Here we have Telly Savalas serenading a giant disembodied Stepford Wife head with his famous talk-singing version of "If." Be careful with that cigarette, Telly -- you almost burned her! 
Werewolf Specimen and Hunting Kit
Link
Alex CF, who did the amazing "Lovecraftian Specimen Jars" in my Wired Steampunk piece, has a new piece up for auction on eBay UK. It's a seriously cool Werewolf Research Kit, complete with an albino lycanthrope foetus in a jar, handwritten notes and drawings, other forensic samples, and some silver bullets to have on hand, just in case.
Surreal video for Arkansas seafood buffet
David Lynch couldn't come up with a creepier, less-appetizing video for a restaurant. These slow pan/zooms of a deserted restaurant and countless steel bins loaded with breaded and deep fried fish parts, accompanied by melancholy new age music are both horrific and entrancing. (Note: video was taken down, so here's a link to some photos of the buffet, instead). YouTube Link (Thanks, Sam!)
Wheat field as software
Link (Thanks, Rick!)The German programmer, Bernd Hopfengärtner, wrote in Semacode, a type of visual code that contains "machine readable information" that can be used to graphically encode web-links. Since the code is visual, Ben was able to take a picture of his 160 square meter programming artwork from an airplane and have a machine read the code to output the words "Hello, World!"
Update: Nicolas sez, "It's not Semacode, but Data Matrix. All the Semacode company does is offer an SDK that will encode a URL into a data matrix label. Reading Semacode's website, they go out of their way to hide the fact that they use Data Matrix and that they didn't invent it, nor do they own it, nor that anyone can create it."
Massive margarita mixer
Link (Thanks, Richard!)This past weekend, my wife and I attended a family wedding for one of her cousins. My wife's uncle (and the father of the groom) is a bit of a tinkerer and a prankster. We also suspect he's slightly crazy, but that's beside the point.
When you've got a small-block 400, a trailer, assorted parts and the ability to custom fabricate a 6-inch tall replica of a blender blade out of stainless steel, what do you do with your spare time?
Make the world's fastest margarita machine.
Update: Autumn sez, "I thought you might want to tell folks in the SF bay area that tomorrow (Wed 6/20) there's a class at the TechShop on making a DIY Margarita Machine that still has lots of seats left open."
Update 2: Brett sez, "Here's the Flickr set of that wonderful machine."
Crazed freeway interchanges
Lessig switches from copyright to corruption
Larry has posted an expanded piece about this to his blog, explaining his decision to move on after ten years. He suggests that the open Internet and a culture of sharing and remix will make it easier to fight the bigger problem of corruption.
Lessig inspired me -- his writing and work changed my life forever, and I'm not the only one. It's amazing to see him moving on to tackle this new issue. I'm looking forward to following where he leads.
From a public policy perspective, the question of extending existing copyright terms is, as Milton Friedman put it, a "no brainer." As the Gowers Commission concluded in Britain, a government should never extend an existing copyright term. No public regarding justification could justify the extraordinary deadweight loss that such extensions impose.LinkYet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea -- both Britain and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?
The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.
The point of course is not new. Indeed, the fear of factions is as old as the Republic. There are thousands who are doing amazing work to make clear just how corrupt this system has become. There have been scores of solutions proposed. This is not a field lacking in good work, or in people who can do this work well.
We-Fi, collaborative open WiFi mapping
My pal Pablos (creator of the Hackerbot, among other ingenious stuff) writes in about his latest project, We-Fi: "Our goal is to make open Wi-Fi act more like a wireless infrastructure that can compete with 3G networks, except freely created and shared by the users. We want to be able to get on fast, free Wi-Fi wherever we go, so we're building the tools to make that possible. Today we are releasing the first version of our client that replaces the wireless connection manager in Windows. It tests all the networks around you and automatically connects you to the best one. Metrics about all the access points users see are reported to our server, and we show them on a map, so you can see where there is open Wi-Fi coverage - updated constantly, in real time, by the WeFi users. Take a look at San Francisco on our map, for a good example." Link (Thanks, Pablos!)
An exquisite popsicle that puts all other ice cream bars to shame
Simon says: "After all your extensive posts about how lame the common American ice cream bar is, this post on Serious Eats just rubs more salt into the wounds of our shamed nation. I can only conclude that Korea truly is light years ahead of us in snack design, craftsmanship and production technology." Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer
Last photographs from Iraq
A first-person essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, whose work from Iraq has appeared in the New York Times:
I didn’t want to go back. When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.Link. Above: "American soldiers take a biometric scan of [Iraqi detainee] Ziad." (Thanks, Clayton)
Gilbertson has a book coming out soon -- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, "A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War." Here's a recent radio interview on NPR's "Fresh Air."
