A familiar source from Iran who previously worked for an ISP there tells BoingBoing,

I have heard from several sources that Iranian ministry of "culture and islamic guidance" has published a set of regulations for Iranian websites. Parts of this are to force all website owners to register their website and their own identity. Hosting companies inside Iran cannot host any website unless the site owner has already registered their information. After a registration deadline two months from now, persian websites not registered are at risk of filtering (censorship).

The website to register this information is www.samandehi.ir.

I could not find any official document stating this fact. But since some media sources in Iran - and also the BBC Persian service - have criticized this, the chance it is true is very high. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am no more in Iran. At the moment I am searching for some reliable sources inside Iran to confirm this.

It would be interesting to know how the BBC confirmed the data they published as a news article here (Persian): link.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Censorware in Iran: latest crackdown on bloggers

Iran limits ADSL bandwidth above 128kbps for all ISPs

Iran: magazines at newsstand censored in ink, stickers

ISPs in Iran, Tunisia also use SmartFilter (which blocks BB)

Markus sez, "After Lessigs stunning talk at 23c3 in Berlin there was an interesting debate between Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow about strategies in the copyfight. We did an interview with Barlow right after the debate about massive civil disobience to crash the system:"

[...]If you wanna share something - share it. If you wanna use something - use it. Try to do so ethically in the sense of don't take things without attribution.[...] Pay no attention to these people when it comes to being creative. Go ahead and do the stuff that Larry showed in the beginning of his talks and do lot of it. And every time they put a lock on - break it. And every time they pass a new law - break that.[...]

Link (Thanks, Markus!)

Security researchers Steven Murdoch and Saar Drimer hacked one of Britain's much-vaunted "tamper-resistant" chip-and-PIN credit-card processing terminals so that it plays Tetris. Link (via Engadget)

At Defensetech.org, Noah Shachtman writes:

Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed military contractors have been roaming the country -- without any law, or any court to control them. That may be about to change, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer notes in a Defense Tech exclusive. Five words, slipped into a Pentagon budget bill, could make all the difference. With them, "contractors 'get out of jail free' cards may have been torn to shreds," he writes. They're now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws that governs soldiers.

In that Defensetech post, Singer explains how he believes the new law will change things for military contractors. But could it also mean that embedded reporters will now end up being subject to the same justice code? Singer writes:

The Iraq war is the first that journalists could formally embed in units, so there is not much experience with its legal side in contingency operations. The lack of any legal precedent, combined with the new law, could mean that an overly aggressive
interpretation might now also include journalists who have embedded.

Given that journalists are not armed, not contracted (so not paid directly or indirectly from public monies) and most important, not there to serve the mission objectives, this would probably be too extensive an interpretation. It would also likely mean less embeds. But given the current lack of satisfaction with the embed program in the media, any effect here may be a tempest in a tea pot. As of Fall 2006, there were only nine embedded reporters in all of Iraq. Of the nine, four were from military media (three from Stars and Stripes, one from Armed Forces Network), two not even with US units (one Polish radio reporter with Polish troops, one Italian reporter with Italian troops), and one was an American writing a book. Moreover, we should remember that embeds already make a rights tradeoff when they agree to the military's reporting rules. That is, they have already given up some of their 1st Amendment protections (something at the heart of their professional ethic) in exchange for access, so agreeing to potentially fall under UCMJ when deployed may not be a deal breaker.

The ultimate point is that the change gives the military and the civilians courts a new tool to use in better managing and overseeing contractors, but leaves it to the Pentagon and DOJ to decide when and where to use it. Given their recent track record on legal issues in the context of Iraq and the war on terror, many won't be that reassured.

Read the full text of Singer's analysis here: Link. He is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at The Brookings Institution, and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press) and the upcoming book Wired for War (Houghton Mifflin).

See also this related Washington Post story from today, "Contractors Are Cited in Abuses at Guantanamo": Link. (Thanks, Noah Shachtman!)

Update: my NPR News colleague JJ Sutherland, who has spent much of the past year in Baghdad, Afghanistan, and other places covering war, writes:

Just read the post about how in Fall 2006 there were just 9 embed reporters in Iraq. While there may be 9 folk who are only embedded, that is a very misleading number.

