A blurb just issued from NASA reads, "A severe dust storm is underway on Mars, causing an energy crisis for NASA's Mars rovers. Dust in the atmosphere over Opportunity has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight, leaving only the limited diffuse sky light to power the rover." Link to audio and video. Here's more, and still more.

BoingBoing reader Roy Berman says,

On this day of the release of the final Harry Potter volume, I thought other BB readers would be interested in seeing some scans from two completely fake sequel novels published in China, as well as a very slick Harry Potter fan manga published in Japan.

The two Chinese books, "Harry Potter and the Filler of Big" and "Harry Potter and Beaker and Burn," were purchased in ordinary bookshops in China about 4 years ago, shelved with the Chinese translations of the real novels.

Link

Relax, just kidding! I have no idea what happens, I'm not a big Potter fan and don't know how this one unfolds.

Rick Prelinger says,

I know the net is clogged with Potter pix right now, but it was wonderful in London last night -- a queue of perhaps 1000-1500 fans with at least as many spectators, all shooting off digicams with flash. Media hype lives on, but so does fantasy!

Link to a wonderful photo set.

Someone has uploaded the entire concert video for Talking Heads' 1980 appearance in Rome. There's never been a musical group that inspired me as much as Talking Heads. Every album, every track, all the solo projects... I'd trade all the music in the world for their canon. This is amazing footage, the Heads performing with incredible verve and energy. If I had a time machine, I'd go back to this show.

Songs performed:

* Psycho Killer
* Stay Hungry
* Cities
* I Zimbra
* Drugs
* Take Me to the River
* Crosseyed and Painless
* Life During Wartime
* Houses in Motion
* Born under Punches
* The Great Curve
(via MeFi)

Planet Hiltron takes photos of celebs and photoshops them so that they look like normal people -- poorly dressed, flabby, nourished by fast food and a little bit wrinkly. The Johnny Depp is amazing but Madonna (shown here) is by far the creepiest. Link (Thanks, Bill!)

For the latest edition of the Get Illuminated! podcast, Mark and I talked with artist Drew Friedman. Drew's incredibly-detailed caricatures and biting parodies have appeared in publications ranging from Raw Magazine, Weirdo, and Heavy Metal to Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, and the New York Observer. His appreciation for yesteryear's entertainers, expressed in many strips and his terrific book Old Jewish Comedians, is infectious. As the New York Times said of Old Jewish Comedians, "Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt." Also this year, Blab!/Fantagraphics published an anthology of Friedman's comix and illustrations titled The Fun Never Stops. It's a real laff-riot.

Mark and I have been fans of Drew's work for years and it was an absolute delight to chat with him about art, comics, and, of course, old Jewish comedians.

While listening to the Podcast, peruse the exclusive sneak preview below of drawings that will appear in Drew's next book, More Old Jewish Comedians, to be published early in 2008. (From left, Joe E. Lewis, Morey Amsterdam, Herbie Faye, Molly Picon, and Jan Murray. Click for larger images.) And for a taste of The Fun Never Stops, visit Drew's online gallery here.


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

Link to buy The Fun Never Stops, Link to buy Old Jewish Comedians

Previouly on BB:
• Drew Friedman: Guilty Pleaure of Lit. Great Link
• Drew Friedman's Old Jewish Comedians Link

Peter Stafford, author of the fascinating Psychedelics Encyclopedia died on July 20, 2007. Bruce Eisner, his friend, writes:

Peter Stafford (1941-2007) author of Psychedelics Encyclopedia, and LSD in Action died last night in Santa Cruz, California. Peter was a friend of mine since we met in Canada back in 1971 and I will miss him.

I will add more to this post in the next day or so.

Link

Truly, the fun never stops around here. Hot on the heels of the Drew Friedman podcast, here's an interview with longtime Boing Boing pal R.U. Sirius, co-creator of the mind-bending magazines High Frontiers, Reality Hackers and Mondo 2000, the host of the RU Sirius Show, a contributor to 10 Zen Monkeys, and the author of True Mutations: Interviews on the Edge of Science, Technology, and Consciousness

RU and David Pescovitz will be at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 24th, 7pm to conduct a live taping of the RU Sirius show. They'll be joined by Lynn Hershman, Jamais Cascio, and Howard Rheingold.

