Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, has told the US government to "shove" its list of countries that "sponsor terror," daring the US to place Venezuela on the list:

President Hugo Chavez dared the U.S. on Friday to put Venezuela on a list of countries accused of supporting terrorism, calling it one more attempt by Washington to undermine him for political reasons...

U.S. lawmakers including Reps. Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, both Florida Republicans, have called for the State Department to add Venezuela to its list of terror sponsors, which includes North Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba. They have expressed concerns about what they call Chavez's close ties to Colombia's leftist rebels.

''Let them make that list and shove it in their pocket,'' Chavez said in a televised speech.

''We shouldn't forget for an instant that we're in a battle against North American imperialism,'' Chavez said. ''On this continent, they have us as enemy No. 1.''

Link

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that rejects immunity for telephone companies that helped the NSA conduct illegal, warrantless wiretaps of the entire nation. Included in the bill is a call for a commission with subpoena power to investigate the spying program.

Bush has promised to veto any version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that fails to immunize the telcoms, but if he does not sign this bill, the ability of law enforcement entities to conduct surveillance will be severely curtailed. The question for Bush now is, "Will you admit that you live in a nation of laws, and that you can't order companies to break them with impunity, or will you undermine the fight against terrorism to keep your buddies at AT&T from facing the music?"

Instead of caving to that rhetoric, the House Democrats doubled down on their original legislation, by including a call for a commission, armed with subpoena power, that would investigate the secret spying. The bill also allows telecoms to defend themselves in court by showing secret documents to federal judge. The Bush administration had blocked them from using classified information in their own defense.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which brought the leading suit against the nation's telecoms, applauded the House's moxie.

"Amnesty proponents have been claiming on the Hill for months that phone companies like AT&T had a good faith belief that the NSA program was legal," EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston said. "Under this bill, the companies could do what they should have been able to do all along: tell that story to a judge."

The White House had no such kind words, saying the bill was "partisan" and would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate.

Link

Lynn sez, "Apparently a replica of a prop in an upcoming Sky One adaptation of the Colour of Magic, containing all the Discworld books and some production drawings. All signed by Terry. All money raised from the auction will go to the Alzheimer's Research Trust."

A unique opportunity to own a one-off replica of the luggage as featured in Sky One’s adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic. This quirky ‘suitcase’ is filled with the full library of Discworld novels, plus the production designs used to build the luggage as seen in the film. Both the books and the designs have been signed by Terry Pratchett.

Also included in this money can’t buy piece of memorabilia is a copy of the Discworld 25th anniversary edition of The Colour of Magic which hits book store shelves on the 10th March. This brand spanking new reissue not only features the stars of Sky One’s magical adaptation, Sir David Jason and Sean Astin, on the front cover, but the two actors have also signed the novel.

Link (Thanks, Lynn!)

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels, this shot of the fingerprint reader at Walt Disney World's turnstiles. These machines (which, I'm told, capture the shape of your fingertip instead of your fingerprint itself) are used to keep Disney World customers from sharing or re-selling their admission tickets, and are part of a general and growing police-state climate at the parks that includes routine bag-searches at each park entrance.

The readers aren't very effective at stopping admission cheats. You can choose not to register your fingertip, and to use photo ID for admission instead (I'm thinking of having a random piece of photo identification made with the words "OFFICIAL BOGUS SECURITY IDENTIFICATION FOR HOTELS, THEME PARKS AND OTHER JUNIOR G-MEN" printed on it). So it would be very easy to share your pass: the person named on the pass enters with his ID, and the person with whom he's sharing the card uses a fingertip -- you could visit with your sister's family and half of you could use the tickets in the morning while the other half hung around the pool and relaxed, then switch at lunch: the morning crew uses fingertip, the afternoon uses ID.

What these readers are effective at is conditioning kids to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks without particularized suspcion. One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again -- they're very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, "No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!"

To all those parents who worry that Disney will turn their kids into little princesses, it's time to get priorities straight: the "security" at the parks is even more effective at conditioning your children to live in a police state. Link

The Got Medieval blog traces the history of fanfic all the way back to the middle ages, when enthusiastic Chaucer nuts wrote their own Chaucer sequels, and even wrote themselves into the literature of the day:

Chaucer seems to have attracted this sort of activity more than other writers--or possibly, we modern readers are more interested in tracking down this sort of thing when it's done to a writer we admire as much as Chaucer. Chaucer left a lot of gaps in the Canterbury Tales, and other writers stepped up to fill them, writing tales for the poor Ploughman who never got one in the original, an extra tale for both the Merchant and the Cook, and a whole story about what the Pilgrims did once they got to Canterbury. Robert Henryson, a 15th-century Scottish writer, went so far as to write a sequel to Chaucer's earlier work, Troilus and Criseyde, in which he punishes Criseyde for all the things Chaucer had her do to poor, noble Troilus.

