Warren Ellis blogs this quote of the day, extracted from a lengthy and dubiously factchecked report on DNA testing and alien sex abductions:

Who then was the being whose blond hair inexplicably became wrapped around Peter Khoury's penis?

NORML has announced the winners of its "Ron Mann's Cannabis Clip" video contest. There're some damned funny pot videos here. Link (Thanks, Ron!)

See also Make a pro-dope short, win $1k

Glyn sends us these "how-to videos on building a scale model Sherman tank, you can sit in and drive around. It can even fire paint ball shells or if your local firearms rules prevent that infra red lasers! Simple but effective engineering, explained so others can build their own tanks."

Pt 1: Intro, body shell, suspension
Pt 2: Tracks
Pt 3: Engine, Controls, Weapons
Pt 4: Transmission (ingenious solution and key to the simplicity)

(Thanks, Glyn!)

The NASA New Horizons mission will make its closest approach to Jupiter a half-hour from the moment I hit "publish" on this blog post -- that's 28 February 2007, at 05:43:40 UTC. Next stop: Pluto.

To commemorate today's historic Jupiter flyby, The Planetary Society has published images which will be sealed in a Digital Time Capsule, and unlocked in the year 2015 (when the craft is scheduled to reach Pluto).

There are a number of different image categories, but my favorite are the tech ones -- a screengrab of Windows XP, a double-A battery, or the one where a bunch of ipods are stacked on a laptop. That's all gonna look so lame in 8 years.

Snip from announcement:

When New Horizons arrives at Pluto eight years from now, the Society will open the time capsule to remember the world as it was when the mission launched. Fifty images submitted by people in 17 countries have been selected, and tonight's encounter with Jupiter will begin a countdown to closing the capsule until the spacecraft arrives at Pluto.

"When we open the Digital Time Capsule in 2015, New Horizons will be looking back at Earth from a distance measured both in time and in miles," said Bruce Betts, The Planetary Society's Director of Projects. "Much will have changed on that pale blue dot by the time the spacecraft arrives at Pluto."

As the spacecraft approaches its rendezvous with Pluto, it will send back a "family portrait" of the Pluto system. The return of this image from the spacecraft will be used as the signal for the time capsule to be opened and shown to Earth in 2015.

Link

Health researchers in Peru have produced a report that explores the sociological links between public internet cafes (cabinas públicas) and unsafe sex -- in particular, anonymous male/male encounters that take place inside the cafes, sometimes arranged online. Snip from the Public Library of Science announcement:

One recent survey, for example, found that a small number of men--10 out of 1,112 in the survey--reported having had their last sexual intercourse inside a private module of an Internet cafe. Nine out of the ten had anal sex (only four used a condom), and one out of the ten had oral sex without a condom. Of those who had anal sex, four out of nine had a casual partner, three out of nine an anonymous partner, and two out of nine a stable partner. All last sexual partners were males and all had met on the Internet.

"Given the possible association between HIV/sexually transmitted infection transmission and the high level of Internet use by men who have sex with men in Peru," say the authors, "cabinas públicas are a logical place to deliver Web-based interventions."

"Cabinas also may be an effective means for delivering low-cost prevention messages to a great number of people, especially those who are not being reached using more traditional methods."

Noah Shachtman at Wired: Danger Room writes:

Dave over at the Mutant Palm blog has uncovered pictures of those Chinese cyborg pigeons -- and the scientists controlling their implanted minds.   So now we'll know what to look for, when our half-robot, half-flying-rat enemies attack.

Paddy Johnson, editor of Art Fag City, tells BoingBoing:

I was tipped off today on one of the best website hacks I've seen in a long time. A hacker taking the voice of Jenny Holzer sends a selection of truisms to MoMA president Glenn Lowry in the form of a MoMA ecard. The is particularly timely given the fact that just last week the New York Times reported that Lowry had received an undisclosed 5 million dollars in addition to his regular salary.

Image: cropped detail from a stunning panoramic photo of the Black Rock Station on a sunny, wintery Nevada day -- well, actually, today.

Snowy Gerlach in February, the opposite spot in the calendrical cycle from those sweltering weeks when the desert is chock full of hippies.

