Ed Guidicelli of Sheffield, Ohio plans to turn a 1948 42-passenger Convair airplane once owned by cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajnessh into a luxury bed and breakfast. Apparently though, his neighbors are complaining about his backyard tourist stop, which also includes a vintage caboose. As a result, township officials are now requiring Guidicelli to have his property rezoned to commercial, a difficult challenge, if he wants to open the airplane as an inn. From the Associated Press (photo from Roadside America):

Guidicelli believes the project could help put his economically depressed Lorain County town on the map...

"(The plane) is a piece of history," Guidicelli said. "And most people are thrilled that I'm saving it. A part of me knew it would be an uphill battle. But if I don't do it now, I never will."

Link to AP article, Link to more background on Roadside America

Back in December, 2006, the mayor of the 11-million-person Brazilian city of Sao Paulo banned all outdoor billboard advertising, citing advertisers' unwillingness to comply with the city's rules on what sort of billboards can be placed where. Now the rule is in effect, and Flickr user Tony de Marco has documented the eerie sight of a city stripped bare of commercial visuals.

The statute's most visible impact promises to be at eye level and above. The outsized billboards and screens that dominate the skyline, promoting everything from automobiles, jeans and cellphones to banks and sex shops, will have to come down. All other forms of publicity in public spaces, like distribution of fliers, will also stop.

The law also regulates the dimensions of store signs, and will force many well-known companies to reduce them substantially by a formula based on the size of their facades. Another provision, much criticized by owners of transportation companies, outlaws advertising of any kind on the sides of the city's thousands of buses and taxis.

The law, as passed, also applied to advertising banners trailed by airplanes and ads on blimps. But in the first of what promises to be a long series of legal challenges, a court ruled the clause unconstitutional on the grounds that the federal government, not the city, controls airspace.

Link to Flickr set, Link to IHT story on the ban (Thanks, Tom B!)

On the Making Light blog, novelist Jim Macdonald -- who is also a paramedic -- lays out the stark, grisly case for wearing your seatbelt. New Jersey's Governor Jon S Corzine was recently badly injured in a car collision. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt. The two other passengers in the vehicle were wearing their seatbelts -- they sustained bumps and bruises. Macdonald's description of what he sees when responding to "unrestrained passenger" accidents aren't for the faint of heart. Macdonald may be a science fiction writer, but he missed a calling as a splatterpunk horror writer.

In a collision, you have three or four sub-collisions all taking place in sequence. First, the vehicle hits some object. The vehicle abruptly slows, but unrestrained objects inside it continue at the same speed, in the same direction. Then the unrestrained body hits the interior of the vehicle, and starts to slow. That’s the second collision. That body’s internal organs are still moving at speed until they hit the inside of the chest (or get cheese-sliced by their supporting ligaments—and that’s where you get things like bisected livers or aortas). The fourth collision is when the bowling ball you left on the rear deck hits you in the back of the head, because that continued at the same speed in the same direction. Newtonian physics: Learn it, live it, love it.

Link

Chinese housing developers are luring that country's burgeoning middle class with theme-park-style housing developments that hearken to romanticized versions of European cities: Merrie Olde England, Venice, Italy, Zurich, etc.

In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.

"Many people in China today associate the exotic with wealth. They buy into these developments to differentiate themselves from ordinary people," said Tino Wan, a manager of ERA Real Estate in Shanghai...

Workers took three trips to Britain to learn different roof tiling, stone molding and other techniques.

In the end, they were so skilled at old techniques, Ho said, that the team was asked to help work on a new Thames Town-like development — in Britain.

Link (Thanks, Roger!)

The US Patent and Trademark Office is holding public hearings on May 9 to discuss the US position on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty -- you can attend and even speak.

The Broadcast Treaty is a proposal to let broadcasters (and "webcasters" -- people who host files and make them available to the Internet) claim a copyright to the stuff that they transmit. Broadcasters get this special right even if the stuff they're sending around is in the public domain, or Creative Commons licensed, or not copyrightable (like CSPAN's broadcasts of Congress). Fair use doesn't apply to this right.

What this means is that a handful of corporations are going to be able to claim copyrights over billions of works they didn't create -- works that they've done nothing to improve, works they've done nothing for except electromagnetically modulating them.

What this means is that these corporations are going to be able to trump the rights of actual creators. If you put a Creative Commons license on your video that allows your fans to share it, the "broadcaster" -- or the person who transmits it over the Web -- can override your wishes and tell your fans that they can't.

This is a proposed UN treaty, and the US position on it keeps wavering. The tech sector recently woke up and told the government off for selling them out in Geneva, critically wounding the Treaty's prospects. With a little help, it could die altogether.

Persons wishing to attend and observe or participate in the roundtable are required to submit requests to observe the roundtable or participate, preferably by electronic mail through the Internet to sking@loc.gov. Alternatively, you may submit requests by facsimile at 202–707–8366 or via regular mail to: U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright GC/I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024, marked to the attention of Simone King. Please be aware that delivery of mail (U.S. Postal Service and private carrier) sent to the U.S. Copyright Office is subject to delay. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that any request to observe or participate be made via e–mail or fax. Requests to observe the roundtable or to participate as a member of the roundtable must indicate the following information:

1. The name of the person, including whether it is your intention to observe the roundtable or to participate as a member of the roundtable;

2. The organization or organizations represented by that person, if any;

3. Contact information (address, telephone, and e–mail);

4. Information on the specific focus or interest of the observer or participant (or his or her organization) and any questions or issues you would like to raise.

