Our John Brownlee, over at Boing Boing Gadgets, tells the mothership about a project close to his heart:

There's an organization called the Fresh Air Fund, which has been around since 1877.

Their charter is basically to arrange to send low-income New York City kids out of the city for the summer to get a breath of fresh air and experience the country: free summer vacations for kids who might never have left the city in their lives.

They need to place 200 kids with host families by the end of July or these kids can't have summer vacations.

There's a website detailing their organization and what they need from host families here: freshair.smnr.us.

Image: "Fresh Air campers visit the model farm, one of the highlights of Sharpe Reservation in Fishkill, NY where The Fresh Air Fund has five camps."

Ethan Persoff says,

A new game of Poodle (about the game) is live on COMICS WITH PROBLEMS, this time using the New Yorker cover as the game ball.

Goal is to see if it's possible, through poodle method, to make a universally offensive cover out of this wishy washy half-satire that no one can seem to agree upon.

POODLE SAMIZDAT: SPECIAL NEW YORKER EDITION [ Comics With Problems ]

We've written about ultrarealistic reborn baby dolls before.

The Courier Mail in Australia reports that police saw one of these reborns in a locked car and, thinking it was a real kid, broke the window to save it:

Frantic police smashed a window to rescue a seemingly unconscious baby from a locked vehicle in Queensland last week only to find it was an extremely lifelike doll.

The embarrassing mistake, made in regional Gympie, is not an isolated incident and passionate creator of the "reborn" baby dolls Vynette Cernik knows just how easily they can be mistaken for the real thing.

Ms Cernik said last week's case of mistaken identity mirrored a similar incident in the US when the window of a new Hummer was broken by police trying to rescue a "baby" that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner's wife.

Frantic rescue effort saves doll, not baby (news.com.au) (via Arbroath)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Sculptor makes dolls of babies that died
• Documentary about women who collect fake babies
• Orlando-area people raise monkey as surrogate kids -- "monkids"

Amy Crehore has posted scans of her new delightfully mysterious paintings, titled "The Caged Wonder," (shown here), "Black Ball Finale," and "French Bubble Gum Encore."

3 New Crehore Paintings Revealed (Little Hokum Rag)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a wonderful steampunk (read: "stimpank!") mouse while a network admin held San Francisco hostage with his own Dr. Strangelove style Doomsday Device. Joel looked at some LEGO lunch utensils, while Beschizza griped about an alarm clock that expected him to pump iron at the crack of dawn.

Unusual burglar alarms with clockwork muskets were discovered, while Rob reviewed the latest convertible Fujitsu tablets and Joel fiddled with the dials of his wooden radios. AT&T blamed the iPhone 3G launch fiasco on iTunes gremlins, and we wrote some jammin' beats on our PSP.

Also, we were delighted to discover the return of analog gauges to our cameras. We puzzled over how the smell of bread was infused into our wristpads. We looked at an incredible bicycle with a hotly debated number of wheels. And we finally figured out how to make crime pay.

Oh, and lest we forget... We drink your milkshake! WE DRINK IT ALL UP!

Link

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, interviewed a woman who "escaped from the Amish." It's fascinating. Here's an excerpt:

What were the positives of growing up Amish?

-Growing up bilingual (Though I didn’t become fluent in English until after I escaped and I was always very self-conscious about my command of the English language)

-The emphasis on the solidarity of the extended family unit

-The emphasis on being hospitable to strangers, helping those in need, whether Amish or “English” (anyone who’s not Amish is “English,” no matter what language or culture he/she represents)

-Building your own houses, growing your own food, sewing your own clothes

These experiences taught me self-reliance, self-preservation, and gave me the ability to relate to non-American familial cultures much better than I might otherwise.

The biggest negatives?

-The rape, incest and other sexual abuse that run rampant in the community

-Rudimentary education

-Physical and verbal abuse in the name of discipline

-Women (and children) have no rights

-Religion–and all its associated fear and brainwashing–as a means of control (and an extremely effective means at that)

-Animal abuse

Escaping the Amish - Part 1 (4-Hour Workweek)

From Core77:

French design collective Duende have used a technique that can transform human or animal milk into plastic by solidifying the casein content. The 'Perle de lait' range of jewelry will be on display as part of their collection of objects exploring the relationship of food between mother and child at La Cuisine. This takes the concept of bespoke jewelry to whole new level.

