By Xeni Jardin at 7:59 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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Snip from a New York Times piece by John Schwartz about blog controversy over a study that sought to determine why some sheep prefer to bonk others of their own gender:
Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story.
Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.
But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world – all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about.
The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle.
Link. Image: "Some sheep from a university study of homosexual behavior. About 8 percent of rams are said to seek sex with other rams instead of ewes." Lynn Ketchum/Oregon State University.
reader comment: Hugo says,
Ben Goldacre wrote a good article in the Guardian concerning this rather impressive misunderstanding. Link
Update: The British paper accused of inaccuracies in earlier reports on this story has issued an apology for its errors:
The Sunday Times January 28, 2007
Corrections
The report “Science told: hands off gay sheep” (News, December 31) contained several inaccuracies in its description of research into the brain’s role in sheep’s sexual partner preference being conducted at Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University. The research is aimed at understanding the role of the brain in sexual attraction. The researchers deny that they were trying to “cure” homosexuality in sheep, a statement that is backed up by their published studies. The research included a study that limited androgen in sheep to determine if this resulted in same partner preference. Our report misconstrued this experiment. The researchers also stress that contrary to our report they have had no success in altering the sexual preference of the animals. The research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and is not being conducted to improve farm productivity. The authors of our report were not science specialists and we should have ensured that the story was checked by the science editor before publication. We apologise for the errors and any subsequent confusion.
By Xeni Jardin at 7:22 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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The Wired News blog Table of Malcontents has posted an interview with astronaut Buzz Aldrin about his new documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon which is premiering at the Sundance film festival this week. John Brownlee of Wired News says, "He gave us some of his thoughts on what it was like to land on the moon, pre-flight jitters, and about his thoughts on a slew of matters, from religious extremism to Martian colonization."
John, I hope for your sake that you did not ask him to swear on a bible that he had been on the moon.
Here's a snip from the interview:
Q: You are a big proponent of manned missions to Mars. Would Mars be any more hospitable?
Aldrin: Conditions on Mars are much better. But in order to get to Mars, it takes a much bigger effort. And you can’t just go and then turn around and come back right away. The planets are not in the right position. Mars requires that we stay for a considerable period. You have to come back from Mars before the next people arrive, so if you don’t bring everybody back, it’s empty there, and that’s no way to build up permanence. You have to keep leaving more and more people there and have the confidence to do that.
Q: Would you want to be left on Mars?
Aldrin: Well, you’re not really left on Mars. It’s just that the train doesn’t come by for a year and a half. And no, I don’t think I’m suited to that.
Link (
Thanks, John Brownlee)
Previously on BoingBoing:
Xeni floats in zero-G with Buzz Aldrin
Moment of Buzz Aldrin/Emmy Awards Zen
Aldrin punches out lunar conspiracistBuzz's Barsoomian Bus Business
By Xeni Jardin at 7:14 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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The
EFF's Cindy Cohn says,
Have you had any difficulties entering or leaving the
United States? If so, EFF would like to hear from you.
After focusing attention on the Department of Homeland
Security's secret Automated Targeting System (ATS), we're
keen to uncover and document its effect on the law-abiding
public. We're interested in hearing from any travelers who
have had repeated problems at the border or have been told
by government agents that they are on a "list" or that
there is some unexplained "problem" that needs to be
resolved.
Please share your story with us by writing travel@eff.org
and providing as much detail as possible. We will treat all
responses confidentially and may contact you to follow-up.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:16 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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"In 2005, Richard Freeman led a four man team from the
Centre for Fortean Zoology to Mongolia in search of
the notorious Mongolian Death Worm; a fabled reptilian
beast said to spit venom and kill its victims with
electric blasts. This is their story."
(Image by by Belgian painter Pieter Dirkx, from a Wikipedia article on the death worm.)
Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Brain worms in Texas
• Worm from a pork taco
• Six horrifying parasites
• Hairworms brainwash grasshoppers into watery suicide
By Cory Doctorow at 3:00 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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Peter Gutmann, author of the
"Vista Suicide Note" paper (in which he added up the cost of implementing all the dumb DRM in Vista), has responded to Microsoft's
answer to his paper, in which they tried to spin the issue to make it all seem harmless. As with the original paper, the response is savage, funny, and fact-filled:
"Do things such as HFS (Hardware Functionality Scan) affect the ability of the open-source community to write a driver?
"No. HFS uses additional chip characteristics other than those needed to write a driver. HFS requirements should not prevent the disclosure of all the information needed to write drivers. "
This claim is directly contradicted by a document by the same author which states:
"Such tests could involve loading a surface with an image, and then getting the chip to apply various visual effects to the image and reporting back the resulting pixels. "
and then later on:
"The internal workings of the graphics chip must be kept secret, such that a hacker building an emulator could not find out the required information."
So this document, the primary reference for Vista's content protection, states exactly the opposite of what's said in Microsoft's response, namely that standard chip functionality (in this case graphics rendering in a GPU) is exercised for HFS, and that the device details have to be kept secret to prevent someone emulating the functionality.
Link
(
via Pwned)
By David Pescovitz at 2:27 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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Dart Coat Hooks are stainless steel darts with screws instead of points on the end. A set of three is $34 from Elsewares.
Link
Previously on BB:
• Voodoo coat hanger: sadistic and practical way to hang coats
Link
• Lamp lamp
Link
• Shotgun shell vase
Link
By David Pescovitz at 2:09 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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I dig the styling of Torquil Harkness's homebrew laptop PC. He played around with the component arrangements in a cardboard box before welding together the aluminum chassis. From Harkness's build notes:
This, my first original computer design came out of frustration and I hope one day we will see a case that allows people to bolt together their own laptop in a weekend - and not have to spend days in the shed annoying the neighbours with my angle grinder and learning how to mig weld aluminium like I did!
There are 'bare bones' kits from some manufacturers, but you are still expected to pay through the nose. To have one designed around standard Mini-ITX components would be great for the kind of people who do not want a laptop that we can fit in an envelope, rather a unit that we can use all around the house for a decent price.
I decided to create a laptop that at any point, I could upgrade every component as they grew too old.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:00 pm Thursday, Jan 25
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Welcome to ReasonableAgreement.org -- where we make mincemeat of End User License Agreements. As you move through space, as you look at the Web, when you buy things, when you travel, it's increasingly the case that you end up making "agreements" to give up your rights. For example, by installing software, you might give up the right to sue the company that made it if it didn't work. Or by subscribing to an online music service, you might give up your right to loan the songs you buy to a friend. When you install a game like World of Warcraft, you agree to install spyware on your computer. When you sign your credit-card slip at Best Buy or Fry's, you waive all kinds of rights you get under consumer protection law.
Who knows if this stuff is enforceable? The case law is all over the place. What if you're under-age? Drunk? Using someone else's computer -- do you agree on your parents' behalf when you install software at their place over the holidays?
Frankly, it's all bullshit. The way the system should work is, you buy something, you own it. The law of the land governs your interactions with the seller. What's the point of having a consumer-protection law if all it takes to get around it is to announce that you've agreed to waive your rights by buying something? If consumer protection laws don't protect people who buy stuff, whom do they protect?
That's not to say that we can't have reasonable agreements -- like when you and your boss sit down and draw up your employment contract, negotiating the terms on which you'll work. But the idea that an agreement can be made by shouting, "By standing there doing nothing, you agree to let me stab you in the eye!" is just dumb.
Enter the anti-EULA. Here's the text of it:
READ CAREFULLY. By [accepting this material|accepting this payment|accepting this business-card|viewing this t-shirt|reading this sticker] you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Put this at the bottom of your emails; print it on your stationery. Stick it on the bottom of the credit-card slips at Best Buy, put it on your warranty cards before you mail them off. Print them on the back of your business-cards.
It's no more enforceable than any of the other dumb-ass, abusive agreements out there, but this one works for you. It's time to stop "agreeing." It's time to come up with some real, reasonable agreements.
