Sho sez, "A Japanese TV show designs a 5'6" Wacky WallWalker, weighing about 154 lbs, to climb down a 110-meter skyscraper. The first try is not exactly successful, but a second attempt comes up with better results. Both videos are highly entertaining for the 8-year-old in all of us."

This is no ordinary reality show -- they've got enough cameras deployed to catch the merry mayhem from every conceivable angle. I love the school-group of little kids on one storey who are captured gasping and giggling as the WallWalker plummets past them. Link (Thanks, Sho!)

Cortejo sez, "Irony Chan is trying to figure the terminal velocity and weight of a Balrog. She has gotten quite far." Link (Thanks, Cortejo)

Documents on Wikileaks show that the German Bavarian government had planned to release trojans -- malware -- designed to allow them to intercept Skype calls. The leaked documents include wrangling over the pricing and payment for the malicious software. The docs were leaked by the German Pirate Party.

The offer dating September 4th 2007, replies an inquiry by Bavarian officials on the possibility of Skype interception, introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls.

It continues to introduce the so-called Skype Capture Unit. In a nutshell: a malware installed on purpose on a target machine, intercepting Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception.

Another part of the offer is an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer this method is working for Internet Explorer and Firefox webbrowsers. Digitask also recommends using over-seas proxy servers to cover the tracks of all activities going on.

Link (via /.)

This 1500 volt proto-taser glove was spotlighted in the September, 1935 ish of Modern Mechanix:

MORE punch than can be found in a box-glove is contained in a new electric glove invented by Cirilo Diaz of Cuba for use by police while handling rough characters or in quelling riots. Persons contacted by an officer wearing the glove receive a 1,500-volt shock, sufficient to remove all traces of fight. A half-pound battery worn on the belt supplies the power, all wiring being concealed beneath the coat.

Link

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: a shot from inside the Haunted Barrel Works spook-house in Toronto's Centreville on Centre Island. The Haunted Barrel Works was my first-ever spook-house, and I love it for all its cheesy, graffiti-spattered, malodorous glories, especially the "hippie" mannequin with his anachronistic "Roachdale or bust" sign. Link

John Lupien forwarded me a ton of photos of these beautiful motorcycle sculptures made from watch parts. Unfortunately, he didn't know the artist's name -- and it doesn't appear anywhere on the pics, nor did my googling turn up any likely leads. Who made these things? What's the URL? Where do I buy one? Leave your answers in the comments.

Mystery solved!: These come from the Brazilian artist Jose Geraldo Pfau Kings -- many thanks to Miss Cellania! Link (Thanks, John!)

Update: Here's more (unattributed) work from the same artist -- thanks, Perry!

Love these modded steampunk Nerf guns -- you'd be sure to outclass all the other cubicle warriors with your foamy blunderbuss. Link (Thanks, Brett!)

Striking writers for The Colbert Report and The Daily Show masterminded a brilliant comedy mock-hearing on the Hollywood writers' strike, including an arch (and brilliant) meta-moment where they disrupted their own hearing with nonsensical grandstanding from seeming participants.

On one side, in shirts, was the striking Writers Guild of America, played by "Daily Show" writers Rob Kutner, Tim Carvell and Jason Ross. On the other side, in suits, was the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, played by "The Colbert Report" writers Michael Brumm, Peter Grosz and Tom Purcell.

Crashing out of the starting gates, the shirts argued it would cost the suits less than 1% of their total revenue to give the writers everything they wanted. For Paramount Pictures, that comes to $4.6 million, or "half the amount it takes to get Reese Witherspoon into a movie."

"I ask you," one writer noted, "which is more important to a movie -- a script, or half of Reese Witherspoon?"

The studio suits thought for a second.

"Which half?"

Link, Video link

Sarah "Buffy" Michelle Gellar is vowing to finish her film adaptation of the brilliant and twisted American McGee's Alice video game -- I'd pay money to see that. Talk about three great tastes that taste great together!

But Gellar said that she hasn't given up on developing the game as a movie. "It's still my project, and I'm still working diligently. So to all those Alice fans, I'm not giving up. Because I believe there is such a beautiful, crazy, cool, twisted story to be told there."

Calling the movie "the frustration of my life," Gellar joked: "I'll do it if I have to get down and write it myself one of these days. I may have to."

