Kairsten sez,

A group of Terry Pratchett fans, known as the Ankh Morpork Knitter's Guild from the fiber arts site http://ravelry.com, were inspired by Mr Pratchett's Alzheimer's diagnosis to create a group afghan (known as The Pratchgan) to give to the author. The woman who collected the squares and sewed the quilt had the opportunity to give the Pratchgan to Mr Pratchett at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday. She blogged about it; the finished Pratchgan can be seen here, and there's a Flickr group containing many of the squares here. It's a pretty special project and Mr Pratchett seemed to like the blanket.

The Pratchgan 2008 - MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!! (Thanks, Kairsten!)

Who knew that kids' playtime could be so enhanced with an electric carving knife? Think of the fun we'll have! Asha at ParentHacks has the scoop:

I was given an electric carving knife as a wedding present with a note that went something like this: This is great as a carving knife, but even better for all those times you need to cut cardboard for your childrens' projects. I have yet to use the knife for my own children, but as a teacher I use it all the time. So nice and easy!

Cut cardboard with an electric carving knife (Thanks, Marilyn!)

TokyoMango's Lisa Katayama has kicked off a new column on Asian futurism for IO9 with five predictions about the future of China:

1. The dystopic Communist regime will continue.

While some China experts think that democratization is an inevitable first step to total economic domination, Andy Nathan, author of How East Asians View Democracy, believes otherwise. "China has authoritarian resilience," he says. "If (the current regime) was not supposed to survive modernization, it's proving very adaptable." In other words, as long as Hu Jintao's government can prove itself efficient albeit its shortcomings, the people will continue to sustain their loyalty to it.

Coming Soon from China: Dystopic Futures, the Next Steve Jobs, and a World Full of Drumming Androids

Over on IO9, a pair of essays by Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz presenting the case for and against writing young adult science fiction:

It's great news that young people are getting exposed to SF at an impressionable age, without apparently feeling any particular stigma about it. And yes, a lot of those people will eventually come to view SF as "kid stuff" and stop reading when they reach adulthood. But if even 20 percent of those readers keep reading SF after they turn 18, that guarantees a sizeable readership for SF in decades to come.

The other great thing about YA science fiction is that people come to writing it from all sorts of angles. Some YA authors write non-speculative YA books and then drift into writing books with science-fictional plots.

...

What I'm trying to say is that labeling novels YA in the hope that that will make them "mainstream" may actually backfire. You will certainly alienate possible adult readers, who feel vaguely nasty for cozying up with a genre aimed at teens. And I believe in the end you will lose teen readers, who are exactly the sorts of people who dislike being told that their youth bars them from understanding adult novels. What self-respecting 15-year-old wants to read "young adult" fiction when she could be reading stuff actually written for adults?

The beauty of science fiction is that our hypothetical 15-year-old can read adult fiction and enjoy it just as much as adults do. Not because scifi is simplistic, but because it usually operates on multiple levels: One level is devoted to an adventurous plot, and the other seethes with social subtext and commentary. The most successful scifi novels should work as entertainment for people of any age, and can suggest deeper ideas to people who have been on Earth long enough to want a little contemplation with their space battles.

Young Adult Books Will Save Science Fiction, Stop Writing Young Adult Science Fiction

Bjoern sez, "'Amazing but True Cat Stories' is a collection of stories about feline antics, illustrated in vivid 8-bit color by true mspaint artists. Stolen pants, pooped-on veterinarians, fur on fire, foretold seizures, and much more! This book was entirely written by the anonymous crowd. All stories and illustrations were submitted by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I selected, edited and laid out the stories in a short but sweet coffee table book. The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours in late July. To spend my time, I posted the following two tasks on MTurk: 1) Write at least one paragraph about a funny, unbelievable or otherwise memorable incident involving your cat. 2) Sketch a cat. With or without an environment and toys. Before I got out of that terminal, it was already clear that the submissions were too good to keep to myself."

When we first received our cat, my father brought her home in his car. She was only a kitten and was running around his car like crazy. To keep her from getting lost he put her into the glove compartment. After about fifteen minutes he began to hear meowing from behind the dashboard. He reopened the glove compartment to find the cat had chewed through the plastic. He later had to remove the radio in order to get her out. The look on his face was priceless after the event. This was an omen of times to come with our new kitten.

Amazing but True Cat Stories (Thanks, Bjoern!)

