The NYT has a creepy article about profiteering US hedge-funds that are making their fortunes by investing in increased surveillance in China, including technologies designed to recognize pro-democracy demonstrations so that the police can break them up faster.

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police...

Each time China Security and Surveillance makes an acquisition, it holds an elaborate banquet, with dancers. The majority of the 500 or more people invited are municipal and provincial security officials, as well as executives of rival companies that may become acquisition targets.

"When they come, they hear central government officials endorsing us, they hear bankers endorsing us or supporting us, it gives us credibility," Mr. Yap said. "It's a lot of drinking, it's like a wedding banquet."

Link (Thanks, Kathryn)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel has turned up an award-winning design for an "Antivirus lid" for soda cans: it's a plastic, locking, non-removable lid that fits over old coke cans and turns them into safe disposal receptacles for used biohazard sharps.

The cap's yellow color is a nearly universal indicator of biohazardous waste, and the thick, large overhang on its edges protects users' hands from being stuck by the needles being discarded, as well as preventing liquid splashback. Made in collaboration with SP-Moulding, a plastics molding company in Juelsminde, Denmark, the cap is designed to be disposed of with the can, eliminating another danger to handlers. And even small children's fingers cannot pass through the opening meant for needle tips.

Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Demitrios Kargotis unveiled his Mr Whippy machine at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz. It's a self-serve frozen custard machine that doles out portion sizes based on the amount of misery it detects in a voice-stress analysis. The sadder you are, the more ice-cream you get.

Employing voice stress analysis of the user's answers to specific questions, varying degrees of unhappiness are measured and the counteractive quantity of ice cream is dispensed: The more unhappy you are, the more ice cream you need.

Link

Reed Crawford's Formable Furniture consists of "a couple of interlocking pieces that stiffen at the pull of a wire cable. By manipulating the tension, you can make all kinds of crazy shapes strong enough to act as shelving, seating, or flooring." This looks like fun stuff! Link (via Cribcandy)

Break has a video of "The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself" -- a Mario level where the platforms, monsters, and special blocks impel Mario forward like a ball in a rube goldberg machine, knocking him back and forth and eventually delivering him safe and sound to the end of the level. It's hypnotic and often surprisingly witty viewing. Link (Thanks, Joe)

Condomania is selling condoms featuring art by Peter Bagge, Coop, Ron English, Johnny Ryan, Peter Kuper, Trevor Brown, Robert Williams, and Winston Smith. I like the SubGenius condom, shown here. Ideal for consummating a ShorDurMar with an amorous yetisyn! Link

Asahi Shimbun reports that a woman in Osaka discovered these pretty katydids in a field.

Osaka Museum of Natural History entomologist Itaru Kanazawa identifies them as the larvae of Euconocephalus thunbergi (”kubikirigisu” in Japanese), a close relative of the katydid. While he says it is normal for these insects to change between green and brown to match their surroundings, pink and white are considered abnormal.

Link

In honor of A Wrinkle in Time author Madeleine L'Engle (who died last week), physicist David Morgan explains tesseracts (aka a "four dimensional cube"). Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• RIP: author Madeleine L’Engle (Thanks, Andy!)

The Uncle Abdul suicide bomber character from the Seamour Sheep comic strip series will be available as a collector's vinyl figure from Crazy Label. A controversial item, indeed.

From the creator:

We hope that the release of the Uncle Abdul figure will help to ironize the act of suicide bombing and acts of violence in general. In our humble opinion no subject should be an absolute taboo that is free from any satire, because satire is not only meant to make people laugh, but sometimes also to wake them up and make them think and discuss.

Link

Ken says:

On the 43rd anniversary of its first broadcast on NBC's Monday Night at the Movies (1964) CONELRAD has published a complete history of the infamous and iconic Daisy Ad. Bill Geerhart spent the last year researching the story and documenting its disputed authorship.

In addition to the collected video, audio, and historical documents, Bill interviewed the 'Daisy Girl' Birgitte Olsen. As a bonus we've posted video of 'Fighting Words' -- a 1951 military training film about propaganda starring James Gregory. Enjoy!

Link

Here's an interview with Thomas Hine about one of my favorite books, Populuxe, and a forthcoming book about the 1970s he wrote called The Great Funk.

In the final paragraphs of Populuxe I talked about how the world had changed and about how I, for one, could not imagine going back to the world I had described in the book. The time when the assumptions of the Populuxe years were truly undone, once and for all, was the decade of the 1970s. And I realized that even though this was a period that was antithetical to the fifties in so many ways—a time of scarcity rather than abundance, fragmentation rather than national unity, personal exploration rather than social progress, corruption rather than trust, defeat rather than victory—it visually interesting and even positive in all sorts of unexpected ways.

