This year's Personal Democracy Forum in NYC on May 18 looks like an incredible show, with speakers like Esther Dyson, Craig "craigslist" Newmark, Eric Schmidt, Larry Lessig, Arianna Huffington and many others, discussing the theme, "The Flattening of Politics."

Technology and the Internet are changing democracy in America. Personal Democracy Forum is a hub for the exciting conversation underway between political professionals, technologists, and anyone else invigorated by the remarkable potential of technology to engage citizens in the democratic process.

Link

Salon is carrying a long, thoughtful review of Daniel H. Wilson's Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived, a book that sounds entirely up my line. Daniel wrote the classic How to Survive a Robot Uprising, and is a hell of a nice guy besides. I imagine that this kicks all kinds of ass.

A glib and flippant tone dominates "Where's My Jetpack?" but I get the feeling a more serious book is struggling to extricate itself from Wilson's arch and camp approach (something compounded by Richard Horne's kitschy retrofuturist illustrations). The research is top-notch and fascinating. Some of the best material here entails a sort of archaeology of stillborn or prematurely abandoned futures. In the 1960s, for instance, concerted attempts were made to build living environments at the bottom of the ocean, in the form of the U.S. Navy's Sealab program. But instead of aquadome cities nestling on the ocean floor and a massive exodus of pioneers emigrating to settle the briny depths, all that remains today of the dream is a solitary subaquatic hotel, the Jules Undersea Lodge, located just off Key Largo, Fla. Other science fiction staples that made a tantalizingly brief appearance decades ago but never caught on, for reasons either practical or cultural, include the jetpack (the energy required for blast-off generates dangerous levels of heat) and Smell-O-Vision. The latter idea was mooted fictionally in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel, "Brave New World," in which the "feelies" stimulated one's tactile and olfactory sense as well as sight and sound. The idea was actually attempted a couple of times in the early '60s, but both times tanked in the marketplace.

Another classic futuristic idea made real is "cultured meat," i.e., animal protein grown in the laboratory, where, Wilson reports, it is repeatedly stretched as a surrogate for physical exercise, in order to give it the texture of a living, active organism. This grotesque technology was memorably anticipated in Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's 1952 novel "The Space Merchants," a corporate dystopia of the 21st century in which peon workers hack slices off a gigantic blob of animate but nonsentient poultry breast called Chicken Little. But in our nonfictional 21st century, the idea languishes in the laboratory thanks to consumer resistance. Our cultural biases reject cultured meat as gross, unnatural, an abomination. Indeed, popular taste is trending the opposite way, toward the organic, the uncaged, the nonprocessed.

Link

A new line of Peter Bagge condoms feature a picture of Buddy Bradley from his wonderful HATE Comics. Link (Thanks, Fried Ricer)

At a small party a few weeks ago in Los Angeles, Devo co-founder Gerald V. Casale and V. Vale, of countercultural chronicler RE/Search Publications, performed an impromptu cover of Devo's Mongoloid. Vale tickled the ivories and Gerald gave great voice accompanied by piano-pounding percussion. Fortunately, Marian Wallace, director of the RE/Search Counter Culture Hour, caught the moment on video. Ah, the delightful bombast and tongue-in-cheekiness of it all! Link

A Tolkien collector commissioned architect Peter Archer to design a building to house his collection of Tolkien rarities; the architect built him a tiny perfect Hobbit house.

Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.