JPEG Link (it's a really large photo, 11726 x 504 pixels), and here's an index page with more beautiful panoramic photos of the same site, during other seasons. Photos credited to Ghost Dancer.

It's really a lovely place, with or without beglowsticked humans. (Thanks, Wayne Correia)

Derek Slater from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says,

Reps. Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's FAIR Use Act [PDF] would remove some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chip away at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) broad restrictions on fair use. Take action now and tell Congress to help restore balance in copyright now.

Technology companies play a game of Russian roulette whenever they create products with both infringing and non-infringing uses. Current "secondary liability" standards don't provide enough certainty, and if innovators guess wrong, they can be hit with statutory damages as high as $30,000 per work infringed. When it comes to mass-market products like the iPod or TiVo, damages could run into the trillions of dollars -- more than enough to bankrupt anyone from the smallest start-ups to the biggest companies. Unlike in other areas, the private assets of corporate officers, directors and investors are not shielded from liability in copyright cases.

The FAIR USE Act would eliminate statutory damages for secondary liability and allow innovators to make more reasonable business decisions about manageable levels of legal risk. Meanwhile, copyright owners could still get injunctions and actual damages for harm suffered, putting them in no worse a position than civil litigants in most other areas.

Here's some video from a Current TV segment about a biodiesel boat race to circumnavigate the globe. The boat featured in the video runs on a mixture of fuel from various sources -- 4 gallons of the stuff was produced from liposuctioned butt blubber (a hundred grams of that came from the captain's own backside). Welp, there's a renewable fuel source America has plenty of. Here's a blog post with more info. (Thanks, Jay)

UPDATE: Ah, looks like Wired covered this story a year ago! Link.

BoingBoing reader Brian Jamison says,

I know these people and there is more to the story. The boat in question is attempting a round-the-world speed record powered entirely by earth-friendly biodiesel. They've put everything on the line and just had a major sponsor pull out at the last moment. They are in dire need of support -- a donation of any amount would help!

Writer Harlan Ellison is suing Fantagraphics, the world's greatest book publisher, for libel.

First, in the history-of-Fantagraphics book WE TOLD YOU SO: COMICS AS ART that we serialized on the Comics Journal blog last year, Gary told two brief anecdotes about Ellison’s conduct during the infamous Michael Fleisher trial. We are defending ourselves by arguing the content of these anecdotes are a) opinion and b) true (and for that matter have been circulated for over a decade unchallenged including on Ellison’s own website in the context of the notoriously one-sided Gauntlet article), Ellison has now elected to allege that they were libelous. When we were apprised by Ellison’s attorney initially that Ellison was unhappy with these comments, we offered him space in our book to rebut these comments or offer his own counter-narrative, but he rejected these options and chose to file suit instead.

Second, we reprinted the Ellison interview that caused the Fleisher suit in our COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY collection THE WRITERS. Ellison is not suing over this –in fact, he’s admitted in public that we own the interview and have the right to reprint it—but is claiming instead that it is illegal to use his name on the cover (along with the names of the other writers we interviewed).

We have argued to the court that both claims are absurd and the suit frivolous and meritless. In our opinion, it is merely designed to harass us, bully us, hurt us financially, and chill public criticism of Ellison generally. Notwithstanding Ellison’s own denials (embedded in the text of his rambling lawsuit), we consider this suit to be a petty and malicious effort to trample our 1st Amendment rights to truthfully relate the history of our company, and to cost us money and time.

Leif Peng bought a bunch of old science booklets at a used bookstore. They had wonderful illustrations by Frank Lacano in them. Leif scanned some of them. Hope he gets around to scanning more soon. Link

An unusual thing happened in the center median of 280 northbound at 92 about 45 minutes ago: dude in gorilla suit waves at motorists, causing traffic slowdown. Here's the California Highway Safety Patrol coded alert thread:

Incident: 1286 Type: Location: info as of: 2/27/2007 4:54:41 PM
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
4:52PM MAN IN GORILLA SUIT STILL 1097
4:52PM SO ADV 2 VEHS LEFT THE AREA
4:47PM PER ANOTHER ABOUT 1 MILE JNO 92 / 2 PEOPLE IN CD
4:45PM THIS IS A REAL PERSON IN A GORILLA AND 2 OTHER PEOPLE ON RHS
4:39PM IN CD/MALE LSW GORILLA SUIT
RESPONDING OFFICERS STATUS
4:45PM CHP Unit Assigned
4:50PM CHP Unit Enroute

Mark Allen of Machine Project, a wonderful LA art/tech gallery/workshop space that has hosted many Make events, says the offices were ruined from a leaky hot water heater in an apartment above the space.

