Bonnie Burton interviews actor, author, gamer, and geek-er Wil Wheaton in this month's edition of GEEK. Snip:

Geek: (...) I need to know how far you’ve gotten in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Wil Wheaton: I haven’t been playing GTA IV that long since the game came out—maybe five hours so far. My progress meter is at like eight percent or something like that. I’ve gotten to a point where the story took a rather shocking and unexpected twist. The character that you control in the game is a very conflicted guy with a pretty complicated and dark history. The guy is more real and has more depth to him than any of the other characters I’ve controlled in GTA. Until last night, I may have played one or two story missions to advance the game, but I really just spend the rest of my time driving around and crashing into cars. I drive cars until they catch on fire. I like to go driving through the parks and hit the pedestrians. I’ve noticed a couple of things like if you’re going really fast and you hit a wall or a tree something like that you’ll fly through the front windshield of the car. So I drove really fast down the wrong side of the street on the expressway and hit a car head-on, and the driver shot through the windshield and landed on the hood of my car. That level of detail is just remarkable. But it suddenly felt weird just driving around the city mowing down pedestrians.

Has it started to warp your sense of reality when you’re stuck in traffic yet?

I hate driving. I absolutely despise it. I particularly hate driving in Los Angeles. I’ll be out somewhere with my wife and point out things, and tell her if this was Grand Theft Auto we wouldn’t have to sit here like this. We could just drive over that median.

Wil Wheaton [ Geek Blog / Geek Magazine. Disclaimer: I have been profiled there previously. ]

Update: We've raised enough to replace all the laptops and then some! See this post for more.

Clarion West, the famed Seattle science fiction workshop, has suffered a terrible theft: four student laptops were stolen yesterday. Clarion West (like Clarion in San Diego) is a grueling, six-week intensive boot-camp for science fiction writers. Students often quit their jobs and save for years to attend and it goes without saying that they can hardly absorb the cost of a new laptop in the middle of the workshop.

I'm flying to Seattle tomorrow to teach the third week of the workshop and I'm keenly aware of the chaos this will have wrought on the students. The workshop's organizers are soliciting donations -- either hardware or cash -- to get the students up and running. The workshop is incorporated as a 501(c)3 charity, so any donations are tax deductible.

I am donating all of my teaching fee to the fund. I hope that some of you will be moved to chip in whatever you can afford, to help fund the instruction of the next generation of great science fiction writers.

Here's the note that organizer Leslie Howle has sent around:

Four laptops were stolen July 4 from student rooms at the CW residence, and people in the SF community are responding swiftly and generously to help replace the stolen student computers.

If you'd like to donate to help the students replace the stolen laptops, please visit our Donate page and use the PayPal button, noting in the "Purpose" field that the donation is for "Computers."

This is the first time in our more than 25 years of workshops that something like this has happened, and we're doing all we can to get computers for students so they won't lose any writing time. The theft occurred while students were in class, and was discovered immediately afterwards. I called the Seattle Police Department to file a report, and we've taken steps to increase residence security.

News of the students' loss has spread quickly, and I deeply appreciate that friends, alumni, and writers in the community at large are offering donations to help students replace their computers. We'd especially like to thank Jay Lake for his generosity and for alerting others who might donate money or laptops.

This community is amazing and wonderful. Thanks for helping this year's CW writers, and for all your support. It means a lot to me, Neile, and all the rest of the CW volunteers and students. You guys are the best.

Link

The Phoenix was a short-lived 1982 TV series starring Judson Scott as an ancient astronaut named Bennu of the Golden Light. Extraterrestrials had left Bennu behind as a "gift to mankind" but he was woken too early and didn't know his mission on Earth. The show was kind of a cross between The Incredible Hulk and Erich Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods Around 1982, I was really into both of those, so it's no surprise I thought The Phoenix was a real gas. Here's the opening sequence. The Phoenix (YouTube)

Snip from an article in today's New York Times about a slew of designers and firms developing new models of airships. These passenger-carrying aircraft float on the wind, rather than being propelled solely by fuel (more precise explanation here). And, ah, hopefully they don't blow up in the sky or whatever.

