But actually, the research in the cases that we’ve gleaned from actual law enforcement files, for example, suggests a different reality for these crimes. So first fact is that the predominant online sex crime victims are not young children. They are teenagers. There’s almost no victims in the sample that we collected from – a representative sample of law enforcement cases that involved the child under the age of 13.LinkIn the predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence, stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor. Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating with.
So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who are considerably older than themselves.
Sexual predators online - the real story
Pac-Man skull
Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)"PacMan’s skeleton, conceived by Le Gentil Garçon, in collaboration with François Escuilié, palaeontologist, from the comparative observation of human and various predatory animal skulls. 2004, Resin, diameter: 65 cm."
Previously on BB:
• Cartoon character skeletons Link
• Artificial cartoon-character skeletons Link
Creepy, interesting, and real -- a short link roundup.
YouTube and Google to test copyright filtering, ATT too
Today, news that AT&T plans to do effectively the same to their phone and data subscribers (Wired, LA Times). Snip:
"The risk AT&T faces is fighting the last war by spending money and energy plugging an old hole in the wall when new ones are breaking out," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The San Francisco digital-rights organization has sued AT&T, alleging it illegally released customers' phone data to the federal government.Technology is putting unlimited copying power in the hands of consumers, Von Lohmann said, so the answer to piracy can't be trying to stop them from making copies.
"The answer should be to figure out how to turn them into paying customers," he said.
Scans of comic book ads
Ben Smith went to a garage sale and picked up a grocery bag full of Silver Age comics (and some Zaps, too). I'm so envious I could kill him. At least he was kind enough to scan some of his favorite ads from the pages. All of them bring back memories. Did anyone buy this Polaris Nuclear sub for $6.98? If you did, add a comment to Ben's Flickr site. Better yet, if you still have your sub, take a photo and send it to me.
If you like old comic book ads, I highly recommend the book Hey Skinny!, which is out of print. Used copies are for sale at Amazon for $6.67 and up.
Jamais Cascio on his new hearing aids
LinkThese aren't just dumb amplifiers; they're little digital signal processors, small enough to fit into the ear canal, and smart enough to know when to boost the input and when to leave it alone. They're programmable, too (sadly, not by the end-user -- programming requires an acoustic enclosure, not just a computer connection). And here's where therapeutic augmentation starts to fuzz into enhancement: one of the program modes I'm considering would give me far better than normal hearing, allowing me to pick up distant conversations like I was standing right there...
I expect that, over the next decade, hearing aid technologies will have improved enough that most of the drawbacks will have been rectified, and I'll have access to hearing capabilities better than ever before; over that same time, we may see biomedical advances that can fix deficient hearing, restoring perfectly functional natural hearing. Augmentation for therapy slides inexorably into augmentation for enhancement. Should I give up my better-than-human hearing to go back to a "natural" state?
Previously on BB:
• Simians, Cyborgs, and Gareth Brawnyn Link
• Musician requests truly badass bone conduction hearing aid Link
• Hearing aid museum Link
• Deaf hacker rewrites implant-firmware Link
Guatemala: very large earthquake
I just spoke to a friend in Guatemala who says there's just been a very large seismic event -- at or over 7.2, is what local news says. No official reports of injury or damage, and no report from Guatemala's institute of Seismology. I'm hearing it was centered near the southern coastal area of Escuintla, 70 miles away from the capital, Guatemala City -- and that the quake was very deep, but they're not expecting tsunamis. I spent the better part of the last month working on a documentary series in Guatemala. The area where this quake hit was heavily waterlogged from intense rains over the last few weeks, there was flooding and some small mudslides... I wonder if there will be reports of further damage of that kind, it's possible that a quake this strong would dislodge wet soil.
I've spoken to a number of people on the phone since the quake hit, and it was felt in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala City, and as far north as some of the small indigenous towns in the upper part of the department of Sololá.
The quake just happened within the past hour.
Update: Reuters says 6.8: Link (in Spanish). Ah, here's a CNN report (thanks, Seth Rosner). The quake hit at 3:29PM ET, 1:29PM Guatemala Time. People felt it as far away as Mexico and the capital city in El Salvador, and the activity even registered on seismographs 1,800 miles away (!) on Midway Island.
