Artist Mike Leavitt hand-makes custom action figures in limited editions of no more than ten. Each one is hand-sculpted from synthetic polymer clay, wood, and elastic. Leavitt's Art Army is a series of artist action figures, ranging from Basquiat, Big Daddy Roth, and R. Crumb to Tim Biskup, Robert Williams, and Salvador Dali. He'll bring the latest members of the Art Army, the "Young Guns," to the Copro Nason Gallery in Santa Monica, California for a show opening December 8. The show will feature sculptures of "low-brow superstars, underground heavyweights, and some L.A. art darlings," including Travis Louie and Audrey Kawasaki as depicted on the exhibit invitation. From Mike Leavitt's site:

New 10″ editions of artists such as Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Jeremy Fish, CRAOLA, Chet Zar, Kathy Olivas, Anthony Ausgang, and Friends With You will take on new the forms of cyclops, mermaids, centaurs, minotaurs, cyborgs, and sirens. The artists’ human form will morph with their painted surrealities into mythical hybrids of figurative form. The small, circus creature sculptures will be installed in a carnival-curio-shop-like atmosphere in the gallery.

Link to Art Army "Young Guns" page, Link to videos of the construction process (via Audrey Kawasaki's LiveJournal)

The long-awaited Wired Magazine / PBS television lovechild "Wired Science" debuted tonight -- here's a clip with host Chris Hardwick, who many Boing Boing readers will know as half of the comedy duo Hard 'n' Phirm (here's a previous BB post about an anatomically-correct valentine song they did, LOL). Hardwick is awesome, he's a wonderful host. Video Link.

From Wired Science executive producer Melanie Cornwell (she's from the Wired Mag side of the project):

WIRED Science is the first new prime-time series on PBS in 5 years. Hosted by the most excellent Chris Hardwick, Kamala Lopez, and Ziya Tong, the show translates Wired Magazine to television. In the premier episode, Wired contributing editor Josh Davis reports on the botnet attack that took out much of Estonia's online infrastructure this past spring (Davis simultaneously reported this story for the magazine and Wired Science in Tallin and Moscow); Tong tests software from the MIT Media Lab that is designed to help kids with Asperger's Syndrome do something the rest of us take for granted-- read emotions on people's faces; Wired senior editor Adam Rogers goes in search of chemistry and ends up needing to be decontaminated at the aptly named United Nuclear in New Mexico; plus we'll see a RoboDoc performing cardiac surgery at UCLA-- fascinating but definitely not for the squeamish. There are also studio segments, including Hardwick bringing 'What's Inside' from the mag hilariously to life; a demo of Photosynth software; and a chat with Paul Kedrosky, a VC who's in the more-than-highly speculative business of moving science out of labs and into markets.

The website launching with the show has lots of original content, including a blog with 8 contributors, most of whom are scientists. Congrats on the launch, guys!

Below, Adam Rogers prepares to demonstrate dangerous toy chemistry sets.

I saw Ryan McLellan's magnificent work for the first time in the current issue of Juxtapoz. I think his acrylic on paper paintings of wildlife are absolutely lovely. He'll next show his work in December at the Red Dot Fair taking place as part of Art Basel in Miami, Florida. Link

New York Times reporter John Schwartz has an amazing piece online today, I understand he's been working on it for a half a year or so. The story is about guy who owns his own Sputnik -- or, more precisely, one of the spares built before the initial launch. He bought it during the 1990's post-Soviet fire sale. There's a nice multimedia slideshowmajig along with the article.

So, OMG you'll never guess who the Sputnik owner is. Oh that's right, I put it in the headline for this post. Dude. It's Richard LORD BRITISH Garriott, the creator of Ultima and a very serious space-stuff collector.

Link to "Texas Man Linked to Past and Future of Space Exploration by Sputnik and Soyuz."

The story by Schwartz comes out in the same week as Sputnik's 50th anniversary, and on the same day as a related piece from Robert Pearlman, at CollectSpace.com. Don't miss the entire "10-famous-Sputniks countdown" feature on that site: Link. Image by Will Van Overbeek for the NYT.

