The Hanttula website has vivisected a Magic 8-Ball toy, revealing, among other things, an oracular D-20 in the middle. I roll to disbelieve. Link (via Digg)

Voce looks like an interesting new virtual cellular carrier, despite a marketing campaign targeted at rich idiots. A $500 signup fee gets you a no-contract, unlocked handset (mostly stupid blinged out phones from Dolce and Gabbana, but also regular old Treos and the like) and then $200 a month gets you unlimited voice calls and GPRS data, and a 24/7 personal assistant service you get by dialling 611. The PAs are guaranteed to pick up within three rings and will research any question that can be answered by the web or phones, including stumpers like, "Call a research librarian and ask them to look up the opening sentence of every chapter in Robert A Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers'" or "Find me a restaurant in Tulsa that serves vegetarian food that can seat a party of 18 before 8:30PM" and so on. They'll call, email, fax or text you with the results.

The service is clearly targeted at people who think that a gold phone and the ability to boss around a researcher is cool, but I'm thinking that $200 a month isn't bad for unlimited calling and data (I already spend that much or more a month with my regular cellphone) plus the gravy of a part-time personal assistant service that'll wait out hold queues, check stuff for you on the road, and run the kind of routine research tasks you might have to hire a full-time staffer to do otherwise. What's more, the premium services -- like free loaner phones with call-forwarding when you're travelling in Asia, free insurance, next day handset replacement -- are all things that I presently end up paying money for.

When I called the general number, I got someone smart, thorough, pleasant and helpful -- on the second ring. When's the last time that happened with your mobile carrier? It's certainly not par for the course with Verizon, who I pay a gigantic sum of money to every single month and who still make me wait for 40 minutes and then treat me like dogshit every time I call, unless I'm actively threatening to switch carriers. Link to goofy Flash site targeted at rich idiots

This is pathetic: British Airways cuts scenes showing rival aircraft and aviation execs out of its in-flight movies. Your ticket-price at work, folks.

Virgin boss Richard Branson appears briefly in the James Bond film Casino Royale.

However, British Airways passengers watching the film as an in-flight movie won't see Branson's brief appearance because BA has edited Branson out of the film, along with a shot of a Virgin Airways aircraft.

Commenting on the phantom edit a BA spokesman said "We do reserve the right to edit films, and many films are edited in some way on board."

Juxtapoz magazine profiles incredible pop surrealist painter Lori Earley whose new solo show, Anima Sola, opens Saturday, April 28, at New York City's Opera Gallery. Seen here, "Regret." From Juxtapoz:

As for her trademark “elongated” style, Earley expresses a kind of bemused frustration with people who are convinced she uses a computer to generate her images. “I can see why people would think they’re digital, but it’s a little upsetting, because when I first started doing all this, barely anyone had a computer. I don’t even think Photoshop existed for regular users. Then when it came out, I thought, shit, now everyone’s going to think I do all my stuff in Photoshop.”

Earley is classically trained and credits much of her technique to the painter Steven Assael, who she studied under at the School of Visual Arts. The elongation is something she developed entirely on her own and she prides herself on her meticulous perfectionism. She says she’s gone through different color phases depending on her mood and is influenced by everything from music, to movies and books, but has a special affinity for fashion.

“I love looking at fashion. Fashion in and of itself is an art form. It’s so much more interesting to look at a dress that has all these layers and detailing, and when it comes to painting, I love painting that. I like weird fashion that looks kind of timeless and bizarre, like Alexander McQueen, Versace, Gaultier, and all those guys.”

First used as the earth station for the 1969 moon landing, the Jamesburg Earth Station was shut down in 2002 by owners AT&T and put up for sale. Fortunately, it was bought by a private investor who agreed to allow some Ham radio buffs to restore it. After months of work, the group fired up the 10-story high dish in February and bounced 20 radio signals off the moon. From Aviation Week:

The dish sits on a 160-acre site that's been subdivided for residential sale, so the restorers feel some urgency in trying to preserve it. Ideally, they'd like to see it returned to service, perhaps to support scientific and deep space missions. But they also think of it as an ideal location for a space camp for star-struck students.

Eduardo Sese of Pampanga, Philippines may have exposed more than 100 men to rabies during a self-flagellation ritual. Sese died from rabies two weeks ago, but he had previously shared a knife with a large group of people who slashed their backs before whipping themselves with bamboo in honor of Good Friday. From New Scientist:

The government doctor in Pampanga, Maria Clara Aquino, said vaccines had been given to 103 people who could have been exposed.

Self-flagellation is an annual tradition in Pampanga and other parts of the Philippines in which men whip themselves into a frenzy on Good Friday to atone for their sins.

Scott Beale says, "The notorious domain goatse.cx is being sold through an online auction. The minimum bid is $4000." Link (thanks, also, Stuart and many others). Thumbnail: a Getty Images stock photo used in a number of surprising places, including a recent TD Ameritrade report. If... only... I could place... what this reminds me of... (Thanks, El Verde)

Reader comments: Dan says,

I saw this and had a good laugh to myself - I have some, I guess you could say 'insider information' about this. It's speculation, but it makes sense.

Goatse.cx was put up and maintained by a guy named Mike Joyce. He also runs obstinate.org.

Mike Joyce lived in San Diego and worked for a small ad agency. Hes good friends with Sammy, the guy who wrote the 'sammy is my hero' myspace worm. Sammy also used to live in San Diego, but he moved to LA to start his own web development company. Mike Joyce quit his sysadmin position and moved up to LA to work with sammy. That opened up his position and I was hired there.

