Artist Cosimo Cavallaro's 200 pound, milk chocolate sculpture of Christ was to be exhibited next week at Manhattan's Lab Gallery but the Roger Smith Hotel that houses the exhibition space cancelled the show today. After hotel officials bowed to pressure from pissed off Catholics, Gallery director Matt Semler resigned. From the Associated Press (image from Cavallaro's Web site):

The 6-foot sculpture was the victim of "a strong-arming from people who haven't seen the show, seen what we're doing," Semler said. "They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions."

"In this situation, the hotel couldn't continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety," Semler said.

Link

Stephen Worth, director of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive says:

Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, video producer John Ellis stopped by with a portfolio case full of original artwork he discovered in a box of memorabilia belonging to the estate of cartoonist Milton Caniff. Unseen for decades, these jaw-droppingly beautiful ink sketches stand as a testament to the genius of Caniff, whose 100th birthday would have been celebrated this year. Caniff drew "Terry & the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon" every day for 54 years, and his draftsmanship was the envy of his peers. But most of all, he was a masterful storyteller. We posted a dozen high resolution scans of original "Steve Canyon" strips, and we''ll be posting more dailies and Sunday pages soon, along with rare photographs that have never been published before.

Link

On Alan Graham's new blog MedHed, he posts photos of every personal computer he's owned over time along with anecdotes that occurred at the time he owen them.

Macintosh IIvx

After dropping out of college and spending two years flying airplanes and helicopters (while managing a pizza place), I got a bee in my bonnet to buy a computer. I walked into a store that sold Macintosh computers and walked out $5,000 poorer with an Apple Mac IIvx. It was a pretty big deal because it was the first Mac built to house an internal CD-ROM drive, and the first time I had even seen one.

Through a chance encounter I ended up starting a computer repair and consulting company. In the early days I would often secretly peek into my repair bag at David Pogue's Mac for Dummies book to diagnose my clients problems.

"Ah yes...I think this is a problem with an extention...one moment while I look into my bag here....uh huh...yes definitely an extention."

[Note: many years later I had the great privilege to do R&D for the first two versions of David's Missing Manual: OS X book. How funny is that story arc?]

Within a year I was a Mac authorized VAR and Apple Authorized repair technician. And not long after that I was one of the leading digital video experts in the country.

Link

People are posting their photos of the fire in Burbank, CA on Flickr. This one is by crza. Link

According to Brian Flemming of slumdance.com, Uri Geller, who claims to be psychic, has been using the DMCA to force YouTube to remove videos that debunk his stunts (which include bending spoons and locating hidden objects.) By law, only the copyright holder of a video can make a Web site owner remove a video.

The only bright spot is that Geller's actions to suppress criticism may expose him to legal liability (provided that one of his victims has the resources and will to fight this litigious spoon-bender).

His liability? Geller does not apparently own the copyrights to the videos that he demanded YouTube remove.

The DMCA allows copyright owners to file a "takedown notice" with a service provider such as YouTube, provided that the copyright owner swears under penalty of perjury that he or she owns the copyright in question ("I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner of an exclusive right that is infringed").

It appears that on March 23, Geller or his representative filed with YouTube a series of these DMCA takedown notices, which should have included swearing to the stated facts under penalty of perjury. When internet griefer Michael Crook tried this method of critic suppression, it didn't work out too well for him.

You can see one of the videos pulled from YouTube here. Link

MJ Kelly says: "A (serious) Creationist clip showing how peanut butter disproves the theory of evolution. (Query whether it makes a difference if its creamy or with nuts...)"