Not only do molecules in birds's eyes enable them to sense the Earth's magnetic field, but the nerve fibers lead to a region of the brain responsible for processing visual information, scientists report. According to University of Oldenburg biologist Dominik Heyers, "birds may see the magnetic field" to orient themselves. The new study suggests that this magnetic "vision" is a key part of how migratory birds move from place to place. Other researchers posit that birds use other magnetic senses or even the stars to determine their present location. From National Geographic:

"The magnetic field or magnetic direction may be perceived as a dark or light spot which lies upon the normal visual field of the bird," Heyers said, "and which, of course, changes when the bird turns its head..."

"An animal that has to migrate over great distances needs to have both a compass and a map," said Cordula Mora, a biologist who recently completed her postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Mora's work suggests that birds may use magnetic crystals in their beaks to sense the intensity of the magnetic field and thus glean information on their physical location.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Implant gives man the sense of "magnetic vision" Link

Dan from Silicon Valley's Hijinx Comics writes,

I own and operate a comic book shop in San Jose, CA which was recently voted best comic shop in Silicon Valley. I write free comic retailing software and I also run an online graphic novel store called ComicBookShelf.com .

The recent teacher ousting over Eightball #22 was a real wakeup call that there is a lot of work to do on making the public understand what a vital and important artform comics can be. A world where an educator loses their job for recommending Dan Clowes is a world I don't want to live in!

That's just one of the reasons I'm proud to announce that ComicBookShelf.com will donate 5% of every online sale to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund which supports comics-related first amendment cases.

We're also donating an additional 5% to the Hero Initiative which helps get financial help to golden age comic artists who never made any royalties from their priceless creations.

Furthermore, until the end of October 2007 we will double the donation to both organizations, meaning 20% of every sale will go to these worthy organizations.

Shipping is always free anywhere in the US and we support Google checkout for safe and secure payment processing. We carry a wide array of books and our open source bookstore recommendation algorithms let you rate books and get recommendations. Kind of like Netflix does, but for graphic novels.

Link (Thanks, Dan!)

Dan says: "London attacked by burning, spicy food -- locals unable to 'Keep Calm and Carry On.' It all spells t-e-r-r-o-r a-l-e-r-t! (NOTE: the BBC provides the recipe in a sidebar in case you need to have "specialist crews" break down your door.)"

A pot of burning chilli sparked fears of a biological terror attack in central London. Firefighters wearing protective breathing apparatus were called to D'Arblay Street, Soho, after reports of noxious smoke filling the air. Police closed off three roads and evacuated homes following the alert. Specialist crews broke down the door to the Thai Cottage restaurant at 1900 BST on Monday where they discovered the source - a 9lb pot of chillies. The restaurant had been preparing Nam Prik Pao, a red-hot Thai dip which uses extra-hot chillies which are deliberately burnt.

Link

A Boing Boing readers says: "David Bynoe built a 20-foot-tall surveillance tower that is constructed out of wood and mirrors. The tower is tall enough and controllable enough that it can look down into the neighbors' back yards. Also check out his previous project of a set of hand carved wooden 9.5-foot wings that fold up into something backpack sized."

Includes video. Link

Young America's Foundation is kindly giving away copies of its Conservative VIP poster, as seen here.

Hang the leaders of the Conservative Movement on the wall in your office, home, or dorm! Young America's Foundation is excited to offer our latest breakthrough poster that brings together the strongest leaders and advocates of the Conservative Movement in a unique group photo! This is the only poster of its kind that includes these twelve conservative luminaries: John Ashcroft, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Robert Novak, Ward Connerly, Dinesh D’Souza, Walter Williams and many more.

Get your *free conservative VIP poster here... while supplies last!

*You pay only shipping and handling! [[$7]]

They had me with the first seven words of their pitch. Link (Thanks, Colin!)

Jason says:

I am a photographic archivist and while brainstorming ideas for National Archives Month (October) exhibits, I jokingly suggested "Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century." My boss let me run with it, and I created a daily mustache blog with the digital images I gathered from our collections here at the University of Kentucky.