In the last few months, as I'm certain you guys are aware, Sammy was getting prosecuted by the company that owns myspace for their downtime, and all the damage he caused. It was something like 300,000 dollars in advertising revenue lost for the day and half they were down (forgive me, I cant find the post with the actual figure).

I wonder if Mike is selling goatse.cx to help Sammy pay for legal fees?

btw, here is a link to the most recent goatse statistics.

See also:

I just finished Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, a funny, quiet, improbable book about an art-rock band in Los Angeles that might be making it big.

I'm an enormous Lethem fan, and have been since Gun With Occasional Music, a hard-boiled detective story by way of Philip K Dick, and I particularly love how versatile he is, every book really different from the last. You Don't Love Me Yet is no exception.

The book follows the story of Lucinda, a barista and bass player who has just broken up with Matthew, her lead singer who works days as a veterinary assistant at the LA Zoo and burns with white-hot anger at the treatment of one of the kangaroos there. They remain friends, and remain in the band, and Lucinda finds herself quitting the coffee shop to work for a conceptual artist whose latest gimmick is the "Complaints Line," a phone number you can call and complain to.

It's there that she first encounters The Complainer, a brainy, deeply weird older man who seduces her through the complaints line -- and gives her the inspiration to get the band out of its rut and onto a stage.

You Don't Love Me Yet's characters -- a collection of earnest would-be rockers, rogue zoologists, cynical promoters, and sociopathic sloganeers -- are totally charming. Even the most repulsive among them is redeemed, shown to be somehow necessary, even if utterly reprehensible.

The storytelling in this book has all the daffy precision of an old Talking Heads song, an intense, nerdy diction like an autistic film student telling you about the secret meaning of an old black-and-white movie he's been studying by watching once a week for ten years (this actually happens in the book). And like an old Talking Heads album, say, Remain in Light, the tone of the book veers madly with Lethem's whims, from nearly pornographic to uproariously funny and then introspective and quiet again.

I listened to Lethem's unabridged reading of the book on CD, and he does a really good job with the material, delivering it with unashamed earnestness of his striving characters, throwing in the occasional comedy voice, and generally having a high old time. I love hearing writers read their own work, and Lethem is great at it. Link, Link to audiobook

See also:

Lethem on the copyfight
Lethem: free film option in exchange for public domain release after 5 years
Jonathan Lethem: remix my stories!
Lethem, Vaidhyanathan, et al talk copyright and plagiarism on NPR tonight
Jonathan Lethem on Philip K. Dick
Copyfight symposium in NYC with Lessig, Lethem, Art Spiegelman...
Lethem wins Macarthur "genius" award!
Lethem's new novel reviewed on Salon
Lethem to Gehry: High-rise Brooklyn is wrong
Prisonaires: golden age pop music from behind bars

Update: Rick Kleffel, sf interviewer extraordinaire, got an interview with Lethem in for his podcast last week

Todd Goldman, an artist whose work often so closely resembles the work of other artists that one can only marvel at the freakishly-rare coincidences. It's as if a thousand worms, crawling over a palette of oil paint onto a canvas, made a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa. Take a look for yourself at the incredible coincidental resemblances between Todd Goldman's art and that of other artists.

A lot of websites are pointing out the similarities between Goldman's work (which sells for a lot of money at his gallery in Hollywood), and other artists.

For some reason, Goldman has retained the services of a law firm to send email to some of these websites, demanding that they remove articles "which contain defaming, derogatory and malicious statements about Mr. Goldman."

from Andrew.P.Felix@[redacted]
to authors
date Apr 19, 2007 6:10 PM
subject Todd Goldman

Andrew P. Felix, Esq. wrote:
Dear Sir or Madam:

This firm represents Mr. Todd Goldman. I write on behalf of Mr. Goldman regarding certain comments and disparaging remarks that are posted and housed on your website (www.fleen.com).

We have acquired articles posted on your website which contain defaming, derogatory and malicious statements about Mr. Goldman. Therefore, we request that you immediately remove these article from your website, as well as any subsequent articles and/or URL links of this nature regarding Mr. Goldman. Further, the hosting of such statements and/or URL links about Mr. Goldman is actionable defamation and libel that has caused irreversible damage to his character.

Unless we receive written assurance that you have removed these article, as well as any subsequent articles and/or URL links of this nature regarding Mr. Goldman, from your website by the close of business on Friday, April 20, 2007, we will have no other alternative but to take action to seek injunctive and monetary relief against you pursuant to Florida law. Please be advised that we will also seek to recover attorneys’ fees and costs associated with this matter. As time is of the essence, this action must be taken immediately.

This letter is not, nor should it be construed to be, a waiver of any rights or remedies available to Mr. Goldman under federal or state law, whether now existing or hereafter accruing.

PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.

Sincerely,

SHUTTS & BOWEN LLP

/s/Andrew P. Felix

A Vatican panel has issued a report that concludes that unbaptized babies go to Heaven, not limbo, as the Catholic church has been claiming for centuries.

In the 5th century, St. Augustine declared that all unbaptized babies went to hell upon death. By the Middle Ages, the idea was softened to suggest a less severe fate, limbo.

In his Divine Comedy, Dante characterized limbo as the first circle of hell and populated it with the great thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as leading Islamic philosophers.

The document published Friday said the question of limbo had become a "matter of pastoral urgency" because of the growing number of babies who do not receive the baptismal rite. Especially in Africa and other parts of the world where Catholicism is growing but has competition from other faiths such as Islam, high infant mortality rates mean many families live with a church teaching them that their babies could not go to heaven.