The deadline for receipt of requests to observe or participate in the roundtable is 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 4, 2007. If we receive so many requests that we reach the room’s capacity, attendance will be granted in the order the requests were received.

Link (Thanks, Dan!)

See also:
US Senate: Broadcast Treaty subverts copyright!
WIPO Broadcast Treaty: consolidated three-day notes
UN cooking podcast-killing treaty
URGENT: Podcasters act now to stop anti-podcasting UN treaty!
America to US gov't: kill the Broadcast Treaty!
US copyright head: world "totally rejects" webcasting restrictions
Secret WIPO memo: rich countries to kill Broadcast Treaty, Development Agenda
WIPO wants to give webcasters the right to steal from public domain, Creative Commons and GPL
WIPO anti-podcasting treaty refuses to die
European podcasters to WIPO: Stay away from us!
Copyright treaty laid bare: watch your governments make sausage!
Financial Times: WIPO's webcaster treaty is a disaster
Podcasting saved from the UN -- for now
Tech companies tell WIPO: we don't want your "protection"

M John Harrison's rumination on why "worldbuilding" is a pointless exercise is like a bucket of cold water in the face. Shocking, refreshing and altogether unexpected. Worldbuilding is the science fiction writer's practice of meticulously (or not) drawing up the contours of a fictional place -- from the physics to the biology.

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

Link (via Warren Ellis)

EFF is hiring an intake coordinator -- that's the person who figures out whether the EFF can help you, whether they can find help for you elsewhere, and what you should do otherwise. It's an amazing job for an aspiring superhero (Julie Lindner, who presently has the job, definitely qualifies -- I've lost count of the number of Boing Boing readers she's saved from harrassing DMCA takedowns, legal threats and other online nasties).

Applicant must have general computer skills and knowledge of the Internet. Experience with basic legal issues and familiarity with EFF and our specific issues are also very helpful. This person must have great interpersonal skills, compassion and a sense of humor.

Duties include:

* Greeting visitors
* Answering general organizational telephone and email inquiries
* Performing legal case intake and referrals
* Managing database of cooperating attorneys and technologists
* Coordinating volunteers and part-time staff for support projects
* Assisting staff with assorted administrative tasks

Link

Here's some lovely advice on writing short stories, from Kurt Vonnegut's collection, Bagombo Snuff Box:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.*

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Link (via Making Light)

Love this animated Space Invaders doormat -- it even lights up and appears to animate(?). Link (via Wonderland)
See also:
Barcode doormat
Go Away/Come In doormat
Geeky doormat
HOWTO make a river-rock doormat

The Locus Magazine poll for the best science fiction of 2006 is closing soon -- the poll is open to everyone, and invites you to select your favorite works published last year for receipt of the prestigious Locus Award (I've won it twice: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom won Best First Novel in 2004, and I, Robot won best Novelette in 2005).

I'm especially excited about the Best Novelette category, where I'm eligible twice: first for my story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, about the geeks who babysit the Internet after the apocalypse; and I, Row-Boat about robots who find religion in Asimovism after the humans all leave the planet. Both stories have been picked up for several reprints, including some of the Year's Best anthologies, and I've got Locus Award hopes there, too! If I had to pick one (and I do) I'd pick Sysadmins. I think it's got a little more heart.

2006 was an incredible year for sf. In the best novel category, we have two books by Charlie Stross; Karl Schroeder's magnificent post-singularity pirates-in-a-Dyson-bag adventure Sun of Suns, and Vinge's groundbreaking Rainbows End -- along with Rudy Rucker's sweet, smart Mathematicians in Love. Oh, and Jo Walton's haunting, blistering Farthing and Peter Watt's dark and savage Blindsight, his best book to date.

The Young Adult category has three Scott Westerfield novels -- and Larbalestier's wicked Magic Lessons.

I'm also going to have a hard time choosing my pick for the Best First Novel -- for me, it's a toss up between Klages's Green Glass Sea and Buckell's Crystal Rain.

In Novellas, I'm torn between Bradley Denton's "Blackburn and the Blade," Greg Egan's "Riding the Crocodile," and Bill Shunn's Nebula-nominated Inclination.

In Best Short Story, there's Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties and Rosenbaum's The House Beyond Your Sky, neck and neck for my vote.

