I, for one, am outraged. Video Link (Thanks, @andrewbaron!)

Update: I presumed the fact that the video above is a one-note quickie parody of a rapidly spreading political rumor based on this original material would be apparent to all comers. I was mistaken. For that, I -- HORSE SHIT! -- apologize. Thank you. (Avram had it right.)

Update 2: Whoah, some people really don't get sarcasm unless it's accompanied by a smiley. THIS VIDEO WAS, AND IS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE A HOAX. This post was a joke. My friend made the video.

This story came out in February, but I just heard about it on the news today. A company in the depressed town of Stockton, California (which looked to me like it was about to collapse when I was there ten years ago; I imagine it's much worse now) is keeping busy painting the dead lawns of foreclosed homes with green paint so banks can tart them up for auction.

Nick Terlouw has launched the Greener Grass Co., which amounts to a service in which he sprays dead lawns with a deep green, water-based dye that makes the turf look good enough for a golf course or a professional football stadium.

For between $175 and $225 per yard, Terlouw uses a motor-powered 50-gallon insecticide sprayer designed for treating orchard trees. He waves his magic wand and in broad sweeps, a la painting a house, makes tired, if not expired, turf sit up and sparkle like Shirley Temple.

Upscale curb appeal goes green

Author and social critic James Howard Kunstler has a section on his website called "Eyesore of the Month." It includes photos of things in and around his town (Saratoga Springs, NY) he doesn't like, along with comments explaining why they irk him so. In August, he trained his crosshairs on a tattoo parlor.

The building itself, shown here, is a sturdy but unspectacular business building on the main street (Broadway) of Saratoga Springs, NY. ... The activity taking place here, however, is a symptom of the growing barbarism in American life. Tattooing has traditionally been a marginal activity among civilized people, the calling card of cannibals, sailors, and whores. The appropriate place for it is on the margins, in the back alleys, the skid rows. The mainstreaming of tattoos (on main street) is a harbinger of social dysfunction.

James Howard Kunstler's "Eyesore of the Month"

Proceeds from the sale of these "cardboard" silkscreened duvet-sets goes to benefit a Dutch homeless charity. Slaap onder een kartonnen doos en help een zwerfjongere eronder vandaan (via Geisha Asboi)

Update: Here's the a worldwide distributor for the duvet

When I first came online at BB, a few people kindly asked for me to share some of what it was like to play keyboards for Psychic TV. It was magnificent, life-affirming, a bit grueling, but as total an experience as transcendent sex. For me, rehearsals were actually more fulfilling than performance - it felt like we could experiment more freely there than onstage with real paying people listening and watching. Plus, it's a hell of a harder harder to hear what you're doing in most stage settings with monitors and everything going on than it is in a little rehearsal room with an amp and a beer.

But still, onstage with Genesis, there was this overwhelming sense of fun. Pure joy, even during the most aggro songs. That was unexpected. This sense of being part of a family of weird, loving, geeks just trying to bring everyone into the spirit of shared celebration and experimentation. Very much the way I see BoingBoing. But it was scary as well, and having a front man as self-assured and quick-witted as Gen made us all feel safe. He was the interface between us and the potentially unruly crowd; in the realm of musical performance, which was quite new to me, his was a very welcome presence.

I managed to co-write and record one song, "Lies and Then." Then responsibilities of new fatherhood forced me to pass the keyboards onto to Marcus, who has been with the band for the past two years, and bringing the sound to all sorts of new places.

Last year, Gen's partner in art and life, the amazing Jackie Breyer P-Orridge (Lady Jaye), died of a sudden seizure. Gen and I met to speak shortly after - he wanted to get down a lot of his first feelings before they changed. That whole conversation will appear in The Believer in January. They've kindly given permission for me share an advance snippet from the part where we're talking about our first PTV show after Gen's "big change."

Rushkoff: And when we played that first PTV show at the Coral Room, right after you got the breasts - to be on stage and see those guys' faces then they have to come to terms with seeing Gen like this. They were all modeling what they thought was Gen’s - for lack of a better word, machismo. ‘Oh, he can stick a spike in his balls and survive… Okay, now, the person I’ve been ‘modeling on’, whose tattoos I have on my skin, is now crossing a boundary that is really frightening to me. That was sort of the greatest gift, I thought…

Genesis: "Even further…"

R: Yeah…"even further."

G: Well, that was one of the reasons we terminated the ‘Topy’ project in 1991 was exactly that; the people who were doing the whole ‘accessorizing’ again; just as we did ‘industrial’ 10 years before… and the final postcard that we sent out, as you know, just said ‘changed priorities ahead’. Which was a traffic sign I saw as we were driving along one day and I looked up and there was this sign and I thought ‘That’s it’!