Link

Opening tonight at Thinkspace Art Gallery in Los Angeles is Smitten, the magnificent group show featuring work by Stella Im Hultberg, Audrey Kawasaki, Amy Sol, Brandi Milne, and KuKula. For those unable to see the work in person, the gallery has just posted all of the pieces online. Seen here, at left, Brandi Milne's "Queen of Siam" (acrylic and ink on wood, 16" x 24") and Stella Im Hultberg's "No Where Near" (acrylic and ink on tea-stained paper, 9" x 12"). This is astonishing work by a stellar group of artists. And I don't use those words lightly. Link

Previously on BB:
• Group art show in L.A.: Kawasaki, Sol, KuKula, Milne, and Hultberg Link
• Stella Im Hultberg's beautiful drawings Link
• Amy Sol in Juxtapoz Link
• Audrey Kawasaki interview on MacTribe Link
• Audrey Kawasaki at Roq La Rue Link

In this edition of the Get Illuminated podcast, I interviewed cartoonist Adam "Ape Lad" Koford, the mastermind behind the 700 Hoboes Project and all-around creative dynamo. (Here's a drawing he made of Boing Boing's own Jackhammer Jill as a hobo).

In this interview we discuss hoboes, the comic strip Gordo, he previous job at a hotel chain call center, the awesomeness of Jack Kirby, Golden Books, how he creates those $20 postcard drawings, and many other topics.

MP3 link | Podcast feed | Subscribe via iTunes | Previous Get Illuminated shows

Here's a snip from this week's installment, "Shipwrecked and Abandoned":

At a concurrency of 40,000 people, Second Life’s gears begin to grind a bit. My inworld sojourn last night was truncated by the teleport system failing, which, admittedly, kind of prevents people from circulating around the grid. I was stuck in Toxian City, along with about twenty other people. That said, someone just told me that concurrency has cleared 42,000, and things are still working, if slowly.

And I’m tripping from place to place, and seeing nothing but abandoned buildings wherever I go.

I start jumping to clubs. The Velvet, in Iron Fist, is empty. I find three miserable naked men in a sex club looking for a mistress to savage their little avatars. A vast vampire-themed club with not even the undead laying around. A space station that feels like it’s re-enacting the final days of Mir, all the service modules undocked and waiting to be deorbited. A massive replica of a STAR TREK Starfleet vessel with all hands missing, shipwrecked seven hundred meters up. A Zen temple chill-out zone with not a devotee to be seen. Again and again I teleport, like Gully Foyle in the last pages of THE STARS MY DESTINATION, and, for a while there I wish that I, like he, had bombs to scatter. But there’s no one here to receive them.

Link

One presumes the CNN International employee who typed this title *meant* to say, "Blair resigns," but perhaps they know something the rest of us do not. Link 1, Link 2.

Physicist Theodore Maiman, who in 1960 demonstrated the world's first laser -- a device so small, it fit in the palm of his hand -- has died. Snip from NYT obit:

He went to work for Hughes and after some military contracts fell through, worked on the predecessor to the laser, the maser, which concentrated microwaves, not light. He made a five-pound maser that could do the work of a two-ton one. He told his bosses he wanted to make a laser, but they were wary of discouraging reports from other laboratories and said no.

They wanted him to work on computers, or “something useful,” his wife said. But he threatened to quit and build a laser in his garage.

So the Hughes executives gave him nine months, $50,000 and an assistant. The assistant was Charles Asawa, who had the idea of illuminating the ruby with a photographic flash, rather than with the movie projector lamp first used.

After Dr. Maiman succeeded, a news release predicted that doctors would use lasers to focus on a single human cell. For the rest of his life, Dr. Maiman insisted on emphasizing the laser’s healing possibilities, even as the public was riveted on the new “death ray.”

Link (thanks, Lek Geltmopus)

Above: "People being watched."

For sale on eBay today (bidding is around $550 right now) -- the diaries of FBI Special Agent Max H. Roder (1892-1988), who covered narcotics investigations throughout the entirety of his 34-year career. He filled 28 journals with daily notes, and is said to have done this so he could recall details if he had to testify in court.

A number of things boggle the mind here -- these diaries contain the names and addresses of real people, though one might reasonably presume most of those people have either perished or moved on to other places. Also, note one of the names above... Snip from auction description:

It appears the New York City cases were mainly targeted again Italian Americans in Little Italy. You'll be amazed how many people smoked opium in NYC. A lost practice in today's world. Agent worked out of Room 615 at 90 Church St and later 633 Broadway NYC.

