London-based artist Mandy Sutcliffe draws absolutely lovely artwork of children. Sutcliffe illustrates children's books and also sells prints of her wonderful art on Etsy, under the name of Belle & Boo. From an interview with Sutcliffe last year in Venus Zine:

When I asked Sutcliffe why she is interested in drawing children, she told me about time she spent in Paris during an exchange with her university. "The Parisian children had such an elegant, old fashioned charm about them, very classic clothes and hair styles. They reminded me a lot of the characters from my favorite childhood story books," she says. It is evident she has glorious memories of her childhood story books because the images she sketches are nothing short of innocent magic. She assures me that this inspiration goes deeper than just nostalgia and sweet sentiments. Even at a young age she appreciated the craft of illustrating. "I remember winning a book token when I was 9 and buying The Water Babies, illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell, purely because of the beautiful paintings. I still go back to it for inspiration."

Link to Belle & Boo shop on Etsy, Link to Venus Zine interview (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)

Please indulge me. How often does someone get to wish their grandmother a happy 107th birthday?

(Here's a photo of my grandfather, who passed away at age 75 or so).

I'm curious -- how many Boing Boing readers have relatives 107 or older?

Johnny Lee, who wrote an article for MAKE 01 on making a $14 video camera stabilizer, demonstrated his awesome Wii remote hacks at the TED 2008 conference. Link

The Rules of Thumb website, created by Rules of Thumb author Tom Parker, is off and running, with thousand of user-submitted rules of thumb. Some are more useful than others, but they are almost always interesting.

DIRECTION CONVEYS TIME AND EMOTION
In advertising, art and photography, the direction the subject is looking or the flow of the composition can affect the tone of the image. Left is the past, right is the future, up is positive, down is negative. For example: a subject looking up and to the right is looking positively into the future. Submitted by: Jeremy Reid, Graphic Designer, Belleville, Ontario, Canada

MAXIMUM VALUE OF A SERVICE The value of any service is highest *before* the service has been rendered.

FINDING SMALL THINGS ON THE FLOOR To find something very small that you have dropped on the floor, lay a flashlight on the floor and rotate it. A small object looks a lot bigger when it has a shadow too.

WALKING WITH SMALL CHILDREN When walking with small children who are falling behind, the slower you walk, the slower they will walk, until they stop. If you maintain your pace, they will keep up with you, albeit somewhat behind.

Link

Erik says: "The Bush administration is planning to move its primary foot-and-mouth research lab to the continental United States. Foot-and-Mouth, you will recall, is incredibly contagious and has several times led to enormous livestock extermination campaigns to halt the spread of the disease. Yet, believe it or not, one of the top contenders for the research site is Kansas. And, if that’s not enough, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas actually wants the lab built in his state — 'It will mean jobs,' he says. I’m trying to persuade myself that this entire article isn’t actually a piece done by the Onion."

One such government report, produced last year and already turned over to lawmakers by the Homeland Security Department, combined commercial satellite images and federal farm data to show the proximity to livestock herds of locations that have been considered for the new lab. "Would an accidental laboratory release at these locations have the potential to affect nearby livestock?" asked the nine-page document. It did not directly answer the question.

A simulated outbreak of the disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.

Link

Everybody's favorite space dog Laika now has a statue near Moscow's Military Medicine Institute! In 1957, Laika became the first living creature (from our planet, anyway) to orbit the Earth. Todd Lappin has more on Laica over at Telstar Logistics.
Link

Will Mann of LA Metblogs took this amazing photo of a passion flower being serviced by a carpenter bee.

There’s a bank of passion flowers blooms off the Ballona Creek Bikeway east of Sepulveda Boulevard that have been calling to me and my camera for about two weeks, but only on this morning were the timing and weather conditions right to find them soaking up the full illumination of the morning sun. As an added serendipitous bonus I was getting a macro shot of this blossom when the Biggest Fucking Loudest Bumble Carpenter Bee Ever that I named Maverick, buzzed the tower that is my head without proper authorization and came in for a landing to add to the already copious amount of pollen it was already packing on its back.

Link

Here are five great tips from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders on "getting unstuck" when you are procrastinating or don't know how to move forward.

Hack your way out of writer’s block - “Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.”

