One of my favorite living artists, Camille Rose Garcia, is having her first solo museum exhibition of her fantastically surrealist paintings at the San Jose Museum of Art beginning next week. The show, titled "Tragic Kingdom," opens Saturday, May 12, and closes September 23. Seen here is "Black Dawn Rising," a signed print published especially for the exhibition in an edition of 50. They're $950 each. The Museum also created a fun video preview of the show.

From the show description:

Garcia’s work stems from growing up in the suburbs of Orange County and making frequent visits to Disneyland, “the happiest place on earth.” The artist quickly grew to recognize its artifice and contradictions, and she witnessed the realities of privileged suburban life - adolescent alienation and social marginalization. Her precious glittered compositions are infused with a sense of discontent, yielding works that are simultaneously disturbing and attractive.

Garcia is a notable member of a Los Angeles underground contemporary art movement known as the “Pop Surrealists” or “Lowbrow” artists, who combine dark surrealism with an eclectic array of pop culture sources, including comics, animation, and 1950s television. Garcia is particularly influenced by Walt Disney, punk bands like the Dead Kennedys, and sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. In addition, she draws upon diverse artistic and cultural sources, such as the work of her former teacher Paul McCarthy, illustrations by nineteenth-century artist Aubrey Beardsley, myths and fairy tales, and Japanese art, specifically traditional woodblock prints and the anime inspired work of Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami. From these references, she has crafted both a style that is unique and content that is a good deal more political than the work of her contemporaries.

Link to San Jose Museum of Art page, Link directly to YouTube video

Of all the wonderful things I've seen on the Bibliodyssey blog, this may just be the wonderfullest.

Snip:

After beginning his working life as a printer's apprentice, Louis Crucius (or Crusius) completed the necessary requirements to graduate as a pharmacist in 1882 and a doctor in 1890 in St Louis, Missouri. While he was studying he worked in a pharmacy and made humorous sketches that were placed in the window of the store. A collection of these drawings was published in 1893 ('Funny Bones'). He lectured in histology and anatomy and eventually came to be a Professor of Anatomy but died in 1898 from kidney tumours.

Although he gave most of his drawings away, Crucius sold a number of them to the Antikamnia ('opposed to pain') Chemical Company which had been established in St Louis in 1890. They produced antikamnia medicines containing the coal tar derivative, acetanilid, an anti-fever drug with pain relieving properties somewhat related to paracetamol, but which would be later shown to be a toxic compound not to mention addictive. Antikamnia was mixed with substances like codeine and quinine to enhance the pain relieving effects.

30 of the Crucius 'dance of death'-inspired drawings were used to make 5 years worth of Antikamnia Chemical Company calendars - between 1897 and 1901. They had a fairly aggressive marketing campaign in which the calendars (aimed at the medical fraternity) as well as postcards and sample packs were distributed to doctors in the United States and overseas.

Link to full post.

GigaOM: "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday that the commission told large telcos to stop blocking calls into numbers for the Iowa-based free calling operations, threatening punitive actions if the carriers didn’t comply." Link.

The Transportation Security Administration is missing a hard drive that contains sensitive data -- social security numbers, birth dates, bank account and payroll information -- on 100,000 TSA employees. "It is unclear at this stage whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen," according to a TSA press release about the breach issued last Thursday. Link to post on Wired's "Threat Level" blog.

BoingBoing reader crazymonk says,

The alt-weekly Las Vegas CityLife has published excerpts from Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, a new book by local journalist Matt O'Brien depicting his exploration of some of the 400+ miles of flood-control tunnels and storm drains that can be found beneath the glitzy lights of Las Vegas. Link.

"I follow the footsteps of a psycho killer. I two-step under the MGM Grand at 3 in the morning. I chase the ghosts of Benny Binion, Bugsy Siegel, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes. I learn how to make meth, that art is most beautiful where it's least expected and that there are no pots of gold under the neon rainbow."

The second excerpt (located at a separate URL) describes his encounter with a homeless man living in dank tunnel near the airport, who has fashioned himself an elevated bed that manages to stay above the water line even during major flooding.

