Boing Boing: August 16, 2007 Archives

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August 16, 2007

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Kepler $100k wristwatch

Posted by David Pescovitz, August 16, 2007 2:46 PM | permalink

Ulysse Nardin's Tellurium J. Kepler watch rotates the Earth as it would be seen above the North Pole. The timepiece was named in honor of Johannes Kepler, a 17th century astronomer who formulated the Laws of Planetary Motion. Only 99 of the timepieces were made and they are priced at more than $100,000. From the Ulysse Nardin product page:

A flexible spring bends from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn to reveal the part of the Earth lit by the Sun and to indicate the time and place of sunrise and sunset. The moon rotates around the Earth.

The dragon hand indicates the eclipses of the sun and the moon. The perpetual calendar completes one turn each year.

Link (via Thoughts From The Sidelines)

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Perry Farrell... yawn?

Posted by David Pescovitz, August 16, 2007 2:12 PM | permalink

My old pal and seasoned music critic Mike Breen wrote a thoughtful, nostalgic, and bummer of a blog post about Perry Farrell, currently on tour with his new project Satellite Party. For many of us, Farrell was an avant garde art-rock prophet, a multimedia visionary who emerged from Venice Beach in the late 1980s and spread the word of weird to the masses. According to Breen, who was one of fifty or so fans who bothered to catch Satellite Party at a Cincinnati, Ohio club, the shock of the new has given way to the yawn of the boring. From Cincinnati CityBeat's Spill It blog:

I have had to leave concerts for a variety of reasons. I confess, I’ve been thrown out. I’ve gotten sick. I’ve gotten bored. I’ve gotten too drunk to remember anything anyway (a sort of mental exit, I suppose).

But I have never had to leave a show due to depression. That's exactly what happened tonight...

With Jane’s Addiction, Perry was a Tasmanian devil driven by freakazoid, banshee-like impulse and dangerous debauchery. You couldn’t stop watching Perry when Jane’s was in their heyday (though Stephen Perkins is a fascinating drummer to watch play). I’ve seen different incarnations of Jane’s and I’ve seen Porno for Pyros. All good shows. And I have seen Satellite Party twice before tonight, both times at Lollapalooza in Chicago. They didn’t do too much for me. Perry seemed pretty chill at the most recent Lolla a few weeks ago. I didn’t see that hunger, that prowess, that theatrical mania in his eyes (though he's still oodles more tolerable than, say, the singer for Mink, whose Rock Star stage moves were more phony than a prostitute’s moans of “Oh yeah, baby, that feels so good”). I loved seeing Perry play the kids’ stage at Lollapalooza, where he did “Pets’ and a cover of “Whole Lotta Love” (a song with the words “fucked up” in it and a song about — just guessing — fucking?). He seemed even mellower than he had on the main stage, surveying the kiddie crowd and beaming proudly, perhaps moved by the curious generational overlap.

He surveyed the small crowd at Bogart’s tonight, too. His glance around the venue seemed to say, “Wow, how humbling, but these people really love me.” The audience may have been small in numbers, but almost everyone there seemed to love seeing their hero on stage. Perry’s children’s-stage haze seems to have stuck with him and, while he’s graceful and still somewhat engaging on stage, he came off a little like an AltRock Icon version of Perry Como. Comfortable and familiar, but not even remotely provocative.

Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

NPR "Xeni Tech" - How Long Should Government E-Mail Linger?

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 1:02 PM | permalink

I filed a report for NPR News today about how and when our government -- city, state, and federal -- hangs on to official email, and what that means for both IT budgets and public knowledge.

Short version: policies are all over the map, there's no consistency, and government watchdogs believe more frequent purging means the public loses access to valuable historic information.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty recently ordered that all e-mails not flagged as "save" by city government workers will be deleted and purged from the city's email system in January of 2008. After that initial purge, all city employee email older than 6 months which is not specifically flagged as "save" will be auto-deleted.

The more e-mail government employees send, the more there is to store, costing taxpayers money. But costs must be balanced against the need to preserve history, and ensure government transparency. If individual officials decide which emails to save and which to delete, will they choose to save potentially incriminating or embarassing emails?

We hear from Wired News reporter Ryan Singel, who often covers news involving technology and government transparency; Purdue University professor and cyberforensics expert Marcus Rogers, Christina Fleps, general counsel for the office of the Chief Technology Officer for the DC city government, and Kevin Hall, who is spokesperson for Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine.

- - - - - - - - - -

Link (and direct MP3 Link) for "How Long Should Government Email Linger?"

Link to audio streams for a related conversation that ran today with Day to Day host Madeleine Brand, about deciding when and how to delete or archive personal email.

Or, listen in the "Xeni Tech" podcast (subscribe via iTunes here). NPR "Xeni Tech" archives here, and "Day to Day" archives here.

