Update: Looks like Pesco got to this one earlier this week!

Guido sez, "GM mice modified to have their neurons of 90 shades of color, each one shining in its unique way. A clever trick (this is a true example of biohacking) allow differential expression of color markers in each neuron in a way analogue to the display of pixels in a monitor. This will really improve things for people who does brain research and study the way the brain is wired. Santiago Ramon y Cajal would be very excited about this. Besides this, the pictures are exquisitely beautiful, this is bioart too."

Ira Flatow did a great segment with the principal researcher this week on the NPR show Science Friday (this is one of the two science podcasts I'm religiously devoted to, the other being CBC's Quirks and Quarks -- having these shows in my earbuds once a week is one of the coolest things about living in the twenty-first century). Link

Earlier this year, painter Andrew Brandou mounted an astounding and provocative exhibition, "As A Man Thinketh, So He Is," at the Corey Helford gallery in Culver City, CA. The paintings told the story of Jonestown, the commune in Guyana where more than 900 members of Peoples Temple, under the guidance of cult leader Jim Jones, killed themselves or were murdered in 1978. While creating the series, Andrew consulted a variety of sources on the history of People's Temple, including the "Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple,” a site sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. Now, Andrew has contributed a piece to the site's online journal, "Jonestown Report."

From Andrew's essay:

i was ten years old living in michigan when the events in guyana occurred, so on one hand i have no direct relationship to them. on the other hand, i was attending catholic school. each morning after for quite some time, the sermons tended to be responses to the tragedy. my teachers and priests not only described the events to me, but my own brothers and sisters, all 14 years or more older than myself. their point of view did not always align with what other authority figures had said. i became driven to understand exactly “what” had taken place, not only to the victims of circumstance who became “a nations tragedy” but to myself, as a frightened child suddenly forced to question authority. these are the forces which have always driven me for my series regarding peoples temple.

i have 30 some pieces, only 10 of them recalling specific events in south america. i have no interest in mocking anyone, glorifying tragedy, playing into conspiracy theory, or being overtly graphic. as a matter of fact, if you did not know it, you may not even realize the paintings were about the peoples temple in particular. i humbly submit that this is because i am coming from a youthful perspective, as an outside observer trying to reverse engineer an “unsolvable” situation.

i have found that a visual shorthand helps to focus on the types of stories i tell. for this reason, i call forth the simple graphic nature of childrens book artwork as a shell around my concepts. most people seem to respond very rapidly to the benign nature of the visuals, and have an easy time deciphering them. for example, i use animals in my work instead of humans. most people have vivid memories of the childrens books they read. they understand things like a lion is king of the jungle, or a rabbit is the everyman. the use of these simple visual metaphors works to take away distractions. if i attempted to portray jim jones specifically, people would find flaws or idiosyncrasies that have nothing to do with the story im trying to tell. if i simplify him by making him a lion, he becomes a hieroglyph, filed away under jones, and you can then go straight into the story.

Link to The Jonestown Report essay, Link to Corey Helford Gallery (select Andrew's name from the "past shows" menu to view "As A Man Thinketh")

My Nebula-award-nominated story 0wnz0red has been translated into Swedish by Johan Anglemark for the Finnish fanzine Enhörningen, and released under a Creative Commons license. 0wnz0red was the first sf story ever published on Salon and it has been reprinted several times -- nice to see it reaching Nordic fans, too! It seems that "0wnz0red" translates into Swedish as "Ägd!"

Tio år i Silicon Valley, och allt Murray Swain hade fått ut av det var en bilring, begynnande flint och ett liv som var ensamt och tomt och genomruttet. Hans enda vän i Kalifornien, Liam, hade förvandlats från en lönnfet programmerarformad potatis till ett levande skelett på dödsbädden ett år tidigare, med herpesblemmor i full blom över hela kroppen i brist på immunförsvar. Minnesgudstjänsten pryddes av ett inramat foto av Liam på examensdagen; hans kropp hade skänkts till vetenskapen.

