Bow Street Runner is a Flash game from Channel 4 that plunges you into the grimy, crime-ridden streets of 18th century Covent Garden and asks you to join the goon squads who tried to impose order on the city. It's full of historically accurate, Deadwood-grade foul language and squicky details.

Bow Street Runner is set in London's Covent Garden in the 1750s. With crime and vice running at very high levels, and before the organised police force existed in England, local magistrates formed the Bow Street Runners and began to impose law and order.

Link

(Disclosure: My fiancee commissioned this game for Channel 4)

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: this entire family came to last year's ComicCon in matching, beautifully made Incredibles suits, and worked out a great little tableau of poses for photographers. Link

Here's a superb collection of picture postcards from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair (the Space Needle fair), depicting a rounded-corner futuristic world that I'd be proud to inhabit. Link (via Paleo Future)

BoingBoing's sysadmin extraordinaire, Ken Snider, reminds us of scheduled downtime for all BB commenting features and new posts tonight, sometime between 12 - 6AM Eastern time (9-3AM PST). "Total downtime isn't expected to be more than about 15 minutes," he explains.

On NASA's website, ISS Science Officer Don Pettit describes the "smell of space" -- long a staple of science fiction stories.

Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

Link (via JWZ)

The Nebraska Library Commission has begun to include Creative Commons licensed editions of books in its catalog -- so you can check out my novels in the Tor editions, or just nab a copy from the library's site.

About a month ago I was asked the following question: Why don't libraries start cataloging and offering CC-licensed works? Why not, I asked myself. Why doesn't the Commission try this. So, I spoke with others and everyone loved the idea. (At first anyway. We'll come back to that in a moment.) The basic idea was to take electronic versions of these titles, post them on our Web server, catalog them in the OPAC, then offer them up to those that wanted them. Additionally, for some titles the license allowed for physical printing of the works so we sent those files off to the print shop to turn them into spiral-bound books to be added to the physical collection. (A few days later the print shop called back to question our right to print these works. A few pointers back to the CC Web site and the relevant licenses straightened it all out.)

Link

Disneyland is reviving its old "House of the Future" attraction -- originally, this was a wheel-of-gouda-shaped plastic house sponsored by Monsanto that opened in 1957, featuring futuristic technology like cordless phones, giant TVs, electric razors, and kitchen appliances that rose out of the countertops. It was inspriringly goofy -- and so indestructible that the wrecking-ball bounced off it and so the structure had to be disassembled with cutting torches and chainsaws.

The new version will look like a suburban McMansion and will feature stuff that sounds like rejects from CES: touch-screen home automation, automatic lights and temperature (oooh, a thermostat!), and assorted junk from HP, Microsoft, and a couple other sponsors.

I'd rather see Disney give us something built out of surplus shipping containers, filled with just-in-time blobjects that track their existence through spimes and gracefully decompose into the manufacturing stream at their end of life. Something that at least looks like the future, rather than the model home in a pre-subprime-meltdown housing development.

When a resident clicks a TV remote, for example, lights will dim, music will shut off and the shades will draw as the network realizes a movie is about to start.

The system will allow residents to transfer digital photos, videos and music among televisions and computers in different rooms at the click of a button. Other applications still in development could include touch-screen technology built into appliances, furniture and countertops, said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president for entertainment services.

In the kitchen, for example, touchpad software on the countertop would be able to identify groceries and produce recipes and meal suggestions. Similar programs could turn a desktop into a computer screen, allowing residents to load photos, music or e-mail onto a cell phone by placing it on the desk.

Link (via /.)

(Image: Yesterland)

Etsy seller Recraft was selling this "Posable Robot Lamp" whose base was salvaged from a broken robot toy. It's surprisingly expressive. Pity it got sold before I got to it! Link (via Cribcandy)

A four-tonne railway bridge has been stolen in the Czech Republic:

The bridge was on a disused stretch of line just outside Cheb.

Martina Hruskova, a spokeswoman for the Czech police, commented to AFP: 'We are not sure if it was taken for personal use or for its scrap value.' Exactly what that 'personal use' might be was left unsaid.

Link (via Warren Ellis)

The New Yorker has a good investigative piece on the history of the use of waterboarding by US troops in the Philippines in 1901-2 -- a scandal that rocked the nation.

A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”

And let us not forget: after WWII, Japanese soldiers who'd waterboarded their American prisoners were put to death by the US military for committing unconscionable acts of torture. Link (Thanks, Ken)

Tobias Wong's "Killer Engagement Ring" is a sturdy diamond ring whose point faces out, turning it into a potentially lethal weapon.

