From 2005-2006, illustrator Rafa Toro created and blogged a set of 80 notional monster trading cards. These are terrific -- I want them blown up to back-patch sized and safety-pinned to my jean-jacket!
Link
(via IZ Reloaded)
How pissed are Canadians about the new copyright bill, Bill C61, which was introduced without any consultation and which makes it a crime to upload clips to YouTube or use a region-free DVD player? Way pissed.
Ten thousand more Canadians signed up for the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group in the day following the Bill's introduction, bringing the grand total up to 50,000. Michael Geist has more ways you can show the government what you think of these shenanigans.
2. Take 30 minutes from your summer, to meet directly with your MP. From late June through much of the summer, your MP will be back in your local community attending local events and making themselves available to meet with constituents. Give them a call and ask for a meeting. Every MP in the country should return to Ottawa in the fall having heard from their constituents on this issue.
3. If you are not a member of the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, join. If you are, consider joining or starting a local chapter and be sure to educate your friends and colleagues about the issue and starting working through the list of 30 things you can do.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Joseph Rykwert is an architectural historian who has spent more than four decades studying how we relate to our cities, and how our cities change our relationships to each other. He's written nearly a dozen books exploring urban life and how cities develop, most recently The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000). CNN just conducted a fascinating interview with Rykwert. From CNN.com:
CNN:What is your assessment of the increasing prevalence of barriers and CCTV in public buildings and spaces today?
JR: I think it is a tragic development. I think it cuts a swathe out of public space. In a way, I think the American Embassy in London led the way but other institutions have followed. It has blocked off a bit of London.
Whether embassies are entitled to do that or not, I don't know. But it certainly presents itself as a fort or a castle. That's the metaphor that occurs to one going past it.
In a way, it suggests foreign domination in a way that embassies never did before. There are other embassies on the square and they are very modest by comparison.
The growth of security areas is something which is a reflection on our society. We are a frightened lot in a way that the people of the 1920's and 1930's were not.
This is not a British phenomenon, it is worldwide. You find gated communities in India and China perhaps even more than you do in England. Partly, of course, it's a feature of the unadvertised growing inequality in our society. But obviously it is a symptom of fear. It's also paralleled by the growth of the great commercial shopping centers which also cut up public space.
Behavior has to be conformable, conforming to. Everybody has seen The Truman Papers. (Truman Show? -ed.) I think that kind of conformity is something that is imposed by turning the citizen into a customer.
Link to CNN interview, Link to buy The Seduction of Place
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Mother Jones's Michael Mechanic created a chart that associates presidential campaign donations with the donors' stated occupation, from science teacher to professional golfer to baker to candle manufacturer. The data comes from FundRace.org.
Link
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
These days, lots of pot dealers use pre-printed ziplocs or stamps to "brand" their product. Or so I've noticed in the gutter of my neighborhood park. But that's nothing compared to this awesome header card that COOP just sent me. Kustom kulture pioneer Robt. Williams drew it during his employment at Roth Studios in the 1960s. It's meant to be folded in half and stapled on top of a baggie. I love that it has a punch hole marked for hanging on a standard retail display rack. Link to bigger image (Thanks, COOP!)
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted me a few weeks back with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
The Open Source Cinema folks have cut together this PSA about Canada's new copyright bill, C-61, which imports the worst elements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, turning millions of Canadians into presumptive criminals who will be forever at risk of losing their property, privacy and dignity for the "crimes" of posting a clip to YouTube, breaking the DRM on a CD, or using a region-free DVD player.
Link
(Thanks, Brett!)
Steampunk maker Jake von Slatt sez, "I've been into human powered vehicles for a long time, far longer then my current passion for steampunk. So I got very excited when Eric and Alan (aka Steuben's Wheelmen) sent me some new pictures of their completed and fully steampunkified tadpole trike!"
Link
(Thanks, Jake!)
Here at Search Engine we've been on the phone with Minister Prentice's
and Minister Verner's offices, holding them to their promises that
they would answer questions about the Copyright bill once it's out.
Fingers crossed!
We're hoping Boing Boing readers can assist the CBC in collecting
questions for the Minister(s). Specifically, we want to get beyond
the angry emotions and pose practical questions.
Here's the form all questions should take:
"What if I _______: Will the new bill make me a criminal?"
Here are my questions, based on listening to the Minister weasel when asked them earlier:
* What if I remove the DRM from a public domain work?
* What if I remove DRM from copyrighted works that I created?
* What if I remove the DRM from a crippled CD in order to load it onto my iPod?
* What if I help a blind person remove the DRM from a crippled ebook?
* What if a blind person gives another blind person a copy of her cracked ebook?
* What if a blind person gives another blind person a tool that can be used to crack ebooks?
And here's two important ones that don't follow Jesse's template (if you ask me, these are the most important questions to get answers to from the Minister):
1. Don't we pay Parliament to make our laws? How come DRM companies and entertainment companies get to invent any copyright law they want (in the form of DRM) and enforce it using our cops? Isn't coming up with rules about what copyright does and doesn't allow your job?
2. Do you really think that Canadians are going to stop putting videos on YouTube, breaking DRM from their DVDs, enjoying region-free players, etc, just because you've passed this dumb law? What will happen to the public's respect for copyright law once every voter realises that you've just turned her into a criminal, just for watching the DVDs she bought on her iPod? How will you protect Canadians from selective enforcement and vindictive prosecution (like the time the RIAA went after a college kid who'd contributed code to a search engine that could find MP3s on the campus net, busting him for the MP3s on his hard drive, and demanding that he switch majors and stop programming computers as a condition of his settlement)?
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Carlos Ramos was the creator of The X's on Nickelodeon, art director of Chalkzone, and also worked on Deter's Laboratory and a slew of other cartoons. He has a show of magnificent large paintings opening June 28 at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, California. The show, titled Natural History Museum Part I, runs until July 16. I'd love to see a full-length film starring Ramos's fantastic menagerie of beautiful beasts. From the gallery's show description:
For his first solo show in Los Angeles, Ramos replicates the natural history museum experience for his audience, fusing the natural world with the art world. A series of twenty four large-scale paintings based on classic grand dioramas and a special installation of skeletal structures will transform the gallery into an epicenter of fl ora and fauna. The concept of the exhibition is based on Ramos’ childhood fascination with natural history museums and the “authoritative” impression they made on him growing up.
We'll be talking with Brendan at 11 Eastern in #boingboing. Click here to join the conversation or join #boingboing on chat.freenode.net in your client of choice.
We'll post the transcript here after we're done.
Update: Edited transcript after the jump.
UK-based Russell Porter chronicles alt music culture in the Porter Report with aggressive wit and offbeat charm. In today's episode, Russell has a sit down chat on a stoney beach with eclectic melodramatic pop musician, George Pringle.
Alexey Titarenko's "City of Shadows" is a series of haunting, gorgeous long-exposure shots of street-scenes in St Petersburg, Russia. The long exposure-times turn the people in the shots into ghosts and suggestions of motion.
Link
(Thanks, Marilyn!)
Mother Jones's Michael Mechanic created a chart that associates presidential campaign donations with the donors' stated occupation, from science teacher to professional golfer to baker to candle manufacturer. The data comes from 
