Link to a Flickr set of old photos, mostly nudes, all in stereoscopic 3D. Some appear to be very old (1900s?), others from the '50s and '60s. (thanks, jay)

Reader comment: David says,

One of the great early American comedians, Harold Lloyd (his movie "Safety Last" is a classic), photographed a lot of Hollywood starlets nude and in 3-D, including Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, etc. A few years ago, his daughter compiled a book of the best shots: Amazon Link.

Duke University researchers have genetically engineered mice that exhibit symptoms similar to those associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and then successfully reversed the behaviors using antidepressants and gene therapy. At first, the study had nothing to do with OCD. The scientists had switched off a particular gene, Sapap3, involved in neuronal communication to better understand its mechanism. To their surprise, the rodents began to exhibit signs of anxiety and compulsively groomed themselves to the point of injury. Like many humans with OCD, the mice's symptoms subsided after treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, in this case Prozac. Next, the researchers injected baby mice from the same engineered breed with a trigger to switch the Sapap3 gene back on. That therapy prevented those mice from developing the OCD-like symptoms. The scientists published their research in this week's issue of the journal Nature. From News@Nature:

"What's most exciting for us is that you can put this gene back in a very small area and rescue the normal behaviour," (lead author Guoping) Feng says...

Feng admits that it is hard, if not impossible, to come up with a perfect animal model for a human psychiatric condition, as no one knows what the animals are thinking. But the team still hopes that studying these mice can help develop better drugs for treating OCD in humans.

Feng's team is now studying human families where OCD is common to see if mutations in the Sapap3 gene are linked to OCD in humans as well as mice.

Link to News@Nature, Link to Nature Editor's Summary, Link to NINDS press release

Previously on BB:
• Shrooms to treat OCD Link

New in US theaters this week: "The King of Kong," a geekumentary about two Donkey Kong masters trying to set a world record, and the little-understood world in which competitive arcade game trufans try to avoid "being chumpatized."

Here's IMDB, Here's a review at Cinematical, The NYT's Brad Stone raves about it here, here's a piece in the NY Sun, Here's Rotten Tomatoes (goddamn, 97%!).

I was in the ABC News bureau in Los Angeles this afternoon, and producer Ed Cunningham was there speaking to ABC newsers (taping an interview or something, I guess). I overheard him explain that Universal made them append the title, so it reads "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," because studio lawyers believed the first half alone to be too close to "King Kong." Heh.

Haven't seen the film, but I'm googling showtimes right now. Looks awesome.

Reader comment: Justin Garrison says,

I went and saw the movie last weekend at the Nuart Theater in Santa Monica. By far the best documentary I have ever seen, let alone a geekumentary. There was a Q&A with Seth Gordon (director) and Ed Cunningham (producer) after the movie and they talked about the dramatization of the documentary (I forget what studio picked up the rights). They both talked about some actors they liked for the two main roles and mentioned Johnny Depp or Ed Norton playing Billy and Greg Kinnear or Nathan Fillion for Steve. Either way, go see the documentary! It was far more interesting than most of the movies that have been in theaters recently, except Hot Fuzz of course.

Parker says,

It's funny that Universal should go after a movie based on the video game, given that Universal's attempt to restrict the arcade game Donkey Kong failed, and established the character and the plot as being in the public domain. In case you're not familiar with this case, it's a good one! Link to Wikipedia entry on MCA Universal vs. Nintendo.

r3v says,

I wanted to point out that the Comic-Con episode (#32) of the podcast Geekscape featured an interview with Steve Wiebe, the protagonist in King of Kong. Link.

Update: Here's the ABC News piece, Here is a link to the whole webcast.

The Financial Times today reports on a planned social network for the U.S. intelligence community -- a sort of MySpace for spooks, dubbed A-Space. Idle question: are users referred to as "a-holes"? Anyway, snip:

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (...)Underscoring the power of social-networking sites, the Central Intelligence Agency recently used Facebook to help boost applications for the national clandestine service.

Link to story. BoingBoing reader Brian says, "I immediately realized what the result of CIA agents adopting Facebook/MySpace culture would be: LOLspies!" Link.