Father Thomas Weinandy, executive director for doctrine at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the document "addresses the issue from a whole new perspective — if we are now hoping these children get to heaven, there is no longer any point in worrying about limbo."

Reader comment:

Kevin says:

Your post today about limbo was an example of how the media misunderstands the Church. I have immense respect for people who make an effort to understand a position opposite to theirs before publicly rejecting them, but your post, as well as the LA Times article, shows that you are rejecting something you don't understand.

Limbo was never part of official Church teaching. St. Augustine did think limbo existed, but that does not mean that it was part of Catholic belief. For example, you will not find it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a dense summary of what the Church believes produced by the Church. I've heard it classified as a "theological hypothesis" which no Catholic must assent to, but it would no be contrary to the faith to believe in it. This was not a reversal of Church teaching, although in many places limbo was taken as a given by people in their local Churches and many universities.

So that means that this panel did not reverse anything. They just pointed out that there is merit to the position that unbaptized babies may go to heaven. The Church did not change Her mind.

Jake tried to access Boing Boing from Boston's free WiFi network and got this notice -- topped by the seal of the Mayor of Boston no less! Banned in Boston -- first they came for the Mooninites, then they came for the Boingers.

Want to defeat censorware? Let freedom ring!

Update: Seth sez, "The phrase 'Banned combination phrase found' is a characteristic message of the censorware Dan's Guardian. It seems some combination of words has triggered the 'isItNaughty' flag (that's what they call it). It would be an interesting legal case to see if you had the right to file a Freedom Of Information Act for the settings and block logs to find out the exact reason you got censorware'd."

Update 2: Seth appears to have figured out the incredible stupid basis on which Boing Boing has been banned.

The finalists for the Locus Award for the best science fiction of 2006 have been announced and I'm proud as anything to announce that two of my novelettes made the shortlist, I, Row-Boat and When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (both are from my new collection Overclocked). The list is filled with really wonderful fiction. As I mentioned before, 2006 was a banner year for sf. Just have a look at the novel finalists!

Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor)
Carnival, Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
Farthing, Jo Walton (Tor)
Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Orbit; Ace)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Check out this video from the Global Village ride at Everland in Korea ("the most-visited non-Disney park in the world"). Global Village is a crude knock-off of Small World from the Disney parks, a ride I have a real soft-spot for, mostly because of Mary Blair's beautiful graphic design. Global Village lacks that, but it does have a slightly less ear-wormy theme song.

That's no accident - at Everland, the park mascots, Lastar and Laila, look suspiciously like Mickey and Minnie, as well. Not to sell Korea's top amusement park short, or anything - there are many reasons why this is one of the most attended on the planet (recent stats actually place it as the most visited non-Disney park in the world.)

History Magazine's old (heh) article on the history of mealtimes is just too fascinating. Before artificial light, the main meal of the day was eaten at lunchtime, with the evening meal being a few leftovers before sundown followed by an early bedtime. Artificial light changed that, prompting aristos to eat a huge meal after dark, party all night, wake up mid-day, and say "good morning" to one another until sunset.

With these late hours for entertainment and parties, and with more artificial lighting, many people in the cities began going to bed later and rising later in the morning. Mealtimes were pushed back as a result. In London, by the 1730s and 40s, the upper class nobles and gentry were dining at three or four in the afternoon, and by 1770 their dinner hour in London was four or five.

In the 1790s the upper class was rising from bed around ten a.m. or noon, and then eating breakfast at an hour when their grandparents had eaten dinner. They then went for "morning walks" in the afternoon and greeted each other with "Good morning" until they ate their dinner at perhaps five or six p.m. Then it was "afternoon" until evening came with supper, sometime between nine p.m. and two a.m.! The rich, famous and fashionable did not go to bed until dawn. With their wealth and social standing, they were able to change the day to suit themselves. The hours they kept differentiated them from the middle and lower classes as surely as did their clothes, servants and mansions.

Some upper-class individuals did get up earlier, children for instance and sometimes their mothers. By 1800 the dinner hour had been moved to six or seven. For early risers this meant a very long wait until dinner. Even those who arose at ten a.m. or noon had a wait of anywhere from six to nine hours. Ladies, tired of the wait, had established luncheon as a regular meal, not an occasional one, by about 1810. It was a light meal, of dainty sandwiches and cakes, held at noon or one or even later, but always between breakfast and dinner. And it was definitely a ladies' meal; when the Prince of Wales established a habit of lunching with ladies, he was ridiculed for his effeminate ways, as well as his large appetite. Real men didn't do lunch, at least not until the Victorian era.

Update: Dallas sez, "My mother grew up on a farm that followed the traditional meal times: Breakfast after chores, Dinner at noon, Supper in the evening. Lunch was a snack taken out to the men working in the fields in between both Breakfast/Dinner and Dinner/Supper. As a child, I was always puzzled by having Dinner at noon and cold cuts and leftovers at night. This is still the general pattern that my grandmother (92yrs old) follows, still calling the meals by their traditional names as well. When we go to visit, we just adapt and I find myself eating a small snack before bed - cold-cuts having not been enough for a body that is used to a big meal."

