By Xeni Jardin at 7:47 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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I am told that this video is a recent and wildly popular thing in Japan. Here's an English subtitled YouTube of "the butt biting bug song,"
Oshiri kajiri mushi.
Video Link. It gives me acid flashbacks. "Tight asses and hard asses and beaten asses and shriveled asses." In what universe do these constitute appropriate lyrics for children's music?
By Xeni Jardin at 7:23 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes, business, and lives in America.
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt has personal ties to the Gulf Coast, and his portraits of Katrina survivors are featured in this month's issue of Eyemazing, the international journal of contemporary photography, along with an interview. Snip:
CM: Where were they taken? All of them except for three seem to be taken in a studio-like setting. Why did you choose that rather than shooting the subjects in the context of their surroundings at the time?
CJC: The studio portraits were taken in a former school gymnasium that had been cleared out and cleaned, and was serving as a distribution point for aid in the small Gulf Coast town of Pearlington, Mississippi, which was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. The whole town was under 30 feet of storm surge, and had to fend for itself with no outside help for almost ten
days.
I wanted to shoot many portraits in a studio context in order to separate these images from the flood of photojournalistic images that came out of New Orleans. I think people have become so jaded as visual consumers that when they see a photograph that's obviously reportage, they immediately shove it into a safe little compartment called "other." This happens in Haiti, or Africa, or Pakistan, not America, and all the images look the same, with the victims of the tragedy filling the same role, that of making Americans feel relieved that they live in America. Well, this is America.
I wanted to short-circuit that automatic filing. I wanted to present these people with the same care and respect I would use when on assignment shooting a portrait of a celebrity or a politician. I think it allows for a lingering appreciation of what they've been through, in small doses, rather than in an overwhelming image of total disaster, which is very hard to really absorb in the two seconds most viewers allot a photograph.
But mostly, I wanted to treat them with the respect they deserve, but never get.
Link. Here are more Katrina-related photos from Clayton:
Link.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:08 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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A few of my favorites posts at
gadgets.boingboing.net:
Why are hideously expensive gadgets so hideous looking? Link
Nokia is adding "Web 2.0 services like MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook" to its series 60 OS. Link
Scan of 1960s brochures advertising "personal 'massage instruments' clearly intended for use in a woman's nethers." Link
Crayola makes a talking ruler "that audibly speaks the distance it has travelled, in quarter-inch increments, while leaving a trail of disappearing ink." Link
By Xeni Jardin at 7:07 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Regarding the ongoing internet fun-poking at Miss Teen South Carolina and her love of maps, Jason Schultz says,
In response to the recent call to action by Miss Teen South Carolina, Maps For
Us started a blog of important maps: Link. My favorite is the map of Sparta: Link.
In BoingBoing's comment section, reader Tim Howland shared this revelation:
I think that everyone has missed something important here; she's actually been pioneering a new art form- a combination of Hindi Ghazal poetry and blank verse.
Look at the transcription:
I personally believe that us americans
are unable to do so
because osama.
People out there
in our nation
don't have that,
And I believe that our education
like such as south africa and
such as the Iraq.
everywhere "such as".
And I believe our education
should help the US
should help the south africa
and the iraq
and the asian countries
so we can build up
our future.
The themes are clear; she's worried about the way we are reacting to the war on terror, the way Osama Bin Laden still is free, and the way that we are being "educated". The irony is simply dripping from the last stanza.
She was able to deliver this call to revolution absolutely deadpan, cunningly pulling the wool over America's eyes- and people here have the temerity to mock her intellectual accomplishments? She is the latter-day heir to Rosa Luxemborg- only, without the boathook.
Previously on BoingBoing:
Tube Map for Miss SC: The Iraqs and Everywhere, Like, Such As.
Miss South Carolina says we need more maps (video)
By Xeni Jardin at 7:03 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Wired Threat Level contributor Ryan Singel says,
The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
DCSNet combines software with nicknames like Red Hook and Digital Storm, telecommunication switches with legislated backdoors and a private, encrypted nationwide backbone tying spying rooms across the nation together.
Link to Singel's extensive report, which features a slideshow of scans from those FOIA'd documents.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 6:56 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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A couple of weeks ago, I posted some
photos of figeater beetles eating my figs. Similarly, Alek has posted some beautiful photos of peach wasps eating his fine Colorado peaches.
(Alek was featured here and here in Boing Boing in 2005 for his excellent online Christmas lights prank.)
