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

Earlier this year, I linked to Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article about Enron. I was most interested in his distinction between puzzles and mysteries. "Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty," Gladwell wrote. It's a subtle difference, but one that I think is important to recognize. Indeed, my Institute for the Future colleague Bob Johansen argues in his forthcoming book Get There Early that in our increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world, the biggest challenges we face are not problems that can be solved but dilemmas that must be managed; they have no solutions. In the new issue of Smithsonian, Gregory Treverton delves into the similar mystery vs. puzzle difference in the context of recent events. Puzzles, like the Soviet Union, "can be solved because they have answers," he writes. On the other hand, a mystery, like Al Qaeda, has "no definitive answer because the answer is contingent; it depends on a future interaction of many factors, known and unknown." From Smithsonian:

A mystery cannot be answered; it can only be framed, by identifying the critical factors and applying some sense of how they have interacted in the past and might interact in the future. A mystery is an attempt to define ambiguities.

Puzzles may be more satisfying, but the world increasingly offers us mysteries. Treating them as puzzles is like trying to solve the unsolvable—an impossible challenge. But approaching them as mysteries may make us more comfortable with the uncertainties of our age...

Puzzle-solving is frustrated by a lack of information. Given Washington's need to find out how many warheads Moscow's missiles carried, the United States spent billions of dollars on satellites and other data-collection systems. But puzzles are relatively stable. If a critical piece is missing one day, it usually remains valuable the next.

By contrast, mysteries often grow out of too much information. Until the 9/11 hijackers actually boarded their airplanes, their plan was a mystery, the clues to which were buried in too much "noise"—too many threat scenarios. So warnings from FBI agents in Minneapolis and Phoenix went unexplored. The hijackers were able to hide in plain sight. After the attacks, they became a puzzle: it was easy to pick up their trail.

Solving puzzles is useful for detection. But framing mysteries is necessary for prevention.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Gladwell on mysteries vs. puzzles Link
• Bad predictions about the future Link

Own a piece of hoodlum history by being the high bidder on this book of mugshots from a 1970s New Jersey motorcyle gang. Link (Thanks, Armand!)

Barbara sez, "Robert Heinlein, Grand Master of Science Fiction, inspiration to many of us, is turning 100 on 7/7/07 and there will be a celebration of his life and work in Kansas City, Mo on that weekend." Link (Thanks, Barbara!)

Bedazzled is running this excellent video of 70s punk rock group The Saints performing "Stranded."

Wikipedia:

The Saints are an Australian rock band, formed in Brisbane in 1974. They are considered to be one of the first and most influential punk groups. By 1975, contemporaneously with the Ramones but on the other side of the world, The Saints were employing the fast tempos, slurred vocals and buzzsaw guitar that characterised early punk rock. With the release of their first single "(I'm) Stranded" in late 1976, they beat on to vinyl a host of more widely-known punk acts like the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, and The Clash. Bob Geldof has been quoted as saying, "Rock music in the Seventies was changed by three bands - the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and The Saints".

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• 9 great old punk videos
• 7 punk and post-punk female singer videos

Steve Lodefink sent in his hard-earned $3 for four plastic bubbles containing pieces of trash from Christopher Goodwin's Trashball! site (motto: "One man's trash is another man's trash"). Steve has photos of each piece of trash contained in the balls, along with his feelings about it.

The actual capsules that the trash treats are packaged in are not your ordinary gumball machine bubbles. These clear polycabonate spheres are not meant to be easily opened. The only place that I have ever seen a case like these is at the core of of one of those light-up superballs. I actually had to destroy one ball to get it open.

Link

One of the highlights of Maker Faire was Mister Jalopy's Urban Guerilla Movie House. It's a scratch built video projector housed in a whimsical wood cabinet mounted atop an adult tricycle. The complete how-to will be featured in an upcoming issue of MAKE.

A Schwinn Town and Country adult tricycle with a Lumenlab-style projector on the back. Inside the wooden box is a stripped 15" PC LCD monitor and replacing the meager florescent backlight is an awesome 400w lamp that is bright like welding. Add a reflector, a couple of fresnels lens and a homemade focusing triplet lens and you are ready to bring the party to the people. Easy as that? Well, not really. I made more missteps than a fox trotter with two left feet. But, I learned a ton along the way and the results will be in Make Volume 11.

