Just don't call it "Silicon Alley," he says: Venture capitalist Fred Wilson takes a trip down memory lane in a sweeping keynote he gave at Web 2.0 this week. Video: The New York Internet Industry, 1995 to 2008, From Nascent to Ascendant.

Essential viewing. Seriously. If you use the internet, you need to see this. Know your history. Wherever you are on the web, this is part of your history.

I just spent the weekend clearing out a garage full of old belongings and personal documents, including box after box after beat-up box of Silicon Alley Reporter magazines, and brochures for NYC tech conferences I produced with Jason Calacanis. Watching Fred's presentation and leafing through those dusty old glossies makes me feel nostalgic for all the hope, ambition, and excitement we all felt back then. I'm proud to have been there for some of it. Even the crazy, fucked-up parts that ended badly, which Fred chronicles beautifully here. (thanks, Josh "MC Luvvy" Harris!)

Lauren McLaughlin sez, "Young Adult author Maureen Johnson launches new Obama social networking website. Many YA authors will be blogging there, including Judy Blume, Scott Westerfeld, Meg Cabot, Holly Black and many more. From the mission statement:"

YA for Obama is a community of YA writers and readers and friends who have joined together because of our commitment to Future United States President Barack Obama...This is a social networking site, which means that when you join (it’s free! easy! takes about a minute!) you can do LOADS of stuff around here. You can make your own page, contribute to the forum, upload your own photos and videos, and make friends who love Obama as much as you do.

I wouldn't say I loved Obama (his vote to allow the continued illegal wiretapping of the entire nation destroyed any chance of that), but I do support him. If I got a vote (I'm Canadian), that's who I'd vote for. YA for Obama (Thanks, Lauren!)

Looks like Bill O'Reilly skipped the First Amendment section of Journalism 101. He thinks owners of websites that posted Sarah Palin's hacked emails should be prosecuted along with the hacker who broke into her account. When a Fox news anchor attempts to explain why the websites can't be prosecuted, he refuses to accept it, arguing back with bad analogies, which the news anchor handily demolishes. It's fun to watch.

A slender majority of members in the American Psychiatric Psychological Association have voted in favor of a resolution that forbids members from aiding in torture. This was spurred by the complicity of APA members in conducting torture-based interrogation at Guantanamo Bay and other American and American-affiliated secret prisons:

The ban means those who are American Psychological Association members can't assist the U.S. military at these sites. They can only work there for humanitarian purposes or with non-governmental groups, according to Stephen Soldz, a Boston psychologist. Soldz is founder of an ethics coalition that has long supported the ban...

Psychologists have been involved in decisions that approve of coercion methods, including "taking away comfort items like clothes and toilet paper from detainees" to help extract information from them, Soldz said.

He said that some even declined to diagnose post-traumatic stress in detainees because that would suggest detainees had been abused or harmed while in custody.

...

Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Mental Health and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have determined that treatment equivalent to torture has been taking place at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. [1]

Whereas this torture took place in the context of interrogations under the direction and supervision of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that included psychologists. [2, 3]

Whereas the Council of Europe has determined that persons held in CIA black sites are subject to interrogation techniques that are also equivalent to torture [4], and because psychologists helped develop abusive interrogation techniques used at these sites. [3, 5]

Whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross determined in 2003 that the conditions in the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay are themselves tantamount to torture [6], and therefore by their presence psychologists are playing a role in maintaining these conditions.

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights[7].

2008 APA Petition Resolution Ballot, Psychologists vote against role in interrogation (via Blogzilla)

A good friend of mine got this email about his Canadian .ca domain from "TradeMarkSolutions.cn" telling him he needed to send money to China or he'd lose his domain. Needless to say, it's a scam. Thought you'd want to know!

*From*: "Laurence.Rockefeller"
Laurence.Rockefeller@TradeMarkSolutions.cn
*Date*: XXXXX
*To*: XXXXXXX
*Subject*: XXXX inquiry
Dear XXXXX ,

We are one of the Domain Name Dispute Resolution (DNDR) Committee members authorized by ANIC(Asia Internet Network Information Center).

Now we have something urgent need to confirm with your company. On the Sep17, 2008, we received the GoldenSunshine International Investment Group's application that they want to register the “ * XXXX * ” as their Internet Brand and Asia Pacific domains. Considering these domains and internet brand would involve the intellectual property of your company’s name,patents,trademarks,and copyright, and in order to avoid confusion between them, so we inform you urgently. If you considered these domains and internet brand are important to you and there was necessary to protect them by registering them first, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.Thank you for you cooperation.

I am waiting for your urgent reply,
Kind Regards,
Dr. Laurence Rockefeller
Chief Law Officer,Senior Consulting Director

Internet Brand Justice & Safety Dept.
*Asia Pacific* *TradeMark Solutions Ltd* (Branch Office)
*Help Dispute Tel:* +86-10101-75620-6698 ext.888 (Mon–Fri,9am to 6:30pm,GMT+8)

Asia Domain Name Registration Limited - Scam

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 16 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.