Link (via Wonderland)

Zing spoons are spring-loaded cutlery intended to give you the tactical advantage in food-fights. Link (via Gizmodo)

Here's a delish-sounding recipe for "Red Eye Rice Treats" -- caffeinated vegan rice-krispie squares that give you the pep you need to make it through the day:

6 cups puffed brown rice [any puffed rice will do, really]

1 cup peanut butter [I scored a few jars of White Chocolate Peanut Butter & Co for cheap, so I used up the rest of mine: creamy might be your best bet, no matter what]

1 cup brown sugar corn syrup [or brown rice syrup, organic light corn syrup…if you want maple syrup, I’d recommend going the half/half way by mixing it up with granulated sugar or rather fine other sugar]

1/2 t pure vanilla extract

1 t instant coffee crystals, crushed into a fine powder with the back of a spoon [up this a bit if you want a stronger coffee flavor, 2 t maximum to avoid overwhelming the other flavors]

1/3 cup carob powder [if you’re a hater, I’m sure cocoa powder would be a fine substitution here]

You could probably substitute agave syrup for the corn syrup (blending it with something?) to get a super-low-GI version. Link (via Craft)

A campaign is afoot to build a memorial to Voytek, a soldier-bear who fought alongside the Polish army at the Battle of Monte Cassino, carrying ammunition. After the war, Voytek lived out his days in the Edinburgh Zoo, occasionally visited by his old army buddies who tried to slip him the cigarettes and beer he'd come to enjoy while serving in the army.

When Polish forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him.

So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.

He saw action at Monte Cassino before being billeted - along with about 3,000 other Polish troops - at the army camp in the Scottish Borders.

The soldiers who were stationed with him say that he was easy to get along with.

"He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him," said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp.

Link (Thanks, Grey!)

(Image: Iranian.com)

Issue 7 of Sean Tejaratchi's seminal clip-art zine CRAP HOUND is just about to hit the stands, thanks to the good folks at Portland's Reading Frenzy, a zine store par excellance. CRAP HOUND plunders its graphics from hundreds of sources and then features them in gorgeous, endlessly fascinating mosaics and layouts. Issue 7's theme is CHURCH AND STATE, and judging by the cover, it looks like a doozy.

Crap Hound #7: Church & State, 96 pgs., 2 color cover, b/w interior, offset printed, suggested retail price of $12. This is the first all new issue of Crap Hound in 9 years! A pure but lucky coincidence makes this issue particularly apropos, as we're in an election year with a candidate declaring his intention to rewrite the constitution according to "God's standards"!

Link

See also:
Crap Hound -- seminal clipart zine -- is back!
Crap Hound No. 6 - clip art magnificence

Ken sez, "The Village Voice has a great overview of a uber-nanny NYPD's deputy commissioner (of counterterrorism, natch) attempt to fast-track a piece of legislation that would make mere possession of many sensors, from Geiger counters to asbestos detectors, illegal without a police permit. Send you to jail, illegal, too. Luckily, dozens of university researchers, public-health professionals, and environmental lawyers were somehow alerted and showed up at the city council session, blocking the quick enactment with old-fashioned argument and analysis. The commissioner is still dead set on taking away your ability to test for pollutants without a license (it's For the Children?!), but they pledge to 'accommodate all the concerns' as they draw up the new bill."

When the Environmental Protection Agency promised that the air surrounding Ground Zero was safe, Vallone said, independent testers proved that such assurances were utterly false. Would these groups really have to get a permit before they started working? "It's a good question, and it has come up prior to this hearing," Falkenrath replied. "What I can assure you is that we will look extremely carefully at this issue of the independent groups, and get the opinion of the other city agencies on how to handle that, and craft an appropriate response." And if people use these detectors without a permit, Vallone asked, do we really have to put them in jail? Afraid so, Falkenrath answered.

Councilman John Liu was considerably less impressed. Why, he asked, should a community group like Asthma-Free School Zones have to tell anyone, much less the police department, that they're testing for air pollution? "We have no interest in regulating air-quality sensors around schools," Falkenrath promised. "That's not what this is about."

