A spot-on Bob Dylan impersonator reveals the hidden truth: Dylan actually wrote all the top-selling music of the last 35 years, including "Big Butts," "Drop it Like it's Hot," and "My Humps" (written in honor of Joni Mitchell's Joan Baez well-disguised little hunchback). Link (via Lawgeek)

John Gilmore sez,

The Feds want you to bring your camera to a national park for a photo contest. Wasn't it just a few years ago that if you brought your camera to a national park, you were surrounded by cops and arrested for being a terrorist? I myself was harassed and threatened with arrest merely for taking out a pocket camera in a San Francisco streetcar station. Isn't it true today that if you bring your camera to a federal building, they confiscate it on entry, as if it was a weapon? They did that to me! I think these "Sponsors" and agencies are just setting people up for a bust. Don't forget to wear your turban while taking your photos, kiddies! Exercise your precious rights, before the velvet glove of the photo contest is over and the iron fist comes back out.

PS: The "Official Rules" of the contest say, on one hand, that by merely submitting your photos to them, you are assigning them all your copyrights in the photos. But a few paragraphs later there's a more reasonable section that contradicts the first section, saying just that they'd get the right to display your photo if it's a finalist. Perhaps the Lawyers Committee for DVD-CSS wrote this contract.

Link

Looks like the story about Estonia suffering military cyberattacks from Russia was bogus:

"We see signs of Russian nationalism at work here, but no Russian government connection," Nazario told Heise Security. "None of the sources we have analyzed from around the world show a clear line from Moscow to Tallinn; instead, it's from everywhere around the world to Estonia."

The article also notes "there was no apparent attempt to target national critical infrastructure other than internet resources."

Link

Update: Elver sez, "As all attempts to link the Russian government to the attacks were failing, the Russians themselves came and confessed! An official operative of Nashi, the youth organisation with close ties to Putin, gave an interview to the newspaper "Vedomosti" saying that he and his fellow Nashists were behind the cyberwar attacks. I only have an Estonian source for this, however.

"So while there's no evidence of a clear and simple connection between the Russian government and the attacks, operatives of Nashi have confessed to the attacks and the Nashi organization has very close ties to Putin."

San Francisco's 7x7 Magazine just published their "Best of SF" edition. I was thrilled that they asked me for a list of my tech/art/culture "favorites" in the Bay Area. It's in the current issue of the print magazine and also online, along with a short profile. In addition to my picks that made it into the magazine, the original list I gave them also included: Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Survival Research Laboratories, and Maker Faire. I feel fortunate to live in a city where I'm surrounded by such creative and inspiring people. From the article:

“Once an email list, now a blog, Laughing Squid is the essential online resource for avant-garde art, technology and culture events in the Bay Area. They’re a helluva Web host too.”

“A day at the Musee Mecanique is a trip back in time to the pre-PlayStation penny arcades of yesteryear.” (Pier 45, 415-346-2000)

“Since 1977, the Billboard Liberation Front has ‘improved’ public advertisements in the Bay Area, wittily altering marketing campaigns to reveal the real message behind the media.”

“Rumored to be based in SF, the Imaginary Foundation is a mysterious Dada-inspired think tank using surrealist T-shirt graphics to spread its empowering message of creativity, experimentation and reality-hacking.”

“Blurring the line between art and engineering, Dorkbot-sf is a semimonthly salon of people who are doing ‘strange things with electricity."

Link

How To Kiss Someone Passionately: really very good instructional video. Plus: funny. Plus: h4wt. Link (via Mefi)

Update: Instructables has a more basic version, if this is a little too advanced for you -- thanks, Christy!

Here's a tastily frivolous, serious-silly economic analysis of "The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Down," employing game-theory:

Choi (2002) does not model the issue as a situation of conflict, hence ignores the game theoretic aspects of the problem. Harter (2005) models the situation as a cooperative game and proposes a contract that splits the costs of toilet seat operations evenly among the parties. Both papers agree that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down in inefficient in the sense that it does not minimize the total cost of toilet seat operations per household. However, both papers fail to address an important concern: If a female finds the toilet seat in a wrong position then she will most probably yell at the male involved. This yelling inflicts a cost on the male. Based on this omission, women may argue that the analysis in these papers is suspect.

Link (via 3 Quarks Daily)

Just finished Fell: Feral City, the first collected volume of Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith's new hard-boiled, surreal, ultra-violent comic. I've loved Ellis's writing since Transmetropolitan (the comic that got me reading comics again), but I've only just started to notice Templesmith's unique brand of abstract, kinetic, moody painting (see, for example, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse and 30 Days of Night). Together, they just can't be beat.

Fell is about a fallen cop who has banished to "Snowtown," an abandoned DMZ "on the other side of the bridge," where he is one of three-and-a-half detectives charged with investigating the hundreds of murders that sweep through it like the plague. Detective Fell is like Dante, exploring hell, getting stabbed and having guns thrust in his face, bearing up under heaps of abuse and navigating a police squad where the Lieutenant is a pill-freak who hallucinates and reads Crowley on "magick" as a way of solving the squad's problems.

The characters are somewhat stock -- batty Lt; beautiful, smart, fucked-up barmaid girlfriend; disgusting coroner, criminal scum -- but that just leaves more room for Ellis and Templesmith to really explore the outer reaches of the hard-boiled genre, combining comedy with sickening violence in a way that is half Transmetropolitan, half Serpico.

Each of the eight collected stories is a stand-alone, and the format will be familiar to lovers of Transmet -- Detective Fell shows us a new aspect of the hell of Snowtown in each: the old lady who runs a thrift shop and has a dark secret; the sniper who hates women; the way that the murder victim got so much booze into him without having a drink.