Furries and an Escalade (video)
Cosplayas, crunk juice, and spinnin' rims. This video needs not much more in the way of a description. Link. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)
eBaywatch: Playboy "Big Bunny" DC-9 stuff from 1970
Whoah, much badness of ass in this eBay auction, spotted by Fleshbot -- sexy avionics kitschery from Hugh Hefner's 1970 "Big Bunny" DC-9 aircraft:
Described in press materials at the time of its inaugural flight as "Hef's sky-high hutch" and "a floating bachelor pad", the "Big Bunny" was the ultimate in sexy jet-set fabulosity ... and now you have a chance to own the actual fiberglass panels from the original model of Hef's private quarters on the plane as well as a pile of ephemera related to the project (even if you'll have to go to London to pick them up if you're the lucky high bidder).Link to Fleshbot post, Link to eBay auction. There's some fancy cosplay fixins in here, too -- flight suits and other goodies. (thanks, Jonno!)
Deconstructing scammy junkmail
LinkI got this piece of junk mail today ["A Message From The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau"] that I thought was pretty funny. It came from The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau. In reality, it's from some publishing house in Denver, Co who won't leave me alone and let my subscription to their Inside Photoshop magazine expire. I almost don't want to call them because they keep getting more and more inventive with their junk mail.
I guess as long as they keep sending me them, I'll keep reading them. And as long as they are not invoices, I'll keep not paying them.
Josh Wolf on Colbert Report
I missed blogger Josh Wolf's appearance on The Colbert Report on June 12, 2007. Here it is. As you'll recall Wolf was jailed for 228 days for refusing the government's request to turn over video he'd shot of a G8 protest in San Francisco. Wolf was articulate and did a great job of defending himself against Colbert's faux attack. Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Free Josh Wolf: update on jailed San Francisco video-blogger
• Josh Wolf remains in jail, dad starts "nonstop" vigil
• Vlogger Josh Wolf breaks jail time record for subpoena refusal
• Videoblogger Josh Wolf returns to prison today
• Court rejects Josh Wolf's appeal, return to prison possible
• Josh Wolf released on bail from SF Bay Area jail
Profile and videos of New Hampshire tax protester
At a press conference on Monday, Brown told reporters, "We either walk out of here free or we die."A standoff [is] brewing in New Hampshire where tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown have barricaded themselves in what has been described as a “fortress-like compound” after they were convicted of refusing to pay income tax to the federal government earlier this year. In recent days their phone, power and internet have been cut off and camouflaged SWAT teams, helicopters, armored vehicles and possibly combat robots have descended on this formerly quiet area. Supporters of the Browns have also flocked to the compound and Ed “is armed and has promised a Waco like ending … he will not be taken alive.”
How to spend $1.13 mailing a letter that should be 41 cents
I thought you'd get a kick out of the ridiculousness that is the United States Postal "Service." I'm getting married at the end of the summer and am using a lovely red No 10 standard size envelope. The problem is that I decide to get funky. Instead of addressing the envelopes normally, I decided to orient the envelope vertically and put the stamp at the top (what would be the lower right-hand corner in a normal horizontal envelope).
Since the envelope is still the same size, I mistakenly thought that the postage would be 41 cents. Oh how I was wrong! My invitations all came back to me asking for 17 more cents. I brought them back to the post office, where the surprisingly friendly staff explained that since the simple act of spinning my envelope 90 degrees increased my postage to 58 cents. So I bought the extra stamps and sent the invitations on their merry way. Friends emailed and called to say they received their invites. All but one, that is, because one invitation was returned to me AGAIN. This time the post office was asking for 22 more cents.
So I returned to the post office and was told that the previous post office employee who told me that the envelopes were 58 cents was wrong. And the postal employee who thought that the envelope should’ve been 80 cents and returned it to me again was also wrong. Instead the envelope should be $1.13 and I owed 55 more cents to mail the letter. Apparently, I was lucky that the other 47 invitations were mailed out and delivered in a timely fashion. They all should’ve been $1.13, not 58 cents.
When I asked the postal employee how I could insure that any of my other letters would be delivered if no one seemed to know the correct postage she didn’t have a good answer for me.
Reader comment:
Michael says:
I work in a post office, so I think I can clear up some of this, but mind you this is off the top of my head.We have a template that shows the acceptable fraction of height to width for a standard 41 cent letter. Now, while you might think it would be the same either way, remember what has to read this: Machines. If it doesn't fit the template, it won't fit through the machine correctly, and has to be sorted differently. 58 cents is the postage for an oversize envelope (Or one that is 1-2 ounces.)
