The July, 1934 ish of Popular Science reported on this wonderful plan to exploit Soviet Turkestan by means of twin-barrelled, streamlined amphibious monorails to "whiz above desert sands on an overhead rail, or plunge into the water to ford a river."
A single overhead rail on concrete standards could be erected at low cost along these routes, engineers estimate. Air-propelled cars with twin, cigar-shaped hulls could straddle the track and glide along it, at speeds reaching 180 miles an hour, according to calculations based on tests of models at Moscow. The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each one would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load. Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.
Further to last night's post about Sequoia, the voting machine vendor that sent a legal threat to Ed Felten, the renowned Princeton prof who was tapped by the New Jersey's Union County to audit their Sequoia machines and make sure they're secure enough to use:
Union County has backed off a plan to let a Princeton University computer scientist examine voting machines where errors occurred in the presidential primary tallies, after the manufacturer of the machines threatened to sue, officials said today...
On the advice of county's attorneys, however, Rajoppi said today she must forego all plans for independent analysis.
"Wikihistory" is a delightful science fiction short story by Desmond Warzel in the form of a series of messages posted to a time-travellers' forum -- it's basically a Wikipedia edit war, where the old hands have to keep on slapping down the noobs for killing Hitler:
International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War
Page 263
11/15/2104
At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl's cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!
At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.
At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is about to follow Norway's NRK and become the first major North American broadcaster to release one of its shows as a DRM-free torrent:
Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada's public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada.
The CBC's mandate, as provided in the Broadcasting Act, requires it to make its programming "available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means." Using BitTorrent allows the CBC to meet its statutory mandate, yet with ISPs such as Rogers engaging in non-transparent traffic shaping, millions of Canadians may be unable to fully access programming funded by tax dollars. If the CBC experiment is successful, look for more broadcasters to do the same and for the CRTC to face mounting pressure to address net neutrality concerns.
Rob Cockerhamfrom Cockeyed.com is continuing his ongoing experiments with his Eyeclops magnifying digital camera, this time shooting high-mag photos of four different brands of ziploc seals.
The "double" seal is more robust, but it doesn't actually have more connection hooks. The "male" side of the single zipper seal is split, creating two independent hooks from one mushroom-cap shaft.
I wish I was a great notetaker/artist like Mike Rohde, who posted pages of his beautiful personal notes from SXSW Interactive 2008 on Flickr. Link(via Laughing Squid)
Dustin Carter is a high school wrestler from Hillsboro, Ohio. He doesn't have much in the way of arms or legs. This year, Carter made it all the way to the state wrestling championships.
Link to YouTube video of a match, Link and Link to Cincinnati Enquirer coverage (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)
Matt Springer interviewed Johnny Hiro creator Fred Chao for HeavyInk.
It's rare that a new series will grab you by the back of the head and smack your face into a soft, comfy cushion of fun goodness. Yet that's exactly what Johnny Hiro does. It's hard to describe in the usual Hollywood pitch-style loglines -- "Scott Pilgrim meets Bruce Lee and dates an adorable girl in a fantastically weird New York City" is about as close as you'll get, but even that doesn't convey the pure energy and enthusiasm evident in every panel of Johnny Hiro.
An illustrator and graphic designer by trade, writer/artist Fred Chao has published three issues of Johnny Hiro through AdHouse Books. He took some time to talk about his influences and inspirations, as well as the background on how Johnny Hiro came to be.
I'll be a guest on G4 TV's "Attack of the Show" today, for a discussion about the blocking of YouTube, Google News, and other sites (including Boing Boing) in China in the wake of recent violence in Tibet. Link. Update: video's online, embedded above.
No details yet, but an aide has reported that Arthur C. Clarke, luminous fiction author and progenitor of geosynchronous communication satellites (among other novel notions), has passed away in Sri Lanka at 90.
Here's a quick how-to that shows you how to modify a single use camera so that it shocks the person when they press the shutter button. The video includes a bunch of clips of unwitting suckers using the camera.
UPDATE: let it be known that I consider shocking someone to be a crappy, unfunny prank.