R: I wonder what that even means in the context of traffic. It's a great sign off, though: changed priorities.

G: …and that was it; that was the last message. Oh, I though it was great; it was an enigmatic final message from this huge network which says ‘change priorities ahead’.

R: And now the priorities change again….

G: Yes.

The Finnish ISP Mikkelin Puhelin is blocking access to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) site, describing it as child porn.

Due to reasons yet to be determined, the website of the World Wide Web Consortium, w3.org/w3c.org, is being filtered as child pornography (wget/curl) by the Finnish ISP, DNA Internet.

Update Sept 27. 3PM: DNA has removed w3c from their list, but another ISP, Mikkelin Puhelin (MPY) has added it (dig/host).

From Wikipedia: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web.

W3C filtered as child porn by Finnish ISP (Thanks, Andrew!)

Tom Conrad of Pandora tweets, "Help save @pandora_radio: call 202-225-3121 NOW, ask for your rep, & ask them to support H.R. 7084. Critical vote Saturday AM., so call now!"

In more than 140 characters, on the Pandora blog:

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, artists and record companies are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we've gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.

More: Congressional Emergency! (Pandora blog), Pandora Needs Our Help Now! (Digg), Pandora to Congress: Vote now, we're running out of time (CNET: The Social), Pandora, Nearing Survival Deal, Gets New Threat From NAB (Gizmodo). (thanks, Wayne de Geere)

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.

Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com

Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases

We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart's MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.

If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.

Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.

Thank you for using Walmart.com for music downloads. We are working hard to make our store better than ever and easier to use.

Walmart Music Team

(Thanks, Dorri!)

This small-bathroom sink hides in a drawer (presumably it uses a length of flexi-hose for its drains connection). It's a smart space-saving design and it has the additional advantage of making it easy to pour water directly on the floor for cleanup (provided that you've got a floor-drain, of course) -- something common in many countries. Make a Small Bath Look Larger (via Cribcandy)

DeviantArt's Spippo creates elaborate costumes for My Little Ponies based on major media franchises -- Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Alien, and Star Wars, as well as many others! ~Spippo (via Neatorama)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we saw Samsung's Pixon camera-phone, a fakeleak of the new MacBook Pro, a robot communist firefighter from the 1930s, and a web server the size of a business card.

There was a giant light fixture in the shape of a spaceship from Elite; shots of RIM's BlackBerry Storm; a massive price drop for the Redfly; and teen taser action.

Joel armed himself with Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators "Unnatural Selector" Ray-Blunderbuss and a DIY Full Metal Rubber Band gun. Thus equipped, he approached the Tantric Sex Chair.

Rob complained about the dregs of the AppStore, spotted an MP3 player that'll do games as well, and busted his opponent's balls.

On your way out, don't forget to scan your ID.

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 17 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.

Yves Rossy jumped out of a plane over Calais, France today and flew his jet-propelled wing across the English Channel. After crossing the water, he released his parachute and floated safely to the ground. From the Associated Press:

Backed by a gentle breeze, Rossy crossed the Channel in 13 minutes, averaging 125 miles per hour. In a final flourish, he did a figure eight as he came over England, although the wind blew him away from his planned landing spot next to the lighthouse.

"It was perfect. Blue sky, sunny, no clouds, perfect conditions," the Swiss pilot said after touching down in an adjacent field. He said he wanted to show, "it is possible to fly, a little bit, like a bird."

"Swiss man flies over Channel on jet wing" (SFGate.com, thanks Jennifer Lum!), Rossy's FusionMan site (jet-man.com)

My friends at Youth Radio have just produced another thought-provoking radio commentary in their fantastic "What's The New What" series. In this episode, Anthony Waters says that "gay fashion is the new straight fashion... in ghetto neighborhoods." From Anthony's commentary:

I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the white T look. I’m all about big shiny sunglasses, sparkling necklaces, tight legged jeans…and this cute shirt I spotted at one of my favorite stories: DD’s Discounts.

The straight boys who used to whisper about me on the bus haven’t discovered DD’s yet, but they are jacking my style. It all started when artists like Kanye West, Pherrell, and Cam’ron showed up on the TV screen, suited and booted in outfits I would have picked out in middle school. Now my uber-macho nephew, AR, is raiding my closet.

MP3: What's The New What? Gay Fashion is the New Straight Fashion (Youth Radio), Transcript (What's The New What? blog, thanks Lissa Soep!)