Photo by Bill Hughes, courtesy of Las Vegas CityLife.

Emily Gould of Gawker did a recent op-ed for the New York Times about her guest experience on CNN's "Larry King Live" last month, in which substitute host Jimmy Kimmel flipped out on her because of the Gawker Stalker:

He especially took issue with an entry last summer, when a tipster had reported that Mr. Kimmel was “visibly drunk and talking loud.” It’s hard to believe that Mr. Kimmel, a late-night talk show host who has made on-air inebriation a cornerstone of his public image, was truly upset that people knew he’d gone out drinking. So what was he really angry about?

More likely, Mr. Kimmel was trying to defend the symbiotic relationship that has existed between celebrities and the mainstream entertainment media since the dawn of Hollywood, and which the Internet is steadily eroding.

Link (thanks, Mark Pesce!)

As an aside, I hate the new feature on nytimes.com where you doubleclick on a word or words and it gives you a dictionary excerpt, instead of just selecting that text for you as would normally occur. I was just now trying to highlight the title of Emily's op-ed, to paste into this blog post -- and my browser choked because the New York Times thinks I need a pop-up window to give me the definition of the word "and." I like the web the way it's supposed to work.

Reader comment: Scott Gregory says,

If you hate the NYTIMES "dictionary" feature too, and you are using Firefox with Adblock, block

*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js

Definitions of "and" no more!

The unfairly talented Michael Mouris of Milkfat.com has been producing some highly neat stop-motion animation videos lately.

Here's one (YT video link) where a dude changes his shirt without moving, and is then bombarded by rubiks cubes. It's "stop motion animation, with effects done in camera with transparencies on multiplane," explains the aliased uploader.

Here's a kung-fu style fight with stop-motion, in-camera special effects: Video Link.

How about some stop-motion "special" pumpkin muffins? Nom nom nom. Video Link.

Here's another one that already has 205,000 views on YouTube -- this video is composed of 2,388 still photos, all of which add up to tell the tale of a guy drinking beer in his flat with cats. Pure internet gold! Video Link.

(PSST: Michael, your site needs an RSS feed!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Diddy and Bjork have a conversation: the animated gif

Here's a pretty righteous move on the part of CNN management -- kudos to them. Remix fun for the whole family! Snip:

The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. Therefore, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.

We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process. This decision will apply to all of CNN's presidential debates, beginning with the upcoming New Hampshire debates in June.

Link. (thanks, Rick Kleffel)

custom ice cream
7 frozen treats
wine cellar sorbet
sorbet disaster
pepto ice cream
candy sushi
jaffa cake
what's noka chocolate really worth?
buffalo cookies
mintini

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

My NPR colleague Luke Burbank is hosting a new, experimental kind of show on the network, code-named Bryant Park Project until they come up with a better name.

They have a blog where they're periodically posting these cool, smart little video segments.

I really like this video they uploaded this week, about the sociology of personal avatar space inside Second Life. They explore how people playing SL get really creeped out when someone's avatar stands too close to their avatar... just like in real life. This phenomenon is what's known as "the elevator effect." Link.

Susannah Breslin has an interesting essay up on her blog today about the purported "mainstreaming" of adult entertainment in America. Sure, it's moving in that direction, she argues, but it's not there yet -- for a reason. Here's the kicker:

In an abandoned building, I watched while Jenna Jameson and T. T. Boy had sex that night. T. T. Boy looked like a construction worker trying to run a jackhammer through cement. After the pop shot, the P.A. stepped forward because his job was handing T. T. Boy a paper towel. Not long ago, I came across a photo from the set of a porn movie. The girl in the picture is a porn star. Her eyes are red. Her mouth is agape. There is a dog bowl on her head. On it, someone has scrawled: STUPID WHORE. The real Porn Valley remains behind closed doors. The reality is too hardcore for reality TV--and America.

Link to "The Opacity of Pornography."

Image: from the "Pornoland" series by photographer Stefano De Luigi. Link to his portfolio (includes nudity).

Designer Chris Dimino made this ingenious waffle-iron based on a keyboard -- it turns out QWERTY waffles! Also, be sure to check out his gas-mask shower and other creations. Link (Thanks, Marianna!)

