The only thing in the world I hate more than Crocs are Uggs. Evidently, the two have mated, spawning this vile demon bastard footwear spotted recently in Houston. Where it is 100 degrees. (Thanks, Katie)

Reader comment: Samir M. Nassar says,

I might not be a proud Crocs owner, but my feet are happy. I work a twelve-hour night shift at a hospital. This entails lots of walking to and fro. After years of suffering at the hands of sneakers and tennis-shoes I put down my money for a pair of Crocs and my feet have been singing the praises since.

For the record, mine are black, and don't have the stupid holes on top and I do cringe when I see them worn out in the street. Tacky!

Brett Burton says,

How did you miss the opportunity to make one of the nearly limitless puns available for your Cruggs post? Say No To Cruggs, Don't Get Hooked on Cruggs... Crugg Abuse ? Anyway, thanks for helping raise Crugg Awareness. It's good to see Boing Boing doing it's part to aid in Crugg Prevention.

Previously:

Crocs banned in Swedish hospital for generating a "cloud of lightning"

Link to a feature article on cat macros and the websites that love them, including Eric Nakagawa's icanhazcheeseburger. LOLcats may not have started there, but whatever, I love that site. In other news, HELLL FREEEZIZ OVAR.

Scott Beale points to this video, inspired by a classic Monty Python sketch.

LIVE, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Hipster Olympics! Brought to you by POYKPAC Sports.

Hurrah! The first episode of season two of The IT Crowd has aired and it's already available for download!

The IT Crowd is the nerd sitcom about sysadmins from Graham Linehan, creator of the convulsively, piss-yourself funny Father Ted. The US adaptation of it that NBC picked up is reportedly not so hot, but I loved the Brit version and was immensely pleased when it got picked up for a second season.

Channel 4, the show's homebase, has a ridiculous DRM-based web-viewing option, but I can't get that to work (though I live in London, I'm travelling in Australia, which means it won't let me get access to the show, and even if I could get at it, it won't play on Linux). Lucky for me -- and you -- intrepid fans of the show have already put episode one online on a variety of torrent servers, and I'm downloading it now with eager anticipation.

Season two, episode one is called "The Work Outing."

Pirate Bay torrent, Eztvefnet torrent, Mininova torrent

IMBD info about the episode (Thanks, Sebadog, David and Clay!)

See also:
Season 2 of the IT Crowd announced
The IT Crowd -- the geek comedy I've been waiting for all my life

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant to Season One of The IT Crowd, and I live with a Channel 4 commissioner))

Update: Chirag's put together this handy streaming page for all the old episodes!

UPDATE, 2:10pm PST: Looks like MSFT has fixed the immediate problem with WGA, for now: Link. But the product is still, as they say, defective by design. (Thanks, Marius)

- - - - - - - - - -

BB reader David McBride says,

DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today.

The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation -- except possibly those with volume license keys -- is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in. Installations which are flagged as counterfeit switch to a "reduced functionality mode" which results in features like Aero and DirectX being disabled.

So far, the only public response from Microsoft has been indirectly via their technical support forums, where a user has posted the following snippet from an email he received from MS's technical support address:

Thank you for your response.

I’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.

Link.

Update, 12:03pm PT: David McBride says,

Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager has responded on the Microsoft forums to say, effectively, "we know, we're taking it seriously and we're working on it."

I understand the frustration you all are going through. I'm investigating the issue right now.

I guarantee that we're working on this issue right now. For folks wondering, MACHINES ARE NOT SHUTTING DOWN with reduced functionality.

I guarantee that I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

The message from the Supportability team will be addressed appropriately as well. I encourage folks to keep an eye out on these forums.

I promise I will have an explanation and resolution as soon as humanly possible.

-Phil Liu @ Microsoft
Program Manager, WGA

Link. This is also not the first time that this has happened.

Reader comment: Thomas Hruska says,

Here's a possible explanation for what happened, spanned across two blog entries over the past 24 hours: one, two.

Colin sez, "I operate a current events and free culture blog for Red Hat. We made this anti-DRM agit-prop cartoon, and are inviting people to mash it up and add to it. It's licensed to share. Originally, it was supposed to tell the whole story of music, throughout all of civilization and its inevitable industrialization and ultimate trascendancy, but we couldn't actually handle that, so we got as far as we could using a cute bird. If this one flies, we intend to make a lot more. It was fun, and we're really proud of it." Link (Thanks, Colin!)

Earlier this month, Mark posted that David Hahn, the "radioactive boy scout" who years ago tried to build a nuclear reactor in his basement, had been busted again. This time, he was nabbed for stealing smoke detectors allegedly to get at the bit of radioactive material inside for experimentation. For the back story on Hahn, check out Ken Silverstein's 1998 Harper's Magazine article "The radioactive boy scout: When a teenager attempts to build a breed reactor," now freely available on the magazine's Web site. And if the article doesn't satisfy your curiosity, Silverstein later expanded the feature into a book. From the article:

David’s parents admired his interest in science but were alarmed by the chemical spills and blasts that became a regular event at the Hahn household. After David destroyed his bedroom–the walls were badly pocked, and the carpet was so stained that it had to be ripped out–Ken and Kathy banished his experiments to the basement.

Which was fine with David. Science allowed him to distance himself from his parents, to create and destroy things, to break the rules, and to escape into something he was a success at, while sublimating a teenager’s sense of failure, anger, and embarrassment into some really big explosions. David held a series of after-school jobs at fast-food joints, grocery stores, and furniture warehouses, but work was merely a means of financing his experiments. Never an enthusiastic student and always a horrific speller, David fell behind in school. During his junior year at Chippewa Valley High School–at a time when he was secretly conducting nuclear experiments in his back yard–David nearly failed state math and reading tests required for graduation (though he aced the test in science). Ken Gherardini, who taught David conceptual physics, remembers him as an excellent pupil on the rare occasions when he was interested in classwork but otherwise indifferent to his studies. “His dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table,” Gherardini told me with a laugh during an interview at Chippewa Valley before his 8:20 A.M. class. “I don’t know about you, but my dream at that age was to buy a car.”