Jewelry created from plasticized human milk (Thanks Ultimate Cowboy!)

The DIY extravaganza Maker Faire comes to Austin, Texas on October 18-19, 2008. The official Call For Makers has just gone online and you have until Thursday, September 4, to submit your application. Get out your soldering irons, knitting needles, screwdrivers, sewing machines, propane tanks, and frying pans and get busy! From the entry page:

Maker Faire returns to Austin, Texas for its second year. This two-day, family-friendly event celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset and features interactive exhibits organized by individual enthusiasts, hobbyist groups and clubs as well as student groups. It's for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things. Maker Faire is an opportunity to share what you do with others...

Organized by the staff of Make and Craft magazines, Maker Faire is a newfangled fair that brings together science, art, craft and engineering plus green, food and music in a fun, energized, and exciting public forum. The aim is to inspire people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become makers. We encourage you to join the fun and enter a project to exhibit.

Maker Faire Austin Call for Entries (Makerfaire.com)

This marvellous paperback chair is on display at Myopic Books in Providence Rhode Island (where the Rag and Bone blog's proprietor spotted it). It was made by artist David Karoff: "David Karoff welded the chair and attached the paperbacks: they have holes drilled though their insides and are slipped onto a hidden rebar frame. All of the materials are recycled - even the books, which are cast-offs from the Rochambeau Library Book Sales." ZOMG I wish this was for sale. Link (via Make)

David Wiggins rebuilt his M16 as if it were a DeWalt powertool. Rob has more over at Boing Boing Gadgets. DeWalt M16 (BB Gadgets)

Tokyo conservationists are using honeybees to fend off crows attacking vulnerable seabirds nesting near the international airport. The nonprofit Little Tern Project has installed hives of honeybees on the roof of the watertower where several thousand of the seabirds nest during migration. The bees came from the Ginza Bee Project, another nonprofit that teaches people about agriculture and beekeeping. From National Geographic:

"We spoke to an expert and learned that honeybees in the wild have the natural response of attacking a black object that comes near to their hive," (Ginza Bee Project chair Kazuo) Takayasu said.

"There have been tests with black and white balloons, and the bees always attack the black balloon."

It is believed that the bees' reaction is linked to the color of bears' fur. The insects apparently attack dark-colored creatures to protect their hives from plunder.

"We noticed that the bees swarmed around crows that were taking offerings from white plates left on the outdoor altar of a shrine in Ginza," Takayasu added.

Bees Enlisted to Attack Crows in Tokyo (National Geographic)

The new Black Canary Barbie is pissing off some people because of her BDSM appearance. Black Canary is a DC Comics character. From The Sun:

Religious group Christian Voice said: “Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far.

A children’s doll in sexually suggestive clothing is irresponsible – it’s filth.”

S&M Barbie is lashed by the public (The Sun, thanks Mac Delaney!)

I have a huge iTunes library, more than 25,000 songs and 140+ GB. I've acquired my music from all over the place -- ripped from CD, downloaded, shared from friends, etc. As a result, many of the album, artist, and track names are a total wreck. Tunes are mislabeled, some artist names include "The" and some don't (Beatles vs. The Beatles), and a slew of tunes are titled "track 01," etc. A few days ago though, my friend Gabe Adiv fixed almost all my metadata for me. His company, TuneUp Media, just launched a plug-in for iTunes that cleans up your library's metadata and grabs the missing album cover art. It takes an "audio fingerprint" of each track and then gets the appropriate data from Gracenote's Global Media Database. It'll also let you know if you're missing any tracks from a particular album so you can buy them from iTunes or, er, find them elsewhere.

Right now, the TuneUp Companion is only available for Windows. (Mac version is coming in the Fall.) I don't use Windows, so last week I gave my hard drive to Gabe to test the software on his PC. He said it took about 12 hours to process my whole collection (10 hours to clean, 2 hours to get the cover art.) It couldn't find the metadata for approximately 500 tracks, but that doesn't surprise me because I easily have that many live concert bootlegs that aren't in Gracenote's database. The company claims they're averaging a correct rate of 85 to 90 percent. A quick flip through my library makes me think it worked even better than that for the metadata and about that well for album art.

TuneUp Companion has several other features that I haven't personally seen in action. It grabs contextual content from various places online. For example, if you're listening to "Creep" by Radiohead, the "Now Playing" feature will check YouTube for live videos of the song and search for bio info and music news. The Concert feature looks for tour information and can be set to alert you if a band is coming to your town. Gabe told me they're planning to open up the "Now Playing" API so anyone can create their own contextual content features.