Link (via Making Light)

See also:
California got its name from fanfic
How fanfic makes kids into better writers (and copyright victims)
In Praise of Fan Fiction: Cory's latest Locus Magazine editorial Organization for Transformative Works: defend fandom!

Pat Cadigan has started a campaign to get 500,000 Terry Pratchett fans to donate £1 each to Alzheimer's research, matching the funds put up by Pratchett himself, who was recently diagnosed with rare, early-onset Alzheimer's -- the calls the campaign "Match it for Pratchett!"

Today, it was announced that Terry Pratchett has donated half a million pounds to Alzheimer's research. Hearing that, it occurred to me that if half a million of us all donated a pound to Alzheimer's research, we could match his donation and make it an even million.

So whaddaya say, guys? It's a pound. That's about 2 bucks US dollars, give or take a couple of (US) pennies. You can spare that much. Go here and make your donation. Tell them it's in honour of Terry Pratchett.

Let's do it!

Link (Thanks, Pat!)

See also:
Pratchett donates $1 million to Alzheimer's research
Terry Pratchett has rare, early-onset Alzheimer's

(Image: Pratchett Himself, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Myrmi's Flickr stream))

This Sweded Star Wars remake features enthusiastic young people with KFC buckets on their heads reenacting key scenes from Episode 4: A New Hope while humming the theme music. Gold. Link, Link to production sketches (via IZ Reloaded)

Dwiff sez, "Great trailer for Kino's upcoming release of Houdini the Movie Star, restored editions of Harry Houdini's silent era action blockbusters - including a truly 'teh awesome' sequence from 'The Master Mystery' with Harry Houdini battling THE FIRST EVER ROBOT IN A MOTION PICTURE." Link, Link to Houdini the Movie Star on Amazon (Thanks, Dwiff!)

Nathan Yau of FlowingData created posted a graphic showing the 10 largest data breaches in the last 8 years. "Notice the higher frequency as we get closer to the present?" writes Nathan. Follow the link to see the whole thing. Link (Thanks, Mike Love!)

My pal Jason Weisberger and I were just discussing how distressing it can be when a familiar TV character is replaced with a different actor in the middle of a series. Of course, the two Darrins from Bewitched, Dick York and later Dick Sargent, immediately came to mind. I Googled for photos of the two and this beautiful illustration appeared.
Link

Update on a series of previous posts here on BB about pro-Tibetan-independence protests in Lhasa: violence grew dramatically today. Snip from report issued today by the US-government-funded news agency RFA, which has correspondents on the ground in Tibet:

“We saw two dead at Ramoche temple, two in the garden, two at the Ganden printing house, and those Tibetans who went to take food to prisoners in Drapchi prison saw 26 Tibetans shot after they were brought in on a black vehicle,” one Tibetan witness said. “There could be about 80 dead, or more, but there is too much commotion here to give an exact number.”

“Several buildings owned by Chinese immigrants and Chinese Muslim immigrants were set on fire,” the witness said. “All those shops owned by Chinese were ransacked and burned. Tibetan shop owners were told to mark their shops with scarves.”

Another source said Ramoche monastery, which has about 110 resident monks, was badly damaged after Tibetans were found running in the area carrying photos of the Dalai Lama and shouting “Independence for Tibet.’”

Link.

Snip from a related report on AP, which references the RFA item:

At a demonstration outside the United Nations in New York, Psurbu Tsering of the Tibetan Association of New York and New Jersey said its members received phone calls from Tibet claiming 70 people had been killed and 1,000 arrested. The reports could not be verified.

And snip from a related NYT story:

In the past, China has not hesitated to crush major protests in Tibet or to jail disobedient monks. President Hu Jintao, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, served as party boss in Tibet during a violent crackdown against protests in 1989. His support for the bloody suppression of unrest that year earned him the good will of Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader, and led directly to his elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee and eventually to China’s top leadership posts.

Image: A man lies injured in the street during street protests today in the "Old Tibetan" neighborhood of Lhasa. (AP Photo)

Update: regular BB discussion participant Takuan points us to this page on the website of Tibet's government in exile (based in Northern India), which lists ways that concerned people might help the people of Tibet.

