The break-room in Disney World's Cinderella's Castle has been converted to a "royal suite" that winners of Disney's Year of Dreams competition can sleep in. The first photos of the finished suite have surfaced. Disney World's most exclusive suite looks like a fantasy room in a really good Shinjuku love hotel. If you win a night in the suite, you're locked in until morning -- no sneaky running out into the Magic Kingdom and riding the Haunted Mansion in the nude! Link

Minifig sez, "It's been a while, but Xeni very kindly linked to me making Dick Cheney in Lego. In return, it would have been nice to make her out of Lego, but however hard I try, I can't get it right. Instead, I've made Cory, with a heap of his CC books next to him. Enjoy. There are a few other famous people recreated in Lego in my flickr photostream if you take a look around." Link (Thanks, Minifig!)

Steve from Scary Toy Clown submits his "post following the path of bright orange novelty lederhosen from the Bavarian Beer company which have now shown up as the main game piece in a Chinese board game with an amusingly violent commercial. Video and pictures follow."

Bavaria Beer, a Dutch brewer, doesn’t just make a hearty beer, they’ll also sell you bright orange pants with a lion’s tail attached. You can buy them here but they were originally given away if you bought enough beer. Bright orange is the color of Dutch pride and the Lion is the symbol of Dutch soccer so it would seem the perfect novelty garment. People who drink your beer get a free pair of lederhosen, the company gets some free adverstising as “Bavaria” is emblazoned across the chest. Chances are you’ll get a few people to wear them to the game. You want to see a sea of orange? Look around for Dutch soccer fans on flickr...

Scrappy Chinese manufacturer, Wang Ming, saw an opportunity where others saw a crisis and pressed the excess pants into service as props in a baffling looking board game named Smack The Lion. Wang Ming makes 3 products: Plastic trees, Industrial oven hand protection, and Family Game. While I’m sure they make a nice tree, Family Game has a weirder back story.

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

And now, we pause for a Unicorn Moment. From the lovely and talented R. Stevens of dieselsweeties.

I decided to try out veganism a little over a week ago -- so far I feel great, and it's a lot easier than I thought. A number of things inspired me to give it a go, including Joi Ito's blog entries about his own vegan bodyhacking experiment, and this Rolling Stone article by Jeff Tietz. A friend had a copy sitting on the couch, open to this page, and I couldn't take my eyes off the story.

It's an investigative piece on how Smithfield Foods, America's largest hog slaughterer, circumvents law, pollutes like crazy, and creates antibiotic and vaccine-laden pork products that feed our country. I don't intend to become one of those annoying vegangelicals who tries to convert everyone to tempeh, but this was just a fascinating read:

Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.

Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.

Some pig-farm lagoons have polyethylene liners, which can be punctured by rocks in the ground, allowing shit to seep beneath the liners and spread and ferment. Gases from the fermentation can inflate the liner like a hot-air balloon and rise in an expanding, accelerating bubble, forcing thousands of tons of feces out of the lagoon in all directions.

The lagoons themselves are so viscous and venomous that if someone falls in it is foolish to try to save him. A few years ago, a truck driver in Oklahoma was transferring pig shit to a lagoon when he and his truck went over the side. It took almost three weeks to recover his body. In 1992, when a worker making repairs to a lagoon in Minnesota began to choke to death on the fumes, another worker dived in after him, and they died the same death. In another instance, a worker who was repairing a lagoon in Michigan was overcome by the fumes and fell in. His fifteen-year-old nephew dived in to save him but was overcome, the worker's cousin went in to save the teenager but was overcome, the worker's older brother dived in to save them but was overcome, and then the worker's father dived in. They all died in pig shit.

Link to "Boss Hog," by Jeff Tietz. Photo by doveimaging.com. (thanks, Sputnik!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Time-lapse video of decomposing piglets

Reader comments:

Cowicide says,

(Unintentional?) Smithfield Ham Pron?

Check out the screenshot in my post. It's from this part of the Smithfield website here: Link.

Damn, now that's some juicy ham pron if I've ever seen it.... I just want to stick my tongue right in the midd... (OK... I'll stop).

Cropped thumbnail of porkse.cx above, here's a JPEG link to full screenshot.

Daddymem says,

Here's an employee site regarding Smithfield Farms' labor practices: Link.

Kelly says,

B..b..but Smithfield can't possibly be a polluter. They have a web page that shows they got an Environmental President's Award award! Link.

numlok says,

I dig your post about Pig farms and Smithfield Foods in particular. I only want to ad that if you really want to turn people off to their products, I can think of no better way than their own (vintage drive-in) advertising. Enjoy! Video Link.