Off the top of my head, and this is just people that I know personally, which certainly doesn’t encompass the entire Baghdad press corps, I can think of more than 10 who were embedded over the time I was there, which was from mid October to mid November, and that doesn’t include any on the list you posted. And I am sure there were far more than that. NPR alone had four different people embedded since the summer.

Some people embed for long periods of time, but far more common is the embed that lasts a few days to a week, which happens regularly…and that doesn’t include the 1 day embeds that occur even more often.

There are myriad reasons people will embed for only a short periods of time during a tour in Iraq, as there are many other stories to cover there besides the, admittedly important, experiences of American troops.

BoingBoing reader Paul says,

In the story on contractors and embedded journalists being subject to the UCMJ, the writer lists one of the journalists as being a member of the "Armed Forces Network". As much of a nitpick as this may be, that is not the correct name.

The correct name is "American Forces Network"-- a small change, but critical. The name reflects a shift in emphasis made in military journalism to put the "journalism" aspect at a higher priority. The disuse of the word "armed" is also an attempt to present a friendlier, more neutral face to the civilian world.

I've worked with a lot of AFN folks-- journalists, photographers, electronics technicians (as the AFN-Tokyo folks like to say: "200,000 watts! Size DOES matter!"). They're good folks-- and it's appropriate to call their organization by its correct name.

Next Thursday in San Francisco -- EFF turns 16! Come on down to the 111 Minna Gallery to help celebrate 16 years of defending your liberty on the interwebs.

DJ Ripley and Kid Kameleon will be keeping the dancefloor hopping all night long. EFFers will also be on hand to briefly recap the year in digital rights, and we'll be receiving a very generous birthday present from Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

A $20 donation gets you in the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, and all proceeds go toward our work defending your digital freedom.

This fundraiser is open to the general public. 21+ only, cash bar.

Please RSVP to events@eff.org or on Upcoming.org.

What: EFF Sweet 16 Party

When: January 11, 2007 7-10 PM

Where: 111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street/San Francisco, CA/94105 www.111minnagallery.com Tel: (415) 974-1719

Link

A Fox television affiliate in Colorado captured some amazing video of a Russian rocket bursting into flames as it crashed to earth.

Link to story, and the "Videos" link in the sidebar on that page is a clip from that amazing footage.

More video with live reactions from the on-air hosts. (Thanks, Kurt)

Previously on BB:

Weird rock crashes through roof

Paul Whippey says:

I would like to draw to your attention this fantastic British documentary series - "The Secret Life of Machines" which is available to view on Google video. It was filmed between 1988 and 1993, but the content is surprisingly valid even after almost 20 years. It could be considered as a precursor to many of the Mythbusters antics.

It was filmed in a wonderful quirky style, obviously very low budget and used comical animations to illustrate each episodes' theme.

I recommend at least viewing "The Secret Life of the Electric Light."

Especially the extremely dangerous and entertaining antics with a welding power supply and a pencil!

I used to love these when I was a geeky teenager. They brought back some wonderful memories and I would like to share them with all the Boingboing readers.

Link

BoingBoing reader Brian says,

The president has used the recent postal code reform, much of which from what I understand is very beneficial to the employees and to the system overall, to push through a nifty bit of law to allows him to open mail. The only catch is that the president can only open the mail when the president says it is necessary to do so and will only be overseen by... you guessed it, the president himself.

From the White House (Link to announcement):

The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.

More in the Washington Post: Link, and the San Jose Mercury News: Link. (Thanks, eecue and Jake and others)

Reader comment: Michael Thomason says,

Signing statements have no basis in law. It's where the President signs a law, and says he's not going to follow the law he just signed. In fact, his signing statement "is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. (NY Daily News article)"

Please do not give this President more power than is granted to him in the US Constitution. He can sign the law, but he must follow it. His words are not law. The bill he signed that was passed by the congress is law, and it contradicts his statement. In fact, this President is acting illegally.