True Mutations looks at the wild changes that may be coming to the human species during the 21st Century. In a series of interviews, author/host RU Sirius explores a series of (r)evolutions in disciplines ranging from the evolution of clean energy to the possibilities of endless neurological ecstasy; from open-source free access to nearly everything under the sun to self-directed biotechnological evolution; from psychedelic culture mash-ups to the possibilities of a technological singularity that alters not only humanity but the entire universe.

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

For the latest edition of the Get Illuminated! podcast, Mark and I talked with artist Drew Friedman. Drew's incredibly-detailed caricatures and biting parodies have appeared in publications ranging from Raw Magazine, Weirdo, and Heavy Metal to Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, and the New York Observer. His appreciation for yesteryear's entertainers, expressed in many strips and his terrific book Old Jewish Comedians, is infectious. As the New York Times said of Old Jewish Comedians, "Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt." Also this year, Blab!/Fantagraphics published an anthology of Friedman's comix and illustrations titled The Fun Never Stops. It's a real laff-riot.

Mark and I have been fans of Drew's work for years and it was an absolute delight to chat with him about art, comics, and, of course, old Jewish comedians.

While listening to the Podcast, peruse the exclusive sneak preview below of drawings that will appear in Drew's next book, More Old Jewish Comedians, to be published early in 2008. (From left, Joe E. Lewis, Morey Amsterdam, Herbie Faye, Molly Picon, and Jan Murray. Click for larger images.) And for a taste of The Fun Never Stops, visit Drew's online gallery here.


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

Link to buy The Fun Never Stops, Link to buy Old Jewish Comedians

Previouly on BB:
• Drew Friedman: Guilty Pleaure of Lit. Great Link
• Drew Friedman's Old Jewish Comedians Link

Stanford design prof Michael Shanks has an online course unit about the design, politics, sociology and economics of slot machines that is flat-out fascinating, especially the manipulative psychology of slot and casino design.

The layout also takes advantage of the differences between slot and table players. In general, table players do not like the noise of slot machines because they find it distracting. In addition, they may sometimes play a few rounds on slot machines spontaneously, but obviously prefer table playing. At the same time, however, spouses or partners of table players will often wile away time playing at a nearby slot machine. Thus casinos are planned such that there are slot machines lining walkways around tables. However, these slots are always tight. This cuts down on the noise and distraction to table players, and makes sense because the majority of players on these machines are playing spontaneously, with little expectation of winning. This demonstrates to what degree casino layouts are optimized—in this case, to the point that a complex system is implemented simply to clean up loose change from spontaneous players.

Link (via Architectures of Control in Design)

Update: Andy sez, "Just for accuracy's sake, the report on slot machines is actually a student project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu."

Instructables contributor The Jehosephat posted a neat guide to making shadow sculptures from piles of junk.
Link

Previously on BB:
• History of the shadow in art Link
• Shadow billboard Link
• 4D sculpture with a 3D shadow Link

Grad student Ethan Garner created CraigStatsSF, a site that slices, dices, and visualizes CraigsList San Francisco housing rental listings with Google Maps overlays. For example, this heat map shows a citywide view of rental costs for one bedroom apartments over the last year.

From the project description:

After living in this city for 8 years, living in a lot of horrible neighborhoods, and doing the eternal run-around to find a decent apartment I have become fascinated with the San Francisco rental market .

At the end of the August 2006, I was dealing a really shady landlord whose house was going into foreclosure as he (like a lot of the city) had speculated on an adjustable rate mortgage...and he was desperately trying his best to get as much money as he could out of me in any illegal way possible.

Not wanting to deal with such a shady landlord, I broke the lease, and fled to find a new place.

As I started looking for places, I noticed everything that used to be for rent was now for sale due to the same forclosure effect that happened to my landlord.

It also appeared that the rents were going up..... but... were the really? or am I just paranoid and bitter?

Since I was waiting to get my research published, I figured I could waste ample amounts of time coding perl scripts and learning google maps.

This project was born out of boredom.

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Almost a decade ago, filmmakers Syd Garon and Rodney Ascher created their fantastic, critically-acclaimed animation of the seminal Jack Chick religious tract "Somebody Goofed." Last year, the duo reunited for a sequel, mashing up Chick's tract about the sinking of the Titanic with clips from James Cameron's film.

