As Kottke sez, "Not that this guy cares or whatever, but the modern banana is a cultivated fruit...i.e. pressured by humans to, oh what's the word...evolve into its present form. And other varieties of bananas are smaller or larger and differently shaped. Some wild bananas have large hard seeds. I could go on...." Link

UPDATE: If the original link doesn't work, try this one.

(via Kottke)

Thirty-five articles were presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives late Monday evening, airing live on C-SPAN.

"The House is not in order," said Kucinich to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), upon which Pelosi pounded her gavel.

"Resolved," Kucinich then began, "that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. ...

"In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power..."

The first article Kucinich presented, and many that followed, regarded the war in Iraq: "Article 1 - Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq."

(Featuring in order of appearance): The Artist's Guide to Infinity, Jason Polan presents Jacob Brege, Arbito, Spencer Hibert, Justin Van Hoy, Gluekit, Matt W Moore, Keith Shore, Ryan Riss, Dan Rule, Garrett Morin, Justin Fines, Blair Sayer, Sylvain Gerand, Neil Doshi, Thomas Jennings, Ray Frenden, Gasolline Gut, Derek Ballard, a Boy named Ethos, Labour-Ny, Pietari Posti, Tristan Henry Wilson, Damien Correll, Sune Ehlers, Jason Urban, Christopher Norris (Steak Mtn), Prate™ Computer Channel & Bang.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid has good things to say about the $50 (after rebate) Sierra Wireless Compass 597 EV-DO USB Modem on Sprint's $60 a month (not really unlimited) unlimited plan.

EV-DO has come a long way since I first started using it back in January 2006, we are now on Rev. A and the size and functionality of the EV-DO modems has improved quite a bit. I recently picked-up the tiny Sierra Wireless Compass 597 USB EV-DO modem using the Sprint network. It comes with GPS, has a slot for a microSD card and a port to connect an external antenna. Best of all, it is small enough to work on a MacBook Air without using an extension cable.

The software has evolved quite a bit as well, especially on the Mac side of things. The modem ships with Sierra Wireless’ TRU-Install software, which automatically loads up when you insert it into the USB slot, then when launched installs the drivers and Sprint’s SmartView software, all without the use of a CD. Activation was super easy and once complete getting online is a simple as hitting “connect”.

First there was silence... Then there was data... But there was no story...

Just images and sounds...

cities were built and a grid was laid on top of the topography

Within this global grid a company named eBay became the largest marketplace, with very local marketspaces. eBay is romantic and seductive, not like the local fleamarkets in Paris (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen) but sexed up a million times bigger and spherically transcended, much more effective and thoroughly commercialized. We love it! "The Sound of eBay" is the affirmative high-end low-tech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at Sprint's Instinct, and, of course, the new 3G iPhone, which has an engineering marvel within, and for which higher rates and a new 2-year contract will apply.

Yesterday, we published a song about when the Apple Store is Down that Joel's been working hard on for weeks—listen closely! Today's magnum opus, however, was our liveblogged coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote speech in the style of a classical play.

Collection of Tonight Show style newspaper items.

Here's the question -- "Should Congress quit funding for Public Television and NPR, Public Radio?"

Richard Guess of Charleston says, "Congress should continue paying for it because if they don't, the taxpayers will end up paying for it."

Sali learned of the issue after a constituent brought the purchase to his attention. ATF said the tools were to be used as part of its Asset Forfeiture Program, which provides training to federal, state and local law enforcement. But Sali said the “Always Think Forfeiture” motto engraved on agent tools sent the wrong message to law-abiding citizens.

“Americans have a right to keep and bear arms. We have a right to private property. But ATF, through its engraved motto, sends a message that these rights are secondary to the government’s apparent goal to 'always' seek forfeit of private property. Of course, we all want our law enforcement agencies to pursue and prosecute criminals fully. But I have a problem with a federal agency sending a message, even an unintended one, that law-abiding citizens will apparently 'always' be treated the same as criminals.” said Sali.

As part of training for ATF special agents and state and local task force officers, ATF purchased a number of Leatherman tool kits engraved with the words ‘ATF – Asset Forfeiture’ and ‘Always Think Forfeiture’ for distribution to the participants. These training aids were designed to increase awareness of the asset forfeiture concept so that persons who do not regularly employ the strategy as part of a criminal investigation might be reminded to consider it. [emphasis mine] We regret that ATF’s training initiative created a misperception. However, be assured that ATF’s Asset Forfeiture Program complies with Federal law and Department of Justice guidelines. As a result of the concerns brought to ATF’s attention by your constituents, we have halted the distribution of the training aids at issue.”