Manuel says,

Here's a link to the pig farm in google maps for the site referenced in the "Pork's Dirty Secret" article.

[Ed note: those big, pink "lakes" in that map detail above, next to what look like housing for the pigs? Filled with pigshit.]

Mark says,

If you go through the Smithfield site, they link to worldwatermonitoringday.org. They said they were involved with this for the last three years. However if this is going on for the last several years, where are the result from before? There is no link to previous years result. Also will the actual data be made public or will it get filtered?

Paul Jones says,

Just saw your pig postings about the trouble Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, NC as I got back from the Science Bloggers Conference where folks from OnlineNewsHour began their talk with a bit from their 2004 show called "Pigs and Politics": A snip from the transcript:

"North Carolina's ten million hogs produce twice as much feces and urine as the populations of the cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago combined. Industrial farms, most with thousands of hogs each, store the waste in open-air pits, called lagoons. They spray the waste, untreated, as manure on adjacent fields."

Tasty.

John Alderman says,

Look at these crazy pictures of a festival in Taiwan where it appears they sacrifice 2,000 pigs: Link.

Ian Hogben says,

I was reading about the (horrific) pig farm article and couldn't believe there was no mention of the unintentional goatse of the farm's aerial map. From the user comment "Here's a link to the pig farm in google maps for the site referenced in the "Pork's Dirty Secret" article.", the photo is SO TOTALLY goatse it's hilarious.

Nate says,

*sigh* I've never been so conflicted about eating meat after reading that post. So I hope Choppy the two faced pig either brings a smile or a WTF. Reminds me a bit of Cy the kitten. Link.

Andrea James says,

Speaking of the poor pigs, ever seen a state of the art Jarvis bung dropper? Link. Be sure to watch the vid at upper right: Link. Not to be confused with a bung cleaner: Link. Or bung ring expander: Link. Or lung gun: Link. Or spinal cord remover: Link. Other fun links for kill floors and carcass prep: Link.

Go veggie! I attached a pic of the best way to taste a pig.

UPDATE: Many more of you wrote in with strong opinions on pigshit, economic activism, and braised tofurkey. Your comments after the jump.

sheep ringtone
squow
sinister ducks
kungfu bunnies
cows with guns
these little pigs
chicken a day
cowscapes
cluck of july

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!) Image: From the Cowscapes series by photographer Rachael Sudlow. To purchase a print, email rachael.sudlow at gmail.com. Below, kung fu bunnies, which is insane.

Update: some of you have complained of an auto-loading Flash embed with sound for the "kung fu bunnies" in this post -- there was never a flash embed in this post, just a jpeg that links to the Flash content. But we did a little digging and learned that BoingBoing's feed was configured to pre-load linked-to Flash items under certain circumstances, so we've turned that off. Sorry for the annoyance!

My NPR "Day to Day" colleague Luke Burbank did an amazing piece this week about the huge, passionate, came-from-nowhere online community of Barbaro fandom. You gotta see the fanmade videos, chock full of race footage and love, and set to the music from the likes of Enya, Michael Bolton, or Andrea Boccelli. "Believe in Barbaro," reads the metadata. From Luke's introduction:

The racehorse Barbaro is recovering this week from his latest setback, a diseased hoof. As he convalesces, an online community of thousands is following his progress breathlessly. Last spring, Barbaro was a contender for the Triple Crown. He had won the Kentucky Derby and was a favorite to win the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore.

Then fate struck. Not far out of the gate at the start of the Preakness, Barbaro shattered his right hind leg. It was a heartbreaking development, accented by images of his visibly distraught jockey, Edgar Prado. Barbaro's career was effectively over.

But his life as a cause celebre was just beginning. YouTube is full of Barbaro tribute videos and photo montages such as this one, all set to tearjerking music. At another site, 14,000 candles have been "lit" in his honor. On various message boards, people post fervent messages expressing hope and admiration for the struggling racehorse. One couple even invited Barbaro to their wedding.

Link to audio, text, and photos for "Loving Barbaro: A Racehorse and His Fans." Here's a bunch more Barbaro fan videos.

Reader comment: Dave Warner says,

Barbaro was recently voted "Sports Human of the Year" at Gawker sports blog Deadspin.com, in no small part because of the fervent fan base he's developed -- a fan base that has declared Deadspin to be "garbage." In particular, Dee Mirich of Merrillville, IN, has become a cult figure at Deadspin for her "Affirmed" messages. Check the link for all of Deadspin's posts about Barbaro and his fans.