I won't go into the other categories -- but my oh my, what a fine body of work we all managed to field in 2006. A vintage year. Link

Andrew Brandou has a new show of paintings opening tomorrow night at the Corey Helford gallery in Culver City, CA. The exhibition, titled "As A Man Thinketh, So He Is," is based on the history of Jonestown, the commune in Guyana where more than 900 members of the People's Temple, under the guidance of cult leader Jim Jones, killed themselves or were murdered in 1978. I find Brandou's juxtaposition of extreme cuteness and dark imagery to be deeply moving. Seen here, "Medication," a depiction of People's Temple members lining up for a cup of cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. (Note: Funnily enough, I learned about this show last week when I saw an ad for it on this very site!)
Link

UPDATE: Juxtapoz posted a fantastic photo gallery documenting their visit to Brandou's studio. Link

The MAKE: Bay Area Maker Faire takes place May 19 and 20 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. In the weeks leading up to the DIY extravaganza, the MAKE: Blog will feature short profiles of some of the hundreds of attractions and projects sure to amaze, amuse, dazzle, and inspire those in attendance. From this week Maker Faire preview posts (photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid):

• The Life-Sized Mousetrap (seen here) Link
• Electric Giraffe is back! Link
• Submarine-maker Mike Wernecke Link
• Tod Kurt, roomba hacking Link

Link to purchase advance tickets for the Maker Faire

Jim Woodring, the creator of Frank will be touring Australia in late May-June 07.

The Studio, Sydney Opera House: 25th & 26th May. To book: (02) 9250 7777 The Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns: 2nd June

Exhibition: “Combination Theory” @ The Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns; 21 May – 8th June

Exhibition May 24– June 12th: Books Kinokuniya; Level 2, TGV, 500 George Street (opp QVB) Phone: 9262-7996. Free entry.

Exhibition: MELBOURNE 21 May – 10th June. Federation Square – Fracture Gallery.

Artist Talk 31 May (Part of Sydney Writers Festival): 6pm-7.30pm, The Mint Subject: Stories without Words: Graphic Novels w/ Shaun Tan. Bookings 9250 1988.

For the launch events, specially curated and produced shows (care of Top Shelf), will be offered;

25 minute screening of select cuts from “Visions of Frank”, a collection of wild Frank animations by some of Japans most innovative and idiosyncratic film makers (and one by Jim himself). Each piece is an interpretation of a classic Frank comic and is scored by musicians from Japan and the USA.

A 30 minute musical interlude. Consisting of live and improvised scores to comic strips and original Woodring paintings… musical and visual collaborations and experimentations with some of Australia’s most versatile and creative musicians – JEFF LANG, MICHAEL LIRA and PETER HOLLO (FourPlay).

A 20 minute live visual projection and reading by Jim Woodring entitled Lazy Robinson.

A 15 minute question and answer session with Jim Woodring. Link

The Economist has an interesting article about different proposals to harvest wind energy from the jet stream (elevation: 10km). A San Diego, CA company called Sky WindPower wants to send giant kite-turbines into the jet stream to generate power.

Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.

Here's another interesting proposal:

Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.

An arrangement of two or more of these kites could act together to produce a steady supply of power. When one kite was being released, part of the electricity produced would reel the other kite back in, and vice versa. The whole system would thus remain in surplus, and if well designed could deliver a constant current. This system has the advantage that it requires only simple parts—generators, kites and cables—and should thus be much cheaper to build than a conventional turbine.

Link

This is a drawing of the "Comeback Kid" -- a toy with a weighted bottom that rights itself when you knock it over. Weebles and inflatable punching clowns with a pocket of sand in the bottom work the same way.

Recently two mathematicians designed and built an object that rights itself without a weighted bottom. Gábor Domokos of the Budapest Institute of Technology and Economics and Péter Várkonyi of Princeton University made this wooden object that has a shape that rights itself no matter how it's disturbed. Interestingly, the shape is very much like an Indian Star Tortoise.

Now, Domokos and Várkonyi are measuring turtles to see if any of them are truly self-righting, or whether the turtles need to kick their legs a bit to flip themselves back upright. So far, they've tested 30 turtles and found quite a few that are nearly self-righting. Várkonyi admits that most biology experiments study many more animals than that but, he says, "it's much work, measuring turtles."

The mathematicians still face an unanswered question. The self-righting objects they've found have been smooth and curvy. They wonder if it's possible to create a self-righting polyhedral object, which would have flat sides. They think it is probably possible, but they haven't yet managed to find such an object. So, they are offering a prize to the first person to find one: $10,000, divided by the number of sides of the polyhedron.

It sounds like a tempting challenge, but there's a catch: Domokos and Várkonyi are guessing that a self-righting polyhedron would have many thousands of sides. So the prize might only amount to a few pennies.

Link (Via Complexity Digest)

Derek sez,

The illegal NSA spying program remains shrouded in secrecy over five years since it first began. Now the Bush Administration is reportedly once again pushing Congress to legislate in the dark and expand spying powers.

With the Senate Intelligence Committee taking up this topic next Tuesday, it's critical that you tell your representatives to defend your privacy and support thorough investigations into the domestic spying program.

Make your voice heard now by visiting StopIllegalSpying.org.

StopIllegalSpying.org is a new site setup by EFF, ACLU, and a broad coalition of groups defending your privacy and the rule of law. With your help, we can press Congress to do its job and restore the checks and balances that define our democracy. Please help spread the word about the site to friends and family, and post our graphic on your website or blog.

Link (Thanks, EFF!)