Michael Geist sez,

Copyright reform has not generated much attention during the current Canadian political campaign with every indication that the Conservatives will reintroduce the Canadian DMCA if re-elected. There are still several weeks left in the campaign, so there is still a chance to build on the recent emergence of a strong voice for fair copyright in Canada.

Following on the 2006 copyfight pledge, ask your MP or political party to take the 2008 copyright pledge:

Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all Canadians by pledging:

1. To respect the rights of creators and consumers.

2. Not to support any copyright bill that undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s users rights.

3. To fully consult with Canadians before introducing any copyright reform bill and to conduct inclusive, national hearings on any tabled bill.

There are at least three steps to help fight the reintroduction of a Canadian DMCA First, urge all political parties to sign on to the pledge. Second, raise the issue with your local candidates - attend a town hall meeting or debate, pose the question if a candidate knocks at your door, or send an email to all the candidates in your riding. Third, email your copyright question to question@electiondebate08.ca. There are still 18 days left in the campaign which provides plenty of time to ensure that fair copyright concerns are heard before election day.

The Copyright Pledge - 2008 Election Edition (Thanks, Michael!)

Bonnie Erickson was the creator of such esteemed Muppets as Miss Piggy, Statler and Waldorf, and Zoot from the Electric Mayhem band. Erickson's work is featured in the traveling Smithsonian exhibition Jim Henson's Fantastic World, and Smithsonian magazine interviewed her for the new issue. From Smithsonian:

Let's say you get a contract to make a character. How does your creative process work?
Well let me take the Philly Phanatic as an example. The managers approached us to design a mascot who could encourage fans to bring their families to the games. So we had to design a character who was child-friendly, who was playful and a little irreverent but not too silly. We'd heard from the Phillies that their crowd had booed the Easter bunny, so it was a challenge to come up with something that was not going to talk down to their audience. We wanted a character who had a life and a story. A lot of our characters are still performing today. We created Youppi for the Montreal Expos, and when the team moved out of Montreal Youppi was left without a home. So he was taken in by the hockey team. In my mind I've always thought of these characters as having a life, so they're free agents in many ways. When they lose a team, they go out and try to find another job.

"The Woman Behind Miss Piggy" (Smithsonian)

Here's a sneak peak at MAD Magazine's upcoming artwork on the bailout! Greed Spirit JPEG (Thanks, Austin!)

BBtv reader Brian Frank says, "I thought Boing Boing might enjoy this...see attached screenshots from Washington Mutual's website at various times over the past 24 hours... I call it, 'peek-a-boo! your bank is toast!' Top: before. Middle: after. Bottom: current."

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Researchers seeking natural "aphrodisiacs" as alternatives to Viagra think that the aptly-named horny goat weed may hold promise. According to University of Milan pharmacologist Mario Dell'Agil, a drug derived from the plant could potentially be as effective as Viagra without the same side effects as the little blue pill. From New Scientist:

Viagra's active compound, sildenafil, works by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5). Because PDE5 helps control blood flow to the penis, inhibiting PDE5 promotes male erection.

Dell'Agli and his colleagues tested the four plants in vitro to see how efficient they were at inhibiting PDE5. Just one – Epimedium brevicornum, also known as horny goat weed and Bishop's Hat – had an effect. This confirmed previous studies showing that icariin, a compound found inside the horny goat weed, is a PDE5 inhibitor.

"Horny goat weed could be better than Viagra" (New Scientist)

Photographer Chris Van Wyk snapped this terrific photo of a Mary River Turtle rocking a mohawk. Or a bit of algae. I prefer to think it's the former.
"The punk rock turtle with a bright green mohawk" (Mail Online, thanks Kirsten Anderson!)

In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, we float around in zero gravity. With me on this Zero-G weightless flight are Intel Chairman Craig Barrett; my friend Sean Bonner from metblogs; and a bunch of science teachers from grade schools and high schools throughout the United States who were on board to conduct microgravity experiments for the kids back home. As you watch, keep an eye out for the floating lego robot, a flying pig, and the barfing guy who is totally barfing for reals -- the rest of us did not, btw, I don't get sick in space.

What you see in this episode is what it feels like, guys, and it feels awesome.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable version of this video, and instructions on how to subscribe to the daily BBtv video podcast.