Solve problems by writing a note to yourself - “Seriously, open up your email program, type in your own email address, then choose a brilliant subject line that perfectly encapsulates your particular problem.”

Do a fast “mind-sweep” - “And as long as you let that stuff accumulate as chunky deposits on the edges of your perception, it’s very unlikely it’ll get done since — well — they won’t get done until they’re been captured and properly started, right?”

Cringe-Busting your TODO list - “Per cringe item, think honestly about why you’re freaked out about it. Seriously. What’s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you’re already way overdue?)”

Patching your personal suck - “Every patch that fails teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. Mistakes, as they say, can be a buddhist gift.”

Link

According to Wikipedia, Raymond Zinke Gallun (rhymes with "balloon") "was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He lived a drifter's existence, working a multitude of jobs around the world in the years leading up to World War II." At least a few people have said that The Planet Strappers is an underrated science fiction novel.

The Planet Strappers started out as The Bunch, a group of student-astronauts in the back room of a store in Jarviston, Minnesota. They wanted off Earth, and they begged, borrowed and built what they needed to make it. They got what they wanted--a start on the road to the stars--but no one brought up on Earth could have imagined what was waiting for them Out There!

Link to free ebook

KCET has a series of fantastic video interviews with LA cartoonists, including Jaime Hernandez (shown here), Johnny Ryan, Carol Lay, Esther Pearl Watson, and Mark Todd. Link

Lenore Skenazy wrote a piece for the April 4 edition of the New York Sun about letting her 9-year-old son find his way home from downtown NYC using the subway system. Many people were upset with her.

Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.

Link

The Orlando Sentinel has an article and video about empty-nesters who buy monkeys and raise them as surrogate children.

Many self-described "monkey people" don't dare call them pets. They are playfully referred to as "monkids" and reared in a world of pierced ears, monogrammed clothes, a seat at the dinner table and their own bedrooms.

At Gemini Springs in DeBary recently, Johnson pushed "Jessy" around in a toy-filled red stroller, a sight that drew attention. "Hey, it's a real monkey," hollered one youngster, who did a double take.

Johnson replied with a grin: "That's not a monkey; that's my kid."

Link

This delightful set of psychonalyst finger puppets features Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Carl Jung, and, naturally, a shrink's couch. What perfect props for playing mind games! The set is $20 from UncommonGoods.
Link (via Mind Hacks)

Mother Jones has published an investigation of Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), a private security firm that the report claims was paid by corporate client to spy on Greenpeace, the Center for Food Safety, and other environmental concerns. Run by former spooks, the company allegedly employed police to help dig through garbage seeking intelligence on groups that may have included the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, the Environmental Media Services, and others. Beckett Brown International dissolved in 2001. From Mother Jones:

According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.

In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records, BBI engaged in "intelligence collection" for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; it handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance," and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.

Link

Quantum computing is getting quite the buzz, but there are other bizarre computer architectures bubbling and buzzing away in research laboratories. New Scientist compiled a survey of the "Ten Weirdest Computers," from reversible chips that recover energy usually lost with each operation, to magnetic (NMR) computing that leverages the dynamics of molecular interactions, to slime mold computers. From New Scientist:

Toshiyuki Nakagaki at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Nagoya, Japan, has shown that slime mould can work out the shortest route through a maze.

In his experiments, the masses of independent amoeba-like cells that act as a single organism would initially spread out to explore all the possible paths of a maze.

But when one train of cells found the shortest path to some food hidden at the maze's exit the rest of the mass stopped exploring. The slime mould then withdrew from the dead end routes and followed the direct path to the food.

Link

Sadly, a supplier of "hillbilly" teeth has recalled the wonderful product due to lead paint concerns. More on this alarming development over at BBG. (Mark F. used to wear a set of these frequently. Maybe that's why he makes so many typos.)
Link

Christine Ruther, 19, brought her baby along with two three accomplices to rob a candy store in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. From Local12.com:

Police say Ruther took her baby out of a stroller so they could fill it with $400 worth of candy.

Officers followed a trail of candy wrappers to Fourth and Race Streets, where they arrested...

Link (via Fortean Times)

Forbes Traveler has a rundown on costly bottled water, such as Berg, made from ice-age Arctic icebergs, and Bling, which comes in a bottle emblazoned with fake diamonds. I don't know which more obviously brands you a fool: being seen with a bottle of Bling, or sporting a forehead tattoo.