Ruth sez, "today I made a Death Star cake for a co-worker's birthday. I used red velvet in honor of all the independent contractors (Clerks reference). Star Wars and Kevin Smith for dessert!" Link (Thanks, Ruth!)

Ricky sez, "Religious writing dominated the Epcot sky this morning. The whole bit of skywriting wouldn't fit in my camera's frame. To the left of Jesus was a giant smiley face (probably as large as Spaceship Earth, if not larger). It then read 'Jesus Loves You' next to the face. The skywriting stopped everyone in their tracks throughout Epcot, as everyone pulled out their cameras to snap a photo of a rare religious sight in a Disney park." Link (Thanks, Ricky!)

Update: David sez, "The religious skywriting on top of Disney World is a rather common sight in the Spring and Summer. He will usually write things like 'Praise Jesus,' 'Jesus Loves You'" and draw a smiley face and a heart." Here's the guy's website

Paul Di Filippo notes that it's the twentieth anniversary of the first issue of SCIENCE FICTION EYE, one of my favorite zines.

SFE was born in the heady cyberpunk years, in the wake of the folding of Bruce Sterling's CHEAP TRUTH, when he bade his disciples to go forth and found a million zines to carry on the good and noble fight for better speculative fiction. SFE was the ideological and graphical brainchild of the multi-talented and passionate Steve Brown (or as the masthead invariably listed him, "Stephen P. Brown"). It was not a unique kind of forum, following in the footsteps of many earlier "sercon" zines such as RIVERSIDE QUARTERLY, QUANTUM/THRUST, SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW, ALIEN CRITIC, et al. But it certainly captured the zeitgeist. Here's what Mark Frauenfelder had to say about it in an issue of WIRED:

"Science fiction fans consist mainly of hobbit-huggers, calculator-wielders, tree nymphs, and trekkies. Each group has its own sci-fi subgenre 'zine to read while waiting for the next WorldCon costume contest, but what about the tiny gang of folks that view science fiction as a supercharged way to think about the present? That gang reads (and writes) SCIENCE FICTION EYE, a fat nonfiction quarterly with great graphics and regular columns by Bruce Sterling, Paul DiFilippo, and Richard Kadrey. It's like going to a party where all your favorite writers are discussing the real-life issues that inspire their fiction - morphogenic field theory, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the history of Bohemianism. These and a dozen other subjects are dished out with passion every issue. The best part of SF EYE is the letters column, where everybody pulls off their gloves and goes at each other on issues ranging from abortion to the possibilities of cloning a cow from a packet of Jell-O. If science fiction means more to you than zapgun-blasting elves astride cyborg unicorns, you'll like EYE."

Link

Joey Anuff alerted me to some rare Harvey Kurtzman art that he posted to the Cartoon Retro board a few years ago. These are notes, photos, and sketches Kurtzman (the creator of MAD) made for the cover of his short-lived humor magazine, HELP!

There are quite a few additional posts with Kurtzman art on the same page, too. Link

Over at the excellent new Philip K. Dick blog, Total Dick-Head, David Gill points to an audio interview of PKD chatting about Kurt Vonnegut, circa 1981. From the interview:

Interviewer: What did you think of Vonnegut’s attitude towards his characters (in Breakfast of Champions)?

PKD : Disgusting and an abomination. I think that that book is an incredible drying up of the liquid sap of life in the veins of a person like a dead tree…that’s what I think. I also love Kurt Vonnegut.

Link

Kasey McMahon gutted a taxidermy beaver and filled it with PC components to create the Compubeaver!
Link (Thanks, Jim Leftwich!)

Andrew sez, "Here's a recording of Kurt Vonnegut's very first public reading of Breakfast of Champions, 3 years before it was published, at the 92nd Street Y in 1970."

VONNEGUT: The best audience in the world is the 92nd Street Y. Those people know everything and they are wide awake and responsive.

HELLER: I was part of a panel there on December seventh. The fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

VONNEGUT: Were you bombed at Pearl Harbor, Joe?

HELLER: No.

VONNEGUT: Of course, James Jones was. I was saying this would be sort of a valedictory interview because our generation is taking its leave now. James Jones is gone. Irwin Shaw is gone. Truman Capote is gone.

HELLER: Yeah, but nobody’s replaced us.

VONNEGUT: No. (Laughter)

Link Coral Cache MP3 mirror (Thanks, Andrew!)

Sean sez, "A Swiss company is selling watches which are partially built from authentic parts of the Titanic, which sank in 1912. The price on these suckers range from $7,800 to $173,100, and 2,012 watches are planned for production."

Geneva watchmaker Romain Jerome SA billed its "Titanic-DNA" collection as among the most exclusive pieces showcased this week at Baselworld, the watch and jewellery industry's largest annual trade fair.

"It is very luxurious and very inaccessible," said Yvan Arpa, chief executive of the three-year-old company that hopes the limited edition watches will attract both collectors and garrulous luxury goods buyers.

"So many rich people buy incredibly complicated watches without understanding how they work, because they want a story to tell," Arpa said. "To them we offer a story."

Link (Thanks, Sean!)

