Artist Cali Rezo's portraits are not digitally-manipulated photographs but rather tablet/pen illustrations drawn from reference photos. Amazing. From the "How do I work" section of her mostly-French language site:

I work with a tablet and a pen directly on the computer. Besides, my crafting is quiet "traditionnal":

I use photographics references (I shoot everything that moves... and everything that does not also, haha !). I start with a sketch (with my electronic pen, huh, not on paper, no, no, no !)( and I don't draw ON the photo). Then I paint the light and dark flat tints. And I tune the color tints and the finess of the strokes.

Link (via Drawn!)

There's a book for sale at the Grand Canyon National Park claiming that the canyon was a result of Noah's Flood. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), park superintendent Joe Alston in 2003 lobbied to keep the book, titled Grand Canyon: A Different View, by Tom Vail, out of the park's bookstores; the National Park Service responded by promising a "high-level policy review" of the matter. PEER claims that three years later, a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the review wasn't even "requested, let along conducted or completed." From PEER:

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book...

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” (said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.)

Link to PEER press release, Link to a review of the book at the National Center for Science Education (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Previously on BB:
• The Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old! Link
• Profile of Creation Museum founder Link
• Creationist theme park Link


UPDATE: BB reader Joseph Francis points out that the National Park Service FAQ on the Grand Canyon includes the following question and answer:

How old is the Canyon?

That's a tricky question. Although rocks exposed in the walls of the canyon are geologically quite old, the Canyon itself is a fairly young feature. The oldest rocks at the canyon bottom are close to 2000 million years old. The Canyon itself - an erosional feature - has formed only in the past five or six million years. Geologically speaking, Grand Canyon is very young. Link

When a young girl in China Grove, North Carolina, opened a Bratz doll on Christmas morning to play with it, she discovered three pounds of pot in the box. According to WSOC-TV, the girl's mother bought the doll on eBay and thought it had never been opened. After seeing the grass hidden behind the doll's head, she called the cops who have since turned the case over to postal inspectors. No word on whether the mom left the seller positive feedback. Link

At least two Arab-language television networks (Alhurra, US-based; and Al Arabiya, Dubai-based) are now reporting that Saddam Hussein was hanged in Baghdad at 10:05 PM Eastern Time. Reports say he was executed with two co-defendants.

Update, 1035PM ET: Iraqi state television (Al-Iraqiya) is now reporting the same, as are other Iraqi TV networks and Al Jazeera. CNN now reports that a senior US military official has confirmed.

Link to CNN's coverage, Wikinews here, evolving Wikipedia article here, New York Times coverage here.

Related: in the New York Times, a report on debate at television networks today over whether and how to broadcast images and video of the execution. In the age of abundant online video, it seems inevitable that explicit footage will soon show up on the internet. How does that -- or should that -- influence editorial decisions at television networks? Will they show greater restraint on-air than online? Link. Poynter is running a related column about the ethics of coverage: Link. Editor&Publisher has a similar item here: Link.

Update, Dec. 30, 11AM ET: Online and on-air, CNN is running stills and video of Hussein at the gallows just up to the execution, and "video captured by cell phone" of his corpse wrapped in a shroud, with the face visible. The NYT online is running similar video and stills, and the BBC seems to be running the same footage (with stills of the shrouded corpse). As I understand it, the footage comes from Iraqi state TV (Al Iraqiya -- screengrab of their website below), which did not broadcast the actual moment of death. It would be interesting to see a roundup of exactly what editorial choices the big Western media companies made, and whether any of them went with different boundaries on-air than online.

Nice to see Fox News staying classy: JPEG Link (Thanks Krolls)

Explicit images of Hussein's corpse and "unedited" cellphone video of the hanging (which includes the moment of death) have already shown up online in other places. A quick search on Google Video, YouTube, and other popular video services for "Saddam," "saddam hanging," or "saddam execution" yields abundant copies of both the phonecam and Al Iraqiya footage. The metadata some uploaders have added for the more explicit cellphone video is macabre: "Includes the drop!" (examples -- video links: 1, 2, 3, 4)

IMAGE below: screengrab of Al Iraqiya (Iraqi state TV) website (cropped): Link to full image.

Reader comment: Alf LaMont says,

The images of Saddam, and the notion that our country had a hand in such medieval barbarism were so disturbing, that I immediately sought solace in Matt Stone and Trey Parker's endlessly more amusing end for Saddam as a "Sandy Little Butthole" /Satan's consort. Link.

Omar says,

The BBC News 24 posted to their blog on their editorial choices: Link

Update, Dec. 30, 930PM ET: Defensetech has more about the state videographer who shot the official tape at the gallows: Link.

Update, Dec 31: BBC is running a story on the fact that the phonecam video differs significantly from the "official" Al Iraqiya footage, which seemed to depict a quiet, dignified procedure. In contrast, the "unofficial" phonecam video shows Hussein being taunted and cursed at his death, and him taunting back, while camera flashes go off: Link, and here's their translation, though I understand that others would translate some of the nuances differently. The phonecam video would also appear to contradict some details of previous reports. Al Jazeera's English-language site is running a story on the footage here: Link. We don't know who shot it.

What were the most-clicked posts on BoingBoing this year? Ken Snider, BoingBoing's sysadmin extraordinaire, dug into the stats to find out. Between that and our keyword logs, one thing is clear -- we really need to be doing more posts about britney spears' naked mesothelioma ipod video lesbian kissing torrents.

While we don't currently have a reliable way to determine which items were in fact most read by human eyeballs (or cyclops kitten eyball, for that matter), Ken did calculate which permalink urls received the most traffic. Here they are:

Top visited permalinks in 2006 (Stories from 2006 only):

(1) StarForce threatens to sue Cory: Link (669,311)
(2) Adorable cyclops kitten: Link (305,773)
(3) NBC nastygrams YouTube over "Lazy Sunday": Link (191,513)
(4) Facebook prank on police: Link (165,773)
(5) Anti-copying malware installs itself with dozens of games: Link (154,139)
(6) Coldplay's new CD has rules: No MP3s, no DVD players, no car stereos: Link (147,720)
(7) Diet Coke + Mentos = Rapid Carbonic Geyser: Link (141,649)
(8) Rumsfeld resignation summarized in Mac OSX screenshot: Link (139,487)
(9) Stephen Colbert kicks ass at White House press corps dinner: Link (136,691)
(10) SNL Natalie Portman gangsta video, braindead NBC: "viral" = "borrowed": Link (122,316)

Top visited permalinks in 2006 (Stories from all years):