Early reports indicated some homes were damaged and people may be missing, journalist Patzy Vazquez told CNN en Español. Torrential rains have made telephone communication difficult, hampering efforts of rescuers trying to reach the region. The USGS has received no confirmed reports of damage or casualties, and no immediate reports of aftershocks, the agency's Rafael Abreu told CNN. As a precaution, authorities were evacuating high-rise buildings and homes that might be vulnerable to damage if there were any aftershocks.(map image ganked from cnn.com)
The Cosmoboy jacket
I dig The Cosmoboy, "a red reversible whipcord vest jacket" by Pierre Cardin. Just $250... in 1967.Link
UPDATE: BB reader Neil says, "The Cosmoboy jacket immediately reminded me of Captain Scarlet, the follow-up to Thunderbirds which came out in 1967. The jacket is identical to the Spectrum uniform." LinkGoogle, Intel, Climate Savers wage war on energy-wasting PCs
A number of tech firms, nonprofits, universities, and others (huh, even Starbucks) are teaming up in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative -- a consortium formed to improve energy efficiency in computing. Announcement on the Google Blog here, press release here.
Started by Google and Intel, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative brings together industry, consumers, government, and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers. Believe it or not, the average desktop PC wastes over half the power delivered to it! Servers are slightly more efficient but still squander about one-third of the power consumed. This wasted electricity unnecessarily increases the cost to power computers and also increases the emissions of greenhouse gases. Improving the energy efficiency of computers is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce electricity consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.Much talk around the blog'n'newsosphere today: SJ Merc, NYT, Ars Technica, AP, and elsewhere. (Thanks, Nate Tyler!)Through more efficient design optimized for power consumption alongside speed, capacity and cost, together with use of power-saving technologies, the electricity required to power computers can be significantly reduced while at the same time increasing their computing capabilities. As participants in this program, computer and component manufacturers commit to produce products that meet specified power-efficiency targets, and corporate participants commit to purchase power-efficient computing products.
Michael Gorman's anti-Internet rant
Over at the Britannica weblog, Michael Gorman, the former American Library Ass'n head, has an anti-internet rant entitled "Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters", to which a number of of us have now replied:Link"The success of Wikipedia forces a profound question on print culture: how is information is to be shared with the majority of the population? This is an especially tough question, as print culture has so manifestly failed at the transition to a world of unlimited perfect copies. Because Wikipedia’s contents are both useful and available, it has eroded the monopoly held by earlier modes of production. Other encyclopedias now have to compete for value to the user, and they are failing because their model mainly commits them to denying access and forbidding sharing. If Gorman wants more people reading Britannica, the choice lies with its management. Were they to allow users unfettered access to read and share Britannica’s content tomorrow, the only interesting question is whether their readership would rise a ten-fold or a hundred-fold.
Britannica will tell you that they don’t want to compete on universality of access or sharability, but this is the lament of the scribe who thinks that writing fast shouldn’t be part of the test. In a world where copies have become cost-free, people who expend their resources to prevent access or sharing are forgoing the principal advantages of the new tools, and this dilemma is common to every institution modeled on the scarcity and fragility of physical copies. Academic libraries, which in earlier days provided a service, have outsourced themselves as bouncers to publishers like Reed-Elsevier; their principal job, in the digital realm, is to prevent interested readers from gaining access to scholarly material."
Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
For the last couple of weeks, I've been posting photos of the ugly-looking character popsicles sold on ice cream trucks.
They don't have to be so shoddy. Admire the beauty of this Korean red bean ice cream fish, which looks exactly like the image on the wrapper. American frozen novelty makers have much to learn from the Koreans.
Lex10 says it's "packed in an ice cream cone material casing & shaped like a fish. Cool & delish!" Link
Website helps you get your grandparents FBI files
LinkEver wonder who in your family had a "colorful" history? Did Aunt Mary lead anti-war demonstrations? Was Grandpa Joe a smuggler during Prohibition? GetGrandpasFBIFile.Com will automatically generate the letters you need to send in to get a (deceased) relative's FBI files. The site was created by a couple of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) advocates as a way of spreading the FOIA meme.
Inside the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
A new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is now under construction. The 80-year-old span that's being replaced may be familiar to people living outside the Bay Area because it appeared all over the news in 1989 when it partially collapsed during the big earthquake. Flickr user and construction worker SF Emperor took an amazing set of photos from inside the new span as it's being built. More background at Telstar Logistics. LinkCreationist Archie comic
Shannon says:
These are scans of an issue of "Archie's Parables." In it, good Christian/old west sheriff Archie starts up a Christian book store to help offset the evil of evolution being taught in school and the "filthy books" being sold at the trading post.The worst thing of all about this story, if you ask me, is the lousy attempt at drawing Dan Decarlo's sexy versions of Betty and Veronica. Link
Reader comment:
A Boing Boing reader says:
Saw the creationist Archie link this morning, reminded me of a more entertaining homage.