Kasper Hauser (SkyMaul creators) are also very lulzworthy live

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 8:42 AM | permalink

Fellow internet funnyhunter Jesse Thorn turned us on to the amazing "SkyMaul" publication by San Francisco-based comedy troupe Kasper Hauser some months ago. The group came to Los Angeles this week for a live show, and I went to check 'em out with Jesse and others.

They were great live! This particular show incorporated much SkyMaul material, and videos they've uploaded to YouTube and elsewhere.

I bugged Jesse for links to more of their online material, so here it is (thanks Jesse!): Link to their collected YouTubery.

Also don't miss their hilarious audio podcast episode Phone Call to the 14th Century, and more recent KH podcasts are here.

My two favorite videos are probably the one where the 14th century monk Jacobus sings a song about LonelyGirl15 being a witch, and the one about MCT (male camel toe) treatments from SkyMaul.

The act that followed their show at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles was the sketch comedy group Hendershaw, and they were terrific.

Previously:

SkyMaul: Happy Crap You can Buy from a Plane -- book pick

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Ionic Breeze for microchips

Posted by David Pescovitz, August 16, 2007 8:38 AM | permalink

Researchers have shrunk Sharper Image's bestselling Ionic Breeze fan down to the microscale. Well, kinda. Purdue University engineers developed a tiny "ionic wind engine" to help cool computer chips. As processing power increases in line with Moore's Law, they also get much hotter. According to experiments, the ionic wind engine increased a chip's cooling rate by 250 percent. From a Purdue University press release:

The experimental cooling device, which was fabricated on top of a mock computer chip, works by generating ions - or electrically charged atoms - using electrodes placed near one another. The device contained a positively charged wire, or anode, and negatively charged electrodes, called cathodes. The anode was positioned about 10 millimeters above the cathodes. When voltage was passed through the device, the negatively charged electrodes discharged electrons toward the positively charged anode. Along the way, the electrons collided with air molecules, producing positively charged ions, which were then attracted back toward the negatively charged electrodes, creating an "ionic wind."

This breeze increased the airflow on the surface of the experimental chip.

Link

UPDATE: BB pal Todd Lappin of Telstar Logistics writes, "Meanwhile, the architects at Solomon Cordwell Buenz have expanded Sharper Image's bestselling Ionic Breeze to macroscale, right alongside the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge. Well, kinda." Link

Star with comet's tail

Posted by David Pescovitz, August 16, 2007 8:26 AM | permalink

Astronomers have captured the first image of a comet-like tail behind a star. The star, Mira, is named for the Latin word meaning "wonderful." The tail is 20,000 times the distance between Pluto and our sun. Mira is hurtling through space at 291,000 miles per hour.
Headlines Y2007 Images Mira Mira1

Headlines Y2007 Images Mira Mira1

From NASA:

"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star," says Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology. "It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake." Martin is the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (telescope), and lead author of a Nature paper appearing today to announce the discovery.

Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. Mira is an older star called a red giant that is losing massive amounts of surface material. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets and possibly even life to form. This tail material, visible now for the first time, has been released over the past 30,000 years.

"This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved," says co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. "We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Gorilla Slaughter: A Personal Account

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 8:18 AM | permalink

James Hathaway from the landmine victims' aid group Clear Path International (CPI) tells BoingBoing,

Recently I was very fortunate to be invited by Jack Hanna's staff to Rwanda where he was taping a special on mountain gorillas.
Sadly, a few weeks after my return, 4 gorillas were killed in neighboring Congo.
I spent some time while in Rwanda with Dr. Lucy Spelman. Her team at the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project are working to save the surviving infant gorilla, Ndeze. Here is a first-person account on Dr. Spelman's blog.

Link

Transgendered LAT sports columnist Christine Daniels: interview

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 8:17 AM | permalink

A few months ago, I blogged about the story of an LA Times sports writer who announced -- by way of a newspaper column -- plans to transition from male to female.

This week, host Madeleine Brand on the NPR News program "Day to Day" (disclaimer: I'm a contributor to the show) did an amazing and extensive interview with the person who is now Christine Daniels.

Snip from transcript:

Madeleine Brand: And what was it about Christine that you liked so much?
Christine Daniels: Oh, there are a lot of things. An icon of mine — well, several icons of mine. One was Christine Jorgensen, who was the first high-profile transsexual in the late 1950s. I just think she had a — well, it's pretty obvious she had a lot of courage to do what she did when she did it.
Readers of my blog know that I'm a punk-rock girl. I love music, and especially the New Wave punk era. So The Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde — always a hero of mine. I still dig out that first album; I was playing that the other night.
Madeleine: There's that Siouxsee and The Banshees song.
Christine: And the Siouxsee and The Banshees —
Madeleine: [The song] "Christine."
Christine: Now you're reading my mind on this one. [Laughter.] Yeah, Christine. All my — a lot of my friends call me strawberry girl from the lyrics, you know. And also, being a sportswriter and having covered her — Chris Evert. Chris Evert was as tough a competitor, male or female, as you're going to want to find. So anyway, it's those four reasons. I guess it's pretty involved — and also a fifth reason: I just think Christine's pretty. (Chuckles.)