Liams bortgång hade verkligen sabbat allt för Murray. Han hade hamnat i en av de spiraler med klinisk depression som förr eller senare hade drabbat alla åldrande smarta unga kodare som han känt i datorbranschen. Ögonen blev fuktiga på morgonen vid andra kaffekoppen och när blodsockerkraschen inträffade på eftermiddagen satt han och grät tyst i sitt bås och klinkade slumpmässigt på tangentbordet för att dölja sitt motbjudande hulkande. Hans papperskorg svämmade över med använda näsdukar och det gick ett rykte bland kvällsstädarna att han var obotlig onanist. Det omöjliga i ryktet blev snabbt uppenbart för alla andra kodare på våningsplanet som, ständigt på jakt efter pr0n, hade utforskat omfattningen och gränserna för censurproxyn på huvudkontorets nätverk. Trots detta upprepades det med illa dold glädje i den kollegialt grabbiga atmosfären på arbetsplatsen och lustigkurrar envisades med att dumpa samlingar av miniatyrflaskor med handkräm som de stulit från konferenshotell på hans skrivbord.

Link to HTML version, Link to PDF version

Anita Thompson, who was married to Hunter S. Thompson for two years before he died, is unhappy with Jann Wenner's Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, An Oral Biography. She told the NY Daily News:

"There are beautiful parts in [Wenner's] book, but it sensationalizes Hunter unecessarily. It's meant to portray him as losing his mind at the end, but he was not. He was just as kind and decent and brilliant as when he was younger.

"And it portrays him like leaving Rolling Stone was the biggest mistake of his life. After leaving Rolling Stone, he's portrayed as an awful beast of a man. Jann looks at it as humiliating that, after he left Rolling Stone, Hunter wrote for ESPN. But Hunter's deepest passion was politics and sports. And he was looking at sports readers as just as important. He saw them as a powerful voting bloc if they could be inspired to vote.

"When Hunter was compiling his second letters book, there was some humiliating correspondence between Hunter and Jann. His publisher was urging him to put it in, but in the end, Hunter didn't run it. It would've sold more books. But he protected his buddy. I'm sad that Jann didn't do the same.

(Shown here: Anita and me at her book signing in Aspen Colorado for The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. She told me Hunter would have loved my shirt.)

Link

MAKE is looking for makers who would like to show off their creations at the upcoming Felt Club event in Los Angeles. (I'm editor-in-chief of MAKE). Here are the details:

The Maker Faire team is joining forces with Felt Club for the upcoming Felt Club XL Holiday event -- Sunday, November 18th from 11am-6pm on the Los Angeles City College campus (855 N Vermont Ave, LA CA 90029).

This family-friendly event will feature 70+ amazing crafters, delicious food and great music, plus an all-new section called MAKER SQUARE, a miniature version of Maker Faire! (Felt Club is a twice-yearly indie craft fair featuring the best and brightest of the SoCal craft scene. Our carefully juried shows highlight a wide variety of handmade goods, including handbags and jewelry, baby gifts and paper products, clothing and housewares, one-of-a-kind plushies and original artwork. In between shows, we host a variety of craft-related events around the city, including how-to workshops, craft supply swaps, and more).

Maker Square is organized by the staff of Make and Craft magazines and is a mini-fair that brings together science, art, craft and engineering in a fun, energized and exciting public forum. The aim is to inspire people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become makers. We will showcase the amazing work of all kinds of makers -- anyone who is embracing DIY and wants to share their accomplishments with an appreciative audience.

We encourage you to join the fun and enter a project to exhibit. You can submit you entry by sending an email to sherry@oreilly.com. In your Maker Square entry request, please tell us about yourself and your project. Entries can be submitted from individuals as well as from groups such as hobbyist clubs and schools. Please provide a short description of what you make and what you will actually bring to Maker Square. Please provide links to photographs or videos of what you make. Maker exhibits should be non-commercial. We particularly encourage exhibits that are interactive and that highlight the process of making things. Please remember that our space is outdoors and we do not have access to electricity.

Here's some suggested ideas for topics that we're looking for:

• Things Made From Recycled Items
• Microcontrollers
• Robotics
• Making Musical Instruments
• Bicycle Hacks
• Ham Radio
• Puzzles, Games and Toys
• Cars (hot rods, custom vans, electric vehicles)
• Airplanes and Aeronautics (models, etc)
• Biology/Biotech
• Chemistry
• Cool RC Toys & Mods
• Video Games (retro, home arcade and more)
• Model Trains and Planes
• Weaving/Looms (historical or unusual)
• Kites
• Temporary Structures (Tents, Domes, etc.)
• Unusual Tools or Machines
• How to Fix Things or Take them Apart (Vacuums, Clocks, Washing Machines, etc.)

Maker Square Space: Our standard setup for each Maker is roughly a 10x10 space. Use this space to display your work and/or demonstrate how you make something. You will need to bring your own tables and chairs.