Todd sez, "A new group of activists in Toronto, the Public Squares, coordinated the temporary conversion of the intersection of Bloor and Spadina into a piazza with trees, fountain and dozens of revellers. From the group:"

Blackout Anniversary Five years ago the lights went out on some 100 million people. We spilled out of our home-box, work-box, shopping and car boxes. We stepped away from computers, microwaves and TV's. The streets became our living rooms as we shared the good company of friends and strangers alike. We rediscovered the power and vitality of the commons. Last night's temporary reclamation of Bloor & Spadina is a festive demonstration of how our city could evolve. The streets and avenues are the veins and arteries of the city. Great intersections like this one are vital organs where people are drawn to work, eat, play and commune. This connection of citizens creates a livable city in a way that an easy left turn never will. See for yourself how this thousand square feet of pavement can better serve us all. "Get out of your box and into the square." - the Public Squares

Blackout Anniversary Parade (Thanks, Todd!)

Red Bubble has a couple of sweet, CCTV-themed tees, entitled: CCTV Government, The Kiss (Thanks, Alice!)

Remember the story about the pit bull cloner who is suspected by many of being the same woman who kidnapped a Mormon missionary 30 years ago to be her sex slave? Well, she is now suspected of plotting a burglary in Tennessee to procure funds for an artificial horse leg.

Joyce Bernann McKinney, a former beauty queen who earlier this year paid £25,000 to have her dead pet recreated, is accused of instructing a 15-year-old boy to break into a house because she needed funds to help another beloved animal, her three-legged horse.

...

The Tennessee charges stem from McKinney's arrest in November 2004 after being found in a van with the teenager. According to prosecutors in Carter County, an area in north eastern Tennessee, she instructed the boy to burgle a house and was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Dog cloner Joyce McKinney sought over burglary to fund horse's wooden leg (Thanks, Teresa!)

Ralf says:

Heinz-Jürgen Ehrig, a German Science Fiction fan, has collected about 130.000 Science Fiction books, magazines, fanzines, etc. Since his death in 2003, his widow, the SciFi author Marianne Sydow has spend gazillions of hours cataloguing his collection and is now publishing the bibliographical data on a monthly basis in a paperback + CD outfit for a small fee. Unfortunately she finds it hard to get any subscribers, which is a shame really. It would be a shame if this project dies. More here - I think I'm the only one who brought this more or less to the attention of the "outside Germany" world.

Villa Galactica needs your help Part 1 | Villa Galactica needs your help Part 2

Peter Thaler says

Away from its usual home in Berlin, the Pictoplasma Conference is about to touch down in the heart of Manhattan. On September 5 and 6 the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU will serve as the gathering place for a diverse crowd of artists, designers, animators, producers and fans who will freely exchange ideas about anything and everything related to character design.

The diverse lineup of speakers hails from around the globe, covering a wide range of media, artistic ideas and inspirational sources, with lectures by Tim Biskup (US), Akinori Oishi (JP), Friends With You (USA), Motomichi Nakamura (JP/US), Fons Schiedon (NL), David OReilly (IRL), Gangpol & Mit (FR), Aaron Stewart (US), Studio AKA (UK) and Tokyoplastic (UK).

Besides a back-to-back program of presentations, parties and panels, this year's animation screenings promise to further explore how graphical characters previously not associated with the industry are now taking the medium by storm, including work by Marc Craste, Yves Geleyn, Daniel Garcia, Passion Pictures, Rex Crowl, Wieden + Kennedy, Buck, Nathan Jurevicius and more...

Pictoplasma: 5-6 September, New York

Shockingly, the press conference (shown live on CNN!) where two Bigfoot "hunters" and one Bigfoot "researcher" were to reveal proof that they have a dead Sasquatch in a freezer was a bust. From FOXNews:

(Bigfoot "researcher") Biscardi reiterated his invitation to FOX News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly to come to Georgia and view the body, and plugged his Internet radio show.

He said there wouldn't be anything more revealed Friday, but promised that he would "assemble" a group of scientists to examine the alleged corpse...

"It definitely looks like our costume," Jerry Parrino, owner of TheHorrorDome.com, told FOXNews.com.

"This 'body' has little to do with Bigfoot and everything to do with a Sasquatch costume that someone developed after watching too many gorilla movies," warned Loren Coleman, who runs the influential Cryptomundo blog devoted to strange and unknown animals. "The teeth that seem to have been placed in the mouth could be my late mother's false teeth."

"Bigfoot Hunters Press Conference Reveals Little" (FOXNews.com)

Previously on BB:
• Bigfoot discovery press conference on Friday (HOAX?)

