We've had Edith Piaf singing "La Marseillaise" since cock-crow here, so it must be Bastille Day! Go behead some aristos and tell 'em "Edith sent ya!"

On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were clergy and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The assembly re-named itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution.

In the wake of the 11 July dismissal of the royal finance minister Jacques Necker, the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain arms for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a prison which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettre de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed. Besides holding a large cache of arms, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance.

Link

Inspired by Brendan Dawes' 2004 project Cinema Redux which "distills a whole film down to one single image", tshirtblogger Jason Cosper used the shareware Thumber app to crank out a similar image for The Big Lebowski. I'd love to have a large-size print of this on my wall. Oh, hey you guys, feel free to litter the comments with Lebowski quotes -- for the Boing abides.

Cinema Redux - The Big Lebowski Edition [ Flickr ]

Previously: Video: He-Man versus the Big Lebowski

Here's a new YouTube channel from Nottingham University in the UK -- here, scientist-vloggers are in the process of posting a video for each element of the periodic table. Sort of "Mythbusters" meets chemistry, with real live awesome mad scientist hair. This is one of the neatest, most clever, and most enduringly valuable things I've seen on YT in a while.

Periodic Table of Videos channel, and The "sodium" video, above, is a good place to start.
[ YouTube, thanks Mark "coolest Scottish dude in Silicon Valley" Day ]

art of rss
deleted images
shorpy
scophy
sleevage
soviet poster
acid head war ( *image above )
beancounter parodies
bob's blog

previously on web zen:
ceci n'est pas un blog zen
blog zen 2004

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Snip from an item on Wikileaks:

Chip company NXP Semiconductors is to sue Radboud University in an attempt to halt the publication of a paper detailing the cryptographic cracking of the Oyster smartcard, used widely on the London transport network.

The case is to be heard on Thursday in a court in Arnheim, NXP told ZDNet.co.uk on Tuesday. However, an NXP spokesperson declined to give any reasons at present for the company seeking to halt the publication.

Researchers from the Radboud University in Nijmegen last month claimed to have cracked the security on the Oyster card, which uses an NXP chipset called Mifare Classic. The research had led on from a cryptographic crack of Mifare Classic by German researchers Karsten Nohl and Henryk Pltz.

A spokesperson for Radboud University told ZDNet.co.uk that NXP wanted to stop publication of the paper due to "safety reasons". However, the spokesperson said that the university intended to proceed with the publication of the research at the Esorics conference in Malaga in October. The court is expected to reach a decision next week.

Well, it does appear they're leaked. Lawsuit to stop the paper publication isn't going to do a heck of a lot of good now.

Censored Milfaire Classic Oyster Card break paper 2008
[ Wikileaks, thanks Jake Appelbaum ]

Previously on Boing Boing:

London Underground's OysterCard is cracked

Dutch RFID transit pass cracked and cloned

WorldChanging's Alex Steffen and I sat down last week for a cup of coffee and got to talking about post-apocalyptic life. I noticed that while there's a whole ton of stories -- and people who emulate them -- about heavily armed survivalists bravely holding off the twilight of civilization after the Big One, there are damned few stories about super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how to put it all back together. I even came up with a name for it: the Outquisition; the opposite of the Inquisition -- missionaries who come to your town to remind you of how awesome it can all be, leave behind a bunch of rad, life-improving systems and tools, and generally get on with the business of being happy, well-fed and peaceful.

Alex wrote up a great post about this and 24 hours later, some WorldChanging readers created Outquisition.org. I'm not sure what they'll do there, but in my dreams, they're off building a non-secret society of emergency-preparedness Nice People who think that the response to catastrophe isn't lifeboat rules and militias, but humanitarian aid and kick-ass tools.

What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.

Imagine these folks like this passing out free textbooks, running holistic programs for kids, creating local knowledge management systems, launching microfinance projects, mobilebanking and complementary currencies. Helping rural landowners apply climate foresight and farm biodiversity. Building cheap, smart, quality housing for displaced people (not to mention better refugee camps), or an Open Architecture Network for cheap informal rehabs of run-down suburban housing. Hacking together DIY windmills and ad hoc smart grids, communication systems, water treatment systems -- and getting really good atadaptive reuses of outdated infrastructure. In other words, these folks would be redistributing the future at a furious clip.

Link to Alex's post, Link to Outquisition homepage (Thanks, Alex!)

Yee-HAW! EFF, the ACLU and others are suing the government -- in multiple suits! -- over the new spy bill that "legalizes" warrantless bulk surveillance and immunizes the telcos from civil prosecution for their past bad deeds in cooperating with the President in wiretapping the whole nation.

The ACLU contends those blanket powers to grab international communications of Americans without specific court orders violate the Fourth Amendment and would stymie journalists who often speak to confidential sources outside the country.

Plaintiff Naomi Klein, the liberal columnist and author, said the surveillance would compromise her writing about international issues.

"If the U.S. government is given unchecked surveillance power to monitor reporters' confidential sources, my ability to do this work will be seriously compromised," Klein said.

Go, go civil libertarians! You've just earned my annual donation, and I'm upping the amount next year. Have you joined yet? These are the folks who are keeping the Constitution intact even as "our guys" in Congress tear it up in the name of political expedience and assuaging right-wing talk-show hosts who aren't going to vote for them, anyway. Link, Link to donate to EFF, Link to donate to ACLU

See also:
Obama's support for the FISA "compromise"
Senate approves warrantless wiretapping and telco immunity, throws out the Fourth Amendment