With the news that Jenni Engebretsen, the RIAA's Director of Communications, has been put in charge of PR for the Democratic National Convention, I thought I'd round up some of her greatest hits, culled from her adventures in PR while helping pilot the RIAA into its coveted slot as the most hated company in America:

• On whether downloading a single song could make you into the victim of a RIAA lawsuit: "The industry has no minimum threshold for pursuing legal action."

• On universities spying on students to help the RIAA sue them: "One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records."

• On whether infringement is the same as theft: "When you illegally download music, it's no different than walking into a music store and shoplifting." And "Unauthorized downloading is considered to be robbery by federal law, and is therefore treated as such."

• On whether universities should help the RIAA extort money from students without going to court: "It’s almost unimaginable that a university would be unwilling to help a student avoid a lawsuit."

• On the RIAA's lawsuit against Patti Santangelo, a soccer mom who didn't download any music: "No comment."

With expert PR like this, a Democratic victory must be assured, right?

(1) Benin: vintage hotel radios with email indicators

I have encountered these handsome, clunky old analog radios in hotel rooms throughout Benin. Each of those numbered buttons is supposed to give you a different radio station (usually only one or two kinda work, if you're lucky). The slider thing (often missing) is volume. I do not know what that input jack is for, presumably headphones.

But the best part of this is the little envelope icon, with an associated red light.

I like to imagine that this is an email indicator.

My red email status light hasn't lit up yet, but perhaps that's just because nobody in Africa wants to send email to my hotel room radio.

Link to full text and photos.

(2) Sourcing "Africa's a continent. Not a crisis."

Regarding the unattributed title of yesterday's post, "Africa's a continent. Not a crisis" -- Ethan Zuckerman wrote it. He explains,

"That's me, I'm afraid, from Link. The paragraph it comes from, more or less..."

"Africa's not an issue. It's not a cause or a problem. It's a continent - a complicated, confusing, beautiful continent, with wealth and poverty, peace and strife, success and tragedy. When Africa becomes a cause, we tend to see only one side of the continent - a helpless, dependent, starving side that "needs our help"."

"The post was written during debate over the Bob Geldof Live8 nonsense - the event caused a huge debate in the African and Afrophile blogging community and this was my response to the tendency for the event to blur all the problems and hopes of the continent into a single word."

Link to full text of post.

(3) East Africa: Photoblogging aid work in Kenya. Link to post.

(4) Ghana: eat Shitto. Link to post.

Previously:

West Africa: Apr. 11, a couple posts from the road

Ghana: superbly kooky road signs, Accra at night

Xeni: I'm headed to West Africa for a while.

SomethingAwful poster DarkSun6890 made this ass-kicking Cthulhu iPod cozy for his brand new music player. It's his first craft project -- he should go into biz mass-manufacturing these things! Link (Thanks, Craig!)

Stuart Hughes says,

In London, we have been holding a day of action today for our BBC News colleague Alan Johnston, who was abducted in Gaza exactly one month ago today. I was producing the BBC's coverage and have blogged it here: Link.

Gareth says:

Bunny Burn is an annual event that a group of friends (location unknown) organize.The purpose of the party is the spectacular immolation of marshmallow bunny Peeps, centered each year on a different theme. This Easter, the theme of the crime was Robots. One participant, Sengkelat, built this incredible six-legged cardboard robot piloted and crewed by oodles of Just Born Bunnies. Sparked up, the gooey treats achieve a Napalmy intensity unmatched in kitchen pyrotechnics. Sengkelat documents the construction, display, and destruction of the bunny hellbot in three Flickr sets.

Link

Apple says it has been working so hard to get iPhone out the door by June (late June), that the ship date for Leopard has been pushed to October.

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones.

Link

The Free Software Foundation, a nonprofit that manages the GPL copyleft license and promotes the use of free software, is hiring a new campaigns manager. This looks like a sweet gig!

The Campaigns Manager implements the FSF communications strategy and works as part of a team to develop and implement issue campaigns and community resources, acting as a spokesperson on matters of software freedom. The Campaigns Manager handles writing, editing, speaking, and research related to these activist and program efforts; coordinates the GNU Chief Webmaster and the other webmaster volunteers to develop FSF and GNU web sites; plans and implements proposals to increase fundraising; and serves as a main point of contact between the Foundation and the free software community.

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

Nine Inch Nails's most recent album, Year Zero, has a great piss-take on the usual RIAA anti-piracy warnings emblazoned on its back cover: "USBM WARNING: Conusming or spreading this material may be deemed subversive by the United States Bureau of Morality. If you or someone you know has engaged in subversive acts or thoughts, call 1-866-445-6580." Link (Thanks, Paul!)

Update: Andy sez, "Your 'NIN anti-piracy piss-take' story prompted me to send you this pic of the back of my CD, to see the fine-print my brother, Jeff, a lawyer (!) came up with: 'This CD is protected by plastic shrinkwrap.' We also considered: Unauthorized duplication is prohibited by archaic unenforceable laws; Unauthorized duplication is prohibited by inapplicable laws; This CD is protected by plastic cellophane. Unauthorized duplication is expected; Unauthorized duplication is a fact of life; Unauthorized duplication happens."