Initially introduced only to "hand-selected athletes and actors," Bling H2O is now available to the rest of us mere mortals. It has made appearances at the MTV Music Video and Emmy awards, but did anyone tell the celebs the water comes from Dandridge, Tennessee? Never mind, the point in this case is not what's in the bottle as it is what's on it: Swarovski crystals spelling out "bling." The frosted glass bottle is labeled "Limited Edition Spring Water" and is sealed with a cork.

You can buy Bling H2O in bottles without crystals, but why would you? $441 per case of 12 bottles (750ml)

Per 750ml bottle: $36.75

Link

Adam Rice and Phillip Lamb were both unable to comment, so they sent me letters.

ADAM RICE:

I hope you're the right person to contact; if not, my apologies.

We need a better way for readers to tell us about technical problems. One of our suggested mechanisms is to have a front-page link to a form for reporting glitches, much like the link for submitting suggestions for stories. Until then, we'll all keep improvising.

The last couple of times I've tried to leave a comment on Boingboing, I've gotten the following error:

---
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:
Text entered was wrong. Try again.
---

I admit this may be true in an epistemological sense, but in a formal sense, the text I entered was entirely innocuous.

Would you believe I've occasionally been getting that one too? I don't know why that error message turns up. I wish it weren't even in the system. It keeps giving readers the idea that we use automated content-based message filtering, and that something they've written has infracted the filters' rules.

Not so. The only content-based filters on Boing Boing are the people who edit it. If you get an error message saying "Text entered was wrong," it's the error message that's in error.

Back to Adam Rice:

The other interesting thing is that the dynamic.boingboing.net page where this appears shows me as logged out, although I am logged in from the main boingboing page, or gadgets.

I feel your pain. I had the same problem for a couple of days this week. David Harmon's reported it too.

My comments were not such pearls that the Internet cannot function without their presence, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention.

Well said, and thank you for bringing those problems to our attention.

Onward to:

PHILLIP LAMB:

Hi there - not sure if you're the right person to send this to, but I can't seem to find a tech email on BoingBoing's site. ... Hope I'm not inconveniencing you!

Not at all. We really do want to hear about technical problems.

I and other people have had trouble submitting comments lately, getting a "Text entered was wrong. Try again" error message.

It seems like the following is happening:

1. User logs in

2. User does logged-in user stuff, including commenting.

3. User goes to sleep, or hibernates, or eats a Polish Sausage or whatever.

4. User comes back to BoingBoing, bleary-eyed because it's 3am and when you gotta get your fix you gotta get your fix.

5. User's session has timed out (rut roh!) but due to either a caching bug or perhaps a session timeout bug, the comment form still shows up.

6. User submits a comment, but sadly it doesn't go through, and they see, "Text entered was wrong. Try again."

7. User wrecks their apartment with a frying pan.

8. User eventually logs back in and is able to comment normally.

We're sorry about your apartment--and, presumably, your frying pan.

This is my hypothesis, and I've tested it (somewhat) and it seems valid. Just letting ya know. I'll email this to whatever email address I can find for your admin, assuming I can find one.

Thanks! I'm pretty sure the Polish sausage is a local artifact. The rest, we'll have to have a look at.

What hardware and browser were you using? (Adam, same question.)

---

UPDATE: Semiotix comments:

I'm very disappointed to hear that the "Text entered was wrong" message is simply an indication of some sort of login error.

I've gotten the message several times, and, assuming that it was autogenerated in response to wrong ideas, have modified my beliefs (and comments) accordingly until I reached--so I thought--right text, and therefore right thinking.

Now you tell me that I haven't been engaged in a Socratic struggle for truth all this past week? That I changed my beliefs for no reason?! Well, thanks for nothing.

Michael Holloway from the Open Rights Group conducted a fantastic, in-depth business-analysis of Magnatune, the open/free commercial record label that uses free, Creative Commons licensed music to sell commercial licenses. Magnatune has blazed a lot of new trail -- especially in "secondary" genres like classical (Magnatune has experienced 20 percent annual growth in classical sales at a time when industry-wide classical sales have fallen 90 percent).