There's probably a great Linux joke in here, but I'm not funny enough to come up with it. Technologist and former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold visited the Falklands[ / Islas Malvinas], and took some amazing photographs of penguins and other creatures there. Dr. Myhrvold is CEO and managing director of Intellectual Ventures, a private entrepreneurial firm he founded with his former Microsoft colleague, Dr. Edward Jung. Snip from an essay about what he observed on the islands:

It turns out that there are some reasonably well developed scientific theories of cuteness.

Penguins look like little people – their bipedal stance, walking gait and proportions look like a tiny toy person. Self-love is something humans are good at, so it is natural to find these animals compelling. Their behaviors also happen to map well to human behavior – or at least one can naively imagine so because they are stereotypically similar to some of our own actions.

That covers penguins, but there are some more universal aspects of cuteness. I once studied to be a cartoonist (alas, I wasn’t funny enough) and in that field they have this very well figured out. The rule of thumb is that if you want a cartoon character to be cute, you draw it so that the total body height is between 2.5 and 3 times the height of the head. This gives you a Mickey Mouse, or Tweety Bird sort of character. You then make the eyes a large fraction of head height – little beady eyes are not cute. To make a heroic character – say Superman, Spiderman or Captain America you want 7.5 to 8 heads high. It always has amused me that being a pinhead looks heroic.

Link. Image: (c) 2007, Nathan Myhrvold. (Thanks, John Brockman)

Reader comment: Jeff says,

You should link to Mhyrvold's article on the future of digital photography, it's a must read. Direct link here. Excerpt:

I'm eagerly awaiting Canon's next move, probably to 25-plus megapixels. I'm what marketing people call an early adopter, but mark my words - you'll own a 16- or even a 25-megapixel point-and-shoot in a few years, and it will not stop there. By some estimates, your eyes have an effective resolution of more than 500 megapixels. If you can see it, why shouldn't a camera record it? The reason many pictures don't turn out is that in daytime the human eye can easily perceive a dynamic range of 10,000:1, while at night it is more like 1,000,000:1. Meanwhile, color slide film can record only about 32:1, and digital cameras, about 64:1.

In many situations, this forces a choice - do you expose for the light parts of the scene and let the dark parts go dead black, or save the shadows and turn the bright parts pure white? Future digital sensors will fix this, with ever broader dynamic range and greater light sensitivity (the ISO rating).

Focus is another problem. How many of your pictures wind up fuzzy? Autofocus technology can help, but cameras today still have a limitation on how much of a scene can be in focus at one time, known as depth of field. If you focus on the flower in front of you, the mountain in the background is apt to be fuzzy. Yet technically there is no reason we can't get essentially infinite depth of field, again by using more digital processing.

Javier Rodruiguez says,

My impression concerning your post would have been much better if you just said "Islas Malvinas" instead of Falklands (...) they always belonged to Argentina, not just a matter of sovereignty but simply geology (it's physically undeniable that they are inside South America's continental platform). I guess you regard colonialism as evil, as much as many of us do.

Above: "Pac Man's secret," by Ape Lad.

Here are a bunch of BoingBoing posts from the past week that (a) people talked about or linked to a lot (b) we were particularly obsessed with.

BoingBoingBoing podcast 9: Matt Haughey of MeFi

Some Zune tracks are crippled with no-sharing flags

Feral woman found in Cambodia

Grand Canyon employees not "silenced" as PEER claimed

Mudflation: inflation in virtual worlds

Unicycle tank from 1933

Self-tuning portable RF jammer disguised as menthol cigs

A town called Fucking / A town called Feces

Government guide to destroying old Woodsy Owl costumes

Campaign to saved "world's weirdest creatures"

Two-person teledildonic rig

Xeni NYT op-ed from CES: Gadgets as Tyrants

Cory's new short story collection: OVERCLOCKED

I'm launching my short story collection Overclocked at Duke University's Levine Science Research Center in Durham, NC on Feb 22 at 5PM. I'll be giving a lecture on privacy and technology, followed by a signing and general schmooze. Hope to see you there! Here's more detail on the event, and here's a map. Admission is free and open.

Where: Love Auditorium, Levine Science Research Center
When: Feb 22, 5PM

A reminder: I'm also having launches in Toronto (Feb 1), San Francisco (Feb 8, with Rudy Rucker), and Vancouver, San Diego and Los Angeles (details TBD).

The Sky Yacht personal blimp is a cross between a zeppelin and a hot-air balloon that claims to combine the best of both in a highly steerable vehicle that doesn't require large ground crews.

Our aircraft is one of the safest in the sky. There are lots of reasons for this. But the single most important one is that it flies at low altitudes and low airspeeds. Going low and slow is not only beautiful, it's also safer. In addition, our design gives the pilot more control than any other type of lighter-than-air aircraft.