The diamond sharp edge will also cut skin down to the bone (with a minimum 1 karat stone - but the larger the better). Or it may simply be used to tag hard surfaces, like cars and windows for S.O.S. messages or that last will and estimate when pen or paper (or lawyers) aren’t conveniently around.

Link (via Making Light)

I Want to Be the Guy is an insanely hard platformer video-game that mashes together art, bosses, and other play elements from several 8-bit console cartridges from the golden age. Here's a video of someone running the game -- mesmerising. Link (via Waxy)

Two doctors -- a married couple -- were flying with their kids from Chicago to Manchest NH. Given the record delays, snows, etc, they brought along a bunch of extra baby-food. When they got to the TSA checkpoint, the government stole their children's food, saying that if they wanted to bring that much food past the checkpoint, they'd need a letter from a doctor. So -- being doctors -- they offered to write the letter. No, the TSA said, you need a letter from a different doctor.

According to Dr. Soni, the T.S.A. officers said they would need a “doctor’s note” to bring on all of the food. He said he pointed out that he and his wife were doctors, and then offered to get a pediatrician colleague on the phone...

The T.S.A. officers confiscated some of the food. “They divided it up. They took a jar of prunes and one of bananas, and I think a bottle of formula,” he said.

Link (via Consumerist)

Here's a Google Talks video featuring the late Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2).

This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.

Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.

Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).

Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.

Link

Recently on Boing Boing Gadgets we took a look at Fright Catalog (dot com's) wondrous animatronic monsters, HP's entry into the UMPC/Eee subnotebook space, a belt-fed NERF cannon, upcoming multitouch interfaces from Apple, a kitchen device that works more or less as a steak toaster, a weightlessness-simulating treadmill, the thought that goes into designing a low-end camcorder, a gee-whiz linear propulsion toy, a documentary about circuit bending, a concept emergency shelter in a 50-gallon drum (and some ideas I have about blogging from the forest this spring), the hopefully impending death of The Sharper Image, a game that plays with the idea of a 2D character in a 3D world, a headset that reads your thoughts to control games, and a tortuous puzzle box in which to stow gifts. And deals and retro links.

The Sagan Appreciation Society is petitioning for the US Postal Service to issue a postage stamp honoring astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan. An article last week in the Ithaca Journal says the petition should be available online at the Society's site, but it isn't currently there. This is one of the proposed stamps, illustrated by Skeptics Society founder Pat Linse. From the Ithaca Journal:

“Carl was an avid stamp collector as a boy, and we treasure the albums he made then, (said Sagan's wife Ann Druyan.) "They’re filled with his handwritten notes in the margins — perhaps the earliest evidence of his passion for the diversity of Earth’s cultures. So this particular tribute to Carl would have held special significance for him, as it does for me.”

Link

An historic stretch of Toronto's Queen Street West -- the corner of Queen and Portland -- burned to the ground today in a massive fire. This corner was home to the brilliant Suspect Video and the legendary Duke's Cycle, which had been in the same family for four generations.

Many of the gutted buildings were built at the turn of the century, and had recently been declared a heritage conservation district. City Councillor Adam Vaughan called the fire a tragedy for Toronto.

"It's a tragedy in so many levels. The Duke's Cycle that had been here for four generations is gone. The building is gone. I bumped in one of the brothers, and they're in shock," he said. "But you know, the residents above the stores, and the stores, and we just had the area declared a heritage conservation district. On a host of levels, it's a bloody tragedy.

"It punches a hole in the heart of Queen St."

This was my old stomping grounds, from the age of about 13 until I left Toronto around 1999. Queen Street will never be the same. My condolences to all the people who worked and lived there. Link (Thanks, Shannon!)

Update: Tons of photos on Torontoist here and here.

This German exibition is showcasing bright infrared LED devices that overwhelm the CCDs in security cameras, allowing you to move through modern society in relative privacy. I used this as a gimmick in my story I, Robot -- now I want to own one!

The URA / FILOART developed device promises to the citizens of a more reliable protection against security measures of the state (and other Überwachenden).

