Medical illustrator Leslie Arwin's Skeletees feature highly detailed, stark anatomical drawings of the bones, muscles, nerves and digestive tract, printed on the front and back. I picked up a skeleton shirt today and I'm delighted with it -- it's a great, thick, high-quality tee with a nice cut and the design is wonderful. Link

The latest thing in "experience" funerals is a Harley Hearse from Milwaukee's Krause Funeral Home -- it joins a host of specialty funeral options available around the world, including "farmers being pulled to their rest by John Deere tractors" and "cremation urns that look like tear-drop motorcycle gas tanks."

Now, he has what he prefers to call "the Krause Funeral Home Motorcycle Hearse" out of sensitivity to local manufacturing icon Harley-Davidson Inc., which carefully guards its famous brand.

"For so long, funerals have been so reactive," Krause said. "I think that's part of the reason that people don't like funerals - that they've been so traditional. . . . If we can offer people more options and be more creative in the way we say goodbye, it will certainly broaden our clientele."

Link (Thanks, Michael!) (Image: cropped and downsized version of a pic from JSOnline)

After being totally blown away by Brian Wood's comic DMZ, I decided to seek out some of his earlier works, starting with 2005's DEMO, a collection of 12 short stories about "teens with power." Wood's introduction says he came up with the idea after working on franchise comics about teen underwear perverts, and he wanted to revisit the subject from a grittier, more inventive place.

He succeeded. The stories in DEMO are incredibly diverse in their interpretation of what it means to have "power," from telekinesis to lying convincingly. In each case, the power forms the center of a hard-edged little story about the rottenness and the wonder of being young, the endless redemption available and the endless difficulty of achieving it.

It only took me about five pages to get hooked on this thing. A lot of that is due to Becky Cloonan's wildly versatile illustration style which fearlessly changes from story to story, to suit each piece best.

There isn't a single story here that I didn't love, that didn't make me think, that didn't thud home in my heart, though they hardly take more than five minutes apiece to get through. Link

See also:
DMZ: graphic novel, a worthy successor to Transmetropolitan
DMZ comic t-shirt

Some silly creationists are finally opening their wacky $27 million Creation Museum on Monday in Petersburg, Kentucky. The slogan on the museum's site? "Prepare to believe." From Reuters:

Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah's flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah's Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.

Scientists, secularists and moderate Christians have pledged to protest the museum's public opening on Monday. An airplane trailing a "Thou Shalt Not Lie" banner buzzed overhead during the museum's opening news conference....

A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.

Link to Reuters article, Link to reactions at the National Center for Science Education site, Link to New York Times coverage, Link to Scientific American's "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

Previously on BB:
• Profile of Creation Museum founder Link
• Kentucky creationist museum online Link
• Creationist museum opening soon Link

Yesterday, I flew into Oakland airport on Southwest Air and dropped by the Fox Rent-A-Car counter to pick up the car I'd reserved using Southwest's website. Ten minutes later, I left, without my car, hopping mad and swearing never to do business with Fox again.

The problem was that I wanted to use a debit card to pay for my car (I got rid of all my credit cards a few years back when I paid off the last of my debts). I rent cars all the time with a debit card and I'm used to rental agencies taking a small deposit (usually $250) on the card, or, in some extreme cases, requesting my Social Security Number and doing a credit check on me.

But Fox had a genuinely idiotic policy for debit-card payers: they needed a copy of my Southwest flight itinerary. It wasn't enough for me to show them the itinerary on my laptop's screen. They couldn't take it on a USB stick and print it themselves. I either had to take a taxi to a Kinko's and print it and come back or call Southwest and have them fax the itinerary to Fox.

An itinerary proves exactly nothing, of course. You can make any itinerary you want on your computer and print it off. Given that Fox got this reservation from Southwest, anything I printed for them was totally redundant. The clerk kept repeating that he needed "proof" that I was flying out of Oakland again. I offered to let him photograph my screen with his cameraphone, but for some reason, that isn't "proof," while going to a print-shop and screen-dumping to a printer would be.

I spoke to a supervisor (who told me that this was my fault for not noticing this bizarre requirement in the five screens' worth of fine print in their reservation "agreement"), called Fox corporate HQ and left a message, then turned around, walked up to the Hertz counter with my debit card and drove off in one of their cars five minutes later.

Update: Brendan sez, "I recently did a little googling about Fox Rent-A-Car in preparation for a trip to California. It turns out they're listed with the Better Business Bureau for bad business practices. The Attorney General of California seems to have some interest in them too. Maybe it's a good thing they made it so difficult to rent."

Update 2: Doug did some digging into Fox: "I followed one of the links to the California Attourney General's site and found that there was a judgment in place against Fox Rentals for various business practices which were illegal under California law.

"What made the hair on the back of my neck stand up however, was the statement on the Attourney General's Website that Fox routinely tracks their customers by GPS. They have used this to illegally charge their customers for driving out of a three state area, but hey, they could certainly use it for other purposes."