The notion that blimps explode comes from the famous Hindenburg accident of 1937, that aircraft was filled with highly flammable Hydrogen gas. Nobody really knows how the Hindenburg fire started. But once it did, the Hydrogen ignited and the famous fireball resulted. Amazingly, even with the intense fire, 2/3rds of the people onboard survived. In any case, neither we nor anybody else today has an airship filled with Hydrogen.

Link (via Futurismic)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshoppng contest: Apple's next "i" product. Pictured here: the iKill pistol (only compatible with iBullets). Link

Made With Molecules jewelry: earrings and necklaces with charms in the shape of important chemicals, such as caffeine, estrogen, chocolate, serotonin, GABA... Also available: testosterone boxers and oxytocin baby onesies. Link (via Making Light)

This small Flickr set documents a fantastic Pac Man themed bathroom where the tiles have been turned into a pixel-art mosiac depicting Pac, Ms Pac and the ghosts. Link (via Neatorama)

Drugs and Poisons is a fascinating blog about pharmaceutical drugs. It reminds me of the excellent old print zine, Pills a Go-Go (which was anthologized in a book called Pills-A-Go-Go: A Fiendish Investigation into Pill Marketing, Art, History & Consumption).

From an entry titled Teh Overdose: Drugs and poisons that you shouldn't kill yourself with

Ro-15-4513

Reverses the behavioural effects of ethanol. It stops you from being drunk. It does this horrible, horrible thing by blocking the action of ethanol at GABA receptors in the brain. The worst part is that it can't even be used to treat alcohol poisoning, since it doesn't block the respiratory depression that is usually what kills you if you drink way too much. If that wasn't it enough, it also increases the risk of seizures. So not a big winner with anyone.

Link

Last month, I posted about how the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore is still selling a Creationist book claiming that the canyon was formed by Noah's Flood. On December 28, 2006, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release complaining about this matter and claiming that a promised National Park Service policy review had never been conducted. It's true that the book is still being sold in the bookstore. However, the PEER press release starts off by stating that the "Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees." I didn't post that part of the PEER release and, in fact, a BB reader quickly pointed out that the National Park Service FAQ on the Grand Canyon states very clearly that the canyon is five or six million years old.

Well guess what. It seems that PEER's shocking opening statement that park employees are being silenced to serve some big shots' religious agenda is, well, dubious to say the least. Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer investigated after readers suggested that eSkeptic, which posted highlights from the PEER release, might not have been skeptical enough. From Shermer's column:

The referencing of sources who wish to remain anonymous (like those who PEER executive director Jeff Ruch claimed gave him the information about the silenced park employees) is quite common in journalism and, in fact, there are laws protecting whistleblowers . The fact that no such reference was made until I pointedly accused Ruch of flatout lying makes me, well, skeptical of this explanation. His final statement to me doesn’t make me any less skeptical:

We are issuing an amended release today that
1. deletes reference to what interpretive staff can and cannot say and
2. features the NPS official statement that they provide geological information to the public.

Link to eSkeptic, Link to PEER's "amdended" press release, Link to an archive of the original PEER press release (Thanks, Randee!)

Previously on BB:
• Grand Canyon bookstore still selling Creationist myth Link
• The Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old! Link

Mark Ashley says:

U.S. Congress to the TSA: "Please screen the cargo that goes into planes. We'll be safer." TSA response: "No."

We're safer if they DON'T screen the cargo, I guess, and focus their energies on taking away water, yogurt, and semi-gelatinous pie.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• TSA doesn't allow Zippo camera case past security Link
• TSA confiscates miniature bats at Louisville airport Link
• TSA arrest villain for possession of rubber band ball Link
• TSA confiscates folding car key, calling it a "switchblade" Link

The sign mounted on this hideous sculpture of a typewriter eraser scarring a new Seattle neighborhood sculpture park says, "Sorry, photography of this statue is not permitted." So, you're not allowed to make a copy of something the artist copied? (Update: I don't really think the sculpture is hideous. But it's not as playful or interesting as his other work, I think. Also, here are 134 photos of the sculpture on Google Image Search, found by Boing Boing reader Aaron.) Link

Reader comment:

David says:

For readers who want to know more: The eraser is a sculpture by Swedish sculptor Claes Oldenburg, who is best known for his oversize sculptures of everyday objects. A gallery of his large scale projects can be seen on his website.

It reminds me of the quote by designer Paul Rand, who said something like: "If you can't make it good, make it big. (And if you can't make it big, make it red.)"