See also:
HOWTO make a steampunk keyboard
Keyboard boxers
Sledgehammer keyboard
Purse made from keyboard keys
Keyboard optimised for BabySmash and its ilk
Keyboard used as bean-sprouting medium
Crazy vertical keyboard
Neckaces made from keyboard keys
Pirate keyboard

I've always loved author Rudy Rucker's artwork. In fact, he drew some cartoons for the early issues of bOING bOING (the print zine) in the late 1980s.

He's also a painter, and he just posted a long entry on his blog about his paintings and his process of getting them made into prints. Link

Tomorrow, May 5, is Free Comic Book Day, and Salon has celebrated with a tremendous guide to comics for the noviate -- lots of great suggestions for people looking to start (or renew) a love affair with funnybooks. Apropos of this, let me reiterate my frequent plugging for my favorite comics store ever, The Secret Headquarters in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

The Astounding Wolf-Man (Image Comics)
Rising star Robert Kirkman ("The Walking Dead," "Invincible") is launching his new werewolf series with this freebie, drawn by Jason Howard. It's a totally straightforward monster-adventure comic, but crisply drawn and smartly executed, with little touches of characterization and coloring and design that enhance its sense of fun. A-

Jack the Lantern: Ghosts (Castle Rain Entertainment)
If you were reading comics in the '80s, you might remember Tim Vigil's ultraviolent, hyper-stylized horror series "Faust." Vigil drew eight pages of this murky, sloppy, incoherent, incomplete horror-fantasy story, which is the only reason anyone might want to look at it. D

Last Blood (Blatant Comics)
This first issue of a miniseries has exactly one clever idea: vampires protecting the last living normal humans -- their food supply -- from a plague of zombies. Too bad the actual writing is clunky and badly paced, and the scribbly black-and-white artwork is wretched. D+

Link

Some enterprising, crafty parents converted an old "entertainment center" style shelving unit into a damned cool kiddee kitchen:

Next, we cut a hole where the TV originally sat and placed a silver mixing bowl (free from our kitchen) to use as a sink. We bought a real faucet ($7, Home Depot) to install behind it. Ideally you would have a jig saw to cut a hole for the sink, but we actually used a drill to cut out the hole since we didn't have a jig saw. We measured just below the rim of the bowl, cut a hole, and placed the bowl in the hole - we didn't need glue or anything. Same thing for the faucet - measure, cut, and screw into place.

For the stove, we removed the glass door and covered the bottom part in the same silver contact paper. For the burners, we spray-painted plastic lids (sour cream lids for the small burners and large, Sam's size cottage cheese lids for the large burners) with a high-gloss black spraypaint. We screwed a flat-head screw through the middle to screw it into the wood. The knobs were given to us for free by a friend who was trashing her stove. If you can't find a stove that is being trashed, you can buy the knobs at Home Depot for $15. We used a large bolt and washers to attach the knobs in place so they could still turn. We added the oven knob directly to the oven door using a bolt and washers.

Link (via Cribcandy)

Paul Krassner kindly offered the following essay, entitled "Secret Bullshit," to Boing Boing.

I’ve been alternating between reading The Secret and The Truth About Bullshit. Funny how complementary these two disparate books can be, which has led me to the concept of Secret Bullshit, based on a psychological notion that in order to deceive others you need to deceive yourself.

So, take the CBS lawyers who agreed to the stipulation in Don Imus’ contract that he be given a warning before being fired for doing what they hired him to do in the first place, known as the “dog has one bite” clause. Well, their secret bullshit--bound to become their defense in court--is that although Imus wasn’t warned after referring to Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz as a “boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy,” they still had the right to fire him for saying “nappy-headed hos.”

Now there’s Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam, who wants all those former clients to follow the lead of ex-Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias and testify that they also hired those gals only for a massage, never for sex. OK, everybody say, “Yeah, right.” Ironically, once they’re outed, won’t they gladly reinforce Palfrey’s secret bullshit with their own in order to correspond with what they must now tell their wives?