These Australian guys conducted an experiment and videotaped it: Can you beat the lines at a club and get in by wearing a record bag and pretending to be a DJ?

Guy 1: Alright AJ, it's been a long night but we've proven some truths about the record bag. What are they?

Guy 2: I've proven I can get into any club I like, skip any queue, pay no cover charges, go up to the DJ and pretty much take over their job.

How to Get Into Any Club (via Schneier)

From Reason TV:

Norm Stamper is a cop who saw it all during his 34 years on active duty. As police of Seattle from 1994 through 2000, he was in charge during violent World Trade Organization protests in the Emerald City.

Stamper, who holds a Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior from United States International University, has emerged as one of the most thoughtful and outspoken critics of the war on drugs, which he believes causes untold misery, undermines effective law enforcement, and doesn't begin to pass any sort of cost-benefit analysis. As important, the libertarian Stamper believes that the drug war—and other wars on the behaviors on consenting adults—does great violence to the idea that we own our bodies.

Stamper is the author of the Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (2005) and now works with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a nonprofit created by former cops to "reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition."

Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on the high costs of the drug war

Here's a clever tip for getting customer service reps to help you with a sticky problem that will require extra effort on their part. It's from Noah Goldestein, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the author of Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (co-authored by by Robert B. Cialdini, who wrote the terrific book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion).

If you've ever contested a mysterious charge on your credit card, tried to resolve a problem with your computer, or wanted to return an item to a vendor, you've probably encountered stubborn customer service agents -- people who seem nice at the outset but change their tune when they realize complying with your request will cause additional work on their part. To change their orientation toward you, try the following: If you find toward the beginning of your interaction that the customer service agent is being particularly friendly, polite, or responsive -- perhaps before you get to your toughest request -- tell the agent that you're so impressed with his or her service and knowledge so far that you're going to write a positive letter or e-mail about your interaction to his or her supervisor as soon as you get off the phone. After getting the agent's name and the supervisor's contact information, you can then get to the more complex issues at hand.

...

Although there are a number of psychological reasons for why this might be an effective strategy, the norm of reciprocity -- one of the best-studied norms in psychology -- is a powerful factor here: You've offered to do a favor for that person, so now that person is going to be motivated to return the favor.

Trouble with customer service agents? Try this

Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine has kindly scanned a 1949 issue of a story from Boody Rogers' short live Dudley comic book. I'm still waiting for someone (Fantagraphics? Dark Horse?) to publish a fat anthology of Boody Rogers' feverishly surreal work.

Boody Rogers tried his hand at an Archie-style strip with Dudley. It lasted three issues, which shows his readers probably preferred his funny take on super-heroes with Sparky Watts, or Babe, Darling of the Hills, his bizarre version of Li'l Abner. This is story number one from Dudley #1, Nov.-Dec. 1949

Dudley, the Teen-Age Sensation

UPDATE: Fantagraphics has pulled through! A Boody Rogers book is in the works! Here's the cover.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Boody Rogers' profoundly absurd comics
• Boody Rogers' weird and wonderful Babe comic book

Artist Duane Keiser, who does the A Painting A Day blog sells beautiful little paintings, like this one of a marble, for $150. They're called oddments.

What's an oddment?

Oddment means "a remnant or part of something, typically leftover from a larger piece." I originally made these very small paintings on pieces of board leftover from my larger paintings. They are typically about 3"x2.5"

Unlike my Postcard Paintings, I post oddments on my blog without email notification. If you see an oddment available, email me at keiser@duanekeiser.com and put the title of the painting you want in the subject line. The first person to email me gets it.

Duane Keiser's Oddments

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 11 as a PDF or a text file. (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.

The RIAA has lost its lawsuit against Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother, and have been ordered to pay her court costs of $107,951. But the good news keeps on coming: Ms Andersen is now countersuing for damages arising from her having to defend the suit.

"Well, Phase I of the RIAA's misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn't compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she's sustained. And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution. Should be interesting."

RIAA Pays Tanya Andersen $107,951

Police in Kent, UK arrested some climate protestors and confiscated their "criminal" equipment, including a satirical boardgame about the war on terror. The police claim that the ski mask that came with the game could be used in a criminal act.

"Surely no member of the public is going to believe that a board game could be used as a weapon?"

War on Terror, similar to games like Risk, revolves around creating empires that compete and wage war.

But there is a twist - players can poke fun at the rhetoric of world leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair...

In their cardboard version of realpolitik George Bush's "Axis of Evil" is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state.

That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word "Evil" stitched on to it.