In addition to monitoring purposes organised systems interaction between man and machine is still IR.ASC an additional interaction between machines dar. This absurd accumulation of technology is symptomatic, because although the entire expense of the protection measures for the alleged safety of citizens is made, the person slips on the importance scale of the current security plan ever deeper down.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Art galleries have been showing the work of graffiti artists for quite some time now. Right now, large graffiti pieces are also on display in the "hallowed halls" of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The pieces, by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, are part of an intriguing new exhibition titled Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. Along with graffiti, it features the work of a poet, photographer, filmmaker, and portrait artist. Seen here, "AREK" "CON" (Montana spray paint on Sintra panel, 182.9 cm x 609.6 cm). From Smithsonian:

Since museum officials were hesitant about artists spraying paint directly onto the gallery walls, the works were instead executed off-site by two local artists, Tim "Con" Conlon, 33, of Washington, D.C. and Dave "Arek" Hupp, 34, from Baltimore, who have both been spray-painting (or "tagging") trains and bridges since they were teenagers. They boast quite the portfolio of street graffiti, or what (co-curator Frank H. Goodyear III) euphemistically calls their "noncommissioned works." Hupp estimates that in his peak he tagged about 400 freight trains a year, and Conlon's signature pieces, many of which feature TV's "Simpsons" characters, can be seen around the country. In fact, their street art has gone commercial, with companies such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines recruiting them for advertising campaigns to target the youth demographic. Even Maisto International, a die-cast toy company, had the two artists tag model trains last year. "People who think it is just vandalism are amazed when they see what we can do with spray paint," Hupp says.

Link to Smithsonian article, Link to Regognize! site

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes:

Paul Jones of iBiblio tipped me off to some recent M&A activity by Microsoft, this time involving the Library of Congress.

This deal involves the donation of "technology, services and funding" (e.g., mostly not money) with a purported value of $3m from Microsoft to the Library of Congress. The Library, in turn, agrees to put kiosks running Vista in the library and to use Microsoft Silverlight to "help power the library's new Web site, www.myloc.gov."

The official blogger of the library, Matt Raymond, says "this is really a quantum leap for the library." Perhaps it is, but it sure smells like a whole lot of proprietary.

Link (Thanks, Carl!)

The Spanish-language blog Decoesfera spotted Roca's new urinals with built-in dividers. They might be helpful for the pee-shy and to discourage peeking. Link to translated blog post (via Neatorama)

In the discussions following my post about Alice In Wonderland Syndrome, WAREQ linked to this absolutely fantastic psychedelic music video for Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit starring the original Star Trek crew. Link

A DVD that fire chief Barry McCroy of Walterboro, South Carolina, was carrying protected him from a stray bullet on Saturday. He was in a local Waffle House when a fight between two men led to gunfire. The DVD stopped a bullet from entering his stomach. From the Charleston Post and Courier:

Maj. Ken Dasen of the Walterboro Police Department said the bullet grazed the suspect's head, shattered the glass window and then ricocheted into McRoy's abdomen...

McRoy didn't know he had been shot until he was telling a police officer what happened.

"I felt something like being hit in the stomach and assumed it was the percussion from the discharged firearm," he said.

Then he saw a hole in his jacket. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shattered plastic. The disc was nicked.

He then found a piece of the bullet.

Link

TV Signoffs collects videos of the signoff videos of TV stations of the bygone era. These are just great -- I was always an early riser as a kid so I would catch the sign-on every morning. Link

Linda Stone (who coined the phrase "continuous partial attention") has noticed that people hold their breath and breathe shallowly when answering email, a phenomenon she'd dubbed "email apnea." She's posted a little rumination on the long-term health impacts of impaired email breathing.

I wanted to know -- how widespread is email apnea*? I observed others on computers and BlackBerries: in their offices, their homes, at cafes. The vast majority of people held their breath, or breathed very shallowly, especially when responding to email. I watched people on cell phones, talking and walking, and noticed that most were mouth-breathing and hyperventilating. Consider also, that for many, posture while seated at a computer can contribute to restricted breathing.

Does it matter? How was holding my breath affecting me?

I called Dr. Margaret Chesney, at the National Institute of Health (NIH). Research conducted by Dr. Margaret Chesney and NIH research scientist Dr. David Anderson demonstrated that breath-holding contributes significantly to stress-related diseases. The body becomes acidic, the kidneys begin to re-absorb sodium, and as the oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitric oxide (NO) balance is undermined, our biochemistry is thrown off.