The art and the writing here are perfect complements to each other, and you get a sense of Ellis and Templesmith egging each other on to see who can top whom. I don't know who won, except that the readers all come out ahead. Link

Our cryptozoologist pal Loren Coleman, co-author of Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep, was on CNN's Paula Zahn Now last evening talking about the recent video that may or may not depict the Loch Ness Monster. Loren was paired with Joe Nickell, columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer and co-author of Lake Monster Mysteries. People always try to position Loren as a "believer" and I love how he responds that belief is something done by religious people. He just tries to keep an open mind in order to accept or deny evidence based on examination and investigation. Link

Previously on BB:
• Is this Nessie on video? Link
• Get Illuminated! podcast with Loren Coleman Link
• Loren Coleman profile Link

Damien Hirst's latest artwork is this life-size platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 fine diamonds. The sculpture, titled "For The Love of God," will likely sell for as much as $100 million, making it the priciest contemporary artwork ever made. White Cube gallery is selling several limited edition silkscreen prints of the work, priced from £900 to £10,000, for one sprinkled with diamond dust. The title of the piece comes from Hirst's mother who asked her son, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” From the New York Times:

For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”

Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.

“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”

Link to NY Times, Link to White Cube

From BB reader Cody Klingbeil.

Mark sez, "The Dutch reality show about the woman choosing who would get her kidney is apparently a hoax."

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was revealed as an elaborate hoax on Friday.

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

See also: Organ donor TV: reality show for would-be kidney recipients

A Michigan man was arrested by police for accessing a coffee shop's public Wi-Fi hotspot. He was charged with a felony and faced up to 5 years in jail, but he took an offer of "paying a $400 fine, doing 40 hours of community service and staying on probation for six months."

The coffee shop owner said she was surprised by the arrest of 39-year-old Sam Peterson, who is a toolmaker, volunteer firefighter, and secretary of a bagpipe club. "He could have just come in the cafe, even if he didn't have any money, I would let him get on it," said the owner. Before the arrest, Peterson had no criminal record.

In the article about the incident, Sparta police chief Andrew Milanowski and Kent County assistant prosecuting attorney Lynn Hopkins come off as brittle, badly-programmed automatons.

"I was sitting there reading my e-mail and he came up and stuck his head inside my window and asked me who I was spying on," Peterson told FOXNews.com.

Someone from a nearby barbershop had called cops after seeing Peterson's car pull up every day and sit in front of the coffee shop without anybody getting out.

"I just curiously asked him, 'Where are you getting the Internet connection?', you know," Sparta Police Chief Andrew Milanowski said. "And he said, 'From the café.'"

Milanowski ruled out Peterson as a possible stalker of the attractive local hairdresser, but still felt that a law might have been broken.

"We came back and we looked up the laws and we figured if we found one and thought, 'Well, let's run it by the prosecutor's office and see what they want to do,'" Milanowski said.

A few weeks later Peterson said he received a letter from the Kent County prosecutor's office saying that he faced a felony charge of fraudulent access to computer networks and that a request had been made for an arrest warrant.

Link (Thanks, Alasdairs!)

A high-school math teacher in Indiana is suing two high school students who made a movie about a teddy bear that attacks a teacher.

This happened after the school expelled the students, and the students sued the school. The court awarded the students $69,000 and made the school expunge the suspension and expulsion records.

(Here's a trailer for the film, called "The Teddy Bear Master.")

The lawsuit claims the film mocked the teacher's appearance and mannerisms by portraying a math instructor named "Mr. Clevenger." It also contains "graphic depictions of violence" and the eventual murder of Clevenger and his wife, Christine, the lawsuit said.

"The defendants intentionally created the 'Teddy Bear Master' and intentionally used the plaintiff's name in such a way that would provoke a reasonably foreseeable emotional disturbance or trauma," the lawsuit states.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said the lawsuit is without merit.

"It's not true that they were murdered in the movie," she said. "It was literally stuffed animals being manipulated by the boys, walking around going 'yeoo http://www' and talking in funny voices, very juvenile."

Link (Thanks, Charles!)

BB reader Ross says,

This Google link is supposedly, according to this article (see #6), a close-up view of a well-known homeless man in San Jose who was killed earlier this month in a scuffle over his dog.

If true, this whole Street View thing is getting stranger by the minute. Can anyone substantiate this rumor?

Previous BB posts on Google Street View:

NYT on BB on Google Street View

Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader

Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle behind it

Google Maps zoom feature inspires neologism

Google Maps Zoom and kitty on perch: the inevitable LOLcatting

(posted from the road in central america / xeni)

Reader comment: Gene Cowan of San Jose, CA says,

Regarding the homeless man captured by Google's street view cameras: Yes, that is Cornelius, who was a gregarious, friendly homeless man here in San Jose. He had a dog, who was the target of some kind of attack, and when Cornelius attempted to defend the dog, he was killed by some freak. In the era of the internet, no one is forgotten, evidently.

Kristofer says,

I can vouch for the unfortunate picture from Google Street View of the now deceased homeless man in San Jose. I work in downtown San Jose, and the guy was really well known. He would sit there with his dog all day - hours and hours. I didn't ever speak with him, but I knew who he was. The URL is a video "Remembering Cornelius" where people reflect on his life. You can see his picture in there and match it up with the Google Street View.

Steve Cooley says,

This is a gallery down the street from our gallery, and their billboard shows the date range that this batch of google photos was taken. Dec. 1 - Jan. 20... Just an additional piece to the puzzle... so they've obviously been sitting on this photo data for a while.

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) The results of our contest to win a copy of Gama-Go's new book, Limited Edition: The Art and Design of Gama-Go, are in. As you may recall, the challenge was to draw or paint a picture on your hand and send us a photo. Our four talented winners are (in order of photo appearance): Sadie Smith, Rikki B, What What, and Hugh. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! (We'll hold another contest soon, so if you didn't win this time, don't be disappointed.)