Glenn "WiFi News" Fleishman sez, "The BBC recently ran a terrible half-hour program on the risks from Wi-Fi to 'the children.' While there's no reason to not study the matter further, the report relied on measurements taken by a lobbyist who also sells tinfoil hats and measurement devices to those afraid of wireless signals. The report also seemed to systematically avoid using the scientific method, instead relying on vagueness and analogy. There's no reliable (peer reviewed, etc.) that shows any risk from Wi-Fi, and the cell phones studies performed on real populations (instead of lab conditions with high signal strength and rats and such) show no increased risk for specific cancers. Bad Science tears apart the report and shows how the BBC itself, in a follow up, reamed the show's presenter about the information presented, too." Link (Thanks, Glenn!)

Update: Chris sez, "Wellington Grey's 'Miscellanea' has a great take on the WiFi scare.

In honor of Tim Biskup's new gallery exhibition, Ether, he's created a limited "War Dragon" edition of his Dragamel vinyl figure and filled its guts with custom-cast miniature pewter weapons and assorted odds and sods from other Dragamel figures. The edition consists of just 25 figures, each signed, numbered, and packaged in a stenciled tin box. Ten of the 25 go on sale today at 5pm but can only be nabbed in person at Tim's show at the Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Culver City, CA. The rest will apparently become available Two new limited edition prints, Armor Totem and Tyrant, are also being released.
Link to images of Dragamel "War Dragon," Link to Billy Shire Fine Arts

Previously on BB:
• Tim Biskup's new art exhibition, Ether Link
• Win a copy of the new Gama-Go book Link
• Biskup mural for Helio: part 3 Link

Love this bicycle/bike-lock sculpture from Vancouver. Having had a dozen bikes stolen over the years, I feel the artist's pain. Link (Thanks, Dustin!)

God help you if you need a new screw for your Sony stuff: Sony charges 61 Euros (more than $82) for a replacement. Sony: we know screw-jobs. Link (via Global Nerdy)

In 1952, the Asbestos-Cement Products Association released "According to Plan," a 15-minute commercial extolling the virtues of miraculous asbestos as the ideal construction material, especially for young couples setting out to build houses to raise their families in. Part 1, Part 2 (Thanks, Tom!)

Update: Rick Prelinger sez, "The asbestos video you just posted is a low-quality derive from the high-quality version from Prelinger Archives. Hey, no problem, it's public domain, but the mpeg-2 is much better for remixing!"

Update 2: Scott sez, "I used the actual audio from the original and animated it, with an MST3K-style onscreen commentary. I did this just after my animation-a-day-for-a-year project ended and just before my show on PlumTV began."

This Physical Culture Magazine ad from November, 1934 promotes the use of "Kelp-a-Malt" to help skinny girls get some lovely wobbly fat on their bodies. Eating Kelp-a-Malt will put five pounds on your bones in just one week! Why, it contains "more FOOD IODINE than 1600 lbs. of beef!" Link

Kyle Baker's two-volume history of Nat Turner, an African slave who led a bloody revolt in the American south, is gripping, heart-wrenching, and glorious. I first encountered Baker's work in his uproariously funny Why I Hate Saturn and I pegged him immediately as a deliriously funny, raunchy comic creator that I wanted to follow for the rest of my life.

But the Nat Turner books are nothing like Why I Hate Saturn and many of his other books -- they've every bit as brilliant, but without a shred of whimsy. Instead, these expressively illustrated black-and-white pages, with almost no text (what text there is is lifted from Turner's confession before he went to his execution) are as savage a tale of the slave-trade as you could hope to find.

Great artists are often incredibly versatile and Baker is no exception. These books will haunt me. Link to book 1, Link to book 2, Link to Kyle Baker's pages for the Nat Turner collections

See also: Kyle "Why I Hate Saturn" Baker's new collection

A downloadable MP3 of a C-pitched tone fools many wiretaps into thinking that your conversation has ended, which makes them switch off. If you're worried about being tapped, playing this tone into the receiver might keep your calls a little bit more private. Then again, maybe not.

Download Blaze’s C tone and broadcast it continuously during phone calls. You can play the tone at low volume so it just seems like ambient room noise...

Don’t stop there – befuddle your foes. Play the C for a second in the middle of a call, then without hanging up, dial another number. Analog wiretap systems will interpret this as a new call. You may be chatting with a friend, but now the spooks think you’re talking to Domino’s.

Link

Update: Mark sez, "This would be completely ineffective against the most simple and least effective wiretaps like a wireless transmitter or a voice activated tape recorder attached to your phone line."

Little Capers sells kid-sized caped crusader suits for your junior underwear perverts. If these had existed contemporaneous with Underoos, I wouldn't have had to hide my superpowers under my jeans for all those years. Link (Thanks, Tim K!)

Numan Parada has created a "Fantasy public transit map" of Los Angeles in the style of the classic London Underground map. It's a work of stupendous alternate history in which LA is reimagined as a humane, pedestrian-friendly city. Link to Map, Link to LA Times story (Thanks, John!)