And finally, the spectacle of ten white male Republican presidential candidates all vying to become the leader of the western world by competing to see which one most disbelieves in evolution, has itself become the Dinosaur Follies. Their utter disdain for stem cell research and their unquestioning support of the invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq are two sides of that same secret bullshit.

You can watch secret bullshit becoming public bullshit as the language becomes increasingly perverted, ranging from the Bush doctrine that the new winning is not winning, to the cavalier morphing of the word debate to mean that candidates are not permitted to ask each other any questions--the very antithesis of what a debate originally meant.

“They should call it an AA meeting,” my wife Nancy observed. “No cross-talk allowed.” She is an instinctive detector of secret bullshit when expressed publicly, that transcends political correctness. As the pundits discuss the merits of stiffer sentences for hate crimes, Nancy wonders aloud, “And what are the others--love crimes?”

Link

Toronto Mayor David Miller has instituted an annual "Jane Jacobs Day" honoring the brilliant urban planning theorist with a series of walking tours of the city, highlighting the practical evidence of Jacobs's theories. Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of the Great American Cities is a book that will forever change how you see human habitation, community and endeavor. It's one of those books you need to read to be a literate, 21st-century human. Jacobs fell in love with Toronto -- my hometown -- and devoted a lot of great critical thought to the city.

The Jane's Walks tours are tomorrow, May 5.

Link (Thanks, Ian!)

See also:
RIP Jane Jacobs, urban activist

Superstar Mexican wrestler El Hijo Santo has signed on as a celeb spokesman for WiLDCOAST, a charity that raises awareness of the danger to endangered sea turtles:

The campaign has two goals: discouraging the consumption of turtle meat and, more recently, turtle eggs as well. Eating caquama, or turtle meat, is a tradition in some parts of Mexico that is increasingly losing its allure, says Fay Crevoshay, WiLDCOAST's spokesperson. The turtle meat campaign began in 2001 and by 2005, she says, "we had the biggest population in 20 years of turtles laying eggs in Oaxaca's La Escobilla Beach."

The egg campaign was initiated two years ago, but made a big splash thanks to celeb spokesperson Dorismar. The model appeared in print ads wearing a slinky black bikini alongside baby turtles scurrying across a beach. "My man doesn't need sea turtle eggs, because he knows they don't make him more potent," reads the ad's caption. A common misconception is that sea turtle eggs have aphrodisiac power, but they are simply rich in protein, explains Aida Navarro, WiLDCOAST's wildlife conservation program manager.

Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

SomethingAwful's latest photoshopping contest is remixing posters for lovable Hollywood to look like grindhouse exploitation films. This may be the apotheosis of the comedy photoshopper's art -- real genius here, laugh-aloud funny, and great execution. Someone should do a book of these -- or turn them into real wall-posters. I'd line my study with grindhouse-style posters for ET and The Prestige and Gosford Park. Shown here, propunker's brilliant Inconvenient Truth remix ("The Movie Washington Didn't Want You To See!!"). Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

"The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs" is a nigh-perfect geek reader for the top of your favorite nerd's toilet tank. It collects the jokey proposed standards that are have been an annual tradition in in the Internet Engineering Task Force since 1969. This is engineer humor at its finest -- geeks making up stuff to amuse other geeks, from IP-over-Carrier-Pigeon to the "Evil Bit" proposal (all malicious network traffic has to be tagged with a bit denoting that it's evil so that firewalls know to ignore it). This is the Internet at its finest -- unlike the staid, boring International Telecommunications Union or ISO, the IETF is a kind of zany funhouse. You can download all of these for free, but it's nice to have them between covers for those times when you don't want to take your laptop into the can. Link

Gabriela sez, "Today, the Sunlight Foundation picked the winner of the Mashup Contest we announced two months ago as a way to honor Sunshine Week. We are announcing the winner is a mashup called 'Unfluence.' Unfluence was submitted as an entry by Greg Michalec and Skye Bender-deMoll. And while their mashup actually uses state campaign finance data (and the APIs developed by a Sunlight grantee - the Institute of on State Money and Politics), it is clear that the underlying code is directly applicable to federal politicians. In fact, the Center for Responsive Politics has been experimenting with similar network mapping. The more data that's available both from the government and the nonprofit sector in mashable forms, the more data can be examined from different perspectives and the more we know about Congress.