Tomorrow, San Francisco's Asian Art Museum opens their huge retrospective on Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), the pioneering master of manga who created Astro Boy and so, so much more. The exhibition features 200 works, including original art, covers, posters, anime, and adult manga. (Seen here, the slip-case design for Teskuka's Metropolis (Metoroporisu), a 1949 manga starring inspired by a photo of the robot Maria from Fritz Lang's film.) For those unable to see this show at its only US venue, the (Flash) site has a ton of information, including a series of video podcasts celebrating the artist.
Link

UPDATE: Scott De Las Casas writes:

Growing up I was a huge fan of Tezuka's Tatsuo Yoshida's Speed Racer, while my sister preferred (Tezuka's) Kimba the White Lion, another anime classic by "the god of manga." USA Today has a first look at the the Wachowskis's Brothers SPEED RACER adaptation, including an exclusive premiere of the Mach 5. It appears that the movie will be true to the spirit of series, although based on the synopsis I'll withhold celebrating until I see it. Now if only we could get Carroll Ballard (Duma, Fly Away Home, The Black Stallion) to make a live-action Kimba movie... Link

Darren says: "Link goes to a news report on the 'Regal Guest Response System', a pager system given to a random patron in 114 US cinemas (here's the media release). The patron's device has four buttons on it:

1. Sound

2. Picture

3. Piracy

4. Other disturbance

"When they press the button, a staff member is alerted and responds accordingly. Presumably #3 sends a call directly to the MPAA bat phone.

"That's hilarious corporation-oriented design, eh? Surely the moviegoer's number one complaint is noisy neighbours, and yet it's bundled under 'other disturbance'. Where’s my button for ‘the guy next to me reeks’ or ‘I paid $11 for this jackalope turd?’" Link

Here's a PDF of a "graffiti report card" that you can fill out and place next to graffiti in your neighborhood. Brandon Thomas Baunach, the creator of the report card explains:

It’s a project I started a couple of months ago after seeing my neighborhood (The Mission District of San Francisco) receive an amazing amount of ugly, large, and talentless graffiti. I wanted a way to combat the ugly graffiti while at the same time give praise to the talented graffiti writers who I feel make the streets more beautiful. It occurred to me, that many of our local taggers don’t realize how ugly and talentless their graffiti is, so I wanted to give them some feedback.

Link

Gabriela sez,

Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new Web site and a new contest that will award $500 for the first video capturing Senator Mitch McConnell on record answering (or refusing to answer) who is blocking passage of legislation that would require senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically.

This contest is part of Sunlight's new campaign that asks, "What's McConnell Hiding?" through a billboard alongside I-65 in Louisville, Kentucky that points readers to the www.whatsmcconnellhiding.com site.

Whatsmcconnellhiding.com prompts citizens to take action to promote transparency in the Senate by advocating for the passage of the Senate Campaign Disparity Act (S. 223).

Link (Thanks, Gabriela!)

This video seems to depict a cute child solving a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes.
Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

Previously on BB:
• Michel Gondry "solves" Rubik's Cube with his feet Link
• Rubik's Cube solved in 11.13 seconds Link
• Rubik's Cube folk art Link

Five-minute video about a rural Chinese man who taught himself how to make cool little walking robots out of scrap. Link (Thanks, Stella!)

As LOLCats go, this one is pretty spesh. Schroedinger's LOLCat indeed. (via AccordionGuy)

Update: Rob sez, "That lolcat belongs to Kevin Steele of Mackerel fame!"

Update 2: Dan sez, "Just wanted to give you a link to the Flickr page of my lolcat, which gives due credit to those where credit is due."

See also:
LOLCODE: LOLCats meet programming
LOLPresidents photoshopping challenge
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!

The single most frequently asked question I get is, "Does giving away ebooks of your novels sell books, or does it hurt your sales?" It's a really hard question to answer, since to do a controlled experiment, I'd have to go back in time and re-release my books without their Creative Commons licenses and compare the sales.

Now Tim O'Reilly, publisher and founder of tech-book giant O'Reilly Media, has posted a tremendous case study on a book that was available as a free download as well as available in stores. The case study isn't iron-clad proof that giving away books sells books, but it's the best evidence I've seen to date.

The quick answer from this experiment is that we saw no definitive correlation, but there is little sign that the free downloads hurt sales. More than 180,000 copies were downloaded from Jeremy's mirror (which is one of five!), yet the book has still been quite successful, selling almost 19,000 copies in a year and a half. This is quite good for a technical book these days -- the book comes in at #23 on our lifetime-to-date sales list for the "class of 2005" (books published in 2005) despite being released at the end of September. You might argue that the book would have done even better without the downloads, especially given the success of asterisk and the importance of VoIP. But it's also the case that the book is far and away the bestseller in the category, far outperforming books on the same subject from other publishers.

Meanwhile, we saw a huge spike in downloads starting at the beginning of this year, but didn't see a corresponding drop in print book sales, other than the continued slow erosion that's typical of books in print (especially one that's heading towards a second edition.) However, we did see the book's first fall from grace, dropping from an average run rate of about a thousand copies a month to about six hundred back in March 2006 coming at about the same time that we start showing the free downloads, but we're not sure whether or not that is just because we don't have earlier download data -- the book should have been available online sooner after publication even though Jeremy didn't start his mirror till March. (Next time we do a book available for free download, we'll be careful to collect accurate data from the start of the project.)

Link

Italy's National Research Council reports that the air in Rome contains trace amounts of cocaine and cannabis. Nicotine, caffeine, and other chemicals were also detected. The concentration of cocaine, .1 nanograpms per cubic meter, was far below the legal limit for air toxins, but they are still worried about it. From the Associated Press:

"The highest concentrations of cocaine were found in the center of Rome and especially in the area of the University of La Sapienza," said Dr. Angelo Cecinato, who led the investigation.