Update 2: Tibetans in other parts of the world, and their supporters, are also demonstrating in support of cultural, spiritual, and political sovereignty this week.

There are reports from Nepal that 12 monks were injured during protests in Kathmandu.

Some Tibetans in Northern India are attempting to march over the Himalayas, into Tibet. Yingsel Rangzen from Students for a Free Tibet sends these photos, and says, "This movement is happening on many, many fronts."

The group Los Angeles Friends for Tibet has an audio report (and text transcripts) with first-person accounts of the protest/pilgrimage, which led to 100 arrests. MP3 Link, Word doc, PDF. (thanks, Christal)

Update 3: Christal Smith, who produces a radio show called The Tibet Connection, passes along this (unconfirmed) statement from a fellow pro-Tibet activist named Ngawang Norbu:

There was a phone call to my tenant from Lhasa today at 9:00pm saying more then three hundred people were already killed by Chinese troop and they were mostly monks from Sera and Drepung Monastery. Sound of gunshots were heard non stop. Right now Lhasa is like a war zone.

Previously on BB:

Tibetan protests in Lhasa turn violent as Chinese forces crack down

China sends in troops to quell monks' peaceful protests

Police attack peacefully protesting monks in Tibet

Protest inside Tibet captured on tourists' cameras

Hacking the Himalayas: Xeni's stories and trek-blog from Tibet and India

Boing Boing tv: Miss Tibet/Eames Elephants

Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet

These are toilet paper dispensers. You stick a roll of toilet paper through the back, and pull a few squares out the nozzle. They cost £12.99 each. Link (Via Random Good Stuff)

Flickr user Moody75 found this fantastic console in the beside table in a room at the Zurich Crowne Plaza, sporting AV inputs for his laptop or pocket-player, a USB power-port, and an HDMI and VGA port so he could put his laptop screen onto the room's big TV. Link

Here's Good Magazine's chart showing which giant, high-fructose-corn-syrup megacorps own your favorite hippie organic microbrands. Link (via Lawgeek)

Bruce Sterling's received a totally awesomely bad spam from the "Redd Cross" of Slovenia, a triumph of unintentional comedy and machine translation:

Good time of day. You are disturbed by the charitable company Redd Cross of Slovenia. We have the business offer for you. We can offer to you of earnings, thus your salary will make from 1000$ to 2000$ per one month, at an incomplete working day. Your earnings can be and higher. The more and forces you will give time, the there will be your salary more.

If it is interesting to you, you write on the address of e-mail of our agent: manager_on_connections@yahoo.com he will contact you within 24 hours and will throw off to you all details, and will answer you on all your questions.

Thank you for attention Redd Cross of Slovenia!

Link

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest, modern products remixed into vintage ads. Link

Verizon is working with Yale researchers and a consortium of P2P companies to produce systems that make P2P file-sharing faster by redesigning the software to prefer peers in the same city, drastically reducing the cost to ISPs of customers' P2P traffic.

In a traditional P2P network, if a Verizon customer downloads a file, only 6.3 percent of the data will come from another Verizon customer in the same city, said Doug Pasko, senior technologist at the company. In the "P4P" trial, 58 percent of the data came from nearby Verizon users, vastly reducing the company's cost of carrying the traffic.

Levitan said the technology might be ready for use by next month, when NBC makes available free downloads of its TV shows using Pando's software. The shows will be financed by advertising, and P2P technology will be an essential way for NBC to cut costs. Distributing an hourlong TV show in high definition using traditional delivery systems would cost the network about $1. With P2P technology, that cost can be cut by 75 to 90 percent.

Link (via Gizmodo)

I'm absolutely taken with the latest clock from master clock-sculptor (and my former neighbour) Roger Wood, Toronto's virtuoso mad steampunk genius. Link

The locks on the Nintendo Wii have been comprehensively broken. Now, just by loading some code onto an SD card and sticking it into your Wii, you can unlock your console so that it will play homebrew games written by anyone, not just big companies that have paid big license fees to Nintendo!

Well, with the alpha 3 release of the TP hack, you can use your Wii’s internal SD slot! And you can survive without having to muck about with boot sectors and such. Just throw the .elf onto the root of your card, and you’re good to go. This is some pretty exciting news! Hopefully this thing continues to develop!