EZT4L1TY sez, "Science in Silico, a new video from Seed Magazine, is about the power of modern scientific supercomputing, showcasing some of the most impressive new simulations and visualizations from around the globe. The coolest part about many of these projects is that they're giving us information and insights about our world that, as far as we know, would be otherwise unavailable via more 'traditional' investigations. These simulations represent a third way of doing science, using the fixed assumptions and prior knowledge so vital to deductive reasoning to generate new information and data that can then be analyzed inductively. Also, the soundtrack has some nice excerpts from the Dub Side of the Moon." Link

Ape Lad, who will draw any hobo you care to name for $10, was commissioned to draw a robotic hobo version of me. I am honored! Link

See also:
Ape Lad draws Jackhammer Jill as a hobo
John Hodgman's hobo mosaic
700 imaginary hobo names
700 Hoboes project takes off

Dickens World, a new Dickens-themed attraction will open in a giant former warehouse near London next month:

The indoor attraction includes a central square of cobbled streets and crooked buildings, where staff dressed as pickpockets and wenches will mingle with the crowds. Visitors who pay the $25 admission charge -- $15 for children -- will have the chance to see the Ghost of Christmas Past in Ebeneezer Scrooge's haunted house, be hectored by a schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall -- the dismal school from "Nicholas Nickleby" -- and peer into the fetid cells of Newgate Prison.

Tourists can also have a meal in the cafeteria, which has resisted the temptation to offer "Please, sir can I have some more?" 2-for-1 specials. The little ones can play in Fagin's Den, an area for preschoolers named after the gangmaster of the band of thieves in "Oliver Twist."

Mike "Hometown Baghdad" says:

A while back, BB linked to Hometown Baghdad, a web documentary series about life in Baghdad. We've put out 17 videos so far. And by pure luck, today (4/20) we put out a video tribute to one Iraqi's all-consuming love for his hookah, or hubbly bubbly as he calls it. Even though he isn't smoking marijuana in the video, it seems appropriate for today.

In anticipation of the upcoming MAKE: Bay Area Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds on May 19 and 20, the MAKE: Blog continues to profile some of the incredible people and projects participating in the Faire. From this week's Maker Faire preview posts (photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid):

• Survival Research Laboratories coming to Maker Faire Link
• Sparky Jewell Link
• The Neverwas Haul Link
• The Disgusting Spectacle - Giant hamster wheel/nose picker Link
• Maker Faire Video Preview Link

Link, no known casualties, but gunshots heard at Johnson Space Center building 44. What a dark week in America.

Update: a local news station reports that both the white male gunman and a second male, a hostage, are dead. A third person, a female hostage, was "duct taped but uninjured."

Reader comment: Michael Calanan says,

The video embedded on this site appears to be raw video (no sound) right from the chopper cam. The page also links to streaming video of the local ABS news station's broadcast at: Link.

Here is one of the local Houston TV channels that is covering the event live.

Back in February, Andy Darley wrote about winning the first Perplex City alternate reality game. He also put a lot of photos on Flickr about going to the Rockingham Forest and finding the Receda Cube, worth $200,000.

It was then that I realised I was practically standing on a spot where the topsoil was the colour of the clay that ought to be hidden underneath it.

It wasn't 10m from the post, it was slightly further -- practically a continuation of the line I'd just investigated, exactly where you'd end up burying something if you walked 10m, stopped, and leaned forward to start digging. Seeing sub-surface clay with just a very thin covering of the material that was several inches thick elsewhere was deeply suspicious. If this wasn't the evidence for a hole that had been dug and then filled in, I didn't know what it was. I unpacked my trowel and cut straight down into it.

I'm trying to remember, and I think at this point I already knew I was onto something good, even before I'd gone very deep. It was the most promising spot I'd yet seen - it fitted the clues and it had good archaeology - and it had come at a moment when I was at a pretty low ebb. Six inches down, my trowel nicked something dark in the side wall of the hole that crackled when I prodded it. Just a couple of square millimeters of whatever it was, and at that point it behaved exactly like the tree root bark I'd been finding since Friday - it looked the same, and it made the same noises when poked. I cleared more of the sticky clay away from it with the tip of my trowel, and found that it was definitely plastic - not bark, but a bag. Plastic bags get buried for all sorts of reasons, usually accidental, so I refused to allow myself to believe it was the Cube. Nevertheless, I rocked back on my heels to take a photo. It's not a great photo, all blurry, but it turned out to be a pretty important photo - because moments later I cleared enough of the clay to run a gloved hand along the plastic and feel a hard, heavy, straight edge inside it.

That was when it hit me, that was when I knew I'd found the Cube.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Perplex City
• More on Perplex City
• Fan song created for Perplex City
• Perplex City players need help to crack encryption
• Alternate reality games
• SF Weekly on Jane McGonigal
• Microsoft's new alternate reality game

I listened to most of this Fresh Air radio interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on NPR yesterday while I was driving around in LA -- it was really good. Most of what's discussed won't be news to BoingBoing readers (questions about how entries are edited, whether Wikipedia will take ads, what happened with the Legendary Siegenthaler Clusterfuck). But it would be a great url to share with friends or family members who believe collaboratively edited encyclopedias want to eat your babies and tear your culture apart, limb from woeful limb. Link to archived audio. (Thanks, Joe)

Joey Manley says:

Webcomic artist Neal von Flue has scanned a page from an old encyclopedia which basically says that comic books are the root of all evil. He found it while helping his daughter do a school paper on "comets," and just, you know, skipped over a couple of pages.

Best bit: "There is nothing real about the stories in such comic books, and for that reason, grownups are often against them and children love them." Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Predecessors of anti-game hysteria: anti-novel, anti-waltz, anti-phone! (Thanks, Rodney!)