Researchers can't say for sure why the high concentrations were registered in those locations, but Cecinato stressed that the findings didn't necessarily mean that cocaine and cannabis are more heavily used there.

Link to AP article, Link to Italian language press release

Previously on BB:
• Peed-out Prozac detectable in UK water-supply Link

Several years ago, river guide Steve Currey had chartered a Russian Nuclear icebreaker ship to travel into the center of the Earth via a legendary hole in the Arctic Ocean. Currey died before the trip could take place but now fringe scientist Brooks Agnew has revived the plan. From the National Post:

This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands...

Mr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to peddle the nutty, yet persistent, theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm...

While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs, as well as a team of documentary filmmakers...

If the polar opening isn't there, the voyage "will still make an outstanding documentary," he promises.

Link (Thanks, Greg Benjamin!)

Previously on BB:
• See for yourself that the Earth isn't flat... it's hollow. Link
• Hollow Earthers' favorite experiment analyzed Link

The inaugural edition of BarCampSanDiego takes place this weekend. And because it's in lovely, warm San Diego, they're not joking about the "camp" part. Link. (thanks to everyone who suggested)

Here's a first-person account of the media turmoil in Venezuela by Rodrigo L. Arcaya, a 36-year-old Venezuelan who owns a web development company in Caracas. His bio describes him as "an iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian opponent of excess state power." On 10zenmonkeys.

BB reader carlosCCS in Venezuela says,

The homepage of Ipostel, the Venezuelan postal service has been defaced, and supposedly hacked by a group that claims to support the recently closed down TV station RCTV. A logo of the defunct TV Station is shown in full flair.

The new homepage reads something that roughly translates to: "Chavez, I will fuck up all your websites" and the credits goes to a hacker by the name of Söad. It also claims to be the ninth attack, "of the many to come". Last December many local government websites were defaced by a hacker group by replacing the homepage with many homoerotic photoshopped images that involved Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

BB reader Sofia says,

"El Observador" which is the name of one of the oldest newscast shows and that was part of the prgramming of the now defunct RCTV, is now showing all its emissions: Morning, Noon and Nightly newscasts via a recently created youtube channel.

Although internet penetration in Veneuzela is not as big as to consider this a fair alternative is the sign of a strong showing of forcefully fight for democracy, since the newscast is in no way financed with advertisement and yet it costs as much to produce as a full fledged regular airwaves broadcast production. YouTube Link.

TIME has an interesting piece here: Link. Here's a bunch of video from the protests: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3 Link 4 Link 5, Link 6. Wikipedia has an evolving article about the RCTV stuff here.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Venezuela's TV crisis, continued: Chavez to sue CNN in world court?

Venezuela: Chavez to shut down a second TV station

Venezuelan media crackdown: the other POV

Venezuelan media crackdown: TV anchors sign off, mouths shut

Reader comment: Raduga Nine points to a google video link for a Venezuela-related documentary film blogged here in an earlier post:

[Here is a video link for] this astounding documentary about the failed April 2002 coup in that country. It really provides an excellent background to the media war that has surrounded Chavez from the start.

The filmmakers follow Chavez around and have some interesting conversations with him inside the presidential palace before, during and after the military coup, in which he was physically plucked from the presidential palace by revolting members of the military, who (according to interviews in the film) were backed by the right-wing owners of the major private media channels. This is one of the most memorable documentaries I've ever seen -- and current events make it all but essential!

We've featured the incredible artisan Kaden Harris several times on BB. He makes exquisitely-crafted "antiques from a parallel universe," from desktop guillotines to mindwarping machines (image left) to insanely intricate smoking devices (image below) that would be right at home on Jules Verne's Nautilus. He sells his creations via his Eccentric Genius Web site, but he's not sure what people actually want to buy. So he's written the request below of BB readers. Please don't email me with your responses, but post them on the QuickTopic board instead! Kaden says:

My drawing board is overfull of stuff that's through R&D and waiting to be fabricated, but it's all stuff that either resonates really strongly with my personal tastes, or stuff that has grown around a specific scrapyard archaeology artifact that happened to catch my eye (I have about 3 tons of scrapyard brass scattered around Eccentric Manors...inspiration is kinda hard to avoid). Knowing my personal tastes is one thing; knowing what my marketplace likes is entirely another, and due to my *close* personal relationship with my raw material inventory, it's kinda hard to step back and view things with an unbiased eye.

So waddaya think I oughta build? Whatever it is, it has to actually function: I look on bricolage as a waste of perfectly good components. I build mechanisms...purposeful things. Anything less is an insult to the mojo of the componentry.

Link to discussion board, Link to Eccentric Genius

Previously on BB:
• Dangerous Things on your desk Link
• Retro bong designed and built in 11 minutes Link

Miguel Helft at the New York Times did an interesting piece about the blog-drama over Google Street View's launch, and profiled the woman who sent BoingBoing that wild image of her tabby cat Monty hanging out in the window. Some internet meanies called her a luddite, others a "poor deluded cat owner," but...

For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.

“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”

Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”

Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.

Link. (Thanks Chris Kimbell) Image: Jim Wilson for the NYT.

Previously:

Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader

Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle behind it

Google Maps zoom feature inspires neologism

Google Street View: was this one of Google's vehicles?

(posted from the road in central america / xeni)

Also, I swapped a few emails with Ms. Kalin-Casey on the day that entry went live, and forwarded to her some of the funny/mean-spirited responses calling her a privacy nutball or a cat psycho. She wrote back:

I was a little surprised at the follow-up bb-reader response labeling my concerns as paranoid and delusional. It seemed to be written somewhat tongue in cheek, so I presume it was meant to be a funny rebuttal. My post was never actually about the cat, which I thought should be obvious, especially to the bb crowd.

