Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob's cooked up Super Blockquote, a Flash version of Breakout in which you operate the little paddle in order to smash the blockquoted words of corporate shills. Sheer genius! Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

SpaceWesterns.com is an online fiction magazine filled with stories that blend themes from western fiction with science fiction, including long-running serials. There's some really lovely stuff here -- the genres mesh surprisingly well at times. They've just reprinted my 1998 story Craphound, the first professional sale I ever made, which is about an alien with a yard-sale jones who discovers that he really, really likes old time cowboy toys. Link

See also: Space Western limerick contest-winners

Randall Roberts at the LA Weekly crunched all the data for bands in the 2008 lineup for the Coachella music fest. Excel spreadsheets in turn generated charts and graphs based on gender of lead singer, ethnicity of artists, YouTube hits, Pitchfork ratings, Country of origin, region of the US from which the act hails -- and so on. Link to essay, and here's the data analysis.

Continuing in our week-long look back at the first 6 months of Boing Boing tv, we revisit an episode in which...

BBtv co-editor David Pescovitz takes a trip into the alternate reality of pop surrealist artist Tim Biskup. And it's definitely a trip. Then, sculptor Chris Yates demonstrates how he makes a Diesel Sweeties wooden Red Robot from start to finish, slightly faster than normal.

Link to BBtv post with discussion and downloadable video.

People who really, really, really like melty dairy products and bread -- rejoice. A new competitive sport is emerging in cities across America. "Grilled Cheese Invitationals" are kinda like a WWF tournament meets hot Velveeta, and the queso combat is coming next to LA, this Saturday, April 19.

The sammich definitions are as follows:

The Missionary Position: White bread, orange cheese (Cheddar or American) and butter or margarine only.

Spoons: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter and any kind of cheese (or combination of cheeses) but no additional ingredients.

The Kama Sutra: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, and any kind of cheese (or blend of cheeses) plus additional ingredients.

The Honey Pot: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, any kind of cheese (or blend of cheeses), and any additional ingredients, but a sandwich that is sweet in flavor, or would best be served as dessert.

Link to info on this weekend's LA event. These people are not kidding, there are rules.

In 1977 when Jeremy Eaton was 13 years old, he sent a letter to the editor of The Incredible Hulk. They ran his letter, along with his mailing address. Shortly after, he received a letter from Wendy Wilson. Jeremy saved the letter and posted it on his blog. It's a terrific story.

Wendy lived in Kingston, Jamaica. Her letter arrived in early August, just a few weeks after I’d first discovered my name and address had become a part of the Marvel Universe. Her envelope, a delicate, soft, airmail blue, cut like a cyclone through my introverted, adolescent existence, spewing a flurry of feminine considerations. She told me of her eyes. Black eyes, she said, with a poetic force beyond her years. She told me of her hair. Black hair, she teased. She told me of her body. Slim build, with lovely shape, she smiled, seeming to literally breathe from the lightly-scented, decorative note paper, stationary that featured an illustration, in the lower left-hand corner, of two Keane-styled children, a boy and a girl, dressed respectively in overalls and a petticoat, tromping barefoot through a pasture of bright daisies. This idyllic drawing was accompanied by a script-written quote: “We’re not the only ones in love… we just think we are”, to which Wendy had coyly added Remember m, remember e, put them together and remember me. She went on to inform me she was, in no uncertain terms, a very pretty and attractive girl, very romantic and fun-loving. She told me her favorite sports were lawn tennis, table tennis, and basket ball (two words in Jamaica, apparently). She told me her ambition was to become an airline stewardess, “otherwise known as a ground hostess”. She told me that, in her spare time, she would be a singer.

Nearly twelve months my senior, Wendy was, in essence, a fourteen year-old siren, a rock I’d gladly have smashed into, ultimately perishing of starvation, thirst, and delirium. In my already-fevered imagination, one fed on the hyperbole of Smilin’ Stan Lee and the voluptuous curves of Jack Kirby (the curves of his female characters, not his), I saw Wendy calling me onward, urging me to leave my 25¢ vessel, a flimsy, pulp-hewn, four-color yacht held together by staples, to join her, to lose myself in her smooth, brown limbs.

Link

Mike Baehr of Fantagraphics writes: "We recently received a large package of original art from Al Jaffee for our upcoming complete Humbug collection. Here's just one amazing example." Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Al Jaffee profile in NY Times

Here are the results of the poll David mentioned in his post about brain enhancement drugs last month.