As the cost of fuel soars and the pressure mounts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, several schemes for a new generation of airship are being considered by governments and private companies. "It's a romantic project," said Mr. Massaud, 45, sitting amid furniture designs in his Paris studio, "but then look at Jules Verne."

It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air.

Mr. Massaud, a designer of hotels in California and a stadium in Mexico, has not ironed out the technical details, nor has he found financiers or corporate backers for his project -- to create a 690-foot zeppelin shaped like a whale, with a luxury hotel attached, that he has named Manned Cloud.

And, heh, my favorite quote here:

"A dirigible is something magical," said Jérôme Giacomoni, who was 25 when he founded Aerophile with a friend. "But most of the ideas are crazy."

Why Fly When You Can Float? [NYT]
Image: Jean-Marie Massaud.

Update: most LOLlable comment in this thread, #4 posted by Chris the Tiki guy...

[I]f they're exploring whale shapes, why not other aquatic creatures, like the seacow? That way people can point and say "Oh, the huge manatee!" (...) [I]f Helium is in short supply, I doubt we'll be launching very many lighter-than-air craft any time soon, unless we can figure out how to make hydrogen just as buoyant but less explode-y.

Image: found floating (snort) around on the internet, provenance unknown Something Awful Dot Com's Photoshop Phriday.

This video is not new, but a friend just pointed it to me. It is noteworthy because it shows a dude shooting himself in the chest and not dying. Also, because it includes mock-pizza-boxes crafted for a robbery enactment on television. The mock pizzas appear to be made of palm thatch. How do they do that?

Richard Davis, former U.S. Marine and onetime pizza delivery guy in Detroit, survived a gun shootout (he killed three armed robbers when they attacked him during a delivery). He went on to develop new forms of concealable body armor using kevlar. Those products are now widely used by military and law enforcement personnel, and private sector folks who have reason to believe they will be shot. This video tells a bit of his life story.

Richard Davis: video
[ YouTube, via, thanks, Susannah Breslin ]

Back-room dealings in the European Parliament have resulted in a "three strikes" rule being included in a new telecoms bill -- the rule would force ISPs to kick people who've been thrice accused of copyright infringement off the Internet.

If this bill passes, then Europeans' access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.

Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 -- that's this Monday.

The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you.

“One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications (”Telecom Package”), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users..

…this set of amendments creates the unprecedented mechanism known as graduated response in European law; judicial authority and law courts are vacated in favour of private actors and “technical measures” of surveillance and filtering. According to rules set forth by administrative authorities and rights holders, intermediaries will be forced to cooperate in monitoring and filtering their subscribers, or they will be exposed to administrative sanctions”

Link

See also: Three false copyright accusations and we'll cut off your Internet access

I just stumbled on Kikkerland's "Anatomic 3-D Puzzles" in a shop and was absolutely enthralled. These are snap-together models (calling them "puzzles" is a little weird, actually) showing the anatomy of various critters, from humans to cows, mammoths, and my favorites, beetles and snails. They're made out of plastic that feels just like the plastic they use for the anatomical models you had in senior biology class, with the same color schemes, but the sculpting is absolutely gorgeous, making them into stylish knick-knacks as well as interesting scientific instructional materials.

Kikkerland's online shop carries the whole line, albeit at about 10 percent higher prices than other webstores that carry one or two. My advice is to check out the items here, find the ones you want and google for a cheaper one at another store. Link

Charlie Stross's new novel, Saturn's Children, is out -- this is Charlie's Heinlein tribute, and unlike everyone else who does classic, adventure -story Heinlein tributes, Charlie's written a novel in the style of the late, indulgent, sex-saturated Heinlein, from the period before a cutting-edge surgery fixed a problem with the blood-supply to his brain (seriously). Orbit, the book's UK publisher, has also put an excerpt online.

Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the final extinction of my One True Love, as close as I can date it. I am drunk on battery acid and wearing my best party frock, sitting on a balcony beneath a pleasure palace afloat in the stratosphere of Venus. My feet dangle over a slippery-slick rain gutter as I peek over the edge: Thirty kilometers below my heels, the metal-snowed foothills of Maxwell Montes glow red-hot. I am thinking about jumping. At least I’ll make a pretty corpse, I tell myselves. Until I melt.

And then –

Link, Link to excerpt, Link to Saturn's Children on Amazon

Vinay sez, "John Perry Barlow is in Iceland for the Icelandic Foundation for Digital Freedoms' conference. We shot this Fourth of July talk with him at Thingvellir, the ancient site of Iceland's historic parliamentary republic, B. 930 AD, D. about 3 centuries later." Link (Thanks, Vinay!)

Snip from an essay published by Kevin Kelly today over on his Technium blog:

All extropic  systems -- economy, nature and technology -- are governed by self-accelerating feedback cycles. Like compounding interest, or virtuous circles, they are powered by increasing returns. Success breeds success. There is a long tail of incremental build up and then as they keep doubling every cycle, they explode out of invisibility into significance. Extropic systems can also collapse in the same self-accelerating way, one subtraction triggering many other subtractions, so in a vicious cycle the whole system implodes. Our view of the future is warped and blinded by these exponential curves.

But while progress runs on exponential curves, our individual lives proceed in a linear fashion. We live day by day by day. While we might think time flies as we age, it really trickles out steadily. Today will always be more valuable than some day in the future, in large part because we have no guarantee we'll get that extra day. Ditto for civilizations. In linear time, the future is a loss. But because human minds and societies can improve things over time, and compound that improvement in virtuous circles, the future in this dimension is a gain. Therefore long-term thinking entails the confluence of the linear and the exponential. The linear march of our time intersects the cascading rise and fall of numerous self-amplifying exponential forces. Generations, too, proceed in a linear sequence. They advance steadily one after another while pushed by the compounding cycles of exponential change.

Balancing that point where the linear crosses the exponential is what long-term thinking should be about.

Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential [Kevin Kelly]

US Senator Jesse Helms died today. Here were his words in 1956, responding to criticism that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was racist:

To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.

Jesse Helms quotes on life and politics [AP]

New legislation has been proposed in Iran that could make blogging a crime punishable by death. Cyrus Farivar has a story on today's edition of the PRI radio show The World: Iran considers harsh penalty for some bloggers (3:30).

Over at Global Voices, Hamid Tehrani writes:

On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death.

In recent years, some Iranian bloggers have been sent to jail and many have had their sites filtered. If the Iranian parliament approves this draft bill, bloggers fear they could be legally executed as criminals. No one has defined what it means to “disturb mental security in society”.

Such discussion concerning blogs has not been unique to Iran. It shows that many authorities do not only wish to filter blogs, but also to eliminate bloggers!

A translated English copy of the proposed legislation is here. [International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran]

Image: "Women In Black," by Matthew Winterburn, who has some really neat photos of Iran in his Flickr stream.

The headstone marking the final resting place of deceased Joy Division singer Ian Curtis is suddenly missing.

Whoever stole it is a total douche, and deserves a special place in hell where screaming emo demons torture them with burns from a thousand clove cigarettes, poke them with a million blunt eyeliner applicators, and blind their eyes with painfully asymmetrical hair extensions for all eternity.

The grave marker, wherever it is now, reads: "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Here is a story in the Times UK, and above is a music video by Jonathan Beamish for the earliest recorded version of "Love Will Tear us Apart," produced as a John Peel Session for the BBC in 1979 (jesus! 30 years ago, wow).

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Blow some shit up!

Captain America Fuck Yeah
[YouTube; the song in this unauthorized and infringalicious fan video was lifted from the great Matt Stone and Trey Parker epic, Team America: World Police, referenced in these BB posts of yore: 1, 2.]