Reader comment: Ted says,

Along the lines of the A-Space initiative, you might be interested to know that there has been an intelligence community wiki for about a year and a half now. It's known as Intellipedia. Interestingly enough, it's very much like Wikipedia: some topics are covered in exhaustive detail while others are frustratingly short. There is also a notable dearth of LOLcat related material.

BoingBoing reader Anthony says,

Since we're on a flowchart roll at BoingBoing, my favorite is Toothpaste for Dinner's Panflute flowchart. It's hard to beat on brevity or accuracy. This link is to the presumably permanent location of the gif image of the flowchart on the Toothpaste for Dinner site.

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

BoingBoing reader David Hayward says,

2K's BioShock is easily the most overhyped game so far this year, though it is quite beautiful.

What they're no doubt underhyping as best they can is the fact that the PC version of the game is packaged with SecuROM copy protection, a piece of third party anti-copying software that phones home and prevents installation on more than 2 PCs.

The PC demo of BioShock causes AVG to go nuts at it for containing trojans. It wouldn't install or load on a winXP partition until AVG antivirus was completely uninstalled. *Presumably* this is due to SecuROM, which also demands that other perfectly legit processes stopped: Link.

The response on the 2K forums has been a pretty uniform "Yarr!": Link.

Anonymous adds,

Worse yet, game maker 2K is telling people to call Securom, and Securom is telling people to call 2K. Steam is affected as well. You can only install the game on 2 PC's, period. (Confirmed by steam employee.) So, if you use your steam account on 3 PC's, you'll only get to play on 2. You're required to right click the game in the steam menu and choose 'delete local content' before you can transfer the game to another PC. If you delete the game without following this procedure, you may end up in the same ordeal as retail buyers. Details for the steam issue can be found here: Link.

Patrick says,

This isn't entirely correct. If you follow this link to Kotaku's post you'll see that the game can be installed on as many computers as you want, it just can't be installed on more than two at a time (i.e you have to uninstall first, and then install on another computer). Not such a big deal.

Alex says,

Regarding Patrick's comment, many people have been having trouble with not getting the uninstall "credit" and when the activation server went down many people were unable to play the game they were entitled to... it's not "Not such a big deal" for a lot of people, more defective by design.

Over at the National Geographic All Terrain blog, Tom Zeller, Jr. (formerly of the New York Times) today posts about vanishing arctic ice, and recent news that "Russia took a submersible to an undersea ridge beneath the North Pole earlier this month and, yes, planted a titanium flag." Link to blog post, and Video Link to the clip about the Russian flag at the ocean floor.

Reader comment: Nick Crossland says,

Did you know it has since been found that some of the footage the Russians claimed to be at the Arctic was really stolen from the movie Titanic ? Link.

Zacharia Smith, 18, of Cincinnati, Ohio was hit by a train as he walked across the tracks on Monday, but fortunately survived. The gates were down. Witnesses report that Smith appeared to be sending a text message while he was walking. He's listed in serious condition. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

(Witnesses told Elmwood Place Mayor Richard) Ellison that Smith looked as if he was using his phone to send a text message and didn't see the onrushing train.

"The horn was blowing like mad, and the kid was text-messaging," Ellison said.

"The kid apparently was just daydreaming."

Link (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

Bacn invented this past weekend? This historic panel from the early 1900s Laugh Out Loud Cats comic indicates otherwise. Link. (thanks, Ape Lad)

Snip from WSJ item: "The attorneys general of all 50 states have joined forces to pressure MySpace, Facebook Inc. and other Internet social-networking sites to put in place greater parental controls and age-verification tools so minors can't access the sites so easily." Sites are under fire to voluntarily implement stronger restrictions and perv-nabbing technologies, but the group is also pushing for new laws and "public educational campaigns" to be led by the Federal Trade Commission. Link.

Update: Here's an extensive critique of the "29,000 zapped predators and counting" stat MySpace is touting. Link.