Image by LuisDS via Flickr

LuisDS looked at the metadata on the video for Microsoft's new "I'm a PC" commercial and learned that it was made on Mac using Adobe Creative Suite 3. Link

I get about ten books sent to me every week. I'm a slow reader, so I can't begin to get to them all. But I keep the ones that I hope to get to some day. Here are a few interesting ones in my ready-to-topple-over reading stack:

Teeny Bikini #4, by Robert Ullman. I actually did read this one already. It was easy, because it doesn't have any words, just wonderful little pencil sketches of cartoon cuties. I didn't see Issue #4 for sale on Rob's site, but you can buy earlier volumes there, along with other books and stickers.

Porn Soup, by Paul Krassner. This anthology of sex-related essays were written by Paul Krassner, the founder of The Realist and one of my cultural heroes. I've read a few of the pieces in here, and they're funny, profound, and revealing, which is what I've come to expect from Paul.
Essays include: Susie Bright Interviews Paul Krassner, Lenny Bruce Meets Blow Job Betty, In Praise of Indecency Masturbation Helper, The Man Behind The Aristocrats, Showing Pink, Pee-Wee Herman Meets Pete Townshend, Satirical Prophecy, The Marriage of Hip-Hop and Pornography, Porn and the Manson Murders, Rape and Porn, Bizarre Sexually Oriented Spam Subject Lines, Meet an FBI Porn Squad Agent, Remembering Pubic Hair, The Taste of Sperm, Disinformation Porn, Hobo Sex and Crack Whore Confessions, Eating Shit for Fun and Profit, Porn Dogs, "I Fuck Dead People," Porn Provides Product Placement, Addicted to Porn, Women and Porn.

Boy's Club 2, by Matt Furie. A comic book about the non-adventures of four post-adolescent, near-imbecilic, prank-playing, dope-smoking humanimals. I expect Judd Apatow will option this.

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, by Kirsten Menger-Anderson. I haven't started this novel, but it looks promising. The inside flap copy says it's about several generations of peculiar medical doctors, whose techniques involve spontaneous combustion, animal magnetism, phrenology, and lobotomies. I'm going to sneak this one higher up on my stack.

Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture, by Damon Brown. This one has a cover by our pal Coop, and was published by our pals at Feral House. Looking forward to reading this one, too. From the jacket copy: When the VCR first became commonly available, and the modern porn industry’s sales skyrocketed, Atari systems, with their phallic joysticks, also seized the American mind. In Porn and Pong, Playboy journalist Damon Brown reveals how these businesses have blossomed, intersected and affected our culture.

Kevin has a Flickr set of "signs that have been slightly altered in Photoshop for a humorous effect." I like this one for an "attack toilet." Remixed Signage

This was on the Consumerist last month, but I just came across it. On the left, the box for a kiddie pool. On the right, a photo of the actual kiddie pool. A note on the box reads: "Product may not be as appears on image." Banzai Wild Waves Water Park Box Picture Vs Reality

Left to right: Pinball Wizard, Beer Wagon and Peanut Machine Photo: Street Rodder

While George Barris and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth are household names, the comparatively unknown Carl Casper is my favorite designer of outrageous custom hot rods of the 1960s and 1970s. Such incongruous hot rod themes as mail truck and barbershop were common, but I prefer the straightforward corner tavern, hot peanut and pinball sensibility of Carl Casper. These no-go showboats were decked out with chrome superchargers and fuel injection but never hit the pavement as they were rolled out of trailers to the pink shag fake fur of the hot rod show floor. Carl is still slogging it with an annual Louisville car show and, since he has never sold a car he built, there is still an opportunity to see these beasts in their natural environment under the florescent lights. Naturally, I like cars that go, but these candy flake monsters were the stuff of my dreams when I was kid; I bought all the model kits and dutifully assembled plastic chrome engines in a Testors glue fog.


Street Rodder Magazine on the 1970's Show Rods Carl Casper on the interdoodles

(Mister Jalopy is a guest blogger!)

Laughing Squid treats us to this funny clip from an episode of Quincy. Jack Klugman is trying to save a young girl lured into the violent world of the punk underground. He visits to a punk rock club, bravely goes on stage, and pleads passionately for information about the girl's whereabouts. The punks, in preposterously clownish make-up, respond with sarcasm, socio-political rhetoric, and snot-nosed apathy. I enjoyed this almost as much as the Ironside clip with Tiny Tim at a beatnik club.

The Quincy Punk Episode vs The 90210 Rave Episode

When plants are stressed out, they generate aspirin-like chemicals. The aspirin isn't used to reduce headaches, primarily because plants don't have heads. Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research detected significant quantities of methyl salicyate, a chemical form of aspirin, above a forest canopy. The capability of plants to emit the chemical had been known previously but only observed in a laboratory setting. From a press release:

(Lead researcher Thomas) Karl and his colleagues speculate that the methyl salicylate has two functions. One of these is to stimulate plants to begin a process known as systemic acquired resistance, which is analogous to an immune response in an animal. This helps a plant to both resist and recover from disease.

