A balloon artist visits a nursing home, shapes crazy hats and bracelets and geegaws out of balloons, and makes a lot of elderly people very happy for a while. That's it. No catch, no irony. Video link. (thanks, nirvan)

Update: From the comments thread, nirvan adds:

The balloon artist is Addi Somekh. All of Addi's YouTube videos are pretty amazing. The music is by The Evangenitals.

A 14-day-old Samoan infant died in DHS detention at Honolulu airport earlier this week, and American Samoa's delegate to Congress is calling for an investigation:

The baby had been flown to Honolulu for emergency heart surgery. He died while detained inside a customs' room at the Honolulu airport with his mother and a nurse.

Link (thanks Nithya)

Kotaku has a doozy of a post up today -- Yaron Brooks, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, talking about the use of objectivism in the first-person-shooter game Bioshock:

BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute's president, Yaron Brook.

Brook, a former member of the Israeli Army military intelligence and award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, first took notice of the game when he discovered his 18-year-old son playing it. It's a fact that didn't bother Brook despite his son's objectivist beliefs and the game's not so positive take on the philosophy.

"My son has to find his own way in life," he said. "There are certain games I wouldn't want him to play, like Grand Theft Auto, games that celebrate criminality. But a game that might lead him to think and have him challenge his ideas, I'm fine with. "Luckily for me he doesn't agree with the game, he still seems to believe in objectivism."

Link (thanks, Brian Crecente!)

The Rinspeed sQuba is an amphibious electric vehicle inspired by the submersible Lotus Esprit that Q gave to James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. There's only one sQuba in existence and it cost more than $1.5 million to engineer and build.

"For safety reasons, we have built the vehicle as an open car so that the occupants can get out quickly in an emergency," said (Rinspeed CEO Frank) Rinderknecht, 52. Passengers will be able to keep breathing underwater through an integrated tank of compressed air similar to what is used in scuba diving. The sQuba's top speed on land is about 77 mph, but it slows down to 3 mph on the surface of the water, and 1.8 mph underwater....

"We always want to do cars that are outrageous, which nobody has done before. So we thought, 'Let's make a car dive,"' said Rinderknecht, whose innovative company has made transparent, flying and voice-activated cars in previous attention-grabbing displays at the Geneva Auto Show.

Link to CNN, Link to Rinspeed (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Freak Angels: the latest from Warren Ellis, with Paul Duffield, version 0001 is now online and it's lovely.

The Cambridge University Library's tower has long been rumored to be packed with vintage pornography books from the Victorian era. Now, a million dollar grant is funding the online cataloging of the 170,000 publications in the 17 floor tower. Turns out, the closest thing to erotica up there are titles like "A Golden Guide To Matrimony" and "Flirting Made Easy." They're mixed in with the likes of "How to mesmerize" and "Wasps have stings; or, beware of tight-lacing." (Shhhh... I heard they moved the real hardcore stuff to the library's sub-basement.) From The Telegraph:

Students of pornography can take heart, however, because more recent erotica is kept there thanks to its copyright library status.

(Vanessa Lacey, the manager of the Cambridge University Library Tower Project,) said: "There's plenty of pornography in the library which is more recent.

"People can come and have a look at it - for their research. But there's nothing terribly racy from the 19th century. What we found is the Mills and Boon of the era."

Link to The Telegraph, Link to the Cambridge University Library Tower Project (via Cabinet of Wonders)

COOP says:

I've been enjoying Julian Cope's highly-recommended new book on Japanese 60's/70's freak/psych/noise rock very much, and I'm just beginning the process of tracking down some of the music therein (and so far, it is just as crazy and interesting as described!) For someone with a 20-year+ music addiction, it is a great thrill to be turned on to a whole chunk of great stuff that you previously knew nothing about.

Anyway, I just noticed that Mr. Cope has a companion website, with a full A-Z encyclopedia of artists and albums. If the sight of all those crazy LPs doesn't whet your appetite, you deserve to listen to the new Britney Spears CD instead!