Magnatune’s most popular genre by far — with 30% of sales — is classical, followed by new age, electronica and rock, which represent around 10% of sales each. The classical market is in serious decline: In 1980, classical recordings comprised 20% of the industry’s revenue, which dropped to 2% by 2000, and to 0.75% in 2006. Yet Magnatune has seen 20% growth annually since autumn 2003.

John recognises that obscurity is a musician’s biggest hurdle, and his innovative approach to overcoming it is to provide ‘open music’, which is “shareable, available in ‘source code’ form, allows derivative works and is free of cost for non-commercial use.”

Shareable: Users are invited to share their purchased tracks with up to three friends, can listen to the entire catalogue for free via the website’s 128kbps streams, and can download any song as a 128kbps MP3 file.

Available as ‘source code’: Ten per cent of the catalogue is also available in its component parts, e.g. scores, lyrics, MIDI files, samples or track-by-track audio files.

Derivative works: The CC licence used by Magnatune explicitly permits users to make derivative works - such as remixes, cover songs and sampling - for non-commercial purposes, which is further facilitated by the provision of the ‘source code’.

Free for non-commercial use: Users can download songs for non-commercial projects, such as a home video soundtrack or compilation album intended for family or friends.

Link

Chris sez, "British MP Austin Mitchell has finally started trying to get the government to talk sense into the mob of self-appointed goons and bullyboy rentacops who try to stop you taking shots in perfectly legal, public domain areas. About time too."

"People have complained about photographers being stopped from taking pictures by police, PCSOs, wardens and by various officious people," he said.

"People have a right to take photographs and to start interfering with that is crazy. It seems crazy when the streets are festooned with closed-circuit television cameras that the public should be stopped from using cameras.

"The proliferation of digital cameras and mobile phones with cameras means that everybody carries a camera these days."

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Avatar Machine, by designer Marc Owens, is a wearable device that simulates the experience of third-person gaming environments.

By wearing this costume and head-mounted camera with VR goggles, a user can view themselves as a sort of virtual character while moving around and interacting in the real world.

Owens created Avatar Machine to explore whether such a device would grant users "a diminished sense of social responsibility (...) and demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment." In other words, turn them into instant board trolls.

Owens, 26, is a design student at the Royal College of Art, and lives in East London. An earlier version of this experiment from Owens circulated around the web in 2007.

In part one of today's Boing Boing tv episode, we premiere an all-new experiment with Avatar Machine -- live beta testing conducted in 2008, in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Here, the user (Owens) flirts with Harajuku hotties, then almost gets his ass kicked (for real!) by some Japanese rockabilly gangster dudes.

In part two of today's show, Xeni speaks with Owens over a Skype video connection, live from his studio in East London.

Link to Boing Boing tv episode, with discussion and downloadable video. (special thanks to Susannah Breslin)

A satellite is being abandoned in orbit because its position can't be corrected without violating a Boeing patent on lunar flyby:

The AMC-14 commercial geostationary satellite was launched in March by a Proton launch vehicle into space just short of its minimum geostationary transfer orbit (GTO)...

However, SpaceDaily has now learned that a plan to salvage AMC-14 was abandoned a week ago when SES gave up in the face of patent issues relating to the lunar flyby process used to bring wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit.

Sources have told SpaceDaily that it was possible to bring AMC-14 back via the moon to a stable GEO orbit where the high powered satellite would have been able to operate for at four years and probably longer.

Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legally "trite", as basic physics has been rebranded as a "process", and that the patent wouldn't stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time because "the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters".

Link (via /.)

(Image: Patents are only for the old machine, a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licensed image from Adulau's Flickr stream)

Stefan sez,

The Prelinger Archives is an incredible collection of old films, many of them accessible via its website.

In addition to old industrial films, quaint hygiene lessons for teenagers, and jaw-dropping things like footage of pre-1906 quake San Francisco, the site now features contributed mashups.

I particularly like "Planet Earth: Our Response," a dreamy mix of archive footage (assembled to look like an introduction to Earth culture) and shots of a guy mucking around with an alien probe.

Link

De Grisogono Meccanico DG is an all-mechanical "digital" watch that uses a wind-up mechanism to rearrange the "pixels" on its face to update the time. Only 177 will be made, which lets me out, but it doesn't stop me from drooling. Link (Thanks, Dan!)