The methyl salicylate also may be a mechanism whereby a stressed plant communicates to neighboring plants, warning them of the threat. Researchers in laboratories have demonstrated that a plant may build up its defenses if it is linked in some way to another plant that is emitting the chemical. Now that the NCAR team has demonstrated that methyl salicylate can build up in the atmosphere above a stressed forest, scientists are speculating that plants may use the chemical to activate an ecosystem-wide immune response...

The discovery raises the possibility that farmers, forest managers, and others may eventually be able to start monitoring plants for early signs of a disease, an insect infestation, or other types of stress. At present, they often do not know if an ecosystem is unhealthy until there are visible indicators, such as dead leaves.

"A chemical signal is a very sensitive way to detect plant stress, and it can be an order of magnitude more effective than using visual inspections," Karl says.

"Plants in Forest Emit Aspirin Chemical to Deal with Stress" (UCAR)

Creative Review's Patrick Burgoyne is visiting Mumbai where he spotted the secret pilot of Google's new drinks subsidiary. Before you get any bright ideas to knock them off, please notice that Gogola has a TM next to the logo.
"Google or Gogola?" (Creative Review)

Previously on BB:
• Google-themed sari at Delhi mall

An company that specializes in sneakily placing product-names in pop-song lyrics (!!) screwed up and accidentally approached an anti-advertising activist for money to include his nonexistent "product" in a pop song -- the activist strung them along and got tons of poop:

In the e-mail, Kluger (who has represented Mariah Carey, New Kids on the Blog, Ne-Yo, Fall Out Boy, Method Man, Lady GaGa and Ludacris) explained via e-mail that for the right price, Double Happiness Jeans could find its way into the lyrics in an upcoming Pussycat Dolls song. Crouse posted the e-mail on his blog at the Anti-Advertising Agency, an art project of sorts that's basically the philosophical mirror image of a traditional ad agency.

The thing is, Double Happiness Jeans is not your everyday brand -- it's a virtual sweatshop organized by EyeBeam for a display at the Sundance Festival, which involves paying Second Life citizens 90 cents an hour to make real, customized jeans designed in the virtual factory. Crouse and Steve Lambert, his partner at the Anti-Advertising Agency, are probably the last people on earth who Kluger would want to receive this e-mail. Both men spend a fair amount of their time questioning, undermining and criticizing the pervasiveness of materialism and advertising in our culture.

"It was hilarious," Lambert told us via telephone, "that he wanted to put Jeff's fake Second Life sweatshop company in a pop song. It's this desperation that advertising has come to because you can't just tell people about your product anymore, because nobody cares. Advertisers have created this situation where they've made themselves obsolete. There's too much advertising out there, so they try to find new ways to cut through the clutter that they've created. And this is one of those ways."

Products Placed: How Companies Pay Artists to Include Brands in Lyrics

Update: Complete and unedited transcript of our interview here.

In today's episode of Boing Boing tv: One year ago, a 19-year-old MIT engineering student named Star Simpson got dressed to go pick up a friend at Boston's Logan airport. She pulled a hoodie out of her closet, a wearable tech design she'd made with a light-up LED-circuit on the chest. In her hand was a small pink rose she'd crafted from hardened clay, a gift for her friend.

A few hours later at the airport, after an airport employee mistook her sweatshirt for a bomb and the rose for an explosive implement, Star found herself surrounded by 40 armed police who believed she was a suicide bomber. She was arrested for "possessing a hoax device," and an unprecedented media frenzy ensued. Here was the Boing Boing post from that day.

A year later, after a long series of court dates, a Boston judge ruled that Star must perform community service and make a public apology. Star says she intended no harm. She believes the authorities were unfairly harsh with her long after it was obvious she posed no threat, and that legal proceedings were unduly influenced by a prevailing atmosphere of anxiety over terrorism (this just months after a similar case in Boston).

She has since dropped out of MIT, and says the school's reaction felt like "being disowned." She has moved out of Boston in part because of recurring threats and attacks from strangers.

Star has finally come forward to tell her side of the story publicly, and she does so on Boing Boing tv today.

---

Link to Boing Boing tv episode with downloadable video, discussion, and video podcast subscription instructions.

---

If you'd like to make your very own LED breadboard hoodie, the folks at Instructables have just published Star's plans here. They're too graceful to say this, but I will: do not wear this to airports. Make a Breadboard Sweatshirt (Instant Wearable Electronics!)

MAKE will soon be publishing a related article.