The video explains that evolutionists claim that energy plus matter sometimes results in the creation of life. But since no one has ever found spontaneously-generated life in a jar of peanut butter, that means that matter plus energy from the sun couldn't have caused life on Earth. That's a grand piece of thinking! Link

Today on the Modern Mechanix blog, an incredible, five-page spread about the making of Snow White, from the January 1938 issue of Popular Science. Modern Mechanix scans old science mags and posts them in high-res, along with transcripts of the articles, so that they're machine searchable. It's my favorite old-magazine blog ever. Link

Bonnie sez, "With R2-D2 mailboxes popping up across America, thanks to the U.S Postal Service and Lucasfilm, fans can celebrate 30 years of Star Wars and mail letters at the same time. But if you can't find a R2-D2 mailbox near you, make this cool papercraft 3-D model of the mailbox for your action figures. Just print out this handy PDF on sturdy paperstock and follow the directions to make your very own mini R2-D2 mailbox!" Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

See also: R2D2 mailboxes from the US Postal Service

Craft blog has a great feature on the work of Cathy Kasdan, who has knit an entire 1950s ensemble out of old grocery shopping bags:

The dress is all hand knit from grocery bags that were the result of actual trips to the grocery store. As soon as I told people I could use their old bags for a project they brought them in by the bag full, I received thousands! The plastic grocery bag came about in the 1950's along with futuristic optimisim about America, so I made a "typical" 1950's ensemble complete with pillbox hat and purse, not pictured. I am going to have my pieces in an art show on recycled art at the School of Art Gallery in downtown Kent along with a group of other people beginning April 19th.

Link

JFarber sez,

On 3/27, someone submitted a question to the Wikipedia Reference Desks (where I volunteer) asking about what seemed like a silly claim in a NYT health article published that same day.

The article, which summarized a recent panel study on the health benefits of beverages, claimed that it was illegal to fortify soy milk with Vitamin D, and, because soy milk did not contain calcium, that the soy milk was not recommended as a substitute for cow's milk.

The NYT reported that claim as true, and used it to close their article.

Over the next 24 hours, the ref desk volunteers (including myself) followied the info back to its source, dicovered that the error was due to the original study's citation of a 1971 article on this point (which seems like pretty bad science, given how much nutritional laws have changed in that time)...and further tracked down plenty of evidence on both the public online documents of the Federal Register and on our own shelves which showed this claim to be absolutely false.

Wednesday night, I sent a letter to the NYT.

Sometime yesterday, the entire last section of the NYT article, which (according to the NYT website) was NYT's most emailed article for the last two days, was changed to the following sentence:

Undercover agents were able to slip bombs and IEDs past the Transport Security Agency checkpoint at Denver airport 90 percent of the time. Last time I was in Denver, the eagle-eyed agent was able to spot and confiscate my toothpaste, and of course, my suitcase arrived damaged, contents filthy, having been pawed at by a TSA goon and then improperly closed. These eagle-eyed guardians of freedom are so obsessed with making sure that we're all sharing our foot-funguses with each other on while our shoes go through the X-ray machine that they can't actually find actual bombs.

It's great that the TSA devotes all its energies to stopping the kind of ridiculous terrorist attacks that don't work, like shoe bombs and moisture bombs. Makes me feel much safer. I sleep better knowing that four-year-olds whose names sound vaguely like some terrorist's possible alias are kept off our planes.

In one test, sources told 9NEWS an agent taped an IED to her leg and told the screener it was a bandage from surgery. Even though alarms sounded on the walk-through metal detector, the agent was able to bluff her way past the screener...

Dzakovic was a Red Team leader from 1995 until September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, Dzakovic became a federally protected whistleblower and alleged that thousands of people died needlessly. He testified before the 9/11 Commission and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US that the Red Team "breached security with ridiculous ease up to 90 percent of the time," and said the FAA "knew how vulnerable aviation security was."

Dzakovic, who is currently a TSA inspector, said security is no better today.

"It's worse now. The terrorists can pretty much do what they want when they want to do it," he said.

Link (Thanks, Bolder X!)