(1) Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24 hours: Link (1,176,966)
(2) StarForce threatens to sue Cory: Link (669,311)
(3) HOWTO get something posted to Boing Boing: Link (371,114)
(4) Five years' worth of Boing Boing posts in one file!: Link (315,143)
(5) Adorable cyclops kitten: Link (305,773)
(6) BoingBoing traffic stats are back: Link (304,182)
(7) NBC nastygrams YouTube over "Lazy Sunday": Link (191,513)
(8) Solving and creating captchas with free porn: Link (173,134)
(9) Facebook prank on police: Link (165,773)
(10) Boing Boing has a linking policy: Link (155,332)

Ken adds,

Some other interesting stats for 2006:

There were 53,356,288 requests for the main page

The various RSS/Atom feeds were served 144,949,688 times

There were 385,629 views of BB's "Defeating Censorware" page

Reader comments: Michael Mason says,

Below are a list of some early posts I found while perusing the archives:

Somebody is launching an encyclopedia: Link

First mention of Cory: Link

Mark disses Hunter S. Thompson: Link

Cory's first post: Link

Cory's First Haunted Mansion mention: Link

400 Visitors a day: Link

Pesco's First Post: Link

Welcome Xeni: Link

Iceberg liberation activists, rejoice! Scientists reported yesterday that an enormous ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has finally broken free from Canada's Arctic:

The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Link to AP story, here's a related CNET post, here's a related item about how such changes may help rid the world of notoriously unfriendly polar bears, who aren't all that much fun at parties because their breath smells like blubber: Link.

Reader comment: Madeleine Begun Kane responds:

Ode To A Former Canadian Ice Shelf
By Madeleine Begun Kane

An ice shelf’s collapsed in the ocean.
Global warming’s far more than a notion
Dreamed up by Al Gore,
Though some wish to ignore
All the changes that greed’s set in motion.

Link

Howard Rheingold says, "This San Jose Mercury News story compares the well-known and for-profit Digg with the lesser-known and probably far more important not-for-profit Newstrust." Excerpt:

Two years ago, the inspiration for creating a Web site for news junkies hit two men with vastly different ambitions. One hoped to make boat-loads of money. The other dreamed of enriching American democracy by identifying trusted news sources hidden in the deluge of information available online. The latter turned out to be the tougher task.

Fabrice Florin, a successful technologist and a veteran of Apple Computer, launched the beta version of NewsTrust.net last month after turning 50 and deciding it was time to give something back to society.

Florin had founded three for-profit companies, but feared that if he focused on profits with NewsTrust "the public interest would get cheated.'' So he raised a small amount of money from donors and funded the rest himself.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rose, 27-year-old host of an obscure cable TV tech show, lost no time in launching Digg.com in October 2004. Rose's site lets people give a thumb's up or a thumb's down to stories other users had found on the Web and submitted to Digg.

Link. Image: Newstrust founder Fabrice Florin (Joanne Ho-Young Lee / Mercury News)

Internet celebrity monkey ("i'm small, i'm terry cloth, and i think i have a nice personality!") weighs in on the internet fistfight over luxury chocolate brand Noka (Previous BB post: Link). There's an interesting thread on this over at food forum "chocolateandzucchini" today: Link. Monkey's rebuttal after the jump.

BoingBoing reader Ted read our post yesterday on the Dubious Centrifuge Weapon, and says,

It immediately made me race down to the basement to my pile of old Popular Mechanics, specifically the November 1963 issue. I scanned it am sharing it here for BoingBoing readers. Now we can all build our own little electric centrifuge cannons! ;)

JPEG Link to complete scan (cropped, downsized image shown in this post)

Previously on BB:

Silent but deadly: DREAD centrifuge-powered weapon

Centrifuge as a weapon (2005)

Reader comment: anonymous says,

That reminded me of this site, with a How-To on building a BB machine gun that uses a centrifugal chamber to accelerate the BBs: Link.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has published a detailed, thoroughly researched analysis of technical factors behind this week's case of the missing sex blogs.

Link to his post, which is very instructive reading for any blogger or website owner -- not just "adult" -- who wants to ensure their site is properly ranked in Google and other search engines. Background for the story on BoingBoing here and here.

BB reader Mike says,

I like the pictures of a 1913 Denver blizzard that Flickr user etching has posted in his stream. (Just in his stream, not grouped, unfortunately.) It's a kind of silent editorial on the thousands and thousands of pics of the current mess. I didn't know that the buried car shot was actually a hundred years old, but I suspected as much. And I wish people still sledded down 8th Ave.

Link

Previously on BB:

Snowed-in Denver airport viewed from above (photo)

Great roadside signs of Denver

Guide to suburban Denver subdivision names

Noah Shachtman at Defensetech rounds up 20 of the year's most memorable posts about military technology:

(1) Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile
On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously.

(2) Look Out, Pyongyang? Rail Gun in the Works
One of the big selling points of the Navy's new destroyer is that it can rain a whole lot of hell -- 20 rocket-propelled artillery shells, in less than a minute -- on targets up to 63 nautical miles away... But really, that's the start. The ship's real power will come when it moves away from chemical powders to shoot its projectiles -- and starts relying on electromagnetic fields to shoot projectiles almost six kilometers/second, instead.

Link to full list.

interweb medley

brooklynradio

cover songs

stairway to heaven

etherbeat

hawaiian warchant special

zoe radio

on the download

90hz

tim westwoood soundboard

exopolis mixtape

designer mixtape

tunefind

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

I do not like them on a website.
I do not like them day or night.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

Link, and background here: Link. (Thanks, Michale)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Green-glowing pigs

Dr. Seuss taxidermy

Dr Seuss's anti-malaria GI comic

Dr. Seuss' "Gerald McBoing Boing" on MP3

More BB posts on Dr. Seuss and Theodor Geisel

Reader comment: Mike says,

As a side note, it is somewhat interesting to note that green eggs can be made without the use of food coloring. A little grape jelly will have the same effect (although not as profound).

Grape juice (and a number of other fruits and vegetables) contain molecules that act as a sort of litmus test. The molecules change pigment based on the PH of their environment. In the case of egg whites, it turns green (indicating a PH > 7). Link to New Scientist article.

Nick says,

Bob (The Surreal Gourmet) Blumer made a slightly more appetising 'Green Eggs and Ham' with prosciutto and 'Eggs' made from cantaloupe (for the green 'white') and honeydew (for the 'yolk'). Not a very literal interpretation, but one I'd rather see on my breakfast plate. Link.

Michelle says,

There was a fantastic cafe in Mt Eden (Auckland, New Zealand) called Solla Sollew that offered green eggs and ham. Their version was 'green' simply by covering it a fresh herb pesto. It was absolutely delicious and I haven't tasted anything quite as good since.