Previous Boing Boing tv episodes :
* Star Simpson's fuzzy logic, MacGyver, MIT lasers, and trippy glasses: Maker Faire with Phil Torrone

Related Boing Boing blog posts:
* MIT student arrested for entering Boston airport with "fake bomb"
* Improvising electronic devices is not a crime
* OK Go's LED Jackets
* ATHF LEDs all over Boston today

Marilyn sez, "Swiss businessman Uli Sigg owns one of the largest collections of contemporary Chinese art in the world, and part of his collection has just gone on display at UC Berkeley Art Museum,. The exhibit is called 'Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection,' and includes these photos of a man with a Chinese landscape painting tattooed on his torso and arms." Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, after we booted up with a sunrise test, we asked ourselves: do women really need a wild cherry steam thing, as LG implies?

Brownlee wondered if people were really canceling their landlines because of the economy, and admired a DaVinci alarm clock and an ice pack for hemophiliacs. There was also musing on the base functions necessary for even the simplest cell phone. Conclusion: text messaging, at least, is a must.

Joel likes an iPhone amplifier made without electronics and an airplane made out of rubbish. Brownlee snickered at a skull-painted netbook for "unique souls."

Finally, Joel's green streak goes one step too far: he's now eating his food off of rotting leaves. Meanwhile, Brownlee spells fancy words in paper clips.

Link

A paper in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses, "Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males" (Zarrintan, S) proposes a good hard wank to relieve nasal congestion in men:

So the author proposes a more...natural method of decongestion. "It is known that sexual arousal in men is followed by penile erection and subsequent ejaculation" (unless of course you've taken too much Viagra or something). The emission phase of ejaculation is under the control of the sympathetic nervous system, which of course has lots of adrenergic receptors. The author reasons that ejaculation will stimulation adrenergic receptors in the refractory period immediately afterward, and stimulation of your adrenergic receptors will give you relief from your cold.

The author proposes that, with proper scheduling of masturbation and/or sexual intercourse a guy could keep his nose clear for the rest of his life! I wonder how the partner takes that. "Honey, come here, my nose is stuffed up..." And what if your nose is REALLY messed up? I hope those people work from home.

And if a guy can keep his nose clear for life, what about us ladeez? My allergies bother me, too, you know. I think this needs to be tested, both on men and women. So I want to hear back from all of your whether it worked. Wait 'til the hay fever sets in, go at it like rabbits, and then leave a comment with whether or not it worked. Obviously this is not a well controlled study, but I don't know that I want to ask whether it was masturbation or intercourse, and I wouldn't trust anyone with a timer in the few minutes after sex to measure their refractory period. So this is more of a pilot than a real test. Go to it! This is your homework for the weekend!

Screw the sudafed: When your nose ain't great, masturbate!

For Love of Water, the amazing documentary about water-rights and bottled water companies, is opening tonight in DC and up and down California. Here's some of my review from last April:

Global water profiteering is at the center of a global healthcare crisis that kills more people than AIDS or malaria. The film shows the grim reality of water in Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and the USA. The mortality is awful, and not just from bad water or no water -- also from police forces in states like Bolivia who go to war against people whose water supply has been sold to foreign multinationals who are reaping windfall profits while they die.

In the US and Europe, the bottled water industry pulls in billions to sell products that are more contaminated and toxic than what comes out of the tap. The result is a gigantic mountain of empty plastic bottles that toxify the environment -- and three times more money spent on bottled water than it would take to solve the world's real water crisis. The companies like Nestle that pump out our aquifers use private investigators to harass people who sign petitions to stop them from pumping.

But it's not all doom and gloom -- low-cost, sustainable purification technologies like ultraviolet water-health run by village cooperatives can make dramatic development differences for the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world, who are able to maintain their own systems without foreign involvement. Local activists all over the world and fighting back and winning public, non-profit ownership of their waterworks.

Flow See also: For Love of Water: infuriating and incredible documentary about world's water-crisis

Art sez,

My partner and I were plaintiffs in the lawsuit suing the State of California for the right of same-sex couples to be married. We won that battle but now we have a new one: California Prop 8, if it passes, would change the part of the state constitution that the State Supreme Court upheld in granting us our new marriage rights.

This is the first of many ads aimed at convincing people to get up and vote down Prop 8. It's aimed at young voters, and I'm sure more than a few read BoingBoing religiously, like I do.

I wrote, produced, shot and co-directed this piece, and all the crew donated the time and equipment necessary to make this happen. It just went live on YouTube today. The two stars just graduated from Berkeley High where they were extremely active in gay rights and their school's GSA program.

NoOnProp8dotcom's Channel (Thanks, Art!)

Mary sez,

In 2007, Dred Pirate John Joseph Adams, of the MS Fantasy and Science Fiction, commandeered the MS Shimmer for one special issue: the Pirate issue, released November 2007.

In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a holiday dear to our hearts, we’re making the electronic edition freely available. One day only: Plunder away!

The issue features fiction from James L. Cambias, Marissa K. Lingen, Jeremiah Tolbert, Mikal Trimm, and and half a dozen others. And don’t miss our piratical interview with the creator of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Illustrated throughout by James Owen.

Pirate Booty! (Thanks, Mary!)

