By Xeni Jardin at 5:40 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Boing Boing reader
Andy Carvin says,
"Now that the media circus has died down surrounding the controversial deposing and reinstatement of Sajani Shakya, the Kumari of Bhaktapur, Nepal, I just had the chance to conduct a brief interview with her. As befitting a living goddess - or perhaps a shy 10-year-old girl - her responses to my questions were short and sweet." Link.
Previously on Boing Boing:
Nepali "Living Goddess" is rather into gadgets
Gadget-loving Nepali "living goddess" fired
Nepali goddess, recently sacked, now reinstated
By Cory Doctorow at 5:34 pm Monday, Sep 3
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The second episode of season two of The IT Crowd just aired on the UK's Channel 4: "Return of the Golden Child," and it's keyboard-destroyingly funny. The IT Crowd is the nerd sitcom from Graham Linehan, who created the funniest TV show ever, Father Ted. In "The Golden Child," Denholm's death and Roy's obsession with his own mortality provide fodder for a series of very good inappropriate funeral jokes, mobile phone humor, and so on. It's vintage IT Crowd. Channel 4 has some kind of ridiculous, DRM-based streaming service in the UK, but I can't get it in China (I'm here for a meeting), so I just downloaded the torrent and laughed myself sick.
Suprnova Torrent Link
(
Thanks, Dave and everyone else who suggested this!)
See also: The IT Crowd -- season two, episode one
(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant to the first season of The IT Crowd)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:11 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Glyn sez, "The BBC are reporting that ballot scanning machines used in the Scottish elections rejected tens of thousands of votes without any human adjudication. The Scotland Office ordered the machines to reject some kinds of the new style ballots automatically.
"The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond described the development as 'astonishing' and deeply disturbing. 'I was under the impression - until this revelation - that the ballots that were rejected were actually seen by the election agents as part of the process,' he said. More than 140,000 ballots were spoilt on 3 May when votes were held for the Scottish Parliament.
"If you want to read in more detail about the e-voting trials in the UK check out the the Open Rights Group's election observers' report. It paints a grim picture of crashed computers and concerns about the systems' security and reliability."
Link
(Thanks, Glyn!)
By Xeni Jardin at 4:50 pm Monday, Sep 3
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US officials told the
Financial Times today that China's military hacked into the Pentagon's computer network three months ago. The reported attack would amount to to the greatest pwnage yet of DoD computers:
The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.
Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.
One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence...trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.
Link (Thanks, Robbo)
By Xeni Jardin at 4:37 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Wired News reporter and "
Danger Room" blogger Noah Shachtman is liveblogging an ongoing reporting trip in Iraq (add a few days' delay, but same diff).
Link.
"Kids with AK-47s, biometric gates, and a distressing lack of toilets
all feature prominently," he explains. " Look out next week for what I believe is an exclusive look inside the CSI-style lab that's picking bombs apart to find the IED-makers."
By Xeni Jardin at 3:17 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Above: a nice collection of nerdy wedding cakes. Link, rounded up by ace scienceblogger Shelley Batts (that's not her in the photo, just so you know -- it's Carol Orsini of GameDaily).
If you receive an invitation from a social networking site called Quechup, run screaming.
Shava Nerad is among many who pointed us to their horrible spamming practices, and says, "The blogs are calling it 'the Q problem' and a 'trust virus.' Bad juju, in general, not to mention they are one of those sites that sends you your selected username and password in the clear."
By the time you read this, there will probably be some news articles out about how evil they are. Until then, watch out.
A chemical found in microwave popcorn, diacetyl, is killing food industry workers -- and may also pose a threat to consumers. The stuff is used to create a buttery taste in many popular brands. Link.
A fascinating profile piece in this weekend's New York Times Magazine about Def Jam founder Rick Rubin's new job: save Columbia Records. But the bigger job he's taken on: save the entire music industry from its own slow, suicidal idiocy. Link. Here's a YouTube video Rubin totally flips out over in the course of that story -- an until-recently-unknown Welsh cellphone salesman named Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma, from Puccini's Turandot: Video Link.
At left, several fat Flickr sets of pulp fiction cover scans: Link. My favorite are the cheezy pervy ones.
The Islamic religious council of Central Java has issued a fatwa on nuclear power, and declared plans for a nearby nuke plant "haraam," or "forbidden." Link.
Add this to the list of stuff promised, then denied to Katrina survivors: No WiFi for NoLa. "A free Internet wireless system in New Orleans likely will not be expanded to devastated areas of the city, following EarthLink Inc.'s decision to quit investing in such services." Link.