NOTE: Makers whose entries are accepted will receive free admission to Felt Club/Maker Square. However, we cannot pay for transportation and accommodations. Makers do not pay a fee to exhibit at Felt Club/Maker Square and maker exhibits are non-commercial.

Carl Malamud sez, "Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce a joint venture with the U.S. government's National Technical Information Service, a program I've dubbed 'FedFlix.' Each month NTIS will send us 10-20 videotapes, which we'll digitize, then send the tapes back. We'll upload all this public domain data to places like the Internet Archive, and also give the NTIS a digital copy of their data." Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Bonnie sez, "Find out how to make a giant Jabba the Hutt puppet out of irrigation tubing, foam mattress padding, spandex fabric, plastic bowls and other supplies from discount and hardware stores!" Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

A economic study funded by the Canadian government has concluded that heavy P2P users buy more music.

* When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

* When viewed in the aggreggate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study authors, "the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole."

Link

I moved back to London a couple months ago and I've been trying to get a British Telecom phone line installed ever since, and so far, all I've gotten is a comedy of errors that's played out like a cross between a Fawlty Towers episode and 1984.

There appear to be at least three departments at BT that aren't talking to each other (or themselves) and between them all, I've been put through a meat-grinder. First, there's the billing department, who seem to call me every other day to tell me that I need to put a deposit down before my line can be installed, and then, when I remind them that I've provided them with a credit card on three separate occasions, promise to call me back (and never do).

Then there are the schedulers, who keep calling to confirm a November 1 installation date, and every time I say, "No, we agreed that you'd install on November 6th -- that's why I cancelled a flight and a day's worth of meetings to be home for you." Why, just Wednesday a BT rep assured me that the installation would be on the sixth, not the first.

Finally, there are the customer service people, who insist that someone needs to come out to "install" my line, even though there's been a working BT line in this flat for the past ten years, and all I want to do is switch it back on again now that the tenants who rented the place while we were in LA last year have gone.

Thursday morning, a BT engineer called to say that he was on his way (it being the first) and I told him, no, I'm not in today, you're supposed to be coming on the sixth. Since then, I've been on the phone for two days with BT, speaking to customer service rep after customer service rep, none of whom can explain when -- or if -- my line will be turned on (though several of them have told me firmly that no work can be done until I put down a deposit).

Now it seems like I'm going to get installation sometime before the end of the month. Maybe. Who knows? At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if BT's next step was to burn my house down and dance in the ashes.

Today we looked at a ticket-stub-eating robo-goat, the first look at the modular Bug Labs gadget kits, an early Nintendo computer prototype that used infrared instead of wires, tiny ornithopter drones that may or may not be spying on you right now, a weird tech talk show from AT&T, a mouse with a built-in label printer, a flashlight with a built-in videocamera, flat-folding pens, an mp3 player for dogs that costs two grand, and reminded about the Child's Play Charity (and a fund raising event in Brooklyn and Denver). Also, quite a few deals. (The holiday shopping pre-season has begun!)

Science News reports that dinosaur fossils have been found in burrows.

"The find is the first indisputable evidence that some dinosaurs maintained an underground lifestyle for at least part of their lives."

The newly described dinosaur's 1.25-m-long tail accounted for most of the slim creature's estimated 2.1-m length. In adulthood, it would have stood knee-high to humans, says Varricchio. Broad flanges on the upper bones of the creature's forelimbs indicate where large muscles attached, he adds. Similar features, which provide increased leverage while digging, are found on the analogous bones in modern-day armadillos.

The dinosaur's broad hips suggest that it could have braced itself in a wide stance* while burrowing. The foremost bones in its skull were fused, a characteristic that could have enabled the creature to dig more effectively.

(*The dinosaur does look a lot like Senator Craig.) Link

Furries get no respect. Usually, when you hear about people who dress up like life-sized stuffed animals, it's in the context of an unfriendly internet joke, a sex gag on Entourage, or an insult that ends with "yiff in hell."

But Brooklyn-based filmmaker Marianne Shaneen has spent more than two years following these people around, capturing their lives in and out of their "fursonas." She's working on a documentary film called AMERICAN FURRY: Life, Liberty and the Fursuit of Happiness.

Today on Boing Boing tv, an exclusive peek at this feature in progress. Marianne provided us with access to some of her raw footage (she's accumulated 2+ years' worth!), and we selected clips, edited, added some audio, and produced the short glimpse you'll see here.