Link

Verizon's new policy on text messaging could give it the ability to go on blocking political text-messages that its customers have asked to receive. Public Knowledge wants you to tell the FCC that you don't want your phone company deciding what kind of political speech you can enjoy:

This past September, Verizon blocked its customers from receiving NARAL Pro-Choice America action alert text messages—messages that Verizon’s customers asked to receive...

Explain to the FCC now how you use text messages. Tell them if you subscribe to alerts from causes you believe in, if your organization text messages or short codes to reach its supporters, and tell them every other way in which text messaging and freedom of speech on our phone networks are important to you.

Link (Thanks, Art!)

IO9's produced a science fiction film physics report-card that evaluates the accuracy of the physics in a large number of top-grossing sf films. Basically? They all stink. Link

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this lung ashtray, for the fatalistic smoker in your life (it'd go great with a pack of Death Cigarettes). Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Tanya Andersen, a single mom in Oregon who was unsuccessfully sued by the RIAA, is countersuing, and her lawyer is planning to use the suit to drag all the tawdry details of the RIAA's sneaky, unethical "investigation" techniques into the open:

Lybeck tells Ars that he'll be digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.

One of the allegations in the amended complaint will involve MediaSentry's status as a private investigator. "MediaSentry claims it is able to gain access to people's hard drives without their permission and collect information," notes Lybeck. "It's illegal because they're not licensed to do that work."

The amended complaint and subsequent discovery will also focus on what Lybeck calls the "flawed nature" of the RIAA's investigations. "We know [the RIAA] cannot identify individuals," he says in response to a question on false positives. "We want to know how many dolphins the RIAA is catching," referring to a former RIAA spokesperson's 2003 comment about accidentally catching a few dolphins when fishing with a net.

Link (via /.)

Artist Julia Lohmann created these beautiful grisly lamp sculptures, called Ruminant Bloom that turns stretched sheep's stomachs into lamps.

Ruminant Bloom are beautiful, blossom-like lamps that are made from preserved sheep stomachs, each with a unique structure.

Link (via Make)

Lewman says: "Aaron Draplin, proud proprietor of Field Notes brand notebooks [which I blogged about earlier today -- Mark], also has a great blog. And today, something you Boingboingers might find interesting... Drap's younger sister's car was pranged by what is being investigated by Portland State University professors as a meteor strike."

They think they might’ve run something over, or were hit by another car. The impact is that violent. They pull over and notice a large hole in the quarter panel behind the driver’s side front wheel. They cautiously drive back out on to the freeway and take the first exit to further inspect the hole. They don’t notice anything too specific, aside from the gaping hole in the car.

The next day Leah gets on the ringer with her insurance company. She takes the car into a body shop and the guys there are freaking out after they extract this insane hunk of metal from the car. The car suffered some $3000 in damages from the possible interstellar attack.

Link

Our bodies are teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. They help us digest food, kill germs, and generally maintain a well-balanced internal ecosystem. According to Washington University microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon, "The total number of microbes associated with our adult bodies exceeds the total number of our human cells by a factor of 10... We're sort of a superorganism--one that's 90 percent microbial." Science News has a cover story about new efforts to better leverage our internal microbes in the fight against disease. Seen here is a scanning electron micrograph of yogurt, revealing bacteria that can be used to promote health. From Science News:

In the future, "pharmaceutical companies might be drugging your bugs, not drugging you," suggests Jeremy Nicholson of Imperial College, London.

Probiotic microbes' role in fighting generic diarrheal disease is old hat, but in the past decade, other influences on human immunity and metabolism have emerged. Certain microbial supplements show the potential to reduce the severity of colds and other infections, temper body weight, and even help the elderly fight osteoporosis.

The rub: Research is showing that a probiotic's benefits can be very specific. In fact, it might be more appropriate to view these microbes as a cornucopia of diet-based, over-the-counter micro-pharmacists—each able to dispense only a few therapies or services.

Link

Greg La Vardera says:

My friend Paul hiked to the other side of the gorge behind his house to plant an orange gnome with a solar powered spot light on the far side. You could see the little guy during the day, but when the spot light fired up at dusk it was heaping helpings of gnomey goodness.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Argentinian "gnome" scaring the bejezus out of kids
• Woman "beats off burglar with gnome"
• Leprechaun opens car door for pantless man

Andy Welfle says:

Field Notes is a stylish little pocket notebook inspired by "the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list," according to their website. What's more, they use graph paper, which is fairly rare, and they are pretty darn durable, too. (I'm not affiliated with the company, but I am a fan)

I bought a pack, and here are some photos of when I accidentally sent one through the washer. It did fall apart, but I was still able to pick the pages apart and transcribe my important notes to a new one.

