By Cory Doctorow at 10:58 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Craftster user Zosomoto created these handsome goth reworkings of the classic Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dollies. Just in time for Hallowe'en accessorising, too.
Link
(
via Wonderland)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:57 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Copyfightin' law prof Michael Geist tackles the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a new global treaty proposal that has expanded to cover all the bad stuff that we're more used to seeing from the World Intellectual Property Organization (which bears the same relationship to bad copyright law that Mordor has to evil in Middle Earth), like prohibitions of breaking DRM and the use of public money spent to police the private interests of a few giant corporations.
Unlike WIPO, ACTA is undertaken without input from those pesky consumer rights groups and developing nations, and without the need to come to consensus.
Despite the absence of any independent data (indeed, there is evidence that some numbers have been fabricated), politicians are easily convinced that action is needed since the lobbyists often come armed with compelling props (exploded batteries, unsafe toys) and no one actually supports counterfeiting. Of course, the issue is not whether you are for or against counterfeiting, but rather whether the proposed reforms have anything to do with health and safety or significant economic concerns.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 10:51 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Boiler Design has a couple intriguing prototype cable-managers online: the first being a baseboard "picket fence" that forms a designy trough to run your cables along (looks like it'd be a dust-magnet, though), and the other being a nautically inspired "cleat" for your plug receptacles that you can wind your cords around when not in use (I suspect it'd be great for in-use cords too, especially vacuum cleaners, to keep the plug from being jerked out).
Link to picket fence,
Link to cleat
(
Thanks, Karl!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:44 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Kikuya, a ramen shop near Tokyo's Kitasenjyu Station, carries a startling variety of improbable novelty ramen dishes, including Vanilla Ice Cream Ramen, Yogurt Ramen and Chocolate Ramen.
That flavors can you expect? Vanilla Ice Cream Ramen, Chocolate Ramen, and every bodies favorite… Green Tea Ramen (LIKE WHOA!) Something to remember is that ice cream ramen could be a limtied summer time edition this year (like I heard it was last year) and if you show up too late in the season you might end up with some Coffee Ramen (a.k.a. kohii gyunyu ramen). Other items on the menu include white ramen (yogurt), red ramen (tomato), natto ramen, milk ramen, hot cocoa ramen, pork kimchi ramen, and other crazy combinations. Regular ramen is 500 Yen but if you choose that option I’m sure people will look at you funny.
Link
(
Thanks, Marilyn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:40 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Glenn Fleishman sez, "Verizon Wireless has settled with the New York State Attorney General over the use of the word 'unlimited' in the marketing for their cell data service, where 'unlimited' meant 5 GB a month, regardless of use.
"The Verizon service, as BoingBoing has noted before, prohibits anything but Web surfing, email, and intranet use, although the revised terms of service indicate downloading legal music is acceptable, while P2P usage is not. The AG's office found that Verizon cut off 13,000 customers nationally over three years for violating its previously not well disclosed limits on unlimited. Verizon no longer calls it unlimited, and stopped cutting people off in April while this complaint was resolved."
(Insert "Neverending Story" Simpsons joke here.)
Link
(Thanks, Glenn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:37 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Mashing Pumpkins is a pretty swell new free album of illegal Hallowe'en mashups. I've just downloaded a smattering of them for review purposes and found myself rockin' out to
DJ Engineer's "
Purple Monster Bop" (Shaun of the Dead - Man Parrish (Hip Hop, Be Bop - Don't Stop) vs Dr. Demento (Purple People Eater) vs Monster Twist).
These mashup sites tend to disappear about ten seconds after they hit the net and get some serious download traffic, so I've created Coral Cache links to all the individual MP3s below -- just one of the many services we provide here at Boing Boing Global Enterprises (A wholly owned subsidiary of Harriman Enterprises Holdings (Holdings) Ltd).
Link,
(
Thanks, Ray!)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 5:39 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Designer Roger Arquer makes non-lethal mousetraps from household items.
Using everyday household objects like a clear drinking glass, metal springs, paper clips, and a metal nut, this "friendlier" mousetrap won't kill off your rodent infestation, but instead will just provide an easy way for you to transport them outside. The designer's intent is that you can re-use the objects after you catch the mouse. I think I would probably wash them a few hundred times first.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 5:33 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Kevin Mack is a special effects genius that I profiled in Wired in 1999. He's also an excellent artist.