Link to eBay auction (via notebookism, thanks Erika)

Last Friday, representatives from the Achuar tribe in Peru's Amazon region traveled to Santa Monica, California to confront Occidental Petroleum executives for alleged "ecological genocide." The indigenous people claim "Oxy" has been poisoning the Amazon over the past 30 years with oil production waste products. They say the ongoing toxic assault is results in death, disease, and loss of land that critical for their subsistence livelihoods. The Amazonwatch group claims these tribal people also plan to file a lawsuit against the petroleum company. This is video of their protest outside Oxy's shareholders meeting: video link, and here's an archive of earlier, related footage from the advocacy group that organized the protest. (thanks, Mark Pritchard)

Spike says,

The problem with this link is that the South China Morning Post is a subscription-only site. However, this article in today's paper is exactly the type of thing you give coverage to and cries out to be exposed to the world. In brief, a man posted a link to a website that had "porn" in a web forum. He was tracked by his IP address, arrested, pled guilty and fined HK$5,000, roughly US$650.

This is coming hard on the heels of the appeals trial for the only man in the entire world to receive a jail sentence for posting Bit Torrent seeds.

I've written about these two things briefly in my blog: Link, and Link. Here is an excerpt from the newspaper article:

Escape Pod, the killer science fiction story podcast, is running all the Hugo nominees for best short story, starting with Tim Pratt's wonderful "Impossible Dreams," about a film-geek who discovers a video store from another dimension.

He went to the Sci-Fi shelf—and had another shock. I, Robot was there, but not the forgettable action movie with Will Smith—this was older, and the credits said “written by Harlan Ellison.” But Ellison’s adaptation of the Isaac Asimov book had never been produced, though it had been published in book form. “Must be some bootleg student production,” he muttered, and he didn’t recognize the name of the production company. But—but—it said “winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.” That had to be a student director’s little joke, straight-facedly absurd box copy, as if this were a film from some alternate reality. Worth watching, certainly, though again, he couldn’t imagine how he’d never heard of this. Maybe it had been done by someone local. He took it to the counter and offered his credit card.

Link, MP3 Link, Podcast feed

BoingBoing reader Daniel Geduld says,

I recently watched a BBC documentary on compulsive hoarders. Far from normal collectors, compulsive hoarders fill their homes with almost anything. Some have very specific obsessions, for example a man in the UK who filled his house with bicycle parts. Most are men and most are over 50. It is a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Although that documentary is not available online, I did find this eight-minute trailer for an upcoming documentary about a woman with this disorder. A woman's mother is an obsessive collector of other peoples' refuse and has filled her house with junk to the point that she can no longer sleep inside.

The producers of this documentary claim that there are a million compulsive hoarders in the U.S. alone. How many of your neighbors, the ones who always seem to have junk on their lawns, are compulsive hoarders? Unfortunately, in many cases, they are not diagnosed until their bodies have been found inside their hoarde.

One of the most famous cases of compulsive hoarding was the two Collyer Brothers who were discovered dead in their apartment when one brother was buried by junk, killing him. The other brother at that point needed constant care and so died of dehydration and malnutrition.

Here is a wikipedia article about the Collyers: Link.

The trailer referenced is for a film titled "My Mother's Garden," here's the official website. (screengrabs above).

Reader comment: Jed Silverman says,

ChildrenOfHoarders.com has some videos, many stories, and most importantly info resources where children and relatives of hoarders can get help to help their loved ones.

His ashes were supposed to be shot into space, but they ended up missing in New Mexico mountains, along with the cremated remains of 200 others. Link.

Some designers are considering the fashion needs of future space tourists. Others believe space tourists need no fashion at all. Float naked, says the aptly named Starck!

One could revisit the 1960s cosmonaut fantasy designs of Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges — as did so many contemporary designers in their futuristic spring 2007 collections. But Philippe Starck, the French designer who is consulting as art director for Richard Branson’s development of Virgin Galactic spacecraft, said that one of his original proposals was for future space explorers to travel naked.