The question is, where do we draw the line between public and private? Obviously, the picture of Monty isn’t very good, but who’s to say whether tomorrow, Google’s camera’s won’t be a lot better, giving clearer pictures and more detail? I’ve already seen one post online where the poster’s only complaint about Google pics is that the pictures aren’t sharp enough. (He wasn’t commenting on my pic, but on a picture of his own home.)

The opposing argument claims that what’s visible from the street is public. By opening my windows for some much-needed light and air, am I granting permission for my living room to be broadcast worldwide? I don’t think I am. I think if I open my windows, my neighbors and passers by might see the cat in the window. That’s substantially different to me than realizing that everyone in the world can potentially see into my home.

It’s my feeling that we should know what kind of monitoring we’re subject to and when. Stores, airports, intersections, museums —there are security cameras everywhere. We’ve all seen overhead satellite photos for mapping purposes, but when does helpful mapping recon morph into home surveillance? When does it move from a grainy picture of the cat to a high-res image where you can see small details in my apartment? When do I have to choose between sunlight and unseen threats to privacy? It’s one thing to be monitored on the public streets of London. I think it’s another to wonder if, right now, someone or something is taking my picture through my living room window. Maybe that is paranoid, but it’s hardly delusional. After all, it’s already happened.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of one of the vehicles used by Immersive Media, a contractor that provided some of the imaging services for Google's new "Street View" thing. But Immersive Media apparently did not do all of the imaging, and I'm told that Google did some themselves (or perhaps with other contractors). BB reader Ben says,

I snapped this picture back in March. It shows 4 Nikon DLSRs with wide angle lenses mounted to the top of a car. Google Street View vehicle, or... something else? Link.

Here's the intersection in Google Street View.

Previous BB posts on Google Street View:

Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader

Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle behind it

Google Maps zoom feature inspires neologism

Google Maps Zoom and kitty on perch: the inevitable LOLcatting

Reader comment: Chris Genetti says,

I'd like to comment that it would be a thing of beauty if Google's Street-view team decided to map out Pittsuburgh in early July...

...July 5-8 (and presumably the fourth and ninth), 2007 is the slated date for Anthrocon, the world's largest furry convention. If Google Maps started showing up with a bunch of fursuiters (not quite underwear perverts but close.. sort of) and pointy-eared and fluffy-tailed furry fans wandering the streets, I think I would buy Google a cake and thank them for being awesome.

'Course, there's always the Midwest Furfest near Chicago held in November, and various other cons in Cali, Atlanta, etc. ;)

Jon says,

I noticed that unlike in other areas on Google Street View, you cannot look up or down in that intersection. It would make sense given the camera setup seen in that picture. However, the traffic in your picture looks a lot heavier that what is visible in streetview, but I wouldn't be suprised if they made multiple runs to get better pictures of areas that came out bad.

Brian Aker says,

More possible Google Van Shots? While out for lunch yesterday I spotted one of these possible google vans parked in a drive way. So I took a bunch of photos :) One question that has come up, is what is the box labeled "SICK"? The other two boxes are pretty easily identified as cameras or a GPS unit. Link.

Streetviewr says,

Follow up to your story this morning on the vehicle Google is using to take shots for Street View - this passed me on the way in to work this morning: JPEG 1, JPEG 2. I think it's the one since it looks like a similar vehicle to the one someone spotted here. Be interesting to see if images from their side ever appear on the site.

Joshua McFarren says,

Regarding the Google van "Sick" box, Pretty sure thats a laser range-finder. Saw these on a NOVA episode. Almost all the vehicles entered in the DARPA Grand Challenge had multiples of these boxes.

I've posted here before that I love seeing where creative people work: mechanics' garages, artist's studios, scientists' labs, writers' offices. The folks at Dark Horse Comics apparently do too! In July, they're publishing a beautiful hardcover book called "The Artist Within: Portraits of Cartoonist, Comic Book Artists, Animators, and Others." Inside are Greg Preston's striking photos of some of my favorite artists--Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Frank Miller, Adrian Tomine, Coop, Los Bros Hernandez, Peter Bagge, Art Spiegelman, and dozens of others--in their natural habitats. The book features 100 photographs, 100 illustrations, and brief profiles of the subjects and their work. The Artist Within is filled with intimate glimpses of people who have entertained me for years, many of them decades, but most of whom I've never met. It's a delight to put faces with the names and a real treat to finally see where the magic happens.

Link to buy the book, Link to a flipbook preview

Here's an updated post, apols for the error: Link.

Love this 1970s promo for a TV news cast, "Catch 5!" Psychedelic dancing silhouettes and Chuck Mangione style horn playing -- what more could you ask for? Makes me nostalgic for Buffalo 29's "Get to Know Us" bumpers from my boyhood. Link (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

Greg sez, "In an effort to better educate people about the problems of DRM, the fellows down at GrooveShark have started a visual analogies group, "DRM is like..." Highlights include a bike that can only be ridden on special roads and crayons that don't draw in color."

DRM is absurd. Visual analogies help in explaining why DRM is bad. Help us educate the public by adding pictures to this group to help explain the downfalls of DRM.

Link (Thanks, Greg!)

"Favorite Intermissions: Music Before and Between Beethoven, Stravisnky, Holst" is a collection of the ambient intermission sounds--murmurs, coughs, tuning, musical warm-ups--before and after orchestral performances. John Cage would be proud. The compiler, sound artist Christopher DeLaurenti, bootlegged the recordings while attending concerts for seven years. This is his greatest hits from more than 50 recorded hours, presented in 3D binaural audio. John Cage would be proud. From the New York Times, where you can also hear selections from the CD:

“Every composer, every sound artist, every musician, poses a fundamental question to everyone else,” Mr. DeLaurenti said in an interview. “It’s a request to listen. I have faith that in any sound or collection of sounds, music lies therein.