Link to "Jack Chick's Titanic" on YouTube, Link to watch "Somebody Goofed" via a film festival page

Previously on BB:
• Rodney Ascher's short film about a freefalling parachutist Link

This huge graphic seeks to map the Internet onto a map of the London Underground Tokyo rail system (the series of Tubes as a tube-map). There's a lot of dense info here and I'm not sure I agree with all of the implied relationships, but it's some interesting stuff. Link (Thanks, James!)

Update: Thanks to everyone who noted that this is the Tokyo rail map, not the London Underground

Students at the University of Kansas who are accused of "downloading copyrighted material" will have their network access permanently terminated. Presumably this means that even downloading "fair use" works (mashups, etc), looking at web-pages, or even getting your profs' lectures is disallowed.

The law doesn't require universities to spy on their students' network use. It doesn't require them to bear the enforcement costs of the RIAA's business model. Students' tuition is being spent to subsidize giant corporations bent on subverting the rule of law, free speech and free inquiry, and now, students caught in the entertainment industry's fatwa will be locked out of the network.

Honestly -- doesn't the University of Kansas have a law-school? What the hell is wrong with Kansas?

A brief notice on the University of Kansas ResNet site explains the university's new position very succinctly. "If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever," reads the notice. "No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus." Presumably, the University is referring to illegally downloaded copyrighted material, as there is plenty of copyrighted material that can be downloaded legally.

Link

Chore Wars: a site that lets your household turn chores into a game, with points.

Chore Wars lets you claim experience points for household chores. By getting a few people in your house or workplace to sign up, you can assign experience point rewards to individual chores, and see how quickly each of you levels up.

Experience points are tracked both as weekly high-score charts, and as ongoing character sheets - every time you rack up 200XP of chores, your character gains a "level", and their class changes to match the type of chores that they've been doing.

Link (via MeFi)

Amy Crehore has just painted her very first ukulele. It's beautiful.

Here is my very first fine art ukulele ("Tickler" brand label). This is a soprano uke that was lovingly hand-built by luthier Lou Reimuller, creator of Teenar Girl Guitar.

It has a solid mahogany body and neck with a rosewood fingerboard and bridge. It plays and sounds great!

This "Tickler" brand uke is a one-of-a-kind fine art object which is entirely painted in oils on all sides by myself, Amy Crehore, with my trademark motifs: "The Banana Eater" image is on the back (from my "Monkey Love" series), a monkey and "little pierrot" combination are painted on the front.

It's $3,000. Link

Various researchers have spent years developing robotic insects, including some that might someday fly through the air, detecting biotoxins and conducting remote surveillance. Harvard University engineer Robert Wood's robotic fly is the first that's actually taken off. The 60 fly milligram robofly has a three centimeter wingspan and achieves lift using wing motions modeled on a real fly. Currently, the fly lacks a control system so its maiden voyage required a tether. From Technology Review:

"Nature makes the world's best fliers," says Wood...

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding Wood's research in the hope that it will lead to stealth surveillance robots for the battlefield and urban environments. The robot's small size and fly-like appearance are critical to such missions. "You probably wouldn't notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk," Wood says.

Link

• UC Berkeley's micro-mechanical flying insect Link

SeeqPod has developed a custom version of its MP3 searching technology that autodetects iPhones. The service looks for MP3 files on the Web and lets you play them on your computer or iPhone. From Wired News:

[Y]ou can search for any artist and play their songs within seconds, for free. SeeqPod doesn't transcode the music as it streams, so you hear it in its original form as scraped from MP3 blogs, personal web pages, and anywhere else on the internet that hosts MP3s.

Or, you can use SeeqPod on an iPhone to browse the internet's music pretty much as you would the music on an iPod. Choose a letter, then an artist, and boom -- you see a list of songs by that artist that are playable right then and there (thus the tagline: "playable search").

Link

Bob Knetzger, an amazing toy designer and MAKE magazine contributer, recently went to Japan and discovered tiny anatomical toys there. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

He says:

Dunno if two things make a trend but "anatomical toys" seemed to be all around. This isn't new, of course, we all remember the "Visible Man" model by Revell, but in true Japanese mode, the idea has been miniaturized and taken to a whole new level of detail and collectability.