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(Special thanks to Peter Diamandis, and George and Loretta Whitesides)

Meanwhile, among the most interesting and intelligent stuff I've received this week are three new books by some guys who I'd immediately like to invite to join an imagined secret society with members like Joshua Glenn, Richard Nash, Emma Taylor, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness was labeled by Fortune magazine as "one of the smartest books of all time." But I wouldn't hold that against Taleb, who writes brilliantly on the way we attempt to impose logic or causality onto stuff that's coincidental or mere luck. It's more relevant and less unnecessarily provocative than Dawkins' God Delusion - and by avoiding religion (something I should have learned to do) manages to communicate more healing to its intended audience.

Mark Kingwell's Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City is the Canadian social theorist's most engaging read to date. Although ostensibly about the urban terrain, the book is less Mike Davis (City of Quartz) or even Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of Great American Cities) than it is like Robert Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas: Kingwell uses the physical city as a launching point for an extended meditation on the nature of local and non-local consciousness.

The Threat to Reason, by Dan Hind, is an entertaining and fast-paced book-length essay on the abuse of Enlightenment rhetoric and reasoning - by both ends of the political and social spectrum. Hind conducts an equally sharp deconstruction of the logic and language employed creationists/brights, right/left, globalists/environmentalists in an effort to liberate what worked about the Enlightenment from the way it has been worked over.

Police are investigating a German dentist for entering a patient's home and forcibly removing her bridge because he hadn't been paid for the work. Allegedly, the dentist, from the town of Neu-Ulm, was angry because the patient's insurance company hadn't come through with the £320 he was owed. From The Telegraph:

According to police, the dentist knocked on the door of the 35-year-old woman on Monday evening and without saying a word forced her into her living room and tied her hands...

"The dentist is being investigated for assault for the way he forced open her mouth, and theft for taking the bridges," said Christian Owsinski a police spokesman.

"German dentist extracts payment from patient" (The Telegraph, via Fortean Times)

I just watched this 2003 TED Talk video lecture by Wade Davis, the pioneering ethnobotanist and anthropologist who has lived with an amazing array of indigenous cultures around the world. Of course, Davis is best known for his studies of ritual use of psychedelics and also the zombification practices among Vodoun acolytes in Haiti. I've found Davis's work to be personally inspirational, provocative, and mind-expanding. This TED Talk, titled "Cultures At The Far Edge of the World" is no exception. In it, he tells an amazing story about an wonderfully resourceful Inuit elder. Davis retold the same story in a recent Discover magazine interview, but I highly recommend the TED video too because it features many his breathtaking photographs. From Discover:

One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?

Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.

TED Talk: Wade Davis, Cultures At the Far Edge of the World (ted.com), From Hatian Zombie Poison to Inuit Knives Made of Feces (Discover), Buy Davis's "Light at the Edge of the World" book (Amazon)

The Pacific Ocean ate my iphone some weeks ago -- coincidentally, right around the time the sweet new 3G model came out. No, seriously. When I went to the Apple store to buy a new one, there were very long lines. It seems that either the ocean ate everyone's 1st-gen iPhone, or people were excited about the new model. The lines were made slower by the fact that you had to register the phone and take care of the AT&T contract stuff right there in the store. I am a big fan of the device, truly, but the lines were a real drag.

Good news, though -- this week Apple added a new feature to the retail website that allows you to start the setup process online then finish in the store. Expect shorter and quicker purchase lines, and even more people stumbling out of the stores like happy zombies as I did, gazing into the iPhone's glowing eye as they walk, playing Super Monkey Ball or looking for nearby hummus on Yelp. iPhone 3G: Apple.

Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is a balanced, nuanced, entertaining and vastly informative look at the crisis of water -- bottled and tap -- in the USA. Bottlemania asks the big questions about whether water ought to be privatized, takes a penetrating look at the fraught local politics that gives bottled water companies rights to extract a town's vital water and ship it elsewhere, and presents a compelling critique of the sustainability of letting the rich buy their way out of failures in public resources like water. She looks into the campaigns by water companies to "educate" restaurant servers about the fortunes in tips to be had by flattering their customers into buying bottled. The book also does a good job of discussing the amazing local water supplies that come out of the taps in many American cities, absolutely free.

At the same time, the book is not afraid to look at some of the serious problems facing municipal water supplies. The EPA have been negligent in setting and enforcing standards, little-understood bacterial films and hormones and pharmaceutical excretia present compelling health threats, as do arsenic and carcinogenic purification by-products. It's worse where cities don't own the land around their water-reservoirs, where agribusiness and other water users can add expensive- (or impossible-)to-remove toxins to the water.

Royte doesn't leave us with any easy answers, but she frames the debate we should be having about water, going into detail on the missing testing and enforcement regimes, the need to recycle more waste-water (water in New Orleans has already been filtered through 50% of the population in the USA!) and to internalize the environmental costs of private pumping aquifers.