"I'm looking for an editor, a couple of animators, finishing funds, and a producer," says Shaneen -- so if you'd like to get involved, email her at info@rabbitholefilms.com.

Link to BBtv episode.

Special thanks to Susannah Breslin for pointing us to this project. (Music by T.bias.)

Drew Carey is the host of a new series of news videos produced for Reason magazine's reason.tv. In the second episode, he visits a medical marijuana clinic in Los Angeles.

“I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily,” says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.

One of the most outrageous consequences of the war on drugs is the federal crackdown on medical marijuana, which is used by patients to help treat the effects of cancer, glaucoma, HIV-AIDS, chronic pain and nausea, and other severe symptoms associated with serious illnesses. Medical marijuana prescribed by a physician is legal in 12 states, yet federal agents are raiding state-approved dispensaries and preventing patients from having safe access to this drug.

In Episode 2 of Reason.tv's Drew Carey Project, Drew takes a look at patients who need and use medical marijuana in California, and how the federal government is making their lives even worse.

Link

(Image from Diseno-Art)

What's not to love (other than the fact that you'll die if you drive it on the road) about this tiny car from the 1960s, the Peel P50? Link | Company film about the Peel 50

Lasse Klein designed this fantastic Alien Abduction Lamp. It's still a concept model but Klein hopes to someday bring it to market.
Link (via Laughing Squid)

The 17 percent decline in US tourism since September 11th, 2001 has had a devastating effect on the economy, costing nearly $100 billion (200,000 jobs, 16 billion in tax revenue). Visitors to the US from around the world rank the border procedures as among the worst on earth.

"What affects travel and tourism affects our economy and our image around the world. Travel and tourism is the face of America, whether it's people coming here or Americans going elsewhere," he said.

"It's the person coming from India to look at a company in America for parts, or a person from South America who can't get into the country for a conference because he can't get a visa," Dow said.

Link

The latest Weekend Projects video shows you how to build a "Joule Thief." Bre Pettis explains:

Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories joins me to teach you how to make a super clever little circuit called the Joule Thief! The Joule Thief allows you to squeeze the life out of what most people think of as "dead" batteries!

We were inspired by Big Clive to make this project and it's the perfect platform for a flashlight, book reading light, or really just something you should make to get more use out of your batteries!

Link

Gracenote, the company that usually provides the album information when you rip a CD, launched an interesting Music Map application that shows the "popularity" of artists and albums by region and country in many parts of the world. It does this based on how often Gracenote's database is queried about particular albums or artists. Link to Flash map (Thanks, Gabriel "TuneUp" Adiv!)

While shopping for bathroom fixtures, my friend Michael-Anne Rauback came across these unusual items that might make for an interesting combination. At left is the Fairy Tale Oak Pedestal that supports any round vessel sink. It's cast from solid bronze. At right is the Disney Home Pooh faucet set. Home Depot has sanctioned this item as "Appealing to Children and Grown ups." Link to Oak Pedestal, Link to Pooh faucet

It's fun to die when your earthly remains are ensconced in a Star Trek urn or casket. They're made by Eternal Images ("Designing Brand-Name Funerary Products"), which also offers Precious Moments" Major League Baseball, and Cat Fanciers' Association funerary products.

The new STAR TREK Urn will feature a bold design reminiscent of the 24th century styling of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet. Urns will be available in late 2007.

The STAR TREK Casket styling has been inspired by the popular “Photon Torpedo” design seen in STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Kahn. Caskets will be available in 2008.

Link (Thanks, Tamara!)

Joshua Foer, Kircher Society blogger, prepared an interesting article for Cabinet Magazine surveying notable moments in the history of giant spheres. The spheres he showcases range from a sculptural fountain to a giant ball of twine to the Bathysphere, a submersible in the form of a 4.75-foot steel ball. Seen here is the Gottorp Globe, a 17th century planetarium.