Our friends at eBoy, creators of BB's mascots including the lovely and talented Jackhammer Jill, released their latest in the Peecol line of toy figures. My favorite is Rilla, the diaper-wearing gorilla! They're $9.95 each from Kidrobot. eBoy Peecol (Kidrobot)

Bizarre magazine interviews a Montreal gentleman named Rick who is tattooing his entire body to look like the living dead. From the interview (photo by Neville Elder):

What look are you trying to achieve with your tattoos?
They’re about the human body as a decomposing corpse – the art of a rotting cadaver. It’s also a tribute to horror movies, which I love.

What influenced your tattoos? When I was a kid I was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I wanted to be a ninja turtle and live in the sewers. But as I got older I fell in love with zombies and wanted to become one. Oh, and I love George A Romero’s Living Dead movies.

Anyway, the closest thing I could get to becoming a zombie was to get tattooed like one.

Zombie tattooed man (Bizarre)

The original version of Fritz Lang's fantastic science fiction film Metropolis was first seen in Berlin in 1927. Shortly after, Paramount recut the film to (over)simplify the plot. From then on, it was thought that at least 1/4 of the whole film ended up on the editing room floor where it was swept into the dustbin of history. Recently though, much of the lost footage was rediscovered. According to ZEITmagazin, several of the rediscovered scenes are essential to the film's plot. The magazine has the story about how the missing reels ended up in the private collection of a film critic in the late 1920s or so, and eventually came to light again. From ZEITmagazin (poster image from Wikipedia):

Among the footage that has now been discovered, according to the unanimous opinion of the three experts that ZEITmagazin asked to appraise the pictures, there are several scenes which are essential in order to understand the film: The role played by the actor Fritz Rasp in the film for instance, can finally be understood. Other scenes, such as for instance the saving of the children from the worker’s underworld, are considerably more dramatic...

The rediscovered material is in need of restoration after 80 years; the pictures are scratched, but clearly recognizable. Martin Koerber, the restorer of the hitherto longest known version of “Metropolis”, who also examined the footage, said to ZEITmagazin: “No matter how bad the condition of the material may be, the original intention of the film, including all of its minor characters and subplots, is now once again tangible for the normal viewer. The rhythm of the film has been restored.”

Lang's Metropolis rediscovered (ZEITmagazine, thanks COOP!)

Dark Roasted Blend posted a fun gallery of "Ugly Bug Faces." The images above are from the Oklahoma Microscopic Society. The National Geographic Society also published a hardcover book titled Bug Faces.

According to a new international study, the United States has the highest rates of pot and coke use, followed by New Zealand. The other 15 countries surveyed by the World Health Organization didn't even come close. Approximately 42.4 percent of those surveyed in the US say they've used marijuana, with 20.2 percent admitting to having tried the drug by age 15. From Alternet:

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy tried to dismiss the study, Bloomberg News reported:

Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn't make sense, said Tom Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. "The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,'' Riley said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Should we spend less? We're just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society."

Funny, ONDCP takes precisely the opposite line whenever a state considers liberalizing its marijuana laws. In a March press release, deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns railed against a New Hampshire proposal to decriminalize marijuana, saying such a move "sends the wrong message to New Hampshire's youth, students, parents, public health officials and the law enforcement community," and would lead to "more drugs, drug users and drug dealers on their streets and communities."

WHO drug use survey (Alternet, via Dose Nation)

My friend Joe Hutsko contacted 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.

Here's a link to Chapter 05 as a PDF. (Here's chapter 1 and an introduction to the book, and here are the previous chapters)

To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.

For eleven years, the Rock-afire Explosion was the animatronic house band for Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants. The musicians' story is a touching tale of technical expertise, marketing muscle, and, er, "concept unification." (See the Wikipedia page for more on that.) Chris Thrash Window Pictures (director Brett Whitcomb / writer Brad Thomason) are making a full-length documentary on the Rock-afire Explosion, and the new preview trailer is itself a must-see. Rock-afire Explosion trailer (YouTube, thanks COOP and Rodney Ascher!)

UPDATE: Rodney just found a video of Rock-afire Explosion, programmed by Chris Thrash, playing Usher's "Love In This Club." YouTube

UPDATE: The film is actually about Chris Thrash. More info at the movie's MySpace page.