Link to the Harper's article, Link to buy the book The Radioactive Boy Scout (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

In order to study how fear is manifested in the brain, researchers created a Pac-Man-like videogame that shocks the player if he or she gets caught by a digital predator. The scientists from University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging used fMRI to scan the players' brains and see which part lit up during gameplay. From a Wellcome Trust press release about the study, published in the journal Science:

When the artificial predator was in the distance, the researchers observed activity in lower parts of the prefrontal cortex just behind the eyebrows. Activity in this area – known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – increases during anxiety and helps control strategies on how to respond to the threat.

However, as the predator moved closer, the brain activity shifted to a region of the brain responsible for more primitive behaviour, namely the periaqueductal grey. The periaqueductal grey is associated with quick-response survival mechanisms, which include fight, flight and freezing. This region is also associated with the body's natural pain killer, opioid analgesia, preparing the body to react to pain.

"(An animal's) most efficient survival strategy will depend on the level of threat we perceive," (says researcher Dean Mobbs. "This makes sense as sometimes being merely wary of a threat is enough, but at other times we need to react quickly. The closer a threat gets, the more impulsive your response will be – in effect, the less free will you will have."

Link to press release, Link to Science abstract

The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has scanned and published a full set of playing cards created in 1945 by an inmate at the Dachau concentration camp. They are the size of normal playing cards.

Boris Kobe (1905 - 1981) – Slovenian architect and painter was a political prisoner at the concentration camp of Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau. (...) As a whole, this work of art represents a visual summary of life in a concentration camp, the main vehicle of which consists of Kobe's tragic and humiliating sequences spiced with acrid humor. At the same time, this tiny exhibit is a miniature chronicle of the twilight of humanity brought about by Nazism, which regarded a human being, and therefore the artist himself, as a mere number.

Link. (Thanks, Yaffa)

Reader comments: Doug Rushkoff says,

FYI: It's not a full deck. it's most of a deck, but he either didn't finish it or some was lost.

Jody Wickson says,

The university's article unfortunately fails to put these cards in their proper context. The author seems to be unfamiliar with Tarot decks used for card games. This deck is based on a conventional Austrian style Tarot (or Tarock) design in which the trumps and court cards are double figured and the suit signs are hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs. Link. This type of Tarot deck is not used for the occult or for divination. It is only used for playing Tarot/Tarock card games.

I am also disapointed that the "all about the occult" link is a very biased anti-occult sermon which is unrelated to the type of Tarot (gaming, not fortune telling) depicted in the article. The article gives the unfortunate and false impression that these cards were used for the occult. Not all of Tarot is related to the occult or fortune telling. In fact, Tarot cards were originally designed in the 15th century for playing a card game and the fortune telling practices date no earlier than the 18th century.

Here is a link which I think better explains the cultural context of this type of Tarot deck.

Here's a snip from a statement just released by World Organization for Human Rights USA, the group representing Chinese internet dissidents Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning, and Wang’s wife, Yu Ling (Wang and Yu are shown above), in their lawsuit against Yahoo:

On Monday, August 27th, Yahoo!, Inc. will make its first formal response to the lawsuit filed against it by imprisoned Chinese journalist Shi Tao, pro-democracy advocate Wang Xiaoning, and other internet users. The political prisoners accuse Yahoo! of wrongfully providing their internet user information to the Chinese government, leading directly to their arbitrary arrest, long-term detention, and abuse and torture. This will be Yahoo!’s first statement to the court on the substantive issues raised by the case since the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in April 2007.

An Alternate History of the 21st Century is William Shunn's first short story collection, a chapbook from Spilt Milk Press. I've known Bill for a decade -- and even before we met, I'd heard the (true) legend of how he once threatened to blow up an airplane for the Church of Latter Day Saints. He's not only an incredible writer (and he really, really is, as his string of recent Hugo and Nebula nominations can attest), but he's also one of the sweetest, nicest, funniest people I know. It was my absolute honor and pleasure to write an intro to Bill's book. Here it is:

Bill Shunn is a legend in certain circles. Long before I met him, I'd had many people regale me with the story of how he once threatened to blow up an airplane in Canada on behalf of the Church of Latter Day Saints. The story -- incredible, hilarious, sad and instructive -- is too long to recount here. Suffice it to say that it ends with Bill getting a rectal probe from a Mountie, trying to convert a drunk in the tank to Mormonism, and then being deported from Canada as a terrorist (the whole thing is recounted in engrossing detail on Bill's website and podcast). In my mental shorthand, I thought of Bill as "that Mormon terrorist skiffy writer."

But once I met Bill, that changed. He was developing geo-hacker software for handheld computers -- this was before Big Bird hired him to program the computers at the Children's Television Network -- and he was nothing like my mental image. I'd expected someone with the fresh-faced earnestness of the door-to-door Mormons who'd roused me on Saturday mornings (albeit I also expected a mad, terrorist glint in his eye). What I found instead was a hip, ironic, funny guy that I took an immediate liking to. I introduced him immediately to my pal Karl Schroeder, a skiffy writer who comes from Mennonite stock, on the grounds that they'd probably have a lot to talk about. They did.

Bill emailed me on September 11, 2001. He'd set up a message-board CGI for survivors of the attack on the Twin Towers. Log on there and tell everyone you're OK. It was a heartbreaking thing. It filled with hundred -- thousands -- tens of thousands -- of messages. Not just "I'm OK," either. Lots of "I'm looking for my Dad, he works at --" Lots of political messages. Lots of anger. Lots of shock. It was Bill's little message board, but it became a flashpoint for the survivors of that terrible day.

Bill has the sure instincts of a twenty-first century science fiction writer. He is keenly attuned to the present (in the twenty-first century, there's no point in keeping track of the future). He recognizes those truly present-day moments that could only come now, today, in this futuristic present that we swim through without ever really seeing.

This extraordinary book is a journey through our present. From the bitingly political ("From Our Point of View We Had Moved to the Left") to the sad and personal ("Not of this Fold" -- a gorgeous novella about faith and humanity that could only have been written by a lapsed Mormon sf writer), and everything in between, this collection is the kind of thing that you can never un-read, a book that will awaken you to the present all around you.

Link

See also:
Love in the Time of Spyware
SF podcast: reality TV as criminal tracking-bracelets
Bill Shunn hasn't been excommunicated...yet.