Unfluence uses campaign finance data compiled by the National Institute on Money and State Politics and made available through its powerful API which was written by NIMSP's Director of Technology Mike Krejci with funding from Sunlight. (Compiled campaign finance data for Congress is not yet available via API, but we expect that to change soon.)

Link (Thanks, Gabriela!)

Joe Sayers has just published installment two of his hilarious, raunchy mini-comic, "I'm Gonna Rip Your Face off!" Bitter, angry funny for only $3. Link (Thanks, Joe!)

See also: Angry little comics: "I'm Gonna Rip Your Face Off!"

Yesterday I pointed to a gallery of Jack Kirby comic book covers from the 1970s. Several readers emailed me to let me know that DC comics has released a two-volume series called Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, which features most of the comics in that gallery.

I haven't seen the books, but they are hardcover, 400 pages each, and in color. They contain the complete run of Kirby's Fourth World Comics: The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. (Kamandi and OMAC, which came later, were supposedly part of the Fourth World, but the connection was never made clear.) Here's Wikipedia's description of Kirby's Fourth World Series:

The Fourth World dealt with the battle between good and evil as represented by the worlds of "New Genesis" and "Apokolips." Darkseid, the evil lord of Apokolips, seeks the Anti-Life Equation which will allow him to control the thoughts of all living beings. Opposing him is Orion, his son raised by his enemies on New Genesis. Other characters caught in the deadly battle included the Forever People, an extension of the kid gang concept from the 1940s with a group of adolescents adventuring without an adult supervisor; Mister Miracle, the native of New Genesis raised on Apokolips who triumphed over a torturous childhood to become the world's greatest escape artist; and Lightray, the gaily flamboyant warrior of New Genesis.

Mercifully, Kirby's work at this time was inked by "Jumpin'" Joe Sinnot, who made Kirby's pencils sharp and clear, as opposed to the horsebrush and garden-trowel technique of Vince "Vinny the C" Colletta, whose hamsfisted inking efforts spoiled many a Kirby page when he was at Marvel. Link

Reader comment:

Dan says:

Eddie Campbell (Alan Moore's collaborator on From Hell) just blogged a pretty solid defense of Vince Colletta's inking here.

It seems that bad reproduction is to blame for a lot of the loss of detail in Colletta's inks that gets blamed on Vince. Just thought you'd like to know, in case Vinnie's kids are reading BoingBoing!

Fishing lure fetishist Coop says:

Actually, (adjusts comic-nerd glasses) most of the Kirby Fourth World stuff was inked By Mike Royer, generally considered to be (along with Sinnott) among the best of Kirby's inkers, due mainly to his alway-faithful limning of Kirby's pulse-pounding peripatetic pencils!

And yes, I know that a No-Prize is a Marvel thing... fuck off, nerds.

Coop's photo gallery of his collection of old fishing lures is feast for the eyes (and a dastardly cruel faux-feast for hungry fish). Link

My father is working with a company in Colorado that makes a very nifty backup appliance for Windows machines, called Rebit, which provides continuous backup without any learning curve or effort. It's a pocket-sized USB hard drive that draws power from the USB connection (so there's no need for an adapter).

There are no buttons or switches or setup programs to install or configure. As soon as you plug it in, a dialog box pops up asking you for permission to let Rebit go to work. You click OK, and that's it. The software on the Rebit drive goes to work to make an exact copy of everything on your computer's hard drive. It also catalogs old copies of your files, so you can go back to an older version of a document, if you wish.

Rebit continuously copies any changes on the computer's hard drive, so even if you have a bare metal hard drive crash, you can restore all your data to a new drive without losing anything.

The Rebit website has an FAQ with more information about additional features and how it works. Link

Update:

Rebit has just lowered its prices on all three models.

Hot on the heels of Google's recent $3.1 billion acquisition of Doubleclick, there's talk of renewed efforts by Microsoft to snarf up Yahoo. I love how the mother-of-all-mergers scoop was broken by -- The New York Post? Link to somewhat more sober New York Times article that followed. Snip:

According to the report, the new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo a few months ago, which was spurned by the Internet company.