Said mechanical engineering graduate student Craig Wildman, "Now we get to take data while we're driving. We can record everything that happens on a laptop, come back and change parameters, and test drive it again." With the Porsche as a test platform, the students can monitor conditions in the car while looking for ways to increase efficiency, performance and range, and to bring down costs...

What's next for the electric Porsche? One idea is to modify how the batteries are wired together. "We should be able to change our range and performance characteristics very easily," said Josh Siegel, a freshman who has been restoring cars in imaginative ways since he was 14. The students are also thinking about developing conversion guidelines that will enable others to do what they've done--without the fuss.

Ever since TSA's creation after 9/11, passengers willing to undergo a pat-down and hand-search have been able to fly without ID. This rarely discussed, and little used right was documented by the courts in Gilmore v. Gonzales. While mostly just a way to assert your rights, the technique often had the added benefit of allowing the traveler to skip to the front of the security line.

With little warning, on Thursday, TSA announced a new change in policy. Passengers who refuse to show ID, citing the rights, will be refused entry to the boarding area. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their ID will still be allowed to fly.

This new rule seems to only apply to terrorists that are unable to lie, while at the same time, massively cutting into the rights of passengers.

The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure....

I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. ,...Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way....Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned....

"Safe and soft plastic wigs. Fits all head sizes." Wearing one is mandatory here at Boing Boing headquarters. Link

From Save vs. Death:

I could listen to Miller talk all day. The mold was long broken at the shop where they made erudite and eloquent old pervs like him. Writing used to be a scholarly manly art, but is now reserved for disposable milquetoast bores and effete vacuous chumps whose bathrooms hold no ephemera from a long vanished world. Men like Miller have forceful opinions and fifth and final wives.

Warren Buffett recently bet an ambitious hedge fund operator $1 million that they won't beat the returns of S&P 500 after their extremely hefty fees are accounted for. Buffett claims investors will do as well with a no-load index fund over the ten years of the bet. He has long been critical of the performance claims of hedge funds, and his bet is intended to put his money where his mouth is.

Buffett's million dollar bet was made on Long Bets, the accountability mechanism founded in 2002 by Stewart Brand and myself, and operated by Long Now Foundation. The intention of Long Bets is to encourage responsibility in prediction-making (by keeping a public roster of predictions), to encourage long-term thinking (by offering a opportunity to shape a long-term bet), and to sharpen the logic of forecasting (by recording the logic of predictions and bets.)

In order to make a Long Bet, bettors need to lay out their reasoning. It's worth reading the two sides' very short arguments about investing because the two extremes of investment advice are contrasted in them. Buffett, as usual, is stunningly clear in his argument, which ends:

A number of smart people are involved in running hedge funds. But to a great extent their efforts are self-neutralizing, and their IQ will not overcome the costs they impose on investors. Investors, on average and over time, will do better with a low-cost index fund than with a group of funds of funds.

I have about 6 or 7 journals written in the 30's and 40's by a german woman who is in the midst of an unpleasant marriage with an alcoholic and in those I found several items-a doberman's head cut out of a color magazine, drycleaning papers with pins stuck in them, newspaper articles about Russia preparing for war with Japan "this spring", a postcard for ordering a subscription of Coronet"? A price tag with pin from Wanamaker's a poem entitled Adolf Hitler lied! in german, I'll be back to finish tom'w, too tired tonight<

The stage is set, the lights are dimmed, the audience murmurs impatiently. But the tragedy and ecstasy of this year's WWDC can be staged for neither the hoi polloi or the gentry without strapping a scented toga around our play's missing actor: you.

We need your help. If you care at all about Apple, why not join the Boing Boing Gadgets crew in the #boingboing IRC channel to discuss Steve Jobs announcements in real-time? It starts at 1pm EST. We'll take the best IRC comments and make them the chorus in our Neo-Ovidian masterwork, The Keynote, starring Steve Jobs (A God), Marvin Batelle (A Time Traveler) and Julian Sands (An Inexpensive Actor).

For more details on how to join #boingboing on IRC, check out this post for detailed instructions or simply click this link to be whisked away via handy Java applet. A list of live blog coverage to comment upon can be found here.

Link

Update: The curtain rises on The Keynote. Behold! Our tangle of thorns!

Best not make any plans today.
The Apple store is down,
new shit is on its way.
A tablet Mac or new SDK.
Doesn't matter,'cause it's Apple, As long as Steve goes slow in the keynote:
"Had a great business year, our future success is clear.