Hmmm.... Hilton says the official announcement of Castro's death will come later today. Link (Thanks, Jane McGonigal!)

UPDATE: Meanwhile, other news sources report that there are no indications that Castro is dead or about to die. Link (Thanks, Xeni!)

UPDATE: The Miami Herald discusses the rumors that, so far, seem to be just that. Link

Deputy Dog posted an intriguing list of ten people who have modified their bodies in some pretty intense ways. Several are familiar freaks previously seen on BMEzine.com or various TV shows, but seeing them all together is quite a treat. Seen here, from left, Rick Genest, Elaine Davidson, and Kala Kaiwi.

Link

Well, that *is* monstrous. Reuters snip: "Monster.com waited five days to tell its users about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information from some 1.3 million job seekers..." Link.

A new study reveals that female rhesus monkey use "baby talk" to communicate with infants. From National Geographic:

"You can't ask What does it mean?" (University of Chicago professor Dario) Maeustripier) said. "It doesn't mean anything. It's the intonation that matters."

But the sounds appear to serve a key purpose.

"They don't have a meaning linked to a representation of an item or object, but they may perform a very important social function to bring individuals together," said Lisa Parr of Yerkes National Primate Center at Atlanta's Emory University.

Link

Consumerist publishes a pretty wild first-person account from a guy who claims to have been forcibly detained and harassed by private security staff at electronics retailer TigerDirect. The shopper refused to show his receipt after his purchase. The security employee, an employee of Securitas, physically blocked the customer's exit and verbally abused him, according to the account. The customer called 911 and was released. No charges were filed.

Link (thanks, Mike Shea)

Update: Ben Popken at Consumerist says...

TigerDirect manager calls complainant to apologize, fire security guard, and pledge to retrain staff. TigerDirect EVP calls Consumerist to arrange for delivery of big batch of home-made FUD. The latter should take ethics lessons from the former. Link.

Alex Halavais says,

This is a follow-on to your TigerDirect story: a pdf of a brief statement you can hand to the guard who asks to see your receipt, making clear why you both will not show your receipt and how checking receipts is a bad business practice. Link.

A young boy stomped and killed a 10-foot-long python featured in a petting zoo at a Catholic school's festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. House of Reptiles owner Scott Braunstein had brought snakes, alligators, lizards, spiders, and frogs to the St. Bernadette Festival as he has done for several years. The boy apparently told Braunstein that he hated snakes before, allegedly, expressing his dislike in a much more physical manner. From the Associated Press:

"The next thing I know ... the kid raises his leg and stomps down on the snake's head," Braunstein said. "The snake started convulsing."

Braunstein said he saw a man grab the child and say, "This is why I don't take you anywhere," before disappearing.

Link

Are you Amy Winehouse? Link.

Creating an AIM profile: Link (xkcd.com).

R. Crumb explains how there is no hope. Link. Scanned from The Complete Crumb: Vol. 14.

Infinite loop detection. Link.

Periodic Table of Hong Kong. Link.

What Would George Bush Do? Link.

Vietnam vs. Iraq. Link.

The only one you'll ever need. Link.

Windows Vista Upgrade decisionmaking process. Link.

(thanks, AaronM, Ken, Emese Gaal, Brian)

Previously on BB:

Ironic internet flowchart flowchart

Flowchart skull

Flowchart: RIAA Lawsuit Decision Matrix

Flowchart: Is it f*cked up? What to do, if so.

Infographic: Criteria for proper tactical usage of phrase "Oh, Snap!"

Flowchart: Medieval sexual decisionmaking for penitentials

Panflute flowchart

...to charge a teenager for capturing 20 seconds of "Transformers" on her Canon Powershot, so she could share a video snippet with her kid brother.

[Update: BoingBoing readers' protest action, in the comments at the foot of this post.]

David Kravets at Wired News blogs:

Arlington County's top prosecutor, Richard E. Trodden, tells THREAT LEVEL he was pressured by Regal Entertainment Group, the world's largest movie exhibitor, to prosecute a 19-year-old Virginia woman for filming 20 seconds of Transformers.

"What they were saying, 'Could you get her to admit that it wasn't right.' They wanted to make sure the message gets out," Trodden said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "This was kind of trying to address the concerns of the theater people, and the fact that it was not an outrageous crime."

Trodden, pictured [here], said he spoke with Randy Smith, Regal's general counsel. Messages left for Smith at the company's Knoxville, Tennessee headquarters were not immediately returned.

Jhannet Sejas, 19, pleaded guilty last week in Arlington County General District Court to one misdemeanor count of filming a motion picture in a movie house owned by Regal Cinemas. The statute, like the 37 others nationwide sponsored by the motion picture industry, deems filmgoers guilty for filming a "portion" or a "portion thereof" of a movie.

Link.

Reader comment: Jon M says,

In light of the ridiculous action being taken against the 19-year old who took a 20 second clip of the transformers movie, it seems that maybe some boing boing readers should make a project out of filming the entire transformers movie at regal theaters using only cell phones or digital still cameras and afterwards, editing the film together as seamlessly as possible. This is sheer absurdity but a kick in the pants as well. I'd love to send a version of it to Regal so they see that no 'pirate' would steal a movie that way in order to distribute.

Nick says,

If people want to start sending clips to chatfieldtaylor@gmail.com, I'll start to edit the cellphone transformers movie together. Rough timecodes would help, but I'm sure I could just line it up to a street bought copy.

Robotech Master says,

I'd suggest mentioning that anybody who participates in the "tape the movie" protest be prepared to face the same sort of penalties as the person whose charging they are protesting. If they are prepared to be arrested in the name of freedom, like the passive resisters of the 1960s, more power to them, but they should go into it fully aware of what might happen.

(Personally, judging from the number of camcorded movies that haunt BitTorrent these days, I'm doubtful that the protest would have any efficacy. Perhaps people wouldn't *prefer* to watch movies that way, but all evidence suggests that they'll do it anyway.)

Nick says,

In Response to Robotech Master, I suggest that everyone buy a ticket to another movie and then sneak in to Transformers in order to film it.

