Bad science fact on a Happy Meal bag

By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:18 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

I caught this nonsensical fact on a McDonald's Happy Meal bag today. It says: "You can jump 6 times higher in space." I don't think that's correct. If you jumped off a massive platform in space, you'd just keep going. They must've meant the moon. Link (If you have a comment about this, please don't email me about it. Post it here.)

Donald Norman's favorite gadgets

By Cory Doctorow at 7:52 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Donald Norman, the ne plus ultra of cranky design critics (and author of the stupendous, life-changing books Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design) has a page of his favorite best-designed household objects. There's some real drool-worthy gizmos here, from a rolling suitcase with a built-in baby seat to the best stapler in the universe.

Who would have thought it -- a better stapler. This is a great example of how even the most mundane, commonplace commodity can be improved. Staplers look pretty simple and their design has not changed much, until now. Many's the time I have had to redo a staple, pulling out the original, bad staple, and trying to do it right: push straight down, hard -- but neither too slow nor too fast. Bah.

PaperPro completely rethought the operation. On the outside, the stapler looks just like the old-fashioned kind, but try it once and be convinced forever. Pushing down on the top cocks a spring. Then, the spring releases -- bam! -- all the energy at once, and the staple shoots into the paper. Effortless. And in my many uses, never a single failure. And I staple a lot, especially as I crank out draft chapter after draft chapter. My stapler says it can do up to 25 pages, but in actuality, it does a lot more.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Tangle Tamer -- wonderful product

By Mark Frauenfelder at 6:56 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

I have two young daughters with long hair. Combing out the tangles after they've taken a bath has been a painful experience. My three-year-old ran when she saw me coming towards her with a brush and a bottle of spray detangler.

The pain is over since we started using this rechargable electric detangling brush. The motor makes the eight plastic protuberances oscillate at a high frequency. The brush goes through tangled hair like a hot knife through butter. Well, maybe not that quickly, but it is so much better than a comb or brush that there's no comparison.

I learned that a Nokia phone charger recharges the brush, too, which eliminates the need to take along an extra charger on vacations. Link

Reader comment:

Erica says:

Thanks for the advice; I've been looking for something like this forever! On your recommendation, I ordered one, and I am already completely in love with it. I have three feet of extremely fine hair that is FULL of tangles every morning when I wake up, and this comb-thing is already making my mornings MUCH happier. Also, a wonderful aside, it came with an "important safety instructions" card that says to keep it away from water, even though they tell you to use it on wet hair, and to "Never use while sleeping."

Carl Malamud's "10 Government Hacks"

By Cory Doctorow at 5:15 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Carl Malamud sez, "I gave a talk at OSCON about '10 government hacks.' I posted my presentation materials as a series of 10 movies with textual commentary on the Internet Archive. Here's Hack 1." Link

MySpace post leads to murder conspiracy charges for 6 teen girls

By Xeni Jardin at 3:42 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Six teen girls in rural Tennessee have been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Their high school principal contacted authorities after learning of a "hit list" with 300 names, and a MySpace post that included the word "kill."

School officials said the list, discovered in a classroom trash can, mostly named students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.

Sequatchie County High School Principal Tommy Layne said that he initially considered it a joke, but that authorities then found the ninth-graders' online MySpace pages and postings that included the word "kill."

(...) There was no evidence that the girls had weapons or that an attack had been imminent, Huth said. The girls, ages 14 and 15, were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal homicide late Wednesday and taken to a juvenile facility.

Link (Thanks, Roger)

Baby Meat facts pamphlet, and soylent infant snausages.

By Xeni Jardin at 3:08 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

A couple of weeks ago, I started a personal experiment: go vegan, with a diet composed mostly of local produce and unprocessed whole foods. Partly out of curiosity, also to see what the health impact might be, and to explore what daily life is like when you're able to eliminate specific products produced by means you don't want to support. If it felt good (and it has), I'd planned to continue indefinitely.

Well, screw all that -- I should have read this first. PDF Link to "BABY: Eat Healthy, Live Healthy." A contemporary take on Swift's "Modest Proposal," or perhaps the work of this dude.

And it appears the babetarian foods movement already has a mantra: Link to ytmnd.com feature, from which i snagged the image below. (Thanks, Damion!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Big factory pig farms are some of America's worst polluters

Unhappy Meals: NYT essay on the politics of nutrition

Reader comments: Devon says,

In your baby eating post, I can't believe you didn't include the brilliant take on Swift's "A Modest Proposal" that rapper $trick9 does. Video Link.

Steve Cholewiak says,

The sandwich you posted a picture of under the "Baby Meat facts pamphlet" post is more commonly known as a "California Cheeseburger," as coined by [Simpsons character] Chief Wiggum in the museum of crime: Link.