Update: danah boyd, who has researched and written extensively on this topic, describes the AGs' actions as a witch hunt:

The AGs have been perpetuating a culture of fear around SNSs for a long time now, but most of their fears are ungrounded. Research by Ybarra, et al. has shown that safety efforts have focused on the wrong things. (A broader roundup of research in this area is discussed at the Internet Caucus' seminar on the topic; video, audio, and transcripts can be found here.) The AGs have also been screaming danger since they learned that 29K people on MySpace are on the sex offenders list. BBC reports that there are over 600K people registered in the States (meaning that less than 5% of sex offenders have profiles, indicating that sex offenders are far less likely to have profiles than average adults). On top of that, most sex offenders on the list have nothing to do with children. (Stephanie Booth does a great job of discussing who all is on these lists and why.) Combine this with the National School Boards Association report that less than .08% of teens meet someone offline without parental permission and you realize that very few teens are at risk. MySpace and Facebook are far far far safer than most places that teens hang out (including their own homes, schools, churches, etc.), but the AGs gain a lot more public credibility by screaming "danger!" when talking about social network sites than they do when talking about homes, schools, churches, etc.

Erik Schark

More proof of the speed of the internet. The term "bacn" (e-mail you want, just not now: myspace alerts, twitter followers, newsletters, etc.) was coined during PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 on Sunday, and as of today, Wednesday, according to Technorati, there are over 350 blog posts containing the word, and it's the 14th most popular search term of the day.

A few more mentions: Wired, Washington Post, CNET, Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion, The Jeff Pulver Blog, Geek Sugar, A.M.magazine (in German).

The ridiculous power of the internet.

Oh, there is much to love in this "dance and exercise" cover of the Village People's "YMCA" by '70s rokk ikkons Gregorious, who were once huge, huge I tell you, in Finland. But what I love most: well, you're lookin' at him. Video Link. Best YouTube comment so far: "It's like an American Apparel ad gone wrong." (Thanks, Kent!)

Reader comment: Matti Laakso says,

Original source for the NMKY video: Link. (DRM'd windooze player paid by Finnish tax euros, much like BBC's stuff these days.)

And yes, they actually took this stuff seriously. The background band consists of some serious jazz/progressive heavyweights such as Pekka Pohjola (Link). According to the YLE site, Gregorius failed to make it to the charts despite the overflowing Boy-powah!

Seems to me Lordi (Eurovision song contest 2006 winner) is only the latest iteration of painfully hilarious Finnish pop music to tickle that camp-funny bone! Check out this one: Link.

... on the other hand, eastern european, uh, superstar Zlad! doesn't fare much better: Link.

Snip from Newsweek article:

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Link. (Thanks, Joel M)

Photo: a young monk in Amdo province. Ganked from the eternally fascinating archives of photographer Raul Gutierrez, whose RSS feed is a daily source of joy.

David Topping from Torontoist blog says,

This is weird stuff: protesters are accusing police at the Montobello leaders summit (which includes George Bush, Stephen Harper, and Felipe Calderon) of using other police as riot provocateurs. The video of one such confrontation is really extraordinary to watch.

Link.

Reader comment: Duncan says,

This link is a photo of the boots they were wearing which also happens to be the same boots the police were wearing.

Swiftysjunk says,

NY Police have also been arresting themselves to incite people. My cousin Jim Dwyer ( NY Times, Pulitzer Prize winner ) has a three part video blog ( includes helicopter rooftop surveillance of terroristic couples sucking face ). It goes well with the Quebec cops.

Link to Jim's page, and Link to first video.

Spectacle, by designers David Rockwell and Bruce Mau, is a photobook documenting massive communal experiences, from the Kumbh Mela in India (above right) to a NASCAR race (above). It came out last year but I just read a glowing review at Cool Tools. Judging by the review, and the sample pages on the book's companion site, this looks to be a magnificent project. Big lesson? You gotta be there.

Link to buy Spectacle, Link to Spectacle site, Link to Cool Tools review

You need some TSA luggage tags, don't you? BoingBoing reader paul says, "A friend's mom found these luggage tags on clearance at Target for $1.98. "Link.

You need a World Trade Center disaster preparedness kit, don't you? Link.

Yelp + Google Maps = tool that allows you to find lunch near your place of work. (corrected) Link.

Bulletproof Baby Gear. Link.

Exactly how does the Wikipedia Scanner tool work? Link.

Remember the Google Video refund debacle? Google realizes it screwed up, and is now offering to re-refund customers: Link.

Blogger at Runners World celebrates one year anniversary of his brain aneurysm with a splendid "brain cake." In this post, he urges others to have an ID tag of some sort when they run alone, just in case something happens. Link.