I had the idea of a sequel to Populuxe in mind quite soon afterward, but I went on to write five other books instead. Now, after two decades of gestation, I have gone and done it. The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies is a real companion to Populuxe, and it has a real family resemblance, in large part because it was designed by Iris Weinstein, who also designed the earlier book. But it reflects its time in that it is less about technology and more about consciousness. It deals a lot with clothes and the body, and thus is PG or even R rated, rather than G.

The title is a play, of course, on the Great Depression, which is one meaning of funk. But funk is also about texture, and rhythm, and a sensuality, which is also an important part of the picture. And it contains some incredible pictures of interiors. I think that those who like Populuxe will be intrigued.

Hine also wrote a wonderful book called The Total Package: The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Other Persuasive Containers.

Link

Frankie says: Last Sunday while hunting for some cool figures in Akiba I discovered a fetish shop devoted to almost any kind of fetish. Among the most interesting DVDs is Crush by Venus, produced by Gagon. It's a DVD series dedicated to model train crush fetishists.

Seems that the "crush fetish" started in USA. Women would crush insects or worms with their feet, or high heeled shoes, but Japanese switched to otaku products like Model Trains or Die Cast cars. Link

This looks promising. A couple from Sarasota, Florida named Markus and Angela are planning to sell their worldly possessions, buy a used van, live in it, and blog about it. They are currently shopping for the van.

This was inspired (in part) by the 4 Hour Workweek, where Tim Ferris talks about living a totally mobile lifestyle. Well, we love America and before setting out abroad we want to have a base and find the best city to live in that we could make our permanent home.

...

The rough plan as of now is:

1. Sell most of our crap. Store the rest.
2. Find, buy, steal, or otherwise get a van.
3. Pimp out said van with a custom bed, office, LCD tv, etc.
4. Get a high speed internet connection
5. Get laptops, photo, and video gear to document this crazy thing.
6. Figure out what to take along for survival
7. Go!

Link

Montreal artist Cesar Saez is making a giant, helium filled banana that he intends to launch in Texas, sending it 20-30 miles up. The title of the project is "Geostationary Banana Over Texas."

The BBC says it will be "between 15-20% of the size of the full moon" when viewed from Earth. Link (Thanks, Rich!)

Lucy, the famed fossilized skeleton of one of the oldest human ancestors, is coming to visit the US from Ethiopia where Donald Johanson and his colleagues discovered her in 1974. Surprisingly, Lucy won't be on display at two of the premier natural history museums in the country, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Why? Those are just two of the museums who refused the exhibition, arguing that the fragile bones should remain in Ethiopia and not subjected to six years of touring and public display. The exhibit, titled The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia, is hosted and sponsored by the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Here's Houston Museum anthropology curator Dirk Van Tuerenhout's side of the story from the San Antonio Express News:

"Our mission at the museum is one of education and promoting dialogue," (Tuerenhout) said. "We are honored that our museum was chosen to premiere this exhibition. We share the concerns for Lucy's safety, which also extends to the artifacts in the exhibit. Before we agreed to accept the exhibition, a respected team of conservators specializing in hominid fossils was brought in to evaluate Lucy's condition; they pronounced her to be hearty, robust and fully capable of traveling without damage."

Lucy is not only part of Ethiopia's cultural heritage, Tuerenhout added; she is also part of world heritage. "She deserves to be on the world stage for all to see, and we applaud the Ethiopian government's decision to allow this to happen," he said. "She will serve as a unique goodwill ambassador for her country and bring greater understanding about our own past." Link

And the following is what paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program, has to say on the matter:

“From the outset, the plan to bring ‘Lucy’ to the U.S. ignored an existing international resolution signed by scientific representatives from 20 countries, including Ethiopia and the U.S. The resolution calls for museums–in fact, all scientific institutions–to support the care of early human fossils in their country of origin, and to make displays in other countries using excellent fossil replicas.