Link

Included in this list of 10 godawful halloween costumes is this tubgirl-like costume, called Poopie Shorts.

From the package copy:

Two-Layer Butt Allows 'Diarrhea" to Flow without a Mess!

The package also says it "Fits up to 250 lbs." Link (Thanks, Harold!)

Althea Merback knits 1/144 scale outfits that can fit on a dime. Link

Over the years, Alek Komarnitsky has has to chase nine bats out of his house. He's documented each encounter (with photos) on his website.

As of July 27th, 2006 I have had nine "encounters" with bats in my house the last five years ... and the score so far is "Alek-9, Bats-0" ... although 7 of the bats were "returned" back outside ... so it's possible I've had some repeat visitors. I wish I knew why/where these guys are coming from, but I really wish those pesky critters would stay outside and eat the bugs. BTW, if you have bats in your house, the first thing you should do is go get your digital camera (like I do! ;-) ... and then close the doors so they are confined to that room - then deal with 'em!

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Alek Komarnitsky's tele-operated Christmas light display
• Hoax Christmas Lights Webcam up for charity auction
• Peach wasps devouring their namesake fruit

Slacker.com has created a streaming net radio show of punk songs to go along with Spin magazine's October issue, "1977: The Year Punk Exploded!"

The Spin Punk station consists of handpicked songs representing the most influential punk music spanning three decades and is the musical counterpart to Spin's punk coverage. The issue includes an article chronicling the rise of punk, explosive interviews with the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten and the Clash's Mick Jones, a definitive timeline of punk in 1977, and much more.

The Slacker music player is a little odd. When I skipped a song, a message told me that I had "5 skips left." After that, I guess I can't skip again. Ridiculous. Link

BB pal Chad Phillips of Kidrobot is in Toronto finishing up the Kidrobot room in Peter "Studio 54" "Tunnel, Palladium, Limelight" Gatien's new mega nightclub CiRCA, opening this weekend. Chad says that the 53,000, four-four complex is really eight clubs in one and will also be outfitted with a full apartment and recording studio. Chad's posted a few teaser photos on his blog of the Kidrobot environment with more coming soon. Link to Chad's blog, Link to fab Magazine article about CiRCA, Link to CiRCA site

Avant-garde architecture and design group Minimaforms created a system to project SMS messages on plumes of smoke. Installed in two Bristol locations last month for the OFFLOAD festival in Bristol, UK, the "ephemeral speaking cloud structures" meld smoke signals with text messaging. The result, as least judging by photos posted to the Creative Review blog, is a stunningly surreal wordscape. From Creative Review:

“Participants engage in a collective act of writing space through the use of light as a virtual writing machine onto ephemeral plumes of smoke,” explain Minimaforms. In other words, onlookers can text messages which are then displayed using light projected into plumes of smoke. Their texts “are fed through dynamic coding that recognizes, archives and plays back a real time visualization. This visualization is then grafted onto trajectories of smoke that form a dynamic ephemeral field that is affected by all external forces in the space of performance. Through turbulence the smoke writes or erases the grafting of the inputted text.”

Link

The Big Daddy Helping Hands use a big ole pair of vise-grips and some machined hinged metal, along with a handy piece of lumber, to create a set of helping hands that go farther than those little dinky alligator clips. Link (via Make)

The WSJ has an article abut the trouble Wal-Mart is facing, because competitors are offering Wal-Mart's low prices along with better quality merchandise, better service, and more convenience.

The most interesting part, however, was this video showing the way Wal-Mart has spread across the country like a microbe culture in a petri dish.

Today, though, Wal-Mart's influence over the retail universe is slipping. In fact, the industry's titan is scrambling to keep up with swifter rivals that are redefining the business all around it. It can still disrupt prices, as it did last year by cutting some generic prescriptions to $4. But success is no longer guaranteed.

Rival retailers lured Americans away from Wal-Mart's low-price promise by offering greater convenience, more selection, higher quality, or better service. Amid the country's growing affluence, Wal-Mart has struggled to overhaul its down-market, politically incorrect image while other discounters pitched themselves as more upscale and more palatable alternatives. The Internet has changed shoppers' preferences and eroded the commanding influence Wal-Mart had over its suppliers.

