Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: this Amanti espresso setup in the Melbourne airport in which each machine was equipped with a little webcam on the barista's side and a small color LCD on the customer side, so that you could watch the barista's hands dance and twiddle as he pulled your crema.
Link
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has just posted Bruce Sterling's new novella, "Kiosk," and I read it all in one big gulp, making noises of delight and intrigue that were so loud they woke the house.
Kiosk is the story of Borislav, a wounded veteran in Belgrade (or an anonymous city very much like Belgrade, anyway), who runs a little, sophisticated kiosk. He is a philosopher-merchant, his kiosk a window into the soul of the people's desires -- a soul that is bared once he installs a primitive "fabrikator" that can make short-lived tchotchkes from downloaded plans.
But Borislav's world tilts precipitously when he sells his kiosk to a condescending Eurocrat and shortly finds himself in possession of a much more advanced, carbon-nanotube-based fabber that precipitates a social revolution with Borislav at the middle of it.
Sterling says of this story, "I've been in an eight-year struggle to write 'a kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century.' With the possible exception of my forthcoming novel, this story is my best result from that effort." I think he's right -- about the story, anyway; I haven't seen the novel yet.
This is a genuinely 21st century piece of sf. It uses the slightly stilted, comic dialog form of great sf to unravel the social and technological implications of automated search, copying, governance and communications, with an enormous amount of compassion and heart. Sterling's way of thinking about technology has often struck me as kind of stern, but years of living in Serbia appear to have given him a bit of a melancholy Slavic outlook that creeps into the story in a hundred little ways that tell you how much affection he really has for our poor tired human race.
Keen-eyed, brilliantly incisive and humane: this is science fiction at its greatest. If this story doesn't win a Hugo award, then there is no justice in the world.
The fabrikator spoke to him as a veteran street merchant. Yes, it definitely meant something that those rowdy kids were so eager to buy toys that fell apart and turned to dirt. Any kiosk was all about high-volume repeat business. The stick of gum. The candy bar. The cheap, last-minute bottle-of-booze. The glittery souvenir keychain that tourists would never use for any purpose whatsoever. These objects were the very stuff of a kiosk's life.
Those colored plastic cards with the 3-D models.… The cards had potential. The older kids were already collecting the cards: not the toys that the cards made, but the cards themselves.
And now, this very day, from where he sat in his usual street-cockpit behind his walls of angled glass, Borislav had taken the next logical step. He offered the kids ultra-glossy, overpriced, collector cards that could not and would not make toys. And of course – there was definitely logic here – the kids were going nuts for that business model. He had sold a hundred of them.
Wagner James Au sez, "Taking a CC-licensed reading of a strange Sherwoood Anderson short story, UK artist Lainy Voom has created a dazzlingly weird Second Life-based machinima from it. (Boing Boing featured Lainy's equally great Tale from Midnight City last year.) Interestingly, most of the surreal images (giant eyeballs etc.) were shot 'live' without post-production. Music's from Magnatune while the movie itself is CC-licensed, making it a great showcase for Creative Commons."
I'm not a big fan of surrealist fiction, but the incredibly visuals in this make it the most beautiful machinima I've seen to date.
Link
(Thanks, James!)
Larry Lessig's magnificent book The Future of Ideas is now available as a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licensed download. Future of Ideas is a grim and prescient look at the way that corporate interests have rigged the system so that they can own more and more of our thoughts, ideas and conversations -- from banning you from taking pictures of your car and distributing it to pulling down youtubes of toddlers dancing to copyrighted music. Seven years after its publication, Future of Ideas is still as relevant as it was the day it was printed.
This marks a milestone for Lessig as well: now that Future of Ideas is online, all of Larry's books are now free CC downloads.
Link
Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have demonstrated that we can tell from voice alone whether a speaker is smiling -- and even which sort of smile ("open," "smiley eyes").
The audio for the interviews was then played back to another group of test subjects. Even without seeing the speakers, the listeners were able to hear the different types of smile the speaker made as he or she went through the wacky interview.
"A voice contains a variety of acoustical characteristics" said Drahota. "It's possible that we interpret these 'flavours' in someone's voice almost without noticing."
Emily Stoneking knitted and felted this dissected frog sculpture for her Etsy store (it's sold out now, alas!): "The frog is hand knit from a silk/wool blend, and his little innards were needle-felted by hand out of 100% wool. He comes pinned into his black wood 8 x 10 inch frame, but he is not glued down, so you can take him out and cuddle him if you wish."