Adam Reimer secured an interview with Charlie Angus, the ex-punk-musician turned Canadian Member of Parliament who'se leading the charge against the Canadian DMCA. Adam solicited interview questions from the web and got a great interview with a thoughtful, intelligent, and honorable politician. Link, Link to mirror (Thanks, Adam!)

Law enforcement LOVES surveillance cameras -- except when those cameras are used to surveil dodgy busts and get them overturned:

Last year, New York police officers were seen dancing in the streets just before arresting four men in a city nightclub on charges of selling $100 worth of cocaine. It took six months and the men's life savings, but their names were finally cleared when prosecutors took the unusual step of announcing in court that the men had committed no crime.

That's because club surveillance video shows that the undercover cops had no contact with the accused men in the two hours they were in the club.

Now, club owner Eduardo Espinoza says the police are retaliating against him.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Paul sez, "'Choices', from Randall Munroe's xkcd comic has been turned into a short audio drama (under four minutes) available under a Creative Commons license from Brokensea Audio Productions." Link (Thanks, Paul!)

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "SF Gate cartoonist Mark Fiore has an awesome new cartoon on the telecom immunity debate. Snuggly, the Security Bear is back, and he has a few words to say about 'compromise.'" Link (Thanks, Hugh!)

David sez, "From the nobody's suprised file:"

Government workers repeatedly snooped without authorization inside the electronic passport records of entertainers, athletes and other high-profile Americans, a State Department audit has found. One celebrity's records were breached 356 times by more than six dozen people...

When the scandal erupted earlier this year, State Department officials suggested that the department maintained a list of "flagged files" to ensure that records of high-profile individuals were not breached. But investigators found that only 38 people were on the watch list, and there was no system or specific methodology for putting them there.

The watch list has since been expanded to more than 1,000 people, including all members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, senior administration officials, and entertainers, media personalities and sports figures.

What's the easiest way to prevent your huge database of highly sensitive personal information from leaking? Don't generate huge databases of highly sensitive information in the first place. Link (Thanks, David!)

Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we debunked the robot Diggbot; wondered if Apple should redesign the MacBook Pro; marveled at an amazing modular musical instrument for kids; and chuckled at the Comicon Star Trike of 1982.

John spotted the world's tiniest RC choppers and Roku's open-source Netflix player; Tokyo Watch did the unthinkable; and Jackson Pollock painted his hi-fi, sort of. There was a fancy USB hub; a consumer wind turbine; a robot bartender; a portable moisture condenser for your pied-à-sietch; a polystyrene statute; and a Sci-fi USB tube speaker.

Finally, we saw a cool Apple patent for gesture-touch, and learned the truth behind the Gatling gun.

Jake van Slatt sez, "During a recent book signing in Seattle William Gibson was asked about the Steampunk modding craze. I think it was really cool that he was aware of us! In addition he commented: 'My one complaint is, they make these things look all shiny and new...I think they should look...distressed.' Well, Kevin just sent me some pictures of his Steampunk Keyboard and I think he's managed just that!" Link (Thanks, Jake!)

Barnegat, NJ schools were put into "lockdown" because someone saw a "ninja" (turned out to be a camp counselor in a karate uniform going to a costume party). Lesson learned by students: security alerts are bogus, grownups are idiots.

Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Link (via Schneier)

Pedro sez, "Brazil is about to pass possibly the strictest legislation ever regulating the internet. The bill will be voted in the next few days by the Brazilian Senate. Please see below the translation of the article published today by Folha de Sao Paulo, the largest newspaper in the country:"

According to Ronaldo Lemos, by referring to "computer networks", "communication devices" and "information systems", the draft law covers not only computers, but also MP3 players, cell phones, DVD players, software systems and even digital TV set-top boxes, not to mention websites. Following this line of reasoning, the bill would cover even the act of unblocking a cell phone.

The professors claim that no country criminalizes access to information on the Internet in such broad fashion. "The closest legislation to what is being proposed here is the one passed in the USA, which criminalizes the act of circumventing technological protection measures. But no law has criminalized access itself," mentions the brief.