CHORUS

But I have just one more thing to show before I disappear.
And I think it's the most exciting thing that we are gonna launch this year.
Boom it's here.

This isn't a vintage piece, either -- it was built recently, and the makers provided extensive material documenting the process. Link (Thanks, Dug!)

UK-based Russell Porter chronicles alt music culture in the Porter Report with aggressive wit and offbeat charm. Today, part two of his exclusive interview for Boing Boing tv with the English geek rock / pop punk band The Young Knives, whose name came from a bandmember's mis-reading of the phrase "young knaves", while leafing through a book. From the All Music Guide:

Hailing from Oxford, England, the Young Knives feature Henry Dartnall (vocals/guitar), Oliver Askew (drums), and Thomas Dartnall (bass) (aka House of Lords). These snarky post-punk revivalists initially started out playing Ned's Atomic Dustbin songs while living in their hometown of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, but a move to Oxford in 2002 gave the Young Knives their big break. An appearance at the Truck Festival led to the band issuing The Young Knives...Are Dead mini-album for Shifty Disco in 2002. Three years later, the trio was playing shows alongside the Futureheads and Hot Hot Heat while readying their debut EP for Transgressive. The limited-edition Junky Music Make My Heart Beat Faster sold out quickly; "The Decision," which was produced by Gang of Four's Andy Gill, followed in December 2005. In the new year, the Young Knives' growing popularity seemed unstoppable. Both "Here Comes the Rumour Mill" and "She's Attracted To" made the U.K. Top 40.

Link to BBtv post with discussion and downloadable video.

* Link to part 1 of BBtv's Young Knives interview with Russell Porter.
* Here are previous BBtv episodes featuring Russell Porter.

(special thanks to Jolon Bankey).

As with all of my books, this one is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license, meaning you can copy it, share it, remix it and play with it, provided it's on a non-commercial basis. I've uploaded the full book in high resolution as a PDF and CBR file to the Internet Archive, for your downloading pleasure.

Collected in this volume are adaptations of my award-winning stories "Craphound," "Anda's Game," "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," "After the Siege," "I, Robot" and "Nimby and the D-Hoppers."

Have at it! Link to "Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now" on Amazon, Link to free downloads of "Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now"

I just took over as the chair of Free Press, a non-profit that is the largest media reform group in the U.S. -- we just finished the bi-annual conference for Media Reform.

Why should Free Press's work matter for Boing Boing readers? The fact is that while media and tech issues have sort of have been thought of separately, they are coming together. People in the media reform movement care about things like growing media consolidation, the many failures of journalism (particularly over the last 8 years) and the general trend of news being turned into entertainment. But here's the trick: as the internet takes over everything (or just about) suddenly all of these problems of media policy are only answerable in a discussion about the internet.

That's why the challenge, for me, as chair of Free Press is to try and make sure that the power of the media reform movement gets translated into the internet age. What does this mean in practice? Defending the media's role in the internet age, in my view, begins with defending the ability of bloggers and other small scale critics and journalists to be heard through an open and neutral internet.

It almost goes without saying that the media, in the U.S. or anywhere, is the first line check on abuses of public and private power. But figuring out exactly how that's going to work as the mainstream media undergoes a total industry reboot is the big question for the next decade.

We made a bet, some decades ago, that the information economy would be based on buying and selling (and hence restricting copying of) information. We were totally, 100 percent wrong, and now the world’s in turmoil because of it. What does a copy-native economy look like? How do everyone from barbers to musicians become richer, more fulfilled and more civilly engaged in a real information society. And what do we do about the fact that a couple of dinosauric entertainment companies are determined to screw it up?

I love Sedaris's audio stuff -- he's such a great reader, it really brings the work to life. Plus: DRM-free audio! Link (Thanks, Brian!)

A husband and wife living in a second-floor unit at the North Dartmouth apartment complex off Faunce Corner Road kept an estimated 45 gallons in nine plastic jugs, Dartmouth's District 3 Fire Chief Richard Arruda said.

The jugs were covered by cloth rags and stacked in a hallway closet that housed the air conditioning system, Chief Arruda said.

An investigation suggested they were hoarding the gas in response to skyrocketing prices, according to Ms. Mieth and Chief Arruda.

You know the Orwell Was Right stickers? Someone needs to make one that reproduces this webpage under the legend, "Orwell was an optimist."

NIM39140 - National Insurance Numbers (NINOs): Format and Security: What to do if you suspect or discover fraud

(This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)

(This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)

(This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)

(This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)

* (This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)
* (This text has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)