We asked specifically about three drugs: methylphenidate (Ritalin), a stimulant normally used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder but well-known on college campuses as a ’study aid’; modafinil (Provigil), prescribed to treat sleep disorders but also used off-label to combat general fatigue or overcome jet lag; and beta blockers, drugs prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia that also have an anti-anxiety effect.

The most popular of the drugs used by respondents to Nature’s poll seem to have fairly mild neuroenhancing effects, says Chatterjee, who calls the massive media interest in these drugs “neurogossip”. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest a significant amount of drug-taking among academics. As Eisen’s April Fool’s prank [about about a NIH crackdown brain doping] spread from blog to blog, it was hard to tell who was in on the joke and who was taking the announcement at face value. Although tricking people was a goal, Eisen had been aiming for something so ridiculous that most would chuckle. Instead, he worries that he might have hit a nerve: “I think it did make it less funny because it is actually too real.”

Link (via Daily Grail)

Steve Boggan writes about the Church of Santo Daime's spread into the UK. The church uses a powerful hallucinogen called ayahuasca as a sacrament.

The Church of Santo Daime (“holy give me” in Portuguese) was born in the 1930s out of the experiences of a Brazilian rubber-tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Mestre (Master) Irineu, as followers call him. He was born in 1892 to African parents in Maranhão in the northeast of Brazil and travelled to Acre in the northwest in 1912 to find work during a boom time for the rubber industry. In 1930 he was given his first taste of ayahuasca by indigenous shamans - medicine men - and spent eight solitary days and nights in the rainforest, experiencing a series of visions and receiving instructions from the Virgin Mary, whom he called the Forest Queen, that formed the basis of a new religion.

It was predominantly Christian with an emphasis on nature - on the spirits of the rainforest - and it espoused spiritual growth through the drinking of ayahuasca during carefully defined rituals. In subsequent years Mestre Irineu shared his teachings, experiences and ayahuasca with growing numbers of fellow rubber extractors before building his own church, Alto Santo, on the outskirts of Rio Branco in Acre.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Rise of ayahuasca ceremonies in USA

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid has the scoop on the The 10th Anniversary Final SubGenius Devival in Seattle on Saturday, April 19. Link

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Boing Boing readers may remember a kerfuffle about a year ago regarding Smithsonian images getting uploaded to Flickr. In January, after the Library of Congress joined the "Commons" project to distribute images with no restrictions on use, we suggested that they join that project.

I'm pleased to report that Public.Resource.Org and the Smithsonian executed a gift agreement which will result in the release of 2000 medium-resolution images (that's 5-7 megapixels folks!) over the course of this year to the Flickr Commons and from there into the rest of the public domain.

Link (Thanks, Carl!) See also:
Smithsonian images migrated to Flickr for fair-er use
Can the Smithsonian's public domain images join the Library of Congress's "Commons"?

I really enjoyed this Howcast video that shows you how easy it is to make a baby-headed dancing frog. Link

On Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy writes about a limited edition sculpture called "The Blockhead," by Edward and Nancy Kienholz, and follows it with a story he came across about the time Kienholz smashed a TWA desk because the airline had destroyed his lamp and called him a liar and a cheat when he filed for reimbursement.

Kienholz’s letter bluntly stated: “Good morning, my name is Ed Kienholz...you broke my lampshade and I’m really unhappy...so I’m going to cause TWA an equal amount of damage. I’m going to destroy a desk for TWA.”

This is exactly what Kienholz proceeded to do; he destroyed the desk and, somehow, made it back to his car before being apprehended by the Los Angeles Police Department. Though cited and fined for disturbing the peace, Kienholz was eventually reimbursed, and vindicated, for the lampshade through a small claims court victory against the airline, and no further charges were filed or pursued. Throughout the incident, Kienholz not only documented his actions through photographs and writing, he also garnered and exploited a tremendous amount of local and national media attention. He summarized the incident as follows: “It takes a lot of 'Up, up and away’ ads to overcome the humorous, negative publicity TWA got out of that. They would have been a lot better off to not call me a liar.”

Link

A woman who is divorcing a rich Broadway executive is airing her grievances on YouTube.

A New York woman involved in a divorce battle spilled secrets about her husband, his family and their intimate life in a "scary, new step" in user generated content, attorneys said.

Tricia Walsh-Smith can be watched on YouTube lashing out at her husband, Broadway executive Philip Smith, in a teary and furious clip that has been viewed more than 150,000 times.