Under the roof, curious peekers will find a Mac laptop with a RocketFM transmitter for radio broadcasting the movie audio to the 80's era cassette boombox on the handle bars. Oh, it works like a champ! Does the projector work without AC power? No. It is already heavy like a battleship straining those original, cracked Schwinn tires and I can't imagine how many deep cycle marine batteries would be needed for a 400W lamp. While riding, I assure you, it is plenty satisfying to listen to the awesome cassette power boombox.

Link

Chen Guoping of China's Zhejiang province bought this fantastic tomato at a local market. "It looks so much like a mouse head that I bought it without hesitation," he told the People's Daily. "It looks very funny."
Link (via Fortean Times)

Previously on BB:
• Tomato with human face Link
• Daikon "foot" Link
• Food-as-architecture photoshopping contest Link

Yahia Rahim Tulba attempted to bring 700 live snakes, including two poisonous cobras, on a plane at Cairo's airport. He was planning to sell the serpents in Saudi Arabia.

Tulba opened his bag to show the snakes to the police and asked the officers, who held a safe distance, not to come close...

Police confiscated the snakes and turned Tulba over to the prosecutor's office, accusing him of violating export laws and endangering the lives of other passengers.

Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

The Daily Swarm reports that Dr. Martens' parent company fired Saatchi and Saatchi London, creators of the campaign I posted about yesterday featuring dead punks Photoshopped into wearing the company's boots in heaven. Apparently the campaign was just a concept that the ad agency submitted but was never approved. From a Dr. Martens press release:

Dr Martens did not commission the work as it runs counter to our current marketing activities based on FREEDM, which is dedicated to nurturing grass roots creativity and supporting emerging talent.

As a consequence, Dr Martens has terminated its relationship with the responsible agency.

Link (Thanks, David Prince!)

Previously on BB:
• Famous dead punks hawk Dr. Martens Link

UPDATE: BB pal and media critic Douglas Rushkoff smartly comments that "basically, the story is being written by the same outlet that leaked the images that no one intended should be released."

Gavin sez, "Tomorrow is Towel Day when all fans of Douglas Adams unite to remember a singularly tall man (he was also quite clever). In anticipation of the day, I thought you might appreciate this podcast of a fan-produced audio adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The production values are a littly flaky (as are some of the accents) but the love of the text wins through in the end. There are three half-hour episodes, with more to come." Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

The American Film Institute will host PIXELODEON on June 9 and 10, and the soon-to-be-annual video festival promises to recognize "innovation, inspiration, and community in global online video" with over "300 videos, four keynote speakers, two dozen curators, and several hundred people interested in independent media [getting] together in one weekend to celebrate the diversity and talent of online video content." Link, tickets are $60. (Thanks Zadi Diaz)

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Remember when Turkey banned YouTube this March, over some stupid frat-boy youtube videos that implied a Turkish political icon was gay? Well, they've taken care of that now. The Turkish parliament has just passed a bill that allows authorities to block websites with content perceived as an insult to the Turkish republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The bill was signed into law by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on May 22.

Reporters Without Borders said today:

The possible consequences of this law are very disturbing. Will subversive content also be banned from chat forums? How far does the government want go to impose its control on online dissent?

Article 8 of Law 5651 on the "Prevention of crimes in the computer domain" calls for content to be blocked if it violates a 1951 law on "crimes against Atatürk." The article says: "When there is sufficient evidence of the improper aspect of content (...) access must be blocked." As well as punishing "crimes against Atatürk," Law 5651 also punishes "inciting suicide" (article 84), "sexual abuse of children" (article 103), "prostitution" (article 227) and "inciting drug use" (article 190).

Internet Service Providers are themselves supposed to take the initiative to block access to content, which they then show to a judge who decides whether or not the blocking should continue. It will be the job of a "Telecommunication Council" to identify these responsible for the content. A complaint will then be submitted to a "Communication Presidency," which like the "Telecommunication Council" is an entity specially created to ensure the new law's implementation.

An Istanbul court ordered the national telecommunications company Turk Telecom to block the video-sharing site YouTube on 6 March because of content regarded as "insulting" to Atatürk. Access was restored two days later after YouTube removed the offending video. Reporters Without Borders put out a release at the time urging the judicial authorities to act with moderation.