The good people at Bumperactive have printed up stickers -- receipt-sized, laptop-sized and bumper-sized -- and MondoTees have t-shirts ("BY READING THIS T-SHIRT, YOU AGREE..."). I don't make any money off of this, and part of every sale goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a charity that sticks up for your rights.
There's no copyright in any of this. Make your own shirts, sell 'em or give them away. Stickers, stationery, window-signs, door-knockers, welcome-mats -- whatever. Do it, make as much dough as you can, just spread it around.
Buy stickers
Buy t-shirts
Submit abusive EULAs to the Small Print Project
(Thanks to Steve Simitzis for suggesting this!)
By David Pescovitz at 10:25 am Thursday, Jan 25
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William Andrews, former curator of the now-defunct Time Museum and a master clockmaker, is trying to build an advanced sundial that melds horology, cartography, and a passion for antique scientific instrumentation. His Longitude Dial was inspired by a 1610 map created by mathematician Franz Ritter. That map and Ritter's others are considered the first examples of a
gnomonic map projection, a method to accurately represent the curvature of the earth on a flat surface. In the new issue of Smithsonian Magazine,
Dava Sobel, author of the critically-acclaimed book
Longitude and other works, profiles Andrews and the maker mindset behind his unusual project. From the article:
"My original goal in this," he said... "was to produce an accurate timepiece with no moving parts–an original creation that combined art and science, drawing from the long traditions of both in its design, and incorporating the finest craftsmanship and latest technology in its construction." What really set his idea apart, however, was his intention to base the dial on an unusual type of map, and to center the map on the very spot where the dial would stand. The map's meridians of longitude would serve as the sundial's hour lines, creating a union of time and space for that particular location–something no dialist or clockmaker had ever before achieved...
Today the work of measuring precise time has been relegated to government agencies such as the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., the International Earth Rotation Service at the Paris Observatory and the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Sevres, France, all of which measure a second by the interval it takes a cesium atom to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times. Because the Earth goes its own way in space, however, heedless of atomic time, "leap seconds" are periodically added to our years to keep our clocks in sync with the turning of our planet. A sundial requires no such adjustment. "A sundial lets you see the Earth turn," Andrewes says. "Of course you know it's turning, but when you witness the shadow moving across the dial you feel something. Many people have no idea why the seasons occur–that the hemisphere tilted toward the Sun actually changes from winter to summer. Time has become separated from space, and I think that's a mistake."
Link
By David Pescovitz at 10:04 am Thursday, Jan 25
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A four-year-old's screams killed hundreds of chickens, according to a court in the eastern China province of Jiangsu. Frightened by a dog, the little boy apparently cried loudly near the hen house window for quite a while. From Metro.co.uk:
A court ruled the boy's screaming was "the only unexpected abnormal sound" and that the 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.
The boy's father was ordered to pay around £117 in compensation to the owner of the chickens.
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 7:19 am Thursday, Jan 25
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BoingBoing reader Sejin says,
In another stunning blow to the security and integrity of Diebold's electronic voting machines, someone has made a copy of the key which opens ALL Diebold e-voting machines from a picture on the company's own website. The working keys were confirmed by Princeton scientists, the same people who discovered that a simple virus hack on the Diebold machines could steal an election. Absolutely incredible and another example of how Diebold's e-voting machines pose a great threat to the electoral process.
Link. (
thanks to everyone who suggested this)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:52 am Thursday, Jan 25
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These German Micama sofas have a really fascinating design -- it's like a long strip of articulated cushions joined together with hinge-fabric, accompanied by a round bolster for support. The site features several different ways you can configure the thing to make it better for reading, relaxing, or sitting. At €3000, it's well out of my price-range, but it certainly gives me ideas. It definitely looks more comfortable than bean-bag chairs, which drive me nuts, but which are kind of inevitable in a small apartment.
Link
(
via Cribcandy)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:46 am Thursday, Jan 25
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Tax authorities in the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Britain and Canada have deployed a stealthy web-spider called "Xenon" that looks for people earning unreported online income, and subsequently busts them as tax-cheats:
The spider can also be configured and trained to look at particular economic niches -- a useful feature for compiling lists of business in industries that traditionally have high rates of non-filing. "For instance, weight control (yields) 85,000 hits, some for products ... also services," says Sweden's Hardyson.