Mack's work is the result of ongoing research in a wide range of fields from the mathematics of complexity to neuroscience and human perception. His work in artificial life and rule based systems, used on What Dreams May Come and Fight Club, inspired the development of tissue simulation software that is now being used for virtual stem cell research. In 2006, Mack received the title of Honorary Neuroscientist, from UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, for his lectures there on perception, visualization and creativity.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 4:20 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Hulk smash puny trick-or-treaters!
Alek says:
After wasps and bats, I thought you might get a chuckle out of this.
A guy was selling a giant Hulk inflatable on eBay and asked
permission to use the images from my site. After thanking him
for being polite enough to ask (my stuff is scraped
all the time), we chatted a bit and I ended up buying it.
The shipping cost was half of the sale price!
So Hulk's long-lost twin brother is up for Halloween.
While the Hulk Brothers aren't controllable, everything else on the crazy
Halloween display is using X10 powerline control technology ... plus
there are three live webcams to keep an eye on all of the action.
While the site is totally free, over $18,000 has been raised
via voluntary contributions for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland.
Alek's sons have celiac disease (a gluten
intollerance), so consider donating a few bucks to help find a cure so when
they grow up, they can go out for a beer and pizza with their old man.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 4:15 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Loren Coleman detours into "cryptobotany" as he comments on a strange news report from Uppinangady, Mangalor, India about a carnivorous tree that allegedly has a taste for cattle. From the Express News Service:
(Cow owner) Anand Gowda and the villagers struck mortal blows to the branches that turned limp and the cow was rescued. Uppinangady range forest officer (RFO) Subramanya Rao said the tree was described as ‘pili mara’ (tiger tree) in native lingo. Link
And from Loren's post at Cryptomundo:
In Roy Mackal’s book, Searching for Hidden Animals (NY: Doubleday, 1980), his last chapter is entitled “The Monstrous Plants.” It was not about cryptozoology, needless to say, but about cryptobotany, being a short treatise on the Victorian accounts of man-eating plants...
Mackal spends his final chapter detailing mostly the reports from the 1850s through the 1940s of the “Man-Eating Tree of Madagacar,” and the expeditions that searched (unsuccessfully) for the species. Link
By Xeni Jardin at 3:57 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Last week on an episode of Boing Boing tv, we featured an infauxmercial by Gabe Delahaye and Max Silvestri about How to Get the Dream Life of Your Dreams Using the Internet..
Since airing that episode, we've been overwhelmed with messages (bing bong, you got your emails) from viewers who wanted to know how they could get more out of the Internet with new technologies like blobs, and emails, and Myspaces such as the MySpace and Friendsters.
So we reached out to Gabe & Max and asked if they'd conduct a sort of internet video advice session JUST FOR BOING BOING. They agreed.
Now comes the excellent part: You, yes you, for the low low price of zero dollars, can ask your VERY OWN QUESTIONS to Gabe and Max using this internet comments form on this very post.
Act now and Ask now! Gabe & Max will answer you in a future episode of Boing Boing tv.
Previously: BBtv - Internet Cookies/Internet... Thing
By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:43 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Wired Test is available from Cool Tools as a free PDF.
Since it debuted a few years ago, I've eagerly awaited the arrival of these product-packed issues of Wired. Tested, reviewed and rated are pretty much every gadget imaginable in every category imaginable (much of it very newly-released, too). Again, exclusively for Cool Tools readers, Wired's editor in chief Chris Anderson has graciously provided a pdf of the Fall issue (on newsstands today). What you get: 125 pages of solid content broken into specific sections and spreads, everything from A/V to office to kitchen to automotive to garden to gaming equipment and accessories. This means: flatscreens, laptops, lawnmowers, headphones, pocketcams, DV cams, blenders, cell phones, wine openers, strollers, and more, ranging from cheap to relatively affordable to the 'yeah right.'
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:41 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Bruce Eisner's remembers Timothy Leary's birthday, which was yesterday.
If Timothy Leary were alive, he would be 87 years old today. But Timothy Leary is dead, having passed from our lives in 1996.
In remembering Timothy on his birthday, I Googled for a portion of his autobiography, Flashbacks called "My Conception of My Conception" in which he "describes" the experience of being born.
I got lucky and found this video on YouTube which appears to have been made by some of the folks living at Tim's house in Beverly Hills when he passed away. One of them reads the section from Timothy's autobiography Flashbacks that I was looking for.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:17 pm Tuesday, Oct 23
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Nad Shot is a blog that posts comic book panels of violent punches and kicks to the groin.
Link (Via Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror)