“The whole style of the rocket on the inside, the clothes and accessories, I have tried to make the most immaterial as possible,” said Mr. Starck, describing his vision for interiors that evoke a cloudlike feeling. Material is vulgar, he said. Only the vision of space is important. “The style is dematerialization,” he said.

Link. Image: a design for spacewear from Philippe Starck. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Police officer Edward Sanchez of Dearborn, Michigan made some pot brownies with his wife and got so paranoid that he called 911 for fear they were dying. The recording of the 911 call is absolutely insane. From a transcript:

Sanchez:I think I'm having an overdose. and so is my wife.
911: Overdose of what?
Sanchez: Marijuana...
Sanchez: We made brownies. and I think we're dead. I really do...
Sanchez: Time is going by really, really, really slow...
Sanchez: What's the score in the Red Wings game?
911: I've got no clue, i don't watch the Red Wings.
Sanchez: I just wanted to make sure this isn't some kind of hallucination I'm having.

Link to AP article, Link to MP3 of the call (Thanks, Dave Gill!)

Noah Shachtman of the Wired blog "Danger Room" has a post up today about an odd project from the US government's Technical Support Working Group, or TSWG:

The research arm of the government's anti-terror fight is looking to for someone to build "a rugged, reliable, and compact system for canine handlers to collect human scent for future use to track a specified target."

There are similar systems around today, the group notes.  But they're "too large and fragile to be used in an operational environment."  TSWG wants a handheld, rugged device to do the job, instead.  And the group has laid an exhaustive set of criteria for any contractor looking to build the thing...

Link.

Reader comment: dalvenjah says,

The East German Stasi secret police did something similar. (This link was the first to pop up in a google search) They would collect cloths with the scents of their targets for their dogs, sometimes during torture, other times by breaking into a house and stealing the dirty underwear.

Of course, the TSWG is not doing this for totalitarian or creepy old man purposes at all...

I subscribe to a few Department of Defense email lists about biochem-WOMD threats. One such list, devoted to vaccines and infectious diseases, today pointed to this neat Smallpox Crossword Puzzle. Link to endless hours of viral entertainment, from vaccines.mil.

The RU Sirius Show recently had Keith Henson -- the L5 Society founder who has been in a long legal conflict with Scientology -- on his show. As R.U. was editing the show for publication on 10 Zen Monkeys, Henson was re-arrested in Arizona. Both the latest news and the interview (about cool stuff like how to build a space elevator and solar power satellites) are included in the 10 Zen Monkeys write-up.

RU: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about your upcoming case.

KH: (Laughs) Which one? I've got three of them open at the moment. There's a motion to correct an injunction the Riverside court was not permitted to issue; a bankruptcy case that has got tangled up recently with O.J. Simpson's; and this extradition business in Arizona. That last one requires the California governor to sign an extradition warrant, and there's been enough complaints to him about it that I don't think he's going to do it. (ed: He did, on May 1)

RU: It's weird to hear O.J. Simpson's name come up. I don't suppose you can talk any more about your connection with OJ. There could be a book contract in there for you -- the book industry loves OJ!

KH: Well, I can give you a quick thing. It turns out that that the lawyer for the other side in a bankruptcy case involving my bank worked against OJ Simpson -- I think it was for the Goldbergs. So he asked for a delay in my case.

RU: We will contemplate all aspects of your possible connections with the OJ case over the coming weeks and months and maybe get back to it. "If the e-Meter doesn't fit, you must acquit" or something.

Link

Do you think some people have worn this nose-pincher ("Be a Cleopatra's nose") while simultaneously exercising their mouths with the gadget I mentioned earlier today? Link (Thanks, Kay!)