Article 285-B qualifies as a crime – also punished with 1 to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine – "to obtain or transfer data or information" without prior authorization of the legitimate owner.

The professors propose the exclusion or amendment of the text of two articles of the draft law. They suggest that the access and transference of information on the Internet be considered a crime only if fraud or "unlawful advantages" are involved.

Link (Thanks, Pedro!)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "Our public.resource.org gift to all the makers out there this 4th of July is the full text of the California building, electric, mechanical, plumbing, energy, and fire codes, known technically as 'California Code of Regulations Title 24' and perhaps better known in the real world as '$890 MSRP.' It's not just a good idea to copy this data, it's the law." Link (Thanks, Carl!)

A federal judge this week ordered Google to provide Viacom with records of which users watched which videos on YouTube. The ruling raises fears that the video viewing histories of tens of millions of people could be exposed. The sheer amount of data we're talking about here is massive -- for each and every YouTube video ever watched since YouTube launched in 2005, Google now has to to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched every video, and their the IP addresses.

Snip from NYT story by Miguel Helft:

Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors. Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube [New York Times]

Update: Here's a related statement from the EFF.

From the PR/Marketing firm Shackleton in Spain, a super funny riff on Apple products (which has been circulating in the Spanish blogosphere for months). The introductory video will make you burp bacon, it's so funny. Lulz deconstruction, for non-Spanish readers: the "j" would sound like "h" in Spanish if you said the word "iJam." Anyway, somehow the guy's Castellano accent makes it even funnier, because the "th" sounds are all so fancy to my mexican-spanish-trained ear.

iHam 5Js.

Below: More recently, some guys tried to return their iHam at the Apple store, and were rebuffed. Wikreate's response to Shackleton's iJam.

[Thanks, Ari Kuschnir]

A deeper look inside the personal psychodynamics of everyone's favorite giant-ball-of-stuff-roller-upper. "Katamari Damacy Therapy," by Glitch in the System. [Comedy.com, thanks Ben Fritz]

BB community member Takeshi brought this lovely video to our attention. And for that, I am eternally grateful.
Animal Friendship Between Different Species (YouTube)

Internet funnyman Dave Hill tells Boing Boing:

Recently my friends David Rakoff, Martha Plimpton, Chris Schneider, Miles Kahn, and I made this video chronicling mine and David's attempts at forming the world's greatest two-man percussive dance theatre troupe, like, ever. Please watch it now and then make everyone you know watch it and then have those people make everyone they know watch it, sort of like that shampoo commercial or something. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video so much. It pretty much has everything. You can totally watch it right here.

More on this incredible Starship Enterprise tricycle can be found in a BB Gadgets post by the incomparable John Brownlee. Star Trek Trike

Archaeologists report that the remains of an old farmhouse they've spent three years digging up is the childhood home of George Washington. What a deeeelightful pre-July 4 announcement. The excavation, on the Rappahannock River, was the last of three likely sites where the home could have been. The researchers spent the last few years carefully digging out foundation stones, chimneys, wine bottles, forks, wig curlers, a tea set, and even bone toothbrush handles. (No, George's teeth apparently weren't wood even as an adult.) The image seen here shows the home's footprint. From the New York Times:

“What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country,” Philip Levy, an archaeologist and associate professor of history at the University of South Florida, said in an announcement of the discovery.

Dr. Levy and other members of the excavation team said the foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains suggested that this was far from being the rustic cottage of common perception, but instead one befitting a family of the local gentry. It was a much larger one-and-a-half-story residence, with perhaps eight rooms and an adjacent structure for the kitchen.

David Muraca, director of archaeology for the George Washington Foundation, said the size, characteristics and location of the structure, as well as many artifacts from the time of Washington’s youth, had led experts to conclude that this was indeed the house they were looking for.

George Washington's house (New York Times, thanks Jennifer Lum!)