Bruce Schneier's launched his annual "Movie Plot Threat Contest," in which he challenges his readers to come up with ridiculous threat-scenarios (think of blowing up an airplane armed with nothing but some optimistic misapprehensions about organic chemistry, Tang, and hydrogen peroxide). A condition of the competition is that your weird-ass threat has to be preventable by means of a snake-oil security product that you want to sell us (bonus points if deploying your product makes our lives hell -- shoe-removing, liquid-confiscating indiginities!).

There's a ton of great entries already -- I like this one, from R. Serrano:

PROTECT your family!, SERVE your country!

Would you LIKE some terrorist bombing your son's school with YOUR VERY OWN just stolen and filled with EXPLOSIVES car?

Don't let this happen with CURARE SHOTS! An easy to mount hypodermic syringe hidden beneath the seat of your car prevents burglars, thieves and TERRORISTS to MISUSE your car in ways YOU COULD NEVER IMAGINE by literally stopping them on the seat of your car while a wireless silent alarm* warns the closest police station and a text message is sent to your cell phone**.

PROTECT your family AND SERVE your country well with CURARE SHOTS.

* Alarm sold separately.
** Text message service only available with selected providers.

Link (Thanks, Bruce!)

JahFurry sez,

CBLDF Presents New York Comics Week!

Next week the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund celebrates comics in New York City with a week of events leading up to the New York Comic Con!

Tuesday, April 15.
CBLDF's DRINK & DRAW! Tax Day is Over! Now drink up with NYC's best cartoonists and party for a good cause! Featuring Jeffrey Brown, Molly Crabapple, David Finch, Dan Goldman, Dean Haspiel, Alex Maleev, Paul Maybury, and dozens of NY's Finest Cartoonists. Sponsored by ComicSpace.com and Image Comics, premiering Paul Maybury's graphic novel AQUA LEUNG. Additional support provided by ACT-I-VATE, The Daily Crosshatch, SMITH Magazine & JahFurry
7:00 to 11:00 PM at Village Pourhouse
64 3rd Avenue at 11th St, Drink Specials all night!, $5 Suggested Donation; $20 for VIP Schwag Bag

Wednesday, April 16.
RASL Premiere Party! Come meet Jeff Smith in person at his only New York City appearance of the season, enjoy an open bar, and get a takeaway bag of tons of exclusive RASL goodies. Only 100 general admission tickets and 26 VIP tickets are available so get your ticket now!
8:00 to 11:00 PM at Coolture Spain, 409 W 39th St (between 9th and 10th),

Friday, April 18.
An Evening With Neil Gaiman! Experience the magic of Neil Gaiman at an exclusive reading to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Gaiman presents the reading at New York Comic-Con! Seating is limited and going fast.

I'm a proud donor to the CBLDF and I only wish I could make some of these boss events. Link (Thanks, JahFurry!)

Scott sez, "This is a video of Penn and Teller subverting the old 'pull an animal out of the hat' trick by instead producing thousands of bees, including hundreds while ripping apart a stuffed rabbit--take that, kids! I thought of this after seeing the urban beekeeper post. If you want to see loads of bees stinging Penn and Teller, you won't be disappointed." Link (Thanks, Scott!)

Dan "Ride Theory" Howland sends in a link to a stupendous Internet Archive video entitled "Disneyland Dream," noting: "This would be interesting if it were merely a 1956 home movie of Disneyland, but it becomes great when the skinny, dorky, goofy dad (think Dennis the Menace's pop) not only documents the actual trip, but shows us how they got there -- by winning a Scotch Tape vacation contest. Highlights: the family's matching 1950's 'Wild West' fringe jackets with their names stitched between the shoulders, and the kids repeated insistence they have to change hats to enter different parts of the park."

Every second of this footage is pure gold, from the cornball jokes, the lingering shots of the "tickertape parade" the suburban Connecticut neighbors throw as the family gets into their gigantic land-yacht to drive to the airstrip, the runway footage from Idlewild, and the trips around Pasadena, Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios in 1956. The humor is pure "dad" -- loving and corny and just right.

In July 1956, the five-member Barstow family of Wethersfield, Connecticut, won a free trip to newly-opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in a nationwide contest. This 30-minute amateur documentary film tells the fabulous story of their fun-filled, dream-come-true, family travel adventure, filmed on the scene at Walt Disney's "Magic Kingdom" by Robbins Barstow.

Link (Thanks, Dan!)