Link (Thanks, Ken)

(Image: PICT4460.JPG, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Gothick_matt's Flickr stream)

HarperCollins has released a free MP3 of Neil Gaiman reading his Hugo- and Locus-winning story "A Study in Emerald," which mashes up Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos -- a story that transcends mere gimmick and is poignant, and engrossing. I first heard Gaiman's reading of the story in the audiobook edition of Gaiman's excellent collection Fragile Things and had to pull over to give it my full concentration. Gaiman's a great reader and an even better writer. Link, MP3 Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's Laugh-Out-Loud Cats are now available in book form. "I'm selling signed and drawn in copies on my blog, or unsigned and undrawn in copies via Lulu," says the author/illustrator. Link.

Recently and related posts on BB:

* BBtv - Ape Lad: The True Hollywood Story of Aloysius Koford
* BBtv -- Laugh Out Loud Cats: The True History

Kate Black made this notebook. She has just one for sale on Etsy for $24. It's called "The Dollar's In The Shitter.

The US Dollar is worth so little now, it's cheaper to bind books with banknotes than art papers.

This book is made with two 1 dollar bills, actual US currency.

The interior covers and spine reinforcements are emerald green batiked paper.

The textblock is made from 60lb, bright white drawing paper. The paper has a good amount of tooth and can handle ink, pencil and many other media.

- 5.5" x 2.125" (14 cm x 5.5 cm)
- 140 pages.
- Bound with forest green waxed Irish linen thread.

This book opens completely flat, for ease of use.

Link (Thanks, Jenny!)

Now is your chance to own a fantastically awful waxwork from one of the world's worst wax museums. Louis Tussaud's House of Wax in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK, is auctioning off 75 wax heads from its collection. The auction will take place at Keys on February 12. According to The Telegraph, each disembodied head is expected to go for between £50 to £80. Seen here, from left to right, John Travolta, Bob Hope, Tom Jones, and Shirley Bassey. Link

found zen 3
garbage scout
big happy funhouse
superfluous
eavesdrop
swap meat

previously on web zen:
found zen 2
found zen 1

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

Club Littlegun has photos of some very curious antique guns, including this pistol ring. I saw one of these for sale years ago at an antique shop in Aspen. The owner told me that they were popular among Nazis and the Mafia. I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but it was in the thousands. Club Littlegun also has photos of a belt gun, a watch gun, a crucifix pistol, a pen pistol, a hand cannon, and many other unique firearms.
Link (via Damn Data)

Researchers from Duke University think it may be possible to develop a composite material that would make objects acoustically "invisible." The idea is that sound waves approaching an object wrapped in the material would bend around the object and then keep going. The idea was inspired by the recently-developed "invisibility cloak" that bends microwaves. From National Geographic News:

The most obvious use of an acoustic cloak would be hiding submarines from enemy sonar—sound waves that are used to locate underwater objects.

But the advance could also be used in architecture—in music halls and theaters, for instance.

"Right now . . . the acoustics are built into whatever you're doing structurally," (Duke professor Steve) Cummer said. "So you probably have a set of tradeoffs, structurally and acoustically."

But with acoustic cloaking technology, "a giant beam that might be important structurally and bad acoustically could be rendered acoustically invisible."

Link

Previously on BB:
• Invisibility cloak is one step closer after science demo Link

Lothar Windels from the Rhode Island School of Design created this "Joseph Felt Chair 2" in 2003 -- made from "voluptuous folds of heavy red and gray felt." Link (via Cribcandy)

Clever smugglers are cloning FedEx, WalMart, Department of Transport and even US Border Patrol vans, filling them with dope, people, and cash, and driving 'em around with near impunity:

Savvy criminals are using some of the country's most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement...

A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz. An alert agent recognized that the "H" in the van's serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a "P."

Link (via Kottke)

I hope this storm in Southern California dies down so I can take my daughter to Anaheim for the Monster Jam on Saturday, which features this cool Donkey Kong truck. Link

TieGuys.com sells these awesomely nerdy Star Trek neckties. They're $17.50 each except for the blue one with Kirk, Spock, and Bones, which goes for $24.95.
Link (via Neatorama)

doktor tchock says: "Chunklet has uncovered a recording of David Lee Roth's isolated vocal tracks from "Runnin' With The Devil." Link

(If the above player is blank, here's the YouTube link)

Here's the long awaited fourth installment of the hilarious (and educational!) tutorial series, You Suck at Photoshop.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• You Suck at Photoshop #2
• Funny tutorial: "You Sucjk at Photoshop"
• You Suck at Photoshop, Episode 3

Artur Bergman says:

"Wikiscanner hacker Virgil Griffth told me a while ago about his latest data mining project, to visualise the relationship between books and SAT scores. Today he released his findings at Booksthatmakeyoudumb.