Update: Jeff sez, "I did a photo documentary on the building of LA's 'last' freeway, the Century Freeway. In researching the history of LA transit for this project I found a map of SoCal's fabled Red Car system at the Huntington Library. You can see part of it on the Web site I created for this project a while back: In Our Path. It looks awfully similar to Parada's vision!"

Was Chewbacca inspired by Sasquatch? A few days ago, I was reminiscing with my wife about the first time we saw Star Wars, shortly after it premiered thirty years ago today. I told my wife that even as a kid, Chewie was my favorite character ('natch) because he reminded me of Bigfoot. My wife shrugged and said, "Wasn't he kinda supposed to be Bigfoot?" Today, cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, author of Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America, explains why Chewbacca and Bigfoot probably aren't even kissing cousins. From Loren's post:

When I visited Honey Island Swamp, in the 1980s, the Star Wars movies had obviously made an impact on the local naming of the Honey Island Swamp Monster. Locals in the area some miles outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, were calling their Honey Island cryptid, casually, for example, by naming their small swamp boats (wrongly spelled) “Wookie.” The Star Wars movies came first, and there is no evidence that the Honey Island Swamp Monster was called a “Wookie” or a “Wookiee” before 1977.

Some people, however, seem to think otherwise. Florida cryptozoologist Scott Marlowe has argued on the cryptozoology.com forum that “the term ‘Wookie’ chosen by Lucas is a North American Indian term for a Bigfoot…It is culturally and linguistically related to the term Shaawanoki which is the Seminole word for the Skunk or Swamp Ape.”

This is a highly doubtful theory...

Link

Previously on BB:
• Get Illuminated! podcast with Loren Coleman Link
• Chewbacca gropes Leia Link
• Unruly Chewbacca impersonator head-butts tour guide Link
• HOWTO make a Chewbacca snot-rag-box cozy Link
• Bigfoot porn Link
• Bigfoot 911 call Link
• Loren Coleman profile Link

An 11-year-old boy in Alabama shot a monstrously large wild hog. It's an AP story, so I am guessing this astonishing photo is legit. Link

Reader comment:

Mike says:

Just to put in my two cent's worth, something about that hog photo isn't right. I'm not saying it has been doctored, but i suspect the kid is standing further behind the hog than is readily apparent. The article says the measurement around the hog's head is 56 inches. Half that would be 28 inches (a normal small human waist measurement) and the kid in the photo probably has at LEAST that waist measurement (if not MORE) but the hog head in the photo looks to be 3 or 4 times that measurement size when you compare the two (kid and hog). Seriously. PLUS, the hog in that photo looks to be the size of a goddamned RHINO, and your average rhino weighs about 5000 lbs (the hog in the photo weighs approx. 1/5th that, just over 1000 lbs) so again, something isn't right with the pic IMO. Thanks!

Also says:

More pictures of the hog that are a bit more realistic. The hog definitely is not as impressive as the original news photo. Link

"Loving wife spanking in a Christian Marriage," is the motto at the Christian Domestic Discipline Store. Choose from a variety of reasonably-priced crotchless pantaloons.

You can also purchase a book about Christian Domestic Discipline. Excerpt:

Biblically, a man’s right to chastise and discipline his wife is strongly implied. Just as a parent would never stop to ask permission to chastise his child, a husband should not have to obtain consent to discipline his wife; however, our legal system has put him in the position of having to do so. Just as our culture is turned upside down in so many other things, the traditional Christian marriage is no exception.

It is worth mentioning that even Biblically, it is best if the wife submits willingly rather than being forced to obey her husband, and in giving honor to his wife as the weaker vessel, it is good that the husband listen to her thoughts and opinions and try to incorporate them into their lives so that she will be content. In that sense, this discussion of CDD and all it entails is Biblically sound.

Link (Thanks, Jennifer!)

The RIAA (Robotic Intergalactic Astro-Artists) are presenting for your acceptance this 22-song album, called "Sounds For The Space-Set!!," described as a "mashup tribute to the pioneers of electronic music." Link (Via PCL Linkdump)

Bonnie Burton took this photo of a Darth Vader helmet on display at the Star Wars Celebration IV convention. A bunch of artists were invited to participate by painting a helmet.

Walking through The Vader Project exhibit at Celebration IV is like taking a stroll through a Darth Vader tribute done by the coolest lowbrow and urban artists on the planet. Frank Kozik, Paul Frank Sunich, Marc Ecko and Urban Medium (among numerous others) gave Darth Vader’s helmet a hipster makeover. As fans walk through the exhibit they can see the artist’s own unique style featured on each helmet. Whether it’s a Tiki-inspired design from Shag or a girlie 1940’s style pinup from Marc Ecko — it’s apparent each artist took time to pay special tribute to the headwear of the Sith.

This site has more information, along with a video about the helmet show. Link

MAKE's Bre Pettis has a video about making a sound-and-light brain machine (which is featured in Make, vol. 10)

This weekend, learn how to hack your brain by making Mitch Altman's Brain Machine! It flashes LEDs into your eyes and beeps sounds into your ears to make your brain waves sync up into beta, alpha, theta, and delta brainwaves!