Jason sez, "Government subsidized private bus companies in Ontario are feeling threatened by ride-sharing services like Ridester.com and PickupPal.com, so they're getting the government to shut them down under some strange loophole. The former Environment Canada minister is asking for people to protest the current Ontario administration's idiocy to save PickupPal, the last remaining ride-sharing website. Ride-sharing websites match people who need a ride with drivers who have extra space. While some companies focus on daily commutes and errands, Pickuppal works on getting people to special events like concerts and sports games."

Bus companies enjoy a variety of subsidies in Ontario, including unencumbered access to HOV lanes...in a statement supporting the building of the HOV lanes and their use, the Ontario Government states: “Sharing a ride – as a driver or a passenger – may be easier than you think!”[2] The Ontario Government seems to be oblivious to its Public Vehicles Act, as administered by the Government's own OHTB, which could significantly undermine the viability of ridesharing in Ontario."

Save Eco-Friendly PickupPal in Ontario (Thanks, Jason!)

Kyle sez, "Y'all kindly blogged the launch of Bumperactive's '50 Ways To Vote Obama Project', where we created an Obama sticker for every state. We completed 52 designs (including DC and PR) at the end of August." There Must Be.... 50 Fifty-Two Ways to Vote Obama! (Thanks, Kyle!)

See also: Obama bumper stickers for every state

Dale says:

Folks in a NASA study ... were actually supposed to spend 90 days inclined at an angle of -6 degrees (with their heads lower than the rest of their bodies) to simulate the effects of microgravity. But last week they had to end the study early because Hurricane Ike was headed straight for them in Galveston, Texas.

One of them had spent 78 days in bed.

Pillownaut | New Scientist

Over at the Make blog, Gareth Branwyn posted this terrific video of a guy who makes his own vacuum tubes. Make your own vacuum tubes

Every year my fig tree produces lots of delicious figs. I love cutting them open to see the shocking red-purple, raspberry-jam flavored fruit inside. The stickiness of the fruit and the crunchiness of the seeds is a heavenly combination.

Figeater beetles come to feast on the fruit of my fig tree every year. I never bother them, because they are gorgeous and they eat only a small fraction of the tree's seasonal harvest. I like the loud droning sound they make when they fly, too.

Besides, these creatures have been eating figs longer than human beings have been on earth and they don't understand our rules of property ownership. Really, they are sharing the figs with me, not the other way around.

My photos of figeater beetles

Geodesic Domes, in the Updated Last Whole Earth Catalog, 1975

Kevin Kelly, who was editor-in-chief at Whole Earth was looking at an old Whole Earth Catalog came to the realization that it was a 1970s version of a blog.

As I read the dense, long reviews and letters explaining the merits of this or that tool, it all seemed comfortably familiar. Then I realized why. These missives in the Catalog were blog postings. Except rather than being published individually on home pages, they were handwritten and mailed into the merry band of Whole Earth editors who would typeset them with almost no editing (just the binary editing of print or not-print) and quickly "post" them on cheap newsprint to the millions of readers who tuned in to the Catalog's publishing stream. No topic was too esoteric, no degree of enthusiasm too ardent, no amateur expertise too uncertified to be included. The opportunity of the catalog's 400 pages of how-to-do it information attracted not only millions of readers but thousands of Makers of the world, the proto-alpha geeks, the true fans, the nerds, the DIYers, the avid know-it-alls, and the tens of thousands wannabe bloggers who had no where else to inform the world of their passions and knowledge. So they wrote Whole Earth in that intense conversational style, looking the reader right in the eye and holding nothing back: "Here's the straight dope, kid." New York was not publishing this stuff. The Catalog editors (like myself) would sort through this surplus of enthusiasm, try to index it, and make it useful without the benefit of hyperlinks or tags. Using analog personal publishing technology as close to the instant power of InDesign and html as one could get in the 1970s and 80s (IBM Selectric, Polaroids, Lettraset) we slapped the postings down on the wide screens of newsprint, and hit the publish button.

This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the Whole Earth Catalogs disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the Whole Earth Catalogs did, the web does better.

The Whole Earth Blogalog

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel reminisces about the "Fun Bus," a mobile bar business he ran in his teen years, and considers the allure of the professionally-constructed Evolution Mobile Bar above. And no, that isn't Joel in the photo. Evolution Mobile Bar folds up for boozing on the run (BB Gadgets)

1947 film about how a book is made. It starts with the writer -- "This man in an author. He writes stories. He's just finished writing a story. He thinks many people will like to read it. So, he must have the story made into a book." -- and ends with a finished, bound book.