Link
Pennsylvania-based artist Mark Dion is an artist whose installations explore ideas of scientific taxonomy, naturalist collection, curation, and exhibition, from museums to cabinets of curiosity. His most recent show, at New York City's Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, has just closed but fortunately his Web site and Flickr stream contains a slew of images from his various projects. (Click photos above for larger images.) Link to Mark Dion's Bartram's Travels, Link to Dion's Flickr stream (via Morbid Anatomy)
Note: From time to time we're going to be promoting especially wonderful comments (for all values of "wonderful") to the front page. This is Pipenta in "The science fiction book art of Richard Powers" thread, writing in response to someone who looked at Powers' art and said he must have been on drugs.
These look so dang familiar. I read a lot of science fiction back in the sixties and seventies. I picked up a lot of it secondhand. I know I've had books with this cover art. I wish there were examples of what they looked like as finished book designs. I'd love to see the titles.
@ #2 About drug addicts...
Jeff, I think you are huffing something.
Having attended a couple of big-name art schools back in the day (and by back in the day, I mean in the late 70's when drug use was common and open) and having visited and met artists from a number of other art schools during that time, I can assure you that there really is no noticeable difference between artwork made by drug users and artwork made by non-drug users.
We could fill a gallery the size of Grand Central Station with art, half by people who never touched drugs and the other half by people who "inhaled". You would not have any clue. You'd have no way of telling which was which.
I'm not saying that substances get mixed up with chemistry don't effect art output. I'm saying you could not tell. There is no consistent style, or technique, no way you could tell. No more than you could tell from reading a passage of text if the writer had been drinking.
Being an artist, doing art, involves operating at many levels. There's a cocktail of components such as learned skills, physical dexterity, life experience, personality, perceptual ability and more. Those are just off the top of my head. Someone who does a lot of their art, be it visual or musical, dance or theater or the written word, has a lot going on when they do it. Some processes are very much the active here and now, some are happening at a deeper intuitive level. The latter are where your history and training and experience come in to play.
Some folks, folks who either cannot or will not do art, see artists as savant, mystical or idiot. It isn't magic. It isn't one process happening. Art is not the same combination of processes for everyone.
And stoners don't necessarily make paintings like these.
Andrea Bailey of Ashland, Kentucky bought a pack of straws at Wal-Mart for her 3-year-old-daughter a couple weeks ago. The pack had a variety of shapes, including a heart, but also two that she says look like penises. Bailey was quite upset and complained to the store. Wal-Mart says it has pulled the product, manufactured by Eagle Marks Corporation, from its shelves as they investigate the matter. ("That's my hometown!" says my wife. -ed) From WSAZ.com:
“There are two of them that are shaped like the male private area,” said Bailey. “I called Wal-Mart and they very rude with me about it. They acted like I was lying, like I was making it all up. You know, I would never make something up like that, especially about my little girl. But, that's just how they treated me and it’s just not right.”
Prince Philip, who is married to the Queen of England, is a lot like Barbara Bush. They are both so out of touch with non-zillionares that they think of people as a kind of funny farm animal and blithely make fun of them to their faces.
Memorable quotes from Philip:
To a driving instructor in Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
To a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: "You look as if you’re ready for bed."
On seeing a fuse box filled with wires, during a visit to an electronics company: "This looks like it was put in by an Indian."
To a chubby 13-year-old boy at a space exploration exhibit, pointing to a space capsule: "You’ll have to lose weight if you want to go in that."
To a smoke-detector activist who lost two of her children in a house fire: "My smoke alarm is a damn nuisance. Every time I run my bath, the steam sets it off and I’ve got firefighters at my door."
To members of the British Deaf Association, while pointing to a loudspeaker playing Caribbean music: "No wonder you are deaf."
To a tourist, during a state visit to Hungary: "You can’t have been here long, you’ve not potbelly."
Speaking to British students studying in China: "If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed."
On the "key problem" facing Brazil: "Brazilians live there."
On his daughter Princess Anne: "If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested."
On seeing a picture once owned by England’s King Charles I in the Louvre in Paris: "So I said to the Queen, ‘Shall we take it back?’"