Steven Vandervate and Deron Wright modded a 1960s kids pedal car into this killer hot rod ride for Wright's son. From Vandervate's Kischkrieg blog:

The body is a standard 60s vintage pedal car with an incredible candy tangerine job by Nick "O" Teen, the blower is sculpted and cast in resin by Lou Z, while Deron handled the design, machining, and fabrication of the steering, suspension, and wheels. I was left to design and execute the lettering in variegated gold and One Shot enamel. I'd call the whole thing a success and a definite pleasure to take part in.

Hot rod pedal car (Kitschrkieg, thanks COOP!)

Andrew Brandou, one of my favorite pop surrealist painters, has a show of new work opening tomorrow at the Milieu Galerie/Artspace in Bern, Switzerland. Regular BB readers may remember that last year, Brandou showed a provocative collection of paintings based on the story of Jim Jones and the People's Temple. Brandou's new show is titled Mind Manors and he intends it not just as an expression of what he thinks but also a representation of his mind. Andrew kindly sent me a preview of some of the pieces to share here, and also an informal statement about the collection. Click on the images to see them larger.


From his email:

With Mind Manors, i am attempting to construct a metaphor for the way my mind works, or in some cases, does not. Layered above a nebulous ground are the flowers found in much of my work, both a translation of the organic world, as counterpoint to the cerebral architecture or headspace.

The room/containers are areas of my mind, conscious and unconscious, layered and maze like, some with doors and stairwells to make them accessible, others simply boxes, unfinished and empty.

Wandering through this architecture are the bunny and skull, as seen in much of my work. In this case, their roles are that of the active mind and the internal observer. The active mind is seen searching for inspiration or ideas, though it is often asleep or unconscious. The observer is always there, eyes wide open, aware without judging.

This is a rare series for me in that i did very little "research," as opposed to the Jim Jones or Audubon series. Instead, I worked more directly from my personal experience. I did very little in terms of sketching, opting for immediacy and an almost subconscious compositional style. In a way the pieces are Rebus puzzles, using a personal vocabulary of imagery to transmit stories from my subconscious.

Andrew Brandou's site, Milieu Galerie/Artspace

Previously on BB:
• Andrew Brandou: Jonestown Paintings
• Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown Paintings

The image above depicts Golden Rays in the Gulf of Mexico during their migration from Florida to the Yucatan. It's part of a marvelous larger shot taken along with several others by Sandra Critelli, an amateur photog who was on a whale shark expedition. From The Telegraph:

"It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.

Golden Rays migration photos (The Telegraph, thanks Brad Keech!)

Simply Audiobooks -- an excellent audiobook retailer in Toronto -- has launched an online store selling all of Random House's DRM-free downloadable titles. Random House is one of the many audiobook publishers that wants to give up on DRM, but they've been thwarted by Audible (the exclusive supplier of audiobook downloads to Amazon and the iTunes Store) because the company won't sell DRM-free titles even when the publisher and author wish to make their work available without technological restrictions. The good news is that DRM-free formats are much easier to sell and support, which is clearing the way for new entrants into the marketplace like Simply Audiobooks and Zipidee, to compete with Audible.

Simply Audiobooks has announced plans to make a full range of Random House audiobook titles available for purchase and download in a DRM-free format. The deal makes the Toronto audiobook retailer the first to offer Random House audiobooks DRM-free, and covers more than 5,000 RH audio titles. Downloads will initially be limited to Simply Audiobooks Download Club members, but a la carte download sales will be available later in the summer.

Link (Thanks, Down With Bill C-61!)

Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman reports on some Sasquatch sightings at JoeCon 2008, the official G.I. Joe Collectors' Convention held last weekend in Frisco, Texas. Southern Fried Bigfoot found the limited edition "Search for the Sasquatch" set above left, for which there's also an accompanying video. And at right is the new G.I. Joe "Search for the Yeti," a modernized version of the 1973 "Search for the Abominable Snowman" set. G.I. Joe and the Sasquatch (Cryptomundo)

UPDATE: In the comments, Christovir points out that the G.I. Joe Adventure Team has the exact same logo as the Appalachian Trail. How odd.