I recently spoke to Joey Anuff and Will Kreth about their cool new music-related venture, Critical Metrics. (Joey is the co-founder of Suck and Will is the co-founder of Wired.) In short, Critical Metrics is a powerful song discovery system that lets you build playlists and listen to them in a pop-up player. (Try their "100 songs we love" in the upper left hand corner.)

As Joey points out in the following Q&A, Critical Metrics -- in it's current state of development -- is geared towards music geeks, but future iterations will make the service more accessible to casual music lovers.

Q: What does Critical Metrics do?

A: Basically, CM takes advantage of recommendations across ALL media to quickly find and source, with some credible accuracy, your real, e.coli-free, “new favorite song.” Pretty much at whatever rate you want to consume new favorite songs.

Q: Who will use it?

A: At this moment, I think Critical Metrics will most impress BB’s music nerds and/or Rails hacker-types. The music nerds, because they’ve been waiting for/fearing a digital indexing of the music press for years already. The hackers more to laff at our sheer Ruby-on-crack audacity.

Honestly, we’re a few passes short of being nice enough for the average music consumer, but our soonish goal is for anyone who enjoys music to understand CM as a legit alternative to relying upon iTunes ads, Grey’s Anatomy, college radio, a 2.0 blackbox, or their cool friends to find fresh tunes. (Much as we love all those things, ofc. They’re all in the next rev.)

Q: How does it work?

A: Stat-wise, here’s how CM breaks down: we’re currently indexing ~22K reviews written by ~1200 reviewers, who over the last 18 months have collectively recommended 15K+ songs via 300+ review/recs sections of around 80 publications and misc media outlets. Out of these 15K songs, we’ve sourced 23K merchant links amongst iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, and various other merchants. Of course, these numbers all grow daily, but it’s already a nice library.

Q: You mentioned that Critical Metrics is especially suited for integrating Rhapsody accounts into playlists. Can you explain?

A: I think Rhapsody is proving itself to be super-suited for 3rd party integration in general. Yottamusic is a perfect example--an incredibly fast and useful Rhapsody skin that lets you build a massive CD collection in an afternoon. Critical Metrics is another example, although our focus is more on playlisting singles and individual tracks.

I think it's altogether fair to encourage everybody, iPod supremacists included, to pony up for the doggone Rhapsody subscription already. Great sound, great selection, super portable, and ridiculously cheap compared to ANY other entertainment service out there: Netflix, iTunes, and your local cable provider included. These days, Rhapsody’s pretty much my favorite net institution.

Link

Tens of thousands of social security numbers belonging to Americans who received loans or financial assistance from the government were exposed for years in a publicly accessible database. Snip from New York Times article:

Officials at the Agriculture Department and the Census Bureau, which maintains the database, were evidently unaware that the Social Security numbers were accessible in the database until they were notified last week by a farmer from Illinois, who stumbled across the database on the Internet.

“I was bored, and typed the name of my farm into Google to see what was out there,” said Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Ill.

The first link that appeared in the search results was for her farm’s Web site. The second was for a site that she had never heard of, FedSpending.org, which provides a searchable database of federal government expenditures. The site uses information from the Census database.

Ms. Bergmeier said she was able to identify almost 30,000 records in the database that contained Social Security numbers. “I was stunned,” she said. “The numbers were right there in plain view in this database that anyone can access.”

Reader comment: Gabriela says,

I saw your post on BoingBoing about the USDA privacy breach that The New York Times reported and wanted to let you know The Sunlight Foundation just unveiled a new project -- Real Time Investigations – that also had exclusive coverage of this story and blogged about it moments before the Times piece ran.

Real Time Investigations is an open source journalism effort that reveals the behind-the-scenes research involved in petitioning the federal government to make its information more accessible to citizens, constituents and journalists. We first learned of the extraordinary privacy breach by the USDA when a user of FedSpending.org, an online database of government spending created by OMB Watch and funded by us last year, reported it to OMB Watch late last week.

The Blasphemy Challenge is a website that invites people to submit video testimonials denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Those who do will get a free copy of the documentary, The God Who Wasn't There.

You may damn yourself to Hell however you would like, but somewhere in your video you must say this phrase: "I deny the Holy Spirit."

Why? Because, according to Mark 3:29 in the Holy Bible, "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won't forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Ever. This is a one-way road you're taking here.

Reader comment:

Jacob says:

Just saw the Blasphemy Challenge report on Boing Boing and thought it was hilarious. However, as a former Christian and current Discordian, I’m quite concerned that those poor souls participating in the Blasphemy Challenge have been deceived by the contest’s requirements and are not actually signing over their souls in an irrevocable manner. The requirements of “Unforgivable Sin” are simply not met by the act of denying the existence of the Holy Spirit.

A quick study of some related text (Matthew 12:22-31) will show that eternal damnation may only be assured by attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to the work of the Devil. The passage is centered on unbelievers telling Jesus that he was possessed by an evil spirit, and that he used the evil spirit to cast out another evil spirit. Jesus replied, telling them very specifically that they had just committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, as it was the Holy Spirit that empowered him, not Beelzebub.

If you’re going to blaspheme, do it properly! This “I deny the Holy Spirit” stuff is for pansies.

Thanks for the fun link!

Hey, saw your link to the Blasphemy Challenge and thought you might be interested in the counter-site, Challenge Blasphemy. Here's a chance for believers to respond.

The consistently brilliant Choire Sicha at Gawker breaks! news! that "cat macros," aka "Kittah," aka "LOLcats," aka cute clip art that people stick funny text on for the purpose of eliciting laughter and online social bonding -- well, The Gays have taken over this last bastion of internet innocence, as is their dastardly wont. Link.