Eugene says:
The Archie comic you posted on Boing Boing earlier today contains more than mere creationist blather. The references to teachers having "...their hands full ever since they started to bus students across the prairie" and students acting like monkies seem to be intended as a rather nasty (and racist) attack on the desegregation busing schemes implemented in a number of American school districts during the 1970s. It really dates the comic. (I think this is actually worse than the inept Dan Decarlo ripoffs, but that's just me.)
Yahoo: dissident shareholders' anti-censor, pro-human rights move blocked
Yahoo shareholders rejected approximately 2-to-1 a proposal that would have tied executive compensation to competitive performance. They also rejected, by wider margins, proposals to establish a committee to oversee Yahoo’s human rights practices and to require the company to fight censorship and protect freedom of access to the Internet in countries with repressive regimes.LinkHuman rights groups have criticized Yahoo for helping Chinese authorities identify dissidents who were later imprisoned. Some of those dissidents and their relatives have recently sued Yahoo in federal court.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder and “chief Yahoo,” said at the meeting that the company had been actively lobbying the United States government to assist Internet companies in fighting censorship and protecting human rights in countries like China. Yahoo has also been working with academics, nongovernmental organizations and others to create a set of principles to protect freedom of expression, he said.
“Yahoo is committed to protecting human rights globally,” Mr. Yang said. His presentation drew a round of applause from many of the estimated 100 shareholders.
Commercially manufactured anti-vandal mailboxes in The Atlantic
LinkNationwide there are now a dozen or so manufacturers of mailbox-defense systems and vandal-resistant mailboxes. The Pivoting Post Company makes an arm that swings the mailbox away on impact; this is supposed to preserve the mailbox intact. Jandmar makes the MaiLocker, which has a peaked roof and a Darth Vaderesque aspect, and according to company literature, it is the product of "several years of research and testing." EPM sells the Vandalgard, a hardened encasement with a prominent dorsal fin which wraps around a pre-existing mailbox; the company claims that the device will put "an end to damage from baseball bats, rocks, water balloons, snow plow discharge, beer bottles, and shotguns."
Judging by the letters and e-mails [Veeders Mailbox founder Jonathan] Magro receives from satisfied customers, one of the motives behind splurging on an expensive and durable mailbox is the hope that troublemakers will learn of it the hard way--by swinging at it while leaning from a car traveling at a high rate of speed. "We've had it now for some 12 or so years," one pleased customer from Massachusetts wrote last December, "and have often been awakened in the middle of the night with the sound of a ball bat, pipe or some other implement hitting the box, followed shortly thereafter by a scream."
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Ugly mailboxes blog
• Survival of the fittest mailbox
• Fortified mailboxes, part 2
• Mailboxes that fight back
Reader comment:
Kieran says:
After reading through your recent stories about "indestructable mailboxes", I went searching for an NPR story I heard awhile ago on the topic. Unfortunately I cannot locate it on their website, or on the ole intertubes, but thought it was relevant to the discussion.The story was about a farmer who's mailbox was regularly getting smashed and he grew tired of replacing it. What he decided to do was teach the kids a lesson by giving them a surprise on their next attempt. He put the mailbox on a steel pole, embedded it several feet in the ground, and poured in a heavy concrete base. I believe he reinforced the mailbox itself as well, but all of this was done in such a way that it did not appear fotified.
Eventually the kids came back for another run, one of them wound up and swung at the mailbox, and because it was so strong, when he hit it the bat rebounded and struck him in the head, killing him instantly. The kid's family sued and won, I believe the grounds were that because the farmer intentionally built the mailbox in such a way that it appeared to be normal, but in fact was extrodinarily strong, he was complicit in the boy's death.
The reason I bring this up, many of the comments people sent in about your mailbox post were of the nature of "this will learn em". Extreme caution is warranted, because as in the example I cited above, if your actions result in an injury, you could be liable.
Jasmina Tešanović: Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
Text: Jasmina Tešanović
Photos: Women In Black, Serbia
Done: another war criminal from the infamous Serbian nineties was
convicted yesterday in The Hague international court for war crimes.
Milan Martic, the leader of Serbs in Croatia, got 35 years although he
pleaded not guilty.