On April 11, the Open Rights Group is having a party/raffle in London. ORG is a group I co-founded that works to preserve online freedom in the United Kingdom, and they've done amazing work since (I can't take any credit for that -- it's all down to ORG's incredible volunteers and supporters, as well as its executive directors, Suw Charman and Becky Hogge) -- they were instrumental in slaying the proposal to extend copyright on phonorecords by another 45 years. That's the first time (that I know of) that a proposal to extend copyright has been defeated!

The ORG party is a chance for people who care about this stuff to get to know each other, and there are some great items up for raffle. I'm selling off naming rights to a character in Little Brother, my forthcoming young adult novel about hacker kids who fight the American Department of Homeland Security.

It’s less than two weeks until Support ORG! (and Party) - the ORG supporter event on the evening of 11 April at Bar Kick, London. To recap - SO!(aP) is a chance for ORG supporters to meet one another, and we’re asking each ORG supporter to bring at least one friend who they think would like to support ORG if they knew more about our work. The event will feature “public domain” music, remixed visuals and free culture goodie bags - truly an evening not to be missed.

And I’m pleased to announce that our very special guest speaker will be ORG’s pledge founder - Danny O’Brien - who is flying in to the UK from his EFF outpost in San Francisco. What’s more, we’ve got even more treats to add to the ORG raffle - a signed copy of Code 2.0 from Lawrence Lessig, £150 in O’Reilly book vouchers and… wait for it… a signed copy of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property! But remember, you don’t get a chance to win anything, if you don’t buy a ticket (£2.50 each - available now via Paypal or on the night for cold, hard cash).

We want as many people as possible to come and join us for this event, so please spread the word. See you there!

Link

On Thursday, Bev Oda (Canada's besieged Heritage Minister) disgraced herself by storming out of a Canadian Museums Association lunch where she was the speaker. After her talk, the group's president gave her a boomerang and delivered a little speech about how her campaign promises would always come back to her. She refused to accept the boomerang and left without comment.

Bev Oda is the Heritage Minister -- that means that her job is to provide support for Canada's cultural institutions, like museums. It's completely unacceptable for her to storm out of the room when these people (whom she is paid to keep happy) tell her that she needs to do a better job. What is she, a six year old?

This is just the latest in a string of shameful Oda incidents. When she was running for election, she financed her campaign by soliciting donations from multinational and American entertainment companies -- the same companies it would be her job to regulate, should she be elected. Then she got caught taking money from those same companies after she was elected, and was forced to give it back. She's granted entertainment companies extraordinary access while shunning actual artists' groups. Most recently, she spent thousands of tax-dollars on a fleet of limos to chauffeur her and her staffers around (the small, walkable city of) Halifax during an awards show.

As a politician, Oda is a disgrace. Of course we'll fire her during the next election -- but it seems a sure thing that her buddies from the entertainment industry will give her a cushy job once she's kicked out of office. Like Jabba the Hutt once said, she's their kind of scum.

So, to hammer home the association's impatience, the group's president, Calvin White, tried to present a boomerang to the minister to show that her election promise has come back to haunt her and must now be honoured.

Oda refused to accept the boomerang. The atmosphere grew tense...

Oda left, without comment, immediately after the boomerang incident.

Link (via Michael Geist)

See also:
Youtube vid sends up Bev Oda, Canadian copyright czar
Canada's copyright czar and the taxpayer-funded limos Canadian copyright czar forced to turn away industry bribes
Can. Heritage Minister's election was funded by entertainment co's
Canada's about to have a copyright disaster
Canadian Heritage Minister Oda in the pocket of recording execs
Hollywood's Canadian Member of Parliament
Canadian copyright minister caught lining pockets

Diodesex: macro-focus photos of electrical diodes bent into tiny pornographic scenes. NSFW Link (ZOMG you got me fired from my job in the diode secks factory!) (via Monochrom)

Update: Jake sez, "While the heads are Light Emitting Diodes, the ecstatic bodies are in fact resistors."