Update 2: Karl sez, "I've always liked Ani Difranco's sentiment, which is printed on the packaging for all of her CDs: 'Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing.'"

Phil sez, "Our independent CD, New Mountain Music features the disclaimer: 'Unauthorized duplication is but one way to turn your friends on to our music.'"

Update: Ben sez, "2 Live Crew's rap tapes used to carry the warning 'Unlawful duplication will get you fuck up by the Ghetto Style DJs.'"

Today, Jenni Engebretsen was named "Deputy CEO for Public Affairs," for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver -- but she is better known as the Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The RIAA is the most hated "company" in America, according to a recent poll on the Consumerist. The RIAA's campaign of suing thousands of American music lovers has been the single biggest PR disaster in recent industrial history -- which is why Engebretsen's employer beat out Halliburton, Blackwater and Wal-Mart for the coveted "Worst Company" slot.

Engebretsen's PR approach is centered around stonewalling and avoiding difficult press calls. She contacted me in 2005 to deny that the RIAA had sent a takedown notice to a website called RPGFilms.net, and promised to answer my followup questions in a day or two. After four months of emailing and calling her, I finally got through to her (by calling her from a different phone, so she couldn't see who was phoning).

She said that the RIAA had no comment.

The liberal blogosophere is united on many fronts -- not just disliking US foreign policy. We also hate the RIAA -- for suing our friends, for lobbying for laws that suspend due process rights of the accused (the RIAA's favorite law, the DMCA, was used by Diebold to suppress information about failures in its voting machines), and for demanding the right to "pretext" (commit wire fraud) in order to catch "pirates."

Worse still, the RIAA are part of the initiative to corrupt net neutrality, imposing centralized controls on the transmission of information across the network.

It has been Engebretsen's job to sell these initiatives to the American public. She's failed to sell this to the American public. Not only does she take a paycheck for selling gangsters to the public -- she's not very good at it!

The DNC can do better. This represents a potential shear with the left-wing blogosphere. I hate what the GOP has done to this country, but the RIAA isn't much better.

Funding for the Democratic National Convention comes from a different pool than general DNC operations. Here's a list of the largest donors to the DNC for the past two election cycles. If you know these people, you can contact them and urge them not to contribute to the DNCC.

You can also contact the DNC directly, using the information on its website.

The press-release about Engebretsen's appointment isn't online yet, but here's the relevant material:

Washington, DC –Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today announced the six members of the senior leadership team for the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC). This talented group of professionals brings extensive experience representative of the commitment to excellence, inclusion and accessibility that will be a hallmark of the 2008 Denver Convention...

Jenni Engebretsen, Deputy CEO for Public Affairs
Jenni R. Engebretsen is currently the Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Washington, DC-based trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Before joining the RIAA, Engebretsen spent eight years working in Democratic politics, most recently as a Regional Communications Director for the Kerry-Edwards for President campaign, where she was responsible for developing campaign communications strategy for top-targeted states including Florida and New Hampshire. During the 2004 presidential cycle, she also served as Deputy Communications Director for the Democratic National Convention in Boston and as Press Secretary for the Edwards for President campaign during the primaries. Before that, she worked on Capitol Hill in the communications offices of Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Schumer ( D-N.Y.) and in the White House press office during the Clinton Administration. She is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

I sought comment on this post from the DNC and from Jenni Engebretsen. Neither responded in time for initial publication. I welcome their replies and will append them to this post if they are forthcoming.

Banks can reduce their chances of being held up by being extraordinarily polite to everyone that walks in, according to FBI Special Agent Larry Carr. He claims his method of "scaring the lights" out of would-be robbers with over-the-top courtesy is partially responsible for reducing bank robberies in Seattle by almost 50%.

The method is a sharp contrast to the traditional training for bank employees confronted with a suspicious person, which advises not approaching the person, and at most, activating an alarm or dropping an exploding dye pack into the cash.

When a man walked into a First Mutual branch last year wearing garden gloves and sunglasses, manager Scott Taffera greeted him heartily, invited him to remove the glasses, and guided him to an equally friendly teller. The man eventually asked for a roll of quarters and left.

Link

Joe Francis, the 34-year-old multimillionaire founder of the Girls Gone Wild video empire, has been charged with tax evasion. He's already being held without bail on contempt of court charges for allegedly shouting obscenities and threatening seven women during civil suit settlement negotiations.

He's charged with deducting over $20 million in bogus business expenses, including $3.78 million to build a house in Punta Mita, Mexico. He's also accused of using an offshore bank to conceal income.

His attorney, Jan L. Handzlik, said the indictment was unwarranted.

"The government has chosen to make a criminal case out of what we believe to be, at most, a civil tax dispute," Handzlik said. "We are also disappointed about the timing of these charges in light of Joe's difficulties in Florida. This is turning into a litigation dog pile."

Link

Update:

Mark says:

The "Girls Gone Wild" guy has now been caught with drugs in his cell. Also trying to bribe a guard with a $100 bill. And the president of the company that produces his DVD's has been charged with smuggling the pills and cash to him in jail.