From Foer's article, titled "A Minor History of Giant Spheres":

1664
The Gottorp Globe, the world’s first modern planetarium, is completed in Germany. The hollow sphere, ten feet in diameter, is turned by water power; it has a map of the constellations on the interior and a map of the world on the outside. In 1714, it is given as a gift to Peter the Great but is destroyed by fire in 1747. The reconstructed globe, stolen by the Germans in World War II and recovered by US troops, now resides at the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Foer's History of miniature writing Link

Basic64 is a free synthesizer plug-in for VST software "inspired by the 8 bit sounds of the classic Commodore 64." Link (Via Hobby Blog)

Harvard university researchers developed a system that causes neural circuitry to glow in any of 90 different colors. The "Brainbow" process involves inserting genes borrowed from bioluminescent jellyfish, corals, or synthetic sources. Those genes produce proteins that color individual neurons. So far, neurobiologist Jeff Lichtman and his colleagues have tested the Brainbow process on mice but unfortunately the genetic modification can't be used on humans. From Chemistry World:

The researchers will next use Brainbow to compare how these changes occur in other groups of animals and plan to create transgenic fish, insects and nematode worms incorporating the genes. But the technique may also have applications in other areas such as drug development, Lichtman says. 'This may be a good tool to study certain disorders of the nervous system where the synaptic circuitry may be miswired (such as autism spectrum disorders). If there were potential therapies being developed for these conditions this tool might be used to see the effects of these therapies in animal models,' he suggests.

Link to Chemistry World, Link to News@Nature coverage (Thanks, Mike Liebhold!)

This fellow put a 12-volt "ooga" car horn inside a jack-o-lantern on his porch to give trick-or-treaters a jolt of adrenaline. Link

Sculptor Doctor A made this steampunk Pac Man toy called “The Secret History of Video Games: Pac Gentleman”.

When this game was first released in 1880 it was so hugely popular in taverns and inns that the bank of England was forced to mint more threepenny bits to keep up with demand. The game was created by messrs Nam & Nam and Co. as a novelty pastime for the masses. Outdoing the previous top public house game of Shove Ha’penny.

Link (Thanks, Jeff!)

Inquire within for more steam-punke linques

I Heart Guts sells a line of plush internal organs for your little nipper to play with and chew on. Link (via Babygadget)

Wonderful news: Channel Four have picked up The IT Crowd (my favorite geek TV show!) for a third season! It must be because Graham "Father Ted" Linehan, the show's creator, has just been named one of the world's greatest living geniuses by the Creators Synectics ("a global consultants firm").

The IT Crowd, sketch show Modern Toss and Peep Show will also return.

Link (Thanks, Stephen!)

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant on series one of The IT Crowd, and my fiancee works at Channel Four)

See also:
Previews of IT Crowd episode six
IT Crowd, season 2, episode 5: the boob joke episode
IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 4 -- and DVD!
IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 3: Great anti-piracy PSA sendup
IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 2 -- keyboard-destroying nerd sitcom
The IT Crowd -- season two, episode one

My latest Guardian column is online: "Why a rights robocop will never work." In it, I address the issue of automated copyright enforcement systems and why they are a bad idea:

It would have to perform with near-perfection: even if it turns out that it catches every single infringement except for video that is re-cut to 16:9 with letterboxing at 31fps, then all the pirates will just encode it that way and evade the filter, meaning that the system would generate an unacceptable level of false negatives.

In other words, all the money spent on the system would be for naught because it would fail to catch a significant proportion of pirates.

It would also have to be nearly perfect in regards to false positives - every time it misidentified a home movie of your kids' first steps or your gran's 85th birthday as Police Academy 29 or Star Wars: Episode 0, Jedi Teen Academy, your own right to use the Internet to communicate with your friends and family would be compromised - likewise unacceptable.

Link

Check out this 15,000 pound belt-driven "digital clock" from the December, 1933 ish of Popular Science:

Moving numerals, three feet high, will tell Londoners the time when a monster clock now under construction in one of this British city’s railroad stations is completed. The big timepiece is believed the largest without hands ever built. Three endless belts of steel slats, driven by an electric motor, carry the numbers past a rectangular window high on the station wall where they are made visible. Each numeral is outlined by silvered disks of reflecting material, and floodlights play upon the figures to make them show up clearly at a distance. The movement of the belts is governed automatically from a control panel with an extremely accurate master clock, which in turn is constantly regulated from the observatory at Greenwich. The steel roller on which the hour numerals are shown is thirty-seven feet long and the blinds weigh about 15,000 pounds.

Link (via Watchismo)

Kos of the DailyKos blog lets fly at Blue Shield for the nightmarish, deceptive way that they've dealt with him. After lying for months on end to him and to the Anesthesiologist who helped his wife give birth about payment of a claim, they've invented a new lie and used it as the basis for not paying the claim, even though Kos pays $800 a month in premiums. When he asked the rep he was speaking to for her last name, she hung up on him.

