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."

Link (Thanks, Eddie!)

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.”

Link

Previously on BB:
• Lori Earley art show at Roq La Rue Link
• Lori Earley prints for sale Link

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.

Link to Aviation Week article, Link to Jamesburg Earth Station Home Page, More in the the March 23 issue of the Carmel Pinecone (PDF of part 1, PDF of part 2) (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

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.

Link (Thanks, Greg Benjamin via Vann Hall!)

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:

Unintentional Goatse on the London Underground

Goatse ad tells you to get a job without colon-climbing

Goatse iPod case

Captain Copyright commits goatse, unattributed trademark use

Goatse tribute page

Proud owner poses with GOATSE license plate

Goatse fights for your WiFi privacy: GOATSEPEG

Flickr set of people seeing Goatse photo for the first time

Unintentionally Goatse-esque finger ring

Goatse Valentine

GOATSE t-shirt in the NYT

Goatse polo shirt

Goatse t-shirt design

Carousel Goatse

Goatses in the media

Hidden Goatse in Unreal Tournament 2004

Cthulhu meets Goatse

I Goatse'd Ron Jeremy

Goatse.cx taken offline

Goatse casemod

Persistence-of-vision bike spoke Goatse

GOATEA.cx

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

Link

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."

Link

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)

Link (via Memoirs of a Vulture Princess)

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.)

Link (Thanks, PJ!)

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.

Link (via Megnut)

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."

Link (Thanks, ScottG!)

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.

Link. Here's what the numbers mean: Link.

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 to purchase advance tickets for the Maker Faire

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.

Toadstar says,

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.

Andy reports that he's received "lots of lovely messages from the others players, including most of the ones who came closest to winning. Most of the prize money is safely tucked away for a house purchase, but I also donated $8,000 to pay for a year's running costs for unFiction, and I bumped up the player-donated reward for helping find Satoshi to $1,000 (www.billion2one.org). Things have been fairly quiet apart from that - carrying on with freelance web design work and nursing my fledgling ecommerce site, www.mybathroomfinder.com." Link

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.”

Link

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.

Link (Via Skeptic Review)

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!

Michelle says:

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.

Update: Fox News flips over the Blasphemy Challenge. Link

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:

Video: cats in things they're not supposed to be in

Supremely excellent cat-playing-piano video

Cat with 26 toes

Cat with a EULA

Cat piano

Massive cache of kittah pix (aka LOLcats, cat macros)

HOWTO make a noble fruit helmet for your cat

Adorable cyclops kitten

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.

Link

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.

Link

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