On January 1st, 2007, Loren Coleman blogged,

[The new year] opens with the news of the death of a nine-year-old who died by hanging, as he attempted to imitate the widely broadcast Saddam Hussein execution video. This press account, "Boy hangs himself 'like Saddam'", includes the details of the young person's death and the realizations from some media critics that the video being shown is graphic:

And today, Loren updates,

On Monday, I posted here about the death of Mubashar Ali, 9, who hanged himself in Pakistan, on Sunday, December 31, 2006, while copycatting the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Two more copycat hangings of young people have occurred in the wake of the widespread broadcasts of the Saddam hanging video on cable and satellite television, and the entire video on such outlets as YouTube. In Texas, Sergio Pelico, 10, was found Sunday, December 31, 2006, dead from hanging from his bunk bed in an apparent copycat of the Saddam death. In India, early on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, Moon Moon Karmarkar, 15, hanged herself from a ceiling fan.

Link to first post (about copycat hanging #1), Link to second post (about copycat hangings #2 and #3)

Previously on BB:

Saddam Hussein has been executed (and now it's on YouTube)

School shootings: malignant, contagious social meme?

LA train wreck: the copycat effect

Reader comment: ttrentham says,

Here's a Houston Chronicle story about the boy in Houston who hanged himself apparently trying out what he saw on TV. It isn't the same source linked by Loren Coleman's Copycat Effect blog: Link.

A court in Brazil today ordered that YouTube be "shut down," whatever that means, until the company takes down a celebrity sex tape (nsfw video link, another, and another) which was the subject of a recent lawsuit:

Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site. For days it was the most viewed video in Brazil.

Cicarelli and boyfriend [Renato, aka "Tato"] Malzoni filed to force YouTube to take the video down and demanded $116,000 in damages for each day the video remains up. Some copies of the video have been taken off the site but users have reposted it. The case dragged on for several months before they filed a third suit in December requesting that YouTube be shut down as long as the video is available to users.

Reuters link. Related blog discussion here and elsewhere.

The video (at least the version circulating now) isn't all that explicit, but it's super cheesy. It's been edited to include schlocky samba music and subtitles ("an ice cream to cool the heat... or does it, hmmm?"). Mr. Malzoni, a real estate heir whose public LinkedIn profile identifies him as a vice president with Merril Lynch in Brazil, hangs a bunch of seaweed on his schlong at the end.

I'm not sure what the Brazilian court intends to do to enforce this ruling, since YouTube (and its parent company, Google) are based in the US. Will they take steps to try and block access within Brazil? A court that country last year demanded that Google disclose user data related to Orkut (also owned by Google) over child porn. Google removed some of the pages in question, but didn't comply with the data demands. (Thanks, Cardoso, thanks for the video DAM)

Previously on BB:

Brazilian cops: Orkut used as drug network

Report: Brazil's congress wants to track Internet users

Reader comment: Kyle Goetz says,

The language of the subtitles in the video is Spanish. It says:

An evening of love with Daniella Cicarelli (Una tarde con Daniella Cicarelli)

Sangria for refreshment. (Sangría para refrescarse)

Hug me, silly (Abrázame tonto)

The passion intensifies (Aumenta la pasión)

Taste. (Gusto)

Smell. (Olfato)

Touch. (Tacto)

The kingdom of the senses. (El imperio de los sentidos)

The time for appetizers arrives. (Llega la hora del tentempié)

An ice cream fights the heat...or not? (Un helado contra el calor, ¿o no?)

In fact, I bet the person who created the subtitles was Chilean, since the word "tentempié" is Chilean Spanish for "appetizer."

Jon Power says,

I wonder if "The kingdom of the senses. (El imperio de los sentidos)" is actually a reference to The Realm Of The Senses or Empire Of The Senses, alternate titles for a rather saucy film Ai No Corrida.

Diego V. Hernández writes,

Kyle Goetz says: "In fact, I bet the person who created the subtitles was Chilean, since the word "tentempié" is Chilean Spanish for ' appetizer.'"

To which I say: Actually "tentempié" is Spanish for "snack".

I'm not sure if "tentempié" is used in Chile, but it's not "Chilean Spanish". It's used widely in spanish-speaking countries, and is recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy (Real Academia Española), more or less the arbiter of the spanish language. "Tentempié" comes from "tente en pie", more or less "keep you standing up".

Better translations (haven't seen the video, just translating the Spanish posted) would be:

An evening with Daniella Cicarelli (Una tarde con Daniella Cicarelli) - No mention of love in the Spanish.
The time for a snack arrives. (Llega la hora del tentempié)
In the realm of the senses. (El imperio de los sentidos) - This references the Spanish title of Nagisha Orima's Ai no corrida.

