Here's a clever hack from Instructables for making a $5 pen that feels and writes like a super-pricey Mont Blanc "writing instrument." Just buy a refill cartridge for a Mont Blanc, trim it to fit in the barrel of a cheap plastic ergonomic pen, and hey presto, instant writing instrument! Link (via Salad With Steve)

A Differential Analyser -- a specialised computer -- made from Meccano is on display as part of a show on "Machines that Count" at the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, NZ:

That machine was bought for £100 and came to New Zealand around 1950. Ironically, it was used to build the Benmore Hydro Dam and by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, to calculate rabbit populations. It then languished for years at Wellington Polytechnic before finding its way to the Museum of Transport and Technology in the 1970s, where it has been restored and is on display as a lead exhibit in the museum’s “Machines that Count” exhibition.

MOTAT’s Differential Analyser was built by J B Bratt at Cambridge University in 1935, largely from Meccano components. It is known as Meccano Differential Analyser No. 2.

“When New Zealand had two computers, that was one of them,” Pratt says of the System 360 on display. The machine is one of Pratt’s favourites, along with the Macintosh IIfx, which he describes as “blisteringly fast”.

Link to Computerworld article, Link to The Differential Analyser Explained (Thanks, Rob!)

See also:
HOWTO protect your Meccano in a divorce
3D printer made from Meccano and hot-glue

Next time you find yourself bound by a pair of plastic handcuffs, slip them by inserting a short straight-pin between the roller-lock and the cuffs' teeth. Link (via Neatorama)

A 26-year-old blogger in Kuala Lumpur named Nathaniel Tan (jelas.info, suarakeadilan.com, bangkit.net) has been arrested for posting political parody content on the internet.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3.

Supporters are posting the image shown at left on their blogs: Link. Tan is considered a prominent online voice in Malaysia. He was reportedly first detained under an "Official Secrets Act," then later under an "Internal Securities Act" for charges including "publishing lies on the Internet" and alleged possession of classified official documents (thanks Bash, Sean Bonner).

Reader comment: John Lee says,

Thank you so much for writing about Nat on boingboing. Those of us in Malaysia who are close to Nat really appreciate it. However, your post contained one error - Nat was not detained for a parody (that parody was posted by his boss, the information chief of a local political party). He was detained for investigation into a comment posted on his blog some months back, alleging that a particular minister was corrupt.

By the way, as a colleague of Nat's, I personally know the work he has been doing, which has mainly been to get Malaysians, especially younger ones, involved in standing up for their rights and for their country. I think that considering the ludicrous grounds they are holding him for, this is purely an attempt to intimidate those who might be considering making a difference in some small way.

If you're interested, I have written a longer piece on it here: Link.

UPDATE: 07-17-07 - RSF reports "Blogger Nathaniel Tan, a member of the opposition Justice Party (PKR), was freed this afternoon after being held for four days."

Emeka Okafor points us to an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post today by "Beasts of No Nation" author Uzodinma Iweala:

Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists.

"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!

My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.

"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.

It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East, the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.

This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.

Link.

Artist Ellen Lynch of Saint Anthony, Idaho, collects "natural relics," including dead animals, that she finds near her ranch. She then arranges, photographs, and paints them to create digital prints. I find her work to be deeply moving and lovely. [Seen here, "Dutch Owl" (23" x 23")]. From Lynch's artist statement:

As we pass from Earth, we leave behind the shell that served as the relic of our spirit. It is commonly believed that such relics maintain the special gifts attributed to the spirit of the departed, continuing to perform miracles or provide the faithful with powers inherent to the earthly body.

Link (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon (who is also a Journalism prof at the University of Hong Kong), writes:

A Global Voices editor, Oiwan Lam (shown here), faces obscenity charges in Hong Kong for posting an artsy picture of a bare-breasted woman on InMedia HK, a local citizen media website. The picture came from Flickr.

A month *AFTER* Oiwan posted the photo but *BEFORE* Oiwan's article was ruled "indecent" by Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal, the photo was censored to Hong Kong's Flickr users as part of Flickr's new geo-censoring system which has just been rolled out in an effort to comply with local laws.

There are many unanswered questions about causes, effects, and implications.

In this blog post, I raise a few.

Link to full text on MacKinnon's blog (thanks, Ethan Zuckerman).