Local 6 reported that lawyers can't think of another case like Smith's and are calling it a "scary, new step."

>During the video, Walsh-Smith goes through their wedding album on camera, accuses her husband of trying to evict her out of their apartment, and even makes embarrassing claims about their intimate life.

Link (Via Modeling Promotions Girl)

In the 1960s, Leon Berry built an insanely incredible pipe organ. He dubbed it the "Beast In The Basement." Berry outfitted the Beast with a slew of electromechanical special effect sounds too, from birds chirping to a Chinese gong. John Brownlee has more on this amazing instrument over at Boing Boing Gadgets. Link to BBG, Link to YouTube clip (via MAKE:)

The Weld County Sheriff's department has posted a YouTube video of a pair of burglars breaking into a home in Colorado. They hope someone will be able to identify the sleazebags. Link

Continuing in this week's "Best of BBtv" retrospective, after a whopping 6 months of existence, we revisit a popular episode in which...

Mark checks out a 15-times-larger-than-life Atari joystick replica by Jason Torchinsky, on display at Felt Club XL. Then, 8-bit help for those suffering from projectile dysfunction disorder.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video. If you're in LA this Thursday, Machine Project is hosting an event where you can check out this cool creation for yourself!

As regular BB readers know, I love peeking into the Moleskine notebooks of artists and other creative people. Part of my fascination comes from the fact that I'm a lousy notetaker and envy people who are masters of the form. Paul Saffo sent me a link to 'skine.art, a fantastic sketchbook blog open to anyone who would like to submit their work. Above left, "A view of downtown Houston from my hotel window" by Susan Rudat. Above right, untitled pages from Marcelo Braga's Moleskine. Link

Previously on BB:
• Paul Saffo's custom Moleskine cover Link
• Le moleskine blog Link
• Jim Woodring's pop-up Moleskine art Link

My Beautiful Mommy is a new kids book about plastic surgery. It was written by Michael Salzhauer, a plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Florida. Salzhauer says he came up with the idea to help parents explain cosmetic procedures to their children. From Newsweek:

"My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

The text doesn't mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally show Mom's breasts to be fuller and higher. "I tried to skirt that issue in the text itself," says Salzhauer. "The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."

Link

UPDATE: As our eagle eyed community manager Teresa Nielsen Hayden points out in the comments, My Beautiful Mommy is actually a self-published book and not likely to see wide distribution. That said, I still think it's a notable artifact. Dr. Michael Salzhauer clearly spent a great deal of time and effort on this unusual project and that, in itself, is interesting enough for me. But for a more balanced view of the shitstorm started by Newsweek and fanned by folks like me, I encourage you to read Teresa's post on the subject at Making Light. Link

This "Special Tax Stamp," issued by the IRS in 1951 to a "retail dealer in opium, coca leaves, etc.," is up for auction on eBay. Starting bid is $7.95. Link (via Seven Deadly Sinners)

Researchers are studying American alligator blood as a potential source for powerful new antibiotics. Apparently, proteins in the blood can kill E. coli, herpes simplex, and the nasty methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Apparently, many reptiles and amphibians have some of these powerful proteins flowing through their blood. From Science News:

Many of these critters live in "sort of nasty places" that are polluted, and gators probably eat all kinds of sick animals, comments Paul Klein, a reptile infectious disease specialist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. Fierce battles with prey and other gators can leave gaping flesh wounds—but the animals are fairly hardy. These peptides provide a first line of defense—important in the lower vertebrates, who have a slower antibody response than humans, says Klein.

"It seems Mother Nature has built in a circulating system of antimicrobial factories that protect the animals while they are waiting to develop the cell-mediated response that we would develop quickly," he says.

Link

Cornell Law School student Stephen E. White wrote a paper in the Cornell International Law Journal about the legalities of neurowarfare. White told me he's interested in "examining the legality of some of the weapon systems that DARPA is developing and how the use of brain-machine interfaces may challenge many of the core principles of domestic and international criminal law." From the paper:

For the past several years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the military research and development agency tasked with maintaining U.S. military technological superiority, has engaged in research on direct neurological control of weapon systems.1 Although international law does not create a per se prohibition on the use of these weapons, the potential misuse of such weapons radically challenges tradi- tional notions of criminal responsibility by effacing the distinction between thought and act. This Note suggests that the development of such weap- ons requires a more expansive doctrine of command responsibility in order not to vitiate established legal principles regarding criminal accountability for war crimes.