Along the way, we are taken on a tour through the printing and bindery process. In a factory full of machinery that would give an OSHA inspector a heart attack, we see a typesetter making lines of type from molten metal, a composer laying out the lines of type, a workman fitting the lines into metal frames, an operator converting the soft metal plates into wax plates, another worker dipping the wax plates into a tank filled with copper to form a solid plate, another worker cutting the plates into individual page plates with a sharp saw, another workman (he's called the "ready man") preparing the plates for printing by placing 64 pages at a time in the printing press bed, a workman examining the printed sheets, another worker inserting the sheets into a folding machine, another man to check the folder to make sure the pages are folded in the right order, a room filled with "girls" in the gathering room stacking the folders in piles and sorting them in bins, another group of girls taking the assembled folders to a machine that sews them together with thread, other workers trimming the sewed folders with sharp knives, An operator over seeing a machine making covers from paperboard, a machine that gluing cloth to the paperboard, a machine stamping the title of the book on the cover, and a machine gluing covers to the book. Whew!

(via Hang Fire Books)

The -Minus World "repackaged" modern video games as if they were Atari 2600 cartridges.
Atari Modern Classics (The -Minus World via Laughing Squid)

My Institute for the Future colleague Mathias Crawford found this paper titled "Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology." I read the abstract and haven't spent the time to grok it all, but I like the weird ring of the word "cognizers" to describe a kind of person. From the abstract:

"Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition. Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our 'Cognitive Commons,' in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language, the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental states, and on our very nature.

"Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology" (Arxiv.org)

I'm reading Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns, the distinguished chair of neuroeconomics at Emory University. He's a professor of psychiatry and economics, which makes for an interesting combination. The book is about the way successful and creative people think and act, with a special focus on fear and how it affects behavior. Early in the book, Berns describes something called The Ellsberg Paradox. Berns uses it as an example of people's fear of the unknown.

There are two large urns placed in front of you. The urns are completely opaque, so you cannot see their contents. The urn on the left contains ten black marbles and ten white ones. The urn on the right contains twenty marbles, but you do not know the proportion of black to white. Now, the game is to draw a black marble from one of the urns. If you are successful, you win $100. You only have one chance, so which urn will you draw from? Keep the answer in mind.

Let's play again. Now, the game is to draw a white marble. Again, you only have one chance, so which urn will it be?

Most people when confronted with these choices choose the urn on the left -- the one with the known proportions of black and white marbles. And therein lies the paradox. If you choose the left-hand urn when trying to pull a black marble, that means you think your chances are better for that urn. But because there are only two colors in both urns, the odds of pulling a white must be complementary to the odds of pulling a black. Logically, if you thought the left-hand urn was the better choice for a black marble, the right-hand urn should be the better choice for a white marble. The fact that most people avoid the right-hand urn altogether suggests that people have an inherent fear of the unknown (also called the ambiguity aversion).

Buy Iconoclast on Amazon

Manifesto Letterpress sells a lovely set of twelve letterpress bookplates in a nice box, now on sale for $9.95. Dreade Of Death Bookplates (Manifesto)

Bela Lugosi is not dead. Dig the part-memoir/part-culture crit about goth written by fantastic author Cintra Wilson, whose new book Caligula For President Mark reviewed a couple days ago. Ah, the good old daze that have never died. From the NYT:

The goth subculture, however, for those who live it, is more than the sum of its chicken bones, vampire clichés and existential pants. It remains a visual shortcut through which young persons of a certain damp emotional climate can broadcast to the other members of their tribe who they are. Goth is a look that simultaneously expresses and cures its own sense of alienation.

This sentiment was echoed by Wendy Jenkins of Powell, Ohio, whom I contacted via a goth group on Facebook. “To me, Goth is like an escape,” wrote Ms. Jenkins, who is 18 and attends Olentangy Liberty High School.

“No one really judges each other,” she continued. “It doesn’t matter if you are tall, short, black, white, heavy, thin. Goth can fit everyone! I think it is a great way to bond with others who are different and who are just like you at the same time! Because we are wearing black most the time we are EZ to find!”

Missy Graf, 20, of Edmonton, Alberta, became fascinated by the goths at her Catholic high school. “One of the goth girls was in the choir with me,” she wrote in an e-mail message, “and we talked about depression and God’s apparent absence from her life. It was one of my first encounters with the world outside of the ‘Christian bubble.’ ”

“I guess I slowly became (eh-em) ‘goth’ starting a year and a half ago,” she added. “I was afraid of what my mom would think (she is still convinced that goth is associated with Satan-worshipping and that dying my hair black is one more step into the oblivion ... oh mom! You dye your hair red. Don’t you know that Satan panties are red, not black?). Whatever. Eventually I got to the point where I stopped trying to make people accept me.”

"You Just Can't Kill It" (NYT, thanks Kirsten Anderson!)

Cpt. Tim reports on this fun Flickr pool called Through the Viewfinder.

You basically make cool retro or vintage looking pictures by taking a picture through the viewfinder of an old top-down viewfinder camera, like a Duaflex.