Lefkos Hajji of London put a $12,000 engagement ring in a helium balloon, intending for his girlfriend to pop the balloon when he popped the question. Bad idea. The ring floated away into the sky like so many ideas that seemed good at the time. And now his girlfriend apparently won't talk to him until he gets another ring. Link
Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni speaks with defense technology journalist Noah Shachtman about the role technology plays in the Iraq war. This episode is part of our ongoing series of interviews with some of the thinkers, hackers, and tinkerers at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference this year.
Physician Henry Marsh has been using a standard Bosch power drill to do brain surgery. Twice a year, the London-based surgeon assists colleague Igor Petrovich in Kiev, Ukraine where high-end medical equipment, such as a £30,000 medical drill, is unavailable. So Marsh improvised. From The Times:
Mr Marsh has now taken a drill designed for medical use to Kiev. “I’m not recommending that we should all use Bosch do-it-yourself drills in England,” Mr Marsh said. “But it shows how with improvisation you can achieve a lot. I’ve taught [Mr Petrovich] everything I know. Now he’s able to do things that I can’t.”
* Above: cellphone video of thousands of monks and laypeople protesting at Labrang monastery Xiahe, Gansu province in China. March 15, 2008.
* Left: The dead bodies of eight protesters were brought into Ngaba Kirti Monastery yesterday, in the Ngaba area of Tibet. The caption on this image from phayul.com indicates that observers are throwing money on the corpses as a customary expression of grief. Students for a Free Tibet posted reports that more than 20 protesters were killed at Ngaba. Here are photos of the dead (warning: graphic). Copies of the same photos are here.
* Here is the first-person account of Spence Palermo, a sound technician and filmmaker from Oregon, who was on location at that monastery working on a TV program for National Geographic last Saturday when the protests erupted. He sent this email to friends from China, where the crew is finishing production: Link
Sources in the city said 600 people had been detained on Saturday and another 300 had been picked up on Sunday. They said it was not clear where those rounded up were being detained because the main Drapchi prison in Lhasa is believed to be virtually full.
Those detained could be taken to the old Number One prison in the Sangyip district in the northeast of Lhasa that is not currently believed to be in use. They may be held in the nearby Number Four detention centre and the New Lhasa prison in the same district that has recently been used as a re-education-through-labour centre. They could even be taken to the new Chushur prison some distance outside Lhasa where most political prisoners are believed to be jailed after sentencing.
These prison facilities are as notorious for human rights violations in Tibet as Abu Ghraib is in Iraq.
"If the Tibetans were to choose the path of violence, he would have to resign because he is completely committed to nonviolence," [aide] Tenzin Taklha said. "He would resign as the political leader and head of state, but not as the Dalai Lama. He will always be the Dalai Lama."
What will Google do to restore access to YouTube and Google News inside China? China is a big market that Google needs to be a player in. Will it voluntarily strip out all videos or news items about Tibet? Or will the Chinese government just figure out how to strip them out itself? There is a precedent here: in China you cannot find a lot of information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on the Web, including the famous image of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks.
* US president George Bush removed China from a list of top world human rights violators just 3 days before the violence erupted in Tibet. Snip from today's New York Times editorial, "China Terrorizes Tibet":
In its annual human rights report on 190 countries, the State Department conceded that Beijing’s overall performance remained poor. But in what looked like a political payoff to a government whose help America desperately needs on difficult problems, the department dropped China from its list of 10 worst violators.
Whatever gain China may have gotten from being elevated above the likes of North Korea, Myanmar, Iran and Sudan was lost by the crackdown on Tibet.
China had a chance to shine for its Olympic coming-out party and is blowing it. Its leaders will continue to have to battle protests and unrest — and endure international reproach — until they ensure more freedom for all their citizens, including greater religious tolerance and freedom for Tibet.