Link

Alice In Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) is an unusual neurological disorder that causes the person with the condition objects to sometimes perceive certain things as much smaller than they are. It's also referred to as "Lilliputian hallucinations," after the tiny folks in Gulliver's Travels. In The Guardian, Rik Hemsley describes life with the spatial distortions of Alice In Wonderland Syndrome. From his essay:

When it first happened, I was a 21-year-old undergraduate. I had been up late the night before writing my dissertation and drinking a lot of coffee, but on that particular morning I was stone cold sober and hangover-free. I stood up, reached down to pick up the TV remote control from the floor and felt my foot sink into the ground. Glancing down, I saw that my leg was plunging into the carpet. It was a disturbing sensation, but it lasted only a few seconds, so I put it down to over-tiredness and forgot all about it.

It wasn't long, however, before I started experiencing more extreme spatial distortions. Floors either curved or dipped, and when I tried walking on them, it felt as though I was staggering on sponges. When I lay in bed and looked at my hands, my fingers stretched off half a mile into the distance.

Link

China is rocking from a sex-scandal involving a popular actor whose laptop was plundered by a service tech who has been trickling out shocking photos of the idol getting laid by various famous personages. The Chinese government is straining to slow down the scandal, but it's spreading like wildfire.

The images - illegally copied from the star's customised pink MacBook - have prompted a media frenzy here that has eclipsed the fixation about Britney Spears in the English-language web.

As well as crashing servers in celebrity-obsessed Hong Kong, the gossip has spread to the mainland, where one online discussion generated more than 25m page views and 140,000 comments...

Since the first images appeared more than two weeks ago, an unknown culprit has uploaded dozens of fresh pictures every day, each time putting more celebrities into more compromising positions.

Link

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency carries stunning videos of Earthrise from the moon, shot with the Kaguya's cameras:

Kaguya carries two high-definition television cameras, each fitted with a 1,920 by 1,080 CCD. However, most of the movies are downsampled and cropped to 320 by 240 pixels (which is about half the resolution of a standard-definition TV). Almost all of the movies are from the wide-angle camera, which has a field of view spanning 51.23° by 30.17° and faces forward along Kaguya's orbit. The narrower-angle tele-camera has a field of view spanning 15.60° by 8.80° and faces backward. Typically, the cameras are employed in a time-lapse mode, and the movies play at 8x speed, but a few of the movies (especially Earthrise/Earthset movies) are shown at slower 4x or even real-time speeds.

Link

Jürgen Stumpf's Berlin wine-bars in the gentrifying neighborhoods of Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte run on the honor system: show up, drink wine, and pay what you think you owe on the way out the door.

Each of Mr. Stumpf’s three honor-system wine bars (a fourth, down some stairs on Kollwitzstrasse, is temporarily closed while it deals with licensing issues) carries a different assortment of red and white wines. Their owner hails from the north Bavarian region of Franconia, and more than half the wines are produced in Germany. Before you turn up your nose, German wines have been impressive of late, and the food is also good. The fare is mostly variations on German cuisine made with organic ingredients. Food prices, too, are on the honor system. Diners typically pay around 10 to 15 euros for an entree, salad and a few glasses of wine.

Link

A Swedish couple has been fined for failing to register a legally approved name for their seven-year-old child, who is presently called "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" (pronounced "/ˈalˌbin/"). They've offered to change the kid's name to "A," but the Swedish government says that won't do, either.

Because the parents (Elizabeth Hallin and an unidentified father) failed to register a name by the boy's fifth birthday, a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden, fined the parents 5,000 kronor (US$682 at the time). Responding to the fine, the parents submitted the 43-character name in May 1996, claiming that it was "a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation." The parents suggested the name be understood in the spirit of 'pataphysics. The court rejected the name and upheld the fine.

Link

Novelist John Scalzi, who has earned a buck or two from writing, has written a damned fine post about money management for writers. I spent a few years figuring this stuff out myself -- the hard way -- and really wish I'd had this around when I started earning my living from writing.

4. Your income is half of what you think it is.
When you work for someone, the employer withholds your income and Social Security taxes for the IRS, pays part of your Social Security, automatically deducts for your 401(k) and health insurance, and (if you’re not an idjit) also kicks in a bit for the 401(k). When you’re a freelance writer, none of this happens. The problem is, lots of writers forget that and spend everything they get when they get it, so when taxes come due (which is quarterly, because per the earlier notation, the government quite sensibly doesn’t trust freelancers to pay their taxes in one lump sum) lots of writers go “oh, crap” and have to suck change out of sofas and the few remaining pay phones to square the debt. This is also why many writers never get around to funding IRAs or other retirement vehicles, and spend their lives hoping they don’t slip or catch cold or get hit by a taxi, because they have no health insurance.