Kyle from Bumperactive sez,

I wanted to do something to graphically illustrate the way Obama is a new kind of candidate, so I've launched the "50 Ways To Vote Obama" project, where I'm designing a different Barack Bumper Sticker for each state in the Union.

I've got stickers for 18 States so published so far (with 10-or-so more on the drawing board) And I'm actively seeking suggestions from the intertoobs to complete the series by the end of July.

Link (Thanks, Kyle!)

(Update: By total coincidental timing, the VA executive featured in this episode, Charles Ogilvie, announced today he's moving on from VA to do something that sounds equally cool with tech and entertainment. Details at the bottom of the post.)

[Xeni Jardin]: Last week, the Boing Boing tv crew was in San Francisco shooting a few upcoming episodes, and our friends at Virgin America (BBtv is shown on the in-flight entertainment system) invited us to come wander around behind security, and peek at the nuts and bolts that are the tech underpinnings of this airline.

They're about to launch in-flight wireless internet soon, and they're holding a competition for open source games, the winners of which will be available for people to play in-flight (entries are still being accepted).

Virgin America's head of in-flight entertainment, Charles Ogilvie, brought us on board a plane that was empty and at rest between flights. We poked around with the computers and displays (all Linux!) and we tried to IM our friends using the pilot's controls in the cockpit. This did not work so well.

My favorite part of this shoot: driving a VA pickup truck around between the resting airplanes, and peeking into the giant abyss where your bags are shuffled around on giant conveyor belt systems, hopefully towards your plane and final destination.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion, downloadable video, and instructions on subscribing to the BBtv video podcast.

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(Disclaimers: BBtv is an in-flight entertainment partner with Virgin, but BBtv doesn't receive compensation for this. VA once asked Boing Boing to name a plane, and we did, but we weren't paid for this, either. VA has previously been a paid sponsor on Boing Boing the blog. This episode isn't an ad, and we weren't paid to produce it. All of us at BBtv sincerely thought this stuff was cool, and that Charles Ogilvie is a cool guy with interesting ideas, and we had a blast goofing around where the TSA folks generally do not permit one to goof. )

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Update, 07-03-08: BBtv learned today that Charles Ogilvie is moving on from Virgin America. We're bummed we won't be working with him there anymore! The timing of this episode and his move are totally coincidental, we weren't aware. Here's the note from VA CEO David Cush, after the jump, and congrats on your next adventures, Charles!

Back in April, I told you about the new Shepard Fairey cover designs for Penguin's reissue of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. They've just gone on sale! Link to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Link to Animal Farm

By popular request from weary BB thread commenters, "some ducklings in a bathtub" to look at. [YouTube, thanks #1134 ROSSINDETROIT]

When you are having a certain kind of day, revisiting this clip from The Mighty Boosh is wise advice.

Kittens in a Barrel [YouTube, thanks Coop].

Sybil's Garage magazine has an interview with Lauren McLaughlin, a new young adult writer whose debut novel, Cycler, will be published in September. I've known Lauren for some years now and she inevitably says the smartest stuff about writing in any conversation around the table. I've enjoyed her short fiction and the films she wrote immensely, and can't wait to read this book.

Storytelling is the foundation of any good novel and I think it's actually a very rare talent. Plenty of writers get by on killer premises and witty style. But effective storytelling is all about structure. It's very mechanical, almost architectural. When you can marry that structure to a framework of ideas, then the novel can transcend pure entertainment. The trick, in my opinion, is to weave these ideas invisibly into the story so that they are discovered, unraveled by the reader. My goal is to seduce my reader into a compelling narrative that whittles away at some preconceived idea and leaves them with an uncomfortable but somehow intriguing gap in their sense of the world. I want them to close the book and have a head full of questions. I'm not interested in merely diverting them for a while or helping them fall asleep. Nor do I want that from the books I read. I want to be unsettled, challenged. I want to close a book and say “I never thought of that before.”

Link (Thanks, Matthew!)

I really like this fun street art spotted by Torontoist. Phone booth with saloon doors (via Wooster Collective)