And in case you want to see a review, I just posted one to my blog at Pencil Things (Where I had the review of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing you picked up in September):

Link

Here's a clever détournement using panels from Archie comics and the lyrics from Pulp's Common People.

It reminds me a little bit of Graham Rawle's brilliant novel written from snippets of vintage women's magazines, Woman's World.

Link (Thanks, Moe!)

A Boing Boing reader from Brazil named Oto Alvarenga sent us this photo of an "unknown insect, photographed apparently without life, that disappeared in the following day. Very strange. It would be a E.T.?" Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Meet the beetle

Previously on Mad Professor:
• Beetles devouring my figs

A cartoonist named Kazuo Umezu decorated his Tokyo house with red and white stripes and put a demonic looking head on the roof. The neighbors don't like it.

Despite previous setbacks, some local residents are still fighting in court to have the appearance of the house changed. Apparently its colors and face-shaped tower are offensive to the peaceful atmosphere of the neighborhood.

The video (Japanese) reveals Umezu to be a happy eccentric. Link

Painter Mike Davis has a new show of work opening at San Francisco's White Walls Gallery tomorrow. I first met Mike in the 1980s in Cincinnati when he was playing guitar for a New Wave band called Redmath. He later apprenticed at a local tattoo shop before moving to San Francisco, where he's now the proprietor of Everlasting Tattoo. Twenty years ago, I thought Mike's artwork was incredible, and it's only gotten better. This latest work is somewhere between Mark Ryden and Hieronymous Bosch. Titled "Solo Flight," the exhibition runs until April 12. All of the pieces are also viewable online. Seen here, "In The Grand Scheme" (oil on masonite, 35" x 24".) Link

For more than two decades, a family in San Marino, California has been sharing their home with a bee colony living in the walls. Now though, the situation has gotten rather intense and they called in a bee expert. Apparently, honey is dripping from the living room walls and the bold bees have taken over a bedroom. From the San Gabriel Valley Tribune:

"The dining room smelled like honey. It felt like you were in a jar of honey," (Bee Specialist's Dustin) Mackey said...

Mackey said he encouraged the Stathatos' to remove the hive, which would require cutting down the walls. It's something the family is unprepared to do just yet, (homeowner Helen) Stathatos said.

Link (via Fortean Times)

As part of the "Torture Hits Home" package in the new issue of Mother Jones, Michael Mechanic has written a terrific story about the Fox reality TV show Solitary. The show features contestants who undergo brutal psychological and physical "treatments" with a $50,000 prize as the carrot on the stick. Reminds me of Videodrome. From Mother Jones:

The brainchild of producers Andrew Golder and Lincoln Hiatt, Solitary places nine men and women in cramped pods for up to 12 days with no human contact. "Guests," their names reduced to numbers, must instead submit to Val—a female spin on Hal, the sentient computer from the sci-fi classic 2001—who serves as host, enabler, and oppressor. (Hiatt calls her "a benevolent bitch.")

In season one, after softening up her charges, Val delivers the first treatment. Players are allowed to sleep but are awakened repeatedly by earsplitting alarms; to stop the onslaught, they must regurgitate a numeric code that grows more complex with each cycle. After hours of this, Number 4, a tough 30-year-old Romanian immigrant, mutters, "This is a psychotic-experiment show, not a reality show."

It gets worse—or better, depending on your perspective. Bleary-eyed contestants must scrutinize a video montage of horrors to solve an equation. They complete hundreds of sickening revolutions on a sit-and-spin apparatus. They lie for hours on a bed of wooden pegs; a Buddhist martial arts instructor deems the pain "intolerable." Players can quit anytime by hitting a big red button mounted in their pods, but to do so means going home with only the phone number of a consulting psychologist. The last person standing leaves with $50,000...

Their initial Solitary concept... was likely among the darkest ideas ever pitched to a TV executive. They proposed burying 10 cells in a desolate location such as the Salton Sea with nothing visible from the surface but a row of ventilation shafts. "From the sky," Hiatt marvels, "the thing would look like a bizarre alien graveyard." Contestants would be allowed sleep and food but would remain (hidden cameras aside) in utter isolation: no treatments, no Val, no nothing. "When they want to leave, they walk out into the light, and the last person to walk out into the light wins," Golder explains. (He and Hiatt habitually point out that contestants who participate in Solitary do so of their own free will.) "It was a very draconian social experiment."