Simple solution: Every time you get a check, divide it in two. One half is yours to pay for bills, rent and groceries, and if there’s anything left over, to play with. The other half, which you deposit into an interest-bearing account of some sort, goes to federal, state and local taxes and your Social Security taxes, and anything that’s left over goes to fund your IRA (do the Roth IRA, it’ll pay off in the end) and, if you’re not lucky enough to have either number two or three above, your health insurance (have a day job or a spouse with bennies? Save it anyway. Be one of the wacky single-digit percent of Americans who actually save something in the bank. Also, and more usefully, that money you’re saving becomes a “buffer” for the times when you have bills but no income on the way. The buffer is your friend. Love the buffer. Fund the buffer).

Link

Logos Bible Software publishes specialist electronic editions of scholarly works -- they use a "community pricing model" that allows their community of customers to work together to establish the demand for the work and set a fair price for it before it is produced:

They also do what they call community pricing, where they don't know how to set the price. Here, they expose the price curve to their users, letting users choose the price they are willing to pay. Once the price crosses the line that allows them to cover their costs, they give that "best price" to their pre-order customers (regardless of which price they actually chose when voting.) They then raise the price to the point on the curve that shows best profit for Logos, for customers who weren't part of the original subscription. In this way, they make money on every product they produce (much like threadless.com, which aggregates demand (but doesn't set pricing) before producing a product.) To me, this is a major trend for the future of manufacturing, but that's another topic....

Link

The Uganda Skateboard Union is a nonprofit that develops skate-parks and clubs for kids in Uganda. Judging from their blog, they're doing amazing work, growing fast, and doing stuff that should be replicable elsewhere.

Our first park was completed over a year ago. It has been a great success, lots of kids have been learning to skate, all of them are improving, and loving it more than ever. We now want to spread skateboarding to a new community in the country, to share it with more kids.

We are looking for donations to help us buy land and materials to make this happen. If you like what we have done with our first park, please support us in building a new one. As with our first park we are relying solely on private donations, so any amount will help!

Link

Today on Boing Boing tv: Klaus Pierre, a French/German actor, aspires against all odds to become America's next great action hero.

We met Klaus in the previous BBtv episode "Point Break and Heartbreak," in which he revealed his devotion to the great Keanu Reeves; today, Klaus studies broadsword combat, in hopes of conquering the RenFaire circuit and moving every zig for great justice. But breaking through to true action hero stardom requires endurance, dedication, talent, and Keanu Reeves underwear -- guess which one out of four Klaus actually has.

Link to BBtv post with video and discussion.

Boing Boing hero Paul Krassner (wiki) kindly gave us permission to run this essay he wrote titled: "My Brief Encounter With Fidel Castro"

In 1960, the U.S. State Department was financing counterrevolutionary broadcasts to Cuba from a radio station on Swan Island in Honduras. Program content ranged from telling Cubans that their children would be taken away to warning them that a Russian drug was being added to their food and milk which would automatically turn them into Communists. My friend Lyle Stuart was national treasurer of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which sponsored a trip to Cuba that December, and he invited me to come along.

On New Year’s Eve, at an outdoor dinner celebrating the anniversary of the revolution, 15,000 Cubans, including 10,000 voluntary teachers, were bidding goodbye to the Year of Agrarian Reform and welcoming in the Year of Education. Although Fidel Castro accused the United States of planning to attack Cuba, the few hundred Americans who had been invited were greeted with applause, cheering and kiss-throwing. At midnight the Cubans sang “The 26th of July Song,” and their cardboard plates went scaling through the air, mingling with a display of fireworks.

There was a full-scale learn-to-read-and-write campaign. In several industries, every employee would give one cent a day throughout the year to the Minister of Education. In the Sierra Maestra, where battles once raged, there were now under construction schools and dormitories for 20,000 children, to match the 20,000 Cubans who had lost their lives, many after torture, under the U.S.-supported Batista regime. At one of these educational communities, some young students removed the string that had been set up by a landscaping crew to mark off a cement foundation. Next morning, the school director lectured them about such immorality.

“Even a little thing like that,” he explained, “does harm to the revolution.”

The children of Cuba were being programmed for cooperation rather than competition. This sense of utter involvement in the revolution provided the radionalization Cubans gave when I asked about the lack of a free press, critical of the revolution.

“We get the New York Times,” I was told, “and that’s enough.”

On January 2, there was a parade, with female soldiers marching in conga fashion, heavy tanks ripping away at well-paved streets, and a Macy’s-type float that was actually the reconstructed American space rocket which had been fired from Cape Canaveral the previous November, only to be destroyed just after launching when it proved defective. Fragments had fallen in Cuba, killing a cow. Now the revolutionary slogan, “Venceremos” (“We Will Win”) was temporarily changed to “We Will Win, With or Without Cows.”