Artist Dan Funderburgh has created some neat Gangsta bling wallpaper, now available from a New Orleans-based shop that also offers fruit flavored scratch-'n'-sniff wallpapers. If the gangsta paper were scratch-'n'-sniff, would it smell like blood and gunpowder, new car, dolla dolla bills, or Chanel #5?
This news is a few days old, but you Burners and vacationers may have missed it: Torrentspy now blocks users with USA IP addresses: Link.
This one, too. Privacy rights in India suffer a new blow as police in Mumbai expand the use of keyloggers in public cybercafes, citing national security threats after recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad: Link.
MySpace launches a networking portal of sorts around fashion: Link.
50 years in a woman's life documented in photos, found by a stranger at a flea market: Link.
(Thanks, William Smith, Susannah Breslin, Kyle Marler, Aaron Rowe, Mike, Patrix, Andrew Tonkin)
By Xeni Jardin at 2:37 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Joanna says,
The collection of a doctor named Dean Edell -- who collected artwork related to anatomy -- is up for sale at Christie's in New York on October 5th.
The name of the auction: "Anatomy as Art: The Dean Edell Medical Collection." The collection for sale includes a bunch of really difficult to find big-wigs of the genre like Ruysch and Fritz Kahn; you can even buy 19th C anatomical waxes.
Some of the images on the Christie's website are really shocking, especially the full color close up painting (?) of hermaphroditic genitals. Some are just beautiful in a macabre kind of way.
morbidanatomy.blogspot.com has a bunch of the best images cherrypicked (Link 1, Link 2); more to be found on the Christie's site.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:02 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Manybooks.net has formatted The Book of the Damned ("1,001 attested phenomena that science cannot answer and deliberately ignores) into a bunch of different ebook, formats, including the new iPhone books.app format (which I'm really digging). Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 1:28 pm Monday, Sep 3
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After seeing the photos of fortune cookies in a dumpster, Boing Boing reader "555" sent this photo of watermelons in a dumpster.
This reminds me of the photos we posted in March about a food bank dump in a California desert.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:39 pm Monday, Sep 3
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Here's a complete scan of a 1957 issue of Glamour Photography, with wonderfully weird front and back covers.
Glamour Photography is dedicated to that happy province of photography -- the creative interpretation of the girl beautiful. The magazine is designed to give the camera man a better understanding of the technical and philosophical aspects of photographing pretty girls.
Link (Via PCL Linkdump)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:46 am Monday, Sep 3
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(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)
Here's more information on the upcoming Blab! Art show (I have a painting in it, on the far right).
Copro/Nason Gallery and Monte Beauchamp proudly presents "The Blab! Show," the third Group Art Exhibition featuring original paintings and illustrations from the NEW issue of BLAB! magazine: the leading anthology of art, illustration, found graphics, and sequential art.
Curator (and BLAB! founder) Monte Beauchamp will also debut the release of his new book Devilish Greetings: Vintage Devil Postcards. To celebrate the event over two dozen artists have created Devil-themed paintings and illustrations and will be offering them for sale.
Artists for BOTH shows include: Shag, Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Ron English, Sas Christian, Travis Louie, Mark Frauenfelder, Fred Stonehouse, Mark Todd, Esther Pearl Watson, Greg Clarke, Drew Friedman, Ryan Heshka, Dan Quintana, Travis Lampe, Walter Minus, Mark Mothersbaugh, Jason Holley, Calef Brown, John Pound, Sergio Ruzzier, Skip Williamson and many more.
Guests include: Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Fred Stonehouse, Shag, Esther Pearl Watson, Mark Todd, Ron English, Calef Brown, Mark Frauenfelder, Greg Clarke, Travis Lampe, Jason Holley And Monte Beauchamp.
Monte Beauchamp is the founder and editor of the graphics/illustration/ fine arts/comix annual BLAB!, and his work has appeared in Graphis, Print, Communication Arts, American Illustration, Society of Publication Designers, and The Society of Illustrators Annual. His books include: Striking Images: Vintage Matchbook Cover Art (Chronicle Books), The Devil In Design (Fantagraphics), The Life & Times Of R. Crumb (St. Martin's Press), New & Used Blab! (Chronicle Books), And Devilish Greetings (Fantagraphics).
Copro/Nason Gallery (at Bergamot Station)
2525 Michigan Ave T5, Santa Monica, CA 90404
GALLERY: 310-829-2156
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:27 am Monday, Sep 3
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(Click image above or here for Google mashup of botched paramilitary police raids.)