Mitch invents cool things that make the world a better place. He's well known for the TV-B-GONE and this brain machine is his latest project. One of the cool things about this project, is that it builds on an open source project. Mitch used Lady Ada's open source MiniPOV and switched out LEDs and added new capacitors and resistors and then rewrote the firmware to make it into the brain machine. It's super cool when people make hardware open source so that others can work with it!

Link | Link to PDF file of how-to article

A lifetime of creative inspiration is contained in the brilliant closing credit sequence of the Ernie Kovacs Show. Link

Based on this video demo, Sony's just-announced full color flexible OLED display looks pretty amazing.
Link to YouTube video, Link to more at IDG News, Link to Japanese language press release (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Tony Wright of Cornwall, England stayed awake for 11 days and nights. He claims that he broke the Guinness World Record of 264 hours set by Randy Gardner in 1964, but Guinness killed the category due to possible health dangers. From the BBC News:

He said that his 'Stone Age' diet of raw food helped parts of his brain to stay awake and remain functional for long periods.

He said: "It makes it much easier to switch from one side of the brain which is really tired, to the other.

"But both are pretty tired at the moment."

During the record attempt, Mr Wright noticed his speech becoming incomprehensible at times and colours appearing very bright.

Link

Previously on BB:
• HOWTO sleep better Link
• Matsushita's "sleep room" for insomniacs Link
• Nature on Sleep Link
• NYT on the science of sleep Link • Many more posts about sleep Link

The Gama-Go clothing company, which features the art of Tim Biskup, has a new book coming out called, Limited Edition: Art & Design of Gama-Go (release date: June 16, 2007).

Boing Boing is holding a contest to give away four copies of this book. To enter, draw or paint a picture on your hand, then submit a photograph or scan of it. Send entries to gama.go.hand.art@gmail.com. We'll pick our favorites and announce the winners and show their, ahem, handiwork on Boing Boing. Contest ends at Noon Pacific time, June 1st, 2007.

GAMA-GO and Last Gasp have teamed up to make a gem of a book.

What happens when an art school dropout, a traveling curmudgeon, and an amateur taxidermist take on the massive apparel-industry juggernaut? If on the way to work they're kidnapped by a Yeti, you end up with a company like Gama-Go.

Gama-Go co-founders Tim, Chris, and Greg have combed through six years of illustrations to hand-pick this hard-bound 400-page collection.

Since everything we make is limited and all the designs are immediately retired, there's never been a way to view all of our work -- until now.

Gary Groth, founder of Fantagraphics, says:

CALLING ALL POGO FANS & COLLECTORS:

We are requesting the help of Pogo collectors who may have original art or high quality reproductions of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strip.

We are currently assembling Walt Kelly’s POGO: The Complete Daily & Sunday Strips. We are looking for the best possible black-and-white reproduction of both Sundays and dailies — especially the Sundays. If you have original art or proofs that you would be willing to let us scan, we would be grateful if you’d contact us. You may e-mail me directly at groth@fantagraphics.com

(Please put POGO in the header). Thank you.

Mexico will soon boost surveillance of phone and e-mail traffic with help from the USA. Mexico's president Felipe Calderon says the increased spying program is intended to better monitor drug gangs and related crime. Law enforcement agencies in the US may also have access to the data collected. Snip from report in today's LA Times by Sam Enriquez

Calderon argues that the government needs the authority to combat drug gangs, which have killed hundreds of people this year. Mexican authorities for years have been able to wiretap most telephone conversations and tap into e-mail, but the new $3-million Communications Intercept System being installed by Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency will expand their reach.

The system will allow authorities to track cellphone users as they travel, according to contract specifications. It includes extensive storage capacity and will allow authorities to identify callers by voice. The system, scheduled to begin operation this month, was paid for by the U.S. State Department and sold by Verint Systems Inc., a politically well-connected firm based in Melville, N.Y., that specializes in electronic surveillance.

Link ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Reader comment: Dan says,

The Mexican government may say that they need help from the US to keep track of drugs but it's ridiculous. Everyone in Mexico knows exactly where all the drugs are. Walking around the Baja asking for directions will often yield gems such as "Walk past the drug lord's mansion and take a right." It's no secret. Some police actually make a business of raiding lesser known drug lords, taking seizing all their materials and reselling it for a tidy profit.

Mexico needs better surveillance? Please, Mexico needs some real police.

kitten channel | what jeff killed | wiikitty | hitler cats | record store cats | cat + mouse armor | kitten vs. laptop | cat me if you can | it's oh so quiet | cat head theatre | random kitten generator | caption my kitten | i can has cheezburger

and the classics... | in minimal techno mode | on a beach | going to a gay bar | smoking in paris

previously on feline zen... | feline zen 2006 | feline zen 2005 | feline zen 2004

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!) ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) -- "It is by no means improbable that these fantastic forms, and others equally whimsical, were the delineations of some of their deities, to whom they paid an idolatrous worship, consistent with their false belief and barbarous customs."