One evening, there was a reception at the Presidential Palace for several hundred visitors from around the world. When Castro arrived in the main ballroom, he was surrounded by an eager, protoplasmic circle of admirers and well-wishers. He stood tall and handsome in their midst, uniformed but hatless. The throng of people with Castro at the hub surged forward a few feet at a time toward the end of the ballroom and finally gave way to a line that formed to meet him, one by one. Some asked him to pose with them, which he did. A man with a camera stood on a plush chair for a better angle, but his wife, who was posing with Castro, yelled at him.

“Max! Don’t stand on that chair! This is a palace!”

I gave Castro a copy of my magazine, The Realist, and requested an interview. He told me to set it up with his secretary. Then a palace guard handed him a cablegram from President Dwight Eisenhower--in the final weeks of his lame-duck presidency--calling off diplomatic relations with Cuba. I asked Castro for a statement.

“I do not think it is up to me to comment,” he said, “since it is the United States that has broken relations. I will say only that Cuba is alert.”

There was no official announcement at the Presidential Palace, but the news spread rapidly among the guests as Castro strode across the ballroom and departed.

I had brought Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind to Cuba. The next day, I was in my hotel room, sitting on the bidet and reading his long poem, “I Am Waiting,” while waiting in vain for a call from Fidel Castro’s secretary. But Castro obviously had more important things to do than answer my questions. In retrospect, though, I would like to have asked him, “How do you feel about term limits?”

The FAA wants to find out whether a crew fell asleep on a short flight between Honolulu and Hilo, Hawaii.

Flight 1002 left Honolulu at about 9:20 a.m. Wednesday and was scheduled to land in Hilo at 10:05 a.m.

A source close to the investigation said there was a 25-minute period where ground crews in Hilo could not get a hold of the flight crew; the flight landed safely.

Link (Thanks, bigdatty!)

Charles Betz says:

Christina Matzke at the University of Bonn in Germany and Damien Challet of the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Turin, Italy, used a mathematical model to show that shower temperature becomes increasingly sensitive to small changes in hot-water flow as the number of users increases. Thus in a youth hostel, for example, the showers often fluctuate between scalding hot and ice cold during heavy use.

Link

Here's a funny little 8-bit animation explaining how to deal with the typical kinds of things that happen in an online forum. Link

John of Insound says:

I just wanted to tip you off to an insanely cool item Insound just started carrying. It's a limited 5LP set with tracks by Cat Power, Animal Collective, The Knife and more that comes in a domed case that also housing a custom-made MINI Clubman "Vinyl Killer" Record Player: a battery-operated toy car containing speakers and a needle. As the little car drives along the record's groove, it plays each track, acting as a fully portable record player and sound system.

Link

Link to a photo series by Dave Bullock on Wired.com from a visit to the "longest linear accelerator in the world, which resides beneath nondescript industrial buildings near the Stanford University campus."

Matthew says:

Swedish graduate student Emil Ernerfeldt created the program Phun, a 2D physics playground, and has made it free to download for non-commercial use.

He demonstrates it in a zenful YouTube video, where he creates devices like cars and piston engines in seconds using simple shapes.

Download app here.

Jared:

Thought you guys might get a kick out of our Steampunk Justice League costumes (that's me as Superman). Each of the costumes were made by the wearer, and I think we make a rather attractive group. The link is to the Flickr pool where we're stuffing all the pictures.

Link

The art gallery at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign has a Charles and Ray Eames exhibit, which includes these molded plywood leg splints for injured soldiers from 1943. They are now highly collectible as works of art.

Xander Bennett says" "I recently stumbled across this fascinating article [by Lily Pepper] about plant-animal hybrids. It discusses a breaking down of traditional taxonomies, and the cultural fear of becoming plant-like."

Somewhere in Kansas, a crop of rice is growing whose DNA includes a couple of genes borrowed from the human genome. These genes make the rice plants produce a protein found in human breast milk. The rice is intended to be used to produce medicines for infants suffering from diorrhea and dehydration resulting from malnutrition. Rice, long a staple food for many, is being tailored to better meet the needs of the human animal in a changing world. Although humans have been modifying plant species for hundreds of years, genetic modification is a relation between human and plant that fills many people with visceral horror, particularly when the result is a hybrid of plant and animal.

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