For me though, the Clean feature is the big selling point. TuneUp costs $12 a year or $20 for a lifetime of use. A free version is available that cleans 500 songs so you can get a sense before you pay if it will work as well for you as it did for me.

TuneUp Media
TuneUp Companion demo video
Geek.com's TuneUp review
Download.com's TuneUp review

Eight individuals in Libreville, Gabon, West Africa, were busted for stealing human skulls and femurs from cemeteries for resale to healers. Each skull sold for approximately $620. From the Associated Press:

"People placed orders with me. Then I went to get them," (ringleader Jean Martin) Moussavou said...

The skulls were then ground down into a powder that healers use in various drinks and amulets believed to give the wearer strength or power, he said. Moussavou added that he sold many skulls for use in a common initiation rite, known as Bwiti, in which young men and women drink a potion that is expected to bring on visions.

In Gabon, the knowledge that human bones are used in the potion was nearly as shocking to many as the news of the graverobbing operation.

"I was initiated by Bwiti. I'm scared that I ate a person's body," said Jeanne Mba, a middle-aged housewife in Libreville.

Skull thieves (AP)

The Oregon State Hospital, the filming location for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, will be torn down in a few months. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons.) From the Associated Press:

Although Cuckoo's Nest was filmed here, neither the movie nor the 1962 Ken Kesey novel on which it was based makes any specific references to Oregon State Hospital. Kesey drew on his experiences working at a veterans hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., and set his satirical story at an unnamed institution in Oregon.

Actor Michael Douglas, co-producer of the movie, scouted various West Coast locations and chose the Oregon institution because then-Superintendent Dean Brooks agreed to give the moviemakers unfettered access.

"They wanted to make it on location with real patients," said Brooks, now 91, who was given a speaking part as a weak-willed doctor who acquiesces to Nurse Ratched. Brooks said 89 patients were hired as extras.

Cuckoo's Nest Hospital to be Torn Down (Time)

In this video, a shirtless inventor explains how he made a cell-phone activated stun gun to administer a shock to bike thieves.

Bike thieves suck, so I decided to get even. Why not track and, if you'd like, shock these most egregious of folk?

With a $40 pay-as-you-go cell phone, stun gun, and some basic electronic components, you can teach bike thieves a lesson and, hopefully, foster a small social change through individual action:)

How to end bike theft (Instructables)

Sean Tevis is a geeky geek from Kansas who's fed up with his state rep, an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, pro-censorship, pro-surveillance, anti-gay incumbent. Tevis -- an unknown -- is polling within three points of his opponent, and is looking to raise some Internet dough to kick this guy's (extremely tight) ass, and to promote his cause, he's made a fantastic, XKCD-style toon called "It’s Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner." Specifically, he's looking to raise $8.34 from 3,000 people (no state rep in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors). I'm in*. Who's with me? Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

*Actually, I'm not. I'm a dirty foreigner and I'm not allowed to meddle in American elections. Someone else donate $8.34 to this guy for me, OK?

Today on BBtv, part 2 of Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson's interview with his hero, futurist and artist Syd Mead, on the evolution of conceptual design.

In this installment, we go inside Syd's studio in Pasadena, CA, and learn more about the creative process behind his work for movies, television, and automobile design -- both Hot Wheels and life-sized -- and how Syd feels about design in the video game industry.

Mead is a former designer for Ford Motor Company and US Steel. His designs have appeared in many movies, including Aliens, Tron, and Blade Runner.

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

Previously on Boing Boing tv:

Joel Johnson interviews Syd Mead: part 1.

Inflamed by the New York Times's article on perfect chocolate cookies (in which it is revealed that the two secrets are: one, a little salt prior to baking; two, aging the dough for 36 hours in the fridge), the Ideas in Food blog tried (successfully) to shortcut the process by vacuum-sealing the dough:

From the Times story by David Leite:

At 12 hours, the dough had become drier and the baked cookies had a pleasant, if not slightly pale, complexion. The 24-hour mark is where things started getting interesting. The cookies browned more evenly and looked like handsomer, more tanned older brothers of the younger batch. The biggest difference, though, was flavor. The second batch was richer, with more bass notes of caramel and hints of toffee.