This one was a really cool line of tiny anatomical models of human anatomy. Sold as a blind assortment in a closed box you don't know which one you'll get: surprise!--it's a pop-open stomach! Or you might get a skeleton, or a see-thru uterus with a removable fetus, or one of 15 different organs. Thanks, Mom!

They are so unbelievably cool and well done, they are to the Revell Visible Man model as the Nozomi Bullet train is to Amtrak. They come completely finished and assembled. I count 10 different colors of paint in dozens of paint operations in fantastically perfect tiny detail. It's like one of those doctor's office models, only tiny.

And they all come with one cello-wrapped piece of chewing gum. Cuz it's always more fun to chew while you learn about the pancreas.

Collect them all.

And speaking of collecting, I found another line of anatomical toys, this time in the gashapon machines: Visible Animals! These aren't quite as deluxe, but they're also very cool and take the Visible Horse model concept even further. I was so hoping for a Visible Puffer Fish ...but I got the Visible Chicken out of the machine.

These kind of remind more of butcher’s models, showing various cuts of meat, hmm, ....let’s see, there’s beef, pork, chicken, tuna, fugu, “long pork”...

I see that my favorite on-line source for fun Japanese stuff, J-List, has some of these. They were about $4.30 US in Tokyo, so J-List’s price isn’t really too bad.

Link

Reader comment:

Ryan says: Regarding your post on the Japanese anatomical you can buy these at the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles, or from their online store, the link is here and here.

The NYT has an interactive graphic with mini-bios of the world's richest Americans. My favorite is Russell Sage (1816-1906) who was worth $43 billion in today's dollars:

Made most of his money on Wall Street, where he is credited with creating puts and calls. Known as a shrewd pinchpenny, he was once caught stealing a fan out of the offices of Western Union, where he was a board member. Arrested for loan-sharking in 1869, he used his powerful connections to avoid a sentence.

Bill Gates is #5 on the list. Link (Via haha.nu)

Wired News has an interesting photo essay on interactive birth simulators for students to practice delivery. For example, this baby is part of the Limbs & Things' Prompt Birthing Simulator, consisting of a pelvis-and-thigh device and baby, complete with placenta. From Wired News:

The device simulates various types of delivery, including breech birth, birth on all fours, forceps delivery and the delivery of the placenta.

The simulator also allows students to practice extricating babies when their shoulders get stuck during delivery, said (Harvard obstretician Dr. Roxane Nelson). "We can learn how to recognize a situation and use the proper maneuvers."

Link

Anthony says: "The Smoking Gun has a scan of a letter that Mike Polensek, a Cleveland Councilman, wrote to a Arsenio Winston, who was arrested for drug trafficking.

I just love that he puts quotes around any obscenity or colloquialism, such as 'dumber than mud,' and even random phrases, such as, 'not for losers!'" Link

Snip from an essay at Edge.org by Kevin Kelly:

The main question that I'm asking myself is, what is the meaning of technology in our lives? What place does technology have in the universe? What place does it have in the human condition? And what place should it play in my own personal life? Technology as a whole system, or what I call the technium, seems to be a dominant force in the culture. Indeed at times it seems to be the only force - the only lasting force - in culture. If that's so, then what can we expect from this force, what governs it? Sadly we don't even have a good theory about technology.

I'm trying to investigate ways to understand the long-term consequences of technology in the world and place it into some position along with other grand things like biological nature, big history, the physics of the cosmos, and the future. It's a very ambitious project and, surprisingly, there isn't really much thinking about technology in terms of its sphere of influence in a way that might be useful to thinking about how to evaluate what we make.

Link to full text of essay.

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine and author of books including New Rules for the New Economy, and Out of Control. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. (thanks, John Brockman)

BoingBoing reader Chris says,

While on vacation on North Carolina's Outer Banks, my kids and I thought quite a bit about what to sculpt from in sand. Apple's "most successful product introduction in history" provided ample inspiration. The sand iPhone attracted quite a crowd, although none were willing to buy it at my asking price ($599 plus service, of course).

Link to photoset.

* vvork
* 4x6 art
* surreal art
* hot lunch
* swap meat
* we heart prints
* fine art adoption network

Image: Pictures from the series “Blast” by Naoya Hatakeyama, via vvork.com: Link.