It gets worse, the office of the anesthesiologist has letters from Blue Shield claiming that the insurance company had sent us the money directly, so to bill us for the services. Of course, we never received such money. No such checks were ever cashed (which would be easy enough to verify if they were really interested in the truth, and not shirking their duties).

So they lie to us, claiming for seven months that they'll cover the procedure. They lie to the anesthesiologist's office, claiming they've already paid us the amount owed, and to bill us directly.

And now, finally, they truth comes out -- they have a problem paying what's owed and will refuse to do so, even though they sent us a letter saying they would.

Link

See also:
Moore's "Sicko" leaks onto P2P
BlueCross's internal talking points memo for Sicko
Michael Moore rebuts CNN on Sicko, calls for apology
Google to HMOs: pay us and we'll defuse "Sicko"
More on Google vs Sicko
Google's "Sicko" scandal - what went wrong?

Brian Dettmer's ram's-head sculpture is made from melted cassette tapes. Lovely. Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Rudy Rucker has posted his kick-ass, weird-ass post-cyberpunk novel Postsingular to the net as a free, Creative Commons-licensed download. I reviewed Postsingular when it came out earlier this month:

In Postsingular, a mad scientist creates a race of nants -- nanites -- that digest the planet and turn it into a computational simulation of Earth, called Vearth. However, an autistic child memorizes a long string of numbers that poisons the nants and causes them to reverse themselves (luckily, they're engaged in reversible computation) and put the planet back. That's the setup.

Some time later, another race of benign nanos are released on the earth, the Orphids. Orphids are mezzoscale computers that organize themselves into an intelligent global network, tapping into every human brain and giving people access to outboard cognition facilities, so that anyone can drop out, tune in, and become hyperintelligent. The orphidnetters are haunted by spooks from a parallel dimension, who seek to prevent them from using the smarts of the orphidnet to develop interdimensional travel.

This is one of the most fun, strangest, most thought-provoking sf novels I've read, and it's fantastic to have it show up on the net, ready to be copied and shared. Link

YouTube claims that it has technology to automatically detect and prevent copyright infringement in user-submitted videos, but many people doubt that this software will be able to distinguish between actual infringements and fair use, since this is the kind of thing that usually requires thoughtful, informed human judgement.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced a "test suite" of videos that make extensive fair use of copyrighted stills, music and clips -- the videos in the suite are legal, but they represent the kind of material that is in danger of being censored by automated takedown software.

The idea is that anyone who claims to have developed good copyright enforcement software should be able to run it against these videos and detect that they are not in violation of copyright law. If it can't, then it's not ready for primetime.

It doesn't hurt that these are, to a one, awesome videos. Link (Thanks, Madeline!)

Tom Humberstone produced this wonderful comic for last week's 24-hour-comic challenge, called "Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Crohn's Disease." It's an intense and touching personal memoir about life with Crohn's. Link (Thanks, Tamara!)

See also: Homemade comics from International 24 Hour Comics Day

Crazy Rulers of the World is a documentary about secret paranormal experiments conducted inside military bases.

Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s Crazy Rulers of the World explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary -- and plain bizarre -- national secrets at the core of George W Bush's war on terror.

Interviewee: "We had a master sergeant that could stop the heart of a goat"

Jon Ronson: "What? Just by looking at it?"

Interviewee: Just by wantin' the goat's heart to stop

All three parts are available on Google. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Previously on Boing Boing:
• The Men Who Stare At Goats

In May, the science journal The Psychologist published an article discussing the psychology of psychosis in the context of David Lynch's last film, Inland Empire (2006). The full text of the article is now online. From "David Lynch and Psychosis":

Watching a David Lynch film can give the viewer the impression that the director intuitively understands the underlying mechanisms of psychotic experience. Furthermore, in an age where experiential and subjective approaches to understanding mental illness have fallen out of favour, David Lynch may also offer some insight into the feeling of what it is like to suffer from psychosis...

The disorientation engendered by the experience of hallucinations is another tool in David Lynch’s armoury. In Inland Empire, sequences from dreams and earlier versions of the film being shot by Jeremy Irons’ director character are interspersed with footage of the ‘reality’ in which Laura Dern is an actress making ‘High on Blue Tomorrows’. This idea of showing multiple levels of reality is a characteristic of Lynch films. Unlike other directors he goes to great lengths to disorient the viewer by removing the conventional indictors that normally signpost the transition from one text world to another (Werth, 1999). This tendency to remove the tools that allow audiences to monitor the source of what they are witnessing may elicit an experience that resembles the psychotic patient being ‘taken in’ by their hallucinations.