Link to full transcript and audio.

Here's Christine Daniels' sports blog: Link.

Daniels is also maintaining a more personal blog about her gender transition here: Link.

Here's the "coming out" column: Link.

Previously on BoingBoing:

LA Times journalist: "I am a transsexual sportswriter."

Update: Our pal Marty Cortinas at Wired says,

Christina (nee Chris) Kahrl went through the same thing as Penner/Daniels in 2003. She's a writer for Baseball Prospectus, a highly regarded group of baseball geeks. Link. Looks like she's been giving the other Chris some help: Link.

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Beijing stadium designer gives Olympics -and Spielberg- the finger

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 8:16 AM | permalink

Last week here on BoingBoing, we watched Tibetan independence activist Lhadon Tethong (president of Students for a Free Tibet) liveblog her way through Beijing. At one point, she and others were arrested in an investigation around who unfurled a "Free Tibet" banner on the Great Wall of China. Ms. Tethong has since been released, and she's continuing to blog about human rights issues involving ethnic minorities in China, and related controversy around the 2008 Olympics:

The most amazing development since my last post is that Ai Wei Wei, one of China’s most celebrated artists and the designer of the [Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed the] Bird’s Nest, has come out against Beijing’s Olympics.
In this unbelievably damning report from Al Jazeera posted on YouTube, Ai Wei Wei says that the Olympics don’t represent the true face of China and he wants nothing more to do with them anymore.
I guess it’s not suprising that Ai Wei Wei has spoken out. Not only is he a brilliant independent artist, but he grew up watching his father - the famous modern Chinese poet, Ai Qin - and family suffering in a labor camp in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) after his father was exiled there during the Anti-Rightist Movement under Mao.

Link to full text of her post.

Snip from a related story in the UK Guardian, "Olympic artist attacks China’s pomp and propaganda" -- in which Ai lambasts director Steven Spielberg, Zhang Yimou, and other A-listers tapped to design the opening ceremonies:

“All the shitty directors in the world are involved. It’s disgusting,” said Ai. “I don’t like anyone who shamelessly abuses their profession, who makes no moral judgment. It is mindless.”

Link.

Below, a snapshot of that Tibetan sovereignty protest on the Great Wall, captured by phonecams and blogged around the world.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Tibetan independence activist blogging inside Beijing - UPDATED

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Moment of Red Pandas are Excellent Joe Cocker Ballad Zen Video

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 7:49 AM | permalink

Sssshhhh. Baby, don't say a word. I want this moment to last forever. Video Link. Some call them Firefox. (Thanks, Internet Fucktard!).

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Reporters sue Hewlett Packard over spying claims

Posted by Xeni Jardin, August 16, 2007 7:45 AM | permalink

Several journalists with CNET and Associated Press and their family members filed suit Wednesday against Hewlett-Packard and former executives (ex HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, and former ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker). The reporters are seeking damages for "illegal and reprehensible conduct" and invasion of privacy. Link to roundup at Wired's Threat Level blog.

Sandwich art

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:39 AM | permalink

This gallery of artistic sandwiches features many gems -- this one bears a striking resemblance to a damned soul in a Bosch painting! Link (via IZ Reloaded)

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US schools ask 14-year-olds to declare a major

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:37 AM | permalink

Some US high-schools are forcing students to choose "majors" in the ninth grade. This sounds similar to the UK system, where teens take O- and A-levels and seal their post-secondary education choices at the age of 15 or 16. Maybe this works for some kids, but it would have been a disaster for me. I've changed "careers" every 2-3 years since graduating from an alternative school where I spent seven years inventing courses that reflected whatever I was interested in that year. Every professional thing I've done since then wasn't invented when I started the previous one -- if this had been around in 1988, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have offered a major in "blogging" or "writing science fiction novels" or "working on Internet standards." In fact, the one computerized aptitude test I took in high-school recommended a career in "geriatric nutrition" -- cooking meals at old folks' homes.

For Dwight Morrow, a school that has struggled with low test scores and racial tensions for years, establishing majors is a way to make their students stay interested until graduation and stand out in the hypercompetitive college admissions process.
Some parents have welcomed the requirement, noting that a magnet school in the district already allowed some students to specialize. But other parents and some educators have criticized it as preprofessionalism run amok or a marketing gimmick.
“I thought high school was about finding what you liked to do,” said Kendall Eatman, an Englewood mother of six who was president of the Dwight Morrow student body before graduating in 1978. “I think it’s too early to be so rigid.”