War On Terror board game seized by police (via Schneier)

32 unionized Disneyland workers, some dressed as characters, have been arrested at the Disneyland Hotel, where they are striking for better wages and benefits.

More than 600 protesters marched from a Disney-owned hotel to try and block the entrance to the park.

The employees were waving placards and chanting slogans, calling on Disneyland to provide better wages and benefits. Some of the protestors dressed as Disney characters like Tinkerbell, Aladdin and Mickey Mouse.

Disney labor protest ends in 32 arrests

A short film by monochrom about a man who dies, is reborn, and sprouts gills.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with discussion, downloadable video, and podcast subscribe instructions.

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Created by Harald Homolka List, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger (link to monochrom site for this film, here are other short films from them in German)

Previous work from monochrom on Boing Boing tv:

* Monochrom: Economic Recession Wisdom from Sock Puppets.
* Monochrom's "Kiki, Bubu, and the Self"
* Nazi Petting Zoo
* Fisch Interview
* Orwell's 1984 deconstructed by puppets
* Monochrom's Marxist sock puppets
* Monochrom: MyFaceSpace, the musical
* Monochrom: Campfire at Will
* Monochrom: Falco Stairs
* Monochrom: Bar code artist Scott Blake / Falco stencil memorial
* Human USB Hack / Very Simple Motor
* Mark's Curie Engine / Monochrom's love song for Lessig

An unidentified source (oh, hell, alright, illustrator Graham Roumieu) sends us this press release issued by Bigfoot himself about recent cryptid news. Click for larger size so you can read all hims big talkings, which begin -- natch -- with "HELLO, I BIGFOOT." Imagine Cookie Monster's voice dialed up to volume 11, with a lot of reverb and bloodstains, and you can sort of hear it in your head.

Previously on Boing Boing: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir, new from Graham Roumieu

Here's the movie poster for what is being described as "a horror movie for geeks," LAN Party Massacre , coming in 2009. Trailer is here. It looks pretty campy and low-rent, and I look forward to checking it out. (thanks, Andrew Tonkin)

Last year, I posted about the passing of a legendary phone phreaker named Joybubbles. He was a blind and unusually gifted recluse who sought to surround himself in life with things that reminded him of childhood. BB reader Phil Lapsley first alerted us to news of his death, and has since written about what it was like to have the responsibility of cleaning out Joybubbles' home after he died, and the things discovered there. Phil says,

It's been about a year since Joybubbles passed away, and I wanted to let you know my project to document the history of phone phreaking continues. Just this week I finally launched a web site at historyofphonephreaking.org. There is also a blog at blog.historyofphonephreaking.org. I posted my essay about cleaning out Joybubbles' apartment there.

Here's an excerpt from Phil's phreaking history site:

What is phone phreaking?
A phone phreak is someone who loves exploring the telephone system and experimenting with it to understand how it works. Phone phreaking got its start in the late 1950s. Its golden age was the late 1960s and early 1970s.

And here is an excerpt from his essay about Joybubbles.

The smell is the first thing you notice. It's certainly the first thing Joybubbles would have noticed. To my nose, the air in the apartment building is a miasma, an amalgam of the smells of stale food, cigarette smoke, and grease. But I'm not Joybubbles -- and one of his favorite expressions was, "This stinks so good!" Joybubbles loved swimming in heavily chlorinated swimming pools for this very reason. He loved smells, in all their varieties.

The fact that there are no lightbulbs in his apartment is the second thing you notice. But it's certainly not something Joybubbles would have noticed -- blind since birth, he didn't spend a lot of time noticing light bulbs. Joybubbles once told of exploring a hotel and finding his way to its heavily chlorinated swimming pool after hours, in the dark. The angry hotel manager finally caught him and demanded, "How did you find your way to the pool? There's no way you could have gotten here! The lights were off!" Joybubbles just smiled.

The clutter and chaos and insanity in the tiny apartment is the third thing you notice. What's this? Oh, an old military AUTOVON telephone, complete with the magic extra Touch-Tone button labeled "FO ("Flash Override") that Generals were supposed to use to alert the President in the event of war.

Every idea implies its opposite, and there's no clearer proof of this than the amazing Internet practice of "scambaiting," well-documented in Eve Edelson's Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers.

You know those ridiculous fraud emails you get from deposed princes, corrupt bankers, desperate widows (and so on), with weird capitalization and punctuation, asking you to advance them some money so that they can liberate a giant, multibillion-dollar sum and give you ten percent for your trouble? These "419" letters originate from all over the world, but Nigeria's perfect storm of connectivity, corruption, lawlessness and poverty meant that the "Lads" of Lagos have elevated ripoff letters to a high art.