Artist Nadine Jarvis can fabricate pencils from carbon left over by incinerating human remains -- it's part of a larger "research project into post mortem." She notes that "240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind." Link (via Cribcandy)

The Beatles had a guest appearance on Doctor Who in 1965 -- singing "Ticket to Ride." Afterwards, a traveller from the future remarks that she's heard of the Beatles, having visited their memorial in Liverpool, but that she didn't realize that the Beatles also performed "classical music." This is black-and-white Doctor Who comedy gold. Link (via Making Light)

Update: David sez, "The original recording of that particular Beatles performance has been lost along with a lot of the BBC library which was tragically thrown out in a great video tape purge in the 1970s. That Doctor Who footage is now the only visual record of that performance."

Here's a video of sea otters holding hands that will make your teeth hurt.
Awwww (Thanks, Lindasy Tiemeyer!)

Photographer Catherine Wagner spent two years in residence at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. While there she photographed selections from the museum's collection of more than 50,000 historic light bulbs. The resulting series, titled A Narrative History of the Light Bulb, opened yesterday at San Francisco's Stephen Wirtz Gallery and runs through April 28. A reception for the artist is scheduled for Thursday, April 5, 5:30-7:30pm. The beautifully minimalist and sculptural photographs are also viewable online. Seen here, The Lamps of 1900 (Lambda Print, 33.9 x 18.4 inches, 2006).
Link (Thanks, John Tarrant!)

Jim sez, "I am a book conservator, book artist, and author. In 1993, I made a 'book' using a floppy drive from my first computer (circa 1983 Leading Edge), binding the drive with the printed text of a short essay on the topic, the same text on the floppy in the disk drive" Link (Thanks, Jim!)

10 Zen Monkeys has a highly informative interview with Jag Davies from MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies). Davies runs through all the latest information on legal psychedelic studies and experimentation. (Those Monkeys also toss out some really funny stoner jokes.) The interview, covering pot, ecstasy, psilocybin, ibogaine, ketamine, and LSD, ran first on the RU Sirius Show.

RU: So a while back, MAPS got approval for a study in MDMA (ecstasy) assisted psychotherapy. Where are we at with that?

JAG: It's almost over. They've treated 15 out of 20 patients. It's very slow. There are lots of pre-conditions for the study because it's such a controversial substance. But the results are ridiculous. Their CAPS score—(CAPS is the Clinician Administered PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] Scale) is about five times higher than in treating chronic treatment-resistant patients with Zoloft... And there are a whole other slew of studies that are sort of copying this one that we're doing in a bunch of other places like Switzerland, and Israel, just to be sure.

JEFF: So does it look like MDMA is going to become something that's used pharmaceutically?

JAG: After careful analysis, we decided that MDMA is probably the most likely of any psychedelic drug to get approved. First of all, it has a very gentle sort of pharmacological profile.

But the other reason is… because it was so demonized by the government in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been hundreds of millions of dollars of research done into its risks. So they've done all the work for us!

RU: You mentioned a comparison to Zoloft, the implication being that MDMA could be an effective anti-depressant.

JAG: The difference is that MDMA is not used on a daily basis…

JEFF: What kind of dosage did they use? Was it comparable to a street hit?

JAG: Actually, it's a bit larger than a street hit. It's 125 milligrams pure. And then we actually got approval about halfway through the study to make a couple of changes. One of them was to take a booster dose, basically, although we call it a "supplemental" dose. They take another 60 milligrams about an hour and half into it.

JEFF: You're not calling it "a bump"? (laughter)

Link

Don sez, "I'm a volunteer for the Guide Horse foundation, and our blind guide horse users have been very creative in choosing shoes for their ponies, creating sneakers, boots and dress shoes. Since our users are blind, they cannot see how they look to sighted people, but they have lots of fun crafting shoes!" Link (Thanks, Don!)