The cafe itself was delightful, large artworks of Seuss characters around the walls, trippy murals on the toilet walls and on the outside of the building, Seuss books available to read, kids and dogs welcome. A real community-minded cafe which was closed by the new owners after 1 month and turned into yet another boring textbook cafe. The one thing that remains is the exterior mural (link). It makes me smile every time I see it. Link.

Located at CERN in Switzerland, this superconducting magnet will generate the magnetic field for a particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider, the shiny new particle accelerator slated to switch on next November. Among other experiments, the Collider may enable scientists to finally observe the Higgs boson, aka the "God Particle," the long-theorized particle thought to give all other particles their masses.
Link (via Scientific American)

Previously on BB:
• QTVR of Large Hadron Collider at CERN Link
• Betting on the big questions of physics Link
• Math proves you can stop table-wobbling by rotating Link
• Antihydrogen created at CERN Link

At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman has posted scans of beautiful 1910s-1920s newspaper lay outs about the Mokele-mbembe, a dinosaur-like creature thought by some to still be alive in Africa.
Link

Previously on BB:
• New search for living dinosaurs Link
• Creationist Dr. Dino goes to jail Link

UPDATE: Loren has now posted readable PDFs of the articles plus others. Link

Jacob Appelbaum updates us on what's happening at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin this week:

Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and I (with special guest hacker David Hulton) will be giving our talk "Unlocking FileVault - An analysis of Apple's encrypted disk storage system" ( Link )

Stream the video from Saal 1 at 11:30AM CET on December 29th (today!) in mp4, wmv, ogg video and ogg audio format.

Check out the CCC wiki for general streaming information at the 23c3.

If you're interested in FileVault ( Link ) this talk will present information never previously discussed.

A code release with slides will be available here after the talk is finished: Link.

I also wanted to send some other links of talks that are coming up at the congress... These are going to be amazing!

* Amit Singh - Software Protection and the TPM ( Link )
* Thierry Zoller & Kevin Finistere - Bluetooth Hacking Revisited ( Link )
* George Danezis - An Introduction to Traffic Analysis ( Link )
* Lawrence Lessig - On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code ( Link )
* Luis Miras - Automated Exploit Detection in Binaries ( Link )
* Tina Lorenz - Pornography and Technology ( Link )
* Johannes Grenzfurthner - "We are great together, the liberal society and its enemies!" ( Link )
* Mitch Altman - TV-B-Gone ( Link )
* Fox Magrathea & Autumn Tyr-Salvia - Culture Jamming & Discordianism ( Link )

Image: Jacob Appelbaum.

Previously on BB:
• To do in Berlin: 23rd Chaos Communication Congress
• Hacker-con videos: "150 hours of hardcode nerd education."
• Chaos Computer Club hacker con in Berlin (2005)

BoingBoing reader Gunther says,

On the doom9 forums there is news of a new tool to decrypt HDDVD's. How you get the key is not yet clear but there is a promise to have a tool to get the needed key later. (check the #9 post in the thread): Link, and related coverage at the Inquirer UK.

Here is the instructional video posted by muslix64, the person who claims credit: Link. muslix64 says,

I was not aware of anyone having done that, so I did. Have a look. The AACS copy protection system is realy Unbreakable! The program is a simple implementation of the aacs crypto protocol freely available on the net. No reverse engineering! Stay tuned for source code soon! Merry Christmas everyone!

Snip from Reuters coverage:

A hacker known as Muslix64 posted on the Internet details of how he unlocked the encryption, known as the Advanced Access Content System, which prevents high-definition discs from illegal copying by restricting which devices can play them.

The AACS system was developed by companies including Walt Disney Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp. to protect high-definition formats, including Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-ray.

Muslix64 posted a video and decryption codes showing how to copy several films, including Warner Bros' "Full Metal Jacket" and Universal Studios' "Van Helsing," on a popular hacker Internet blog and a video-sharing site.

The hacker also promised to post more source code on January 2 that will allow users to copy a wider range of titles.

Link.

Reader comment: A.V. points out that the HD-DVD DRM crack is not a crack -- but a hack that will stop working pretty soon:

Note that AACS has not been broken. All they did was copy the key from memory off WinDVD's software. Yes, this will let you copy HD-DVD for now, until the manufacturers revoke the key in the next batch of HD-DVD pressings. WinDVD will either have to get a new key or might get their licence canceled entirely, ending the product.

Of course if they get a new key, then it can be copied from memory again unless they start encrypting it in memory and then this program is useless.

So "backup" your HD-DVD's while you can, in a few months this program will be useless on newer releases.

Short on real moondust to study, NASA scientists are planning to manufacture huge amounts of fake moon dirt. Apparently, the now-dwindling samples acquired during the Apollo missions aren't nearly enough to test how machinery will act on the lunar surface. As a result, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has contracted with aerospace R&D firm ORBITEC to manufacture 16 tonnes of three varieties of simulated moon dirt. From NASA Express Science News:

"We need tons of it, mainly for working on technologies for diggers and wheels and machinery on the surface," adds David S. McKay, chief scientist for astrobiology at the Johnson Space Center (JSC)...

Source materials used to produce the three simulants will potentially come from locations as diverse as Montana, Arizona, Virginia, Florida, Hawaii, and even some international sites.

Initial lots will weigh just tens of pounds to ensure that the simulant is made correctly. "Eventually we will scale up to larger quantities when we can make sure that there is little variation from batch to batch," (NASA program manager Carole) McLemore said.

Once NASA understands how to make the various simulants, plans are to farm the work out to companies to produce larger batches. "We will have certification procedures in place for vendors to follow so users know that the simulants meet the NASA standards," McLemore said.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Snip from New York Times article by Martin Fackler on the downsides of extreme inbreeding of pets in Japan:

Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.

There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.

reg-free Link to story. Above, a mutant Japanese chihuahua bred so that its fur will have a blue hue. Eh, whatever. But how do they taste?

Clay Shirky tells BoingBoing,

Earlier this month, I wrote something about the uncritical reception Linden Labs was getting for its Total Residents figure. Turns out even I was not skeptical enough, and I put up a second piece digging a bit deeper.

The term Residents is even more inflated than I first thought, as something like 20% of the most recent million Residents have never been counted logging in.

The press reaction to Second Life was also more credulous than I knew. Linden is guilty of promoting a misleading figure, but the reporters covering Second Life are guilty of converting that figure into an outright falsehood:

Like a push-up bra, Linden's trick is as effective as it is because the press really, really wants to believe...

