Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine is my favorite of the in-flight magazines. Every time I flip through an issue, there's always at least one or two articles that are right up my alley. This month, there's a nice, long feature on the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. From Spirit Magazine (photo by Phil Torrone of MAKE:):

“My brother and I learned to fix the machines using the Machinery’s Handbook,” (museum founder Tim Arnold) says. “Back then, in the early ’70s, you could buy a broken-down machine for 50 or 100 bucks, fix it up, nurse it back to health, and make 20 bucks a week off it. We ended up renting an 800-square-foot storefront in East Lansing. There were some minor details: Pinball was still illegal in Michigan, and we were under 18. We were putting machines in bars we weren’t supposed to be allowed into. My brother and I saw ourselves as bandits. It was organized crime, except that we weren’t very organized.” This was an impressive bit of technical entrepreneurship when you consider that the average college graduate in electrical engineering needs two years of tutelage under a skilled repairman to master the art of fixing old games.

Now all the games are beginning to bear the patina of yesterday. At the height of the pinball era in the early ’90s, the industry produced about 100,000 machines a year. Today only one company, Stern Pinball, remains, and it makes about 10,000 machines a year. “We have a saying: The last ice man makes the most money,” Arnold says. “Back in the ’20s, you had thousands of ice men in every city, delivering ice to every home. Then refrigeration came along, and nearly all the ice men went out of business. Nearly all. You still have a guy delivering ice to bars and restaurants. There’s room in every town for one ice man. That’s what the Hippie and I are.” He peered at me through his aviator glasses. “We’re the last of the ice men.”

Link to Spirit Magazine article, Link to PT's photo post on MAKE:

A 14-year-old boy in Lodz, Poland allegedly hacked a TV remote control so that he could control parts of his city's tram system. Sounds like he identified the infrared pulses used to override the track switching. Four trams were derailed but nobody and 12 people were injured. From The Register:

"He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around and what signals to change," (said Lodz police spokesman Miroslaw Micor.)

"He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed...

The youth, described by his teachers as an electronics buff and exemplary student, faces charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

It's come out in the British House of Lords that a pair of twins, who didn't realize they were siblings, were married. Once the couple found out how close they really were, the marriage was annulled. The matter was discussed during a debate on the legislation surrounding human fertility and embryology. From CNN:

"They were never told that they were twins," (a senior British lawmaker) said during the Dec. 10 debate... They had been adopted by separate families and "met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."

No further details about the couple have emerged, and it is not known when the marriage took place or how long they were together before they discovered the truth.

Adoption groups said Friday the case proves the need for openness and transparency during the adoption process.

Link (Thanks, Mark Pescovitz!)

UK unicorn club girl by photographer Alistair Allan, via fashionista.com (thanks Susannah Breslin).

Sean Ragsdale has been traveling through Asia and sharing some interesting video and photos with friends. He also happens to be one of the folks behind waterboarding.org. He writes:

While we were in Cambodia this winter I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng is one of the few places where you can see a real actual waterboard in the room where it was used to torture prisoners. I've created a 'waterboardingdotorg' Flickr account and put a link up here.

Nice to know America has something in common with the Khmer Rouge -- something that isn't torture, of course. Among the photos in that set, this chilling shot of a poster on the wall of the Khmer Rouge's chief of staff, now covered with graffitti -- and this sign reprimanding less-than-reverent visitors; "no laughing allowed."

Previously:

* What Waterboarding Feels Like
* Senator Kit Bond: Waterboarding is "like swimming"
* Waterboarding.org

Noah Shachtman writes,

Just before the holidays, I took a trip up to iRobot's headquarters, outside of Boston, to take a look at the machine that'll form the heart of the Army's $286 million "unmanned surge."  Along the way, I caught my first glimpse of robot yoga.

Link.

Today, Friday, January 11th is the sixth anniversary of the opening of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay. The ACLU and a number of other organizations asked members today to "wear orange to protest this stain on America's reputation." Snip:

Closing the prison and ending torture and indefinite detention without charge is a first step towards restoring our reputation in the world.

80 people in Gitmo-style orange jumpsuits were arrested today at the US Supreme Court, in a protest calling for the prison's closure: Link. Other similar protests organized by Amnesty International took place in other world capitals.

There were also protests in Second Life: Link to screengrab-set by Taran Rampersad.

(image: Matthew Good).

warner cartoon title cards
moo!
weapon of stick figure
riba
rabbit
eastern europe
clemens kogler
ray patin
acme catalog
animated manhattan
cartoon modern

previously on web zen:
animated zen 2007
animated zen 2005

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Penn Says is a new short video series where Penn Jillette turns on his webcam and talks about stuff on his mind, like time travel, gangs, and religion. From the press release:

"Big badass Crackle has given me the chance to talk directly to you about anything I want, anytime I want. I mean anything. I mean any time. When something gets my goat, or I want to get someone else’s goat or other farm animal, I’ll flip on my camera and rave about it. Half-cocked, from inside my head, electronically to inside your head in minutes. No script, no thinking, so I might be wrong. I’m counting on you to keep me honest with videos right back to me,” said Jillette.

Link

The TSA's Traveler Redress Website was created by a no-bid crony contractor, leaked giant amount of personal information from hundreds of travellers (who had already been screwed over by the agency and were writing in for justice) and exposed them to identity theft. The House Oversight Committee concluded that the TSA totally, absolutely screwed up.