Water wars have been with us for all of human history -- the word "rival" comes from a Latin word meaning "one who uses the same stream as another." But today's water wars have higher stakes than ever before: we're now fighting over a substantial fraction of all of Earth's freshwater. Bottlemania is a hell of a look into the future of that fight. Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, whose work we've featured many times on Boing Boing tv, reminds us that their annual "Arse Elektronika" conference is now under way. The name is a pun on the esteemed Ars Electronica festival; that one's venerable, this one's more venereal. Topics are sexually explicit in nature, but presented with internet-indigenous humor and wit. Arse Elektronika, "Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction," continues through Sunday in San Francisco. A very special congrats from BB to both Johannes and Evelyn, also of monochrom, who recently wed.

Update: Scott Beale has photos of the ongoing event.

monkey's butt is red. An odd but lovely little work by the video artist min oh. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin).

There are three main relationships kids have to gaming, and they seem to correspond to three main relationships people have to culture.

A kid initially plays a game the way it was released. He (or she) gets as far as he can, and if he gets too stuck, his play is over. What then? He either practices, quits, or goes online to find the cheat codes.

Now he's playing beyond the frame of the original game. He's cheating. But since these codes were written by game designers and released, he's not really breaking anything but the rules of the inner game. He's simply choosing a new perspective from which to engage, beyond the original boundaries of play.

With infinite ammunition or impenetrable shields, he can make it through to the end of the game, which again means the end of play, or maybe an opportunity to go back and practice again as a player.

If he's really inspired by the game (or, conversely, incensed by it) he will go back online, find the modification tools (if the game company was smart enough to make this easy) and program his own version of the game. Now, instead of the game taking place in a dungeon, it can happen in a simulation of his high school, or instead of killing one another players can transform one another into angels.

Of course, in all likelihood he's not just creating the new level for himself to play. He finishes his version of the game and the posts it online, where he hopes other people will find it, play it, and love it.

For me, the development of a gamer from player to cheater to programmer mirrors our development as a society....

These men's khaki pants offer a safety feature for guys who bike. They're made by the same company, Cordarounds.com, that makes horizontal corduroy pants. Bike To Work Pants (thanks, Nathan Tyler)

Update: Whups, the Boing Boing Gadgets guys beat me to this one -- join the already-robust thread over there if you have something to say!

I just got this email from John Langley, the guy who made the uber-reality show Cops. I see it as an acknowledgement of all of us who tend to read more into TV programs and their creators' intent than they might suggest on the surface.

Dear Mr. Rushkoff:

It was refreshing to recently read "Media Virus" and your take on "Cops," which I happen to produce and for which I'm responsible as the guy who created it. I can't tell you how tiresome it is to read traditional criticism and critiques of "Cops" as an expression of this or that, usually far from the mark (or at least in terms of my intentions). As a kid of the '60s, I was more likely to name the show "Pigs" than "Cops," so it was indeed rewarding to read that you positioned the program more accurately in its existential realm of relativism. All I do is feebly hack away at trying -- emphasis on trying -- to capture some version of "reality" that will speak for itself, including the echolalia of the very media influence that filters it by the act of recording it. (Viva Heisenberg!) Anyone with half a brain should recognize the social, political and philosophic issues it sometimes reveals in the quotidian pursuit of law and order and the meaning of street crime.

In any case, keep up the good work! And apologies for getting to you so late in the day. Your book is no less valid for the delay.

Regards,

John Langley
Executive Producer - "Cops"

Not only does an email like that make my month, but restores my faith in the notion that absolutely mainstream programs might still be intended to have a rehabilitative or even noxious effect on the overculture. The fact that Langley made Cops in the spirit that Albert Maysles made Salesman means that we can cut through the clutter and expose mass audiences to virulent memes - even in the darkest of times.

(Douglas Rushkoff is a guestblogger)

Liam sez, "DesignByHumans.com is a t-shirt design contest in the similar style of Threadless.com. They are in the midst of a $10k contest and this shirt won 3rd place. Not only is the design aesthetically stunning, it also is very poignant as it puts a 'face' to the idea of Big Brother." PPP (perversion of paranoid populace) (Thanks, Liam!)

Joe sez, "Neuros has a new technology to superimpose text from a dedicated chat room in real time on a TV set, allowing a sort of 'crowd narration' for events or shows. Neuros is inaugurating this technology with the upcoming presidential debate so that anyone can participate in real time fact checking, discussion etc along with the candidates. While anyone can participate in the discussion you'll need a Neuros OSD to see that discussion on your TV set superimposed over the debate." Participate in the US Presidential Debate with Crowd Narration (Thanks, Joe!)