Kathryn Cramer says, "A few weeks ago, when I was visiting the Cahokia mounds, a World Heritage site and once a city of 20,000 about a thousand years ago, I checked the place out on Google Earth and discovered a mound in the elevation data that had been torn down in the 1960s. So what we have here is essentially the digital ghost of an ancient Indian artifact." Link.

(Thanks, Choire, Mike G., James, Ivan, JFR, Mary!)

Deputydog posted a great selection of "13 of the worst fake accents in film," including YouTube clips where available. Readers have suggested dozens of others in the comments, which is where you should post your "nominees" too! From the Deputydog post:

keanu reeves - dracula
i was tempted not to even mention this one due to the fact that he’s not an actor. it’s just a given that he’ll never be able to imitate someone with an english accent because he can’t imitate anything unless it has no emotion, voice or physical presence. and to say yes to the part after finding out the gary oldman is gonna share scenes with you and make you look even worse is just acting suicide.

dick van dyke - mary poppins
there’s a reason why dick’s performance in mary poppins is always mentioned when the subject of shit movie accents is brought up: because it’s absolutely hilariously bad. if the director had said to him before the film, “listen dick, i want you to do a comedy cockney accent throughout filming. don’t take it seriously.” he still couldn’t have done a worse accent.

Link

Rick Prelinger of Archive.org tells BoingBoing,

NASA has chosen the Internet Archive to build a giant, free, online collection of still and moving images. The IA will soon begin digitizing NASA's vast collections, which include material from aeronautical and rocketry experiments sponsored by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in the 1920s.

Link to a CNET News piece, but note that CNET gets one thing wrong -- this agreement is nonexclusive, as agreements with government agencies ought to be.

Image: The Tadpole Galaxy, eyeballed with the Hubble telescope (courtesy NASA).

As South American rain forests are cleared away to make room for livestock pastures, vampire bats in the area are increasingly attacking cattle. The bovines are easier prey than the bats' traditional forest meals--tapirs and peccaries whose habitat is being destroyed. Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research noticed this shift in diet by analyzing the breath of bats in Costa Rica. From National Geographic:

Cattle and rain forest mammals feed on different plants that can be distinguished by their carbon isotopes. Since these chemical clues are present in prey's blood, the signature in the bats' breath varies with their meals. The study clearly indicated that the vampires' most recent victims were almost always cattle, the team said.

Link

Brian Briggs points us to this stealthily obtained Official RIAA Document (TM): "Lawsuit Decision Matrix." Link. He absolutely did not create it and upload it to bbspot.com, because that would mean it's not authentic.

Previously on BoingBoing:

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

Bruce Gray is a sculptor in Los Angeles who has created everything from giant insects to model motorcycles to this massive hunk of Swiss cheese all from metal.

From Gray's site:

"The Big Cheese #4" Standing Sculpture (25x29x43) is constructed in welded aluminum. This version includes many intersecting bubbles of various diameters. This is one of the sculptures in Bruce's series of oversized objects inspired by Claes Oldenburg. It is currently available at $15,000. The "Big Cheese" can be commissioned in any size, and also in steel, stainless steel, or with various patinas. This sculpture appeared on Discovery Channel's "Monster House," in the season 4 finale of HBO's "Six Feet Under," and in a book titled The Sculpture Reference Illustrated.

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

The popular TV drama "Bones" is based on the novels of Kathy Reichs, a working forensic anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Reichs knows death. She's interviewed in the new issue of Smithsonian. From the interview:

You work on crime victims. Do you think about them a lot?
You have to remain objective, of course. My colleague Clyde Snow has said, "If you have to cry, you cry at night at home. While you're doing your job, you do your job." The cases that stay in your mind are the ones that haven't been resolved...

What impact have forensic novels and TV shows had on the public?
They've made the public a bit more aware of science. Especially kids. Especially little girls, which is a good thing. But they've raised the public's expectations higher than is realistic, with juries expecting every single case to get DNA every time. That's not realistic. It's not even smart. You don't do every single test in every single case.

What do your science colleagues think of your fiction?
You're not supposed to be writing fiction. If you do it in the English department, you're a hero. If you do it in the science department, you're a little suspect.

Link to Smithsonian, Link to buy Reichs's books