So, last weekend while we were out in the desert our neighbor Paolo from the Film Center called and said there was some flooding at Machine. It turns out that our (perhaps negligent) landlord let another hot water heater fail in the apartment above us (yes, this has happened before), which flooded our office and destroyed a bunch of stuff.

At first we thought this was really terrible, but shortly realized that this was a great opportunity to fix a major problem, which is the gallery is really too small to hold all the people who come to events, and the back office is much larger than it needs to be. And since the office is trashed anyway, what better time to move the partition wall back 10 feet to make the gallery a whole bunch bigger. Yay!

In another lucky coincidence, our friend Mark Daggett just made a new website for fund raising campaigns called Pledgie, so we went ahead and made a campaign to fund our repair and renovation project. Please visit the link below to read more about the plan and see some photos of the carnage.

Should this all seem terribly uninteresting we can also offer you this video sent in by Ryan of a rabbit repeatedly attacking a snake.

Researchers are developing a dental implant that automatically spews precise amounts of time-released drugs for individuals with diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases. Devised by the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Technologies, the Intellidrug implant contains a drug reservoir, valve, sensors and actuators yet fits inside two faux molars. A wireless transmitter lets the patient know when the teeth need a refill. The dosage can also be remotely adjusted. The first clinical trials will begin soon, using a medication to help drug addicts kick addiction. From The Engineer:

'It is important for some conditions that there is a constant level of drug in the blood plasma,' said (researcher Thomas) Velten. 'Also, for people at risk from heart attacks, these attacks commonly take place very early in the morning when the patient is asleep and cannot self-medicate. With this system we can time the dosage to take place — even when the patient is sleeping...'

Once the device is fitted, saliva in the mouth enters the reservoir via a membrane and dissolves the solid drug, forming a solution. When the system is triggered, a valve opens and allows a controlled amount of this saturated solution to flow into the mouth where it is then absorbed by the mucous membranes in the patient's cheeks.

Yet again, military radio signals have knocked garage door remote out of service. This time, it happened near the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. The interference was apparently caused by tests of a homeland security emergency system. According to the Associated Press, residents "have had to spend hundreds of dollars on new systems." I doubt that the interference broke their remotes permanently, but perhaps they're afraid that the tests will continue. From the Associated Press:

For decades, the military has held a portion of the radio spectrum, from 138 to 450 megahertz, in reserve. That part was borrowed by remote-control manufacturers, with the understanding that the signal be weak enough to be overridden by the military...

"Consumer wireless devices, such as garage door openers, operate on an unlicensed basis, meaning they are required to accept any interference from licensed spectrum users, including the Department of Defense," said Lt. Brian P. Donnelly, a spokesman for the Quantico base.

Discover Magazine is running a fun contest where they're looking for the best video to explain String Theory in two minutes or less. The winner will be selected by celebrity physicist Brian Greene, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos. The video will appear on the Discover home page and the makers featured in the magazine. Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Link. BoingBoing's "band manager" John Battelle has more here. Worst one-day drop since 9/11 - WTF does it mean? Nothing, or something?