Link
(via Neatorama!)
Designer Nicholas Feltron produced a corporate annual report for his life last year, chock full of infographics, statsporn, and even a flowchart!
Link
(Thanks, Nicholas!)
I am 26. I'm a grad student in New York. Internet men pay to spank me. If I don't maintain certain grades, I lose my scholarship, and at the beginning of the semester I was flipping my shit about this one class, insisting I was going to fail and whatnot. I was wondering how I was going to pull three or six thousand dollars out of my ass, depending on how bad I did, and my friend said, "It's too bad you don't live upstate, because my friend Mary has a dude that pays her a fuckton of money to just spank her. No sex." So I had to figure that if Mary can find a dude like this upstate, there HAS to be people like this in NYC I can find. And I have a high tolerance for pain and a passing interest in spanking, so it was on.
I started seeing her once or twice a month and have kept on doing so even though I've been in relationships. I won't lie and say I don't think of it as cheating, it is. I finally stopped when I met a woman who, to be honest, shared a lot of similarities with B. I told B about this and she wished me nothing but happiness. We've spoken a few times since and seen each other socially. It's a bit like work friends after one person has moved to a different job.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Over at DaddyTypes, Greg discusses dakigokochi, Japanese baby announcements in the form of a shippable bag of rice with the newborn's photo and stats printed on it. The bag is filled to match the baby's birth weight. Link
Hungarian rapper "Speak" covers a lot of territory in this supremely awful -- i mean awesome -- video. It's about people who make a war. It's about Tupak Shakur. Yee, comeon, thasright, check, peas. Link. (thanks, Matti Laakso)
Photos of a garbage truck UNICAT TerraCross converted into a nice living space. Looks well-fortified against a zombie attack, too.
This machine combines the rugged "go anywhere" off-road capabilities of the MAN 6x6 with the comforts of living at home. Safe 2 years of design, construction and testing. Built to the exacting standards of the world-class UNICAT engineering team, this "Home on Wheels" is ready for your immediate occupancy. You do not need to be a experienced expedition traveller.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has purchased what is reportedly the largest snake in captivity. Fluffy, a 24-foot-long python, cost the zoo $35,000. Fluffy's previous owner, an Oklahoma City python breeder named Bob Clark, drove a hard bargain. The snake, as thick as a telephone pole, was on loan to the zoo for several months but proved to be a huge attraction. From the Columbus Dispatch:
The zoo's animals generally come as exchanges from other zoos or through breeding loans or donations, so money doesn't often change hands, (zoo executive director Jerry) Borin said. But the zoo sometimes purchases animals, such as three kangaroos recently bought for a total of $15,000.
Clark is happy with Fluffy's outcome.
"I really love that snake; I think it's a special animal," he said. "It's so big and tame and wonderful. But I have to deal with the realities of life like everyone else. I like to have the money, and I know she's got a great place to live there."
Jordan sez, "Toronto's subway system is pretty hardcore. The indicator on this TTC turnstile could not be clearer: 'If you try to dodge the fare, you will be indecently assaulted by a Dalek.'
Either purchase tokens from the wall-mounted vending machines or travel by TARDIS."
Link
(Thanks, Jordan!)
Dubai is cloning the city of Lyon, France on a 700-acre plot, replicating its cultural institutions in a grand and surreal gesture of I'm-not-sure-what. Alas, the newtown is called "Lyons-Dubai City" and not "Baudrillardville."
Lyons and Dubai had already signed a "pact of cooperation and friendship" but al-Gandhi's idea adds a new twist to twinning: the new Lyons will cover an area of about 700 acres, roughly the size of the Latin Quarter of Paris, and will contain squares, restaurants, cafes and museums.
Al-Gandhi could have picked a worse place. Famed as the home of gastronomy and the birthplace of cinema, Lyons sits between two of France's best-known wine-growing regions. Even so, Dubai is unlikely to want to copy the decrepit tower blocks that ring the real city, symbols of the urban violence that periodically plagues France. Nor is the country's recent smoking ban in public places expected to be exported.