Carlos Riquelme says,

Regarding the comment made by Kyle Goetz, the video was an exclusive by Telecinco's Dolce Vita, a tv-show devoted to celebrities. Telecinco is a Spanish television network, ergo, the subtitles were not created by a Chilean, but by a Spanish person.

Photo Link (Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon): ob/gyn students at Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul learn how to bring humans into the world with help from Noelle, a life-sized robot, and her robo-baby. "The newborn, also a robot, is equipped with lights on its hands and cheeks to indicate its health -- blue lights mean problems while pink lights signal all is ok." Story link. (thanks, Andrew Breitbart)

Security blogger Brian Krebs has calculated that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was "unsafe" (that is, vulnerable to known security holes, with no available patches) for 284 days in 2006 -- more than 75 percent of the time. By contrast, Firefox experienced a total of nine days' worth of insecurity last year. Link (via /.)

Photo Link: Reuters/Chile: "A housing debtor runs after setting himself on fire to protest against Chile's housing system in front of the government palace in Santiago January 4, 2007. The man extinguished the flames by jumping into a pool outside the government palace and was arrested by police." (thanks, Andrew Breitbart)

Reader comment: Carlos Riquelme says,

It should be noted that on November 30, 2000, a man named Eduardo Miño set himself on fire as a way to protest by his weak and humilliating condition. He was a worker in the Pizarreño Company, sadly famous because it didn't care that his workers breathed asbestos almost everyday, actually, they were in contact with the asbestos while at work and in their homes. They lived just near by the industry, so their wifes, sons and daughters were also affected. Many people died of cancer produced by the asbestos, and still many people is sick.

Eduardo Miño was protesting because the government failed to give satisfying answers to the demands of the many of the people who were affected by the asbestos. He died because of the burns he caused himself. It should be noted also that he was a member of the Communist party. He also inspired a song by a famous chilean group: Link

Link (Thanks, Cyrus Farivar)

Mahesh's parents were flying from Omaha to Sri Lanka, but they got hosed in LAX, where United refused to honor their (perfectly valid) tickets. They ended up shelling out $3,000 to get to Colombo, and when Mahesh wrote to United, they sent him $600 in vouchers, telling him that they couldn't "respond with the generosity he'd anticipated."

Everthing went fine with the first leg of the flight from Omaha to Los Angeles, but when they went to check in for the flight from Los Angeles to Singapore, UAL refused to honor their tickets, claiming that the tickets have not been approved, authorized and authenticated. My father had argued with them that UAL did not have a problem with the first leg of the flight and how the tickets had magically become invalid. Without recourse and being in the middle of their journey, they were forced to purchase new tickets at a cost of $1000 to fly to Singapore. UAL's code share partner, Srilankan Airlines did the same in Singapore, claiming that new tickets have to be purchased at a cost of US $1860 for them to complete the last leg of the journey.

Link (via Consumerist)

The Watchismo Times has a little roundup of the early years of plastic watches, starting with 1971's Tisson Astrolon. It's amazing what a dose of "Delrin, Polyamide, Polyacette, Hostaform, Polystyrol, Lucite, Acrylic, Perspex and Bakelite" did to the stodgy world of watchmaking. Link

See also:
Mechanical "LED watch" from 1970
History of calculator watches
Steampunk watch
Belt-drive watch
Watch guts of great beauty
All-plastic watch movement from the 70s
Awesome, impractical, expensive watch

The LA Weekly has a nice profile of Mark Allen, the founder of Machine Project, my favorite gallery in Los Angeles.

The Machine obsession was born three years ago, when Allen was looking for a place to live. He saw the space on Alvarado just north of Sunset and rented it on a whim. That’s Allen: the guy who goes out hunting for an apartment and comes back with an art gallery. Albeit one the size of your average living room. Simply decorated, with plain white walls. Mucky wood floors and translucent-plastic shoji screens that cut the space in two. Outside: a plain glass storefront window, a metal gate to keep out vandals, and an old television monitor mounted above the door. Sometimes, cryptic graffiti scribblings appear on the glass, a reminder that Echo Park was and still technically is Sureños gang territory. The modesty of the setting contrasts crazily with the loftiness of Allen’s ambitions. Machine Project exists at the intersection of art and science — it’s Nikola Tesla by way of P.T. Barnum, with a dash of The Anarchist Cookbook.