He does this by cross referencing the 10 most popular books at every college, as given by Facebook, and the average SAT score. He then presents it all in this nifty little visualisation."

Link (Thanks, Chaya!)

Uw Moeder posted three hours of MTV from 1983 (with Mark Goodman as VJ), including commercials, on two Google videos. Link

Two medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles have installed pot vending machines. They're accessible 24 hours a day and monitored by security guards. From Thrillist:

After cinching up your doctor's consultation, hit an AVM location to get your prescription approved, fingerprint taken, and a prepaid credit card loaded with your profile: dosage (3.5 or 7 grams, up to 1oz a week) and strain preference (choice of five, including OG Cush and Granddaddy Purple, the mildly hallucinogenic forebear to Prince). Then day or night, all you do is hit a machine and walk away with enough vacuum-sealed, plastic-encapsulated cheeba to adequately treat your illness.

Link

Chris Spurgeon says:

With the melting of the northern polar ice cap, the coming decades are sure to see a mad dash to claim the territories (and natural resources) of the far north. But since the laws governing the polar regions are a crazy mish-mash of international treaties, centuries-old customs, indigenous tradition, and conflicting national claims figuring out who has rights to what is no easy chore.

Iceland's University of Akureyri is taking on the task, offering the world's first graduate program in Polar Law. Graduates will gain expertise in everything from the Law of the Sea to climate change to Inuit legal customs. Could be a smart career move for a budding attorney looking for some legal adventure.

(Image from a Polar Law workshop) Link

Here's a neat extreme slow motion video of a cigarette lighter ignition.
Link

Researchers at the University of Sunderland and Durham University have developed a wonderfully whimsical looking "prototype cognitive helmet" that "bathes the brain with infra-red light and stimulates the growth of brain cells."

Its creators believe it could reverse the symptoms of dementia - such as memory loss and anxiety - after only four weeks.

Dr Dougal claims that only ten minutes under the hat a day is enough to have an effect.

"Currently all you can do with dementia is to slow down the rate of decay - this new process will not only stop that rate of decay but partially reverse it," he said. Low level infra-red red is thought to stimulate the growth of cells of all types of tissue and encourage their repair. It is able to penetrate the skin and even get through the skull.

Link

The original art for the over of Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural #1 sold at auction last month for $101,575, "making it the first Crumb original - and the first underground original from any artist - ever to break the $100K barrier."

“Top-shelf underground art, by such outstanding artists as Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Larry Welz, Spain Rodriquez, and S. Clay Wilson, is undoubtedly on a growth track in the hobby right now,” [Ed Jaster, Vice-President for Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries] said. “Now that Crumb has set the new standard, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see other artists reach this lofty pinnacle within a few years. It’s clear that our clients have both the desire and the resources necessary to make this happen.”

Link

Next time you're all lost in the supermarket, you can count on Robovie to help you find your way.

In a series of demonstrations conducted from January 22 to 24, a souped-up version of ATR’s Robovie humanoid robot monitored people as they passed through a 100 square meter (1,076 sq ft) section of the Universal Citywalk Osaka shopping center. Relying on data from 16 cameras, 6 laser range finders and 9 RFID tag readers installed in and around the area, the robot was able to watch up to 20 people at a time, pinpoint their locations to within a few centimeters, and classify each individual’s behavior into one of 10 categories (waiting, wandering, walking fast, running, etc.).

Whenever Robovie spotted people who looked disoriented, the child-sized droid wheeled up to them and asked, “Are you lost?” If so, the robot provided simple directions to the destination and pointed the way. If not, the robot proceeded to recommend nearby shops and restaurants.

Link

The National Museum of Public Health has been uploading hundreds of incredible photos from its archives onto Flickr. Image at left, "Masks worn during experiments with Plague. Philippines, probably around 1912." Image at right, "Ossifying fibroma, frontal bone." From email that the National Museum sent to the wonderful Morbid Anatomy blog:

The National Museum of Health and Medicine has been uploading pictures to Flickr since September 2006. We've transcribed, of course, all information that we have for each picture, but have also been posting some for which we have relatively little information, such as Library of Congress is doing, with the hope that a Flickr user will recognize them and be able to tell us more.

We've been uploading the hard way, mostly one picture at a time, choosing from among the several hundred thousand we've been digitizing over the last three years. Until that database goes live, this is our way of sharing our favorite photos from our many collections.