Dan says:
A sagacious fellow by the name of Radley Balko, whose chief journalistic endeavor has been exposing the excesses of the War on Drugs, has compiled an impressive list of botched raids conducted by hyper-agressive police units acroos the country.
The militarization of our police forces, with SWAT units armed with weapons designed for warfare against foreign enemies, has been spreading from the inner city to the suburbs, and from small towns to farm country.
All across America, local police units are arming and training officers to bust down doors, destroy personal property and mercilessly manhandle all living creatures in their path. Dogs, children and even elderly women have been shot by rampaging SWAT teams, usually in the hunt for trivial amounts of drug contraband.
Here's a recent example:
Williams said he believes the team was supposed to be raiding a parolee’s home Aug. 24 when they inadvertently hit the wrong door. Officers ended up at the home of David and Lillian Scott, just off Rancho California Road.
Lillian Scott said she and her husband were in the living room discussing family plans, their 15-year-old daughter was in the garage with two friends and their 16-year-old son was in another room feeding the Scotts’ 5-month-old baby.
That all changed at 9:35 p.m. she said, when Temecula police officers –- four or five, she’s not sure –– carrying rifles charged though the unlocked front screen door and ordered the couple to the floor.
“Two of them came over and put handcuffs on the two of us,” Lillian Scott said. “We asked what we had done wrong and didn’t get an answer.”
Elsewhere in the house other officers handcuffed their daughter and her two friends.
“(The officers) told them to get down on the f–ing floor,” she said.
Her 16-year-old son, who was feeding the baby, was also ordered to the floor and handcuffed, Scott said.
From the other room, Scott heard her infant crying.
“I asked if my baby was OK and the officer told me if I moved he was going to put a bullet in my head,” Scott said.”
Link
Update:
Radley Balko of Reason says:
I think I sent a copy of my [Cato Institute] paper on the rise of paramilitary police forces last year, but if you didn't get it, you can download it for free here.
I recommend sipping a glass of something stiff while reading.
We also did a Google Maps mashup of about 300 botched raids to go with the paper. But it's already out of date. There have been a couple of dozen more botched SWAT raids since I left Cato for Reason magazine last November.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:20 am Monday, Sep 3
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Hal says:
Somebody has some karma to burn. My roommate Megan and I were driving around Downtown LA yesterday looking for photos and video we could shoot and sell as stock photography when we drove down a dead-end alley and found three huge dumpsters filled to the top with fortune cookies -- some of them still sealed in plastic. Here's a link to a Flickr set with photos of this scandal.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:10 am Monday, Sep 3
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Scott says:
Yesterday (Sat. 9/1/07) I took my family to see Crowded House at Bumbershoot in Seattle.
This year, Bumbershoot is claiming to be "greener than ever".
Hmmm...then why did they force thousands of fans entering Memorial Stadium to throw away their bottles of water (already a wasteful product)?
Ironically, this aging high school football stadium has no functioning drinking fountains, no easily-accessible potable water, and even has warning signs on the restrooms that say "Do not drink water from the sinks."
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 10:57 am Monday, Sep 3
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John Halpin, a carpenter supervisor for the NYC school system, was fired for falsifying time records. His manager had been tracking Halpin's location on Halpin's GPS phone (provided by the school system) for five months, and noticed multiple discrepancies.
He said he was never told that the cellphone he was given in 2005 could be used to monitor his every move and questioned the accuracy of the data it produced.
But neither argument swayed administrative law Judge Tynia Richard, who found Halpin guilty of submitting false time records when he left early on numerous occasions between March and August 2006.
She issued a decision saying the Department of Education was under no obligation "to notify its employees of all the methods it may possibly use to uncover their misconduct."
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 7:18 am Monday, Sep 3
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Dude, talk about blessed be. Meet Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett, teacher of
Wicca, winner of gajillions:
He and his wife, Denise, were on their way to the shop where he occasionally teaches Wicca and Reiki healing when they stopped at a liquor store and bought two $5 Mega Millions tickets for Friday night's estimated $330 million jackpot.
On Sunday, he said one of his tickets was a winner.
"If it wasn't for this place I wouldn't have won the lottery," Bartlett said Sunday at Mystickal Voyage, the New Age shop.
Bartlett, an accountant from Dundalk, said he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach." Both tickets he purchased had numbers chosen randomly from the computer.
Link. If you'd like to up your mojo before buying your next lottery ticket, you may want to visit Mystickal Voyage yourself -- it's in the Walther Shopping Center mini-mall in Nottingham, Maryland, kinda next door to the Food Lion.
Link.