Update: The Search author John Battelle (disclaimer: BoingBoing's business manager, among other things) writes:

Yahoo/Microsoft makes less sense to me than Soverture, but then again, as predicted and discussed here and here, GoogleClick pushes these two into each others arms. It was the first prediction I made in January of this year. Not exactly rocket science.

Joshuah Bearman wrote a great story for LA Weekly about a singing competition fashioned after American Idol, but in jail. He says:

Inmates sang, and the judges were the Sheriff, Alice Cooper and Bret Kaiser, a detention officer who was once a hair metal rocker and now is an elvis impersonator and who used his performance background to coach the inmate contestants through all the rounds. All true! There was a little bit of cable news about it when the contest started, but the story didn't really catch on, so I went to the finals, which was a concert at the Sheriff's open-air jails and totally bizarre. This was in Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio is infamous for making the prisoners wear old time stripes over pink underwear and housing them in tents. The Tent City jail is where the final concert was.

The piece tells the story of the entire contest, from the early 100+ auditions up to the finals. There's a video on each page, with the contestants final performances after the first break. As strange as the whole thing was, I loved the undaunted humanity of it all. The inmates' attitudes in the face of their unfortunate circumstances were great to see, especially the way they took the eccentric (and, many would argue, sadistic) sheriff's publicity stunt and made it into something meaningful for themselves. They really took the opportunity to sing for their fellow inmates seriously.

Link

This article from The Week has statistics that bolster and weaken arguments frequently used by people on both sides of the debate.

In several Western nations, massacres by gun-wielding nuts have led to strict gun-control laws without much political controversy. In 1996, a drifter gunned down 16 children at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland. Within a year, Great Britain made it illegal to buy or possess a handgun. In Israel, gun-license regulations were stiffened after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, in 1993. In Port Arthur, Australia, a deranged gunman massacred 35 people in 1996. Prime Minister John Howard immediately launched a campaign that culminated in laws banning 60 percent of all firearms then available, and restrictions and licensing of the rest. Gun-control advocates consider Australia one of their greatest success stories. Since 1996, the rate of gun deaths in Australia has fallen by half. Australia today has a per-capita gun-crime rate less than one-tenth of that in the United States.

Link to full article: Link

Reader comment:

Sean says:

The linked story is dead wrong about how "easy" it is to get guns at flea markets or gun shows. The Brady bill's requirements actually expired back in '98, when the new instant background check became required for all purchasers at gun shows from licenced dealers. The so called "gun show loophole" only applies to private sales between people. Link to Wikipedia article on Brady law

Burris says:

While the US firearm homicide statistics are indeed staggering, the article fails to mention that a substantial portion are due to the US policy of drug prohibition. Americans have an enormous appetite for drugs but those involved in the illegal drug trade are unable to call the police or resolve their disputes in court. Ending prohibition would cut firearm homicides in half almost overnight.

Gauv says:

“Australia today has a per-capita gun-crime rate less than one-tenth of that in the United States.”

But Australia always had a much lower gun crime rate than us, even before their gun control measures passed.

“Gun-control advocates consider Australia one of their greatest success stories. Since 1996, the rate of gun deaths in Australia has fallen by half.”

But how about the overall rates? There is a reason that gun control advocates only point to the drops in gun deaths.

We'll use the very source that the Brady campaign uses, the Australian Institute of Criminology. Please look at their document, Decrease In Firearm Homicides (one-page PDF file). Note the red line at the bottom of that graph that shows the average of firearm homicides. It's been on a consistent decline since long before the gun ban of 1997.

Now look over to the right -- see how the yellow bar -- firearm homicides -- is lower than the previous years? Note how the blue bar -- total homicides -- is higher than the previous years? Note the red line at the top of the graph that shows the average of total homicides. See how it's been flatlined for close to two decades, unchanged by the 1997 gun ban? The same is true with Australian suicides -- firearm suicides significantly decreased after the ban, but were almost completely replaced by an upsurge in hanging and suffocation suicides.