"It has a population of a million." -- Richard Siklos, New York Times

"In the Internet-based virtual world known as Second Life, for instance, more than 1 million citizens have created representations of themselves known as avatars..." -- Michael Yessis, USA TODAY

"Since it started about three years ago, the population of Second Life has grown to 1.2 million users." -- Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN

"So far, it's signed up 1.3 million members." -- David Kirkpatrick, Fortune

Professional journalists wrote those sentences. They work for newspapers and magazines that employ (or used to employ) fact-checkers. Yet here they are, supplementing Linden's meager PR budget by telling their readers that Residents measures something it actually doesn't.

Link to Clay's coverage at Valleywag, and read also "Give Me Laser Guns" -- brilliant: Link.

Microsoft sent a bunch of laptops running Vista to bloggers, resulting in much debate on the internets (oh, hell, what doesn't result in much debate on the internets?). Anyway, Scott Beale, one of the recipients, says:

Laughing Squid is auctioning off the controversial Acer Ferrari 1000 Windows Visa laptop that was sent to Laughing Squid by Microsoft, AMD and Edelman. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to EFF.

Link, and here's background on the brouhaha: Link.

Above, the lovely Miss MC Router (alternate link). Doesn't look like she's on the lineup, but she rocks.

MC Plus+ tells BoingBoing,

Bring in the year 2007 with performances from your favorite Nerdcore artists. It's happening January 9th and 10th in Las Vegas. Check out this link for details. The super nerdy lineup includes but is not limited to MCeeP, Fanatical, High-C, YTCracker, and of course your boy, MC Plus+ (along with Plus+'s most sworn nemesis, Monzy).

And here are a bunch of videos featuring those artists and others: Link.

Previously on BB:

• Nerdcore for Life documentary - trailer
• Response to SNL video "Christmas Box" = "Boobs in a Box"
• Windows Vista: Suicide notes, nerdcore rap MP3
• New MC Plus+ album of nerdcore rapping
• Nerdcore rap: Attack of the Clonefucker
• Nerdcore artists to release nerd-rap compilation disc
• Fuck the MPAA - nerdcore gangsta rap song
• MC Frontalot: Nerdcore rapper

Reader comment: Doctor Popular says,

Nerdcore artist Beefy has recently released his new album "Tube Technology" -- Link. Although Beefy won't be performing at any of the Vegas shows, the album features artists such as Drown Radio and MC Router (pictured with her "g33k L1f3" tattoo). Beefy will also be headlining a nerdcore show in Portland the week following CES with TG, Drown Radio and more nerdy rappers.

Also, there will be a sneak preview of the new Nerdcore For Life documentary at the Consumer Electronics Show as well as performances by several other nerdcore luminaries on the DIVX stage.

Brian Krebs at the Washington Post rounds up assessments from computer security experts about the year ahead in internet-enabled crime:

Internet users witnessed yet another wave of spam, worms, viruses and other online attacks in 2005, and experts predict the online world will grow even more dangerous this year. Few believe 2007 will be any brighter for consumers, who already are struggling to avoid the clever scams they encounter while banking, shopping or just surfing online. Experts say online criminals are growing smarter about hiding personal data they have stolen on the Internet and are using new methods for attacking computers that are harder to detect.

"Criminals have gone from trying to hit as many machines as possible to focusing on techniques that allow them to remain undetected on infected machines longer," said Vincent Weafer, director of security response at Symantec, an Internet security firm in Cuptertino, Calif.

One of the best measures of the rise in cybercrime is junk e-mail, or spam, because much of it is relayed by computers controlled by Internet criminals, experts said. More than 90 percent of all e-mail sent online in October was unsolicited junk mail, according to Postini, an e-mail security firm in San Carlos, Calif. Spam volumes monitored by Postini rose 73 percent in the past two months as spammers began embedding their messages in images to evade junk e-mail filters that search for particular words and phrases. In November, Postini's spam filters, used by many large companies, blocked 22 billion junk-mail messages, up from about 12 billion in September.

Link to article, and Krebs posts more on this topic in this blog post: Link.

Smash the crap out of it with a hammer. No, seriously. Snip from Wired Magazine tutorial:

All passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials – and hackers – to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here’s what you can do about it. But be careful – tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison. Not to mention the “special” customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!

Link (via Bruce Sterling)

Oh, anyone can prognosticate for the year ahead -- but few have the cojones to look back with a straight face on their own predictions from the year past. BB's business manager John Battelle does exactly that, each year, and here's a snip from his self-critique for 2006:

As you all know by now, each year I prognosticate, and each year I judge how I did. This year, well, I have to say, if the only thing I got right was that Time was going to put Web 2.0 on the cover ("You" was a proxy for that, trust me), I'd be happy. But overall, I think I did OK, though I was a bit early on many things. Here's the rundown.

Link to "2006 predictions: How'd I do?"

Image: Bart Nagel.

Related posts on Battelle'sSearchblog:
• 2006 Predictions
• 2005 Predictions
• 2005 How I Did
• 2004 Predictions
• 2004 How I Did

BoingBoing reader Sarah says,

In the vein of inappropriate/unexpected graphic adaptations of literature... my father, a psychiatrist with the Veterans Administration, alerted me to a new training video on the VA website that describes post-deployment health evaluation procedure... as an adaptation of GILGAMESH. What genius government employee came up with that one, eh?

There are some odd (though not necessarily helpful) synchronicities: Gilgamesh was the King of Uruk (now in Iraq). In the vid, his friend comes home from battle with Gulf War Syndrome (I'm guessing), and he with PTSD.

Link to the DoD/VA website.

reader comment: someone whose name I accidentally deleted says,

Using Gilgamesh in a cartoon to explain "Post-Deployment Health Evaluations" sounds like a bizarre combination, but they're following a meme started by VA psychiatrist Jonathan Shay. His books include "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character" and "Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming". Link

Lou Cabron at 10ZenMonkeys has posted a funny roundup of videoblogs he believes are worthy of ridicule: Link. This poor little guy here took top prize. (Thanks, Moe Zilla)

Fans of cloned meat and dairy products -- c'mon, we know you're out there -- rejoice! The US government declared today that food products made from cloned animals is "safe to eat," and probably won't require labeling to disclose the fact:

After more than five years of study, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that cloned livestock is "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock. FDA believes "that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

Link.

Update: this story's a year old, but it's making the rounds again this week after a Gizmodo post. A number of BoingBoing readers submitted it today, but it appears there's been much criticism of the concept since the original 2005 article. Read on, with skepticism or drool, depending on whether you believe the outlandish claims.

-------------------

The gun looks like an angry flying saucer, and the ammo looks like golf balls. A flying saucer that shoots golf balls should be funny. But 120,000 rounds per minute at .50 caliber makes that not one bit funny. Snip from defensereview.com:

Imaging a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire.

Link David Crane's review of "DREAD centrifuge-powered weapon system," on military.com, here's the defensereview Link. Tech-e-blog has video: Link. (also seen on Gizmodo, thanks Gunther.)