Some labels have told Microsoft that it's not allowed to enable "squirting" for their tracks when sold through the Zune store. Squirting is Zune's much-touted ability to send your friends DRM-crippled tracks that can be played three times (or saved for three days) before they're erased. Microsoft won't tell you whether or not a track you're about to buy is extra-crippled -- nice deal.

Curious about this, I conducted a test of my own. I pulled down the top 50 songs downloaded from Zune Marketplace, using my Zune Pass subscription. I then created a playlist of those 50 songs, and attempted to wirelessly send the whole playlist to my wife's Zune.

When the transfer completed, a message appeared on my player: "Can't send some songs because of rights restrictions. 29 of 50 songs sent to Carrie's Zune".

Link (Via Deep Links)

LA Weekly has an interesting story about Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue's purchase of a $35 million home in Malibu. He is slated to take over his father's role as ruthless dictator of Equatorial Guinea. (Official country website here)

The exotic-car-loving playboy newcomer to the exclusive cliff above Malibu Pier, heir to one of the most ruthless dictators in the world, now sits behind two guard shacks with the likes of Dick van Dyke, James Cameron, Larry Hagman, Mel Gibson and other biggies.

Perhaps his politically active Malibu neighbors don’t know that Equatorial Guinea, on the west coast of Africa, with only 540,000 inhabitants, has neither a free press nor free speech. Its people are among the world’s poorest, surviving on less than $1 a day, yet because of plentiful oil and natural gas, the country is the second richest in gross domestic product per capita, just behind wealthy Luxembourg.

Link

Reader comment:

Hannes says:

Equatorial Guinea has not the second highest GDP per Capita. In nominal terms it comes out on place 59, and when measured at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which takes into account the different price levels in countries, so that countries with a lower price level score higher, it comes out on place 42.

Dan says: According to the Herald Tribune, the Defense Security Service has admitted to a slight error in regards to the Canadian spy coin announcement. Namely, they were unable to substantiate the claim, and have since launched an internal review to determine how the false information made it into the report. Link (Read the DSS announcement here)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Spy coins update Link
• Canadian coins bugged? Link
• Russia spy HQ has giant batman mural in floor Link
• Technology for parents to spy on kids Link
• CIA's goofy spy-robots Link
• FAA grounds LA Sheriffs' plans for "spy plane drones" Link
• Lockheed Martin designing tiny "maple seed" spy plane Link
• High-voltage machine shrinks quarters to the size of dimes Link

Marion Peck is married to artist Mark Ryden. Their work is similar.

"The Mysterious Miss Wu", by Marion Peck, is a limited edition, signed and numbered giclee print on archival canvas. This print comes in a custom, hand carved, teak wood framed with an antique gold-leafed finish. Published by Porterhouse Fine Art Editions. Sold framed only. Framed Size: 15" x 10", Image size: 9.75" x 7.75" Edition of 30, signed and numbered

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• "Regina Gloriae Naturae," based on Mark Ryden’s painting "The Creatrix" Link
• Rosie's Tea Party Link
• Mark Ryden's book, Fushigi Circus Link

Ricky sez, "The relatively new Cinderella Castle stage show at the Magic Kingdom has received a technology upgrade that really enhances the magic. Costumed characters like Mickey Mouse are now able to move their mouths in sync with their spoken words and blink their eyes for added realism." Link (Thanks, Ricky!)

James sez, "Did the RIAA just release a report that claimed since Google censored search results for China's citizens, it's now acceptable for ISP's to filter out "infringing" sites for US netziens? Hmmm... The Chinese government and the RIAA - two peas in a pod. Quite a marketing message they've got going on over there. Let the propaganda remixes begin!"

At one time you were considered a new media philistine if you wanted to regulate the Internet. But then Google promised the Chinese government that censorship was possible. Then Google blacklisted BMW in the Internet world for anti-social behavior. It seems policing is acceptable for all sorts of things but not intellectual property!

Link (Thanks, James!)

The TSA's ridiculous, unconstituional no-fly "enemies" list is finally being revised -- the agency may finally remove the four-year-olds, grandmas and Senators from its list of people "too dangerous to fly" but not dangerous enough to arrest.

Even cutting the list in half is "nice but not all that meaningful," said Barry Steinhardt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. He noted that various estimates of the list's size, which is classified, have ranged from 50,000 to 350,000 names.

"Cutting a list of 350,000 names is not all that impressive," Steinhardt added.

Link (via Schneier)

Photographer Jamie Newman shot this fantastic photo of Comet McNaught's "extravagant tail" and fan of dust visible from Auckland, New Zealand last night. Follow the link to SpaceWeather.com and locate the 19 Jan 2007 archive (no permalink available) to see the whole photo and learn more. From the story:

This marks the fourth night in a row that observers have spotted the comet's tail in northern skies. Dan Laszlo of the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society saw it on Jan. 17th and offers this advice: "Find the darkest sky you can and look west between one and two hours after sunset. A site where you can see zodiacal light would be best."