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 6:51 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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(
UPDATE: Paul Krassner says: Re: my Assholes of the Week #7 blog -- I now add myself to one of them because I criticized General Wesley Clark for his silence about Pentagon plans to invade six other countries after Iraq, when in fact he did indeed speak out repeatedly.)
Realist publisher and Yippies founder Paul Krassner writes a weekly column, called "Assholes of the Week." This recent edition, no. 7, targets Senator Larry Craig, Mitt Romney, John Kerry, and Wesley Clark. Why Clark? Because he knew the war on Iraq was bogus in 2001 and didn't say anything about it until recently:
General Wesley Clark, for waiting until recently to reveal to Amy
Goodman on “Democracy Now” the following: “About ten days after 9/11, I
went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy
Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of
the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the
generals called me in. He said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk
to me a second.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re too busy.’ He said, ‘No, no.’
He says, ‘We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ This
was on or about the 20th of September. I said, ‘We’re going to war
with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I guess they
don’t know what else to do.’ So I said, ‘Well, did they find some
information connecting Saddam to al Qaeda?’ He said, ‘No, no.’ He
says, ‘There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to
go to war with Iraq.’ He said, ‘I guess it’s like we don’t know what
to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take
down governments.’ And he said, ‘I guess if the only tool you have is
a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.’ So I came back to
see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in
Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he
said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk. He
picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ‘I just got this from
upstairs’--meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office--“today.” And he
said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven
countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.’ I said, ‘Is it
classified?’ He said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I said, ‘Well, don’t show it to
me.’ And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, ‘You remember that?’
He said, ‘Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!’”
Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Paul Krassner profiled
• Paul Krassner on Supremes' "Bong hits 4 Jesus ruling"
• Boing Boing interviews Paul Krassner
• The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner
• Paul Krassner on RU Sirius Show
• Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit
• Paul Krassner on the parts they left out of the Abbie Hoffman movie
• Realist archive project
By Xeni Jardin at 6:08 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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UPDATE (08-30, 12pm PT): Ryan Singel at Wired News
Threat Level blog suggested filing a FOIA request around this incident, and I plan to do so with his kind assistance (
Link to his post). Will post what I learn here on BoingBoing.
- - - - - - - - - -
I flew from JFK to LAX today, and something really weird happened when I arrived (at about 230PM local time).
I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.
Some of the TSA guards then backed up against walls in the hallway, and sort of barked at anyone who tried to move a few feet away from their "spot," like towards chairs to sit down or whatever.
One TSA guard jogged ahead, back towards the arrival gates (United, this was Terminal 7). At first I assumed maybe it was some weird security drill? A few of us asked what was going on, and got terse answers, like, "Security review." WTF? 5 minutes passed. 10, 15, 20. The two teen Japanese tourists about ten feet behind me looked utterly dazed -- welcome to America, guys. I was really jetlagged and cranky, wanted to move a few feet and sit down, but the TSA lady nearest me kind of snapped at me to stop and stay frozen where I was when the order went out.
After 30 minutes, the TSA people said, okay, you may leave now. And everyone unfroze, and went and got their bags. No explanation. I guess I should have pressed for an explanation, or demanded to know why we were being held without our consent and without a provided reason, but I was really tired and just wanted to get the hell out of there and go home. Perhaps I was wrong to have just walked away.
Has anyone else out there experienced this kind of thing in a US airport? Was this some sort of weird TSA fire drill, or was there an actual security incident with a perceived imminent threat?
The guards were all just sort of standing around scratching their heads, looking bored, I definitely didn't have the sense there was any urgency. But they held us there, standing, frozen, for 30 minutes. I felt like we were in an undiscovered Godard movie or something, and some Parisian babe with heavy eyeliner was going to burst in any moment and start reciting poetry. Totally surreal.
Love to hear anyone else's first-hand accounts of anything similar in the comments, if you've experienced it lately.
By Cory Doctorow at 4:59 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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David sez, "Toronto's Transit Commission (TTC) created a survey to get feedback about potential cuts to the system. Unfortunately, their own survey sucked, so Torontoist has created a new one which we're trying to get as widely-distributed as possible."
Link
(
Thanks, David!)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:58 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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EFF has published the latest installment in its annual RIAA v. The People, "Four Years Later," which is a comprehensive, exhaustively researched and cited white-paper on the RIAA's campaign against music downloaders. The paper starts with the earliest days, when the record companies went after companies manufacturing portable music players, and continues up to the present day, with these companies suing tens of thousands of individual music fans (including people who don't own computers, small children, military servicepeople, dead people, etc), often for sums that end up bankrupting them. EFF describes other RIAA initiatives, such as a deceptive "amnesty" campaign, advising a MIT student to drop out of school in order to pay her fines, and using universities and Congress to try to shake down students for thousands of dollars.