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

In this video, hundreds of inmates in a Philippine prison reenact the video for Michael Jackson's Thriller (complete with ladyboy!) -- they're eerily awesome at it, too. Link (Thanks, Ben!)

See also:
Lego Thriller

Update: Toshi.M sez, "The Japanese kids' show Pitagora Suicchi has a recurring segment called the Algorithm March in which they do a little dance with a different group of people each week; here it is with ninjas. And, the relevant bit, here it is with 967 Filipino prisoners."

Today on Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday: Song-titles as movie posters. I'm partial to this Strangelove/End of the World as We Know It, though the Indiana Jones "Whip It" poster was very fine indeed. Link

The Ten Weirdest Condoms in Japan -- I'm partial to the one that comes packaged in a hollow plastic mobile phone, but the ultimate winner is the Gundam rubber. Nothing says hot love like giant killer mechas. Link (via IZ Reloaded)

Kids in Conakry, Guinea gather at the airport to study under the parking-lot lights. Guinea's economy has tanked, a process accelerated by the martial law declared by the ailing, mad ruler Lansana Conte. Most of the country has limited electricity or none at all, so kids huddle in the light of the parking lot, revising for their exams.

The lot is teeming with girls and boys by the time Air France Flight 767 rounds the Gulf of Guinea at an hour-and-a-half before midnight. They hardly look up from their notes as the Boeing jet begins its spiraling descent over the dark city, or as the newly arrived passengers come out, shoving luggage carts over the cracked pavement.

"I used to study by candlelight at home but that hurt my eyes. So I prefer to come here. We're used to it," says 18-year-old Mohamed Sharif, who sat under the fluorescent beam memorizing notes on the terrain of Mongolia for the geography portion of his college entrance test.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

SoundExchange has offered a poison pill to webcasters: add DRM to your streams, get a discount. SoundExchange are the gangsters who control the royalties for Internet radio, and they recently convinced regulators to raise the rates to insane heights, effectively shutting down all Internet music stations.

Now they've offered a dangerous reprieve to the largest webcasters: add DRM to your streams and you can pay a lowered rate. As EFF points out, this won't stop programs like Audio Hijack and Total Recorder from recording these streams, but it will give the entertainment industry the right to dictate technology choices to webcasters. Imagine if the record labels had been able to tell your local radio station that they had to play CDs, and weren't allowed to DJ from their MP3 payers -- it's invasive, overreaching and unreasonable.

SoundExchange is a front for the RIAA. It was part of the RIAA until 2003, and even today, each major label has a seat on its board. Independent labels and artists have reported that SoundExchange won't pay them the royalties they're owed -- instead, all that money seems to flow straight to the majors.

What's at stake here isn't just the implementation of DRM-laden streaming formats like WMA but also whether the RIAA will get to dictate the sorts of technologies that webcasters use in the future. After all, while DRM would certainly frustrate certain tools that allow users to time-shift, it won't make a lick of difference to software like Total Recorder and Audio Hijack that can record sound as it's outputted in unencrypted form to a sound card. You can bank on the RIAA coming back for more restrictions once it gets DRM in the door, as long as it can hold the threat of ridiculous royalty rates over webcasters' heads.

Link

See also:
SoundExchange won't enforce new royalty rates on Sunday?
Ex-RIAA agency "can't find" artists it owes money to, like Public Enemy

This hand-powered chainsaw will come in handy after the hydrocarbon apocalypse -- think of your neighbors' envious glares (through their bulbous desert-goggles) as you effortlessly cut down the looming branches of the few remaining trees for firewood, while they are forced to make do by burning huge bales of devalued trillion-dollar bills.

The High limb Chain Saw has introduced a whole new method of cutting down high tree limbs. Because of this new "saw on a rope", the job of tree trimming in now safer and easier than ever before and can be done while standing on the ground.

Link (via Gadget Lab)

Update: Dan sez, "I have had one of those 'new' chain-on-a-rope saws for almost twenty years. Exactly the same as pictured - yellow rope, red throwing bag, metal plate hanging off one end of the chain. It works, but it is by no means 'effortless'. This is especially true if the limb sags in such a way as to pinch the chain. If that happens, you've got to climb the tree or a ladder to finish cutting with another saw. The simplest way to make sure the cut doesn't pinch the chain is to stand under the limb as you pull the ropes, so the chain is always cutting straight down. That's not usually a good idea."