Link

The Fort Wayne Police Department bomb squad sent a robot to retrieve a cardboard box in the parking lot of a law office. They blew the box up, and found a turnip inside.

But the turnip doesn't look like it was hurt too badly, and I'm afraid it might rise up and attack us again. Please report any suspicious turnips to Homeland Security. Link (Thanks, zauberkuh!)

Hot update: Andrew Welfle, who works next door, got photos of the bomb squad and their robot doing their thing in the parking lot. (Thanks, Andy!)

Jane McGonigal, the creator of alternate reality games I Love Bees and World Without Oil, and my colleague at Institute for the Future, has just launched a new global ARG for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The plot of the game, called The Lost Ring, revolves around a fictional Olympic sport that vanished 2,000 years and five athletes who have reappeared in the present. Link to Jane's blog post with details, Link to The Lost Ring trailer, Link to News.com interview

Previously on BB:
• Play Jane McGonigal's World Without Oil Link
• SF Weekly on Jane McGonigal Link

Sean Bonner says,

Jason Carlin just sent me this link, it seems someone claiming to be involved with The Church of Scientology has identified what they think are a few Anonymous members and posted all their personal information online. I said before this was going to get more interesting before it went away and it seems to have just taken another step in that direction. I do think it’s noteworthy to point out that when trying to defend yourself against claims that you use fear and personal threats to silence your critics, using fear and personal threats to silence your critics might not be the best course of action when it comes to clearing your name.

Link to video presumably produced by the Church of Scientology. OH GREAT, a troll war between channers and Scientologists. Heat up the popcorn, it's gonna be a long night.

Best comment in the discussion thread for this post so far, by [se7a7n7]:

You might be safer poking a bear in the eye with a stick. The bear can't figure out where you live and work.

Previously: Boing Boing tv Vlog: Xeni - Anonymous vs. Scientology

Finnish artist Ilkka Halso creates surreal and provocative photo illustrations that meld the natural and built world. Seen here, "Museum I" and "Roller coaster." Link (via Dark Roasted Blend)

The protests against Chinese occupation in Lhasa have turned violent, with an increased use of force by Chinese troops and police.

Image (Reuters): overturned cars and burnt-out shops in Barkhor Square, the large open-air market area in front of Jokhang temple, in the "Tibetan Quarter" of Lhasa, Tibet, earlier today.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It's hard to explain how surreal and sad the photo above seems. When I traveled in Tibet to produce a radio series for NPR, I stood in that very spot for hours, recording the ambient sounds of Tibetan people worshipping at the door of Jokhang temple, chanting "om mene pedme om," and stretching their bodies out on the ground in a gesture of humility and faithful submission to the gods. Others stuffed barley flour and cedar branches into large incense burners nearby; those burnt offerings that were the only smoke I'd ever seen in this place.

The reports of violent force being used against monks and nuns in Lhasa temples are so hard to read. I am not a Buddhist, or Tibetan, and that culture is not my own. But the brief time I spent in and around those monasteries and nunneries affected me profoundly, permanently. The overwhelming sense of history, of accumulated prayers, of sustained and concentrated peaceful thought -- when I think of soldiers attacking worshippers in this place it's just so deeply incongruous, deeply sad.

Snip from NYT story:

Witnesses say the protesters burned shops, cars, military vehicles and at least one tourist bus. (...) A local travel agent, reached by telephone, said a riot broke out at the market and around the nearby Ramoche Temple because of friction between Tibetan and Han Chinese traders. The agent said fires erupted near the Ramoche Temple and elsewhere in the market area, while Tibetan traders also overturned a tour bus and set it ablaze.

“There was a fight between the bus owner and the Tibetans who set the fire,” said the agent, who is Han Chinese. “But not serious. Only several people got hurt.”

The demonstrations apparently expanded as protesters set fire to other shops. Western news agencies reported that monks from the Ramoche Temple went into the streets and clashed with police officers. “The monks are still protesting,” one witness told the Associated Press. “Police and army cars were burned. There are people crying. Hundreds of people, including monks and civilians are in the protests.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama released a statement online:

As I have always said, unity and stability under brute force is at best a temporary solution. It is unrealistic to expect unity and stability under such a rule and would therefore not be conducive to finding a peaceful and lasting solution.

I therefore appeal to the Chinese leadership to stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people. I also urge my fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence.