The Flickr group with wonderful submissions and instructions on how to do it is here, and here is what I've been able to do after ordering an old camera on eBay.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against the NSA, President Bush and Vice President Cheney on behalf of AT&T's customers to fight illegal wiretapping:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

YEEEEEE-HAW! Ride 'em cowboys! I could not be prouder of EFF at this moment -- I'm bursting with joy. I made a five-figure donation to EFF this year, and they've just earned every penny. If you want to see them take this administration to the mat, kick in a buck or two yourself.

EFF Sues NSA, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney to Stop Illegal Surveillance

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Boing Boing tv caught up with Les Claypool and Larry "Ler" Lalonde of Primus at Outside Lands for a hyperdelic, transdimensional conversation about inflatables, Maker Faire, South Park, weird home-made electronic instruments, and more.

Les also made his film directing debut this year with Electric Apricot, a faux-cumentary feature about a fictional jam band in search of the ultimate music festival.

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Link to Boing Boing tv post with downloadable video, and video podcast subscription instructions. If you dig this, check out our previous BBtv episodes from Outside Lands. And there's tons of fan-made footage and photos of Primus on Crowdfire.net (they're a BBtv sponsor).

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(special thanks to Jason McHugh; to Virgin America for air travel, and to Wayneco for the magic bus)

Related Boing Boing tv episodes:

* Kaki King, guitar hero: performance, interview with Xeni (music)
* BB Gadgets' Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed
* Carney at Outside Lands - a "Boing Boing tv Bus Session." (music)
* Steel Pulse founder David Hinds at Outside Lands (music)
* Boing Boing tv backstage at Outside Lands: (Xeni + Russell Porter)

The town council in Blackpool, UK hired St Annes Decorators Ltd. to repaint the railings over the North Promenade -- but when the contractors reached a sock tied to the railing, they simply painted it.

Contractors sprucing up North Promenade took an astonishing short cut when they came across the abandoned footwear tied to a railing. Rather than remove it - they painted OVER it! ...

Passerby Andrew Purcell, 22, from Leyland who is working in the area, said: "I think painting round a sock instead of just moving it could quite possibly be the laziest thing I've ever seen.

"It does look quite funny tied there, but I suppose it must be annoying for the council if they are trying to improve the look of Blackpool."

The head of the British Liberal Democratic Party has called for regulators to step and and force hedge-fund managers to stop short-selling failing banks, making billions as the banks stumble and are rescued with tax-money.

Speculation is a normal part of trading in shares, but on this occasion the hedge funds are betting against the taxpayer, since they know that if a leading British bank were to collapse, the Government would have no alternative but to intervene.

It's hard to know who to root against here, the hedgies who invented exotic, incomprehensible over-the-counter instruments or the banks who bought them with their customers' deposits. FSA must stop ‘short selling’ of bank shares – Cable

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob's found this hand-cranked, programmable Japanese bird-song organ -- you create your own birdsongs by punching paper tapes. Bizarre programmable chirping bird organ, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Flickr's Makenosound shot this gorgeous photo of an exploded four-color toner cartridge, noting, "Accidents should always be this beautiful." CMYK (via Kottke)

Among copyfighters, Neil Netanel is rightly hailed as one of the most important writers and thinkers in the field (he's one of the few people whose words are quoted on a photocopied sheet over one of the toilets at the Electronic Frontier Foundation!) and his latest book, Copyright's Paradox, cements that reputation.

Copyright's Paradox unpicks the contradiction that has made the copyfight so compelling to so many of us: the tension between copyright as a tool to drive expressivity and creativity, and the power of copyright to censor those whose creativity involves remixing, quoting, parody and so on.

Netanel explores the history of copyright through this free speech lens, starting with the first copyright statutes in the 18th century and moving through the history of American publishing, the explosion in reproduction technologies at the start of the 20th century, and the horrible mess that is the 21st century.

Netanel is a scholar, and he brings a scholar's comprehensive, wide-ranging perspective to copyright, but his writing lacks all the worst characteristics of scholarship -- that is to say, it's not boring, confusing or abstruse. His writing manages to sparkle and inform, making a coherent and airtight argument for a looser, more liberal copyright as the best solution for freeing more speech, making more money for more artists, and undoing our present harms. There's something almost engineer-like in the argument developed in this book, it feels like a really well-made machine for convincing people of the need for liberal reform in copyright law.

Best of all, Copyright's Paradox offers solutions, a set of simple legislative recommendations that are both realistic and promising -- solutions that will end the copyright wars without destroying the public interest or the fortunes of artists. Copyright's Paradox

Damian from Amnesty UK sez, "Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia at 7pm local time on 23 September. He has been on death row for 17 years for a murder he maintains he did not commit. His appeal for clemency was deined on 12 September. In March 2008, the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, joined by two other Justices on the Court, wrote that,:

In this case, nearly every witness who identified Davis as the shooter at trial has now disclaimed his or her ability to do so reliably. Three persons have stated that Sylvester Coles confessed to being the shooter. Two witnesses have stated that Sylvester Coles, contrary to his trial testimony, possessed a handgun immediately after the murder. Another witness has provided a description of the crimes that might indicate that Sylvester Coles was the shooter.