Link to The Psychologist, Link to buy Inland Empire on DVD (via Mind Hacks)

Paul Tibbets, the man who led the crew that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, died in Columbus, Ohio today. He was 92.

The five-ton "Little Boy" bomb was dropped on the morning of 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 Japanese, with many of them dying later.

On the 60th anniversary of the bombing, the three surviving crew members of the Enola Gay - named after Tibbet's mother - said they had "no regrets."

Link

When AppTapp Installer for the iPhone came out a couple of months ago, I installed it on my iPhone and began running 3rd party applications. I especially liked the ebook reader, Frotz (a text adventure player), the voice recorder, and Summerboard (to scroll through application icons on the iPhone).

Then Apple announced the 1.1.1 update for the iPhone and issued stern warnings that they would not be responsible for any problems caused by updating a modified phone. I un-jailbreaked my phone before updating it.

Shortly after upgrading, I began to miss my jailbreaked iPhone. I read about ways to re-jailbreak it, but they involved downgrading the iPhone's firmware, and it seemed risky.

But a couple of days ago, the iPhone hacking community came up with a very easy way to jailbreak a 1.1.1 iPhone. All you have to do is visit jailbreakme.com on your iPhone and click the AppSnapp install button. I did it, and it worked without a hitch.

According to the site, AppSnapp will not brick your iPhone: "No, worst case you will have to restore in iTunes." Link (Via Ars Technica)

The Guardian has an article about the "most bizarre tests ever conducted in name of scientific inquiry."

My favorite involved 10 soldiers who went on a supposedly routine airplane flight in California in the 1960s. After a while, the plane started falling and the pilot announced they were about to crash.

While the soldiers faced almost certain death, a steward handed out insurance forms and asked the men to complete them, explaining it was necessary for the army to be covered if they died.

Little did the soldiers know they were completely safe. It was merely an experiment to find out how extreme stress affects cognitive ability, the forms serving as the test. Once the final soldier had completed his form the pilot announced: "Just kidding about that emergency folks!"

A later attempt to repeat the experiment with a new group of unwitting volunteers was ruined by one of the previous soldiers, who had penned a warning on a sickbag.

Link (Thanks, Partha!)

Reader comment:

Alex Boese says: In a Nov. 1 post, "Cruel 1960s psychology experiments," you link to a Guardian article which was, in turn, summarizing an article in New Scientist. What the Guardian never mentioned is that I wrote the New Scientist article, and that I was excerpting from my book, Elephants on Acid. It's kind of frustrating to be sidelined like that by a major publication, since I really need all the publicity I can get. But these things happen.

No outdoor festival is complete without a giant naked man balloon, as seen in this terrific gallery of photos taken by Liberoliber and uploaded to Flickr. From an exhibition at the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, May 7 – June 5, 2007. Link

A Berlin college student apparently had the ultimate thrift-score. Turns out that a beat-up old sofa bed she bought at a flea market for 150 euros (US$216) had a baroque painting tucked in the mattress. The painting sold at auction this week for 19,200 euros (US$27,660.) From Reuters:

"She used the sofa bed for a while before realizing the painting was in there," said Michaela Derra, spokeswoman for the auction house Ketterer Kunst, adding she did not know how the oil painting had wound up inside the sofa.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Previously on BB:
• $1 million painting found in trash Link

Did you buy your Ape Lad T-shirt depicting a happy pirate hobo zombie chimp yet? It's only $10 including shipping. Link

I don't know if this illustration of a pregnant manga character is for kids or otaku. Link (Thanks, Frankie!)

Today we were subjected to the majesty that is Batter Blaster (pancakes in a can!), a strange oblong UMPC from Korea, Joss Whedon's next TV series Dollhouse, Gundam-themed desk gadgets, breakaway Glove Guards, PC troubleshooting dice, expensive bamboo dry sacks, a bespoke corkscrew that costs €50,000, a wind-up light for developing nations, and tools "for girls."

And deals. And extraneous links.

From Boing Boing's community manager, Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Boing Boing is about to launch a bunch of new features, which you'll be hearing about later today.