And for every Lad, there's a scambaiter. Scambaiting is a vibrant internet sport that involves turning the tables on 419 scammers, getting them to undertake ridiculous rituals, expend money and energy, humiliate and debase themselves as they seek to ruin their "victims'" lives through fraud.

Scamorama is a popular website for scambaiting, and its creator, Eve Edelson, has put a lot of thought into the nature of the 419 con and those who seek to disrupt it. In Scamorama (the book), Edelson traces the history of scamming back to the middle ages and forward to the present day, giving practical advice on not getting taken in and scam-proofing your friends and family.

But where Scamorama really gets going in as a HOWTO manual for scambaiting, with long, hilarious email exchanges between baiters and scammers, and good tips for running your own reverse con.

As hobbies go, scambaiting sounds like a pretty fun one -- and it has redeeming social characteristics, since the 419 con artist who is busily whittling you a Commodore 64, sojourning to Amsterdam to meet an "eccentric clergyman" who will front him $20,000, or re-enacting the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch is a con artist who is not ruining the life of some more trusting soul. Scamorama on Amazon, Scamorama.com

See also:
* 419 scammers tricked into re-creating Dead Parrot Sketch
* 419 victim shoots Nigerian diplomat
* NPR "Xeni Tech": Scambaiters and Monty Python, 419-style
* Laura Bush's 419 letter
* Dick Cheney's 419 letter
* Dutch court locks up 419 scammers
* Busting a 419 scammer spammer
* Nigerian Letter scammer convinced to carve replica Commodore 64
* Man loses money trying to double it by marinating
* Nigerian letters fuel Lagos's Internet Cafe boom
* Nigerian legit email hard to distinguish from 419s

After an inexcusably long absence from YouTube, the farting preacher is back. (Thanks, Coop!)

Etsy seller UntamedMenagerie has a wide variety of intricately cut acrylic jewelry, but I'm best fond of this ribcage, entitled "Thoracic." Thoracic (Thanks, Alice!)

CrazyPC's latest 5.25" drive-bay gizmo is a toaster for your PC. No more suffering with the indignity of raw bread, nor the insufferable pain of going to the kitchen. Um, might wanna be sure your heatsink is below it, and that your fan is up to snuff. Or invest in water-cooling. CrazyPC 5.25 Inch Bay Toaster

Yakkay's bike-helmets look like hats -- just slip a cover on (they come in beanie, sunhat, peaked cap and a couple other varieties, and in many colors) and pedal your way to sartorial splendour. Yakkay (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

I'm a devoted listener of StarShipSofa's Aural Delights science fiction podcast. The most recent episode (No. 37) has a short story by Ted Chiang called "What’s Expected Of Us," and I think it's comparable to the work of Jorge Luis Borges.

"What’s Expected Of Us" is about what happens after the introduction of a little toy called The Predictor. It looks like a car-door remote. It has one button and one LED. It does one thing, and one thing only: without fail, its LED flashes precisely one second before you push the button.

Chiang's exploration of the consequences of such a gadget packs the same kind of philosophical wallop that makes The Mind's I (Hofstadter and Dennett) one of the most mind-altering books I've ever read.

Cory gave me a copy of Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others, a thought-provoking collection of short fiction.

Starship Sofa Aural Delights

Jordan Crane, one of my favorite illustrators, has just posted two new prints. He says, "They're both a little more extravagant than usual, 6 and 7 color instead of the usual 3 or 4." The boat and sea-monster, shown here, is just perfect. A Bike and a Boat

There are many things to like in this 1974 BBC news segment about a gentleman jumping on eggs. (via Arbroath)

Artist Maria A Lopez created her "dust houses" for her Masters in art in Philadelphia -- cardboard dolls' houses covered in vacuum cleaner dust.

Childhood memories mixed with the stories of others gave context to the project. Houses that represent the "American dream". Generations that lived and inhabited the space but only their dust is left to see. Dust as a witness of the living. Only memory.

The pieces are doll houses covered with vacuum cleaner dust. The architecture of the houses is carefully selected to match them with familiar urban landscapes.

dust houses (via Make)

John Shirley says: "Robot with a biological brain (wrote about this in my Eclipse novels, never thought it'd happen in my lifetime)."

The robot’s biological brain is made up of cultured neurons which are placed onto a multi electrode array (MEA). The MEA is a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells. This is then used to drive the movement of the robot. Every time the robot nears an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes. In response, the brain’s output is used to drive the wheels of the robot, left and right, so that it moves around in an attempt to avoid hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer, its sole means of control is from its own brain.