David Weinberger has a cool idea: "They ought to put Braille bumps on keyboards so that after a couple of years of typing, we will all have learned Braille. Maybe." Link

If your idea of an ideal romantic partner is a deceased canine and you live in Michigan, well, better start thinking about internet dating instead: Link. A state judge has rejected the argument that "a dead dog is not an animal and therefore cannot be violated against its will." (thanks, eck)

Bloomframe (from the Dutch firm Hofman Dujardin Architecten) is a cross between a picture window and a balcony -- it slides out of the side of the building to convert to a balcony when the need strikes, then retracts when you're done. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Cool piece in Businessweek about the rising popularity of "co-working" spaces for independent, internet-age freelancers who are burnt out on working from their homes (cons: too isolating, makes you crazy, no work/life boundaries) and don't want to just work out of Starbucks (cons: too public, not networking-conducive, laptop theft, rising price of lattes). Image above, hatfactory in dogpatch, San Francisco. Snip from story:

Over the past few years, co-working facilities—both grassroots, co-op-like versions and for-profit models—have started popping up across the country and the world, from Seattle to Copenhagen. A co-working wiki hosts pages for dozens of other cities with co-working initiatives in progress. And while the concept of shared office space is nothing new to entrepreneurs, an increasing number of them are signing on and finding that the community-building and networking benefits outweigh even the virtues of a shared fax machine.

In a recent report on the future of small business, the Silicon-Valley based Institute for the Future pegged co-working as a trend to watch over the next decade (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/31/07, "The Face of Entrepreneurship"). After co-working first took off with clusters of free-agent programmers and writers, its flexibility and low cost have also proven a good match for startups unwilling to sign a long-term lease. Because many of these facilities operate on a gym-membership model that doesn't assign workers to specific desks, co-working is cheaper than most subleasing arrangements. And unlike traditional business incubators, co-working isn't just for startups with high-growth potential.

The study's lead author, Steve King, says the increasing popularity of co-working facilities reflects the rise of one-person "personal businesses" as well as a broader fluidity between virtual and real-world communities.

Update: Those of you in San Francisco may want to consider swinging by hatfactory for an open house they're holding this Wednesday, Feb. 28:

On February 28, Wednesday, the Hat Factory Coworking space in San Francisco is throwing its doors open to welcome interested folks who want to give us a try, for free. Come and work with us during the day, from 11 AM to 5:00 PM. Bring your laptop and that manuscript, screenplay, or killer app you've been working on and leave the crowded, loud coffee shops behind. We'll also be cooking a big meal starting around 5pm with free dinner served after 6pm. Come and eat with us! We'll have a projector set up so everyone can show off their work.

Following up on yesterday's BB post about a new youtube soundtrack for the 1902 silent film Voyage Dans La Lune, John Brownlee of the Wired blog Table of Malcontents points us to a recent Wired.com piece he did on silent film revivalism online. He explains:

The piece explores modern scoring of silent films and the future of silent films on the ubiquitous video displays of major cities (as well as all silent, black and white plays based on Louise Brooks films... oh, and Cthulhu): Link.

It hadn't even occurred to me to talk to some of the people rescoring films on the Internet for the piece, and now the heel of my palm is shuddering against my forehead for missing that angle, because it's one of the cooler aspects of silent film revivalism. It doesn't even stop at silent film: for example, there's this experimental rescoring to the trippy French animated classic Fantastic Planet.

I'm actually posting up an interview over the next couple days with the girl who did an all silent, black and white play (part one: Link) and I'll be following up over the next week or two with a bunch of other interviews with artists involved with silent film revivalism.

Previously on BoingBoing:

by Jasmina Tesanovic, photo by Bruce Sterling.

Once again, Serbia is on the front pages of the world press. Serbia is off the hook. The Hague has ruled that the Serbian nation is not directly responsible for the genocide in Bosnia. Genocide didn't happen in Serbia, the genocide existed only in Srebrenica, in those three days of execution and burial of eight thousand people.

I am split over this bad and good verdict. For twenty-four hours I've been talking on my B92 interactive blog with people from all over the world who fear/ hope/ know what this Hague tribunal sentence means... for us and everyone else.

It's a precedent for the rest of the dirty-wars in the world, which now exist in such plenty. It is the first time in history that an international court of war crimes has declared a country both NOT GUILTY of genocide and yet also guilty of NOT preventing a genocide... bad and good news together.