A new line of Alice in Wonderland Barbie toys is in the offing, and man, they're weird. The Mad Hatter is a kind of bulbous, ancient harlequin, while Alice is a doe-eyed anime princess. Apparently the Queen of Hearts is coming too -- I'm thinking anthropomorphic furry fire-ant. Link

Update: Ben sez, "I think the Red Queen is on this pic."

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: if Trekkers ruled the Earth. Link

Cathode Corner sells this handsome, motion-activated Nixie-tube wristwatch for $395 -- despite its baroque, fragile appearance, it's billed as "rugged and water-resistant." The motion-activation looks pretty slick: when you roll your wrist up to look at your watch the hours and then the minutes light up in the two Nixies in the watch. The firmware is GPLed and can be freely hacked, too. Link (Thanks, Betsy!)

Wow -- not only are lighters allowed on US airplanes again, but Kip Hawley, the guy who runs the TSA, has described the ban on lighters as "security theater." The term "security theater" is Bruce Schneier's, and has been used exclusively by critics of the TSA -- to hear Hawley use it suggests that he isn't the capricious, eight-armed* vengeance deity implied by the airport security process.

Lawmakers said that if Mr. Reid had used a lighter, instead of matches, he might have been able to ignite the bomb, but Kip Hawley, assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview on Thursday that the ban had done little to improve aviation security because small batteries could be used to set off a bomb.

Matches have never been prohibited on flights.

“Taking lighters away is security theater,” Mr. Hawley said. “It trivializes the security process.”

Link (Thanks, Christian!)

*One arm to hold your boarding pass, one to hold your shoes, one to hold your freedom baggie, one to hold your phone, one to hold your laptop, one to hold your coat, one to hold your belt, one to hold your coins, and one to salute the flag as you bend over and let someone from the TSA shine a flashlight up your colon.

See also:
TSA: calling Kip Hawley an idiot is not allowed
HOWTO make a "Kip Hawley is an idiot" Freedom Baggie

Update: Damien sez, "They also now allow 'mothers flying with or without their child [..] to bring breast milk in quantities greater than three ounces' Lets hear it for *some* common sense."

Amid sez, "Tonight I uploaded onto YouTube some rare color home videos from the 1941 Disney strike. Strike leaders David Hilberman and Art Babbitt are in films, as is a brief appearance by Walt Disney himself." Link (Thanks, Amid!)

So says Lemonodor blog (John Wiseman), pointing to a Twitter stream attributed to the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer: Link. Whether it's real or fake (my money's firmly on the latter), it's good stuff. (Thanks, Javier Candeira)

Reader comment: J Hyde says,

Surely Othar Trigvorsen: Gentleman Adventurer! also deserves to use twitter. Link.

Max Blumethal went to the College Republican National Convention Tour and discovered that these well-groomed young men and women strongly support the war in Iraq. But when Blumenthal asked them why they weren't fighting in Iraq, the students offered creative and entertaining excuses. Link

Todd says:

The latest Executive Order from the War Criminal Administration facilitates and sanctions the taking away of property of anyone who is deemed to be "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people". Left in those terms, it isn't too much of a stretch to envision this Administration deciding that any particularly vocal critic of the Iraq occupation is "undermining efforts" and thus a target for seizure of property or assets, Fifth Amendment be damned.

Big news indeed, and yet it has received scant little attention in the media. Shameful in every regard, but it troubles me even more that this latest criminal act has crossed a new threshold in reckless disregard for the US Constitution, and yet hardly a soul even knows about it.

As Wonkette sums it up: "If the White House decides that you are in any way 'undermining efforts' in Iraq, or related to Iraq or pretty much anything else, the Treasury Department is authorized to seize your money, property, stocks, etc. The pride is back!"

Link to the White House's Executive Order

Reader comment:

Robert says:

Sorry to criticize, but you screwed up on the White House Executive Order story.

The Order clearly only applies to people who have "committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of: ... (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people"

In other words, it doesn't apply to anyone who is "undermining efforts." It requires violence + undermining efforts. You left off the first part. I'm not saying that this makes the order any better, but at least it limits it.

Further, the President cannot take away property of US citizens by fiat. That's prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. This is directed to foreign nationals who are holding their assets in the US.