A robot with a biological brain
UPDATE: Tom Simonite, online technology editor at Newscientist.com says: "I noticed you linked to the ZDnet coverage of robot with a rat's brain at Reading University. We've put together a video of it using its brain power to avoid obstacles."

Noah Shachtman tells Boing Boing,

The Air Force is about to suspend its controversial effort to reorganize its forces to "dominate" cyberspace. The provisional, 8,000-man Cyber Command has been ordered to stop all activities, just weeks before it was supposed to be declared operational.

Air Force Suspends Controversial Cyber Command (Wired Danger Room).

Above: Air Force Cyber Command Recruiting Video (YouTube)

Coolhunting has a creepy post up about an artist in Thailand, Kittiwat Unarrom, who uses dough to icky, edible facsimiles of hand, feet, heads, torsos and other body parts. He comes from a family of breadbakers, and has been doing this grossout art since 2005 (or perhaps earlier, I'm seeing conflicting reports). Coolhunting snip:

The results are unnervingly realistic with eyes, lips and other details constructed out of cashews, raisins and the like.

Kittiwat Unarrom: Bread Body Parts (coolhunting, thanks Susannah Breslin)
Previously on BB: Baker/artist makes putrefying organs and remains out of bread

Klaus Pierre, a French/German actor-waiter-whatever, aspires against all odds to become America's next great action hero. In today's episode, he heads to the hills above Hollywood, where scrub brush and aspiring starlets bask in the sun, to work out with a really mean personal trainer. Warning: episode contains cucumber masks masques and pushups.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post, with discussion, downloadable video, and podcast subscribe instructions.

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Previous Klaus Pierre episodes on BBtv:

• Klaus Pierre: Big Party
• Klaus Pierre: Super Pretty Action Hero Star
• Klaus Pierre: The Beach
• Klaus Pierre: Red Carpet Botox Dreams
• Klaus Pierre: Pirate Musical of Epic Fail
• Klaus Pierre: Savate
• Klaus Pierre: Coffee Shop.
• Klaus Pierre: Swordfighting
• Point Break and heartbreak

The tenth collection of Fables comics, "The Good Prince" (and its companion volume, The Bad Prince) continues to delight with its thoroughgoing exploration of one of the better conceits in comics today. Fables is the long-running, multiple-award-winning comic series in which every legendary being of every land -- and all of the elements of storytelling, like the pathetic fallacy -- are exiled to earth by a cruel and conquering emperor.

The Fables creators have lots of room to play with this idea -- fourteen volumes so far, including four spinouts -- and they're really going for it. The side-plots have explored everything from Hollywood's vulnerability to Jack of Fables to the special problems of human-wolf mating, the handling of conspiracy nuts who get too close to the truth, and the claustrophobia of a whole world when you aren't allowed to reveal yourself in it.

But all the way through, Fables has been moving toward a conclusion, a major battle in which the Fables try to reclaim their ancestral lands from the evil emperor. And that's where The Good Prince comes in. In this volume, the stage is really set for the final conflict between the two armies, through a set of transformations to some of the series oldest and most complex characters (some of whom have been offstage for a book or two).

At nearly 250 pages, this book feels roomier than some of the others, and there's a lot of laying-of-groundwork going on, the sense of pieces being put into place for a major offensive. And for all that, there's still a complete and satisfying chapter in this one. Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince, Link to all Fables collections, Link to free download of Fables 1

See also:
* Jack of Fables: great new Fables collection * Jack of Fables: Jack of Hearts - comic adventures of the legendary Jack continue
* Scherezade meets every fable of every land - comic

Matt Smith snapped this amazing street-sign in Tokyo, noting that "it's kind of a cool accidental cover" for my young adult novel Little Brother. High-rez JPEG

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a company that sells Mac clones that just doesn't know how to play dead and philosophized on the science of zip ties. NVIDIA might have a company sinking FUBAR on their hands, while Joel liked a Threadless shirt that installs cyborg plugs and ports all over your spinal column.

Brownlee shed a tear for some poor schlub who is being forced to sell his collection of every NES game ever made and wondered if you could build a Flux Capacitor from LEGO-like circuit board components. Joel dug a lamprey-like Logitech mouse and gave his thoughts on the resurrection of the Polaroid instant camera.

At midday, an Apple R&D building dramatically burst into flames, possibly due to smoking around the company's new dancing oil structure. Motorola's releasing a new RAZR, Dell's selling laptops with 19 hours of battery life and the Wii gets DVD playback.