Previously on BB:

YouTube blocked by court order

Update on Turkey bans YouTube: all a "you're a fag" flame war?

UPDATE: Shii says,

I found the horribly offensive YouTube video that caused Turkey to ban the entire website, and have mirrored it on a web host with more balls: Video Link.

Absolutely obscene, I tell you. When you see it you will be chilled to your bones.

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Following up on a photoshop UFO post on BB yesterday, in which some speculated that alien beings would use the Katakana font, Joe in Bath, England, says:

It is not necessary to use the Katakana font, "real" alien fonts are widely available as here: Link. Klingon, Cardassian, etc., some bearing a strong resemblance to the symbols on the UFO.

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Rich Gordon of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism says,

The Medill School of Journalism just won a grant that will allow Medill to offer master's degree scholarships in journalism to computer programmers. It's among $12 million in grants awarded via the Knight News Challenge. The general idea is to lure talented coders, immerse them in the practice of journalism, and then turn them loose to figure out interesting ways of putting journalism and technology together. Our role model is Adrian Holovaty of the Washington Post (who also won a Knight News Challenge grant and, consequently, will be leaving the Post to launch a tech/journalism startup).

We want to enroll the first scholarship recipients this September, so we're looking to get the word out through the tech community as quickly as possible. I do think it's a pretty meaty idea and I am sure your readership will have some interesting perspectives (some will probably love it, others will probably say there's not much a j-school can teach a coder).

The page that describes the Medill program, including how to apply, is here. I've blogged about the initiative here. The full list of News Challenge winners is here. The press release announcing all the winners is here.

Fark's latest photoshopping challenge: LOLPresidents with cute ungrammatical sayings, just like the kittonz! Warning: many of these are funny. Others are just tasteless and gross. Not for the easily offended. Link

Update: Maitri sez, "Someone has already created a website dedicated to LOL President images."

See also:
Where LOLCats come from
Massive cache of kittah pix (aka LOLcats, cat macros)
Pedantic overanalyzer sucks all the fun out of LOLcats
Pedantic overanalysis of LOLcats not pedantic enough, says blowhard
LOLtrek
Cat macros hijacked by heartless homosexuals
Oh, how I love the gebril macros!

MSNBC.com has done a deal with cinemas in the US to replace the dumb pre-movie ads with a giant, participatory game. The game is Newsbreaker, a simple break-out style game that rewards you for clearing lines by dropping real-time RSS news headlines, but the gameplay is the cool part: a motion sensor in the theater allows the entire audience to control the paddle by swaying in unison from side to side. Check out the video of the gameplay at a Spiderman 3 opening weekend screening in LA (given what a steaming CGI turd Spidey 3 is, this was probably the best part of the movie, apart from being harassed by night-scoped teenagers looking for camcorder pirates). These people are having insane fun. Link to YouTube video, Link to Newsbreaker game (Thanks, Sam!)

A couple weeks back, I blogged about NPR's segment on digital libraries, where Brewster Kahle criticized Google for striking exclusivity deals with libraries that prohibited Google's competitors from scanning their collections.

Google has replied, saying that it doesn't have any such deal with the libraries, and they've put it in writing. They've even included one of their library contracts. This is really, really good news.

I'm still disappointed that Google puts restrictive notices on their public domain works (these aren't licenses, just "polite notices") that tell what you're not allowed to do with these books. I know they're worried about their competitors getting ahold of those documents, but that's the deal with the public domain: it doesn't belong to you, period, it belongs to all of us. Just because you scan a public domain book, it doesn't confer the right to control it to you.

More importantly: Google is betting that it will make more money by locking these books up to be merely read than it could by making them available as a giant tarball for the Internet to bend, spindle, mutilate and fold. That merely hosting these will generate more pageviews than turning them loose for remix, mashup, scholarship and other forms of inventive re-use.

It just doesn't seem like Google, betting against the Internet's creativity and capacity to innovate. I know they've got a lot of smart people there, but I hope they understand that they don't have all the smart people. Google makes the bulk of its money by indexing the cool stuff other people make. Why restrict people from making more cool stuff? Link (Thanks, Alex!)