Then the paper moves into a section on empirical studies of P2P activity during the four year campaign -- and shows that the "educational campaign" has been a total failure, with more Americans sharing files than ever, and downloading from P2P at forty times the rate that they use authorized download services like iTunes.
EFF closes by proposing a sensible solution -- stop suing fans and figure out how to make money off of their preferred means of acquiring music. To do this, EFF argues that the labels should offer a "blanket license" to fans or ISPs, a flat fee that legalizes downloading music, the proceeds from which can be paid to artists and other rightsholders. This is basically the same system used by radio stations and live venues to legalize their use of music and while it's not without its problems (the collection societies have a history of screwing indie artists and labels, and aggressively expanding their scope to include things like kindergarten classrooms), it sure beats the alternative -- sue, harass and alienate customers.
Or take the case of Cecilia Gonzalez, a recently laid-off mother of five, who
owes five major record companies a total of $22,500 for illegally downloading off the
Internet. That's more than three-fourths of what she made the previous year as a
secretary. Ironically, Gonzalez primarily downloaded songs she already owned on
CD--the downloads were meant to help her avoid the labor of manually loading the 250
CDs she owns onto her computer. In fact, the record companies are going after a steady
customer--Gonzalez and her husband spent about $30 per month on CDs.
Nevertheless, the RIAA insisted that it would not consider a settlement for less than
$3000, an amount that would bankrupt the Gonzalez family.54
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 3:39 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Lokesh Dhakar's "Coffee Drinks Illustrated" is a wonderful, clean, lucid infographic showing the relative composition of a variety of espresso beverages.
Link
(
via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:36 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Make Blog has a great roundup post on photographing smoke -- HOWTOs, galleries, "smoke sculptures" and ideas for putting together your compositions.
Link
(Image credit: Mehmet Ozgur)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:33 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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The LA Times has a sweet and sorrowful little piece on AT&T's discontinuation of its automated speaking clock time service, with melancholy interviews with the old maintenance staff for the lumbering, crumbling "time machine" hardware.
"It was always there," said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell's (and subsequently SBC's) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. "Everybody knew the number."
Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell Labs in the early 1960s. He described the devices as large drums about 2 feet in diameter, with as many as 100 album-like audio tracks on the exterior. Whenever someone called time, the drums would start turning and a message would begin, with different tracks mixed together on the fly.
"The people who worked on it took it very seriously," Frenkiel, 64, recalled. "They took a lot of pride in it."
In a twist of historical irony, Frenkiel went on to play a leading role in development of the technology that makes cellphones possible -- the very device that's now instrumental in killing time.
Link
(
via JWZ)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:31 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, sez, "An international coalition of environmental and social justice
groups have signed a statement condemning DRM and specifically the DRM in Microsoft's Windows Vista, looking to promote awareness of computer user freedom.
Groups and individuals who support the statement are being asked to add their own signatures at
http://freesoftwarefreesociety.org. The coalition hope that this statement will help raise awareness to these important issues amongst social activists and NGOs outside of the technology field."
In January and February of this year, the Green Party and Greenpeace issued warnings about the tremendous threat posed to the environment by the disposable computer mentality promoted in Microsoft's $500-million Windows Vista marketing campaign. Vista's steep hardware requirements mean that to use it, most people will have to throw their current computer into a landfill and buy a new one.
While these environmental consequences alone are sufficient reason for many to reject Vista, the disposable computer mentality is a symptom of a larger problem--one that should concern all social activists. That problem is the dependency of activists on software owned and exclusively controlled by entities that design their software in ways directly opposed to grassroots social change. No matter what kind of specific change they are working for in society, activists need the freedom to organize and communicate. Yet each time an activist turns on a Vista computer, she is nominating Microsoft and Big Media as exclusive gatekeepers to this freedom.
Link,
Link to Linux.com's background on the statement
(
Thanks, Peter!)
By David Pescovitz at 2:25 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Hilly Kristal, founder of legendary NYC punk nightclub CBGB died yesterday. He was 75. CBGB was the birthplace of such influential artists as Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, and a slew of others. From the New York Times (photo from Kristal's Wikipedia
entry):
From its opening in late 1973, when Mr. Kristal, a lover of acoustic music, gave the club its name, an abbreviation of the kinds of music he originally intended to feature there – country, bluegrass and blues – until a dispute with its landlord forced the club to close last October, CBGB presented thousands of bands within its eternally crumbling, flyer-encrusted walls...