Chronicle Books will soon publish Van Halen: a Visual History to coincide with the band's reunion tour. Image above from that book, shot by Neil Zlozower. Here's my favorite DLR interview ever, from the post-punk fanzine WET: Link (previous BB post). It was a dueling interview layout, DLR vs. Johnny Rotten. DLR won. Did you know he once trained to be a paramedic?

Stooping to New Lows Department: I ended up in an ABC World News segment about a new version of Facebook for cats and dogs. WNT site doesn't have the video, but this affiliate station posted it: Video Link. Shut up.

Scott Beale says, "Check it out, BART [the SF Bay Area underground train system] is requiring SFShenanigans to get a free speech permit for their Christmas in August on BART event. If not, they're going to send in the BART police. Amazing how much things have changed in the last decade. What if they were doing a Mime Flash Mob, then would they need a free speech permit?" Link. UPDATE: BART representative Linton Johnson has just responded to the criticism: Link.

A documentary film about artist Steve Kurtz' "bioterrorism" case is now opening in theaters around the country. Link. Previous BB posts about his case here.

It Came From Airport Security, the anthology announced about a year ago of fiction based on new security measures at airports, is now available (and is forwardthinkingly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5).

The new Sony Bio Battery is powered by glucose from grape juice and sports drinks. Link (via ubergizmo).

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats produces pornography for houseplants, "featuring uncensored acts of explicit pollination, filmed in photosynthetic silhouette for projection onto the exposed foliage of bushes and brambles..." Link.

MUTHR NACHR'S HARBL? A tumbleweed lies lodged in Upper Antelope Canyon, in Antelope Canyon Navajo Tribal Park outside of Page, Arizona. Photo link.

Listening to: some kinda M.I.A., Topknot, Cornershop remix here, MP3 Link.

Twitter updates from Burning Man: Link.

(thanks, Susannah Breslin, Scott Beale, Jeff Reynolds, guinevere harrison, C. Glen Williams, Henrik)

Jody Radzik of the always-illuminating Guruphiliac blog says, "Here's an excellent explanation, deconstruction and debunking of that claptrap "The Secret." From "The Wrath of the Secretrons" by Connie L. Schmidt:

f you’re at all familiar with The Secret, you know that the big secret revealed therein is a centuries-old principle called the law of attraction, or LOA. In The Secret LOA is presented as a scientific law akin to the law of gravity. LOA believers maintain that whether we realize it or not, we “attract” everything that happens to us – the good and the bad, the sublime and the silly, the comical and the tragic. Financial success or failure, health or illness, a life of peace or one beset by violent crime or natural disasters, all occur because we somehow attracted them. Proponents of LOA explain that this happens because our vibrations are in sync with the events in question. If we learn to focus on the good and ignore the bad, we will “raise our vibrations” and attract more good things into our lives – including, and some would say especially, material goodies.

There does seem to be a great deal of emphasis on material wealth in The Secret, and this is by design, according to the producers, since so many people these days are interested in getting rich. The story goes that Rhonda Byrne, the main creator and producer of The Secret, was originally inspired by a 1910 book called The Science of Getting Rich, one of many books by success/motivational writer Wallace D. Wattles (1860-1911). Wattles, who believed a fulfilling life was not possible without wealth, wrote that a “normal” person cannot help wanting to be rich, and that if you don’t become rich, “you are derelict in your duty to God, yourself and humanity.” Although he did not mention the law of attraction by name in the book, he alluded to it: “It is a natural law that like causes produce like effects.” He added, “Once you learn and obey these laws, you will get rich with mathematical certainty.”

I think it worthy of note that Wattles, who died at a relatively young age, did not die rich. Perhaps he failed to do the math...

The reason for featuring (Joe) Vitale, (John) Gray, (John) Demartini and other successful self-help gurus in The Secret is, obviously, to convince watchers that these people became successful because they learned how to use the law of attraction in their favor. Never mind the years of trial and error, hard work and dumb luck, that got them to where they are now. Steve Salerno, author of the book SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, wrote in his review of The Secret on Amazon: “One seldom encounters a better/worse example of the logical fallacy known as a posteriori reasoning. To take a successful person, look backwards at the attitudes they held on the way to becoming successful, then use those as proof-positive of WHY they’re successful, is as fundamentally silly as using the fact that Bill Gates and Ted Turner were college dropouts as justification for why you or your kids should drop out of college, too. (‘See? You’ll become a millionaire, just like they did!’).”

Link

UPDATE: My friend Adam Parfrey and Maja D'Aoust co-wrote a new Secret-busting book, The Secret Source, that's currently at the printer. Here's an excerpt:

Says teacher David Schirmer within The Secret:

"When I first understood The Secret, every day I would get a bunch of bills in the mail. I thought, “How do I turn this around?” The law of attraction states that what you focus on you will get, so I got a bank statement. I whited out the total, and I put a new total in there. I put exactly how much I wanted to see in the bank. So I thought, “What if I just visualized checks coming in the mail?” So I just visualized a bunch of checks coming in the mail. Within just one month, things started to change. It is amazing: today I just get checks in the mail. I get a few bills, but I get more checks than bills.”

Another thing Mr. Schirmer received in the mail was notification from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in July, 2007, that he would be investigated for false promises made to investors who lost tens of thousands of dollars entrusted to a revered teacher from The Secret."

Adam adds "What's different about Maja's and my book from (Schmidt's critique that you link to above) is that we explore the original gnostic and hermetic writings that spun out the alchemical, Rosicrucian, New Thought movement and Prosperity Consciousness ideas that "The Secret" grabs from in a selective and reductionist way." Here's more from our book:

Here, too, we must keep in perspective that fact that the acquisition of wealth is not necessarily a “benefit,” and wouldn't solve one’s deepest problems. In the ancient alchemical and Hermetic teachings, we are taught the opposite, not to go about getting everything we want, but rather, to frustrate our desires by not giving in to them. Carl Jung extrapolates on this Hermetic concept in his works on psychology and alchemy. It is precisely the frustration of desires that creates enough tension and heat to power the calcinatio stage of the alchemical operation itself:

The necessary frustration of desirousness or concupiscence is the chief feature of the calcinatio stage. First the substance must be located; that is, the unconscious unacknowledged desire, demand, expectation must be recognized and affirmed. The instinctual urge that says “I want” and “I am entitled to do this” must be fully accepted by the ego ... As a rule, life reality, if faced, provides plenty of occasions for the calcinatio of frustrated desirousness ... when denied, it becomes enraged. This is the psychological homologue of the “Divine Wrath” that roasted Christ. Reality often generates fire by challenging or denying the demanding expectations of such desires. Denied justification, the frustrated desire becomes the fire of calcinatio ... the fire of calcinatio purges these identifications and drives off the root.