Reader comment: Tom says,

It's worth looking at the discussion forum thread on the DREAD weapon to read analyses on why this won't work. Also, a thread from another forum (Link) does a good job of summing up the flaws in the concept. My guess is that someone with posting rights to Gizmodo got a little overheated when they saw the video (which has been out for over a year and a half) and thought that it was something new.

Anonymous says,

Regarding the mythical 'Dread' centrifuge weapon - you should probably post this link, which does an excellent job of talking about how unlikely some of that company's claims are...

Chris Johnson says,

There are some serious issues with the physics of the 'DREAD' gun (linked to by BoingBoing recently. The comments on the suggested site (notably that of J-Star on February 20 @ 12:09:54) are absolutely correct in terms of the physics (though some of the numbers aren't quite accurate). In short, for the gun to have anything like the claimed firepower, it would be enormous and have huge recoil. Similar ideas _have_ been considered for non-lethal (low muzzle-velocity) guns to quell riots. Link.

Peter says

A patent has been pointed out for this exact device. US Pat. #6520169 no-reg. link to patent: Link. It's an easy read. Strange but it seems not a hoax - although patents can lie too.

Previously on BB:
- Centrifuge as a weapon (2005)

The Los Angeles Times gathered predictions for technology's future from seven people -- John Brockman, Steve Ballmer, Ned Sherman, Rafat Ali, Kevin Werbach, Chris Anderson, Hank Barry -- and their responses are online today.

Here's a snip from what Chris Anderson (Wired, The Long Tail) had to say:

I'M WILLING TO bet that 2007 is the year that somebody figures out how to make video advertising work in a YouTube world. And if I'm right, the TV industry is going to get very rocky, very fast.

I doubt that the same disruptive force will hit movies, however. The big-screen home-theater boom created a market for high-def films, and that factor-of-10 increase in downloading time bought Hollywood another five years or so to figure things out.

And here's a snip from EDGE.org publisher John Brockman's thoughts:

WE WILL SEE migration of social applications as user-generated content moves to the WiFi environment. YouTube, MySpace and multi-user games will be available on hand-held devices, wherever you go. People will carry their digital assets much like their bacteria. Israeli tech guru Yossi Vardi calls it "continuous computing."

The nanotechnology world foreseen by K. Eric Drexler arrives in the form of MEMS, or microelectronic mechanical systems. Very inexpensive moving parts will be mass-produced like a semiconductor. But unlike semiconductors, they move. Useful for anything that employs moving parts.

Synthetic Biology pioneer George Church of Harvard University expects $3,000 personal genomics kits in stores.

"Pop Atheism" might include popular atheist TV and movie characters, professional athletes, political figures, etc. Look for the first billion-dollar IPO for the Web service that gets atheists together for "rituals," dating and political and business networking.

Link to LA Times piece.

Previously on BB:

• Brockman: 40 years of "intermedia kinetic environments"
• More BB posts on Brockman (about 60 total)
• More BB posts on EDGE (about 50 total)

Reader comments: David C. Frier says,

Ballmer had this and this only to say about 2007, "You'll be back in control."

How viciously will this man have to insult his customers before they just go away? The Vista licensing agreement is being described as the "world's longest suicide note." Has Steve read it? Did you know that it goes WAY beyond DRM on content... to the extent of reserving the right remotely to disable YOUR hardware should MS decide at some time in the future that it's not up to snuff? "Back" in control? Does he imply that I am already out of control? Suppose I am, how much of that is due to his handiwork?

Never mind Steve. I have converted one of my old machines to Linux and so have begun the process of stepping away from my 23 years of MS experience to make his arrogantly worded prediction come true -- at least for me. By the end of '07 I hope to be running none of his products anywhere in my life.

(Note that this email comes to you from MS-Outlook, which may be the toughest drug of all to kick -- PDA synch is a Holy Grail.)

The latest issue of Science News profiles the work of several mathematicians who crochet and knit incredibly strange surfaces to illustrate certain complicated mathematical principles. For example, two researchers from the University Bristol used their computer algorithm as crochet instructions to create a Lorenz manifold, a shape that emerges from chaotic systems such as weather. Other crafty scientists crocheted Möbius strips, Klein bottles, and hyperbolic planes (seen here). From the article:

Mathematics has long been an essential tool for the fiber arts. Knitters and crocheters use mathematical principles—often without recognizing them as such—to map the pattern of a cable sweater, for instance, or figure out how to space the stitches when adding a sleeve onto a jacket.

Now, the two crafts are returning the favor. In recent years, mathematicians such as Osinga have started knitting and crocheting concrete physical models of hard-to-visualize mathematical objects. One mathematician's crocheted models of a counterintuitive shape called a hyperbolic plane are enabling her students and fellow mathematicians to gain new insight into startling properties. Other mathematicians have knitted or crocheted fractal objects, surfaces that have no inside or outside, and shapes whose patterns display mathematical theorems.

"Knitting and crocheting are helping us think about math we already know in a different light," says Carolyn Yackel, a mathematician at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

Link

Previously on BB:
• HOWTO crochet a Lorenz manifold Link
• Chaotic crochet Link
• Fabric brain art Link
• Gigantic Klein bottle Link
• Moebius strip playground equipment Link

BB reader Egg Syntax says,

Noka makes obscenely expensive chocolate ($2080/lb in small doses). This superb exposé from a very, very serious chocolate geek reveals that they buy widely-available chocolate and remold it at up to a 6,956% markup. Excellent reading and a good reminder that price is often not proportional to quality.

Link to "What's Noka Worth?" on dallasfood.org.

I can't speak to the veracity of the claims in this exhaustive (10! part!) investigative series, but I couldn't stop reading it. I don't even care much about the subject in general -- I hardly eat sweets at all, myself -- but the scientific references and geeky specificity made this a riveting read. It's more about economics and the psychology of luxury goods than chocolate alone.

Reader comment: Steve says,

I just recently purchased chocolates as a gift. It was a six pack for $10. That's about $1.70 a chocolate. This is to say, chocolate is expensive. The price per pound listed in the article is deceiving because that's the type of mark-up you get when you sell products in such small amounts. Plus, you don't buy those types of chocolates by the pound. Anyone who really enjoys chocolate would be more than willing to spend up to $2 or $3 for a piece. I thought that blogger came to some ridiculous conclusions.