Finally, Brownlee's cell phone company calls him up to tell him that they sincerely hope he'll someday find a lover. In the meantime, he's got Joel.

Link

The Matryomin is artist Masami Takeuchi's theremin built into a matrioshke doll. They're bulk-produced and offered for sale.

It hold form of Matrioshka perfectly, moreover, performing five octaves range. The distance of 1 octave at Low-Middle range is equal to Etherwavetheremin of Moog Music Inc. If you have acquired the basic technique to play theremin by Etherwavetheremin, you can enjoy playing Matryomin by same way. Matryomin is only pitch controlled theremin.

Mandarin Electron, a company directed by Masami Takeuchi, started manufacturing Matryomin on a commercial basis in 2003. Now, Matryomin is going on 2nd generation model. Selled over 1,600 till now in Japan

Matryomin (via Red Ferret)

A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk, taken on long, bumpy drives while official demanded that he drop his immigration appeals. The jailers who caused his death were private contractors with fat deals with the DHS to lock up immigration detainees.

As he lay dying, his family -- wife and two children, aged 1 and 3 -- were denied access to him while the warden considered their request to visit.

"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

The TSA maintains a list of "suspicious" fliers who do things like forget to take their sewing scissors out of their knitting bags before boarding a flight. To this list, they have added 16,500 fliers who forgot to bring ID to the airport, though they say that forgetting your ID will no longer brand you forever as a potential terrorist. Forgetting your sewing scissors will still go down on your permanent record, though.

The TSA began storing the information in late June, tracking many people who said they had forgotten their driver's license or passport at home. The database has 16,500 records of such people and is open to law enforcement agencies, according to the TSA.

Asked about the program, TSA chief Kip Hawley told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday that the information helps track potential terrorists who may be "probing the system" by trying to get though checkpoints at various airports.

Later Tuesday, Hawley called the newspaper to say the agency is changing its policy effective today and will stop keeping records of people who don't have ID if a screener can determine their identity. Hawley said he had been considering the change for a month. The names of people who did not have identification will soon be expunged, he said.

Fliers without ID placed on TSA list (Thanks, Loren!)

(UPDATE: Duke of URL wrote: "I noted your article about quarter-stealing birds. It seemed familiar, so I checked Snopes; I was right - this story came out years ago.")

My favorite TED talk of 2008 was given by Joshua Klein, who built a vending machine that crows can deposit coins into in exchange for peanuts. (Here's the video of his talk.)

Today, Phil Torrone posted news about a gang of thieving <strike>crows</strike> bthat are stealing coins from car wash vending machines.

Bill is the owner of a company that manufactures and installs car wash systems. Bill installed one of these systems in in Frederick, MD. The issue arose when the buyer complained he was losing significant amounts of money each day. He even accused Bill and his employees of ripping him off.

Naturally, Bill proceeded towards investigating the issue. He decided to mount a video camera to see who exactly is stealing all the coins. Imagine his surprise when he saw several birds carrying all the coins in their nest. After following the birds, he discovered its quarters on the top of a car wash and more in a tree, an estimated amount of $4,000.

Phil muses, "So many questions, who is giving them peanuts, is this based off Josh's work or the other way around, a fake?"

I'll bet Rupert Sheldrake would be interested in this. :)

Crows stealing coins from car wash (Make Blog)

From Larry Lessig's blog, a major victory for open licenses:

I am very proud to report today that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (THE "IP" court in the US) has upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.) This is a very important victory, and I am very very happy that the Stanford Center for Internet and Society played a key role in securing it. Congratulations especially to Chris Ridder and Anthony Falzone at the Center.

In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

huge and important news: free licenses upheld

I'm pretty tickled by these rock-n-roll yoga tees -- yoga's been doing wonders for my general health, flexibility and back pain (not to mention my state of mind), but I do get a little tired of the sheer hippietrippiness of it all. A little AC/DC homage is just what the guru ordered. Yoga T-Shirt (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com is a sociologist provocateur that we've featured quite a few times here on Boing Boing. His experiments never fail to delight and illuminate.