Previously on BoingBoing:

Hong Kong: blogger faces 12 months or $HK400K for linking

Hong Kong: the Flickr'd photo that got blogger Oiwan in trouble

Following up on a previous BB post about internet-related aspects of the current meltdown in Zimbabwe, BoingBoing reader Bretton Vine writes:

I'm in from South Africa, currently experiencing what the popular media calls a 'human tsunami' of illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe across our borders for everything from work to medicine and even basic foodstuffs which are smuggled back into Zimbabwe for resale.

The recent enforcing of price controls has left Zimbabwe shelves empty, militia going ape, major cross-border escape (5000 captured in last two weeks, and that's barely a dent in the number that make it though).

Add to this is bittersweet irony that the 'Rainbow Nation' of South Africa is experiencing a form of African xenophobia historically unparalleled despite more than a decade since apartheid become the past. But this is another heated discussion not related to my email.

I just wanted to point out that the Internet Service Providers' Association of South Africa hosts an annual free Internet conference every year, with this year being out 6th.

Back in 2004 we had Declan McCullagh out for one of the talks[1, 2]. While he certainly seemed to enjoy himself, he also left a huge impression over interception issues (and made some government people quite uncomfortable in the process). At last year's event (10th anniversary for ISPA, 5th for iWeek) we even had vendors for lawful intercept technology exhibiting and giving talks [3] along with talks from Wim Roggeman[4], Prof Michael Rotert[5] and representatives from the OIC (central interception spooks, not clearly functional yet) trying hard to remain inconspicuous in their suits among geeks of varying shapes and sizes.

With regard to the whole Interception in Zimbabwe issue it's a little bit of a non-event given so few people have access to either phones or the Internet in that country, and that no Zim ISP can afford to purchase the equipment necessary to implement anyway.

It's a slightly similar situation here in South Africa, except for the following...

A group of Pygmy musicians were temporarily lodged in a Republlic of Congo zoo while visiting Brazzaville for a music festival. Visitors to the zoo snapped photos as the 22 pygmies collected wood from the zoo forest and cooked their meals. From the Associated Press:

Congolese officials, who invited the band of Pygmy musicians to perform at the Festival of Pan-African Music, or Fespam, said their intention was to place them in a "familiar setting."

"It's not a case of discrimination," said Yvette Lebondzo, the director of arts and culture for the Republic of Congo. "We lodged them in the park near running water and a forest simply because that will remind them of their usual surroundings — which is the forest." Link

Spurred by protests from civil rights groups, the pygmies were moved this weekend to a local school. According to a Reuters article, "All the other musicians playing at the July 8-14 pan-African FESPAM festival were provided with hotel rooms." Link

Interestingly, this isn't the first time that tourists have come to a zoo to see real, live pygmies. Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman puts this latest bizarre episode in historical context. In 1906, the Bronx Zoo opened a new exhibit in the monkey house featuring a 22-year-old pygmy named Ota Benga. According to a National Public Radio profile of Benga last year, "it's estimated that 40,000 visitors a day came to see him."
Link to Cryptomundo, Link to NPR profile


UPDATE: BB reader Chris Zable says, "My first question when I read the item about the pygmies lodged at the zoo instead of a hotel was, has anyone asked THEM what they want?" He found the answer in a BBC report:

"It's not good for men, women and children to all be in this one tent. We need some space," dancer and musician David Motambo told the BBC. "We can't live here where there are so many mosquitoes. Here in the city we can't stay in the forest."

Link

Photographer Glen E. Friedman, best known for chronicling formative years of American hardcore, skateboarding, and hiphop, has a new book out soon: Link to "Fugazi: Keep Your Eyes Open."

Fugazi fans, make ready thy drool rags, because it includes never-before-published photographs of the band from back in the day -- including the shot above.

"The book comes out September 3rd, which is 20 years to the day of Fugazi's first show," Mr. Friedman tells BoingBoing.

"Anyone who orders the book from now until the end of July will recieve it postage paid and shipped within 2 weeks (that's at your door as much as a month before the official release)."

(spotted first on Sean Bonner's blog)

I'm in love with Carol Barton's book The Pocket Paper Engineer, a step-by-step guide to designing and executing pop-up effects with paper. Most of the examples focus on grown-up uses for popups -- effective presentations and so on -- but it's really easy to see how you could use this with kids (or friends) to make wicked-cool art. The book carefully guides you through progressively more ambitious popups, in a clear and easy-to-follow style with tons of illustrations and examples. The author promises more volumes with even more advanced techniques. Link

Update: Collapsibletank sez, "I wondered if you'd be interested in the pop-up Goatse I made recently...? (Safe For Work, and roundly non-distressing)."