Link (Thanks, Mister Jalopy!)

InformationWeek's new department is called "Thinkernet," and it consists of short essays about the future of the Internet's evolution. I wrote a piece for it about the coming suite of tools that make it easier to ignore stuff:

Take email: Endless engineer-hours are poured into stopping spam, but virtually no attention is paid to our interaction with our non-spam messages. Our mailer may strive to learn from our ratings what is and is not spam, but it expends practically no effort on figuring out which of the non-spam emails are important and which ones can be safely ignored, dropped into archival folders, or deleted unread.

For example, I'm forever getting cc'd on busy threads by well-meaning colleagues who want to loop me in on some discussion in which I have little interest. Maybe the initial group invitation to a dinner (that I'll be out of town for) was something I needed to see, but now that I've declined, I really don't need to read the 300+ messages that follow debating the best place to eat.

Link

Microsoft has just announced that it will sell more than a million DRM-free tracks in the Zune store. In other news, Satan just sent out for a snow-shovel.

The Zune Marketplace is officially adding DRM-free music support, launching with over a million DRM-free MP3 tracks. As we mentioned earlier, other details (like which labels, whether there is a DRM-free upgrade path is for users who've bought music with DRM, price differences, etc.) are not yet known.

Link (Thanks, Sam!)

Michael Harris's concept gadget, "The Nail Assist," looks like a good idea: a proxy for the nail head that's larger and wider, giving you room to put your fingers somewhere unlikely to be smashed. Of course, it all depends on whether the device can stand up to being repeatedly smashed with a hammer.

You insert the nail inside the guide tube. Position the tube where you want the nail to be. The large top makes it much easier to manage a hammer slamming down on it. It also protects your precious and very useful fingers. Once the nail is pushed in, simply repeat the process. Your nail will always go in straight and square into its intended target. Brilliant I say.

Link (via Gizmodo)

There's a Tintin movie, and it's being written by Steven Moffat, who also wrote many of the best new Doctor Who episodes. Oh, this is good news.

In the comics, Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and world traveler who is aided in his adventures by his faithful dog Snowy. He later was joined by such colorful characters as Captain Haddock, Professor Cuthbert Calculus and bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson.

Kathleen Kennedy is serving as producer on the three feature films, which will be made using performance-capture technology and produced in digital 3-D. Jackson and Spielberg are each directing an installment, with the helmer of the third movie to be determined.

Link (via Making Light)

See also:
Exclamations used by Tintin's Captain Haddock
To watch: "Tintin and I" PBS doc on Hergé, Tue. July 11.
Drunk Astronaut Hall of Fame: Tintin's Capt. Haddock did it first.

During yesterday's RIAA trial proceedings in Virgin v. Thomas, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's the head of litigation. admitted that the 20,000+ anti-downloader lawsuits run by the labels had cost the companies "millions" and were enormous money-losers. I had previously heard from an industry insider that they were running the suits on a break-even basis, shaving costs by running a sloppy boiler-room operation that used cheap telephone thugs and flimsy, badly assembled evidence to extort a few thousand bucks from each of the victims, just barely breaking even.

The next line of questioning was how many suits the RIAA has filed so far. Pariser estimated the number at a "few thousand." "More like 20,000," suggested Toder. "That's probably an overstatement," Pariser replied. She then made perhaps the most startling comment of the day. Saying that the record labels have spent "millions" on the lawsuits, she then said that "we've lost money on this program."

The RIAA's settlement amounts are typically in the neighborhood of $3,000-$4,000 for those who settle once they receive a letter from the music industry. On the other side of the balance sheet is the amount of money paid to SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) to conduct its investigations, and the cash spent on the RIAA's legal team and on local counsel to help with the various cases. As Pariser admitted under oath today, the entire campaign is a money pit.

Link

ChopShop's stylized line-art ("pin-striping" in car culture argot) Star Wars tees are really refreshing and different -- I'm especially fond of the Raider tee, shown here -- but Vader and Chewie are good too. Link (via Preshrunk)