“It does sound crazy,” he continued. “Craziness is the root of many great musical ideas and the source for new ways of listening and considering the world around us..."

Virtually all concert halls ban photography or recording, and contracts with musicians’ unions strictly govern what can be preserved, so Mr. DeLaurenti had to go under cover. He said he was never caught but occasionally drew suspicious looks from ushers.

He honed a technique of often shifting his posture and moving around. “Most people are not observant and rarely look at one thing for longer than 10 seconds,” he said. He also showed unfailing courtesy when questioned. “People don’t want trouble,” he explained.

Link to New York Times, Link to purchase the disc(Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Today I had a remarkable conversation with an anonymous tipster who had a fascinating story to tell about the latest AACS key leak:

The world became a little more magical yesterday with the publication of a new "processing key" that can be used to unlock the AACS copy protection on the latest round of HD-DVD movies. This event is remarkable not only for its timing--barely a week after the release of the discs that the key was intended to secure--but also for the clever way in which the key first appeared on the net. Though this second part of the story hasn't received much attention, it deserves to go down in the annals of hacker lore.

The previous processing key, 09 F9 …, began circulating in February being discovered by a hacker named arnezami. With this 128-bit number, anyone could strip the encryption from every HD-DVD title on the market. The key was reposted on thousands of sites, and quickly made it to the front page of Digg. When Digg tried to censor the key in response to DMCA threats from the AACS authorities, users staged a revolt, reposting it in hundreds of creative ways. The movie studios switched to technological countermeasures, and, starting last week, all new HD-DVD titles were modified so that the key couldn't decrypt them. Hackers began furiously searching for a new key.

In the mean time, Ed Felten of Freedom-to-Tinker satirized the idea that someone could have legal rights to a number. He wrote a blog post, "You Can Own an Integer Too," that gives each reader his or her very own randomly generated 128-bit integer. Hundreds proudly posted their shiny new integers in the comments, some humorously threatening legal action against anyone who would copy them:

BC Says:
5D 4A F0 D9 58 04 3B 06 C8 B2 59 85 A1 5D 6A 88

For the record!! This ones mine. You can look but don't touch.

Anonymous Says:
B8 5C 6D 1E 07 F9 AB 5E 0F 0D 48 A5 3B 1F 6B C7

use it and ill sue! be prepared!

Blending in with the rest was this innocuous looking message from a user named BtCB:

BtCB Says:
Here's mine:
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2

What are the odds that this is the new processing key?
(Hint for arnezami: uv=00000047)

Of course, the odds are basically zero if the number was chosen at random. You have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot four days in a row. So, for more than a week, everyone who read the comment assumed that it was just another joke. But one thing about it was different: the cryptic hint to arnezami, a "uv" number, a pointer to a specific key within the AACS keyspace.

You can probably guess the rest of the story. Eventually someone tipped off arnezami about the strange comment, and he tried using the 45 5F … number to decrypt the new discs. It worked! It really is the new processing key. As a result, all HD-DVDs are open to the public again, at least until new titles can be updated once more.

The next move belongs to the AACS authorities. They're smart enough to know that they can't take the food coloring out of the pool. So will they send out another round of cease-and-desist letters, possibly sparking another revolt, or will they graciously admit defeat for now?

The new issue of Steampunk Magazine (free download, $3 for hardcopy) is out -- tons of steampunk fiction, interviews, and crafts. I love the piece on the environmental impact of coal, and the history of Thomas Edison's animal-torture electrocution exhibitions. 84 pages in all! The fashion guide is great, too:

Explorers are, by definition “persons who investigate unknown regions”. Take a nod from this when dressing yourself, as well. Think tailored garments, but more military-influenced and less I- bought- this- at- the- suit- shop. Leather, silk, linen, tall boots, pith helmets, flying goggles — the list of explorer gear goes on. Try wearing mid-length skirts with the hems buckled up to reveal breeches or cotton bloomers. Billowing sleeves or bustled skirts with tight leather vests or corsets are a definite. Borrow Middle-Eastern and Indian flair from belly dance fashion or take a nod from pioneer garb. Wrap tons of leather belts about your waist and hips or use a piece of rope to tie up your pants or skirt. Ladies — search Ebay or vintage stores for old-fashioned medical cinchers with fan lacing. Gentlemen — tuck your trousers into the tops of your boots and hang a compass and pocketwatch from your belt or rock a kilt and sporran. Mod your own steampunk ray gun from a water pistol and some aerosol paint and wedge it into your belt or your stockings.

Link (via Warren Ellis)

See also Steampunk magazine

Korea has just finished negotiating a free trade agreement with the US that is a complete disaster on copyright. Korea has agreed to give up all fair use to copyrighted works, and has agreed to shut down many of its web-hosting businesses. So much for Korea's power as a global Internet leader. It was nice while it lasted.

In one glaring example, the governments agree to shut down internet sites that permit unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or transmission of copyrighted works-- without reference to exceptions for art, education and critique. If the agreement is ratified, both US and Korean governments will begin shutting down an undisclosed number of peer-to-peer (P2P) and online storage (‘webhard’) services. Korea will also be required to crack down on book copying on university campuses.

The Korea-US FTA could set a dangerous precedent. If ratified, the US is expected to push other countries to accept the similar conditions in their respective FTAs. Much of the ‘piracy’ that the US wants to see cracked down on is of materials copyrighted by large US-based corporations, not individual creators. Since distribution of movies, news, internet software and images is a core area of the US economy, the US government has long been aggressively pushing for stricter copyright and patent regimes in international arenas, including through GATT and WIPO. The Korea-US FTA, represents a new step in this process.