Ethan Anderson says,

I read the Dallas Food article in question a few days ago, and while the author does occasionally fail to take into account the fairly standard practice of marking up an item if sold in small quantities, the end conclusion is far from invalid, as reader Steve commented. Noka is re-selling chocolate to which they have added no value at a considerable markup, even when similar or same quantities are involved. The chocolate in question was purchased by the author from Chocosphere.com, who offers the exact chocolate mentioned in the article for $7.50 per bar. Indeed, the author notes, "So, if you buy Noka's 48-piece Vintages Encore box for $100, you're getting about the same amount of chocolate you would have gotten by buying one 100-gram Bonnat bar at a retail price of $7.50. That's a markup of more than 1,300% over the retail price."

Just because reader Steve bought an unidentified $10 box of chocolates doesn't make his argument valid (if anything it makes it worse), and he doesn't appear to have read the article in question, as his criticism is addressed directly in the original piece.

Egg says,

Steve said, "The price per pound listed in the article is deceiving because that's the type of mark-up you get when you sell products in such small amounts. Plus, you don't buy those types of chocolates by the pound. Anyone who really enjoys chocolate would be more than willing to spend up to $2 or $3 for a piece. I thought that blogger came to some ridiculous conclusions."

I think that Steve is missing the point. When we compare Noka's prices for a four-piece box to, say, Recchiuti's, we see that Noka's price is 60% higher, and you only get 1/7 the amount of chocolate. This would perhaps be justified if there were something extraordinary about Noka's chocolate (or if they were adding a great deal of value to it) but, as the article exhaustively demonstrates, there's not.

South Park's fecal ambassador of holiday cheer now lives on in a fan-made Etsy knitting pattern. Link to photos of the Christmas poo in repose, and here's the pattern ($6): Link.

Previously on BB:
• South Park creators: download our shows!
• South Park: Make Love Not Warcraft
• South Park: Flying Spaghetti Monster, Richard Dawkins
• More South Park-related posts on BB (about 80 of 'em)

Here's the latest on Michael Crook (shown at left), the nutty griefer who tried to bully a bunch of blogs including BoingBoing into removing this photo (despite the fact that Fox News, not Crook, produced it). Scott Beale, founder of the ISP Laughing Squid, says,

10 Zen Monkeys, the blog hosted by Laughing Squid which is currently at the center of the EFF lawsuit against Michael Crook, has just put a call out for Michael Crook DMCA war stories in order to help in the case against him. Link to post soliciting your documentation.

WHY THIS MATTERS:

Crook is a deranged, serial troll, and his behavior is consistent with that of someone who craves attention, no matter how negative. But what does matter is the fact that the DMCA is so poorly conceived and written that even the nuttiest, most deranged of trolls can abuse it into silencing constitutionally-protected online speech.

For instance, others might use the same tactic to chill political speech: what better way to see to it that your opponent's campaign ads are yanked from YouTube a week before the elections? Laws this broken need to be fixed.

Related BB posts:
• Michael Crook sends bogus DMCA takedown notice to BB
• EFF Sues Michael Crook for Bogus DMCA Claims
• RU Sirius show about EFF suit against Michael Crook
• Ethan Ackerman schools us on DMCA and ISPs' obligations
• Troublemakers enjoy harassing sites with bogus DMCA
• EFF fights another DMCA abuser
• HOWTO protect yourself from "The Craigslist Experiment"

Reader comments: Anonymous says,

YTMND does Crook: Link.

And someone else points us to online video of the Fox News interview with Mr. Crook that led to the whole mess: Video Link New Video Link to Hannity and Colmes interview.

San Francisco's Department of Parking and Traffic are testing a mounted camera that scans the license plates of parked cars and searches a database to identify vehicles with lots of unpaid tickets. When a match is made, the parking ticket crew locks on the boot. Apparently the system can scan at least 250 plats an hour. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco isn't the first city to use the license-plate scanning technology. Oakland uses it to find stolen vehicles. San Francisco just added the stolen car data to its system last week.

The system isn't perfect. The cameras don't capture all license plates because some are tilted at the wrong angle or too dirty to read.

The cost of software and equipment for one of the specially outfitted Department of Parking and Traffic vehicles is about $92,000, (said James Lee, assistant director of enforcement for the Department of Parking and Traffic.)

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Previously on BB:
• License plate scanner will bust people with overdue library books Link
• License plate tracking for fun and profit Link
• School becomes surveillance state Link

My wife and I have fallen in love with crafter Sara Lanzillotta's Devout Dolls collection of stuffed oddities and fabric freaks. I bought my wife two Devout pieces as gifts--a Forest Friend deer doll and matching pin (image left)--and they're as beautifully constructed as they appear. I sense our Devout collection has just begun.
Link

Coop says:

My buddy Scott Teplin has a show coming up in Paris on Jan. 13th to feb 20. I really dig his work. For a while now, he's been doing drawings of three dimensional letters, filled with different substances. This has evolved into letters and abstract shapes drawn as axiometric floorplans for strange clubhouses filled with mysterious and enigmatic devices. It's like detention-room doodling, done by a pre-adolescent supervillain.

Link to Scott Teplin's site, Link to g-module gallery in Paris

Via Joi Ito's blog, news of a major disruption to internet access throughout Asia after a series of earthquakes. Snip from an announcement sent out by China Telecom, which appeared on sina.com.cn:

中国电信称，据我国地震台网测定，北京时间12月26日20时26分和34分，在南海海域发生7.2、6.7级地震。受强烈地震影响，中美海缆、亚太1号、亚太2号海缆、FLAG海缆、亚欧海缆、FNAL海缆等多条国际海底通信光缆发生中断，中断点在台湾以南15公里的海域，造成附近国家和地区的国际和地区性通信受到严重影响。

China Telecom has confirmed that, according to China institute of earthquake monitoring, at Dec 26, 20:26-20:34 Beijing Time, 7.2 and 6.7 magnitude earth quake have occurred in the South China Sea. Affected by the earthquake, Sina-US cable, Asia-Pacific Cable 1, Asia-Pacific Cable 2, FLAG Cable, Asia-Euro Cable and FNAL cable was broken and cut up. The break-off point is located 15 km south to Taiwan, which severely affected the International and national tele-communication in neighboring regions.

据悉，中国大陆至台湾地区、美国、欧洲等方向国际港澳台通信线路受此影响亦大量中断，国际港澳台互联网访问质量受到严重影响，国际港澳台话音和专线业务也受到一定影响。

It was also reported that communication directed to China mainland, Taiwan, US and Europe were all massively interrupted. Internet connection to countries and region outside of China mainland became very difficult. Voice communication and telephone services were also affected.

中国电信称，受余震影响，抢修工作遇到较大困难，加之海缆施工具有一定难度，预计影响还将持续一段时间。

China Telecom has claimed that due to the aftershock of the earthquake, the repairing works would be very tough. In addition undersea operation is also not easy to handle with. So this phenomenon is going to exist for certain period.