Link to SpaceWeather.com, Link to Comet McNaught photo galllery (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

A woman believed to have been missing since 1988, when she was 8-years-old, was found in the jungle of Cambodia's norther Rattanakiri provence. If she is indeed Rochom P'ngieng, she has been living in the wild for the last 19 years. She was discovered by a villager after she snatched his lunch. From the BBC News:

Local police said the woman was "half-human and half-animal" and could not speak any intelligible language...

Deputy provincial police chief Chea Bunthoeun told Associated Press news agency: "(The villager) spotted a naked human being, who looked like a jungle person, sneaking in to steal his rice."

(Village policeman Sal Lou) said: "When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey... She was bare bones..."

Mr Sal Lou said (her) family was now watching her closely after she took her clothes off and suggested she would return to the jungle.

Link to BBC News, Link to Cryptomundo for a cryptid angle on the story, Link to buy The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron

Previously on BB:
• Feral child profiled in The Telegraph Link
• Feral Files Link
• Don't call him chicken Link
• Andrei the dog boy Link
• More from the Feral Files Link

The talented individual in this video creates "spit art" by dribbling water out of his mouth onto the pavement.
Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

Spotted on Google Blogoscoped (via Lifehacker): instructions on how to disable Google's "personalized search" function:

Google describes this (old) feature as “an improvement to Google search that orders your search results based on what you’ve searched for in the past,” going on to say that you “may not notice much difference at first, but as you build up your search history, your personalized search results will continue to improve.”

Not everyone wants Google to collect and store this personal data, though, so here's how to turn that off: Link.

John Battelle, author and FMP founder (and BoingBoing's "band manager") has posted some interesting thoughts about the next generation of blogs, which he believes will have better content management, navigation, smart widgets and web services:

A brief dip into nearly every blogger's referral logs shows that a very large percentage of readers - nearly 40 percent in some cases - come directly from search - someone who put "steve ballmer throws chair" into Google, for example, and lands here.

Now, this person doesn't have any frame of reference about Searchblog, or its grammar, audience, or ongoing conversation. He or she is most likely to hit the post in question, read it (perhaps), and move on. This site loses a potential new reader, and this community loses a potential new member, because, in the end, I, as the publisher of Searchblog, have done nothing to demonstrate to that reader the wonders and joy that is Searchblog. In short, I've failed to merchandise my site.

Now imagine instead, that when that person comes from search, they are greeted with a box that pops up and is informed by the search referral information that we all carry with us as we click away from Google or other search engines. That box surfaces a smart search based on the referral - perhaps it shows the reader other posts I've written about Microsoft, or Google and Microsoft, or senior executives in the Internet industry. Perhaps it shows me the top five *other* posts folks read who *also read* that Steve Ballmer Throws A Chair post. You know, the kind of merchandising a good site like Amazon does all day long (from what I can tell, search referral boxes were pioneered by Cnet, for credit where credit is due). Now, wouldn't that be cool, just for a start? Sounds hard to do, right? But actually, it shouldn't be. The information is all there. It's just not organized properly.

Link

Johannes sez, "Dorkbot Vienna (hosted by monochrom) invited Jacob Appelbaum to give a talk about 'The future of free communication - Techniques, ideas and pitfalls for communicating (semi)anonymously'." Link (Thanks, Johannes!)

In 1969, a concept album called "Poe Through the Glass Prism" was released that consisted of rock-and-roll renditions of the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. Frank's Vinyl Museum has ripped the uptempo cover of The Raven -- a must-hear. Link (Thanks, Mike8787!)

The Jeep Waterfall is a 25-foot-high sheet of falling water that can display arbitrary bitmaps in falling water, using a mechanism "similar to an inkjet printer" -- the video has to be seen to be believed. Link (via Plastic Bag)

Wegman's bakery received an online order for a cake with a message in Italian and English, but couldn't process the accent characters in the Italian passage -- instead, the printer barfed out a ton of error messages in angle-brackets.

So apparently you can email an order to the Wegman's bakery for cakes, etc... including what message you want on the cake.

The cake below was supposed to be a mix of English and Italian, but the staff apparently knew no Italian. The problem? Wegman's email system also apparently did not recognize some of the proprietary Microsoft HTML extensions!

Link to story, Link to image

Moebius-strip shoes are the world's geekiest fractional-dimension footgear. It's almost enough to make me start cross-dressing. Link (Thanks, Manar!)