Earlier this year, I married my British fiancee and switched my visa status from "Highly Skilled Migrant" to "Spouse." This wasn't optional: Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had unilaterally (and on 24 hours' notice) changed the rules for Highly Skilled Migrants to require a university degree, sending hundreds of long-term, productive residents of the UK away (my immigration lawyers had a client who employed over 100 Britons, had fathered two British children, and was nonetheless forced to leave the country, leaving the 100 jobless). Smith took this decision over howls of protests from the House of Lords and Parliament, who repeatedly sued her to change the rule back, winning victory after victory, but Smith kept on appealing (at tax-payer expense) until the High Court finally ordered her to relent (too late for me, alas).

Now, it seems, I will become one of the first people in Britain to be forced to carry a mandatory biometric RFID card in a pilot programme being deployed first to foreign students and we spousal visa holders (government is looking to curtail spousal visas altogether, capping all visas at 20,000 per year, including spousal visas, denying Britons the right to bring their spouses into the country once the quota has been filled). The card will be eventually linked to all of the national databases -- credit, health, driving, spending. These are the same databases that the government has been repeatedly losing and haemmorhaging by the tens of million (literally).

My family fled the Soviet Union after the war. They were displaced people (my father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan) who destroyed their papers to protect themselves from the draconian authorities who sought to limit their travel and migration. I used to think it was ironic that my family had gone from Europe to Canada and back to Europe again in a generation, but now I don't know how long the Doctorows will be staying in Europe -- or at least in the UK. The green and pleasant land has suspended habeas corpus, instituted street searches without particularlized suspicion, encourages its citizens to spy and snitch on each other, and now has issued mandatory universal papers that will track we dirty immigrants as we move around our adopted "home," as part of a xenophobic campaign to arouse fear and resentment against migrants.

Many of my British friends act as if I'm crazy when I say that we must defeat Labour in the next election. We're all good lefties, and a vote for the LibDems is considered tantamount to handing the country over to the Tories. But what could the Tories do that would trump what Labour has made of the country? The Labour Party has made a police state with a melting economy, a place where rampant xenophobia makes foreigners less and less welcome -- where we are made to hand over our biometrics and carry papers as we conduct our lawful business. The only mainstream party to speak out against this measure is the LibDems, and they will have my vote.

To my friends, I say this: your Labour Party has taken my biometrics and will force me to carry the papers my grandparents destroyed when they fled the Soviet Union. In living memory, my family has been chased from its home by governments whose policies and justification the Labour Party has aped. Your Labour Party has made me afraid in Britain, and has made me seriously reconsider my settlement here. I am the father of a British citizen and the husband of a British citizen. I pay my tax. I am a natural-born citizen of the Commonwealth. The Labour Party ought not to treat me -- nor any other migrant -- in a way that violates our fundamental liberties. The Labour Party is unmaking Britain, turning it into the surveillance society that Britain's foremost prophet of doom, George Orwell, warned against. Labour admits that we migrants are only the first step, and that every indignity that they visit upon us will be visited upon you, too. If you want to live and thrive in a free country, you must defend us too: we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.

"We all want to see our borders more secure, and human trafficking, organised immigration crime, illegal working and benefit fraud tackled. ID cards for foreign nationals, in locking people to one identity, will deliver in all these areas," she added.

The UK Border Agency will begin issuing the biometric cards to the two categories of foreign nationals who officials say are most at risk of abusing immigration rules - students and those on a marriage or civil partnership visa.

Foreign national ID card unveiled, Support NO2ID and oppose the surveillance state

Dian Agung Nugroho's photo "F*** You (What's on her mind ?)" captures a Chinese Indonesian schoolgirl flipping off an old Chinese Indonesian beggar lady. The title really asks the important question -- what does this little girl know, and what has she been told, that has led her to this pass? F*** You (What's on her mind ?) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Over on Play This Thing! Greg Costikyan reviews Paolo Pedercini's fascinating -- if simplistic -- Free Culture game:

So like, this is a Flash that has you moving little idea objects into the little heads of little ol' people who turn green when you feed them thoughts. When you feed the people ideas, they then poop out more ideas -- literally, off the top of their heads. A vacuum cleaner called capitalism keeps sucking up ideas to feed to the passive consumers, who have turned gray. By moving your mouse around to herd the ideas to the people, you keep the mojo flowing and eventually become the John Lennon/V for Vendetta guy of the game world, turning it into some kind of user-created-content lovefest. It's like the end of The Invisibles, but not as vivid.