Going the full distance seemed to have the greatest impact. At 36 hours, the dough was significantly drier than the 12-hour batch; it crumbled a bit when poked but held together well when shaped. These cookies baked up the most evenly and were a deeper shade of brown than their predecessors. Surprisingly, they had an even richer, more sophisticated taste, with stronger toffee hints and a definite brown sugar presence. At an informal tasting, made up of a panel of self-described chipper fanatics, these mature cookies won, hands down.

The second insight Mr. Rubin offered had to do with size. His cookies are six-inch affairs because he believes that their larger size allows for three distinct textures. “First there’s the crunchy outside inch or so,” he said. A nibble revealed a crackle to the bite and a distinct flavor of butter and caramel. “Then there’s the center, which is soft.” A bull’s-eye the size of a half-dollar yielded easily.

Now, Ideas in Food:

What I can tell you is that the dough darkened and became fully saturated, similar to the way that the dough usually looks after a couple of days in the refrigerator. It also changed the texture of the dough, making it a bit more elastic to the touch. The just made dough was too soft to shape and needed to chill, so I left in the fridge for about three hours before baking.

The resulting cookies were pretty damn good. They had a slightly cakey texture in the center with chewy yet crisp edges and rich buttery, caramel flavors. It was impossible to eat just one and I was thankful that I had not baked off the entire batch.

Link (via MeFi)

The good folks at Evil Mad Scientist Labs have unveiled their fantastic HOWTO for recreating a 1958, oscilloscope-based proto-video-game called "Tennis for Two," created by a physicist named William Higinbotham "to improve what was an otherwise lackluster visitors' day at the lab."

Before we start, let's be clear that this is not a tutorial in how to build an oscilloscope. Tennis for Two is supposed to display on a 'scope, so beg, borrow, or buy one if you don't have one handy. Older low-end analog scopes like mine (a Hameg!) usually go for $50-$150, and if nothing else, you can always make a Scope Clock out of it later.

There are three parts to the electronics that we're building. First, there is the AVR microcontroller-- the brains of the outfit. The specific variety that we're using is the ATmega168, the same chip used in (for example) the Arduino platform. Secondly, there are two handheld controllers that connect to the ATmega168 microcontroller. Each handheld controller has a knob and a button. Third, there is the digital to analog converter that takes the output from the AVR and uses it to drive the scope.

Link

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John posts about this marvellous artifact: the autographed typewriter on which Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for sale for a mere ~$25K. An archivist friend of mine tells me that libraries that once collected authors' papers are now storing their hard-drives:

N.V. Books in Great Wolford, Warwickshire is selling Adams' vintage Hermes Standard 8 typewriter for a cool $25,257.94. Or, rather, they are selling a first-edition copy of Hitchhiker's Guide in "fine" condition and generously throwing in the typewriter as extra. With strange significance, the x key is particularly discolored and worn, which I hope will prompt someone to do a statistical breakdown of the frequency of letter x's in Adams' oeuvre. Also, for authenticity, an "End Apartheid" sticker is slapped on the side, identifying it with almost carbon-dated efficiency as a relic of the late 70s and 80s.

Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has the exciting news that Apple I BASIC has been extracted from an audio cassette and converted to MP3. It's actually got a pretty good beat.

They very first piece of commercial Apple software — a primordial flavor of BASIC originally released in 1976 that took thirty seconds to load — has been perfectly and authoritatively extracted from a yellowing audio tape and converted into a 38 second MP3, playable in iTunes. Plucky, hyper-intelligent beardos are now dissecting the file and learning its secrets, but their findings are a bit above my head.

Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

DEFENDER of the Favicon implements the game of Defender using Javascript and the tinsy, teeny space afforded by a Favicon. Supposedly works in Firefox and Opera, though my Firefox just stalls on the splashscreen. Nevertheless: woah. 8-bit arcade game in a Favicon. Woah. Link (via Wonderland)

Glyn sez,

The EU Commission will be meeting shortly (possibly as soon as Wednesday) and formally accepting DG Internal Market's proposal to extend the term of Copyright in sound recordings. Once accepted the legislative initiative will proceed through the Council of Ministers and EU parliament. As you would expect the Open Rights Group and EFF are hard at work lobbying against this and they would like your help. Please follow the link and sign the petition.

The EU is doing this despite their own findings, the findings of the UK government's independent analysis and advice of Europe's leading intellectual research centres.

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)