Master game designer Raph Koster has posted a great rumination on "Mudflation" -- runaway inflation in virtual worlds. This is an old phenomenon that each game discovers anew as it nears senescence. I think that this has profound implications for in-game democracy -- democracy requires that you play together for a long time, in order to establish civil society. But inflation is such a fixture in virtual worlds that they are necessarily short-lived -- only by beating inflation can games sustain themselves. Ironically, most of the techniques Raph sets out for containing "mudflation" involve autocratic control of the world's economy.

The classic means of controlling mudflation are

* reducing the amount of value in the economy via means such as: item decay, item deletion (either via challenges where you can lose items, or manually; yes, some games literally just go in and delete items), character purges, etc. Many games used to simply wipe the player database every few months because mudflation had gotten so bad.
* Refusing to up the level limit, and instead introducing orthogonal advancement paths. This single mechanism is probably the single biggest slowdown you can effect. Many long-running successful muds got that way by simply never upping the level cap, and instead investing their expansion in enriching the content and encouraging repeat play.
* Obsessive attention to economic stats and adjusting all economic drains to account for all the influx. This often means punishingly high costs for players, btw.

Link (via Wonderland)

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the advisory board for Areae, the company Raph founded)

See also:
Koster's keynote from Game Developers Conference
Koster's amazing "What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?">
Areae: online world startup from "Theory of Fun" Koster
Destiny of Games: what will become of fun?
Lifecycle of a gamer
What would an MMORPG about healing be like?
Civil liberties in gamespace
Theory of Fun: Understanding Comics for games
Star Wars Galaxies economy laid bare

Tofubiker says, "New York City will be upgrading their 911 and 311 systems to accept digital photos and video from callers." Link to NYT story.

US News and World Report's "Bad Guys" blog has photos of the cannibas-laced food products the DEA has been seizing lately. Show here: Keef Kat, Puff-A-Mint Pattie, Stoney Ranchers, Munchy Way, Rasta Reece's, Buddafingers, and Pot Tarts. The guy who marketed the stuff is serving 70 months in federal prison. Link

Incredible home video of an icy intersection in Portland, where cars slide around like greased teflon. Welcome to a world without friction. Link

The LA Times has a brief article about a guy who intentionally spilled about five ounces of liquid mercury onto a subway platform in downtown Los Angeles.

There's also a video from KTLA that shows the guy calmly pouring the mercury on the platform in front of onlookers. He then reported the spill to authorities using a pay phone.

Some people are speculating that this was a dry run for a terror attack. Link

I love -- LOVE -- this fuzzy felt ring with the universal power-button symbol on it. Link (via Wonderland)

The WIPO Broadcast Treaty meeting is back underway -- this is a treaty to birth a new kind of copyright that goes to broadcasters, web-hosters, and other people who don't create, only distribute. Under the rules proposed by WIPO, it wouldn't matter if copyright lets you make use of some material (because of fair use, Creative Commons, public domain, etc) -- you'd also need permission from the company that hosted or distributed the material.

Slashdot has picked up the story and has some great, vigorous discussion about it.

If YouTube, et al have done anything, it's show that a different business model can work: the value is not in production of the material, it's in delivering it.

Previously, if I had wanted lame videos of punk skateboarders doing tricks, angsty teenagers venting their mixed-up feelings, middle-age housewives body-popping, etc. I would have had to spend countless hours trolling the murky depths and dark recesses of the Internet to find them. Thanks to YouTube, I have a single, convenient place to satisfy my disgusting and perverse needs.

Seriously though, can we please stop trying to create artificial scarcity? We don't really need it; TV shows, movies, and music worth paying for are already scarce enough.

Link

See also:
Massive victory at WIPO!
WIPO wants to give webcasters the right to steal from public domain, Creative Commons and GPL
European podcasters to WIPO: Stay away from us!
WIPO meets to screw up podcasting, Barcelona, June 21
Secret WIPO memo: rich countries to kill Broadcast Treaty, Development Agenda
WIPO pulls out dirty tricks to kill participation from consumer groups
How the US is boning the developing world at WIPO
WIPO Broadcast Treaty: consolidated three-day notes
Copyright treaty laid bare: watch your governments make sausage!
Tech companies tell WIPO: we don't want your "protection"
WIPO playing dirty tricks to keep public interest groups out

David Isenberg took running notes from a running-dog lecture by William Barr, Verizon's General Counsel, on Net Neutrality. Barr advances the chilling proposition that anyone who wants to put a novel service on the Internet should have to pay Verizon for the privilege, and that Verizon should get to be able to veto which services are allowed to exist.

Multi player gaming requires very low latency. So this will require special infrastructure. How will new infrastructure be built?