Once the web pages are screen-scraped, Xenon's Identity Information Extraction Module interfaces with national databases containing information like street and city names. It uses that data to automatically identify mailing addresses and other identity information present on the websites it has crawled, which it puts into a database that can be matched in bulk with national tax records.
As illuminating as Xenon is for the tax man, the data-mining effort poses dangers to citizen privacy, said Par Strom, a noted privacy advocate in the world of Swedish IT.
"Of course it's not illegal," said Strom. "I don't feel quite comfortable having a tax office sending out those kind of spiders."
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 6:43 am Thursday, Jan 25
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Community Created Content. Law, Business and Policy is a new scholarly book from Finnish copyfighters Herkko Hietanen, Ville Oksanen and Mikko Valimaki. It tries to bridge the distance between law and commerce, talking about where the law is and where it's going -- and how you can apply that in your business.
I came to know Herkko and Ville as hard-brawling copyfighters from Electronic Frontiers Finland and Creative Commons Finland, people who were equally comfortable putting on a suit and going to a UN copyright treaty meeting or hacking in their pajamas, exposing Finland's corrupt copyright minister as she called copyright activists terrorists.
It's a rare person who can bridge policy debates and the board room, and these folks are among the best.
The text of the book is available as a free PDF, too.
This book presents an overview of the complex legal, business and policy issues in community created content. First, the book briefly treats the major doctrines in copyright law as well other (Finnish and international) laws regulating community created content services. Anyone wishing to start a new service should have a general understanding of the most relevant laws that affect community created content services.
Then, the book turns to open content licensing. Creative Commons is a leading but somewhat controversial project.
However, Creative Commons copyright licenses are tested and can be recommended for most community content services – with the general reservations that apply to all licensing decisions.
From law the book switches to business. It is subject to wild guesses what is the real business impact of community created content in the long term. In fact, the impact is already difficult to measure as the boundaries between community content and traditionally produced content blur. One scenario is that what one can today label as “community created content” will be just “content” in the future.
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 6:10 am Thursday, Jan 25
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John Mark Ockerbloom says,
Nature published an article yesterday about big scholarly publishers meeting with a PR firm to propagandize against open access. The report has to be read to be believed, but here's a sample that gives a good picture of the type and degree of spin proposed:
From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). A follow-up message in which Dezenhall suggests a strategy for the publishers provides some insight into the approach they are considering taking.
The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles".
[...] In an enthusiastic e-mail sent to colleagues after the meeting, Susan Spilka, Wiley's director of corporate communications, said Dezenhall explained that publishers had acted too defensively on the free-information issue and worried too much about making precise statements. Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn't matter if they can discredit your statements, she added: "Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate".
Link
Reader comment: Laust says,
The NIH which is the world's leading funder of medical research actually has a pretty OK open access policy, which is beginning to have an effect on many of the journals in the medical field (...which happens to be my area) because they have to provide open access (I think): Link
Andrew Cantine says:
I'm a manuscript coordinator for the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, an American Psychological Association publication. This is a pretty big deal, for instance, we (Abnormal) can't publish any articles funded by the Wellcome Trust (an important source for research funding in the UK) because the Wellcome Trust says the APA needs to deposit published material(like PubMed) funded by the WT within a 6 month time frame. However, the APA subscribes to the NIH's policy of depositing articles within 11.5 months of publication. So, not only do we miss out on potentially important research, we reject any manuscripts funded by the WT out of hand because we'd never be able to publish them.
Tom says,
The head of the Association of American Publishers for the last ten years has been Pat Schroeder--yes, the same Pat Schroeder who was known as a progressive in the House of Representatives for 24 years is now Big Publishing's favorite lobbyist. Once a friend to librarians, she now treats them, with their advocacy of fair use, as the enemy (Link), and the feeling is mutual. Link.