The argument seems to be this: When ideas are shared, everyone gets richer, because the total number of ideas tends to increase in a recombinant explosion of creativity. Copyright is kind of fallacious, because all patterns of information are by default in the commons of vast, unexplored or previously explored possibility space. Ideas only become intellectual property when someone takes them out of the commons and stamps a (C) on it. The game is basically inviting you to say: "Fuck that!"

Free Culture (Thanks, Greg!)

Here's a collection of photos from a run-down North Korean video arcade. I'm sure that lots of developing countries have similar arcades, but this is notable due to the stark contrast with the legendary PC Baang arcades in the south. Inside a North Korean Arcade (via Waxy)

Karen Hanrahan has been using the same McDonald's hamburger as a prop in her "Healthy Choices for Children" class since 1996 -- 12 years! -- and it's hardly aged a day in all that time. McDonald's should add "immortality" to its list of Unique Selling Propositions for its burgers (unless Karen has an ornate oil painting of the burger in her living room in which it slowly ages, grows mouldy, and decomposes).

The burger on the right, off the paper is a 2008 burger. I had to buy it to get the groovy paper and bag. The meat is a tad darker, the bun a little less golden but in 12 years it will look exactly like that too. Do you find this horrifying? McDonalds fills an empty space in your belly. It does nothing to nourish the cell, it is not a nutritious food. It is not a treat. I marvel at how McDonalds has infiltrated our entire world. A hamburger here tastes exactly the same in China or some around the world place.

1996 McDonalds Hamburger

From TokyoMango: "Newer train lines in Japan have suicide prevention platforms. 5-foot walls span the entire platform, with doors that only open when the train has safely stopped at the station. Jumping in front of a moving train is one of the most common suicide methods in Japan—it was, at least, until people started spreading information on how to gas themselves at home." Suicide prevention train platforms

There's a new version of Rockbox out -- this is the free/open firmware replacement for MP3 players like the iPod, Archos, Sansa and others. It has many awesome features, including playback for more audio formats, like Ogg and FLAC, as well as adding games like Doom to the player. A new spoken interface makes it easier to use if you're visually impaired, too. A great way to breathe new life into an old iPod or other player -- and a great alternative to chucking it out. Rockbox 3.0 Released. Quietly., What is Rockbox? Why should I use it? (via Engadget)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we presented Low-Altitude Attack Zeppelin, our exciting futile browser game; rode to work in teflon-cuffed pants; and ate from Doha Chebib's beautiful log bowls.

Joel read that Esquire's e-ink cover was an environmental bad idea, fumed at the stupid marketing term "3.75G," and lauded the new supersize Gorillapod. He spotted a device that keeps human larvae clean during meals.

Rob wondered if China's electromagnetic space drive was pseudoscience, found a Windows Vista ad in an apt location, and saw a new pocket guitar amp.

John reviewed Trust's useful all-in-one wireless keyboard 'n' trackball, but was otherwise indisposed.

There were creepy robots; a robot breakfast; robots that fail gracefully; and robots that make party political broadcasts in England.

Hook them all up with a Furutech's ultra-expensive power cable. As for another man dead after being tased by cops, perhaps it's time to take the power away.

Read all this and more at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Andrew Sullivan, with whom I agree not all of the time, but do this time, says this about the CBS News interview embedded above: "All you can say is: unbelievable. Except it's true. She is the vice-presidential candidate of a national political party. Seriously." Transcript here, last night's edition is here.

Update: Look! There's Pootin' rearin' his ugly head. (Thanks, Rob Beschizza)

Defamer posted this purportedly leaked email from a DreamWorks exec assistant asking who Rosh Hashanah is. I have no idea if it's real or not, but it's a hoot. "DreamWorks Assistant Thinks 'Rosh Hashanah' Is Newest Hollywood Power Broker" (Defamer, thanks Jason Weisberger!)

China successfully launched the Shenzhou VII spacecraft today, in the country's third manned space mission in five years. Snip from New York Times article:

The three-day mission is part of Project 921, China’s ambitious manned space program, and was expected to include the country’s first attempt at a space walk, which would make China only the third country to accomplish the feat, after Russia and the United States.

The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will establish a space station by 2020 and eventually put a man on the moon.

China Launches Space Walk Mission (NYT), and the Wikipedia article for Shenzhou V11 has lots of details. Or, go straight to China's state-run news agency Xinhua's Shenzhou VII coverage. Among the Xinhua articles is one celebrating the spread of the neologism "taikonaut"...