On a personal level, the expectation of easy riches combined with a sense of absolute entitlement indicates stunted psychological growth and a sense of failure if desires remain unfulfilled. And it should go without saying that the Prosperity Consciousness message, that everyone is entitled to fulfill all their consumerist desires without restriction gnores the fact that our small planet has its physical limitations and is currently in the throes of potentially cataclysmic reactions against its six billion six hundred million human occupants, whether prosperous or not.

Link

[926AM PT] Using abundant quantities of the liquid fuel source shown above, a very dedicated group of Apple fans have documented steps they took to unlock the Apple iPhone's chains to AT&T: Link.

They implemented both hardware and software changes, and in doing so, proved that the device can be modified to permanently function with other network carriers.

Snip from Apple Insider post:

Calling their project Finding JTAG after the Joint Test Action Group standard used to test access ports on circuit boards, the hobbyists claim to have refined a surefire but dangerous ten-step process that allows the iPhone to use an unmodified SIM card from T-Mobile or other GSM cellular networks.

More in this AP account:

George Hotz, 17, confirmed Friday that he had unlocked an iPhone and was using it on T-Mobile's network, the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology.

While the possibility of switching from AT&T to T-Mobile may not be a major development for U.S. consumers, it opens up the iPhone for use on the networks of overseas carriers.

"That's the big thing," said Hotz, in a phone interview from his home in Glen Rock.

Here's the Finding JTAG group's website: Link. (thanks, Jason Tester, via David Pescovitz!)

[1016AM PT] Reader comment: A.V. says,

In the last PC Magazine, AT&T has promised to "pursue" anyone who unlocks their iPhone... don't they have to allow unlocks by FCC law?

Mike

Engadget just confirmed that there is, in fact, a working software hack to unlock the iPhone.

Bo Stewart says,

The unlocked iPhone on ebay: Link.

BoingBoing reader Mike Miner shares the infographic above with all Boingdom and says, "If this keeps up one more day, LOLcharts are next." Image created by Emma Segal of Toronto.

Update: BB reader Nelson fulfills the prophecy. "A link to a cheezburger flowchart on my photobukkit."

Update 2: Brian Van Nieuwenhoven shares the epic LOLcat flowchart below. If only it contained steampunk, or papercraft Star Wars iPhone cozies.

Previously on BB:

Flowchart skull

Flowchart: RIAA Lawsuit Decision Matrix

Flowchart: Is it f*cked up? What to do, if so.

Infographic: Criteria for proper tactical usage of phrase "Oh, Snap!"

Flowchart: Medieval sexual decisionmaking for penitentials

Panflute flowchart

More in this Cornell university newspaper account: Link (Thanks to several people for this one).

Reader comment: Pamela sez, "I think NCState has Cornell beat: Link."

* martini
* absinthe
* i claudius drinking game
* beer
* bruisin ales
* champagne
* drinks planet

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

Image above: Manuscript for "The Green Goddess," an homage to absinthe by Aleister Crowley. You can buy prints of this scan here. You can buy the book here: Amazon Link.

Scott sez, "This week's short story on [science fiction short-story podcast] Escape Pod is The Sundial Brigade, a short story from the Glorifying Terrorism collection. That book was originally written to protest the 2006 UK Terrorism Act. As Steve notes in the intro, the book is sold out, so this is a great chance to listen to a story you might not be able to read otherwise." Link (Thanks, Scott!)

See also: Glorifying Terrorism - Brit sf writers break the law

Update: Leah sez, "I just wanted to let you know that contrary to the item posted on 'Glorifying Terrorism' being sold out, there are about six copies still available at Bakka-Phoenix Books in Toronto -- we'll be happy to send them out to anyone who's interested in getting a physical copy of that story."

Today on the Something Awful Photoshop Phriday contest: grindhouse-style posters for breakfast cereals. Link

See also: Movie posters redone in "grindhouse" style

Today I happened upon a display of Nid Kelly's ceramic robots at a shop in Melbourne. Kelly's robots have a rough, textured finish, but they look like plastic at first glance -- it was a small and delightful shock to pick one up and realize it was clay, not vinyl. The underlying forms are just great, real essence du robot, and the whimsical decor makes a great counterpoint to the serious, nearly Soviet robot shapes. Link

Last weekend was Bat's Day in the Fun Park, the annual goth day at Disneyland. I attended last year and had a ball -- thousands of goths converged on the Happiest Place on Earth, trying not to grin as they ambled through the environs in their fishnets and white makeup. It looks like this year's event was even bigger -- the LA Weekly has a slideshow of shots, and Flickr's Batsday tag is a clicktrance's worth of goodness. Link (Thanks, Scott!)

(Photo credit: Main event gathering, a Creative Commons-licensed photo, ganked from dj drüe's Flickr photostream)

Worldchanging's Alex Steffen sez, "Afghan women die more often in childbirth than women anywhere but Sierra Leone -- one in nine will die during or after being pregnant. But the rapid training of midwives and spread of essential health information suppressed during Taliban years is beginning, perhaps, to change this. Erica Barnett has written a stunning piece about this trend. A little excerpt:"

The tide may be turning. In 2005, Afghan midwives banded together to form the Afghan Midwives Association; by 2006, the organization had been admitted to the International Confederation of Midwives, and had helped to triple the number of trained midwives in Afghanistan. Another program, known as International Midwife Assistance, focuses particularly on rural Afghan women who deliver their babies at home. In 2004, the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics (JHPIEGO), an international health organization based in Baltimore, Maryland, launched its own training program for Afghani midwives. And earlier this year, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan graduated a class of 20 midwives in the Wardak Province of Afghanistan. The goal of all these and other midwifery programs: To train women about healthy prenatal care and safe childbirth and parenting practices, including sanitation, proper diet, and care of newborn infants.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Tag is a horror comic that tells the story of Mitch, an angry man whose loveless relationship with Izumi (his on-again, off-again girlfriend) has just ended, again. They're leaving the restaurant when a shambling horror runs up to him, touches him in the chest and shouts, "Tag, you're it!" Immediately, Mitch begins to die, his bodily functions shutting down, even though he remains able to walk and even talk (when he remembers to draw a breath). He and Izumi confront his death -- the rigor mortis, the rotting -- together, trying to figure out what happened to him. They find answers on a blog, where an earlier "tag" victim explains the rules by which this odd strain of zombiism is spread.