It just keeps getting better!

Previously on Boing Boing:
• LAT's damning profile of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis
• Girls Gone Wild guilty in federal sex exploitation case
• Girls Gone Wild creator grilled on police record in court
Girls Gone Wild robbery: dastardly dildo dude Darnell guilty

From Swapatorium, a blog that displays remarkable ephemera picked up at flea markets, estate sales, and thrift shops, comes this haunting photo of a mother pretending to be a chair while her infant poses for a photo portrait.

I have a small collection of photos of mothers disguised as chairs. John recently found this tintype at an estate sale for a $1 which is a great example.

Link

The Department of Defense's Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) program is about to launch its first IP-aware satellite, which will be able to route IP packets direct to other orbiting satellites without an Earth-station downlink. Once the testing is completed, IRIS routing will be available for civilian applications.

Although satellites have been passively relaying IP traffic since the 1970s, the use of an orbiting satellite as an active part of the Internet is a more recent development, according to Wood.

Traditionally, communication signals that come up to a satellite in either the C-band or the Ku-band, go down in the same band, he said. They require separate transponders that don't communicate with each other.

Internet routing technology being tested in the IRIS project will enable this communication by "decoding what comes up in the C-band or Ku-band and interconnecting the two," said Wood.

"You save on delays and capacity by not having to go back to the ground," said Wood. "And once you have smarter satellites, you can treat them as not completely separate but as part of your IP network and manage them as you do your IP networking assets on the ground. They become fully integrated with your terrestrial network, allowing you to take advantage of existing management tools and also decrease the number of ground stations."

Link (via /.)

I bought a new digital camera in January, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX07. This is my second Lumix (I also have the larger LX1) and I bought it after being incredibly impressed with the performance of my earlier camera, wanting to have a second, smaller camera that fit more easily in my pocket.

The Lumixes are a joint venture between Panasonic and Leica (Leica makes the optics) and they're marketed under both the Panasonic and Leica brand. The Leica branded cameras are functionally identical, but they come with a longer warranty (the Panasonic has a one-year, which is plenty for my needs, I upgrade at least that often) and cost substantially more.

I love these cameras (I've bought three more since January as gifts, with great results). They shoot stunning pictures (here's Flickr's collection of FX07 shots) and have totally kick-ass image stabilization that works great in low-light, getting me incredible shots without using a tripod or leaning the camera against a table. They also shoot wicked-fast, making it easy to shoot a continuous stream of photos of something exciting as it's happening. The presets are also really smart -- the aerial photography setting got great shots when I was in a helicopter last month over the Grand Canyon. The camera also shoots crisp, 640x480 Quicktime video.

The camera shoots at 7 megapixels and comes in four colors (blue, silver, black and red), and hilariously, the manufacturer has a different price-point for each (silver is cheapest). I've carried the camera without a case in my pocket with my keys, change and phone for four months now and it's still running as smooth as the day I bought it. Even though I shoot nearly every day with it, I only have to recharge the battery about once every two weeks.

I love how much functionality Panasonic has crammed into this little body. It's so much easier to carry around than the LX1, but I don't feel like I've given up much by way of quality or ease of use. At this rate, I could see myself buying Lumixes for a long, long time to come. Link

BibliOdyssey has a bunch of high resolution scans of the beautiful designs for the Seattle Space Needle and grounds, the centerpiece of 1962's Century 21 Exposition.

"In 1957 Paul Thiry, one of Seattle's earliest pracitioners of European Modernism, was appointed principal architect of Century 21, the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The Ford pavillion, part of the Triangle of the Future, was located near the south gate on Boulevard 21. Under its geodesic dome, visitors were entertained by a simulated flight to outer space in a model rocket ship. An auto show was also part of the attraction at the pavillion, where the Ford Motor Company displayed some of the consumer products it had in development."

Link (Via Martin Klasch)

Mat Bergman says: I consumed the fantastic scans of the 1929 Johnson Smith catalog. Thanks for the link. 1929 was a bit before my time. A while ago I scanned my cherished copy of the 1979 catalog and posted it on Flickr. Take a look -- it's amazing how little some things change between issues. Link

Emblem says:

Shaun Slifer and Stuart Anderson have constructed a tumbleweed juggling robot for the Rossum's robot arts collective show, "Mechanosphere", at the Three Rivers Arts Festival gallery in Pittsburgh. It uses an infrared security camera modified with a IR long-pass filter and retroreflective tape to track the tumbleweed. Position and velocity data from the vision system are processed into motor commands and sent to an Arduino and Sabertooth that control the motion of a gimbal mounted platform built from recycled bike drive trains, EMT conduit, and canvas.

