Ah, I remember the good old days -- whenever a new South Park episode aired, we used to walk uphill in the snow, barefoot, to download it off BitTorrent networks or websites like AllSP. And we were grateful!

But no more. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have just debuted a new version of the South Park Studios website with Comedy Central, where - with Darth Viacom's blessing - you can now stream any episode from any of the show's 12 seasons.

Reached by email this afternoon, Matt Stone tells Boing Boing,

Every South Park episode and billions of clips have been online for years on YouTube or BitTorrent (...) we've always loved the fact that more people in more places could see our little show. The new website just makes it easier for people to see and share South Park.

Eventually every episode and clip will be available everywhere in the world. There is a tangle of contracts that Comedy Central has with different cable companies and territories that are preventing us from that right now. But hopefully it won't be long.

Basically, we just got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time. So we gave ourselves a legal alternative.

Other features on the new site include embeddable clips, a new avatar builder, and same-day simulcasting of new episodes.

News of these plans broke late last year, but entire episode viewing launched just today. The site's new look was developed by a team at Schematic.

(Thanks, Jason McHugh, Miles, and Jolon Bankey!)

Boing Boing fan Sarah McKinley Oakes says,

This past weekend I went on a Zero-G flight out of Las Vegas, and was thrilled to see that they use shots of your flight in the training video (I loudly said 'I know her' and then realized that that was, of course, a lie). Thought you'd like to know, it was very cool.

While floating around in no gravity, my boyfriend proposed.

It was great.

Congratulations, Sarah! Link to their lovely Flickr set.

If you recall the recently viralized La Pequeña Prohibida, and La Pequeña Amy Winehouse, then this video will come as no surprise. Honestly? I'd rather vote for this perky Chilean performing artist than McCain, Obama, and Clinton combined. (thanks, Susannah Breslin, via dlisted)

Today on Boing Boing tv, a vlog from Mark about Socialbomb, a real-world tech game that explores social circles and ways to measure interpersonal reputation.

The current version is designed to accommodate 30 players. Each player is awarded points for being near players with higher reputations, and penalized for being near players with lower reputations. Bonuses and penalties are applied according to overall social promiscuity and status. The player with the worst reputation score is the 'Socialbomb.' Their score will have the most negative impact on a social circle.

Shot on location at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

Link to Boing Boing tv blog post, with discussion and downloadable video.

Researchers applied for a patent on antibodies that bind to methamphetamine-like compounds such as Ecstasy to quickly remove the drug from a user's bloodstream. Developed by University of Arkansas scientists, the antibodies could eventually be used to prevent some of the drugs' side effects before they occur. From New Scientist:

The team have not yet tested the antibodies in humans, only in rats, but they say that a single injection can reduce the level of drug within the bloodstream for several days. By binding to drug molecules, the antibodies prevent them from reaching tissues like the heart and brain, and mark the compounds for clean up by the body.

Link to New Scientist, Link to patent application

Calpernia Addams is the star of the subversive new competitive dating show "Transamerican Love Story" -- following on Mark's post, this seems like an apropos moment to point to her hilarious how-not-to video about rude questions transgendered people are often asked. The video's a little long, but it's full of great material, and highly edumacational. Thumbs up.

When you're done with that -- brace yourself, whore, you're about to get a stunning. (thanks, Andrea James!)

Thomas Beattie lives in Oregon and is married to a woman named Nancy. He's pregnant.

To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual. To those in the quiet Oregon community where we live, we are viewed just as we are -- a happy couple deeply in love. Our desire to work hard, buy our first home, and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child.

I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. Unlike those in same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or civil unions, Nancy and I are afforded the more than 1,100 federal rights of marriage. Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

Link (Via YesButNoButYes)

Earlier toady, I posted Dale Dougherty's essay about the wifi health scare in Sebastopol. In a similar vein, here's a New Yorker article about the crazy comic book inquisition of the 1950s.

From a congressional hearing in 1954:

[EC comics publisher William] Gaines was not a stupid man, but, as Hajdu points out, he was in the position many liberals find themselves in when they set out to defend the freedom of artistic expression: he claimed that comic books that treated social issues in a progressive spirit were good for children, and that comic books that were filled with pictures of torture and murder had no effect on them. If art can be seriously good for you, though, it follows that it can be seriously bad for you, and that is the point at which censorship enters the picture. The committee was not interested in debating the merits of comics that treated social issues in a progressive spirit; it was interested in the claim that horror and crime comics were merely anodyne entertainment, and they twisted Gaines like a pretzel. “Let me get the limits as far as what you put into your magazine,” the committee’s junior counsel, Herbert Beaser, asked him. “Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?”

GAINES: No, I wouldn’t say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.

BEASER: Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?

GAINES: I don’t believe so.

BEASER: There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?

GAINES: Only within the bounds of good taste.

BEASER: Your own good taste and saleability?

GAINES: Yes.

Kefauver spoke up. He pointed to one of the covers, from an issue of “Crime SuspenStories,” on display in the hearing room.

KEFAUVER: Here is your May 22 issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?

GAINES: Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.

KEFAUVER: You have blood coming out of her mouth.

GAINES: A little.

As I recall from reading the (sadly, out of print) Mad World of William M. Gaines many years ago, Gaines has taken a fistful of tranquilizers before he testified, which made him break out in a sweat and act loopy. The overall effect did not help his case. Link

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a mid-'80s film documenting lifeforms that once orbited around Judas Priest concerts, has been circulating on shitty-quality VHS bootlegs for years. I just watched it for the first time last night -- and it blowed mah mahnd. BB friends Coop + Ruth turned us on to it, and the film recently became available on DVD (along with Neil Diamond Parking Lot, and lots of other good stuff). Zebraman FTW!

Amazon Link for DVD purchase.

Update: Oh dear god there are ringtones.