“There was no real venue in 1973 for people like us,” (Patti) Smith said today. “We didn’t fit into the cabarets or the folk clubs. Hilly wanted the people that nobody else wanted. He wanted us.”
Link
Previously on BB:
• CBGB closing for good
Link
• Patti Smith's NYT op-ed: don't cry for CBGBs, we have the 'net
Link
By David Pescovitz at 1:51 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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According to ChinaDaily.com, this six-horned goat, a rare beast, lives on a farm in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 1:01 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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One of hot rod culture pioneer Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's long-lost custom cars was found parked in front of an adult bookstore in Mexico. The amazing car, called the Orbitron, was apparently, umm, being used as a dumpster.
BB pal
COOP says:
"Orbitron was considered one of Roth's lesser efforts, even he didn't like it too much. It bombed on the showcar circuit when it debuted, which Roth himself blamed on hiding the chrome-dipped engine under a hood.
Another interesting fact: this is the same Roth car that Tom Wolfe describes in his essential essay on Kustom Kulture, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Wolfe lovingly describes the asymmetrical body styling and the headlight made from three lenses - red, green, and blue - that, when focused together, cast a beam of white light. (Somehow I doubt it worked in reality.)"
Link to more at Hemmings Auto Blog
Previously on BB:
• Ed "Big Daddy" Roth show in Los Angeles
Link
• Ed "Big Daddy" Roth plastic face
Link
By David Pescovitz at 12:45 pm Wednesday, Aug 29
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Seen here is a striking portrait of the famous Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square, a London local during the 19th century. Jan Bondeson, physician and author of such terrific books as
A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities and
The Two-Headed Boy and Other Marvels, discovered the illustration tipped into the January 7, 1882 issue of Illustrated Police News. The print was given away free with that issue. Bondeson wrote a short commentary about pig-faced ladies in the current issue of Fortean Times. From the article:
The immensely wealthy Pig-faced Lady had come to London in 1815, look ing for a husband. She was said to be perfectly shaped, except that her head exactly resembled that of one of the porcine tribe. She ate from a silver trough and uttered a loud grunt ing noise when in want of food. Many people believed in her existence and one foolish young man even put an advertisement into the Morn ing Herald that he aspired to make her acquaintance.
The Illustrated Police News went on to claim that at the time of writing (in 1882), many Irish people believed that an other Pig-faced Lady, Madam Grisley Steevens, had once been a resident of Dublin. Parties of country people used to go to Doctor Steevens’s Hospital, where she had ended her days, and tip the matron to be all owed to see a portrait of the pig-faced Madam Steevens and the silver trough she had eaten from.
Link
Previously on BB:
• Two heads not better than one
Link
• Hairy people who made PT Barnum proud
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 7:58 am Wednesday, Aug 29
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Video Link to "oh diamond diamond thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done," by experimental electronica artist Nodern. Released on Sub Rosa records, buy it here. Link to project page. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)
By Xeni Jardin at 7:45 am Wednesday, Aug 29
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Many BoingBoing readers sent in copies of this lovely Tube Map, composed for Miss South Carolina after her most inspirational speech at a recent beauty pageant about the people of Iraq and Such As. Link to full-size at Morning Toast blog, and better grab a hanky before you watch that video Mark posted earlier. (thanks, Method77, Nev Cornforth, Rick P.)
By Xeni Jardin at 7:35 am Wednesday, Aug 29
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Airic's arm is a robotic arm with artificial bones and muscles that look rather like the fleshy ones we have, from design company Festo:
The bone structure, consisting of the human bones such as ulna and radius, metacarpal bone and finger bone, shoulder joint and shoulder blade – joints that do not occur as such in the technical world – is moved via 30 muscles.
The muscles are Festo products, which are already put to extensive use in industrial practice and known as Fluidic Muscle. Using this technology, in conjunction with Festo’s tiny, highly innovative piezo-proportional valves, it is possible to precisely regulate the forces and rigidity within the construction.
Link to product page, and this clip of the arm in action is breathtaking:
Video Link.
(via Core 77 blog, thanks Susannah)
By Xeni Jardin at 7:09 am Wednesday, Aug 29
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Snip from NYT article by James Glanz and Eric Schmitt:
Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.
The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 3:35 am Wednesday, Aug 29
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The Classic Typewriter Page is a trove of typewriter pr0n, with well-written short histories of a number of significant steps from the history of writing machines, lots of photos of the old beasts, and general info on selling, valuing, fixing and buying typewriters.
Link
(
Thanks, Dan!)