Link to Japrocksampler blog, Link to buy Japrocksampler book

Scientific American's JR Minkel interviewed CalTech physicist H. Jeff Kimble about quantum teleportation. In the article, Kimble explains in simple terms why recent experiments in quantum teleportation have nothing to do with the Star Trek transporter. As Minkel sums it up, the phenomenon "turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuiting." From the interview:

Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another.

Link

In Casanova Book 1: Luxuria, the people of Earth are under the control of E.M.P.I.R.E.'s (Extra-Military Police Intelligence, Rescue, and Espionage) Cornelius Quinn, a tough-as-molybdenum son-of-a-bitch with a huge body, a little head and not much more empathy for his charges than the enemy he's sworn to defeat, W.A.S.TE. (an acronym that changes meaning at the whim of its insane bandage-faced leader, Newman Xeno).

Quinn has a loyal daughter, Zephyr, and a ne'er-do-well son, Casanova, a partying lothario who resembles a cross between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Zephyr is a respected agent of E.M.P.I.R.E., while twin brother Cass has worked as hard at making his father disappointed in him as he has at being a creep-for-hire.

Shortly after Zephyr dies on a mission, Xeno kidnaps Cass and inserts him into an alternate space-time where his sister is the black sheep and Cass is was good son (who got killed on a mission, just as his sister did back on the other Earth). Xeno orders Cass to destroy E.M.P.I.R.E. while making it look like he's still on their side. It's not as easy as Cass thinks at first, what with the torture his sister enjoys inflicting on him and the hard time his father gives him for suddenly becoming into something of a screw-up. (After all, the Cornelius Quinn in this dimension doesn't know that his good son has been replaced by this work-shirking hustler from an alternate universe, who's trying his best to keep up the ruse.)

Plenty of freakish and fun villains (my favorite is the Kirby-esque Fabula Berserko -- "a big mutant brain... three monks that practiced some form of occult Zen for so long they fused together in a wad) and weird scenes, like an island where sexual orgone energy fuels non-stop orgies with sentient sex robots and humans, give this darkly-humored science fiction a quirky kick. It also introduced me to the respectable talents of Matt Fraction (Author) and Gabriel Ba (Author).

(This edition collects Casanova #1-7.) Link

Our friend Irwin Chusid has released a new Jim Flora print, and it's lovely.

Jim Flora Art LLC has produced a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1954 Jim Flora hand-tinted woodcut entitled Manhattan.

The cityscape depicts New York in its 1950s glory, including a number of gotham landmarks such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, subways, taxis, horse-drawn carriages and tourists.

Only twenty-five (25) prints of Manhattan were produced for this edition. We are offering five (5) prints (#21/25 through #25/25) now on eBay. After these five prints are sold at the asking price, prices will increase for the rest of the edition.

Link

In the discussion following Xeni's post about Yoko Ono yesterday, Shawn Wolfe referenced having just bought one of Worn Free's "Yoko Ono" t-shirts, just like John Lennon used to wear. I checked out Worn Free and they have a very cool business idea. They recreate obscure vintage t-shirts famously worn by rockers, like Lennon's "Working Class Hero" tee, Iggy Pop's "I Wiped Out The 60's" tee, Debbie Harry's "Punk" tee, Frank Zappa's "Rental" tee, Joey Ramone's "Capitol Theatre" tee, and a slew of others. My favorite is the "Yoko Ono" and Joey Ramone's "Punk Magazine" tee. Link

Web 2.0 meets Marxist (Foucaultian?) economic theory in the latest video hijinks from Austrian subversive art collective monochrom. Meet an online porn monster ("iPhone? noooom nom nom nom") and learn how Google-y eyed neo-liberalism screws over the proletariat in "Kiki, Bubu, and the Shift."

Link to Boing Boing tv post with comments thread and downloadable video.