Recently Rob found $60 in parking lot and when he reported it on Craigslist he received three replies. Intrigued, he posted another (this time, ersatz) announcement that he'd found money and wanted to return it to its rightful owner. Look how four "different" people replied to his annoucement:

Catherine: I was shopping at the Mervyns on camp wisdom and three hundred dollard fell out of my wallett it was twenties and one hundreds. It was my kids back to school money and have been loosing my mind. Not sure if you found all of it or part. but please email me back either way. Thank you, Catherine (Fri. 4:36pm)

Jack: My wife and I where shopping at Mervyns and lost 260.00 it was one fifty one ten five twenties and one one hundred dollar bill. We where at the Mervyns on Plano Rd. In Dallas please let me know if you found any part of this money we would greatly appreciate it. (Fri. 4:40pm)

Rob: Hi Catherine, I'm sorry, I found more money than that, so I think it must be someone else's. I am very sorry. Good luck. (Mon 10:30am)

Rob: Hi Jack, I'm sorry, I found the money in the shoe department at the Camp Wisdom Mervyn's store. Good luck. (Mon 10:31am)

Bella: Hello I was shopping at the mervyns on camp wisdom with my family I was in the shoe department and jewlrey department. somewhere in either department I lost three hundred dollars. and I am going out of my mind ! please email me back and let me know if you found it. I have been worried sick. thank you (10:35 am!!)

Rob: Hi Bella, That is the same store where I found the money, but I found almost $800 wrapped in paper. I'm sorry. It might even be from the store itself, so I've been planning to go and ask the manager if their deposit was missing or something. Good luck. (Mon 12:50 pm)

Eric: I saw your post on cl just as I was going to put one up. my boss told me about cl. I lost some money at mervyns on camp wisdom I had just come from the bank and stopped in to get some sneakers. the money I lost is my rent money. it was wrapped in paper and was 780.00 . my wife is needless to say unhappy with me for loosing it. I called the store and no one has turnend it in. if you can email me back. thank you. (Mon 12:54 pm)

Bella: thank you for emailing me back. someone just called me who found my money! so thankfully I got it back.

Rob: Hi Eric, Ok, thanks for writing. I called the store and tried to talk to the manager to see if it might be misplaced or stolen from the register, but she was not available. I hung up after 7 minutes on hold. Anyway, I'm waiting for them to call me back too. I want to be sure I have the right person because it was a lot of money. Can you tell me anything about the paper? -Rob

Eric: It was wrapped in white paper, I am loosing my mind paniking because that was almost my whole pay how could I possibly recoop that you know?

Cockeyed.com presents: You Found my Money!

Here's a neat video of a funny robot on the roof of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The robot was made by Golan Levin with Lawrence Hayhurst, Steven Benders and Fannie White.

"Double-Taker (Snout)" (interactive installation, 2008) deals in a whimsical manner with the themes of trans-species eye contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous surveillance. The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant's trunk, which responds in unexpected ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity. Sited on a low roof above a museum entrance, and governed by a real-time machine vision algorithm, Double-Taker (Snout) orients itself towards passers-by, tracking their bodies and suggesting an intelligent awareness of their activities. The goal of this kinetic system is to perform convincing "double-takes" at its visitors, in which the sculpture appears to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers — communicating, without words, that there is something uniquely surprising about each of us.

Double-Taker (Snout)

I like this Pendulum Alter Ego video of three different animated heads doing the same thing at exactly the same time. The hi-res version is here. Pendulum Alter Ego

UPDATE: Bigfoot Corpse is Hoax? A Boing Boing reader says: "This site has also been making the rounds - it appears that the person behind the whole thing is a known hoaxer. And the corpse is a simple bought costume. Not too sure about credibility, but seems more reasonable than being the real deal."

Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo writes about the Bigfoot body purported to be discovered in the woods in Northern Georgia. The guys who claim to have discovered it are holding a press conference in Palo Alto on Friday.

Is it real? It certainly looks like the real deal, and with a surprising variety of features.

The hominoid (please note, not hominid) body, found in the Georgia woods, is now in a secure location, under armed guard, and set to be examined by a battery of academic scholars, skeptical scientists, Bigfoot researchers, and debunking writers.

Who is to say the discovery of Bigfoot won’t happen this way?

With offers of millions of dollars, just for the photographs of the body, Loren Coleman and Cryptomundo was given one copy of the first image to share with you, our readers.

The body doesn’t look exactly like people thought it would, because the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot has been the model in our minds. However, this looks as if it is an actual apelike primate. Indeed, the gorilla-like facial features, the robust lack of canines, and the grinding surfaces shown in the teeth suggest a bulky vegetarian with a mixture of higher primate characteristics.

Will further tests and the proposed live capture of others prove beyond a doubt that Bigfoot is a new species? Stay tuned.

Georgia Gorilla: Bigfoot Body’s First Photo! (Cryptomundo)