So yes, by focusing on lower firearm homicides and suicides gun control advocates show that gun control “works,” but only by totally ignoring the overall homicide and suicide rates, which are totally unaffected by gun control. It’s like triumphantly declaring that after banning red cars in Australia, red cars killed less people annually, while ignoring that total vehicular deaths didn’t go down.

[Here is Gauv's entry about Aussie suicides]

How To Open Things is a site where you can post a request for other people to post videos that show them how to open something -- a door with a bump key, someones' clenched fist, a user account in Windows when you don't know the password, a Magic 8 Ball, etc.

There's a prize-component involved. The person who makes the request for videos must offer some kind of cash prize to the creator of the video that gets the most votes.

The site is brand new and many of the requests are silly, but I could imagine this turning into a very useful resource. Link

Even if you don't click through to the full, NSFW text of her MySpace blog post, this snapshot of adult actress Belladonna (wikipedia bio) being immortalized as a latex marital aid says something about what everyday work life might feel like for porn performers. Link (not kid-safe, includes sexually explicit content) to journal entry, which describes the process of cloning her mouth and other body parts -- even her clenched fists -- for resale as intimate gadgets. If you've ever wanted to know how that stuff's made, now's your chance. (Image courtesy Belladonna | Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Over at Whole Lotta Nothing, Matt Haughey blogs:

Patton Oswalt has a new album coming out [Ed. Note: On Sub Pop!]. I got to listen to the whole thing today and I enjoyed it. I’m going to do something unusual here and post one of the 22 tracks. It’s a two minute riff on the crazy scandals that continue to hit the Bush Administration and it’s the best description I’ve heard for the uncanny talent the White House has for averting one disaster after another.

The audio file is right here.

Patton Oswalt is a genius, and I can't wait for the album to come out. He's also the lead voice in Pixar’s Ratatouille, which comes out this summer. He plays rat named Remy who dreams of one day being a chef in Paris. Speaking of which... there's a related book for adults coming out: The Art of Ratatouille, with Brad Bird and John Lasseter of Pixar. (thanks, Sean Bonner)

Bev Oda, the Canadian minister in charge of copyright, has been caught taking funds from the entertainment companies she is supposed to regulate. Oda financed her campaign with giant, unseemly donations from the entertainment and pharmaceutical companies -- many of them US-based -- and was then embarrassed when it was revealed that she planned a $250/plate fundraiser, while in office, just two weeks before a major review of Canada's broadcasters.

Oda agreed to return the money, but it has just been revealed that she lied about this and cashed the cheques anyway. Oda is promising to bring down a Canadian version of the US DMCA, the law that is at the center of the AACS debacle, in which a consortium of anti-copying vendors threatened hundreds of bloggers, educators, and news-publishers over their reportage of a crack to the restriction software built into HD-DVD.

However, newly released records from Elections Canada reveal that of 20 individuals who donated to Ms. Oda's riding association last year, at least nine have senior roles in Canada's broadcast industry. Eleven of the donations were made within five weeks of the cancelled fundraiser.

Among the names listed as individual contributors are Astral Media board chairman André Bureau, who gave $250 on Oct. 16; TVO CEO Lisa De Wilde, who gave $500 on Oct. 16; CHUM president and CEO Jay Switzer, who donated $500 on Oct. 12; Standard Radio president and CEO Gary Slaight, who gave $500 on Oct. 13; and Rogers Radio CEO Gary Miles, who gave $250 on Oct. 12.

Reached by e-mail, Mr. Miles insisted that his contribution was not connected to Ms. Bell's call to buy $250 tickets that went out a week before he made the donation. "It had nothing to do with the Nov. 15 fundraiser and was on my personal cheque and nothing to do with my title," Mr. Miles wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Link (Thanks, Peter!)

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

Max sez, "2BR02B, a story by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in sci-fi mag 'World's of If' but never published in book form has turned up at Project Gutenberg." This story was also podcasted by The Time Traveller.

Everything was perfectly swell.

There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.

All diseases were conquered. So was old age.

Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.

One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.

Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.

Link (Thanks, Max!)