* Many Boing Boing readers in China have written in to report that they can no longer access our website without censorware workarounds, because of the Tibet-related content on Boing Boing. Chris in China explains:
Just letting you know that since boingboing started reporting on Tibet it's been routinely blocked here in China. I don't think it's a very specific block as in "youtube is blocked", but rather that the Great Firewall is finding "Tibet" as a keyword and blocking it then. It's been better today, when I can load most of the page before it switches to "Connection Reset", but what bits I can load are really barebones without youtube (which, as you reported, is blocked) and flickr (which seems to be blocked AGAIN here).
I can access the site through a web proxy ( gladder for firefox comes as a strong recommendation ) however, videos still won't work, and this is exceptionally slow.
One more interesting point, I saw briefly on boing boing where you wrote about Native Chinese antipathy to those "ungrateful" Tibetans. This seems to be the consensus of my students as well. I had them read an article from the NY Times that I had printed that showed the difference in quotes between Chinese authorities ( 8 people dead, no soldiers, no guns) and what Tibetans and reports have confirmed (80 confirmed dead, soldiers, tanks, gunfire throughout the day). My students' response to this was, "well of course they say that. They are foreign. They do not know." (paraphrase). Put it simply-- even when confronted with such blatant contradiction, the students still believed their government.
This is nothing unusual for the multitude of students I've talked to about censorship. They honestly believe that governmental censorship protects them from foreign lies and "The Bad Things" (as one class a year ago referred to it. When I asked what "the bad things" were, they really had no answer. Finally one student piped up, "we don't know because our government protects us from it!"). I know this is not a universal attitude here in China, but I think it is an interesting anecdote, and important to keep in mind when contemplating the average Chinese Netizen and her response to blatant censorship.
* There is a flood of reports today about new protests, new arrest sweeps, and new deaths and injuries related to Tibetan independence protests throughout the Tibetan Autonomous Region and elsewhere around the world. Some Tibet-specific blogs and news sites I'm following to keep up with that news: Phayul; Canada Tibet Committee newsroom; SFT, TCHRD; this blog from a tourist in Tibet. Wired's Threat Level blog has a comprehensive roundup of first-person accounts here.
Currency exchange outlets in Amsterdam won't to trade US dollars for euros because the value of the dollar is dropping so quickly they're afraid of losing money, even with the outlandish vigorish the sleazy little joints usually tack on.
The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.
"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."
My friend, Hillary Carlip, likes to collect other people's discarded shopping lists. She likes them so much she created an art project based on the lists. She has a new book out called A la Cart: The Secret Lives of Grocery Shoppers, in which she imagines the identity of the shopper and assumes their identity and creates a story about them.
Taking her clues from the items listed, the types of paper written on, the handwriting, and even misspellings ("Aunt Spray"), Hillary saw that each list -- at once mundane and personal -- offered an intimate peek into a complete stranger's life. She picked twenty-six lists and imagined who the shoppers might be. She next transformed herself into all twenty-six people, one by one, literally stepping into each character -- all ages, genders, and ethnicities -- with hair, make-up, outfits, and one Fu Manchu. Photographer Barbara Green then captured unforgettable images of Hillary portraying these shoppers at their neighborhood markets.
Hillary came to love these characters, so her accompanying stories for each are as poignant and hilarious as the photographs. She brings to life richly imagined inner worlds, including one for macho Woody, a self-described "Lady's Man with NO BANKRUPTCIES ready to meet just one Special Lady with NO KIDS."
East Bay hardware hacker Tom Sepe refitted a 1967 Tote-Gote offroad motorcycle to run all-electric, then modded the chassis in steampunk finery, including gorgeous inlaid panels and a whistling steam-boiler hanging off the back-end. Be sure to catch the video!
When I was building it, I took a fire extinguisher tank. It all came down to aesthetics. I was looking at my drawings, figuring out where it would go. The steam boiler came from an aesthetic need, form before function. And the fire extinguisher fit what I wanted. So I cut a hole in the bottom of the tank, slipped a pipe in it, welded it on both sides. So that then I had a chamber with a through tube, which became the flame tube. It's not very efficient; there should be more coils in there. But on the other hand, if I crank it up really high, then you get flames shooting out the back of the bike. Which is cool.