Cherri at Village Savant grabbed a sneak peak at Camille Rose Garcia's San Jose Museum of Art exhibition, Tragic Kingdom, opening tomorrow. It looks magical.
Link (via Juxtapoz)

Previously on BB:
• Camille Rose Garcia at the San Jose Museum of Art Link

The Shipyard is a unique collective for artists and makers in Berkeley, California where the residents build out shops inside shipping containers. Over the years, the city of Berkeley has given the Shipyard lots of problems, even denying them access to the electrical grid. In true maker fashion, that limitation prompted Shipyard founder Jim Mason and his pals to design an innovative solar power system so they could produce their own energy. Apparently, the city of Berkeley has now given the Shipyard three days to "vacate and abate" or face fines of $2500/day. According to Mason, the core issue that Berkeley doesn't consider the containers to be "structurally sound buildings." The Shipyard makers will have a big presence at Maker Faire next weekend, a good opportunity for you to check out the work of this amazing group of creative and talented people that Berkeley is booting out. How sad. Here's hoping they find a great new spot quickly! Dale Dougherty, MAKE:'s founder, has more details at the O'Reilly Radar blog. (Shipyard photo from tobo's Flickr stream.)

From a message Jim sent to the Shipyard list:

We therefore have decided to end our art and alternative energy endeavers here in the City of Berkeley and move to a new location.

We come to this conclusion with tremendous sadness and loss, as the open collaborative space we have built here has become a deeply vibrant art/tech skunkworks, continually churning out heroic creativity in the arts as well as very needed innovation in DIY, open source, alternative energy endeavors. We have undertaken these activities as a community collaboration, and used our creative and innovative work as an civic engine for generating meaningful community for many. The results have been tremendous, vastly exceeding any expectations we had when we started this 6 years ago.

Link

UPDATE: Much more information including Jim Mason's letter to the City of Berkeley and plan of action is now available at The Shipyard's Web site. Link (Thanks, babaLou!)

A train plowed into Paula Ceely's automobile when she followed a portable navigation system's directions to drive down a railroad track. The 20-year-old was driving a Renault Clio from Redditch, Worcestshire, England to Carmathenshire in Wales at night when the accident happened. She claims the railroad crossing wasn't on the nav map and there was no signage warning of an oncoming train. Fortunately, she wasn't in the car when it was destroyed. From the BBC News:

"I came to this crossing at Ffynongain and there was like a metal gate, which looked like just a normal farmers' gate with a red circle on it

"I thought it was a dead end at first and then there was a little sign saying, if the light is green, open the gates and drive through.

"So I opened the gate, drove forward, closed the gate behind me and then went to go and open the gate in front of me.

"Then I heard this train and I noticed train tracks.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to blame the nav data for this collision. I found it interesting that the individual put so much faith in her nav system and could not identify that she was entering a dangerous situation. This quote from her says it all: ""I put my complete trust in the sat nav and it led me right into the path of a speeding train."

These three TV shopping channel touts are desperate to sell you this ridiculous mouth exerciser for $29.86 (Retail value $39.00!). Do you think they use it on themselves regularly? Link

Reader comments:

Gerard says:

Those face exercisers are tragically wrong headed. Botox, in contrast, actually does reduce wrinkles and it does so by paralyzing facial muscles not strengthening them.

April says:

That mouth gadget actually works! I admit, I love gadgets, but this is one that I have continued to use for the past 2 years. It firmed my jawline, raised my cheeks, I got a firmer mouth, etc etc. Seriously, it works.

Texas State University was planning a forensic research facility for the study of decomposing bodies, but apparently there's some risk that vultures attracted by the bodies might hit in-flight planes using the nearby airport. The body farm would host six to nine bodies, partially buried or in cages to protect them from scavengers. From News.com.au:

"There's a lot of people who don't want it their backyard, and that's certainly understandable," Mark Hendricks, a university spokesman, said today.

"It's a controversial project, there's no doubt about it."

University officials said they would look for other possible sites for the project.