Link (Thanks, Sasha!)

If you're thinking of downgrading to the new iTunes, stop! The new iTunes breaks the ability to convert the music you've bought -- even "DRM-free" songs sold at a 30 percent premium -- into MP3s that will play on your iPod.

While cumbersome, the "buy-burn-rip-to-MP3" workaround has been the primary way to start with a 99 cent iTunes download and end up with an unrestricted MP3 that will play on your Squeezebox, your non-iPod portables, or your MP3-enabled DVD player (it's not about "piracy" -- if that was your bag, you'd have started by downloading the song as an MP3 from the myriad P2P options).

So iTunes users who have an existing library of songs purchased from the iTunes Store may want to consider doing their conversions before they "upgrade" to iTunes 7.2. (Sure, you can "upgrade" some of your DRMd songs to the "DRM-free" higher-quality AAC format for 30 cents each, but remember that this is not currently an option for the vast majority of iTunes tracks.)

Link

Update: Playlist magazine has more on this: "After testing this further, it appears that this problem crops up only when you rip the CD with iTunes. I took the CD made up of protected tracks and ripped it with Amadeus Pro to MP3 format. I brought the resulting tracks into iTunes 7.2 and they transferred to the iPod without a problem."

Update 2: Some people have figured out how to get iTunes to load burned and ripped tracks by rebuilding their libraries. (Thanks, Mark!)

The RU Sirius Show recently had a great show where he interviewed a writer/performer who evokes Hunter S. Thompson in a theater piece called "Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis." A text version of the interview has now been posted on 10 Zen Monkeys.

RU: Is this writing, basically, you trying to do the voice of Hunter S. Thompson? Are you incorporating his stuff? Is it all him? How does it work?

BD: I had originally intended to take certain passages from Fear and Loathing in America : The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist and kind of knit them together. I quickly abandoned that. I knew it wasn't going to work. Also, we would run afoul of copyright issues with the estate and I don't really care for his widow. She's done several stupid things that I really detest. So I didn't want to pour more gasoline on that fire. And unlike Johnny Depp or Bill Murray, I didn't have the luxury of moving into Thompson's house and getting the Hunter experience.

So I did more research and it was the political stuff that he did that really caught my attention. And at that time, I live alone. So I had a great luxury of time to myself to do this. And I really kind of absorbed him through his letters, and went back and re-read things that I had read before, in the context of the letters, to get the complete effect. And I really allowed him to take me over. I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed imagining the world as he would see it.

And it's very easy to translate elements of his frustration -- the Vietnam war to the Iraq war; spineless, useless Democrats to spineless, useless Democrats; vile Republicans to vile Republicans. Oil companies fucking everybody.

Link

I wrote an article for RADAR about 8 ways to use the Web to snoop on people. It's adapted from my upcoming book, Rule the Web: How To Do Anything and Everything on the Internet -- Better, Faster, Easier.

6. How can I find out what political party someone has donated to?

Federal law requires that people who contribute to political campaigns provide their personal information. The Federal Election Commission keeps this data, but its website isn't very easy to use. In fact, it's downright confusing.

That's where Fundrace comes in. Just select "Neighbor Search‚" and type in an address or a name and you'll be presented with a list of the names and addresses of political contributors from the last presidential election, along with how much they contributed.

The searches aren't limited to your neighborhood, of course. I entered "Barbara Bush" in the search field and learned that she contributed $2,000 to the George W. Bush campaign. I clicked on Mrs. Bush's address (10000 Memorial Drive, Houston, TX 77024), which brought up a list of everyone else in the same area that contributed. Lo and behold, a gentleman named Mr. George H. W. Bush at the same address also donated $2,000 to the George W. Bush campaign.

Beyond satisfying your curiosity about your neighbors' political affiliation, you can use Fundrace to organize a block party to raise funds for your party or favorite presidential candidate.

Link

Check out this video of an insanely long queue at London's Heathrow Terminal 4. The YouTube user who posted it says it took him 3.5 hours to clear it. This is a line to pass through the security checkpoint while changing flights in London. I feel safer already. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Stephen Worth says:

At John Kricfalusi's blog, All Kinds of Stuff, a recent series of posts on the negative impact of UPA's stylized cartoons on animation has ignited a firestorm of controversy over a graphic revolution in cartoons that occurred over half a century ago.

John K argues that many of the fundamental principles of good animated filmmaking were totally dispensed with at UPA -- design and layout were emphasized at the expense of character animation, timing and entertainment value. He argues convincingly that the cartoons of UPA (Gerald McBoing Boing, Unicorn in the Garden, Mr. Magoo, etc.) were responsible for the downfall of animation.

As a sidebar to John K's posts on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog, I posted a Quicktime of a cartoon that is both stylized AND expressively animated -- a KoolAid commercial from the late fifties directed by the King of Cartoons, Tex Avery.

New York animator, Michael Sporn reacted angrily to these posts on his own "Splog," incensed that UPA's legacy was being besmirched and furious that the artistic accomplishments of UPA were being compared unfavorably to kiddie commercials with none of the artistic aspirations of UPA's own films: Splog: Aaargh!

Amid Amidi, author of "Cartoon Modern", a book on modern design in animation, entered the fray and launched a volley of his own- first in the comments on Sporn's post and then on his own blog: Cartoon Brew: The Great UPA Debate.

The comments from the readers on all of these posts are just as interesting as the posts themselves, with impassioned arguments on both sides of the fence from cartoon fans, animation historians and top industry professionals.

Anyone who loves to really think about cartoons and analyze their impact and importance to the art of filmmaking will find hours of engaging reading by going through all these posts and reading the wide spectrum of opinions presented there. (Folks who like to see dogfights between pig-biting-mad cartoonists will find plenty of entertainment value in here too!)