Here's a post on the excellent Bibliodyssey blog that points to a collection of texts at Mesoweb about the Mayan ruins at Palenque.

Referenced publications include a scholarly work about evidence of physical deformities that may have been genetically transmitted as a result of heavy intermarriage within the god-king class in preColumbian Mayan society.

Physical Deformities in the Ruling Lineage of Palenque, and the Dynastic Implications," By Merle Greene Robertson and Marjorie S. Rosenblum Scanidizzo and John R. Scandizzo.

Ganked from We Make Money Not Art:

Daniel & Geo Fuchs have documented the architectural legacy left by the former GDR’s Ministry for State Security (Stasi), the main security and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

The Stasi had nearly 90,000 official workers and 170,000 unofficial collaborators in a country with a population of 16 million. The organization was dissolved 18 years later, yet some of these sites have remained practically as they were.

Images in this series document rooms used by the Stasi used to interrogate prisoners; jail cells for political prisoners; Stasi offices, bunkers, and archives of a regime that clung to power for more than four decades. Link to blog post, and here's the direct link to the Fuchs' photos. ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Herrko writes in with amazing news -- it's legal to break DVD DRM in Finland, because the law only protects "effective" DRM, and DVD DRM is so easy to crack that it no longer qualifies:

Our law firm's client was released as Finnish court today ruled that the charges must be dropped for the two defendants that had "organized discussion" of breaking a technical protection systems.

According to the court, CSS (the DRM on DVDs) no longer achieves its protection objective. The court relied on two expert witnesses and said that "since a Norwegian hacker succeeded in circumventing CSS protection used in DVDs in 1999, end-users have been able to get with ease tens of similar circumventing software from the Internet even free of charge. Some operating systems come with this kind of software pre-installed." Thus, the court concluded that "CSS protection can no longer be held "effective" as defined in law." All charges were dismissed.

Link (Thanks, Herkko!)

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Here's a creepy, interesting, and real eBay find: a scrapbook documenting life among the prison population of San Quentin in 1932.

Chapters include "Mystery of Pervert Solved," profiles of jailhouse characters like "Chloroform Kate," stories of genital modification performed by disturbed inmates, the tale of a child born in prison, photos of theatrical plays that include cross-dressing strip shows, suicide tallies, and more. Don't miss "Pervert blows air into penis." Snip:

Fifty-two pages titled "Suicides of San Quentin." Total of 29 listings each with a mug shot, name, date, method, and details of the suicide. Remaining pages include more information on San Quentin including a medical case involving a mans penis with pictures, a note from a black inmate regarding him being mistreating by other inmates, [and] information and photos of two men found in a "compromising position"...

Auction link. You gotta love the seller's name: "dead.peoples.stuff."

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post about the cultural phenomenon of "sapeurs" in Congo ("men who would rather starve than look poor," in the words of one African blogger) -- here's some video: Youtube Link to "Les sapeurs de Congo-Brazza." (Thanks Emeka Okafor!) ( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Reader comment: Paul Frigon says,

[This video was shot in] Paris, France, in the quartier of "Chateau Rouge" inhabited by many congoleses.

Mrak sez,

Today, the main oposition party in Croatian parliament (SDP - Social Democratic Party) walked out of Parliament after Mr. Ivica Kirina (Interior Minister) accused the SDP of publishing videos about him on YouTube.

The video clips in question were not doctored; they were just showing public appearances of Mr. Kirin with some funny (but not insulting) remarks.

The series of four videos were seen by 500,000 croats so far (we have a population of 4.5 million).

Today, we have a crisis of government because of four video clips published on YouTube.

Link to story (not English) (Thanks, Mrak!)

Today on SomethingAwful's Photoshop Phriday: Children's book covers made demented. Link

IZ Reloaded sez, "This song and dance clip taken from a Hindustani film (I think) has got to be one of the weirdest ever to come out from the Bollywood studios. The lousy special effects used for the flying scenes - you can look through both of them - coupled with really horrendous Superman and Spiderwoman costumes, make this a real classic!" Link (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)

Here's an interesting proposal to replace the text in CAPTCHAs (those boxes where you type distorted words) with text that has stymied the optical character recognition software used to digitize old public domain books.

It's a clever hack, but there's one thing I don't understand. CAPTCHAs are supposed to contain a word known to the computer. You key it in and the computer confirms that you're a human being by comparing your entry to what the computer knows the CAPTCHA to be.

But if CAPTCHAs contain text unknown to the computer -- and any text that stymies OCR software is, by definition unknown to the computer -- then what's to stop you from entering anything in the CAPTCHA box and gaining entry?

Instead of requiring visitors to retype random numbers and letters, they would retype text that otherwise is difficult for the optical character recognition systems to decipher when being used to digitize books and other printed materials. The translated text would then go toward the digitization of the printed material on behalf of the Internet Archive project .