(continued after the jump)

Snip from the Style.com review of Yohji Yamamoto's Fall 2007 Ready-to-Wear runway show in Paris:

Next came an interlude of black-and-white polka-dot hoop skirts that at the touch of a switch revolved, the tiers of the most complicated one turning in different directions. Despite the inevitable comparisons that will be made to Hussein Chalayan (who sent out his own motorized showpieces last season), you could feel the audience breathe a sigh of happy relief. This was more familiar territory.

For background, here are two earlier BoingBoing posts about that mechanized clothing from Chalayan, referenced in this review: Link 1, Link 2.

The Viktor & Rolf show in Paris this week also incorporated unusual uses of electricity:

Should anyone have the idea that today's models are a limp and weedy bunch, they might take a look at what they had to put up with—literally—at Viktor & Rolf. First, the girls had to shoulder heavy steel rigs, further weighed down with tungsten lights and speakers, some of them built up high above their heads. Then, unable to bend or use their arms to balance, they were asked to walk the runway wearing giant, clunky high-heeled Dutch wooden clogs. As the rigs got bigger and the girls' expressions more frozen with fear, involuntary gasps escaped from the audience. "Oh my God, she's listing!" hissed one observer. "I can't look!" cried another. "That poor girl's slipping!" shrieked someone else. By pure luck, no one did fall (...)

Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce
The Tree Show
New Paintings from Mark Ryden

March 10 - April 28, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 10 from 1:00 - 6:00 pm

For more information, please contact: info@kohngallery.com or 323-658-8088.

* Keeping in the theme, please wear brown and/or green attire to the Opening

Geoff says:

In the late 1920s, Soviet architect Konstantin Melnikov proposed a worker's dormitory that would "intensify the process of slumber."

It was designed with sloping floors, for instance, which would "obviate the need for pillows" (!). Wonderfully, though, the whole building was a kind of machine-womb, because sleep technicians in a central control booth would "command instruments to regulate the temperature, humidity, and air pressure, as well as to waft salubrious scents and 'rarefied condensed air' through the halls." They would also soundtrack the dorms with nature sounds, all to perfect the experience of sleep.

"Should these fail," we read, "the mechanized beds would then begin gently to rock until consciousness was lost." These would thus have been "sleep labs" for the workers of the Soviet Empire.

Originally from Cabinet Magazine, but there's no direct link.

This guy created a fake ad for Gucci using a photo of himself, and asked the Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung to run it, which it did. He also told the paper to send the $50,000 bill to Gucci, which it did. Now the paper is trying to find the guy, which it can't. Link

Awesomely funny video about a wonderful new way to eat corn on the cob. Link (Thanks, Dave!)

Reader comment:

Maximillian Hill says: "The video is made by Tally Hall ( tallyhall.com ) Here's a link to it on their site." Kim says:

This is reminiscent of the Billows Feeding Machine from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." Here's a video of that scene, in which Chaplin becomes the machine's victim as the "counter-shaft, double-knee-action corn feeder, with its synchro-mesh transmission" goes horribly wrong.

Training video shows Christian clowns running amok in a nursing home. I wish these clowns were allowed to walk into anyone's home, unannounced.

When you enter the nursing home, do not stand there in your group with a large cluster of clowns. Clowns can look rather intimidating if you see a lot of them in one place.

Eddie Duggan says:

William Barrington-Coupe, husband of "neglected" classical pianist, the late Joyce Hatto, admits to passing off the work of other musicians as the playing of his wife.

The deception was came to light after a listener played a Hatto CD in a computer. The disc was identified by the iTunes database as a 1987 recording by Laszlo Simon. Other Hatto recordings were later identified as being by other artists.

TIn a letter to BIS Records (Laszlo Simon's record label), Barrington-Coupe admits to having inserted several "samples" of other musicians work in order to cover up the sounds of his wife's groans of pain, caused by her cancer.

TBarrington-Coupe maintains he only inserted the pieces to help his wife--an "overlooked" performer--get the recognition he thought she deserved. However, it seems the deception runs deeper and may be whole performances rather than bridging passages, and an article in the current edition of Gramophone Magazine reveals that Barrington-Coupe continued to produce and sell counterfeit recordings after his wife's death.

As of yet, nobody knows the full extent of the deception, and Barrington-Coupe is saying little more than "I'm tired, I’m not very well. I’ve closed the operation down".