Yesterday too, Mira Markovic, the fugitive wife of the late president Slobodan Milosevic, was formally accused of organized crime: smuggling cigarettes in Croatia in the nineties. She laughed the accusation off with her usual bluster: I am a poet, I am a lady, this is ridiculous.
Under the rule of Milosevic and his special troops and secret police,
the smuggling of cigarettes and other goods at the borders was in fact
a major source of income for the regime: a criminalization of the
country and the harbinger of genocide.
The special military group, the Scorpions, recently on trial here in Belgrade, run those affairs on the ground. On the other side of the border, within Croatia, Milan Martic led all the local ethnic Serbian insurgency against the Croats and created a puppet state, Srpska Krajina.
In this no man's land beyond the law, black-market trafficking flourished, in diesel fuel, cigarettes, and human beings: men, women, alive and dead. The bloodshed of Vukovar city in 1991 was the major success of this political mafia. The tragic aftermath was the exodus of 350,000 Serbs in 1995 when the new Croatian state invaded and shelled the puppet local government of Martic and Milosevic, crushing it in "Operation Storm."
Croatian minister: I will find the identity of my YouTube heckler
Link (Thanks, Mrak!)20 days ago you had an article about Croatian opposition party which walked out of Croatian Parliament because of YouTube videos which mock interior minister Ivica Kirin.
Today, new session of Parliament meeting started and opposition party members walked in wearing t-shirts with stylized YouTube logo in crosshairs. They are demanding resignation of our interior minister as well as formation of investigating committee which is supposed to find out if Mr. Kirin abused his power and ordered tracking of internet servers as he claimed.
This is quote important since we really do not know if he (minister) ordered investigation on who uploaded funny clips about him on Internet (he is also coordinator of secret services in Croatia). This is a serious precedent and possible (while still unlikely) invasion of our rights as well as stomping on freedom of speech on the Internet.
President's office says FOIA request will take 200 years!
Steampunk computing
The designer of this hand-built steampunk PC explains his motives: "Due to both the lack of creativity in most of the technically inclined and refinements in plastic forming and mass production, the home computer was denied what I feel to be the proudest time in the life of any technological device. It was robbed of the fleeting, wonderful period right after invention, where it is celebrated and honored by the finest craftsman and creative minds, and given a structure befitting its potential and greatness. It was essentially denied a 'novelty period'."
That's quite a maker manifesto -- and besides the PC, the same person made a h4wt flatbed scanner a la steampunk, that he plans to offer as a commercial product. Link (Thanks, Alexander!)
POUND: short film by Evan Bernard
A very clever short film by Evan Bernard.Video Link (complicated hip-hop handshakes of thanks to both Sean Bonner and Glen E. Friedman)
Reader comment: Marnie says,
The Pound video by Evan Bernard reminded me of this music video for DJ Medhi's "I Am Somebody" from about a year earlier.
Weird toy: Gun of Baseball
Margret sent me a link to her photos, video, and description of a Chinese toy called "Gun of Baseball," which reminded her of a similarly odd toy I bought at a dollar store, called a "fulchau."
This has several features in common with the Fulchau, aside from the sheer randomness of it all. The first is the whistle. Both the Fulchau and the Gun of Baseball have whistles on one end. The second feature is the light. It is very important while building a toy of chaos to include a light. This guides the spirits of destruction to your vicinity. The third item is the inclusion of some kind of human element. The Fulchau has a doll head, the Gun of Baseball has the baseball playing figure. Why? Seriously, can you see the purpose of this item? It's not loud enough to be of any use in a baseball game. What does baseball have to do with yellow guns anyway? And why the whistle?Link
Italian police arrest "ninja" robber
He was caught carrying night scopes and a head torch.Link
When asked about his chosen disguise, he told police he had been inspired by his boyhood idol - Robin Hood.
Nautilus-inspired office space
From the article:
The offices have an attacking octopus couch, a secret lounge hidden behind a bookcase, captain's quarters and a steampunk bike rack, plus a ton of other Victorian details...Link
For the Three Rings project, Because We Can referenced Victorian photo books, appearances of The Nautilus in film and, of course, Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. "We didn't want ours to be a direct copy of Disney or League of Extraordinary Gentleman," says McGrew...
Originally, the back wall (seen here) was going to host a mock submarine bridge, but Three Rings didn't want to sacrifice the work space for a nonfunctional design element. "We decided to make a fake ladder and ceiling hatch," explains Northrup. They plan to add a sign reading: "This way to bridge: authorized personnel only."
the latest
latest episodes