“I think it’s a brilliant idea — using the Internet to correct OCR mistakes,” said Brewster Kahle, director of the Internet Archive, in a statement. “This is an example of why having open collections in the public domain is important. People are working together to build a good, open system.”

Link (via /.)

Update: Alex sez, "the system works by having two words displayed. One that is computer generated (hence the computer knows what it is) and the other a scan from a book to be solved by the human (you do not know which is which). You enter in both words, if you get the computer generated one correct - the system knows your a human and lets you in. It can then also assume you entered the other non-generated word in correctly and can use it."

See also:
Solving and creating captchas with free porn
PWNTCHA: defeating CAPTCHAs with software
Use kittens to distinguish bots from people

Super lucky #13 edition of the BoingBoingBoing podcast is now online!

Special guest for this episode is game designer, games researcher, and futures forecaster Jane McGonigal, who is probably best known as the brain behind I LOVE BEES and WORLD WITHOUT OIL. She's also Pesco's colleague at Institute for the Future. (Previous BoingBoing posts about her work: Link.)

- - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN TO BOINGBOINGBOING #13:
Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, Archive.org, Listen at Odeo, Direct MP3 url, iTunes link.

- - - - - - - - - -

STUFF WE TALK ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE
(total duration -- 35:25)

The book "Stumbling on Happiness," and what the search for happiness and lvl uppage means for game designers (previous BB post here).

Flying machines that can't fly, made by eccentric people. They make for good video.

Bjork and those wild sound editing gizmos on the Volta tour (previous BB post here).

The difference between someone who tells you they predict the future, and someone who forecasts the future. Hint: One is always lying. The other, if they're any good, is not.

TECH NOTES:
We recorded this podcast as a Skype conference call, and captured it with AudioHijack. The audio was later edited in Apple's Garage Band, after some help from Levelator.

PREVIOUS EPISODES OF BOINGBOINGBOING:
1 (Mr. Jalopy, master craphound), 3 (Gareth Branwyn, cyberculture writer), 4 (Chris Anderson, WIRED editor-in-chief), 5 (George Dyson, tech historian), 6 (Steven Johnson, author), 7 (John Hodgman, humorist and PC), 8 (Merlin Mann, productivity guru), 9 (Matt Haughey, MeFi), 10 (Bonnie Burton, Lucasfilm), 11 (Noah Shachtman, defense tech reporter), 12 (Q Burns Abstract Message, DJ and music producer).

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

R.U. Sirius says:

Investigative reporter Greg Palast says 4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings.

... he (Palast) claims to have the 500 emails that the House subpoenaed and Karl Rove claims were deleted forever. They prove definitively, says Palast, that the Justice Department is infested with operatives taking orders from Rove to steal upcoming elections for Republicans and permanently alter the Department.

Link

In the latest episode of the Get Illuminated podcast, I interviewed Steven E. Landsburg, author of the delightfully thought provoking book, More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics. To get an idea of what we talked about, here's part of the preface to Landsburg's book:

Common sense tells you that promiscuity spreads AIDS, population growth threatens prosperity, and misers make bad neighbors. I wrote this book to assault your common sense.

My weapons are evidence and logic, especially the logic of economics. Logic is most enlightening -- and surely most fun -- when it challenges us to see the world in a whole new way. This book is about that kind of logic.

Daughters cause divorce. A thirst for revenge is healthier than a thirst for gold. A ban on elephant hunting is bad news for elephants, and disaster assistance is bad news for the people who receive it. Malicious computer hackers should be executed. The most charitable people support the fewest charities. Writing books is socially irresponsible; elbowing your way to the front of the water-fountain line is not. The tall, the slim, and the beautiful earn higher wages -- but not for the reasons you think.

Each of those statements is closer to the truth than you might imagine. If your common sense tells you otherwise, remember that common sense also tells you the earth is flat.

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

Image: snapshot of a religious poster in Antigua, Guatemala -- blood-soaked Christ. (Link 1, Link 2 / Xeni).

I'm in Central America for a few weeks -- in Guatemala right now following up on stories I reported earlier this year for NPR, and exploring others.

Where I am right now, the coffee and wifi flow freely, wisps of smoke puff out of the volcan de fuego nearby, and all is well.

A quick skim through TV and the daily papers today (Prensa Libre, Siglo 21, and the like) shows several top stories as common themes. I'll recap them quickly here.

Much of what's in the news in Guatemala right now involves the upcoming presidential elections in September. TV and radio are saturated with campaign ads. Concerns over transparency and potential electoral fraud are high (not that we'd have any such worries in the US).

Crime is the dominant theme in the Guatemalan election campaigns, and it's a big problem here. Much of the current problem is blamed on drug trafficking and related gang activity -- Guatemala sits right in the middle of the trade path from South America to the US.

A number of particularly violent attacks have taken place on public transportation in the nation's capital, Guatemala City, in recent weeks. People are asking if some of the attacks may have been orchestrated with political motives, because a climate of destabilization could help certain political parties running on a law and order platform. Billboards everywhere for one party promise "a strong hand" against crime. Some folks I've spoken with fear that this could presage an abandonment of human rights protections hard-won in peace accords after Guatemala's 36-year civil war. Link.