Axlrosen sez, "A wristwatch buried in the ice at the North Pole three years ago was found by a boy more than 1,800 miles away after it floated ashore on the Faeroe Islands."

Niels Jakup Mortensen, 11, spotted a black box near his home on Suduroy, the Faeroes' southernmost island, his mother Anna Jacobsen said. Inside, she said, was a watch that had been buried at the North Pole by Joergen Amundsen, a descendant of Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen.

Jacobsen said the watch discovered by her son earlier this month was still working, and was accompanied by a letter from Joergen Amundsen. "It was so unbelievable," she said. "It had been buried in the North Pole."

Link (Thanks, Axlrosen)

Brian from the comedy site BBSpot sez, "Since the RIAA seems to sue everyone, I created a flowchart which shows how they make their decisions. Or at least how I imagine it to be." This is some funny (and plausible) stuff! Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Matt Webb gave the morning keynote today at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego. His talk (From Pixels to Plastic) was a whirlwind tour through amazing and funny ideas (he opened by seeing how long he could stare at us, smiling, without cracking up).

But the wow moment for me was when he talked about a notional kind of RSS reader -- an "RSS-I" reader, for interactive RSS. The idea is to take all the little decisions that all the services you use have asked you to make (Amazon recommends a book, your mailing list wants you to approve a post, Flickr wants you to add a buddy, your blog wants you to approve some comments) and stream them into a special reader, so that they're all in one place, and you can keep track of your decisions, make them in one go, and not have to run all over the Web.

This hasn't been built, but the second Matt mentioned it, I had that galvanic feeling, that feeling of, "I need this, I didn't know it, but I need this. I really, really need this."

Webb said a lot of fantastic stuff this morning (he demoed a little plastic robot that falls over when your friends go off IM and stands up when they come back online), but this one really floored me.

Update: Here's some more links: Matt's slides, The RSS-I slide, Matt's blog post on RSS-I

See also:
Boing Boing audio interview with Mind Hacks editor Matt Webb
Brain Hacks: Overclock your amygdala
Ruminations on a bee
Futurism, fictional and science fictional - rambling and inspiring

Israel's pro-marijuana party has just announced that it believes that pot isn't kosher for Passover:

Biblical laws prohibit eating leavened foods during Passover, replacing bread with flat crackers called matza. Later injunctions by European rabbis extended those rules to forbid other foods like beans and corn, and more recent rulings have further expanded the ban to include hemp seeds, which today are found in some health oils _ and in marijuana.

Green Leaf is a small political party that supports the legalization of marijuana. Although it is by no means a Jewish religious authority, the group decided to warn its observant supporters away from the drug on Passover.

Link (Thanks, WizardMi!)

Update: Carl sez, "students are giving up MySpace for Lent."

A Japanese restaurant has combined a deep-fat fryer with a functional goldfish tank -- the boiling oil floats on the surface of the cool water, and the fish get to eat all the crumbs of batter that dribble down.

Because oil floats on water, despite the massive heat (163 degrees Celsius) the goldfish simply stay away from the surface and all is well. They eat the crumbs of croquettes and other fried foods that fall to the bottom, and can live in there for 5-10 years as they happily clean away, ignorant to the fact that certain death awaits any potential escapees.

Link (via Kottke)

Update: Tamyu sez, "The actual video isn`t about the fish - in fact, they are only temporarily in the tank to demonstrate that it is really water. I assume they were removed after the segment. The real topic is the new design for an industrial deep fryer. By putting water in the bottom of the fryer and suspending the heating element above, the oil lasts longer. The crumbs are not sinking down and being burnt as with an oil only fryer. It also prevents the sort of explosion that normally happens when water and hot oil are combined. The water sinks down past the heating element and into the cooler vat before it has the chance to explosively boil. The goal is to reduce oil spending and make the deep fryer safer for employees."

A reminder to those in San Diego: I'm doing a drop-in signing and meet-and-greet tonight at 6:30PM at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore. They've got a stack of copies of Overclocked (my new short story collection) in stock. I hope to see you there!