Link

Modern Mechanix posted a neat article from the November 1933 issue of Popular Science about a man's design for an amphibious unicycle tank. The tank bears a striking similarity to Kerry McLean's Rocket Roadster whose project is profiled in the MAKE: book, Makers: All Kinds of People Making Amazing Things In Garages, Basements, and Backyards by Bob Parks.

From the 1933 Popular Science article:

One of the oddest features of the revolutionary machine is formed by the steel-tube crutches that project ahead on either side like medieval lances. As the tank rushes upon a trench or obstruction, the operator will drop the tubes so they dig into the earth and the whole machine will vault through the air to the other side. An open-type form of the vehicle, which is shown on our cover, has also been devised by the inventor. Without the armored body or the crutches, it is designed for highway use.

Link to Modern Mechanix, Link to Kerry McLean's site, Link to buy Makers: All Kinds of People Making Amazing Things In Garages, Basements, and Backyards (via MAKE: Blog)

UPDATE: BB reader Mykle Hoban writes, "The Museum of Retro Technology has a MASSIVE collection of pictures and history of various contrivances throughout the earlier days of the machine age (including) a whole section devoted to monowheels." Link

UPDATE: Thanks to the many many many South Park fans who point out that in the episode The Entity, Mr. Garrison invented his own monowheel called IT. Link

LG Electronics introduced its Prada mobile phone today. Designed in collaboration with the Italian fashion design firm, the device uses an entirely touch screen-based interface similar, some say, to the iPhone. The phone is slated to launch next month in Europe for approximately €600 (US$775), followed by China, Singapore, and Korea. No plans to bring it to the US have been announced. From InfoWorld:

A comparison of the tech-specs reveals that the Apple product is superior in several areas, including screen resolution, data networking ability, and internal memory although the Prada phone does offer at least one thing missing from the iPhone: a memory card slot...

The phone is the product of a design collaboration between the two companies. Prada not only had input on the phone's exterior but also on key elements of the user interface, including the touch interface, ring tones and pre-loaded content. LG didn't disclose any further details of what content will be present on the device.

Link to InfoWorld article, Link to LG Press Release

A large ball of ice blasted through the roof of a house near Philadelphia last night. Authorities are at a loss to explain its origins.

Penny Meyers was in her bedroom when the impact occurred. “There was a huge explosion in front of my face, and at first I thought it was the television exploding,” she said. “But then I looked up and I saw the giant hole in the roof. I picked up my daughter and ran downstairs because I thought the entire roof was going to cave in.”

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• 200-lb ice chunk falls on Oakland Link
• More weird ice falls on California Link

Twenty-two-year-old Charles Littleton of Saginaw, Mich. was tasered for refusing to leave a city council meeting because he defied a rule banning men from wearing hats. Even after being shocked he would not remove his LA Dodgers cap. “It means more than just a hat,” he said. “It’s like my crown. It’s like asking a king to remove his crown.” Link

Update:

Here's a more in-depth article from The Valley Vanguard, the student newspaper of Saginaw Valley State University. Link (Thanks, Cory!)

A TV repair man in San Juan, Puerto Rico named Jose Munoz conducts the current from TV tubes through his fingers to impress people by settings things on fire and lighting up fluorescent bulbs. According to this video, Munoz considers himself an artist but "the downside is that his fingertips are burned off."
Link

A professional football player's water bottle was confiscated at Miami International Airport when authorities discovered it had a hidden compartment containing what appeared to be marijuana residue.

The police report says Vick was at first hesitant to turn the bottle over to security screeners and that the compartment was hidden by the bottle's label. The effect was that the bottle appeared to be full of water when held upright.

Link

Two teenage boys took a locomotive for a joy ride at 1:15am in Nelsonville, Ohio on Tuesday. Eric Burks, 16, and Zachary Walden, 13, ran away from a home for nonviolent delinquents and eventually hopped aboard the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway locomotive, shut down for the night. They went for about a dozen miles before voluntarily stopping the train and surrendering to police. From the Columbus Dispatch:

The 16-year-old, Eric Burks, told authorities that he comes from a family of railroaders and had worked with relatives in the rail yards in Lawrence County...

Patrolman John Meeks, of the Nelsonville Police Department, said the boys used a pipe to pry open a door, opened an overhead door and fired up the 1950s-vintage diesel engine.

They tried to head toward Athens, but the tracks dead-end nearby. They backed up, only to find the tracks to Logan blocked at the depot by passenger cars and a caboose.

The boys coupled the cars to the engine and, breaking locks off rail switches, maneuvered the cars onto a side rail and then headed out.

Link