Hear Troy Davis (Thanks, Damian!)

Barry Ritholtz sez,

Special exemptions from the SEC are in large part responsible for the huge build up in financial sector leverage over the past 4 years -- as well as the massive current unwind

Lee Pickard, former director, SEC trading and markets division, spits out the blunt truth: The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms.

The events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption -- given only to 5 firms -- allowed them to leverage up 30 and even 40 to 1.

Who were the five that received this special exemption? You won't be surprised to learn that they were Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley.

As Mr. Pickard points out that "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up."

How SEC Regulatory Exemptions Helped Lead to Collapse

I had no idea that Marlboros were originally marketed to women, but it appears so. From the Sociological Images blog: "Notice how in one picture the baby actually asks mom to have a cigarette instead of scolding him. It plays up the women-as-hysterical stereotype and also shows changing expectations about good motherhood.." Who knew that the Marlboro Man had a thing for MILKCs (Mothers I'd Like to Kill with Cancer)? Marlboros for Mommies

Antec's new Skeleton case is pretty rad -- looks like the manufacturer has been paying keen attention to the casemod scene:

The Antec Skeleton is a truly revolutionary enclosure. With a unique design that allows for unprecedented airflow, a front 92mm fan, and a top three speed 250mm fan with multicolor LED customization, the Skeleton goes utterly unmatched in stylish cooling. Factor in the layered component trays for top-notch convenience, as well as the rackmount quality side rails, and you have a case truly without equal.

Skeleton (Thanks, Paul!)

Wired Gadget Lab calls the "Epidermits" toy from Karten Design the "scariest toy concept ever," and they make a great case for it! I couldn't find the actual toy on Karten's site, because, like so many "designers," they've designed and unnavigable unlinkable mess of Flash instead of a real website.

A human-like tissue organism covers the robotic thing, which also runs on fuel cells for energy. In theory, you are supposed to be able to program it to move around and act as your kid’s nightmarish companion. But that's not all: "They require minimal maintenance, can be stored in state of forced hibernation in standard refrigerators, and are customizable with different body, skin and hair selections and through tanning, tattooing and piercing."

Scariest Toy Concept Ever: The Epidermits Thing

From the Threat Level blog:

The Recording Industry Association of America is declaring attorney-blogger Ray Beckerman a "vexatious" litigator and is seeking unspecified monetary sanctions to punish him in his defense of a New York woman accused of making copyrighted music available on the Kazaa file sharing system.

The RIAA said Beckerman, one of the nation's few attorneys who defends accused file sharers, "has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs," the RIAA wrote (.pdf) in court briefs. "Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions."

Lory Lybeck, a Washington state defense attorney leading a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing the RIAA of allegedly engaging in "sham" litigation tactics, said the RIAA's motion comes from the same organization that has sued about 30,000 people over the last five years for file sharing, some of them falsely. It's the same organization, he said, that has sued dead people, the elderly and even children -- all while using unlicensed investigators.

Congrats, Ray! First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Victory is around the corner.

RIAA Decries Attorney-Blogger as 'Vexatious' Litigator

From Chicago Museum of Science and Industry:

American Maker is a raucous daylong festival of homemade innovations and inventions, organized and hosted by MAKE Magazine. Picture your grandpa’s weekend workbench projects… if they had diodes, circuits, wheels and fire.

Hacks, tweaks, mods and bends are part of the “maker” sensibility on display in the pages of MAKE. American Maker showcases this do-it-yourself mentality mixed with forward thinking, as grassroots innovators share their creations and spark ideas in others.

Part of LabFest, the Science Chicago kickoff event, American Maker will culminate with a panel review of projects. The winning maker will receive a $500 prize and gets published in a future issue of MAKE.

As a kid, my absolute favorite place in the world was the Stouffer's restaurant in Chicago - the mothership of the Corn Souffle, Turkey Tetrazini, Swedish Meatballs, Escalloped Apples, Creamed Chicken and Noodles Romanov. A close second was the Museum of Science and Industry with the submarine tour, coal mine elevator and ice cream sandwich vending machines.

This Saturday, September 20th, I will be hosting the first ever American Maker event at the Chicago MSI. And, hold on to your penny purses, it will be free! Free admission to the museum, free admission to American Maker, free admission to LabFest - that is a better deal than a Stouffer's French Bread Pizza two-pack!

What can you expect for your hard earned no dollars and no cents?

Makers throughout the day will show their homebrew robots, human powered submarines, ingenuous gizmos, a DIY laser cutter, a Kraftwerk-inspired electroluminescent prototype dress and lots more of the extraordinary things people build when they are doing it for the joy of creating. We will get all the Makers up on stage to show off their creations, needle them with questions and, at the end of the day, we will name a the grand prize winner who will walk away with $500 and a feature in Make: Magazine!

Come by and say hello! Did I mention the event is free?

American Maker schedule
Labfest at Chicago MSI, same day, same no cost