Wiggum: Now, what I am about to show you next may shock and educate you. Hold onto your values as we step through the looking glass into a hippie pot party.
[flicks a switch, lighting a mannequin with a joint crudely stuck to his mouth]
Wiggum: While Johnny Welfare plays acid rock on a stolen guitar, his old lady has a better idea.
[lights up another mannequin, of a woman opening wide to eat a baby sandwich. (That's a sandwich with a baby in it, not a really tiny sandwich.) The crowd gasps]
Wiggum: That's right, she's got the munchies for a California Cheeseburger.

Fipi Lele says,

Here is a totally inappropriate name for a restaurant in the Philippines: Link.

Andrew Cone says,

Maybe it’s serendipitous coincidence, but we just got back from the Chicago suburbs, only to see your story on baby meat. While out in the burbs, I snapped the attached picture. I never thought Naperville, Illinois would be so forward thinking!

Will says,

Here's some evidence of baby-savoring that I recently came across in Beijing.

Nominate articles for "Year's Best Tech Writing"

By Cory Doctorow at 3:02 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Steven Levy, author of The Perfect Thing, Hackers, and other important technology books, has been tapped to edit the 2006 edition of The Year's Best Tech Writing and he's soliciting your nominations for the best tech writing of 2006 -- including material on blogs and other informal venues.

So now I’m asking for your help. The good people at Michigan are collecting nominees for the best writing on tech subjects in the year just passed. This could include magazine, newpaper or online articles and columns, and certainly includes blog postings. Don’t think of “tech” too narrowly– I won’t! Ideally, though, the choices will be grokable by a general audience, and no longer than 5000 words. So please rack your brains and scan your memory circuits to recall the best stuff you saw–or maybe even wrote yourself.

Link

See also: Levy's Perfect Thing: eye-opening iPod book (Thanks, Steven!)

Jonathan Lethem: remix my stories!

By Cory Doctorow at 2:59 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Siva sez, "Jonathan Lethem, author of Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, and a bunch of other great books and stories, has offered some of his stories for remixing and adaptation. Check out the current Harper's Magazine, in which Jonathan copies and pastes together a series of sentences and paragraphs from such notables as Lewis Hyde, Lawrence Lessig, Kembrew McLeod, and Siva Vaidhyanathan to make an argument for Free Culture. It's brilliant, but not online yet. Here is what Jonathan says about his new project:"

These stories are for filmmakers or dramatists to adapt. They're available non-exclusively -- meaning other people may be working from the same material -- and the cost is a dollar apiece.

There's a simple written agreement to sign, which imposes a couple of restrictions, and that's it -- once you've paid your dollar and signed the agreement, you're free to adapt or mutate the story as you please.

Link (Thanks, Siva!)

More live 3D Naomi Campbell on Mon. Jan. 29

By Xeni Jardin at 1:18 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Live! 3D! Naomi! Online! Again! Monday! Link. Photographer Nick Knight talks about the project on his blog, where you can also see 3D renders and view video essays from the photographer.

In this one, Knight explains how he became interested in 3D body scanning:

It seemed to me that this was a step between 2D photography, and 3D sculpture. It has been used a lot in the film world and gaming world, but in fashion it hasn't been used very much... [Naomi] is... a blank canvas on which fashion photographers and designers communicate to their audience.

The 3D body scanner device Knight is using for the Live Naomi project comes from UK-based scanning technology firm Rapido3d: Link. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Live nude supermodel scanning online: Naomi Campbell

International Alchemy Conference this October in Vegas

By Xeni Jardin at 12:59 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

"The emphasis is on real alchemy," the website proclaims. "Discover the secret history of alchemy and how it is practiced today! Learn the secret formulae and processes of the alchemists! Learn how to set up an alchemical laboratory in your own home!" Conference takes place October 5-7, in -- where else? -- Las Vegas. Link. (Thanks, Pam)

Vernacular video: the state of "the people's medium"

By Xeni Jardin at 12:44 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Snip from an essay by Tom Sherman, via Bruce Sterling's blog:

Recombinant work will be more and more common. Sampling and the repeat structures of pop music will be emulated in the repetitive deconstruction of popular culture. Collage, montage and the quick-and-dirty efficiency of recombinant forms are driven by the romantic, Robin Hood-like efforts of the copyleft movement.

Real-time, on-the-fly voiceovers will replace scripted narratives . Personal, on-site journalism and video diaries will proliferate.

On-screen text will be visually dynamic, but semantically crude. Language will be altered quickly through misuse and slippage. People will say things like I work in several mediums [sic]. Media is plural. Medium is singular. What's next: I am a multi-mediums artist? Will someone introduce spell-check to video text generators?

Crude animation will be mixed with crude behaviour. Slick animation takes time and money. Crude is cool, as opposed to slick.

Slow motion and accelerated image streams will be overused, ironically breaking the real-time-and-space edge of straight, unaltered video.

Digital effects will be used to glue disconnected scenes together; paint programs and negative filters will be used to denote psychological terrain. Notions of the sub- or unconscious will be objectified and obscured as quick and dirty surrealism dominates the creative use of video.