Link (to PDF)

Above, a counter-protest by students at Duke University supporting the notion that "Tibet belongs to China, and will always belong to China."

A Chinese student at Duke who participated in pro-Tibet protests on campus -- after befriending her Tibetan dorm-mate -- has become the target of brutal online and offline attacks. Thousands of nationalist Chinese thugs (some claiming to be Duke students) see her actions as "traitorous," and have threatened her with personal attacks in comment threads and, apparently, in person.

EastSouthWestNorth blog refers to the mob vigilanteism as "China's Human Flesh Search Engine."

Online, the bullies have posted her photograph, her US phone number, Chinese identity card number, her parents' address and home number in China. Offline, her parents' home in Qingdao is said to have been attacked with rocks, and her parents are now in hiding.

John Kennedy of the Global Voices blog has posted some of the comments and threats to her and her family here. (coverage also here, thanks Nick)

In related news, BB reader Matthew says,

On Tuesday, April 15th, Chinese students staged a massive protest against a pro-Tibet rally at UCLA. Here is a translation of the call to arms, as it were. Also pictures and video.

And BB reader Dubi points us to yet another video, in which:

National security advisor Stephen Hadley speaks on ABC about the Olympics and how it relates to the Tibet situation. He calls Tibet "Nepal." The kicker is that George Stephanopoulos does not catch the gaffe even after it is repeated 8 times.

Previously on Boing Boing:

Vlog (Xeni): Tibet report - monks forced to participate in staged videos.

Pro-Tibet protesters scale Golden Gate Bridge in SF

Tibet: nearly 1,000 jailed in Lhasa, Dalai Lama offers to resign

Xeni on G4's AOTS re: Tibet and China's 'net blackout

Tibet: China blocks YouTube, protests spread, bloggers react

Tibet: more deaths, injuries in Lhasa as crackdown grows

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

Animator and comics artist Guy Delisle's travelogue Shenzhen is a fascinating, meandering look at one of China's most storied new cities: Shenzhen, the enormous, lightspeed boom-town factory megalopolis just the other side of Hong Kong. Delisle was stationed there as a supervisor for some animation that had been outsourced to China, and he dwelt there in an introspective solitude, drawing and writing about the city as he inhabited his own mind.

I'm endlessly fascinated by these Chinese new cities (I'm working on a novel that's partly set in them), where buildings can grow by a storey a day, where people flock from the countryside to do information-age labor at pre-industrial wages, where commerce and control wage an endless war for dominance in the most populous nation on Earth.

Shenzhen is a really lovely, idiosyncratic, first hand warts-and-all account of the city as seen through the eyes of foreigner. The good, bad and ugly are here, built around Delisle's running account of the daring food adventures he takes himself on. Link

National Geographic has put its stunning feature on China online, including a long article by Peter Hessler (who wrote the amazing story about China's instant factory cities), a series of pieces about China's middle class, life in Guizhou village (by Amy Tan!), architecture and the Olympics, the environmental depredations to the Yellow River, life in Tibet, and a beautiful gallery of aerial photos by George Steinmetz.

In a related story, check out the Chinese "Green Brothers", high-tech environmental activists who "do monthly, explainer-style documentary pieces on wind power, biomass engineering, and solar water heaters (?!) in China. They clearly know their stuff, and Zhao's favored Ghostbusters tee has a charming effect. Here's their first effort, on the problem of waste in Chinese cities."

Across Chinese society, parents appear completely at sea when it comes to raising their children. Newspapers run advice columns, their often rudimentary counsel—"Don't Forcibly Plan Your Child's Life" is a typical headline—suggesting what many parents are up against. Some schools have set up parent schools where mothers, and the occasional father, can share frustrations and child-raising tips.

At times educators go to extremes: At the Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School in Beijing, vice-principal Lu Suqin recently took two fifth-grade boys into her home. "Their parents couldn't get them to behave, so they asked me to take them," she explains. "After they learn disciplined living, I will send them back."

Bella had one free day during the 2006 weeklong National Day holiday. Some of her extended family—seven adults and two children—took a trip to Tongli, a town of imperial mansions an hour's drive from Shanghai. Bella's father hired a minibus and driver for the trip; a friend had just been in a car accident and broken all the bones on one side of his body. Bella sat alone reading a book.

(Thanks, Marilyn!)