It’s a gallery, but there is no art hanging on the walls. It’s a community center, but the “community” has no concrete parameters and is ever shifting. People take classes there — events are often structured around lectures, a setup Allen calls “casual pedagogy” — but it isn’t a school. People attend art openings that feel more like intimate house parties, but anybody, literally anybody, is invited to just walk on in. Allen is a collector of people, not artists necessarily, but rather people who have interesting ideas and ways of looking at the world — engineers, chemists, physicists, astronomers, computer geeks, historians, students, teachers, enthusiasts of all kinds. He is also a collector of experiences. Any machine, after all, is a sum of its parts.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Past events at Machine Project Link

Patrick DiJusto sent me the link to this YouTube video of an old Levi commercial featuring stop-motion live action and an infectious, delightful song. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• French university students have some fun with inexpensive stop motion Link
• Human space invaders Link

The anonymous Seattle parents of a severely disabled girl (she has the mental capacity of a three-yearmonth-old) have revealed that they surgically modified their daughter, giving her hormone treatments and removing some of her internal organs to keep her small and childlike and thus easier to move around and "involve in family activities."

Along with hormone doses to limit her growth, Ashley's parents also opted for surgery to block breast growth and had her uterus and appendix removed.

They say the treatment will help to improve her quality of life...

Ashley's parents say that because she will remain the weight of a child, it will be easier for them to move her around, bathe her and involve her in family activities - movement that will benefit her physical and mental well-being.

Link (Thanks, Angelina!)

Years ago, I bought a multi-CD set of every MAD magazine. It was a dream come true. Unfortunately, it was Windows only, so I could only read it on my desktop Dell machine.

I just found out about a new version that has every issue of MAD from 1952-2006 on one DVD. That's over 600 issues (17,500 pages), plus a bunch of special features such as interviews and some animation. It also runs on Mac machines, and the pages are in PDF format, which is great for printing and viewing on handheld devices (I hope).

I can't wait to get my copy! Link

Joe Sayers, creator of the wonderful, bitter funnybook "I'm Gonna Rip Your Face Off!" is making and selling reasonably-priced limited edition prints of his strips. Link (Thanks, Joe!)

See also: Angry little comics: "I'm Gonna Rip Your Face Off!"

Consumerism Commentary runs down the weirder wrinkles in the US tax code, including the rules governing bribes and the stuff you own, but which does not belong to you:

Q. This year, I’ve been taking bribes to keep the caviar smuggling ring off the FBI radar. Do I have to report this?

A. Yes. If you receive a bribe, include it in your income...

Q. I found an abandoned car and kept it while the person who lost the vehicle presumably wept. Do I have to report this?

A. Yes. If you find and keep property that does not belong to you that has been lost or abandoned (treasure-trove), it is taxable to you at its fair market value in the first year it is your undisputed possession.

Link (via Consumerist)

SFRevu magazine has just published a wide-ranging interview with me and a great review of my forthcoming short story collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present.

SFRevu: Will ebooks ever get traction? Do you read electronically? How does that experience differ from reading on a full size display and print?

Cory: People already read "ebooks" -- that is to say, the majority of readers presently spend the majority of their reading time reading on screens. They don't read longer form works that way (by and large) and it's likely they never will. The computer screen has its own affordances that will drive new forms of creativity.

This isn't just about resolution or form-factor. The point of a computer is that it is multi-purpose, networked, and social. It does lots of things, and it wants your attention to wander around its infinite depths. Long linear narratives just don't work well in that medium.

I'll channel a little Eric Flint here. Reading novels has always been a minority pass-time, and the people who read novels fetishize the form factor the way that, say, a classic car hobbyist loves his tailfins. I recently wrote an op-ed for Forbes where I described these people as "pervy for paper" (I count myself among them). For us, the paper codex has value that has nothing to do with its technical merit.

Link to interview, Link to review

I read Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh's "Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor" over the holidays and it didn't disappoint me. I first read about Venkatesh's work investigating the economics of underground activities in Chicago's poorest ghettos in Freakonomics, so when I heard that he'd published a book dedicated to the subject, I rushed to read it.