Greg says:

Robert is incorrect about the scope of the executive order and who it applies to.

1) it has a broad theoretical reach, i.e., anyone who the executive branch says "pose[s] a significant risk of committing" acts of violence that "undermine efforts" in Iraq. It's like the Dept. of Pre-Crime.

2) the EO applies to "U.S. persons," a group which includes U.S. citizens, not just foreign nationals parking their money in the U.S.

Talking Points Memo has some analysis from the ACLU and other experienced voices on the topic.

Matt Sullivan from Popular Mechanics says,

In the wake of nearly 200 people going down in flames with a Brazilian airliner this week, we took an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.

Link

Reader comment: Dan Hoyt says,

In the 1948 book No Highway (Made into the 1951 movie No Highway in the Sky), Nevil Shute makes the point that the rear of a plane is the safest place to be. He has his scientist protagonist tell another character to sit there if she has to fly in a plane he knows to have a fatal design flaw.

Kevin Poulsen from Wired.com broke a story this week about the first confirmed use of an FBI Trojan horse program in a criminal investigation. He tells BoingBoing,

Last month the FBI sent a program it calls a "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against a high school near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who pleaded guilty Monday to making bomb threats, and related charges. From my article:

The spyware program gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL. The CIPAV then settles into a silent "pen register" mode, in which it lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.

Link to Kevin's story. The FBI search warrant affidavit describing the CIPAV is here: Link (pdf)

BoingBoing reader Billy says,

Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.

The inmates sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison and filed liens against his property. They then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Unfortunately, the person they hired turned out to be an FBI agent.

Link

Snip:

[Counselor name] is available to speak with parents and children, as well as the media, on how to cope with feelings of grief and loss. This is a particularly timely issue with the release of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows scheduled for release this Saturday, July 21, 2007. Recent articles have sparked rumors suggesting that one or more main characters will die. This could have a serious impact on children, millions of whom have grown up reading, watching and profoundly enjoying the characters and storylines of the Harry Potter series.

Link (via needcoffee, thanks John "Widgett" Robinson)

Todd Lappin writes about this gallery of breathtaking photos from atop the Bay Bridge, taken by a person identified as "Unaesthetic."

I work for a company who does wireless networks and IP camera systems. We had some equipment up there that wasn't working properly and when the opportunity arose in talking to them I basically made it absolutely clear that I would definitely have to go up there to fix it.

Link

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of the Easy-Bake Oven due to entrapment and burn hazards. The recall notice says:

Young children can insert their hands into the oven's opening and get their hands or fingers caught, posing an entrapment and burn hazard.

I posted the first recall of the hideous oven in February. The old design (left) was much better, and prettier, too.

Last weekend (inspired by Merlin Mann's recent de-cluttering kick) I happily threw my kids' Easy Bake Oven in the trash. Maybe I'll build them a dorkbake oven to replace it. Link (Thanks, Bob!)

Sigbritt Lothberg of Stockholm has 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic Internet connection. It just might be the fastest residential connection on Earth.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connections... The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between...

The article says she uses her connection to read online newspapers, and nothing more. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Reader comment:

Kris says:

Here is a newscast about the behemoth in question. The creator, Peter Lothberg, is interwieved (in swedish) and we find out that the first thing he did after installing the huge contraption was to drive into town and purchase a computer to test it on, since his mom didn´t have one...

This week marks the birthday of 18th century English naturalist Gilbert White. Chris Vallance from the BBC tells BoingBoing, "Mrs V has just started blogging his journals which he wrote day-by-day..well worth checking out." Snips:

# 1776: July 19, 1776 – Sambucus ebulus. Dwarf elder blows. Fungi begin to appear.

# 1772: July 19, 1772 – Some thunder & hail. Smart showers.

# 1771: July 19, 1771 – Tabanus bovinus. Trenched out celeri. Wind tears the hedges & flowers.

# 1768: July 19, 1768 – Young swallows are able to take flies for themselves.

Link.

The Smoker's Bib was apparently designed for senior citizens, but modeled here by someone much younger. It's $39.98 from Taylor Gifts. From the catalog:

Stop fumbled lit cigarettes and dropped lit ashes from burning holes in senior's clothing. Flame retardent apron stretches across chairs armrest to prevent hot cigarette end from falling onto clothing or between you and the chair.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)