When: Thursday, March 29: 6:30-7PM
Where: Mysterious Galaxy Books, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA 92111, 858.268.4747

Link

Hilarious: ask Google Maps for driving directions from New York to Dublin, Ireland and they'll give them to you, including this step, "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi." Weirdly, they instruct you to swim to France, drive the Chunnel to England, then take a ferry back to Ireland. Surely there's a more efficient totally impossible route? Link (via Kottke)

Update: Dave sez, "Of course, you'd have to swim about 4.9mph for 29 continuous days to achieve this time. Considering that the worlds fastest swimming records (in a 50-meter race) are just over 5mph... your mileage may vary!"

The Rock the Net campaign has rallied rock stars to speak out in support of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the idea that the phone company should just pass along the web-pages, videos and emails you request (which seems like an obviously good idea). The alternative, Net Discrimination, would allow phone companies to hold back or slow down the stuff you ask for, unless the company who's serving it to you has paid them a bribe for "premium service."

A good explanation of this idea comes from Craig "craigslist" Newmark: "Let's say you call Joe's Pizza and the first thing you hear is a message saying you'll be connected in a minute or two, but if you want, you can be connected to Pizza Hut right away."

The Rock the Net campaign, made up mostly of musicians who are on smaller record labels or none at all, said they are fearful that if the so-called "Net neutrality" principle is abandoned their music may not be heard because they do not have the financial means to pay for preferential treatment...

Former musician Jenny Toomey, who is now executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group for independent musicians, said this issue is so important that it has even attracted some big name artists, such as R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan and even Kronos Quartet, a classical musical string ensemble.

Link (via /.)

Techies at the University of Oslo have built an evolutionary computer that changes its design using genetic algorithms to improve performance:

What their hardware does is par up “genes” in the hardware to find the hardware design that is the most effective to accomplish the tasks at hand. Just like in the real world it can take 20 to 30 thousand generations before the system finds the perfect design to solve the problem, but this will happen in just a few seconds compared to the 8-900.000 years it took humans to go through the same number of generations.

Link (via Futurismic)

This year's Hugo nominees are out -- congrats to all the great nominees! It's amazing to see great books like "Glasshouse," "Rainbows End," and "Blindsight" on the ballot, along with stories like Ian McDonald's "The Djinn's Wife," Bill Shunn's "Inclination," Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," Ben Rosenbaum's "The House Beyond Your Sky" not to mention Neil Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," Tim Pratt's "Impossible Dreams" -- and the list goes on! An art book by Picacio, a bio of Alice Sheldon, a memoir by Chip Delany; badass movies like Children of Men and V for Vendetta, and a really top-flight list of Campbell nominees! Christ, it's going to be hard to pick favorites this year.

Novel
Michael F. Flynn, Eifelheim (Tor)
Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon (Del Rey)
Charles Stross, Glasshouse (Ace)
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (Tor)
Peter Watts, Blindsight (Tor)

Novella
“The Walls of the Universe” by Paul Melko (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“A Billion Eyes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, October/November 2006)
“Inclination” by William Shunn (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“Lord Weary’s Empire” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s, December 2006)
Julian: A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson (PS Publishing)

Novelette
“Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimov’s, December 2006
) “Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” by Michael F. Flynn (Asimov’s, December 2006)
“The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald (Analog, July 2006)
“All the Things You Are” by Mike Resnick (Jim Baen’s Universe, October 2006)
“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” by Geoff Ryman (F&SF, October/November 2006)

Short Story
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)
“Kin” by Bruce McAllister (Asimov’s, February 2006)
“Impossible Dreams” by Timothy Pratt (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, June 2006)
“The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Strange Horizons, September 2006)