Tag comes from Boom Studios, written by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Kody Chamberlain and Chee. It has many resonances with The Ring and other stories that revolve around understanding the "rules" governing the creeping awfulness at the heart of the story. Like The Ring, Tag uses its gimmick to tell a damned fine tale about love and betrayal, a story with many layers that are peeled back as the story moves to a moving climax. Link

See also:
Death Valley: a graphic novel that's like John Hughes vs George Romero
Zombie Tales: comics anthology

Snip from an MTV.com interview with director (also painter, video artist, and performance artist) David Lynch:

MTV: You shot Inland Empire using digital technology. Will you ever go back to film?

Lynch: Never. Digital is so friendly for me and so important for the scenes, a way of working without so much downtime. It's impossible to go back. Film is a beautiful medium, but the world has moved on. The amount of manipulation we can do, anybody can do, is so much the future. Film is so big and heavy and slow, you just die. It's just ridiculous.

Link, via Deadline Hollywood Daily. (image: Rita Molnar, via Wikipedia)

someecards.com is the only ecard website you'll ever wanna bookmark. (Thanks, Sean Bonner!)

Above: "My name is Glenn Weyant and i play the US/Mexico border with a cello bow and other implements of mass percussion. Link."

How much is that blow job in the window? Pay rates for sex acts at Kink.com: Link.

At long last: The Stephen Colbert / Richard Branson splashdown: Video Link.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex could outrun David Beckham: Link.

Scientists replicate out-of-body experience using VR goggles and a stick. Link.

BB reader Matt C. says: "The Earth was cool at a young age. But like most aging ex-hipsters it later quit smoking and tried to cover its bald patches." Link.

Link to "A 15,000 year tour of Manhattan," Flash slideshow of NYC decaying after all the humans are dead (we used poisonous gases/and we poisoned their asses). From the website promoting Alan Weisman's new book, "The World Without Us."

This machine produces instant french fries automagically from powdery potatoey flakes. Link.

So, you want to be a sommelier: Link .

Crafty pancake pillows: Link.

Crafty boobie pillows: Link.

Michael Vick, step aside, and kindly take those rottweilers with you: "Actor and Internet personality Wil Wheaton has been indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of promoting and hosting a robot fighting ring." Link.

Can an opera singer's voice really shatter glass? Link.

OMG LINUS TORVALDS READS BOINGBOING! Link. The sky above is full of win, and the stars, they spell out "hawsum."

Excellent 1980s party robot for sale on eBay: Link (shown below).

(Thanks, Jack, Fred McCord, Alberto Colin, Scott Rosenblum, Maddy , DJ Spiess, Sean Carton, Joel M, Peabody, Brian, Susannah Breslin)

Following up on a previous BoingBoing post, here's a snip from CBC news:

Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protests at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Quebec.

Link (Thanks, Deb Johnson)

Decius adds,

Police in Quebec have admitted that the people in the YouTube video linked yesterday on BoingBoing were their officers. However, the press release says "Les policiers ont été repérés par les manifestants au moment où ils ont refusé de lancer des projectiles." In english thats: "The police officers were located by the demonstrators when they refused to launch projectiles." Now that version of events is very clearly contradicted by the video, which shows demonstrators telling the officers to put the rock down, not to launch it.

A good roundup of video chat services and "social television networks" in this NYT article by John Biggs: Link.

Included here, LA-based Operator 11, founded by Josh Harris (previously, founder of Pseudo.com and Jupiter). I visited not long ago and snapped this photo of some of the crew members at work. Fascinating place, and a nascent social phenomenon I don't entirely understand, but intend to keep an eye on.

This piece in MIT Technology Review dives in a little deeper to the Operator 11 story: Link.

Love this ceramic juice-jug with integrated squeezer:

With geometric shapes that are pleasing to the eye and warm, colorful enamel decorations, the "tropics" ceramic set is well suited to various tastes and atmospheres, being very attractive even to children. This is a totally ecological design, which encourages us to follow a healthy diet, and it allows us to prepare and serve natural orange, grapefruit or lemon juice, without any reaction between the acids contained in the juice and the varnished ceramic set. The squeezer can be used combined with the pitcher, in which the citrus fruit can be thoroughly squeezed; and then the juice can be served immediately or it can be kept in the pitcher until breakfast time, for this the squeezer is placed upside down and the pitcher is covered with its lid.

Link (via Popgadget)

A Consumerist reader writes in with this chilling tale of TSA confiscation hijinx -- crack anal-probers at the Sacramento airport stole the flyer's pudding, but left him with his stabby stabby knife.

I was passing through Sacto airport security checkpoint. I sent my carry-on backpack through the Xray machine. The operator found something, and raised her hand for assistance. Another TSA person came over and pulled my bag out of the machine and commenced with a hand search. Inside he found a package of unopened Hunts Pudding Snacks in my lunch. He confiscated the pudding "it's a liquid" and sent me on my way. Absurd, but forgettable. However later in the day I had a layover, and was going through my backpack looking for a pen and came across my Swiss Army Knife with a 4" locking blade.

Link (Thanks, Meghann!)

Update: Patrick sez, "It happened to me in 2006. But it wasn't pudding they got from me. They did two x-rays and two hand searches of my carry on and ended up confiscating a waiter's wine-key because it, 'had a foil cutter on it'. (If anyone is familiar with one of these items, the blade is about as sharp as a bowling ball.) However, they totally missed my huge stabby stab stab knife that was also in the bag (by mistake)."