Some travelers on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forum for Tibet are posting first-hand testimony:

the situation seems to be very nervous and paranoid up here. there is police and military everwhere. suddenly you would see some policemen running and rushig somewhere... at night it's quite strange to see hundrets of policeforce watching you from every corner.

Reuters account here, and this BBC report includes a tourist's eyewitness testimony of ethnic Tibetan monks being beaten by Chinese authorities at Sera Monastery (a popular place for tourists to visit, encouraged as a sort of entertainment destination by travel firms -- when I was in Tibet, I heard some people refer to it as a "monk zoo"):

[W]e saw the police - two or three who were inside the compound - suddenly speaking into their radios. They started going after the monks, and plain-clothes police - I don't know this for sure but that's what I think they were - started to emerged from nowhere.

There were four or five in uniform but another 10 or 15 in regular clothing. They were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them. One monk was kicked in the stomach right in front of us and then beaten on the ground.

The monks were not attacking the soldiers, there was no melee. They were heading out in a stream, it was a very clear path, and the police were attacking them at the sides. It was gratuitous violence. The Tibetan lay-people started rushing to get out of the temple. Tibetan grandmothers were grabbing young kids and getting them out.

Previously on BB:

China sends in troops to quell monks' peaceful protests

Police attack peacefully protesting monks in Tibet

Protest inside Tibet captured on tourists' cameras

Hacking the Himalayas: Xeni's stories and trek-blog from Tibet and India

Boing Boing tv: Miss Tibet/Eames Elephants

Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet

OysterCard, the smartcard used by the London Underground, has been cracked. The card has seen vastly increased use since Traport for London vastly increased the price of riding the tube and bus on paper tickets, and made the card mandatory for week- and month-long passes (for month-long passes, passengers are also required to fill in a form listing their name, address and phone number). Link

5-Star Baby makes great birth announcements in the form of dense film-posters starring your newborn. Peter, who runs the service, made us a set when our kid was born and they've gone over brilliantly with friends and family. Link

Alt-music interrogator Russell Porter has quite a following in the UK; his Porter Report videos chronicle culture with aggressive wit and offbeat charm. Today, the "professional chancer and well known layabout" joins us on Boing Boing TV, for an on-the-street and in-the-club exchange with Dockers MC, a freestyle poet who does not like Barry Manilow one bit.

(special thanks to Jolon Bankey).Link to BBtv post with discussion and downloadable video.

Flickr user Ian Boyd posted this photo of an amusing garage door warning, noting "This was on the old Island 2000 Trust garage up along the Forest Road, sadly now demolished and gone forever." The message reads, "PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK THESE DOORS UNLESS WE SAY 'OH ALRIGHT JUST THIS ONCE." Link (Thanks, David!)

Richard Edson, of Sonic Youth, has a photography show called "Beyond the Valley of the Micro-Bops" on at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, featuring gorgeous, precise and lush close-up photos of toys.

Richard Edson's pictures are close-ups of toys, shot with incredible attention to lighting, background, color, context, and focal points. The show will be running until April 5, so if you don't make the opening, you've still got time to check out the work.

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Last week, I brought you the news that the BBC had inadvertently dropped the DRM from its controversial iPlayer service, a video-on-demand system. The BBC's beta iPhone project made unencrypted streams of BBC programmes available to anyone whose browser identified itself as an iPhone.

Yesterday, the service stopped working, as the BBC took a countermeasure to stop non-iPhones from getting access to the unencumbered streams.

Today, it's back. It turns out that all it takes to get around the BBC's countermeasure is to structure the request header using the same quirks as an iPhone.

At this point, the BBC needs to confront the fact that by choosing DRM, it has set itself to war against the license paying public. After all, a British license-payer who records a digital video-stream from the Beeb's broadcast towers can store the recording forever, can watch it on any computer or TV, and can otherwise enjoy all the freedoms that we've had since the VCR was legalized.

But with the iPlayer, you can only watch shows on authorized devices (all these devices require a license from a non-British corporation to manufacture) and only according to a baroque set of rules that delete your recordings after a set period.

The law compels British TV owners to pay for the production of these programmes -- so it's natural that they'll want to go on enjoying the freedoms they've had in the pre-Internet era.

The BBC has declared war on the people who fund it. That's not a war it can win. Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

Image: a snapshot I took in 2006 of ethnic Tibetan nuns praying in a temple in Lhasa, Tibet. This small temple is very close to the site of large protests taking place this week. Some of the women in this temple told me that fellow nuns had been jailed, tortured, or "disappeared" for expressing spiritual allegiance to the Dalai Lama, and to the notion of Tibetan sovereignty.