Update: Zhan sez, "As a product of the UK secondary education system, I have to say that Cory's description of the UK A-level/GCSE (the O-level was phased out in the mid-1980s) is not really accurate. Students typically take a wide range of topics at GCSE (formerly O) level to be taken at around age 16 - the above-average state school and average private school will expect its students to take a selection of sciences, foreign languages, maths, humanities. For the A-levels (about age 17-18), students can become much more specialized, OR they can take a diverse selection from both sciences/maths and the humanities. While being more specialized gives an advantage when applying to a related specialized UK university program, there are many interdisciplinary UK university degrees which would fit a student with mixed-up/broad interests (I was one of these kids)"

Action figure modders

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:32 AM | permalink

One of the highlights of this year's Comic-Con for me was the panel on action-figure modding. These dedicated artisans combine a prodigious knowledge of materials science, artistic talent, and a deep love of comics to make their own incredible custom action-figures. Wired's Marty Graham was there too, and she got a great story out of it, accompanied by a gallery of luscious studio photos of the figs. I also shot a ton of pix at the panel.

A dedicated subculture of craftspeople have been frankensteining, kitbashing, boiling-and-popping, sculpting and painting one-of-a-kind figures for years. Their efforts are bringing to life characters that don't enjoy enough of a following to justify mass production -- think the 1950s Batman foe the Killer Moth -- or which, like the Watchmen figures, are tied up by copyright and creative differences.
"We all started customizing because there was a character we were in love with and nobody made the dolls," says Scott Rogers, a Los Angeles hobbyist who's been building figures since 1992. "Or the one they made didn't look right."

See also: My ComicCon photos

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Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch debate in San Francisco, 9/19

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:27 AM | permalink

At the next SFinSF event -- free readings by and discussions with science fiction writers -- Howard Hendrix debates Scott Sigler. Howard made headlines with an intemperate post calling writers who give away their work for free on the Internet "webscabs," saying "Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work."

Scott Sigler is a science fiction podcaster whose novels Earthcore and Ancestor are distributed for free online. He is a hearty proponent of Creative Commons licenses and free Internet distribution.

Howard's initial post -- which bemoaned "the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch" -- gave rise to Jo Walton's satirical International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day and a great deal of discussion about the economics and ethics of free online distribution.

Both Scott and Howard are really nice guys, and articulate and smart -- and their debate will be moderated by Hugo-winning writer Terry Bisson. This should be a good one.

When: Sept 19: Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM - Event begins at 7PM
Where: The Variety Preview Room The Hobart Building, 582 Market Street at Montgomery adjacent to Montgomery Street BART
Books for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books / www.borderlands-books.com

Link

See also:
Pixel-stained technopeasants talk about free online fiction
Big collection of Pixel-Stained Technopeasant contributions
April 23 is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

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Brazilian newspaper's linkbait: Bloggers are monkeys!

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:18 AM | permalink

A Brazilian newspaper aired a commercial comparing bloggers to monkeys -- as in, "if you read those stupid blog things instead of real newspapers, you're reading junk written by monkeys." Jose Murilo thinks the whole campaign is just linkbait: piss off bloggers, bloggers link to you, you get readers and traffic (note that this post does not contain the name of the newspaper or a link to it).

It is obvious that Estadão’s marketing strategy was counting on the noise bloggers would make over the ads in order to achieve its goals, and the blogging crowd was surely among those who prompted a visit to Estadão’s new website. On the other side, some bloggers guesstimate that inflaming the dispute between blogs and traditional media at this time may turn out to be a bad idea, while others find it better to follow the joke.

Link (Thanks, Josh!)

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AllOfMP3 founder not guilty of copyright infringement

Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 16, 2007 7:00 AM | permalink

The owner of the Russian music-sales Internet service AllOfMP3 has been acquitted of charges of copyright infringement. AllOfMP3 is the most successful commercial Internet music service to date, and the company paid royalties to Russia's collecting society -- their equivalent of ASCAP or BMI, just as American radio stations and live performance venues do.

But the American record labels didn't like AllOfMP3's business practices -- they sold DRM-free MP3s at low cost -- and used the World Trade Organization and the US Trade Representative to get AllOfMP3 shut down (killing this company was even a condition of the recent Russia-US trade agreement, which also included a promise to license and inspect presses, something that the US fought a bloody revolutionary war to stop back in 1776).

Now a court has heard the case against AllOfMP3 and decided that they weren't breaking Russian law after all. The site has already been shut down, though the founders have created a successor already and transferred AllOfMP3 accounts to it.

A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia's commitment to fighting piracy...
"The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law," said judge Yekaterina Sharapova.

See also:
US Trade Representative bends Russia over on copyright
Allofmp3.com finally shut down by Russian authorities (Thanks, Mark!)

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