Over at the Wired News Threat Level blog, Ryan Singel writes:

The nation's top spook Michael McConnell told El Paso Times reporter Chris Roberts last week that debating the nation's spy laws in public means "some Americans are going to die"

[ Ed note: And every time you masturbate, god kills a kitten. ]

...and that companies being sued for helping the government spy on Americans did help the government, an admission that Bush Administration lawyers have repeatedly told courts was a secret that could put Americans at risk. The astounding interview was published on Wednesday.

Link. And in related news, Ryan also reports:

The Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell contradicted the government and his own legal defenses of the nations' telecoms by telling an El Paso newspaper that the companies helped the government with its warrantless wiretapping program. That program ran from October 2001 to January 2006 without court supervision, but now gets special program warrants from a secret spy court.

The nation's largest telecoms, including AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, are being sued for allegedly violating federal and state privacy laws by secretly helping the government spy on Americans' phone and email calls.

Link.

Dutch architects zecc architecten converted a water tower into a nautilus-shaped vertical luxury flat that looks surprisingly homey. I'm especially fond of the little sundeck on the roof. Link (Thanks, Justin!)

Update: Katie sez, "An episode of grand designs, the UK self-build design-porn show, featured a Lutyens-designed water tower that a couple had in their garden. They decided to sell their house and build a new one inside the stilts of the water tower."

Update 2: Julian sez, "The girlfriend of a close friend of mine designed and converted this. I went there for a party and found that while it is indeed, amazing. It's also hell on the legs and would certainly keep you fit."

Johannes Grenzfurthner and the other wild 'n' crazy deep thinkers behind monochrom have just released details on a sex-and-tech-themed conference taking place October 5-7 at the Kink.com porn palace in San Francisco. Snip from the manifesto:

According to a study by Simon Smith, more than 800 items were registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office as sex toys between 1840 and 1997. Among them was a condom with a built-in computer chip that can play music. Progress?

From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development.

The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Immediately after producing his famous bible, Gutenberg used his press to print erotica. Photography was utilized just as quickly. In 1874 the London police discovered 130,000 pornographic photos in the course of a single house search. The introduction of cinematic technology also confirmed the close relationship between pornography and technological innovation: in 1896 a pornographic film was shown publicly for the first time, two years after the premiere of the first films of any interest to the general public. Since then, more pornographic films than nonpornographic films have been produced. That in 1977 the first video cassettes to appear on the market featured pornographic content should come as no surprise. The development of the camcorder and the instamatic camera made it possible for anyone so inclined to produce porno in privacy at home. The fact that the first affordable Polaroid model was named "The Swinger" seems to indicate that the industry was well aware of this possible use.

Link to Arse Electronika.

The name is a play on words, and a poke at art conferences some would say take themselves too seriously: Link.

Today's Skull-A-Day skull: an undead cranium flowchart. Link. (Hi Noah! Thanks!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Flowchart: RIAA Lawsuit Decision Matrix

Flowchart: Is it f*cked up? What to do, if so.

Infographic: Criteria for proper tactical usage of phrase "Oh, Snap!"

Flowchart: Medieval sexual decisionmaking for penitentials

Panflute flowchart

For our 1996 book of future forecasts, Brad Wieners and I asked chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov when he thought a computer might beat him or another human chess master. Kasparov predicted it wouldn't happen until at least 2010, or "maybe never." A year later, he lost to IBM's Deep Blue. On the tenth anniversary of Kasparov's defeat by a machine, philosopher Daniel Dennet wrote an essay on what the match might mean to our understanding of intelligence, human and machine. From Technology Review:

The best computer chess is well nigh indistinguishable from the best human chess, except for one thing: computers don't know when to accept a draw. Computers--at least currently existing computers--can't be bored or embarrassed, or anxious about losing the respect of the other players, and these are aspects of life that human competitors always have to contend with, and sometimes even exploit, in their games. Offering or accepting a draw, or resigning, is the one decision that opens the hermetically sealed world of chess to the real world, in which life is short and there are things more important than chess to think about. This boundary crossing can be simulated with an arbitrary rule, or by allowing the computer's handlers to step in. Human players often try to intimidate or embarrass their human opponents, but this is like the covert pushing and shoving that goes on in soccer matches. The imperviousness of computers to this sort of gamesmanship means that if you beat them at all, you have to beat them fair and square--and isn't that just what ­Kasparov and Kramnik were unable to do?

Silicon machines can now play chess better than any protein machines can. Big deal. This calm and reasonable reaction, however, is hard for most people to sustain. They don't like the idea that their brains are protein machines. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, many commentators were tempted to insist that its brute-force search methods were entirely unlike the exploratory processes that Kasparov used when he conjured up his chess moves. But that is simply not so. Kasparov's brain is made of organic materials and has an architecture notably unlike that of Deep Blue, but it is still, so far as we know, a massively parallel search engine that has an outstanding array of heuristic pruning techniques that keep it from wasting time on unlikely branches.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Daniel C. Dennett: "Thank Goodness!" Link

Link to a reinterpretation by illustrator Leo Lingas of the classic painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emmanuel Leutze.

Bonnie, who points us to this lovely work, says,

He also gives the ”Arnolfini Portrait” by Jan van Eyck and “The Scream” by Edvard a "Star Wars" touch.

Proto-hacker and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has found a new calling: energy-efficient housing.

Snip from his interview intro in design engineer publication ECNmag:

The term "energy efficient" is rather vague. At some level it implies some form of conservation. I have great reservations with that concept as well. One aspect of conservation is to use less so that there is more to go around, either to more people or for a longer time. I disagree with this concept pretty strongly. Personally I want to conserve but I wouldn't push that concept on others as a "right" way to live. I only want to serve as an example. I don't want to tell others that they are bad people or doing "wrong" things. That's not a good way to keep open communication. I also have trouble with the concept that we can have more of a "worse" life. It's a conflict between quality and quantity and life should be judged by quality.

The form of energy efficiency that appeals greatly to me is the idea of efficiency of construction. I have always admired getting the same results with fewer parts or procedures. That's a win for everyone. I used that concept in my design approach in life. I was determined to give my highest regard to engineers and in engineering we always strive for more efficiency, defined mathematically as more out for less in. If you can build a car at the same price, with the same features (size and performance) yet it uses less gasoline or pollutes less, that's a win for everyone, including the car manufacturer. Engineering leads to such advances, even when they seem like tiny steps.