Related Book
Samuel R. Delany, About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews (Wesleyan University Press)
Joseph T. Major, Heinlein’s Children: The Juveniles (Advent)
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon (St. Martin’s Press)
John Picacio, Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio (MonkeyBrain Books)
Mike Resnick & Joe Siclari, eds., Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches (ISFiC Press)

Link

Pete sez, "Last week my friends and I quietly launched our new project; the basic premise is that interesting people upload photos of themselves looking their best. Every day there's a new person to read about on the homepage/RSS for 24 hours. There's no profit motive, and no opportunity to comment or vote or any other cruft; it's just an opportunity to wake up and see a fresh new face." Link (Thanks, Pete)

Last year, my friend David Hyman launched MOG, a social networking site for music lovers that uses a downloadable app to scan your music library and automatically populate your page on the site with data. This afternoon, David told me about a cool new feature launching tomorrow called MOG TV. At its most basic level, MOG TV automatically locates the music videos on YouTube that correspond to the songs in your music library. David tells me that their algorithms and heuristics are really good at identifying the best match for the tune. And when the system inevitably screws up, MOG users are encouraged to flag the offending clip as bad quality or just plain wrong so the matches get better over time. The neatest thing though is that MOG TV doesn't just filter for the "official" promotional videos for each song. David tells me that "probably more than half of what you'll see on MOG TV is live footage." Hooray for bootleg concert video! Link

Previously on BB:
• MOG: social networking around music Link

Erich Mielke, the head of the East German secret police, was a great fan of Orwell's novel 1984, and desperately wanted his office to be in Room 101 (the location of the torture chamber in the novel). His office was on the second floor. So he renamed the first floor the mezzanine.

"I’d long been fascinated by George Orwell’s work, but I resisted reading 1984 until I finished the manuscript for Stasiland. After that, I devoured it, and I couldn’t believe Orwell’s prescience. When I went into Mielke’s office, I saw it had the number 101, which in 1984 is the number of the torture chamber. 1984 was banned in the G.D.R. but of course, Mielke and Honecker had access to banned material. The guide told me that Mielke wanted this number so much that even though his office was on the 2nd floor, he had the entire first floor renamed the Mezzanine so that he could call his room 101."

--Anna Funder, author of Stasiland

Link

White House staffers have been using their own, non-governmental email (from off-the-shelf email providers) as a means of evading subpoenas. That means that critical, secret emails are being kept off the critical, secure servers that the US taxpayers bought, and are instead being managed on Crazy Ed's Discount House of Email and Subpoena Evasion.

It also means that there's no executive privilege for these emails.

A reader who has a security role at a federal agency writes, "On the issue of using outside/unofficial e-mail address from official sites, the CIO at [redacted] has expressly forbade the practice for security reasons as it is all too easy to put sensitive information in an e-mail. ... Needless to say, hearing that the WH does not mandate that practice and lets [Rove] do 95% of his e-mailing from a blackberry, presumably with access to an unofficial address, is quite shocking. Still find it absolutely amazing that his clearance has not been revoked."

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

David sez, "My friend and I have been doing a Katamari Damacy Craft-Off back and forth for awhile now, and while we've only done a bit of work, we've sent each other some cool stuff. I show off the latest piece and the previous ones in this blog entry." Link (Thanks, David!)

See also:
New Katamari Damacy tees
Katamari Damacy phone-pouch
Katamari Damacy checks
Katamari Damacy earmuffs
Handmade magnetic wooly Katamari
Katamari Damacy radio-controlled toys
Katamari Damacy Hallowe'en costume
Katamari Damacy glass beads fundraiser
Hand-embroidered Katamari Damacy patch
Katamari crochet patterns
Katamari Damacy fans in costume
Katamari Damacy fan-cake of extraordinary coolth
Katamari Damacy nerd pride tee
Katamari Damacy homemade models
Katamari Damacy reenactment in Play-Doh
Katamari Damacy made from paper
Handmade yarn Katamari Damacy hats
Katamari Damacy hand-puppet
Offi