Link (via Fortean Times)

A Boing Boing reader says: "Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal has locked himself into a studio with live webcams for the month of May and is inviting you to shoot at him via your computer and the internet. Log on, aim and fire, and if you're good enough the round from the paintball gun will splatter him with faux blood." Link

Snip from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today, by James Sterngold:

As concerns grow that terrorists might attack a major American city with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties.

Many experts say the likelihood of al Qaeda or some other terrorist group producing a working nuclear weapon with illicitly obtained weapons-grade fuel is not large, but such a strike would be far more lethal, frightening and disruptive than the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Not only could the numbers killed and wounded be far higher, but the explosion could, experts say, ignite widespread fires, shut down most transportation, halt much economic activity and cause a possible disintegration of government order.

The efforts to prepare a detailed blueprint for survival took a step forward last month when senior government and military officials and other experts, organized by a joint Stanford-Harvard program called the Preventive Defense Project, met behind closed doors in Washington for a day-long workshop.

Link (thanks, Bunker Buster)

Reader comment: Andrew Fischer says,

I thought you and your readers would like to know that not everything is in the planning stage. Terre Haute, IN will be the site of a massive dry run of a nuclear attack response. In a massive military operation involving 3,000 individuals and 2.6 million pounds of equipment the military is going to simulate a response to a 10 kiloton nuclear device detonating in Indianapolis, IN.

More information here: Link.

[redacted] says,

In today's climate you can't even question the MSM/GOP's position on terrorism without being labeled as un-American. You're either for whatever the MSM/GOP says, or you are a terrorist yourself.

We aren't having any frank public discussions about what to do in the event of another large attack. And even if we try, any dissenting point of view is silenced.

If we the governed don't talk now about the impact on our civil liberties, the economy, transportation, food, law, etc. that another terrorist attack will have, then we are doomed to be at the mercy of the decisions of those who are in power. And right now, our government is playing right into the terrorists' hands by operating on a fear-based agenda.

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

Volume six of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman's thrilling, terrifying zombie comic, has just come out. I bought my copy this morning at The Secret Headquarters, then sat down for lunch and didn't get up again until I'd read the last page.

The Walking Dead is the story of a band of survivors after a zombie plague, led by an ex-cop whose wife and son are with him. In Volume 5, some of the characters had been captured by a savage band of survivors who pit-fought the zombies -- and in volume six, they take their revenge. This is some of the most gruesome comic stuff I've ever read, so much so that I had to look away.

I can't wait for the next collection to come out -- this is great stuff. Link to Volume 6, Link to Volume 5, Link to Volume 4, Link to Volume 3, Link to Volume 2, Link to Volume 1

See also: Walking Dead: scary, engrossing zombie comic

The KnowHow show demonstrates a simple recipe for making an "instant hammock" out of a blanket and some rope. Looks like it'd be simple enough -- and handy if you find yourself in need of some relaxation in a hurry. Link

Update: Mike sez, "For those of us unlucky enough to only have a single rope in our house Mother Earth News published an article on how to fold a hammock back in 1984. It only requires 24 feet of rope, wide blanket, and a tiny bit of faith you won't fall on your head."

Tech Review has a great little video of Bruce Sterling ranting about futurism, design, and its relationship to science fiction. Link

This June, 1924 breast-enlargement advert from Popular Mechanics is a lovely illustration of the era's prudery, employing "double your breathing capacity" as a euphemism for "get giant knockers now!" Link

Disney's 1958 short "Magic Highway" is a retro-future look at the highways of tomorrow that never were. It is a perfect storm of goofy futurism (imagining the future to be just like the present, only more so) and crazy, angular pop art visuals. This makes me terribly nostalgic for the future. Link

Now this is a bicycle bell:

Pedicabs need a big bell -- all the momentum they are riding on is hard to stop quickly. These guys in Suzhou had a cool set of bells using a old gear to more than one bell, which were struck by an armature in the center turned by the rotation of the front wheel It made a great big ring!

Link