The desert city will include a Paul Bocuse Institute, like the one in Lyons named after the hallowed chef, in which students will study hotel management and gastronomy.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This image comes from Wondertooneel der Nature, an early 18th century book showcasing the cabinet of curiosity of a Dutch cloth merchant named Levinus Vincent. BibliOdyssey posted more pages from Vincent's book and also an except from a modern article titled "Scientific Symmetries" by Emma Spary that contains more background on the collection and collector. From that article:
"Rather than presenting himself as the author, Vincent sought to use the printed page as a way of displaying the authorship of the natural world. Descriptions of his remarkable collection and copper-plate engravings intervened between odes to God and His Creation – and to Levinus Vincent and his – written by visitors to the Cabinet numbering amongst Vincent’s friends. [..]
The first, 'Wondertooneel der Nature' (Theatre of Nature’s Marvels), appeared in 1706. Most of the subsequent descriptions of his collection differed largely in the number of eulogizing poems or the length and detail of the description of specimens, and are not clearly identifiable as separate books. [..]
For Vincent and his circle, these publications served a mediating function in the interpretation of the cabinet. No-one, gazing upon the multiplicity of natural productions, could fail to worship God in His Creation. The readership was divided into 'Liefhebbers', or lovers of natural productions and of God, and atheists, who were alternately bidden to “come before the light, and learn ... in all these works to observe the actions of the Supreme Artist” or to keep quiet: “Every animal has a tongue, to find out your guilt against you.”
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This aerial photo depicts evaporation ponds near Utah's Great Salt Lake. It's part of photographer David Maisel's "Black Maps" exhibition, collecting his huge aerial photographs of strip mines, lake beds, and other large features that aren't easily recognizable out of context. Smithsonian's latest issue includes a short profile of Maisel. From the article:
In 1993, to be closer to the topography he was most passionate about, he moved from New York City to San Francisco. From there he scoured the Western states, looking for bizarre patterns. He says locations tend to choose him, as when he first spotted the glittering pink bed of Owens Lake through a car window.
Maisel often hires a local pilot to take him up in a four-seater Cessna he likens to an old Volkswagen beetle with wings. Then, somewhere between 500 and 11,000 feet, the pilot banks the plane and the photographer props open a window and starts shooting with his hand-held, medium-format camera. "Although the subjects are always of concern to me, I do think that I want to lead the viewer into a space where they can do their own thinking," he says.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Jon Palmer built this fantastic geodesic demo from Lego and posted a HOWTO on his site. It reminds me of something out of Gerard K. O'Neill's The High Frontier! Link(Thanks, Paul Hartzog!)
A Boing Boing reader says: "Back in the '90's, Steven Poole wrote an influential book called Trigger Happy, about the history and aesthetics of video games. You can now download it for free, or donate what you want."
Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames – what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.
Four people, including a pilot, saw an unusual UFO in Selden, Texas last Wednesday.
“The ship wasn't really visible and was totally silent, but the lights spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide,” [pilot Steve] Allen said. “The lights went from corner to corner. It was directly above Highway 67 traveling towards Stephenville at a high rate of speed - about 3,000 miles per hour is what I would estimate.”
Allen said the lights were not those of a normal aircraft. He said they were more like strobe lights, and while they were all watching, the lights reconfigured themselves from a single horizontal line into two sets of vertical lights.
They also said they saw two military jets ("possibly F16s") chasing after the ship.
Link
Assuming your brain is still functioning like the well-oiled piece of precision engineering it is, your response would, I trust, be: "That's a wind-up if ever I heard one. Think about it for a minute - you mean these two meet by accident, discover not only that they were both adopted but were born on exactly the same day in exactly the same town, and still never pause to wonder whether they might be related? Pull the other one. What did it say on their birth certificates?"
Police dropped a disorderly conduct charge against a 45-year-old man who wrote a "vulgar message" (with the word "fuck") on a check he used to pay a $5 parking ticket.
Doylestown police Chief James Donnelly said the man was arrested because clerks who saw the shocking message on the mmo line were offended by the message.
"He was contrite enough to offer an apology, and I think that satisfies the people who were insulted by it," he said.
Hidden in those seven words is an indictment of "Nutritionism," the philosophy that says that food must be approached as a scientific challenge, valued for its nutrients, which can be delivered in purer, industrialized (and highly profitable) forms in packaged, prepared dishes and ingredients.
Pollan makes a convincing case -- citing credible research -- that the science behind nutritionism is, at best, "promising" but not ready for primetime (he likens it to sixteenth century surgery: fascinating but not the kind of thing you want to be on the receiving end of). He explains how nutritionism has captured politics, so that the FDA isn't allowed to say, "Eat less red meat," but is backed into saying, "Make eating choices that are lower in saturated fats," prompting an industry to spring up around further industrialization of food to remove saturated fats. Nevermind that the science says, "Eat less red meat" -- by demonizing a nutrient, a blow to the cattle-ranchers is turned into an opportunity to create even greater markups on their product by charging a premium for engineered, "low in saturated fats" beef.