Link (thanks, Amy). Image: Bart Nagel.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Steve Wozniak interviewed by Pesco

Datsun ad starring The Woz

Smithsonian magazine looks at the history and tradition of hula and its reemergence from the 1950s and 60s Hawaiiana boom that threatened to turn the beautiful dance into a kitschy coconut bra-wearing simulacra of itself. Apparently, there's quite a renaissance of serious hula happening today, in Hawaii and beyond. From Smithsonian:

Kumu hulas (hula masters) generally teach their students both hula kahiko (traditional hula) which involves chanting accompanied by percussion instruments, and hula 'auana (modern hula) which features songs, mainly sung in Hawaiian, and instruments such as the ukulele and guitar. Early hula kahiko costumes for women featured skirts made of kapa, or bark cloth. Men wore the skirts, too, or just a loincloth, called a malo. A lei for the head and its counterpart for the ankles and wrists -— called kupe'e -— were made of plants or materials such as shells and feathers. Hula 'auana emerged in the late 1800s, when international visitors introduced stringed instruments to the culture. It was at this time that the ubiquitous grass skirts came on the scene as well, though costumes for hula 'auana are often more Western in appearance—fabric tops, skirts and dresses for women, and shorts and pants for men, but with lei and kupe'e as adornments. These accessories, however, depend upon which type of dance is being performed. "In hula kahiko," says Noenoelani Zuttermeister, a kumu hula who teaches at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, "a circular lei would be worn on top of the head, whereas in hula 'auana, the dancer may affix flowers to one side of the head."

But while hula historically has involved a merging of different cultural forms, kumu hulas of today want blending stopped. Rather than integrate Japanese or, say, Mexican dance traditions with Hawaiian hula in Tokyo or Mexico City, (kumu hula Rae) Fonseca says hula must be kept pure, wherever it is performed. "It's up to us teachers to stress that where we come from is important," he says. Zuttermeister strongly agrees: "If the link is not maintained as it should, then we're not passing on something that is hula and we're not being true to our culture."

Link

Jasmina Tešanović shares with Boing Boing this essay about her friend Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist in Russia who was murdered last year. Photo of Ms. Politkovskaya courtesy Novaya Gazeta, via Wikipedia. -- XJ

- - - - - - - - - -
08-23-2007 | Jasmina Tešanović
- - - - - - - - - -

Seventh of October 2006:

Accompanied by a nervous dog named Van Gogh, Anna Politkovskaya returns to her three room flat, on the seventh floor with a single bag of groceries (she will have to return downstairs for the second bag).

Inside the elevator, five gunshots. The killer drops his gun and walks out of the building. A 14 year old, Nina, is the first to see Anna dead on the elevator floor. Nina screams and runs up to the seventh floor on foot. An elderly woman from the eighth floor calls the elevator to her own floor, then calls the police. Then the old woman hurries off to buy her own groceries because all the shops will be closing at 4PM.

Anna Stepanovna Mazepa Politkovskaya ( her ex husbands name), mother of a 28 year old son and a 26 year old daughter... murdered in Moscow.

The long-expected news shocks no one, even as it hurries around the world. Repeated attempts had been made on her life, and success, was only a matter of time.

What did this tiny, unpretentious woman do to merit this? She was a journalist from Novaya Gazeta, a magazine founded in 1993 by Mihail Gorbachev, as an attempt at Russian full democracy through truth and openness.

She was always close to death while wandering in the lethal war zones of Chechnia, alone, in the dark, to get the story from the other side...

Once she was kidnapped by the Russian military, who staged her fake execution, much as they had done to Dostoyevski some centuries earlier. The military commented after that they would have preferred an authentic execution...

Arrested, she was kept in a hole of solitary confinement for four days without food, water, light, even buttons, for fear that her buttons might be microphones.

Here's a snip from a press release issued by the free speech advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Fronteres, or RSF), about a "self-discipline pact" reportedly signed by 20 or more of the largest blog service providers in China. Participating companies are said to include Yahoo.cn! and MSN.cn.

Unveiled yesterday by the Internet Society of China (ISC), an offshoot of the information industry ministry, the pact stops short the previous project of making it obligatory for bloggers to register, but it can be used to force service providers to censor content and identify bloggers.

"The Chinese government has yet again forced Internet sector companies to cooperate on sensitive issues - in this case, blogger registration and blog content," the press freedom organisation said. "As they already did with website hosting services, the authorities have given themselves the means to identify those posting 'subversive' content by imposing a self-discipline pact."

Reporters Without Borders added: "This decision will have grave consequences for the Chinese blogosphere and marks the end of anonymous blogging. A new wave of censorship and repression seems imminent, above all in the run-up to the Communist Party of China's next congress."

Under the new pact, blog service providers are "encouraged" to register users under their real names and contact information before letting them post blogs. More seriously, they will be required to keep this information, which will allow the authorities to identify them. These companies have already in the past provided the police with information about their clients, resulting in arrests.

Link.

In related news, RSF has this item about the reported confinement of cyber-dissident and blogger He Weihua in a psychiatric hospital in China's central Hunan province against his will: Link.

Reader comment: Will says,

The continued use of psychiatric hospitals as prisons by the Chinese government is an international scandal. This article on Robin Munro's excellent book, China's Psychiatric Terror, gives a good sense of how Beijing uses compliant, politicized mental health professionals as wardens and thought police.

Todd says: "After a China Airlines 737 burned to a crisp in Okinawa earlier this week, the airline rushed to paint over its logo from the charred fuselage to minimize PR damage." Link

A two-headed calf was born at the Hamstra Dairy farm on Tuesday but was euthanized yesterday. The calf was named Blinky because all four of its blinked simultaneously. According to dairy owner Greg Hamstra, the animal's lungs were collapsing, it couldn't stand, and it was "suffering." RIP Blinky.
Link to news of Blinky's birth, Link to news of Blinky's death

Previously on BB:
• Two-headed snake for auction Link
• Two-headed turtle Link
• Two-headed fossil Link