(It's worth noting that while this Kool Aid commercial contains many admirable elements, its characterization of Native American people would now be widely acknowledged as racist. Like other artifacts of this period, this book reflects the popular culture of its time.) Link

In his charming essay in the Austin Chronicle, Wayne Alan Brenner writes about how he introduced the Fantastic Four to his daughter and how his daughter introduced Naruto to him.

By the time I'd finished the third volume, I was hooked. The characters, a group of young adolescents trying to survive the rigors of their renowned village's ninja academy, were so wonderfully fleshed out by mangaka Musashi Kishimoto – in the writing and the drawing. These weren't stock characters with a few choice quirks added for identification's sake. These were kids – Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Rock Lee, Ino, Shikamaru, et al. – with complex backstories informing their decisions, with choices made based on hard-won personal knowledge and social machinations going back generations. Here were astonishing skills and martial techniques that weren't the result of gamma-ray mishap or genetic cataclysm but, instead, years of dedicated physical training and the study of ancient ways of controlling the body's natural energies. A slapdash junk load of mystical mumbo-jumbo requiring much suspension of disbelief, at times, yes; but compelling nonetheless.

And the drawing! The sharp delineation of the characters and their environment, the pacing, the rhythms of accelerated time arranged in strategic panels. The shorthand depiction of motion and speed and impact, the sheer cinematic direction of the battles fought, ink lines flying like shuriken against the masked background or the panel's stark white. Roll over, Jack Kirby, and tell Steve Ditko the news from Japan.

Link

BB reader John says,

Suggested addition of a new word into the language of the web. Screwgle, as in "My wife caught me leaving a strip club on Google Street View, I got screwgled!”

Previous BB posts: 1, 2, 3.

Nick says:

I've linked my some photos I loaded on flickr. On my recent backpacking trip through Asia, I came upon this claw game in Osaka, called sub Marine Catcher. For only 200 yen ($2) you can try your hand at winning a live lobster. I'm not really sure how you get the lobster home but there was a pile of newspaper nearby.

Link

Reader comment:

Scott says:

Dick's Last Resort in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter has had one of these for years. If you ever ventured down to Comicon you would know that. It's a popular haunt for artists and fanboys alike.

Here's a billboard in Pennsylvania designed to stimulate the pleasure centers of people who think Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Link (Thanks, Josh!)

Reader comment:

A Boing Boing reader says:

This post reminded me of a painting in a similar naïve style, painted on plywood, that hung in the cafeteria in the US embassy -- formerly Saddam's Palace -- in Baghdad. It showed the Twin Towers, with a plane crashing into them, and the logos of both the NYPD and NYFD, and then Marine and Army logos and an inscription like, "They did not die in vain, we continue their fight." It was slapped on a wall of tilework and Koranic inscriptions.

Feel free to post this comment. Maybe someone who was in Baghdad has a picture. But since this was all work related, please do not print my name or identification.

In 1901 a mining engineer named J.B. Watson was said to have dropped plumb bobs down two 4250 foot mine shafts spaced 3200 feet apart. His measurements indicated that the plumb lines were farther apart at the bottom than than they were at the top. In other words, they diverged as they descended. Common sense would tell you that the lines would converge as they descended, because the lines should point towards the center of the Earth.

For the last century, some people like to point to the Tamarack Mines experiment as proof that the Earth is hollow.

Donald E. Simanek, who writes for MAKE magazine about curious physics (here's his article about perpetual motion that appeared in Vol 9), has an excellent article on his website that recounts the history of the alleged experiment, and examines the different frequently-offered reasons why plumb lines might diverge like this. Link

Reader comment:

Charles says:

It's not just the Hollow Earthers who have a problem with the prevailing theories. Here is an article I posted a while ago people who thought the earth was flat, or perhaps wavy. There's 5,000 bucks in it if you can prove them wrong. Pity we didn't have satellite photos in 1931. Link

Gordon Holmes, a technician at Bradford University and Loch Ness Monster researcher, claims that he has caught Nessie on video. He was at the Loch ttempting to listen for Nessie using hydrophone equipment when he noticed something unusual moving in the water and grabbed his video camera. If you have a comment on the video, please post it to Cryptomundo at the link below. From the Yorkshire Post News:

(Holmes said:) "It wasn't a wave because it was going in the opposite direction to the waves that I could see and the top half of it seemed to be black.

"My camcorder was on a black and white setting and it took me a while to find it again in the water, but I've got two-and-half-minutes of footage which I have shown to experts and they think it is definitely a living creature."

Mr Holmes arranged for the footage to be played on a TV at a shop in Inverness and he has also shown it to biologist Adrian Shine and Dick Raynor, of the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre.

Link to Cryptomundo post, Link to YouTube video, Link to Yorkshire Post News

UPDATE: Cryptomundo has posted stabilizations, including one at half-speed, of the video. Link

Fisherman Yustinus Lahama hooked this coelacanth off Sulawesi island, Indonesia. A favorite of cryptozoologists, the coelacanth was thought to have been extinct for 65 million years until one was found in 1938 off the coast of Africa. For most of the century, scientists believed that the coelacanth only lived in that region, but then in 1998 a different species of the fish was discovered near Indonesia. From National Geographic:

(This) four-foot (1.2-meter), 110-pound (50-kilogram) specimen lived for 17 hours in a quarantine pool, an "extraordinary" feat considering the cold, deep-sea habitat of the fish, marine biologist Lucky Lumingas of the local Sam Ratulangi University told the Associated Press. Lumingas plans to study the carcass.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Coelacanth in danger Link
• Coelacanth caught on video Link
• Video: Indonesian coelacanth Link