Now where do the other numbers come in? I couldn't explain the 80 cents, because it is not a common charge, but $1.13 sounds like it was mailed as a "flat," which is in line with most sheet-sized manila envelopes, because it failed one of the maximum dimensions for a letter, namely the height. The first group sent back probably occurred when they were loading letters into the machine scanner, while the last one may have simply been a random occurrence of over-zealous postmaster.
What can you do to prevent this in the future? Well, obviously, not do this again, believe me, its a hassle for the postal employees too... we're not just out to get you! But other than that, mail them at the post office. They can tell you exactly if anything is wrong with the postage, and also you might get a lenient or simply nice one who will postmark it before accepting it, which effectively states that this envelope is OKed. You might have some luck, or you might get someone explaining the same thing I did and require you to pay more.
Good luck!
Bicyclist's account of getting tased by cops at Minneapolis St Paul international airport
LinkI stated again, 'You are being rude to me and I want to speak to your supervisor'. Officer Wingate then said, 'Look, you're wasting our time. We were on a call to the Humphrey Terminal for a runaway teenage girl, and we would have been there by now.' I completely agreed that it was a waste of time for everybody. I noted that I was not being cited for any violation, nor told any statute that I had violated. I explained that I would follow the first and most reasonable, safety-wise, of the conflicting orders given to me, and then said 'I'm going to wish you both a good evening, and hope the rest of it goes better than this has gone.' I then got on my bike and began to leave.
I was instantly and with absolutely no verbal warning whatsoever attacked from behind and thrown to the ground. I received wounds to chin and arm. The impact put a new casing crack on my helmet. My glasses were thrown off by the impact and bounced several feet away. The bicycle continued to roll forwards a few feet, coming to a stop in the center of the road. (A gold van would later have to stop, because the bike was crumpled in the middle of the one lane road.) Officer Wingate then came up behind me and jerked me up into a standing position. I then heard him yell an order to Officer Bryant -- 'Shoot him!'. Officer Bryant then shot me with the taser. I fell uncontrolled to the pavement for the second time, experiencing the full force of a weapon that can only be considered barbaric.
Printers lie about empty carts
The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's Easyhare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.Link
Email gets fourth amendment protection again
In a tremendous victory for privacy rights, the US 6th circuit court has restored the power of 4th amendment protection to emails stored on a remote host like an ISP or Webmail, striking down sections of the Stored Communications Act which have been routinely used to grab emails without a warrant.Link (Thanks, Brad!)The court agreed with an amicus brief filed by EFF attorney Kevin Bankston that people did have a reasonable expectation of privacy on their emails even when not stored on their home systems. This decision will make life far easier for users, and for operators of hosted email services like Google's Gmail.
The irony is that the brief was written by the same Kevin Bankston reported last week in Boing Boing who got such a runaround from Google over a request to pull his face from Google Street View.
Update: EFF's Kevin Bankston adds, "You should point out that the amicus effort in Warshak was a joint one--our cosigners ACLU (special thanks to Catherine Crump) and CDT (special thanks to Jim Dempsey) played a key part in creating our amicus brief, as did my colleague at EFF, Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. Credit is also due to law professors Susan Freiwald and Patricia Bellia who also wrote an amicus brief--signed on to by an impressive coalition of professors--that the court relied on very heavily. Finally and of course, credit goes to Mr. Warshak's counsel Martin Weinberg, who brought the case and successfully argued it in front of both the district court and the appeals court."
Video games hidden in the grooves of LPs
Link (Thanks, Sean!)A gigantic step up from encoded text files were actual games included in the grooves of records. In 1984, The Thompson Twins released 'The Thompson Twins Adventure Game' in both regular vinyl and flexi disc formats.
This one has survived the ravages of time and is available for download online. You can play it in your web browser by clicking this link. The game is a bizarre text-based adventure in which you guide the Thompson Twins around a land of beaches and caves. If you didn't grow up playing these games, in which you have to keep a map on paper and guess which key verbs the programmers used for certain actions, you may find it a bit frustrating. I poked around a little, but I haven't played it enough to see how it ends. If you go north from the first screen, the Thompson Twins drown en masse. As always, the British say it best: "And, what a surprise, having deafened my family recording it onto tape on our dodgy stereo, when the game finally worked, it was crap. Bloody stupid Eighties floppy haired innumerate Chesterfield talentless ponces."
World's worst currencies
I bought some 100,000,000 Dinar notes in Serbia last week with Nicola Tesla on them -- I think I paid about $1 for the note, and apparently, this is the highest value that note ever had.
ZimbabweLink
Currency: Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD)
Inflation rate: 3,714 percent and rising
Exchange rate: Officially, 250 ZWD per US$1; unofficially, as high as 750 ZWD to the U.S. dollar
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