Link, Link, and Link (Thanks, Mark Dery!)

Previously on BB:
• Library of Congress uses Flickr Link

An eyeball on its way from Queensland, Australia to Hobart for transplant was accidentally delivered to a random hotel guest instead. A spokesperson for the Australian Air Express shipping company stated that the error was a "failure in an internal handover process." The eyeball was recovered and successfully transplanted. From The Courier-Mail:

Hotel worker Gabriel Winner - who requested the name of the hotel not be used - says the agitated guest brought the esky to reception early yesterday morning.

``The guy left.. me with a box with an eyeball in it,'' he said.

``He got the box and signed for it and opened it in the middle of the night.

``I thought this is just too weird. I went and put it in the fridge because I didn't know what else to do with it. It was more than a little disconcerting.''

Link

Siva sez, "In cooperation with the Media Education Foundation and La Lutta, Free Culture @ NYU is screening Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property at 9pm on Thursday, January 31. Narrated by Naomi Klein, the film features interviews with Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, Illegal Art Show curator Carrie McLaren, Negativland’s Mark Hosler, UVA media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Free Culture @ NYU co-founder Inga Chernyak, among many others. This 53-minute documentary will be preceded by selections from Negativland’s new DVD, Our Favorite Things, and it will be followed by a Q&A with Freedom of Expression® author and director Kembrew McLeod and co-producer Jeremy Smith."

Freedom of Expression Screening and Q&A with Creators
Sponsored by Free Culture @ NYU, NYU ACM, and WiNC
Free and Open to the Public (bring ID if non-NYU)
Thursday, January 31, 2008
9:00pm
NYU's Courant Institute
Room #109
251 Mercer Street b/w Bleecker and W. 4th

Link (Thanks, Siva!)

Boing Boing tv's Matt West visits Machine Project, where scholars and gladiators have gathered to reconstruct Rome in exactly 24 hours.

Link to BBtv post with video and discussion.

Slice, the pizza blog, has a good roundup of US regional pizza styles, tracing the hereditary links between different styles as different groups of Italian immigrants spread across the nation.

(My favorite slice? Hands down, no question, absolutely Massimo's on College Street in Toronto, a slice so good that I don't think I've ever eaten a slice of pizza one tenth as delicious, nothing even in the running. Truly in a league of its own. My mouth just flooded with saliva as I typed those words, and I'm presently 6,000 miles from Massimo's)

Midwest-Style
Variations, I believe, are found throughout the Midwest—from Ohio to Milwaukee to Chicago to wherever. I'd even go so far as to say that the "Chicago-style" pizza just above is really a variation of "Midwest-style." The Midwest style is round, thin, very crisp yet tender-flaky, and is party- or tavern-cut into the grid. Sauces and topping preference may differ from city to city and region to region, but this style seems to crop up often in the heartland.

Link (via Kottke)

(Image: Spanish Chorizo Pizza, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licensed photo from Avlxyz's Flickr stream)

The bookshop by my office has a huge, blown-up quote from George Orwell's 1936 essay "Bookshop Memories" over the counter, which inspired me to go look up the original essay. It's a hilarious, ill-tempered, mean-spirited and vastly entertaining rant about what's wrong with the booky trade -- sure to be appreciated by recovering booksellers like me, and bookstore junkies (like me):

A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books — loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies’ magazines of the sixties. For casual reading — in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch — there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.

Link

(Image: Community Bookstore, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from Phooky's Flickr stream)

Earlier this month, I blogged about The Black Mustang Club -- a fan-club for owners of Ford cars -- being told by CafePress that they weren't allowed to publish their calendar because Ford had contacted CafePress and demanded that the calendar be removed on the grounds that it infringed their trademarks.

A few days ago, I heard back from Ford, with a different side to the story. According to them, they hadn't said anything of the kind to CafePress -- rather, Ford had taken the opposite tack, releasing tons of pictures and bric-a-brac under generous Creative Commons license to encourage Ford fans to do cool stuff with their work.