"El femicidio." The ongoing, growing problem of murder and violent sexual crimes against women. Nearly 600 killed in Guatemala in the past year, according to one source. Thousands of cases in the past few years, too few resources dedicated to investigating and punishing the crimes, and almost no criminal convictions.

Amnesty International released a statement about the widespread violence against women in Guatemala recently, and this was covered in local papers this week. More here.

Editorials in Guatemalan papers and conversations with people who work on this issue generally come down to this idea: the femicide epidemic is the direct, logical result of decades of impunity for human rights violations committed during the civil war. "The highest officials in our country got away with torture, disappearances, and murder for nearly four decades, and still walk among us as free men" one human rights worker told me, "of course impunity leads to more violence."

I haven't seen the Canadian documentary film "Killer's Paradise" yet, but it sounds like a truly worthy project. The director, Giselle Portenier, has been following the story closely for years. Here's the film's official website, and here's the trailer.

Efraín Ríos Montt, the former head of a military regime responsible for some of the worst atrocities during Guatemala's civil war, is running for office again. Several Guatemalan papers ran op-eds this week from people who are basically asking (summarizing with some editorial liberty here): "WTF? How can this mass murderer be running for office again? Are we insane, that our country could even consider this -- when he should be in jail for war crimes?" Link to related item.

Police in El Salvador this week found the corpses of two young men identified as gay, and four (or more?) women identified as sex workers, in a house near the capital. The young people who died were tortured, sexually assaulted, then killed in particularly violent ways, according to news reports here. Some of the bodies were smashed, then half-buried under large rocks. Much discussion about the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and of sex workers. I can't find the story online, but read it in a cafe this morning. It ran with a photo of the father of one victim, crying as he recognized the body of his child.

Reports of violence, break-ins, theft, death threats, and killings of human rights workers are on the rise in Guatemala: Link. Some of the most recent victims include people who work to protect the Mayan biosphere (an ecological protection zone), others who are working for the rights of indigenous farmers/peasants, and a group that provides legal support to people seeking justice on behalf of relatives killed in massacres during Guatemala's internal armed conflict.

Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan fried chicken franchise with an international cult following, is taking over the world. They're launching sites in China and Indonesia now, and this report says they've opened 600 sites in the past 7 years: Link. Overhead bins on the flights from Guatemala City to LAX are always packed with family-sized cartons of the stuff. To me, the stuff tastes like D-list KFC, but -- (shrugs).

Image above: from a series of Guatemalan street life photographs by Atlanta-based photojournalist Allen Sullivan.

Sandra Guamux, 21, sits with her 5 month old son, Alfredo, at an abandoned gas station in Zona 4 of Guatemala City. About 20 otherwise homeless people live inside the station and most are addicted to huffing paint thinner to numb the cold and their hunger pains. Guamux said another baby was stolen from her five days after it was born last year, and she is convinced the baby went into an illegal adoption system. She said that the police told her they would not investigate the situation since she had no photographs of the child.

Adoptions: Guatemala is one of the top "sender" countries for foreign adoptions -- 4,000 Guatemalan babies were adopted by Americans last year. Guatemala signed on to an international adoption treaty this week, committing to bring adoptions under government regulation and make sure babies are not bought or stolen:

Guatemalan law currently allows notaries to act as baby brokers who recruit birth mothers, handle paperwork and complete foreign adoptions in less than half the time it takes in other countries.

But U.S. officials have urged Guatemala to tighten up the procedure amid concern brokers were paying or threatening mothers to give up their babies.

Link. In some of the Mayan communities I've visited here -- extremely poor places where this is a big problem -- the phenomenon is known as "el robo de los ninos," the "theft of the children."

The virgin birth of a child to Cheney's gay daughter is totally weird news here. It's all over the tabloids. Guatemala is way Catholic, the Iraq war is extremely unpopular here, nobody likes Cheney, so this news is perceived as bizarre on many levels. Screenshot below.

Here's part 3 of 3 of the time lapse video of Tim Biskup painting a mural for Helio. Link (Part 1 | Part 2 | Lotsa Boing Boing posts about Biskup)

The brother's McLeod have created another creepy/cool cartoon short that uses the spam filter-breaking text that hideous spammers add to the bottom of their junk mail. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Cartoon based on Spam

Spike says: "Check out these cute retro weather report animations...one for seemingly every possible weather condition...This goes on for about 7 minutes so be ready for it." Link

I just got a sneak peek at issue one of the long-overdue new Tank Girl series, illustrated by Ashley "Zombies Vs Robots" Wood and written by Alan Martin, the co-creator of the original comic. It's been more than a decade since I first read Tank Girl, and I was a little trepidatious about revisiting the beloved, filthy Australian nihilist comic given that it has a completely new look.

But it absolutely works. Wood's illustrations are incredibly stylized, much less cartoony and more abstract that Jamie Hewlitt's (who's gone on to fame and fortune with Gorillaz), but it's no less gonzo, violent, obscene and madcap.