Previously on BoingBoing:

I'm a few days late, but can't let the week evaporate without pointing to "The Landlord," an internet video in which a famous celebrity argues with a child. No, not that one! Will Farrell and an irascible, tiny girl named Pearl McKay who likes to get her booze on, bitch. Video Link. Wired News has a related story today.

James Hathaway says: "Just read your post on metal detection being the world's worst hobby. In many parts of the world it is also the world's worst vocation, at least the most dangerous. Poor people in areas of post-conflict will often fashion home made detectors to seek out bomb fragments and even LIVE bombs to dismantle and sell.

"In the link below I tell of running into a boy with scavenging for metal with such a detector in central Vietnam:

"Sadly, many Vietnamese are severely injured or killed while tampering with live ordnance. My organization, Clear Path International, assists those that are injured. Link

"I thought as a techie you might like to see more up close pics of the boy's homemade detector. I have some pics up on Flickr here."

The starting bid for this 16-acre island off the coast of Machiasport, Maine is $795,000.

Ram Island has been designated, along with most of the other uninhabited islands along the Maine coast, as a bird nesting island -- and it's true! Sea gulls do nest on the island. And live there too. Along with the gulls are cormorants, ducks, hawks and eagles, and small birds like swallows, sparrows and terns. Because of this nesting designation you cannot build during nesting season, which is May and June. This is the only restriction placed upon use of the island due to the designation.

The island is also home to seals. It's common to see their heads sticking out of the water, just off shore, watching you. They are very curious about human guests. They are like great big water-borne puppy-dogs with engaging personalities and their cute "barking" sound.

Jason sez, "This week, Boston Now, a new free daily newspaper launched in Boston to compete with the Metro. The paper is called Boston Now and will rely heavily on bloggers and user-submitted photos for content, with very limited content from the wire services and traditional full-time journalists."

In the name of relevancy, BostonNOW is handing huge swaths of its editorial pages to its readers. Instead of bemoaning competition from bloggers, they're proposing a true pro-am partnership, promising to publish the work of any blogger who's willing and literate enough to work with them.

Update: Jon sez, "They ripped off content from Bostonist.com - while they gave the URL we certainly didn't give them permission to put the clips into print. BostonNOW is still in their inagural week and there has been little to no blogger contributed content thus far. From what's been reported to me the system they'd announced for "submitting" content wasn't even fully functional by press time of the first issue (and possibly later than that). I really want to like a print paper that is looking to use content from willing bloggers - but yesterday they straight lifted content from bostonist.com without permission."

Update 2: Overheard at a Party sez, "I overheard Sean Bonner from Metroblogging respond to this news at the Web2Expo earlier this week. His quote was 'Print versions of blogs - their slogan should be 'Bringing you yesterday's news tomorrow".'"

Update 3: BostonNOW's John Wilpers sez,

Let me apologize for our unauthorized lifting of copy from bostonist. I am embarrassed and chagrined. I did not authorize or clear it, nor was I even aware of it. I will certainly find out how it happened and make sure it never happens again. That (unauthorized lifting) is definitely NOT our model. We hadn't planned on doing that and we don't plan on doing that in the future...

And we hope we can give aspiring writers, reporters, photographers, videographers, etc. the kind of exposure that can help jump-start their careers. And, ultimately, we hope to develop a compensation system to reward them for their work with something beyond fame and massive exposure, and to offer consultation on optimizing their own sites for making money (if that's their interest).

Based on that philosophy, unauthorized lifting of content is antithetical and will not happen again. At the risk of over-doing it, I apologize again for this instance.

Wen sez, "On April, 20th, Bill Gates went to Peking University to give a talk titled "Creativity, China, Future". After the talk, someone held a piece of paper written with 'Free software, Open source' rushed to the stage before Mr. Gates while spoke word to support open source software. It is said that that man is named Yang Wang, and he is a representative of LPI (Linux Professional Institute)." Link (Thanks, Wen)

Back in 2005, LiveJournaller Obelia Medusa posted an extensive photo-record of her gorgeous Bilbo Baggins doll-house. It's fantastically detailed with a huge larder stuffed with Hobbit food, teetering stacks of books, a clutter of Hobbit knick-knacks, and round doors and windows. Link to work-in-progress shots, Link to finished project (via Neatorama)

"Necessarium est autem veteres ortus cometarum habere collectos. Deprehendi enim propter raritatem eorum cursus adhuc non potest, nec explorari an vices servent et illos ad suum diem certus ordo producat"

[It is essential that we have a record of all the appearances of comets in former times. For, on account of their infrequency, their orbit cannot yet be discovered or examined in detail, to see they observe a periodical interval and whether their reappearance on a fixed day could be the result of certain cause] {Seneca, 60AD}

The vast 'Theatrum Cometicum' (The Theatre of Comets) was published in Amsterdam in 1668 and includes about 80 lavish engravings (a great many of them are double-page fold out illustrations). It provides accounts of over 400 comet sightings throughout history and in discussing their meaning, [Polish astronomer Stanislaus] Lubienietzki essentially helps usher in a more astronomical rather than astrological approach to the study of comets.

The whole of 'Theatrum Cometicum' is available online at the National Digital Library of Poland. Also known as Biblioteka Narodowa, this digital library deserves special mention. In addition to having a large selection of books in page image format, the interface is one of the best I've seen.

grass fed cooking
meat alphabet
sweet meats
cuts of beef
meat cake
hot dog loaf
octodog
hot dog aquarium
hot dog opera
hot dog sculptures
chili cheese burrito
in-n-out secret menu
garbage plate
poutine
eat bunny

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!).