They sure do a bang up job at stopping you from bringing water through the checkpoint though.

That's gotta count for something.

* TSA awarded the website contract without competition. TSA gave a small, Virginia-based contractor called Desyne Web Services a no-bid contract to design and operate the redress website. According to an internal TSA investigation, the "Statement of Work" for the contract was "written such that Desyne Web was the only vendor that could meet program requirements."

* The TSA official in charge of the project was a former employee of the contractor. The TSA official who was the "Technical Lead" on the website project and acted as the point of contact with the contractor had an apparent conflict of interest. He was a former employee of Desyne Web Services and regularly socialized with Desyne's owner.

* TSA did not detect the website's security weaknesses for months. The redress website was launched on October 6, 2006, and was not taken down until after February 13, 2007, when an internet blogger exposed the security vulnerabilities. During this period, TSA Administrator Hawley testified before Congress that the agency had assured "the privacy of users and the security of the system" before its launch. Thousands of individuals used the insecure website, including at least 247 travelers who submitted large amounts of personal information through an insecure webpage.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Update: If you want to read the world's greatest "TSA have lied and cheated and lied and cheated" rant, check out our Teresa's post in the comment thread on the five year old whom the TSA thinks is a terr'ist.

My pal Elizabeth Bear -- award-winning sf writer and all-round swell cat -- has just launched an exciting new publishing project with a gang of pals:

Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it's a fan site for a TV show that doesn't exist.

Over the next couple of months, the site will be updated on a weekly or biweekly basis with new information, vignettes, character sketches, character bios, a community message board, and other exciting things.

And starting in mid-February, there will be a series of novellas and novellettes, and one complete novel. Approximately one story every two weeks for sixteen weeks (though we are still tweaking the schedule), comprising the first season (of hopefully many) of a television show that doesn't exist.

Some of the content will be free. Some will be by subscription. (Subscriptions will be extremely reasonable.) There will be DVD extras, deleted scenes, background information, character-based digressions, and I dunno what all else.

The staff writers (as of today) are Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Sarah Monette, and myself. The Brilliant Web Ghoul and Fabulous Artist is Amanda Downum. The Technical Supergeek is Stephen Shipman.

Link to announcement, Link to Shadow Unit) (Thanks, Bear!)

Pasc242 sez, "Tom Sarris Orleans House, a fixture of Rosslyn, VA for over thirty years, is finally closing its doors. The resulting auction contains all the wrought iron, baroque furniture, and antique accoutrements that gave the place such a dark and gloomy atmosphere. This stuff screams haunted mansion; if you're looking for that kind of ambiance, look no further." Link (Thanks, Pasq242!)

Researchers at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) gave an Alzheimer's patient an injection of a compound called perispinal etanercept and noticed a "dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect" within minutes of the injection.

“It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention,” said [Sue Griffin, Ph.D., director of research at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)]. “It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterize the physiologic mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer’s research a tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting and so needed in the field of Alzheimer’s. Even though this report predominantly discusses a single patient, it is of significant scientific interest because of the potential insight it may give into the processes involved in the brain dysfunction of Alzheimer’s.”

Link (Via Look at This)

Virtual Cable is a car navigation concept that projects an image of a red cable on your windshield as you drive. All you have to do is follow the overhead cable to get to your destination.

I don't think the technology is too far along, because the videos only show a simulation of the cable.Link (Via Presurfer)

"People in Order" is a 3-minute film that shows 100 people, from the age of one to 100, hitting a drum. It was made by Lenka Clayton and James Price. (Via Arbroath)

Seven Swedish Members of Parliament from the Moderate Party have written a stirring call for the legalization of file-sharing:

Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state. Today they want to transform the Internet Service Providers into an online police force, and the Antipiracy Bureau wants the authority for themselves to extract the identities of file sharers. Then they can drag the 15-year-old girl who downloaded a Britney Spears song to civil court and sue her.

Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

Over at Museum of Hoaxes, Alex has posted two photos taken through airplane windows. He says: "One of these might be fake. Can you guess which?" Maddeningly, he hasn't told us which one is fake (by that, I am guessing he means there's no Photoshop trickery involved and that they are unretouched photographs).

Perhaps neither one is fake. In the comments section, one reader says the giraffe is probably a cutout of a photo that's been taped to the window. The shadow cast by the giraffe is a giveaway, he says.

And the other photo of the man with his legs sticking out of the engine might have been taken on the ground, says one reader. What looks like clouds could be snow on the runway. Link

A six-foot Giant Pacific octopus at Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall loves his Mr Potato Head toy and "turns aggressive" when anyone tries to take it away from him.

'He's fascinated by it,' said Matt Slater, of the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall. 'He attacks the net we use to fish the toy out every time we try to take it away.'

Mr Slater added: 'Octopuses are very intelligent and they like to be stimulated and busy.'

Link (Via Spluch)

Today on Boing Boing tv, another exclusive interview with Aloysius, the hoboist great-grandpappy of illustrator Adam "Ape Lad" Koford. The elder Koford shares never-before-known knowledge with us about what it was like to live la vida hobo while he developed that famous comic strip about cats. Previous BBtv episodes featuring Ape Lad and Aloysius are here, here, and here.

Next, we feature some floating, mobile, hobo homes, in Walterrobot's short film Moon Avenue Box Man.

Link to BBtv post with video and comments.