And Martin's writing still has everything I loved about the original Tank Girl: funny, angry little stories filled with poo jokes, underwear jokes, bestiality jokes and so on. Reading issue one was like spinning back in time to that first look at Tank Girl.

Issue one should be appearing on stands now (with three collectible covers no less) or shortly, and it's absolutely worth a look if you're a lover of all things Tank Girl. Link

Tom sez,

Artists get together to decorate vinyl records, and someone unintentinonally creates a Steampunk-like record player.

"What's steampunk?" the artist, Christian Aldo of Windsor, Ontario said to me.

"That," I said pointing at his work.

Now he knows.

Link (Thanks, Tom!)

See also:
Steampunk mouse
Steampunk guitar
Spring-loaded steampunk spex
Steampunk magazine
Steampunk Star Wars
Steampunk watch
Beautiful steampunk laptop
HOWTO make a steampunk keyboard
HOWTO make etched brass steampunk journals
HOWTO make a steampunk spinning-wheel
Steampunk walking robot
Steampunk cartoon from SciFi channel: Amazing Screw-On Head
Homebrew mechanical steampunk lion from Belgium
Steampunk robotics
Steampunk weekly serial - handsome editions
Steampunk rayguns
Steampunk Transformer-bots
Ukrainian steampunk plane
Steampunk casemod with a "furnace"
Steampunk submarine free paper toy
Steampunk/dead media photoshopping contest
Brighton's steampunk rolling sea-platform
Steampunk Slashdot
Steampunk mecha-wars
Steampunk car-wars
New York's steampunk pneumatic subway

BB fave artist Tim Biskup's new gallery exhibition, titled Ether, opens this weekend at the Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Culver City, California. Mark went to the preview opening last night and said it was just incredible. Fortunately, the art is viewable on the gallery's Web site. Absolutely phenomenal.
Link to online gallery, Link to Juxtapoz's photos of the opening

Previously on BB:
• Video of Tim Biskup painting the Helio Ocean mural Link
• Tim Biskup profile Link
• Many more Biskup posts Link

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, James Surowiecki, author of the instant-classic Wisdom of Crowds, looks at feature creep and why we're terrible at predicting what we really want out of a product. From his essay:

You might think... that companies could avoid feature creep by just paying attention to what customers really want. But that’s where the trouble begins, because although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive. It turns out that when we look at a new product in a store we tend to think that the more features there are, the better. It’s only once we get the product home and try to use it that we realize the virtues of simplicity. A recent study by a trio of marketing academics—Debora Viana Thompson, Rebecca W. Hamilton, and Roland T. Rust—found that when consumers were given a choice of three models, of varying complexity, of a digital device, more than sixty per cent chose the one with the most features. Then, when the subjects were given the chance to customize their product, choosing from twenty-five features, they behaved like kids in a candy store. (Twenty features was the average.) But, when they were asked to use the digital device, so-called “feature fatigue” set in. They became frustrated with the plethora of options they had created, and ended up happier with a simpler product.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Surowiecki: Brands aren't worth as much as we thought Link
• ETECH Notes: Surowiecki on Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds Link

Inseq Design's ZUSE toaster burns a variety of 12 x 12 pixels into bread.

ZUSE doesn't see itself merely as a compact toasting device but more like a print-maker of the traditional kind... With its candid intention of providing happiness to its owner ZUSE can randomly draw from its repertoire of images encoded in its memory chip.

Link

Previously on BB:
• PlayStation 2 toaster Link
• Transparent toaster "celebrates toasting" Link
• Toaster Fetish photos Link

I recently picked up a copy of Asiaddict: A Cartoon Travelogue by the cartoonist Mats!? (His name includes the punctuation).

This 96-page book is not so much a comic book as it is an illustrated chronicle of the things Mats!? experienced during his travels around Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.

He has an eye and ear for unusual things that most tourists would be oblivious to, such as hand carved statuettes of Tintin and Serge Gainsbourg, garish hand painted movie posters, and funny guesthouse rules:

LAOS GUESTHOUSE RULES:

1. DO NOT USE NOISE

2. INTHE HOLEL, DO NOT HAVE MAN AND WOMAN SLEEP TOGETHER IN THE ROOM IF THEY HAVE NOT HUSBAND AND WIFE, FATHER MOTHER, DAUGHTER AND SON

3. DO NOT TAKE OPIUM OR SMOKE IN ROOM

In addition to calling attention to unusual architecture, products, and customs, Mats!? also relates interesting travel experiences, such as getting treated for a potentially rabid animal bite ("All in all quite the pleasant experience, as you'll most likely be fawned over by three nurses treating you as if you were a serious gunshot victim.") and getting shaken down by a Bangkok police officer for throwing a cigarette butt on the sidewalk.

Mats!? also made a soundtrack for his book, available on YouTube. He has a blog, too, filled with posts about the ever-fascinating world of the far east as experienced by a curious and enthusiastic westerner. Link