The "Paddy Chair" is a cross between an armchair and a padded cell, described by designer Nick Melville as a "comfy chair for nutters." Link (via Shiny Shiny)

The London Then-and-Now Flickr group invites Londoners to visit the sites depicted in vintage photos and recreate the shots, showing what those sites look like in modern London. I love this shot of George Court, off the Strand, right by my PO Box. Link (via Oblink)

Update: Kim sez, "I created a Then-and-Now group on Flickr a while ago, open to any location. There's especially a lot of photos of Montreal and Chicago."

The Paleo-Future blog's feature on the 1937 Donald Duck cartoon "Modern Inventions" has some good analysis and gorgeous stills from this yesterday's tomorrow:

The museum is full of wonderfully ridiculous inventions from the future such as the pneumatic pencil sharpener, peanut sheller, robotic nurse maid, old razor blade mangler, robotic hitch-hiker's aid, potato peeler, the hydraulic potato peeler, mechanical bottle opener, and the automatic bundle wrapper.

This gigantic vintage-esque necklace is actuall a Kodak 1881 camera, designed by Lindsey Pickett to look like an old locket. It has a pair of LCDs inside that display your photos. This is a neat idea, but man, that is one big locket -- Flava Flav big. Link (via Shiny Shiny)

These breast-implants can be adjusted after surgery, varying the size of your fake tits based on your post-operative feelings about them until you're perfectly happy with your wobbly plastic boobs.

The Spectrum is a technologically innovative design that allows the surgeon to continue making adjustments to the breast after your breast augmentation operation. A small, removable fill tube is left temporarily attached to the breast implant after surgery. The tube is accessible to the physician by injection through the skin. In a simple office procedure, breast implant size can be varied until you have achieved the result you desire. At this point, the fill tube is removed (again, in a routine office visit) and a self-sealing valve immediately closes and seals the breast implant.

Talented arteeste Amanda Visell says: "I'm trying to spread the word for this site. This girl Sonia started it to pay for her dog's medical treatment as well as other dogs that are diagnosed with osteosarcoma and require leg amputation. So she makes these cute shirts and other stuff. My dog actually just came back from his week long stay at the vet today, he got his front leg amputated for the same reason, so of course I'm all emotional and trying to help." Link

Comedian Bobby Lee, best known for his work on Mad TV, is one funny dude. You can totally tell from his MySpace template.

One of the editors at UCLA's "Asia Pacific Arts" project turned me on to this new online video of an interview with Lee, in which he makes funny faces, hacks, farts, and explains why parodies of Korean telenovelas inexplicably yet consistently make for such terrific sketch comedy.

SF Gate columnist Jeff Yang (who I met by phone today, in the context of a different story) recently wrote a column about Bobby Lee's current blowing-up-edness. Link to Yang's April 10 piece, "Mad Man." Lee has a role in a forthcoming film about breakdancing, and there's some kind of new Comedy Central TV thing in the works or something.

There is a lot of him on YouTube: Link.

Snip from New York Times story:

A Chinese political prisoner and his wife sued Yahoo in federal court Wednesday, accusing the company of abetting the commission of torture by helping Chinese authorities identify political dissidents who were later beaten and imprisoned.

The suit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act, is believed to be the first of its kind against an Internet company for its activities in China.

Wang Xiaoning, who according to the suit is serving a 10-year prison sentence in China; his wife, Yu Ling; and other unnamed defendants seek damages and an injunction barring Yahoo from identifying dissidents to Chinese authorities.

Wired News reporter Luke O'Brien, who covered the story as it developed in this earlier piece, has an update today. Snip:

I just spoke with former dissident Harry Wu, who helped arrange Yu's travel to the United States. He told me Yu Ling is leaving tomorrow morning to go back to China. Today she wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. She walked the whole thing.

Update: ArsTechnica has a post, too: Link (Thanks, Glyn)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Who Is Sick? is a new Web service that provide a sense of your community's health by enabling people who live there to share information about the local spread of diseases. You can anonymously post your own sickness information and use the Google Maps interface to search and filter sicknesses by symptoms, sex, age, and, of course, location. It's also interesting to look at the percentage breakdown of symptoms--like runny nose, cough, or stomach ache--in a particular area. The concept is something like a modern day version of the famous map that Dr. John Snow and Henry Whitehead created to track the spread of Cholera through London in 1854, a tale beautifully told in Steven Johnson's book The Ghost Map.

From the Who Is Sick? blog:

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) provides flu data but only to the State level and only on a time scale of 1 week. For example, they will report that in the state of California, last week, there were 539 cases of the flu reported. While this information may be useful for some health practitioners or academics, for the average individual, this does not come in handy when they are trying to figure out what kinds of sicknesses are going around their area. It is not local enough, timely enough, or broad enough because they don't cover different types of sicknesses.

In contract, whoissick provides local (down to the zip code level), timely (within a day), and broad (many different symptoms, not just the flu) sickness information. Some typical use cases for a user would be

1. I am feeling a little sick and want to check what sicknesses are going around in my local area - probably within 10 or 20 miles from where I live or work.
2. I am traveling to another area of the country and want to know if there are sicknesses going around that I need to be careful of
3. I live in an area where I notice lots of people getting sick, so in preparation, I can take an AirBorne or vitamins to prevent catching anything

To date, the only way to get information like this is probably to call multiple places (hospitals, doctors, clinics, schools, etc) and ask what is currently going around. Not very organized or efficient.

We hope to change this.