See also: Why Publishing Should Send Fruit-Baskets to Google

Wiki-How has a page up today on making OpenCola, a freely licensed soft-drink. I helped found the company that developed and released the OpenCola drink, and it was developed by Amanda Foubister in our kitchen. It tastes excellent, but it also highlighted for me just how much sugar there is in this stuff -- a lot. When you make cola, you basically end up filling a glass with sugar and then adding just enough water and ancillary ingredients to get it to dissolve.

Flavoring

* 3.50 ml orange oil
* 1.00 ml lemon oil
* 1.00 ml nutmeg oil
* 1.25 ml cassia oil
* 0.25 ml coriander oil
* 0.25 ml neroli oil
* 2.75 ml lime oil
* 0.25 ml lavender oil
* 10.0 g gum arabic
* 3.00 ml water

Link (Thanks, Joe!)

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) Photo: Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté, from this Colors feature.

Serial entrepreneur and blogger Emeka Okafor, who also happens to be organizing TED GLOBAL in Tanzania next week, points us to this blog entry about Congolese "sapeurs" by Sefu Massamba Shongo Erik aka "Papa Shongo," a Congolese blogger who lives in New York City:

Hopefully you’re already familiar with the Congolese outlandish fashion sense courtesy of Koffi Olomide (expensive designer clothes, no concern whatsoever about matching colors) and Papa Wemba to name a couple.

If you thought that fashion sense (nonsense sometimes) was limited to famous Congolese artists only, you were wrong my friend. We Congolese have been so obsessed with designer clothes and looking good that over time some of us have prioritized it to the detriment of basic needs sometimes.

If you ever thought you spent more than you could afford to support a lifestyle, wait till you meet this guy I read about in a LA Times article who reported earning about $150/month but somehow was able to afford D&G, Gucci and other obscure designer accessories. That same gentleman also owned a fur coat, in an equatorial climate mind you!

Although this may seem ridiculous to most of us, showing off (which this really is) has become a religion for a lot of “Congolais” who feel that perhaps they must live up to the hype, the expectation that all Congolese must have a high fashion sense. The phenomenon can also be observed here in the US where I’ve met someone (Charlotte, NC) who was working 3 jobs (no kidding) just so he could impress his friends and family with his Mercedes-Benz.

Read the entire post on Sefu Massamba Shongo Erik's I'm an African in New York blog.

Emeka also points us to some fascinating related items about the "cult of cloth" in Congolese culture, including a Colors Magazine feature (with amazing photos), the "Chic Theory" article in the Australian Humanities Review, and a BBC video documentary.

Image, top: "A three-and-a-half-year-old sapeur — wearing an eye patch in imitation of his uncle, the famouse K.V.V Mouzieto, a grand Sapeur who lives in paris — struts down a dusty street."

Image, inset: "‘I’M A SAPE’: Papy Mosengo, 30, lives with his parents and earns $120 a month — and spends several times that each month on clothes. (Edmund Sanders / LAT)"

Reader comment: Brett Burton says,

Just saw your Boing Boing post about the LA Times' Congolese cloth cult. It reminded me of something I recently read in Vice Magazine, so I did some googling.

On the Vice web site, they mention the recent LA Times piece and point out that they covered the Congolese scene in an article four years ago: Link.

The thing I read was in the May issue, where Vice profiled the Swenkas of South Africa. Couldn't find a link to that article, but here's one for a Swenka documentary: Link.

Ben Frazier says:

Regarding your post on the Congolese men who would rather starve than look bad — as usual, the Onion beats everyone to the punch by commenting on the phenomenon (albeit using a Westerner as the subject) in this article, which is now over seven years old: Link.

Correction: I goofed when I first posted this, and attributed the body of that "sapeur" post to Emeka Okafor -- my apologies! The prolific Mr. Okafor has so many projects going on -- TED Global, plus he authors at least two excellent blogs, and he is an African entrepreneur living in New York (from Nigeria, specifically). But he is not the author behind I'm An African In New York. Here's an interesting profile piece about his work, from The African Executive: Link.

Clarification: Many BoingBoing readers wrote in to ask if the Emeka Okafor in question is this Emeka Okafor, listed by Wikipedia as an pro NBA player. No.

Wikipedia, disambiguate thyself!