So what happened? After a few rounds of correspondence with CafePress, here's where I've netted out:

* Ford had previously sent very stern letters to CafePress about similar projects, warning them in no uncertain terms that CafePress had better not produce projects similar to the Black Mustang Club Calendar

* CafePress contacted the Black Mustang Club and either said "Ford told us that you can't do your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" or CafePress contacted the Club and said "Ford told us that we can't can't do projects like your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" (I haven't been able to reach the Black Mustang Club people to confirm which it was, though they certainly wrote that it was the former)

* Ford has since contacted CafePress and The Black Mustang Club to say that this project and future fan-run projects (that don't imply an endorsement by Ford) are OK -- this is consistent with trademark law and a reasonable position for them to take

There's a couple of interesting lessons for Ford and CafePress to take away from this. For Ford (and companies like it), the lesson is surely to tighten the reins on your legal department. When they send stern letters to online service providers that threaten legal action, the natural outcome is that OSPs are going to get gun-shy -- and they'll tell your fans that they can't do anything and blame it all on you. The usual overkill approach from corporate counsel will come back and bite you on the ass.

For CafePress, the lesson is to take your customers' side when the law is with them. Even if Ford did tell CafePress to kill the BMC calendar, they'd have been wrong. The BMC calendar is legal -- even without Ford's blessing -- and when you protect yourself from legal liability by shutting it down, you incur PR liability by seeming like a bunch of candy-asses who can be bullied into submission by a memo from some white-shoe legal goon from a Fortune 100. Word gets around.

I don't know that we'll ever be able to find out whether CafePress told BMC that Ford was down on their specific calendar, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Ford's earlier letters on the subject clearly scared the hell out of CafePress, and CafePress's lawyers clearly need a refresher course in trademark and liability.

There's one very good piece of news to come out of this, though: Ford's program to let its fans do whatever they want with high-quality shots of the cars is a damned forward-looking and decent bit of strategy.

For the record, here's what Ford and CafePress had to say about this:

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: rows and rows of beautiful decorated papier maché skulls on sale on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Link

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stop The Spying campaign wants your help to send a message to Congress about granting immunity to telcos that broke the law and helped the NSA engage in indiscriminate mass surveillance of Americans. They're calling on US citizens to snap pictures of themselves holding anti-immunity signs that give city and state, and they're producing a gallery of these to present to Congress, to show the faces of the voters who believe in the Constitution.

# Get out your digital cameras, phone cameras, and webcams.

# Write your message on a piece of paper, and include your city and state.

# Take a photo of yourself holding your message. Be creative and make sure the message is readable.

Link (Thanks, Cindy)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this feature on RoyalPingdom: "When data center cabling becomes art." My cabling tends to look more like an altar to The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)

The Secret Headquarters (my favorite comic store in LA) is finally selling their hilarious "God Save Stan Lee" tees online. My GSSL shirt has been just about my favorite garment for the past six months -- and now you can get one from anywhere. Link

Interesting stuff afoot in the Congressional shuffle: "Hollywood" Howard Berman (who once proposed a law immunizing the entertainment industry for hacking innocent peoples' PCs while undertaking vigilante anti-piracy activities) looks set to leave the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property and chair the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (where the pork makes the money you get from entertainment giants look like small potatoes.

Likely to replace Berman is Rep Rick Boucher, who once proposed the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), which would have reformed the DMCA to make it legal to break DRM in order to do lawful things. He's the closest thing to a copyfighter in Congress, and you can only imagine that putting him in charge of the House Committee that handles the Internet and copyright will certainly change the game.

God knows what Berman will do once he's running Foreign Affairs, though.

There's no guarantee yet that Boucher will get the job, and he and Berman still need to win their respective elections this fall, but even the prospect of a Boucher-controlled Internet and IP subcommittee in the House feels like an early Christmas present. As the Hollywood Reporter correctly notes, though, the full Committee is still chaired by John Conyers (D-MI), who comes from the Berman School of Thought on such issues.

Link

Etsy seller Takeahalliday's "Human Anatomy Science Patchwork T-Shirt" uses "different colored and textured fabric used in patchwork to represent the different human organs and rib cage." Lovely! Link (via Craft)

See also: Detailed anatomical t-shirts

Walking-Things's Walking Chair looks like a chair, but it walks -- and you can't sit on it. And it costs €15,000 (which is like ten million American pesos). But the action of its motion (as documented on the site's unfortunately teeny videos) is pure incredibly awesomeness. Link (via Gizmodo)

Chris Harrison's "Visualizing the Bible" project maps every social relationship and cross-reference in the Bible, as compiled by Christoph Römhild. Link (via Kottke)