Venkatesh spent years among the hustlers, gangsters, hookers of a South Side ghetto, interviewing them and following them around, speaking to block captains, preachers, beat cops and other people embedded in the local underground economy. The result is a comprehensive, though-provoking and often exciting read that tells the hidden story of everything from secret soul food kitchens to the ins and outs of running a crack-selling enterprise.

The bleak noir literatures, crime novels and cyberpunk and caper stories, they all use shady dealing as a critical stage-prop. But there's never consideration given to the necessary economic underpinnings of a stable shady economy. We see the macroorganisms, but there's no ecosystem in evidence that could support them -- it's like the dinosaurs on King Kong island -- what the hell do that many giant carnivores eat on such a tiny island?

Enter Venkatesh's tremendous research. He teases apart the gigantic web of interactions that comprises the shady economy, showing how a powerful gang leader has to contend with a store-owner if the gang's activities endanger the homeless man who keeps the graffiti kids away from the shop.

Venkatesh isn't a master storyteller. He repeats himself, going over the same points several times, and many of the book's juiciest tidbits are buried in the copious endnotes. The book is neither fish nor fowl, with elements of both academic text and popular non-fiction. That said, the material here was entirely new to me, and eye-opening. This feels like the kind of book I'll be thinking about for years to come. Link

See also: Underground economics in the USA

An open question on Slashdot asks the world's geeks to tell their hairiest IT improvisation stories -- power supplied by coat-hanger wire, cables run down storm-drains -- and a foot-powered backup system:

I used to be the internal LAN support at a large multinational hardware vendor. Most of the company was on Mac desktops and Unix servers, but the accounts department felt they were mavericks who could run their own IT, so they opted for DOS, Lotus 1-2-3 and a Netware server. OK guys, if you think you can do it better, then maybe you can. Go for it.

They also figured that server backups were probably a good idea, since they routinely handled millions of pounds of transactions per day in that one office alone.

And since they were accountants, they naturally picked the cheapest backup solution they could dig up, which was a 40-dollar backup box that used VHS video cassettes, underneath a beancounter's desk, right by his foot. I shit you not: every few weeks, it would occur to him that a backup hadn't been done in a while, so he'd shove the VHS cassette into the backup box with his foot, then nudge the start button with his foot, and return to counting beans. The cassette would pop out when it was finished, and that was proof positive for them of a job done properly. They never even bought a second VHS cassette. Amazingly, the thing never stretched to snapping point, but it was undoubtedly unusable for restores (it never occurred to them to do test restores), making it genuinely much, much worse than useless.

Link

Ciber, Inc, a lab that tests and certifies voting machines, has had its crredentials revoked by the Election Assistance Commission after it was revealed that Ciber was certifying insecure machines.

Experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use.

“What’s scary is that we’ve been using systems in elections that Ciber had certified, and this calls into question those systems that they tested,” said Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins.

Professor Rubin said that although some software bugs had shown up quickly, in other instances “you might have to use the systems for a while before something happens.”

Link (via Deep Links)

A research-team at Boise State is investigating short DNA sequences that are not found in any species, to see if any of these are "incompatible with life" -- sequences so immediately and authoritatively terminal that they have evolved into extinction.

"It's like looking for a needle that's not actually in the haystack," says Greg Hampikian, professor of genetics at Boise State University in Idaho, who is leading the project. "There must be some DNA or protein sequences that are not compatible with life, perhaps because they bind some essential cellular component, for example, and have therefore been selected out of circulation. There may also be some that are lethal in some species, but not others. We're looking for those sequences."

Link (via /.)

Matt Haber says: "I did a Q&A with Ben Schott, the frighteningly informed author/designer behind "Schott's Almanac" and "Schott's Original Miscellany" for Radar:

Haber: Everything is written so concisely. How do you decide what to throw out?

Schott: I tend to write it quite selfishly. I don't think you can write for a particular audience. I tend to look at any news story and say, Well, what do I need to know? Who are these people? Has this happened before? What's increasingly interesting about modern media is its filters: if you actually look at websites, technology from TiVo to iPods to blogs, it's all about filter. What we mean when we say we like a blog or we like a website is that we like somebody's filter. And we have several filters for different things. Of course our friends are filters. Word of mouth is the ultimate filter. So what I try to do is act as a personal filter. When I say personal, I don't mean political or partisan, I mean, What's the Schott's Almanac take on this? It's almost a sort of character.