In an original EDGE essay, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger claims that the Web's ability to aggregate public opinion and knowledge into some form of "collective intelligence" is leading to a new politics of knowledge. According to Sanger, the power to establish what "we all know'" is shifting out of the hands of a small elite group and becoming more of a conversation open to anyone with a Net connection. However, Sanger is also the founder of Citizendium, a competitor to Wikipedia that, according to its Web site, "aims to improve on (the Wikipedia) model by adding 'gentle expert oversight' and requiring contributors to use their real names." In this essay, titled "Who Says We Know: On The New Politics Of Knowledge," Sanger argues that a lack of "expert" oversight leads to unreliable information, something he sees as a major flaw in knowledge egalitarianism. I'm sure this essay will spark as much fiery debate as the previous essay in this EDGE series, Jaron Lanier's "Digital Maoism." From Sanger's essay:

Today's Establishment is nervous about Web 2.0 and Establishment-bashers love it, and for the same reason: its egalitarianism about knowledge means that, with the chorus (or cacophony) of voices out there, there is so much dissent, about everything, that there is a lot less of what "we all know." Insofar as the unity of our culture depends on a large body of background knowledge, handing a megaphone to everyone has the effect of fracturing our culture.

I, at least, think it is wonderful that the power to declare what we all know is no longer exclusively in the hands of a professional elite. A giant, open, global conversation has just begun—one that will live on for the rest of human history—and its potential for good is tremendous. Perhaps our culture is fracturing, but we may choose to interpret that as the sign of a healthy liberal society, precisely because knowledge egalitarianism gives a voice to those minorities who think that what "we all know" is actually false. And—as one of the fathers of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill, argued—an unfettered, vigorous exchange of opinion ought to improve our grasp of the truth.

This makes a nice story; but it's not the whole story.

As it turns out, our many Web 2.0 revolutionaries have been so thoroughly seized with the successes of strong collaboration that they are resistant to recognizing some hard truths. As wonderful as it might be that the hegemony of professionals over knowledge is lessening, there is a downside: our grasp of and respect for reliable information suffers. With the rejection of professionalism has come a widespread rejection of expertise—of the proper role in society of people who make it their life's work to know stuff. This, I maintain, is not a positive development; but it is also not a necessary one. We can imagine a Web 2.0 with experts. We can imagine an Internet that is still egalitarian, but which is more open and welcoming to specialists. The new politics of knowledge that I advocate would place experts at the head of the table, but—unlike the old order—gives the general public a place at the table as well.

Here's another amazing time-lapse video of BB fave artist Tim Biskup finishing the Helio Ocean mural at 616 North La Brea in Los Angeles.
Link (Thanks, Justin Ried!)

Previously on BB:
• Time lapse video of Tim Biskup ocean mural Link
• Tim Biskup profile Link
• Much more of Biskup on Boing Boing Link

Mavericks is a world famous surf spot just south of San Francisco near Half Moon Bay. Known for insanely massive waves that can top out at 50 feet or higher, Mavericks is home to incredible big wave surf competitions and was the death of legendary Hawaiian surfer Mark Foo. Only now though have geologists discovered exactly why Mavericks delivers such magnificent waves. Researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bounced sound waves and light off the seafloor to generate a high-resolution 3D map of the underwater terrain. According to the researchers, "the abrupt topography of the bedrock reef at Mavericks causes wave energy to converge over the reef, causing the wave to rapidly slow down, shorten in length and substantially increase in height." From New Scientist:

“As soon as I saw that gradual ramping from deep to shallow water, it was, like, wow! That’s why Mavericks happen,” says Rikk Kvitek, director of the Seafloor Mapping Lab at California State University in Monterey Bay. “I’ve done an awful lot of seafloor mapping and I’ve never seen geology like that before.”

As waves get close to shore, their base begins to run into the seafloor, slowing the deeper parts of the wave. The shallower part of the wave keeps moving at the same pace, causing the wave to stand up and then pitch forward. This creates the wave face that is so sought-after by surfers.

Motley Fool is running a contest where they're seeking the funniest 27 second stock pitch video you can come up with. The grand prize is $5000. As inspiration, they've posted a bunch of sample videos written by Daniel Rubin for stocks like Yahoo!, Netflix, Google, and Tivo. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds talk of P/Es to be about as exciting as rolling a jar of pennies, so any attempt to make stock information tolerable, even entertaining, is probably a worthwhile pursuit.
Link

Alan Graham reports that Amazon, owner of the web-traffic stats company Alexa, is suing Ron Hornbaker, who created a service called Alexaholic (later renamed Statsaholic) that reuses Alexa data in useful ways

At first glance, it does seem that Alexa has a decent case to make when it comes to taking their IP and trademarked materials. However when you read the 43 page complaint, some interesting things pop out and make you wonder if this is really such a cut and dry case of infringement? One excerpt in particular that catches my eye is:

"Unfortunately, Mr. Hornbaker has refused to stop trading off the Alexa name. And he has deliberately circumvented every attempt by Alexa to block him from stealing its traffic graphs."

a few lines later we have:

"Through this lawsuit, Alexa seeks to force Mr. Hornbaker to stop infringing Alexa's trademarks and to stop pirating Alexa proprietary data."

There are two things I find interesting about these statements. First, thousands upon thousands of websites link to Alexa graphs, which is one reason their site is so popular in the first place. Looking over large sites like O'Reilly and Paul Kedrosky's (who called Alexaholic "marvy") Infectious Greed, I found several "stolen" traffic graphs. Will Alexa now target anyone who places Alexa data in their sites?