I like this remixed Levi's logo in which the poor, whipped horsies finally get their revenge -- a chance to draw-and-quarter a pair of 501s for the promise of a carrot, rather than the threat of a whip.
Link
(Thanks, Anton!)
Designers Jung-Hyun Lee, Won-Sik Chae and Rhea Jeong have prototyped this "Abracadabra" bookmark that uses a little air-filled bladder to lift the page at the right spot. I think it'd fall out if placed at the page side, as shown here, but it would work pretty well if placed at the spine, in the crease of the binding.
Link
From the April, 1923 ish of Popular Science, a ZOMG-worthy proposal to moor stately airships to the masts of titanic, biplane-sporting steamships on transoceanic journeys as a means of preparing for the next Great War.
CONVINCED that battle fleets of the future will require the aid of rigid airships as long range scouts, aeronautic experts recently have suggested an ingenious method of mooring rigids to the mast of a moving depot ship at sea, as pictured above.
The depot ship, preferably a converted cruiser, has a hangar forward for small fighting planes, with a launching deck from which the planes are seen taking off to protect the rigid as it returns from a trip.
Topping a raised tripod mast is a mooring device to which the airship is anchored, while projecting from each side of the vessel are other tripods carrying guide ropes that hold the airship’s bow in position as its nose cone is hauled down to the mooring device.
ThinkGeek has a sweet, 25-piece survival kit inside a sardine tin (better hope the pull-tab doesn't come off -- haven't they ever read Three Men in a Boat?). The virtues of sardine cans ("air-tight, waterproof, crushproof") make them a pretty good medium for long-term survival gear storage, I suppose.
The kit includes one of each of the following items: non-aspirin pain reliever, adhesive bandage, alcohol prep pad, antibiotic ointment, book of matches, compass, chewing gum, sugar, salt, energy nugget, duct tape, fire starter cube, first aid instructions, fish hook & line, note paper, pencil, razor blade, safety pin, reflective signal surface, tea bag, waterproof bag, whistle, and wire clip.
Andy Baio has a new hobby: hunting down VHS tapes about the Internet from the early-to-mid 1990s, digitizing them and putting them online as historical curios. Here's a 32 minuted video called "Internet Power!" from 1995 -- as Andy notes, "while most of these are pretty corny -- think Gabe and Max's Internet Thing -- they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don't exist anywhere else. The Internet Archive's earliest snapshots were in late 1996, so anything before that is extremely sparse."
"A Web site is like a book that is divided into chapters. By clicking on the hypertext links, you choose which pages you want to view in the book. A Home Page is like the first page of the book, with a Table of Contents and general introduction into what is contained in the site."
Dustin Carter is a high school wrestler from Hillsboro, Ohio. He doesn't have much in the way of arms or legs. This year, Carter made it all the way to the state wrestling championships.
It's rare that a new series will grab you by the back of the head and smack your face into a soft, comfy cushion of fun goodness. Yet that's exactly what Johnny Hiro does. It's hard to describe in the usual Hollywood pitch-style loglines -- "Scott Pilgrim meets Bruce Lee and dates an adorable girl in a fantastically weird New York City" is about as close as you'll get, but even that doesn't convey the pure energy and enthusiasm evident in every panel of Johnny Hiro.
Here's a quick how-to that shows you how to modify a single use camera so that it shocks the person when they press the shutter button. The video includes a bunch of clips of unwitting suckers using the camera.
“There are two of them that are shaped like the male private area,” said Bailey. “I called Wal-Mart and they very rude with me about it. They acted like I was lying, like I was making it all up. You know, I would never make something up like that, especially about my little girl. But, that's just how they treated me and it’s just not right.”
Wooster Collective posted these two nice examples of street art.
Here's a set of six "Drunken Salaryman" cellphone charms that depict increasing stages of intoxication. Shown above: Stage 5: The Barfing Drunk.
Mr Marsh has now taken a drill designed for medical use to Kiev. “I’m not recommending that we should all use Bosch do-it-yourself drills in England,” Mr Marsh said. “But it shows how with improvisation you can achieve a lot. I’ve taught [Mr Petrovich] everything I know. Now he’s able to do things that I can’t.”