Link

Bruce Sterling's kicked off his annual state-of-the-world, take-all-comers interview on the WELL's Inkwell conference, which is open to the public -- as usual, he's fizzing with outrageous brilliance:

I don't think today's rich and powerful "run the show" -- in the sense that there used to be a coherent show and it used to be runnable. Today's rich and powerful are meritocrats and plutocrats, rather than some class-based old-school-tie phalanx Establishment. Any earlier set of the rich-and-powerful would have regarded contemporary players like Gates and Soros and Perot and Berlusconi and Murdoch and Bloomberg and bin Laden to be strange, jumped-up, arriviste, nouveau-riche types, crazily unstable pretenders who don't even bother to send their daughters to the cotillion ball.

We really need some new class-term for these modern tycoons who've been flung into the planetary stratosphere by today's amazingly unequal wealth distributions. "Mogul" is a pretty good revived word. It suggests that current Russian model of five or six guys who've divvied up a national economy into privatized secretive satrapies that exist outside the rule of law.

But to imagine that some mogul in exile in London, sweating bullets over radioactive poison, is really "running the show..." I mean, yeah, he's surely a player of some kind... but is he "running it?" By what right? Through what clear and legitimized set of accountabilities and responsibilities? There aren't any. He's obviously winging it totally. They guy's not a conventional political or economic actor at all. The guy's basically a conspirator.

Link

Smithsonian Magazine's article on exploring Antartica's Mount Erebus features stunning photos of these wild-ass fumaroles -- towering, Seuss-esque chimneys that grow out of the ice.

The flanks of Erebus are spiked with ice towers, hundreds of them, called fumaroles. Gas and heat seeping through the side of the volcano melt the snowpack above, carving out a cave. Steam escaping from the cave freezes as soon as it hits the air, building chimneys as high as 60 feet.

Link (via JWZ)

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is the first Muslim elected to Congress, and he's opted to be sworn in on a copy of the Quran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Idiotic Republican Congressmen like Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va) have espoused the unconstitutional belief that US elected officials must be sworn in on a Bible.

As Lessig points out, "Congressman Goode: The Constitution which you studied as a law student at Virginia, and swore to defend as a member of the “105th, the 106th, the 107th, 108th and the 109th Congress” says this: 'but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States' (Article VI, section 3) Does your oath to the Constitution not include this section? Or do you simply not take the oath you took seriously?"

"It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleamed from any number of sources, including the Quran," Ellison said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

"A visionary like Thomas Jefferson was not afraid of a different belief system," Ellison said. "This just shows that religious tolerance is the bedrock of our country, and religious differences are nothing to be afraid of."

Link (via Lessig)

Update: T sez, "Congressman Goode is probably still upset about what Jefferson did to his Bible:

Jefferson wished to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.

Update 2: Someone has stenciled the word BIGOT on the window of Virgil Goode's constituency office. (Thanks, Xeni!)

A Welsh steelworker addressed a Christmas card to an old friend by drawing a map showing the approximate location of the town his friend had moved to -- and the crafty Royal Mail actually delivered the card in nine days. The map sported the addressee's name and a dot in south-west north-east Cornwall with the legend "SOMEWHERE HERE." Link (via Neatorama)

Update: Bob sez, "Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail (by Harriet Russell) is an entire (and quite charming) book devoted to one woman's attempt to challenge the Royal Mail's tenacity in reliably mail delivery. In it are visuals of beautifully rendered puzzles that she challenged the Royal Mail to solve in order to reveal the address. Of the 130 envelopes she sent, 120 were delivered successfully. I'm a print designer so it was a snap for me to geek out on the beautiful hand rendering, not to mention how the puzzle designs get tougher to solve."

Ironic Sans has a collection of links to patents filed by celebrities, along with the patent illos -- Eddie Van Halen's rock-out guitar-support; Zeppo Marx's cardiac monitor; Penn jillette's sex-bathtub; Michael Jackson's anti-gravity effect; Jamie-Lee Curtis's baby garment; Hedy Lamar's crypto device and many others. Link (via Waxy)