Pollan has a set of simple rules for eating that really resonate: "Shop the edges of the grocery store, not the middle," "Eat things your great grandmother might have eaten," "Eat nothing that bears a health or nutritional claim," and so on.
It's a delightful interview and it's led me to ordering the audiobook to listen to on my morning walks.
Link,
Link to In Defense of Food
Today on Boing Boing tv, we revisit Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's great-grandpappy Aloysius P. Koford for a never-before-exposed expose of his illustrious Hollywood career -- complete with walrii, scantily clad Mary Pickford lookalikes, and movie studio copyright disputes of yesteryear that may just rival, in their fury, the pugnacious picket lines of today. Plus: the real history of the Wilhelm Scream.
As Canada's Industry Minister Jim Prentice prepares to import the US's failed DMCA copyright regime to Canada, Michael Geist has a counterproposal. Geist wants all of Canada's members of Parliament to take a pledge not to undermine fair dealing (the Canadian analog to the US's fair use):
The pledge is simple:
I will not introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either directly or indirectly, undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s fair dealing provision.
Fair dealing, which the Supreme Court of Canada has described as a user right, covers uses such as research, private study, news reporting, and criticism. I have argued that the provision should be expanded. For the purposes of the pledge, I am only asking MPs to do no harm. Fair dealing is a critically important part of the copyright balance that plays a crucial role for education and free speech and it is widely accepted internationally (indeed the parallel provision in the U.S. is far broader). No Canadian MP or party should support or introduce legislation that would weaken it. If you are looking to send a follow-up to Industry Minister Jim Prentice or to your local MP, then consider asking them one straight forward question – will they take the copyright pledge?
Melanie Rieback, who worked on the RFID Guardian, sez,
Roel Verdult, an MSc. student from the Raboud University of Nijmegen,
used an RFID tag emulator to perform a successful practical relay attack
on the single-use OV Chipkaart (the Dutch RFID public transportation card), that uses MIFARE Ultralights (no crypto).
Roel used a homemade tag emulator that was modeled after Kfir and
Wool's "ghost and leech", to perform a simple relay attack. However,
anyone can perform the same attack using the RFID Guardian, whose HW/SW
is freely available.
Piegato shelving is a flat piece of laser-cut steel that you screw into the wall with two screws, then, working by hand, you simply bend out the die-cut sections corresponding to the sorts of shelving you desire.
Comes in white, black and gold and costs €129.
• it's only one piece!
• easily bend it by hand!
• just two screws needed!
• comes as a flat sheet
• high load capacity
• works as a magnetboard
Piegato is a sheet steel rack with a surprisingly high load capacity.
The laser cut and powder coated sheet steel is been delivered almost completely plain, which results in a simple and cost effective transportation.
The customer then bends out the required amount of shelves from the plain and mounts the hole rack with just two screws in a few minutes. Due to the enviromental friendly production, the freight size and the recyclability Piegato also holds a brilliant ecological balance.
Larry Lessig's magnificent book 
Writer Susannah Breslin (of 
Over at DaddyTypes, Greg discusses dakigokochi, Japanese baby announcements in the form of a shippable bag of rice with the newborn's photo and stats printed on it. The bag is filled to match the baby's birth weight. 
Jordan sez, "Toronto's subway system is pretty hardcore. The indicator on this TTC turnstile could not be clearer: 'If you try to dodge the fare, you will be indecently assaulted by a Dalek.'
Either purchase tokens from the wall-mounted vending machines or travel by TARDIS."
"Rather than presenting himself as the author, Vincent sought to use the printed page as a way of displaying the authorship of the natural world. Descriptions of his remarkable collection and copper-plate engravings intervened between odes to God and His Creation – and to Levinus Vincent and his – written by visitors to the Cabinet numbering amongst Vincent’s friends. [..]
In 1993, to be closer to the topography he was most passionate about, he moved from New York City to San Francisco. From there he scoured the Western states, looking for bizarre patterns. He says locations tend to choose him, as when he first spotted the glittering pink bed of Owens Lake through a car window.
Jon Palmer built this fantastic geodesic demo from Lego and posted a HOWTO on his site. It reminds me of something out of Gerard K. O'Neill's 
Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames – what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.