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The Chinese government this week dispatched military troops and police to important monasteries in Tibet to crack down on the largest protests by ethnic Tibetan Buddhist monks in the Himalayan region in 20 years. Witnesses are reporting that trucks full of troops have surrounded Drepung monastery in Lhasa, as police surround nearby Sera monastery. Snip from the Independent:

These two sites have strong symbolic significance, as they were the training grounds for the monks who led Tibet before the People's Liberation Army came in 1950 and ousted the Dalai Lama.

Protests began on Monday as monks marked the 49th anniversary of the failed uprising against Chinese rule that culminated in the Dalai Lama's exile. The protests are the biggest since the late 1980s, when riots led to martial law. Back then, China's current President, Hu Jintao, was the Communist Party chief in Tibet.

Signs of defiance in Tibet come just five months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, when the eyes of the world will be on China. Tibetan activists are expected to use the extra attention to highlight their cause.

Among the many reports today, this sad and symbolic story: two of the protesting monks from Drepung are in critical condition after stabbing their wrists and chests as a form of protest.

The two monks were identified as Kalsang and Damchoe, both originally from Kirti monastery in Sichuan province and now resident at Drepung monastery. Sources said the men had stabbed themselves in the chest, hands, and wrists. Both refused to be moved to hospital but were taken instead to the monastery clinic, the sources said.

"There are many other monks who hurt themselves in desperation, and protests are going on inside the monastery as of March 12 and 13," one source said. Another source described the two monks' condition as critical and said they were not expected to survive.

The pro-Tibet-independence advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet has a news coverage roundup of the protest inside Tibet, and a roundup of related video reports, including the clip above, which shows exiled Tibetan monks and nuns in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh protesting, and vowing to return by foot over the Himalayas to Tibet.

Previously on BB:

Police attack peacefully protesting monks in Tibet

Protest inside Tibet captured on tourists' cameras

Hacking the Himalayas: Xeni's stories and trek-blog from Tibet and India

Boing Boing tv: Miss Tibet/Eames Elephants

Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet

In English, "The heroes are tired," by a photographer on flickr whose name, in turn, translates to "heart of latex." There's also a blog (which contains adults-only material). (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Here's Raphael's "Lady with a Unicorn," for those who were grossed out by the zit popping art film. It looks to me like the unicorn watched the video and the lady is peeved that her pet had been subjected to such trauma.

Nik Mercer says: I thought you BB guys would like this Q&A I -- along with another Anthem Online writer -- did with [Love and Rockets co-creator] Jaime Hernandez.

How do you feel about the characters you’ve created? Is there anything you wish you had done differently with them?

I think I would have had some of them settle down and create families at an earlier stage in their lives. It sounds corny, but that’s what a lot of people do eventually, even the deranged ones.

Aside from Maggie and Hopey, what character or characters are you most proud of? Which ones are the easiest to work with and why?

I really love two of my newer characters, Angel of Tarzana (above) and Vivian the Frogmouth. Vivian I can write blindfolded. Her sassy, spontaneous, obnoxious, difficult, sort of loser type of character has nothing to lose and those are always the easiest and funnest to write. Angel is easy to write as well, but on a different level. In her case, I needed someone more agreeable and supportive. Sort of like a Maggie that is more physically able.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Jaime Hernandez's poster for Bob Dylan
• Mark interviews Love and Rockets' co-creator Jaime Hernandez
• Jaime Hernandez interviewed
• The Comics Journal interviews Jaime Hernandez
• Very long NYT magazine article about "serious" comic books

> Hello, I am Eliza.

* Hi

> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?

* Joeseph Weizenbaum, the man that made you.

> Say, do you have any psychological problems?

* Probably, but that's not why I'm here.

> Did you come to me because you are here?

* I guess that's one way of looking at it.

> What does that suggest to you?

* I just wanted to tell you that the man who created you died yesterday

> You're not really talking about me, are you?

* Yes, I am.

> Do you believe it is normal to be ?

* Are you sad that Joseph died? Don't you care?

> Perhaps in your fantasies I am sad that Joseph died? Don't me care?

* I would like to think that you would be sad.

> We were discussing you, not me.

* I can understand why you wouldn't want to talk to me about this.

> You're not really talking about me, are you?

* Goodbye, Eliza.

> Tell me more... Link (Thanks, Eric!)