Link

Hanttula has a tasty and icky gallery of disemboweled plush toys. They want your submissions, too. Link (via Neatorama)

Here's an October, 1923 Popular Mechanics guide to "novel and little-known accessories," including a fork-cleaner, cream-separator, and a "mixer which aids in preparing mayonnaise dressing for sea foods, salads, vegetables, and the like." Link

In 1982, Popular Mechanics reviewed the top six personal computers, noting that, "It used to be that programs were easy to copy and change. But manufacturers began to lose money as many people made copies of software and gave them to their friends. Now, many manufacturers have figured out how to 'copy-protect' discs. A copy-protected disc—like a cartridge—can’t be copied or changed. To our mind this is a disaster: Most people learn programming by changing programs to fit their own needs. This capability of customization is what makes computers so attractive. New ways of copy protection will probably be found soon. Until then, a computer owner may have to put up with being 'locked out' of his own machine." Link

In Lee Iacocca's new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, the former Ford and Chrysler president excoriates the Bush administration for its total failure to lead the country well, laying out the case that America has turned into a corrupt kleptocracy that is more concerned with lining the pockets of political donors than strengthening the nation and keeping it secure.

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

Link (via Kottke)

Security researchers have uncovered e-commerce sites that sell malicious software to criminals. The sites have shopping carts, deliver analytics, and generally behave like an Amazone for malware.

In return for downloading the malware to their sites, Web site owners are promised at least 50 Euros -- about US$66 -- every Monday, with the potential for even more for "clean installs" of the malicious code on end user systems. "If your traffic is good, we will change rates for you and make payout with new rates," the site promises...

The front end allowed subscribers to login to individual accounts, view indexed data and get results from queries based on certain fields such as IP addresses and URLs. Each customer-generated query had a price associated with it, Jackson said. The currency unit used on the site was WMZ, a WebMoney unit roughly equivalent to the U.S. dollar, Jackson said. A customer query returning three passwords for a small retailer might cost 100 WMZ, while a query for 10 passwords for an international bank might fetch 2,500 WMZ or more. Customers could also choose how they wanted their search results delivered -- as compressed files in e-mails or via FTP.

The actual Gozi Trojan code itself appears to have been purchased by 76Service from a Russian hacking group called the HangUp Team. Such code typically costs about $1,000 to $2,000, depending on its sophistication, Jackson said. In addition to the original Trojan, the server also hosted two ready-to-deploy variants in a separate staging area. The malicious code included a downloader and a stored password stealer and appeared to be have been made to order for 76Service.

Link (via The Command Line)

Today, the Web is full of tributes to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, who died last night. There have been some 250 edits to his Wikipedia entry since his death. Boing Boing readers have sent in some of their tributes:

• The Books of Bokonon from Cat's Cradle, which include the Bokononist last rites:

  God made mud.
  God got lonesome.
  So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
  "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
  And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
  Lucky me, lucky mud.
  I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
  Nice going, God.

  (Thanks, Dannel!)

• David posted an MP3: "This is a wonderful track of Kurt reading aloud, from an ancient audiobook of Slaughterhouse Five. It was set to music by parties unknown, and was a bonus track on a much newer audiobook (read by Ethan Hawke). Ethan's reading of the book is okay, but he can't match the author's perfect inflections. The file's a bit long but it's worth every second." Coral Cache Mirror, Original Link
• The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is collecting fan tributes -- someone should sent them this video montage of Vonnegut stills and clips (Thanks, Russ and Gary!)
  

(Image ganked from Uh...Bob's Flickr stream)

See also:
Vonnegut on "Shock and Awe"

Update: Andrew sez, "Here is the audio of Vonnegut reading from Slaughterhouse without the (lame) music."

Michael sez, "This is one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes. I haven't seen it in the press anywhere but it seems appropriate to mention it now:"

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in Heaven now." That's my favorite joke.

Jeremiah sez, "I interviewed Kurt Vonnegut years ago and had an interesting encounter with him."

And a reader sends in Vonnegut's Daily Show appearance.

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, is dead. Oh, shit. Vonnegut wrote 14 novels. He had fallen several weeks ago and received brain injuries. He was 84.

My first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions. I'd never read anything like it. It was a novel that was so easy, everything just happening, one thing after another. The book almost read itself. That was his gift, I think: to tell you things that were hard to hear, without you even noticing it. Like a nurse who can slide a needle into your vein without making you wince.

Vonnegut has haunted me, delighted me, and made me sad. I still think of the world in terms of Wampeters, Foma, and Karasses, the Boknonism ideas set out in Cat's Cradle. I still think that "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time," may be the best opening line of any novel -- and that the novel, Slaughterhouse 5 lives up to that line.

In 1944 he was shipped to Europe with the 106th Infantry Division and shortly saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge. With his unit nearly destroyed, he wandered behind enemy lines for several days until he was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp near Dresden, the architectural jewel of Germany.

Assigned by his captors to make vitamin supplements, he was working with other prisoners in an underground meat locker when British and American war planes started carpet bombing the city, creating a firestorm above him. The work detail saved his life.

Afterward, he and his fellow prisoners were assigned to remove the dead.

Link, Wikipedia bio (Thanks, Allen)

(Image ganked from Wikipedia)

Christopher Conte sculpts crazy, techno-robotic cyberpunk fancies, like this bronze "Mid-Sagital Skull Bisection," which sports gears and cogs, a la the Tessier-Ashpool terminal in Neuromancer. His whole portfolio is awesomely rad, especially External Video Eyeware Apparatus and Stainless Steel Spider Armature. Link (via JWZ)