While the text of Barrington-Coupe's letter has not been released by BIS Records, there is a comment on the BIS website.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Prodigy pianist declared a fraud

Once in a long while, a new comic book series comes along that just kicks the hell out of you, melding words and pictures in a way that is impossible in any other medium, telling a story that you can't put down, one that changes the way you see the world.

I've just finished the first two collections from Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli's DMZ, and its really, really goddamned great.

DMZ is set in a near-future America torn apart by a new civil war. The "Free State" army is a band of redneck insurgents, sick of an America in decline, who've brought Iraq-style asymmetric warfare to the streets of America. Starting in small towns and sweeping across the country, they are fought to a standstill in Manhattan, the DMZ, where they face off against the US military.

Matty Roth is a kid journalist in Manhattan, the sole survivor of an abortive attempt to drop a Geraldo-like journalist into the DMZ to get the "real story" for Liberty, a politicized TV network with the ethics of Rupert Murdoch's FOX. Matty is the intern, but he's got the gear, and the guts, and he sets about telling the stories of a Manhattan under siege, where all the rich people have gotten out, leaving the poor behind for target practice by both armies.

DMZ has the guts and verve of Transmetropolitan, and a similar structure, too -- episodic slice-of-life views into a city in glorious, self-devouring ruin, shot through with an overarching plot about the fight of average people and brave journalists to expose official corruption.

The storylines are each vivid and rapid-fire, so that you can't stop reading (if I'd had a stack of these, I would have skipped sleeping and just read all night). Like Y: The Last Man and Fables, DMZ is a new kind of comic, something born from Frank Miller classics like Martha Washington, but way more evolved, ebola to Millers' flu-bug.

The supporting art is even better. There are more grace-notes that hint at a fleshed out world beyond the claustrophobic DMZ, little visual cues that make the whole thing seem completely real, totally immersive.

This was another find from the recommended table at Secret Headquarters, my favorite comic shop, and they just keep steering me right. If you're in LA, they're the best place to go get your brain inverted.

Book 1 Link, Book 2 Link

A reminder: I'm coming to Toronto this coming weekend (Mar 2-4) to be a guest of honor at Ad Astra, the regional sf convention. It was my first-ever con -- I volunteered as a gofer in exchange for free admission, and slept on the floor of the "gofer hole," a shared hotel room -- and it's an incredible thrill to be asked back as Guest of Honor.

On that note, the British sf podcast "Yatterings" (produced by Iain Elmsley, proprietor of the brilliant Aust Gate bookseller) has a new interview up with me about sf writing and how it relates to the future.

Link

See also:
Torontonians: win the right to name a character in my book

The Wikipedia entry for the "New Silent Generation" ("a proposed holding name used by Neil Howe and William Strauss... to describe the generation whose birth years begin somewhere in the late 1990s, or in the early or mid 2000s") has a fascinating table of the names ascribed to different generations going back to 1588 ("The Puritan Generation"). Link

Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi's "Ant'ique" wallpaper sports old-timey designs made out of thousands of tiny black crawly ants. Link (via Neatorama)

Update: See also Jennifer Angus's ant-paper (Thanks to Jenny et al for this!)

Brian sez, "This is an electric guitar made to look like the Nintendo Family Computer (Japan's version of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System). The individual who crafted this not only created a body that looks like a Nintendo Famicom, but also make replica controllers out of Japanese timber with little wooden buttons." Link (Thanks, Brian!)

EFF's Danny O'Brien sez, "Klaus-Heiner Lehne, the Euro MP proposing that Europe turn *all* infringement (including copyright, patent and trademarks) into criminal offenses - investigated by national police forces, and punishable with long prison sentences - turns out to have used copyrighted Apple graphics on his own ego site. If his amendment to IPRED2 had passed, would he turn himself in, or merely rat on his webmaster?" Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Printable cold sores: the idea is to print them out on transparencies and then paste them up on billboards, subway ads, and so on. The idea is to close the "gap between natural beauty and manufactured perfection." There's a blog for you to submit your cold-sore successes to. Link (Thanks, Stoo!)