It’s especially distressing to museum professionals I’ve talked with in Africa that ‘Lucy’ has been removed from Ethiopia for six years, and that a U. S. museum has been involved in doing so. The decision to remove ‘Lucy’ from Ethiopia also goes against the professional views of Ethiopian scientists in the National Museum of Ethiopia, the institution mandated to safeguard such irreplaceable discoveries." Link

The fossil above is not the real Lucy but rather the Smithsonian's cast of the original. Lucy normally resides in a climate-controlled safe at the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa. Mamitu Yilma, director of the museum, traveled with Lucy to Houston. From an Associated Press story earlier this month:

"People care about her. They tend to forget that she is 3 million years old. They forget she is a fossil," Yilma said. "Lucy is very precious. We don't have any replacement for her. Whenever any fossil is found, they are compared to Lucy..."

"It was like when someone you love is getting married, both happy and sad," said Yilma, describing her conflicting emotions when Lucy left Ethiopia. "The one thing that gives me comfort is that I'm here with her." Link

For the remarkable story of Lucy's discovery, read Donald Johanson's classic anthropology thriller Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. Link

Plumbers who pulled up the floorboards at a Dorset, England home discovered a cache of hundreds of old artificial legs. Homeowner Mike Sutton told the Dorset Echo he thinks the previous owner "must have been a bit of a Del Boy character," referring to the silly scheming wheeler-dealer in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Sutton is investigating whether a charity might be interested in the prosthetics.
Link (via Fortean Times)

Andrew "bunnie" Huang -- the guy who broke the Xbox and founded Chumby -- has a great blog post today about Master Chao, a middle-aged Chinese man who has helped design thousands of everyday products that fill your gadget bag and home. Master Chao's gift is in creating flat patterns for sewing into three dimensional shapes, something that is insanely hard to model well on computers. I heard bunnie give a talk on Chinese manufacturing process last June, and his lyrical description of Master Chao's virtuoso performance has stayed with me.

It turns out there are still things where Craft, and I use it with a capital "C" here, matters-it's where CAD tools haven't brought about the ability to simulate out our mistakes before we build them. The creation of a flat pattern for textile goods is a good example of a process that requires a Craftsman. A flat pattern is the set of 2-D shapes used to guide the cutting of fabrics. These 2-D shapes are cut, folded and sewn into a complex 3-D shape. Mapping the projection of an arbitrary 3-D shape onto a 2-D surface with minimal waste area between the pieces is hard enough; the fact that the material stretches and distorts, sometimes in an anisotropic fashion, and the fact that sewing requires ample tolerances for good yields makes it a difficult problem to automate. On the chumby, we add another level of complexity, because we sew a piece of leather onto a soft plastic frame. As you sew the leather on, the frame will distort slightly and stretch the leather out, creating a sewing bias dependent upon the direction and rate of sewing. This force is captured in the seams and contributes to the final shape of the device. I challenge someone to make a computer simulation tool that can accurately capture those forces and predict how a device will look at the end of the day.

Yet, somehow, Master Chao's proficiency in the art of pattern making enables him to very quickly, and in very few iterations, create and tweak a pattern that compensates for all of this. It's astounding how clever and how insightful the results can be. And really, the point of this particular post is to introduce you to a person whose old-world skills -- absent computers, all done with cardboard, scissors and pencils -- has likely played a role in the production of something that you have used or benefited from in the course of your life.

Link

See also:
Bunnie Huang's blog-series on Chinese manufacturing
Xbox hacker's view of manufacturing in China

Harrods, the London department store, rented a poisonous cobra to do guard duty at the launch of a pair of £62,000 sandals, proving that tacky displays of wealth and the herpephilia are not mutually exclusive.

A spokeswoman for Harrods admitted that the cobra had been hired strictly for Monday's launch of the shoe collection.

"The snake has now been returned to its owner," she said.

Link (Thanks, Virtual Tours!)

EFF's Hugh D'Andrade sez,

Having caved to the President's outrageous demands for more spying powers in August, Congress is now considering extending this power grab and letting telco giants like AT&T off the hook for their role in the NSA's illegal, warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans. Legislation could be considered within the next 6 weeks! To help ensure that congressional leaders hear from the public, EFF has launched a new site, stopthespying.org.

The site makes it easy to pick up the phone and make your voice heard, by contacting Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and your own representatives. Demand that they agree to the following pledge:

Stop warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans. Congress must stop the NSA's domestic spying, repeal the "Protect America Act," and ensure that whenever a U.S. person is the intended or unintended subject of surveillance, the government must first get a warrant.

Don't legislate in the dark. Congress should oppose any expansion of spying authority until a full, thorough, and public investigation is complete.

Don't let the phone companies off the hook. Congress must allow the courts to rule on the president's program by rejecting efforts to give private entities immunity for illegally assisting the government's spying.

Link (Thanks, Hugh!)