More monochrom episodes on Boing Boing tv:

* Monochrom: MyFaceSpace, the musical
* Monochrom: Campfire at Will
* Monochrom: Falco Stairs
* Monochrom: Bar code artist Scott Blake / Falco stencil memorial
* Human USB Hack / Very Simple Motor
* Mark's Curie Engine / Monochrom's love song for Lessig

Update: monochrom has the longer-form, uncut director's version up on their site.

(Click on image to embiggen) I went to the California Science Center with my four-year-old daughter and they had a great exhibit called Goosebumps: The Science of Fear. One station shocked kids at random intervals, another station made it seem like you were sticking your hand into a terrarium filled with poison snakes and spider, another one had a device that you strapped yourself into to simulate falling.

I liked this handout for kids to color the brain's fear system. Link

These fake eyeball stickers look like they'd come in handy, but The Museum of Hoaxes is having a hard time tracking down a place that actually sells them. They look easy enough to make yourself, though. Link

Here's a 3-fingered robot designed to play the supremely monotonous Towers of Hanoi game at breakneck speed. Build details here: Link

Salvatore Rivieri, the Baltimore police officer who can be seen in a YouTube video wearing cute shorts and knocking a skinny 14-year-old skateboarder to the ground (David posted about it yesterday) is the star of another video that's recently surfaced.

This time he confronts Billy Friebele, an artist from Washington D.C., who was videotaping at the Harbor last summer.

Friebele told ABC2 [a Baltimore TV station] he was taping the reactions of passersby to a box he was moving with a remote controlled car. Officer Friebele is seen on tape kicking the box off of the car and then kicking the car. The officer then orders Friebele to leave the area.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video on the ABC2 site so I don't know if Officer Rivieri is wearing those shorts. Link

The U.S. Government said it's going to try to shoot down that errant spy satellite out of the sky when its orbit decays to about 120 miles above Earth. It contains 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel, which "could turn into a toxic gas capable of causing deaths and injuries if it crashed in a populated area." They hope that by destroying the tank, the poison gas will disperse in the atmosphere without causing harm to living things.

In cases of controlled descents, the fuel can be burned off before reentry. But in the case of the errant spy satellite, ground controllers lost all communications shortly after it was launched in 2006, and the fuel tank remains full. U.S. officials were concerned that the fuel tank could survive reentry and that a crash landing in a populated area could disperse the hydrazine, which causes deadly effects similar to ammonia or chlorine.

...

Last year, China used a missile to shoot down one of its failing weather satellites and was harshly criticized by U.S. officials and others.

Link | More at Space.com

Markus Kison's CharmingBurka is a Bluetooth-enabled Burka that sends a photo of the wearer to nearby mobile phones. From the project description:

The Charming Burka deals with Freud's idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology. Every person next to her can receive her picture via mobile phone and see the women's self-determined identity. The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the CharmingBurka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.

Therefore the Burka is equipped with bluetooth antenna/micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.

Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

Over at the MAKE: Blog, Mike Dixon posted his first installment of "Made In Japan," a weekly roundup of DIY activities happening there. Seen here is a snow sculpture of the villainous Baikinman from the anime series Anpanman. Made In Japan Vol.1 also features circuit-bent Pikachus, recipes for fermented soybean-based Natto, and eccentric maker Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu, inventor of the floppy disk.
Link

This incredible antique automaton, circa 1915-1925, just sold on eBay for $1,775. It's 32" high and 16" wide. The auction listing says it may have been "a knight from a King Arthur type of display." I think it'd look right at home in a crucifixion scene. I hope the buyer completely restores and revives the (holy) ghost in this machine. From the eBay listing:

ORIGINAL MECHANISM AND PAPER MACHE HEAD. ARMS ARE WOOD AND POSSIBLY MADE BY SCHOENHUT. GLASS EYES. ELECTRIC MOTOR CAM DRIVEN MULTIPLE ACTION MECHANISM. WORKS FINE, HEAD MOVES FROM LEFT TO RIGHT. EYES MOVE LEFT TO RIGHT, AND EYELIDS OPEN AND CLOSE. BREATHING ACTION AS A CHEST PANEL RISES AND FALLS. OUT OF AN ESTATE IN STATEN ISLAND , NEW YORK. POSSIBLY FROM HAPPYLAND AMUSEMENT PARK . BELIEVED TO BE A KNIGHT FROM A KING ARHTUR TYPE OF DISPLAY. THE MAKER IS SAID TO BE WILLIAM H AND CHARLES W COOK OF COOK STUDIOS AT 550 EAST DUPONT STREET,ROXBOROUGH PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA. MAKERS OF DISPLAYS, AND ADVERTISING DISPLAYS.

Link (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson and Andrew Brandou!)

(UPDATE: I put the wrong timestamp on this post, so it got buried. I'm putting it back at the top of the stack, so everyone has a chance to join the fun.)

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure, edited by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, is an anthology of several hundred six-word autobiographies. I wish all tombstones came with stories like these:

Kentucky trash heap yields unexpected flower. -- John Kurtz

Changing mind postponed demise by decades. -- Scott O'Neil

Despite disorders, jafroed jewboy gets girl. -- Michael Eisner

Didn't pull out. Downhill from there. -- Roger Daubach

Thought I would have more impact. -- Kevin Clark

Yes, you can edit my biography. -- Jimmy Wales

Must remember: people, gadgets. That order. -- Brian Lam

What's your six-word memoir? Add it to the comments. Link

Danny from the EFF says,

Mark Fiore has a great little animated sequence explaining the U.S. government's domestic spying program from the point of view of the cutest homeland security advocate in the world -- Snuggly the Security Bear!

This video is oh-so-wrong, but I got a good chuckle out of it, especially since I'm a list freak. (If I complete a task that I forgot to add to my list, I'll add it to the list after the fact and then cross it off.)

Terrific music by Patrick & Eugene is called "The Birds and the Bees" (Via Random Good Stuff)

(Click on images to biggify) Paintings of iconic musicians made from colored disks at Buzz Coffee in Los Angeles (323-656-7460). I can't remember the artist's name, but they are selling for $1000 each.

Earlier this week, I pointed to reports that John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, was said to be planning legal action against with a young singer-songwriter named Lennon Murphy, who sought to trademark the name of her band, "Lennon."

Ms. Ono tells Boing Boing today that the reports (from Fox, NME, TMZ, and others) she was suing Ms. Murphy are untrue -- she just didn't want Murphy to seek an exclusive trademark on "Lennon."

Yoko Ono (yes, really) writes:

Dear Xeni,

A musician named Lennon Murphy is claiming that Yoko Ono has sued her and that Yoko is seeking to stop Lennon Murphy from performing under her name, Lennon Murphy. Both of these claims are untrue.

Several years ago, Lennon Murphy sought Yoko's permission to do her performances under her name, Lennon Murphy. Yoko, of course, did not object to her request. Subsequently, without Yoko's knowledge, Lennon Murphy filed an application in the United States trademark Office requesting the exclusive right to utilize the name "Lennon" for musical performances. Yoko's attorneys asked Lennon Murphy's attorneys and manager to withdraw her registration of exclusivity to the name LENNON for the trademark. Yoko also offered to cover all costs Lennon Murphy had incurred in filing for the trademark. But Lennon Murphy went ahead to register.

Yoko did not sue Lennon Murphy, but sought to stop her from getting the exclusive right to the name Lennon for performance purposes. For that, Yoko's attorneys, simply notified the Trademark office that Yoko did not believe it was fair that Ms. Murphy be granted the exclusive right to the "Lennon" trademark in relation to musical and entertainment services. As you can see, this is a very important issue for Yoko and the Lennon family.

Yoko says: "I am really hurt if people thought that I told a young artist to not use her own name in her performances and had sought to sue her. I did no such thing. I hope this allegation will be cleared."

Thank you for your kind attention, Yoko

Image: via Wikipedia.