Link to Joi's blog post. The folks at Wikinews have an evolving page on the story: Link. IMAGE: USGS, via this page with detailed data about the seismological event(s).

This is how people at McMurdo Station in Antarctica keep from going crazy celebrate their craziness during the holidays. Above: a dude in a reindeer costume pauses for a moment of reflection. With a bunch of colored balls. At the South Pole. Photos, blog post. (Thanks, T.bias, via Wayne's list)

Related BB posts:
• Santarchy in Antarctica (2003)
• Will the real Antarctic Anti-santa please stand up? (2003)
• More Santarchy in Antarctica (2003)
• Astronaut in Antarctica to conduct fun experiments (2006)
• More archive posts about Antarctica

Reader comments:

Jonathan Moore points us to a description of the "blue balls," which are actually an art project called Stellar Axis. Wow, Art in Antarctica! snip from the description:

Stellar axis is a giant art piece depicting the 99 brightest stars in the southern hemisphere. blue fiberglass spheres of various yet relative sizes represent the stars - with sirius being the largest. they are arranged as they are in the sky, in forms of constellations as they are when the solstice occurs. only we don't see the night sky here, therefore we don't get stars, but either way, it is beautiful, the contrast of cobalt and ice shelf. locally, the spheres had become known as 'blueballs.' ("hey sandwich, you really have to go out there and check out the blueballs... they're amazing!") the installation is about a 45 minute ride from mcmurdo, out on the ross ice shelf, near pegasus runway.

Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City says,

Related: Artist McKendree Key's earth art with balls at Lake Camplain. Her website here. Her work at Caren Golden Fine Art here. It would be a stretch to say there is a preexisting tradition of ball art similar to what the Santa's came to on their own, though certainly there are other examples of earth artists who use that shape in their work ( Andy Goldsworthy being the best example) but you can certainly see that artists also have an affinity for the form and are making things like the Santa's are doing.

Joseph Miller says,

McMurdo Station is not actually at the South Pole but on Ross Island, which is some distance from the pole and at a more reasonable altitude. Also it's Summer, so the place isn't as crazy-inducing as you might think. At least, that's what I gather from my brother, who's been there a couple of times (and is on his way there now). As for the picture, some people just have more Christmas spirit than others. And more blue balls.

Chop says,

Here's a more "blue collar" look at how people unwind / maintain sanity at McMurdo. The Science outposts down there are, in fact, more construction site than laboratory. Link to BigDeadPlace [ Ed. note: Yeah, we've blogged these guys before! Link 1, Link 2 ]

Sanjay Patel, (check out his doodles!) an animator at Pixar, sent me his delightful illustrated book, The Little Book of Hindu Deities. His style is a little Mary Blair, a little UPA, and thoroughly modern. This is my first introduction to the pantheon of Hindu deities, and Patel's descriptions of the cast of characters, which usually include illuminating anecdotes, are wonderful. It's a shame most schools in the United States skip over the Hindu gods when they teach mythology. What a terrific textbook this would be. Link

Here's a video of my appearance on ABC News talking about five YouTube video picks. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
BB video favorites

Kevin of the Virginia Quarterly Review says,

CNN reported today that over 200 people in Nigeria died today from a massive explosion and fire resulting from a tapped oil pipeline. VQR's Winter issue (in the mail as we speak) features a portfolio of essays on oil in Africa, and in light of today's news, we're posting in advance John Ghazvinian's important essay "The Curse of Oil." It offers some important background on the little-known practice (at least in the West) of pipeline "tapping" and on the larger issues of oil development and revenue in Africa.

Link.

Reader comment: Mark J-L says,

A good friend of mine is a photographer for the Baltimore Sun, and he shot for a story on Oil in Nigeria. It's a multi-part story with a pretty good set of pics (related story and links to pics in the right column). Link

CORRECTION: Jimmy Wales tells BoingBoing that the Times UK article excerpted below contains an important error:

"Amazon is a recent investor in Wikia, but they have nothing to do with this search project."

I've taken the liberty of striking out the Times' error below. - XJ

- - - - - - - - - -

Snip from Times UK article:

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo! Mr Wales has begun working on a search engine that exploits the same user-based technology as his open-access encyclopaedia, which was launched in 2003.

The project has been dubbed Wikiasari — a combination of wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for “rummaging search”.

Mr Wales told The Times that he was planning to develop a commercial version of the search engine through Wikia Inc, his for-profit company, with a provisional launch date in the first quarter of next year. Earlier this year he secured multimillion-dollar funding from amazon.com and a separate cash injection from a group of Silicon Valley financiers to finance projects at Wikia.

Link.

Wikiasari.com currently redirects here: Link, and on that site, Mr. Wales explains:

Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken. Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that.

There have been some amazing projects in recent years which have matured now to the point that a new alternative is possible. Wikia is funding and supporting the development of something radically new.

Nutch and Lucene and some other projects now provide the background infrastructure that we need to generate a new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot. Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.

Help me out, spread the word. I am looking for people to continue the development of a wiki-inspired search engine. Specifically community members who would like to help build people-powered search results and developers to help us build an open-source alternative for web search.

Link to related discussion.

Reader comment: Dan Harper says,

You probably already know the blog "Evolving Trends" has been writing on the Semantic Web, and said back on June 26, 200, that Wikipedia is best positioned to really make the Semantic Web take off, and unseat Google. Link. Maybe this is the way the Zeitgeist is blowing.

While visions of sugarplums and Wiis danced in your head over the holiday, blogs were abuzz over a promotional graphic novel attributed to the National Rifle Association of America (The NRA).

In short: Wonkette posted jpeg scans from a digital copy sent in by an anonymous tipster. Elsewhere, some at Daily Kos and a popular gun law forum (and, for a while, me) expressed doubts over authenticity (c'mon, it was so far-out! lobsterrorists!). Then, Wonkette shared the original doc with BoingBoing (PDF link), a Wonkette commenter determined it appears to have been illustrated by Chris Gall, and everyone agreed -- not a hoax (though we're still awaiting response from the NRA). Here's a link to the updated BoingBoing post with embedded blog-drama, and there are fresh posts at Wonkette (Link), Kos (Link) and the CA-CCW forum (Link). And below -- readers say Adobe Reader reveals what are apparently hidden notes from the NRA assigner to the illustrator.

IMAGE: Brochure excerpt. Guns will protect you from tsunamis. Who knew?

Previously on BB:
• Fear-mongering graphic novel attributed to NRA (UPDATED)

Reader comment: Josh Larios says Adobe Reader reveals "hidden" notes in the NRA pamphlet:

If you use the text selection tool in Adobe Reader and highlight some of the half-page graphics in the recent NRA illustrated pamphlet, you can cut and paste into a text editor to see some of the instructions to the illustrator for those pages. That last page with the tsunami was originally supposed to be very different:

Idea: Good (American values) and evil (anti-American influences) are locked in a final, titanic moment of combat, and the reader must act now.