But first: at about 12:45 PM (PDT), before we start the transition to the new version of Boing Boing, our old commenter sign-in method will go away. As of that point, we won't want any more commenters to sign in using that method, so we'll shut down access to mt.cgi. However, boingboing.net itself will be accessible the whole time.

The upshot: commenter sign-in will be down for about ten minutes. The weblog itself will stay up and stay readable the whole time.

In the aftermath of the changeover, there'll be a period during which new posts by the editors and new comments by the readers will take longer than usual to show up. Please don't be alarmed. It's a strictly temporary condition.

More to come...

UPDATE: There has obviously been a delay in launching the new features. A few scurrying bugs emerged but our team of intrepid exterminators is on the case. Meanwhile, the original comment sign-in system will remain active. Stay tuned.

Howard Rheingold writes in with news of the DIY Video Summit (Feb 8-10, USC, Los Angeles):

24/7: A DIY VIDEO SUMMIT
February 8-10, 2008 School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

I'm thrilled to moderate a session on Feb 9 that will include Yochai Benkler, John Seely Brown, Joi Ito, Henry Jenkins, and Lawrence Lessig. I don't think this particular group has ever been on stage together.

Spaces are limited for attendance at the academic panels and the workshops. The video screenings are free and open to the public.

24/7: A DIY Video Summit will bring together the many communities that have evolved around do-it-yourself (DIY) video:artists, audiences, technology providers, academics, policy makers and industry executives. The aim is to discover common ground, and to chart the path to a future in which grassroots and mainstream, amateur and professional, artist and audience can all benefit as the medium continues to evolve.

Link to conference site, Link to conference blog (Thanks, Howard!)

Dana sez, "Saw this in the San Clemente, Ca library. I was performing my magic show and took this poor pic on my Treo. The 'unfiltered' side faces the reference desk so the librarians can monitor usage but they say it has reduced abuse and given adults uncensored access to the internet."

NASA posted some wonderfully trippy sounds collected from Saturn and its moons. For example, one is the sound of winds on Titan, another is magnetometer data from Enceladus translated into audio. The weird recordings remind me of avant-garde electroacoustic music from the 1950s and 1960s.
Link (via New Scientist)

Launching in two weeks, SimCity Societies has a new feature set for creating cities based on the societal values of "productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge," according to the Electronic Arts site. As the New York Times previously reported, Electronic Arts partnered with BP (formerly British Petroleum) to develop "a more nuanced power generation and pollution simulation." Today, Scientific American looks at SimCity Societies and how it's meant to model societal evolution. From the article:

The goal is to produce a high level of "societal energy," by developing a city with one or more of the game's six values. Societal energy is a fairly intangible force, but players know they have it when their cities grow and their citizens are happy and productive. "If you put the city together right, it has the right energy," says Rachel Bernstein, producer of SimCity Societies. Players place buildings within their cities in order to maximize the values most important to them, whether they are productivity and prosperity or creativity and spirituality...

BP saw its role as helping EA—and by extension SimCity players—understand the role of electricity in climate change. "Globally, twice as many emissions come from generating electricity than from all forms of transportation—planes, trains, cars and others," says Carol Battershell, vice president for strategy and policy at the company's subsidiary, BP Alternative Energy.

"We wanted there to be a range of power sources and an understanding of the impact of each, including local pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and the willingness of people to live next to energy-producing facilities," she adds. "SimCity is a strategy game, and these have been shown to be a good for helping people understand complex issues."

Link to Scientific American, Link to buy SimCity Societies

• SimCity adds global warming to the mix Link
• SimCity for Sims Link

Liuyang City, China's largest fireworks-producing city, set off a 20 km (12.4 mile) string of firecrackers. It lasted for more than an hour but unfortunately nobody from Guinness World Records agreed to show up. The promotional event cost over $100,000 and many people in the region weren't happy about it. From Reuters:

"Unless the firecrackers are supposed to be part of a cinema scene of raging war, what benefits can come from setting off 20 kilometers of fireworks?" asked the Beijing Times...

Chinese towns have staged a variety of fantastic 'records', including the world's largest mooncake, the world's longest whisper and the most people ever to fit on a golf course.

"It's high time to call off applications for the professed 'longest' or 'most' records, such as 10,000 people eating hotpot and 10,000 people washing their feet together. They lack social significance as well as scientific and technical skills," said an editorial in the Guangzhou Daily, which called the event a "real burden for the local economy."

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)