Update: Comment of the day, in the related BB comments thread, by "tensegrity":

Yoko Ono once again shows that she is a class act and a cool lady, through and through.

Virtual China spotted this hand-drawn Chinese diagram of how to cook chicken with beer. Warning: Don't add any salt!!! Link

Recently on Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at oscilloscope hacks, a simple but laudable account of good customer service, a hot tea squirter that heats water in three seconds, another look at AT&T's filter plans, the quality of HD Apple TV downloads, Star Wars toy concepts, a bed shaped like a space shuttle, a phone game in Japan that rewards players real fish, two curvy chairs, a beautiful old ether inhaler (and gerbil death), and a great new concept from Nokia of a phone made of recycled materials (that doesn't actually work).

And grab-bag links, deals, and retro stories from Modern Mechanix, all sponsored by Grandma's Johnson's Jackfruit Fritters. Remember: "Jackfruit is not a federally recognized choking hazard!"

Snip from BLDG BLOG post:

Photographer Richard Mosse got in touch over the weekend with these photographs of air disaster simulations: fire crews racing to put out temporary fires, amidst fake airplane bodies on the runways of airports all over Europe and the United States.

"I spotted my first air disaster simulator on the tarmac at JFK," Mosse wrote. "You can see it yourself next time you fly into that airport. It's an intimidating black oblong structure situated dangerously close to one of the runways. Ever since, I have hunted for air trainers while taxi-ing across each new airport that I've had the chance to fly into."

Link (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

This photo is so amazing I'm not entirely convinced it's real, but it reportedly shows Rio de Janeiro's 130-foot-tall Christ Redeemer statue getting hit by lightning.
Link

St. Mary's Academy (25 miles northwest of Topeka) won't let women referee boys basketball games.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association said referees reported that Michelle Campbell was preparing to officiate at St. Mary's Academy near Topeka on Feb. 2 when a school official insisted that Campbell could not call the game.

The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs.

Link

The New York Times has the full run of Daniel Clowes' (Ghost World, David Boring) "Mister Wonderful" online for free in PDF format. Link (Thanks, Adrienne!)

Authorities in Australia are considering the use of Creative Commons licensing to facilitate sharing of geographical and meteorological data:

Last month, the government of Queensland approved the use of Creative Commons, which allows free re-use of copyright material subject to certain conditions, as part of a new licensing framework. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth (federal) government is expected to give the green light to creative commons in a new set of guidelines for the management of the government's intellectual property.

The new Australian policy will be watched with interest by Britain's free-data movement. Historically, Australia is a pioneer of free data: a 1968 law exempted most data produced by the federal government from copyright protection.

Link (thanks, Perry)

The EFF's Tim Jones says,

On Tuesday, the US Senate approved a bill that would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally spied on millions of Americans' private communications.

The fight is not over yet; the bill must be ratified by the House before it becomes law. This means the votes cast by your Congresscritter in the next couple days will likely be our last chance to hold the telecoms accountable and discover the full extent of the Bush administration's lawbreaking.

Phone or email them now!

Link to more info.

Previously on Boing Boing:
* Senate votes to immunize telecoms over domestic spying

Today on Boing Boing tv:

Xeni visits the first-ever "Cable Untangling Championships" at Machine Project in Los Angeles, where knottiness abounds and speedy-fingered sysadmins pwn the world.

"Cabling" is a new sport founded by Steven Schkolne in which competitors must race to detangle bundles of CAT-5 ethernet cables. The person who unravels their wire bundle the fastest at this particular meet wins a spaghetti dinner (hm, perhaps it's all a front for Pastafarianism).

Cabling enthusiasts are not fooling around: there are detailed rules about the types of wire permitted:

CAT-5 Ethernet cables are to be used. Contestants may use any cable they wish, as long as it is capable of carrying 100Mb/s prior to competition. During competition, the colors red, blue, and yellow are used for the 7, 15, and 25 foot cables resepectively.

Link to full post with video, discussion, and "tangling regulations" on Boing Boing tv.