Concept: Iconic evil non-American figure with blazing torch seeks to overpower and set fire to American flag defended by iconic American muscular warrior. Good guy has death grip on bad guy's throat and on the torch, which has already caused the flag to smolder. The balance of power is dangerously equal; neither combatant has advantage.

Link. Also if you play it backwards, the brochure says "Paul is Dead."

Vann Hall adds,

I downloaded the complete PDF and noticed 'placeholder' comments still located 'beneath' some of the images. (Quark layering, perhaps?) In any case, the artist followed most image concepts pretty closely, although he *did* un-Jewify (or maybe un-Scrooge-McDuckify) the recommended Soros image a bit, and what is now the closing 'guns against tsunamis' image was originally imagined as a bit more Captain Marvel-y. Per-page text, and my comments [wvh], follow.

(4) Idea: George Soros (God like) sitting on stacks of money, guns burning all around him. [wvh: Final image is a falsely pious Soros; actually looks more like a liver-spotted Walter Mondale.]

(6) Idea: Globalist one-world anti-American types want to reduce our quality of freedom to that of the rest of the world. Concept 1: Globalist holding blue earth in one hand and crumpled-up Bill of Rights in the other. Concept 2: Globalist holds globe, from which the U.S. land mass has been plucked, oceans pour into the resulting void. Cutline will help explain this. [wvh: Concept 2 was the one used.]

(12) Idea: Brutal, door-to-door, armed gun confiscations. Concept: Four burly armed SWAT-equipped pol body-slam a fragile 71-year-old lady to the floor of her modest kitchen to wrest and recover her opened, non-threatening pearl-handled revolver. Cutline explains this illustration depicts a true event that happened in post-Katrina New Orleans (see attached frame grabs).

(14 - 15) Idea: When disaster triggers collapse of society, all that stands between your family’s security and chaotic crime is a firearm. Concept: Night scene of a horrifically ravaged middle-class neighborhood – by hurricane or tornado or riots or terrorist act – abandoned by police and left powerless against violent mayhem by roving gangs. A lone father stands guard over his home, wife and children with a shotgun.

(20) Idea: Criminal gangs are in all communities and of all races. Concept: Clearly Asian, black, white and Latino gang members. [wvh: Not sure which one of these brownish individuals is supposed to be white, though.]

(29) Idea: Good (American values) and evil (anti-American influences) are locked in a final, titanic moment of combat, and the reader must act now. Concept: Iconic evil non-American figure with blazing torch seeks to overpower and set fire to American flag defended by iconic American muscular warrior. Good guy has death grip on bad guy’s throat and on the torch, which has already caused the flag to smolder. The balance of power is dangerously equal; neither combatant has advantage. [wvh: Final version has nice, white, nuclear family (albeit 1.1 kids short) peacefully watching an approaching tsunami in the final moments before it sweeps them away.]

BB reader WD45 says,

Just a comment on the NRA pamphlet -- from a reluctant life NRA member. The most important thing in the pamphlet, the concepts, are right out of the NRA playbook, leading me to believe this is the real deal. Globalized gun bans, Hillary, Soros, Schumer and the animal rights depictions and mentions are their main points of argument in their mailings, magazines, and telemarketer phone calls.

It would appear that this is a new concept to lure those younger folks on the fence about the issue into the fold. I get all of their garbage in the mail, and will chime in, should it arrive...

Mark O'Neil says,

Last year BoingBoing posted some info about the "Chaos Congress" here in Berlin, Germany and I haven't noticed any mention of it this year. This "hacker" convention is excellent and I've really been looking forward to it all year. I went last year because of a link suggested on Boing Boing and I loved it. Many of the talks are in English and the people there are super. I highly recommend stopping in even if someone is simply passing through the city. There is definitely no need to be a hacker and any technology interested person will find the speakers interesting. There is some info and a few links to help travelers find cheap places to stay in Berlin on the congress' web site.

Link to event info, 27-30 December 2006.

Among the many fine presenters scheduled are Annalee Newitz (link to session), Lawrence Lessig (link to session) Jacob Appelbaum (link to session), Seth Schoen (link to session), Johannes from monochrom (link to session) and Joi Ito (link to session). The opening keynote will be delivered by Tim Pritlove and John Perry Barlow (link to session)

Previously on BB:
• Hacker-con videos: "150 hours of hardcode nerd education."
• Chaos Computer Club hacker con begins in Berlin

UPDATE: Jacob Appelbaum says folks are uploading photos to Flickr with the tag "23c3": Link.

How did people do photoshop like tricks in 1967? Check out this book of modded topless women for some impressive examples of pre-digital photo manipulation. (NSFW?) Link (Via Beware of the Blog)

BB reader Justin says,

After the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Disney theme park designer Art Riley jokingly proposed repurposing the site as an amusement park - seen here in this concept art found recently on Ebay.

Link to Justin's blog post, which also explores a German fun park on the site of an abandoned nuclear power plant.

Reader comment: Mike Outmesguine says,

I happened to catch this news that Unit 1 from Three Mile island (TMI-1) was shut down earlier this month for a few days "due to a grid disturbance" which probably means problems with the delivery of energy to the electrical grid. It's operating at full power now providing 850 Megawatts. (Link). Unit 2 is the reactor that had the meltdown in 1979 and as of 1993 is permanently shutdown and defueled. (Link)

Continuing in our series of official US lawmaker portraits that include objects of a technological persuasion...

• Jeb Bush post
• John H. Sununu post

BB reader Bill Higgins says:

Oh, I'll see your Blackberry and raise you an autogiro.

Hiram Bingham III barely qualifies for your Governors' Gadgets Derby; he served, owing to peculiar circumstances, as Governor of Connecticut for exactly one day in 1925. His career in the U. S. Senate was longer and more distinguished. But he is best known as an archaeologist, since he discovered the forgitten Inca city of Macchu Pichu. See this link.

Anyway, Bingham was a pilot and an enthusiastic promoter of aviation. For a photo of him posing in front of the U.S. Capitol, climbing out of his autogiro after a quick game of golf, see this link. For an impressive photo of the same aircraft against the Capitol dome, see this link.

Chris from iamanerd.net compares a recent Shepard Fairey print "Nouveau Black" with a Koloman Moser drawing from 1899 called "Ver Sacrum." Chris says his post on Flickr "exposes the source of 'artist' Shepard Fairy's work, with the blatant stealing of old, un-copyrighted work."

If you ask me, Fairey's use of Moser's art is really cool. Link