Travelogues will prosper, as road films and video tourism proliferate. Have palm-corder and laptop, will travel.

Extreme sports, sex, self-mutilation and drug overdoses will mix with disaster culture; terrorist attacks, plane crashes, hurricanes and tornadoes will be translated into mediated horror through vernacular video.

Link

Unhappy Meals: NYT essay on the politics of nutrition

By Xeni Jardin at 12:19 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Snip from an extensive (12 online pages!) essay in today's New York Times by UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

Reg-free Link. Illustration by Leo Jung. (thanks, Tony Sanfilippo)

Previously on BB:

Big factory pig farms are some of America's worst polluters

UK journalist jailed for hacking into royals' phones

By Xeni Jardin at 12:13 pm Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

Snip:

A British journalist was jailed for four months today for hacking into more than 600 messages on the mobile phones of aides to the royal family, including from Prince William. Clive Goodman, 49, the royal editor of the News of the World tabloid, was sent to prison alongside researcher Glenn Mulcaire, 36, who received a six month sentence.

Link (via Bruce Sterling)

Bruce Sterling to keynote at Freedom to Connect, DC, Mar 5/6

By Cory Doctorow at 10:49 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

This year's Freedom to Connect conference -- an annual event devoted to keeping the Internet free and open -- will include a keynote from Bruce Sterling and Vermont governor Jim Douglas. David Isenberg is Freedom to Connect's ringleader; he says, of Jim Douglas, "His initiative to make VT the first e-State means that anybody anywhere in VT will be able to open their laptop and connect!" The event runs Mar 5/6 in DC. Link (Thanks, David!)

Stop-motion video game animation made with candles

By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

This little youtube depicts a clever stop-motion animation made using a grid of tea-candles in a dark room. The animators do scenes from classic games like Pac Man, Pong, and Space Invaders. Finally, something to do with that GIANT bag of cheap Ikea tea-lights. Link (Thanks, Martijn!)

Homebrew AT-ST walker teaches itself

By Cory Doctorow at 7:18 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

This homebrew Star Wars AT-ST replica not only looks amazing, but it was also designed with a learning algorithm so that it could teach itself to walk!

Most of the construction of the robot is brass tubing soldered together with a small pencil torch. The wiring on the legs was run through the tubing so it is not visible. The brass tubing is also used for the bearings in the leg joints. The white plastic pieces were machined from UHMW (a plastic similar to nylon). To be different, I made the circuit board for the control system into a 3-D shape out of 9 separate panels to give the robot a unique look (intended to be a streamlined version of the AT-ST walkers from the Star Wars movies). This was also my first attempt at a homemade surface mount double-sided PCB. The IC's are SOIC packages and the resistors and capacitors are 1206 size packages. It was really no harder to make than a through-hole PCB. I used a product called "Press-n-Peel Blue" to make the boards and I tin plated them with "Tinnit" so they don't corrode. It was interesting to do a PCB layout for a 3-D shape. It gives flexibility that you don't have with a typical flat PCB. I'm currently designing another robot and plan to try some smaller IC packages and to use 0805 resistors and capacitors. Stay tuned for the results.

Link, Coral Cache mirror (via Make)

I am Robert A Heinlein

By Cory Doctorow at 7:14 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

I just took the "Which Science Fiction Writer Are You?" quiz, and apparently, I'm not Cory Doctorow -- I'm Robert Heinlein. This is surprising news -- though my agent is sure to be excited by it!

Robert A. Heinlein
Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Link (via Adventures in Ethics and Science)

EULA that really tells it like it is

By Cory Doctorow at 7:07 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

In the spirit of Reasonable Agreement's anti-EULA, Neil Van Dyke's site features a EULA that really tells it like it is:

By accessing this Web site in any way, shape, or form, directly or indirectly, you (hereinafter, PEON) grant Neil W. Van Dyke and his duly authorized agents (hereinafter, collectively, NEIL) carte blanche, including but not limited to unrestricted use and abuse of PEON's personal information, personal property, personal anatomy, and increasingly precarious emotional state.

This agreement may be be altered at any time by NEIL. Quietly changing a document somewhere on the Internet shall constitute notification. It is incumbent on PEON to locate these changes, seeing as how PEON grants automatic blanket consent to any such changes.

Should any part of this agreement be found illegal, the remaining parts shall remain in full force. Parts found merely unethical or tasteless may be doubled in magnitude, solely at the discretion of NEIL.

Link (Thanks, Javier!)

Printcrime audio from Beam Me Up radio

By Cory Doctorow at 7:05 am Sunday, Jan 28 • Comments • Share

The folks at the Beam Me Up radio show in Rockland Maine (who also do a podcast of the same name) have done their own audio adaptation of my story Printcrime, as featured in my new collection Overclocked -- this joins the Escape Pod adaptation, the remix, and the origami mini-comic of the story.

Link (Thanks, Paul!)