The word is a hybrid of the Chinese term "taikong" (space) and the Greek "naut" (traveler), or astronaut, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Another variation on the term is "cosmonaut", coined during the Soviet space era.

"Taikonauts" a sign of China's growing global influence (xinhuanet.com)

Okay, then. Going 'meta' on the participatory thing, I'm making an open appeal for people to participate in the process through [which] I attempt to produce some participatory media.

Now that I've got a toe in the door at BoingBoing, I'm going to pitch them hard on a longer-term relationship. The regular bloggers' positions are pretty well filled, but there are some opportunities for a bit of engaged cultural critique and collective problem solving - especially as BoingBoing expands into BBTV, IRC, and other forms of media.

I know what I'm hoping to accomplish. Here's a snip from my first pitch email to Xeni:

Interactive, interpersonal meadia can not only expose the artificial nature of the entities currently in control of the social and economic landscape - they can restore human agency, create the right conversations, connect people, and fight fear with fun.

Happy mutants are not unaware of the problems plaguing mankind, but they are committed to confronting them through collective, uninhibited, engineered transformation (mutation) and light-hearted, kind, and amused interactions (happiness).

So, I want to create pieces that initiate the conversations and behaviors that engage people in these processes. Each one would be the beginning of a discussion, and part of an expanding wiki of resources, supporting material, and user-generated content. A piece on "local currency" would branch out to embrace the local currency efforts, discussions, and tools out there. How *does* a person create a currency for his or her town? And where are the other people interested in doing this? Who has the best solar solutions, the most interesting way of organizing labor, the best free local Wi-Max network? Let's talk to the CEO's of GE and BP about their green efforts, and whether they believe their own hype. How about urban planning? Bike lanes? Ads on school buses and Coke machines in the cafeteria? What's in those textbooks, anyway?

This isn't pure 60's or Whole Earth radicalism and self-sufficiency (though it's certainly related) but a 21st Century, cyberpunk reclamation of all technologies and social contracts as essentially open source, up for discussion, and open to modification. It's an application of the hacker ethic and net collectivism to everything, done in the spirit of fun and adventure.

The question is, which medium? Instinctually, I'm drawn towards radio, which would enable interviews and live call-in. Is this hopelessly old fashioned, or is it a reflection of the bias of radio compared with TV? Is there a way to do video that's as interactive as voice? Or should interaction be kept on the margins of something more produced and standalone? More importantly, what sort of resource or engagement would you prefer (if any)? This is for you, after all.

Help?

(Douglas Rushkoff is a guestblogger)

For the "yeah we're screwed" files: "Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday." China banks told to halt lending to US banks, South China Morning Post via Reuters (Thanks JDP). UPDATE: China denies the report. (thanks, Ari Schwartz)

Why do people think that sins "feel dirty?" Why do we use the phrase "cold shoulder" to describe someone rejecting us? Chen-Bo Zhong, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto, researches these "metaphors of the mind" and the physicalization of abstract thoughts. More recently, he's studying how not thinking about a problem can lead to creative solutions to that emerging more easily. From Scientific American:

What are some other examples of how seemingly abstract thoughts, such as feeling excluded, can have physical manifestations?

ZHONG: Another example would be the relation between morality and physical cleanliness. In my early work “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing” in collaboration with Katie Liljenquist [a professor of organizational behavior at Brigham Young University], we discussed how metaphors such as “dirty hands” or “clean records” may have a psychological basis such that people make sense of morality through physical cleanliness.

When people’s moral self image is threatened, as when they think about their own unethical past behaviors, people literally experience the need to engage in physical cleansing, as if the moral stain is literally physical dirt. We tested this idea in multiple studies and showed that when reminded of their past moral transgressions, people were more likely to think about cleansing-related words such as “wash” and “soap”, expressed stronger preference for cleansing products (for instance, a soap bar), and were also more likely to accept an antiseptic wipe as a free gift (rather than a pencil with equal value).

Further, physical cleansing may actually be effective in mentally getting rid of moral sins. In another study, in which participants who recalled unethical behaviors were either given a chance to cleanse their hands or not, we found that washing hands not only assuaged moral emotions such as guilt and regret but also reduced participants’ willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors such as volunteering Thus physical washing can actually wash away sins. Perhaps this effect is why most world religions practice some form of washing rituals to purify souls. We should be cautious, however, knowing that if our sins are so easily “washed away” we might not be as motivated to engage in actual compensatory behaviors to make up for our mistakes.

Metaphors of the Mind (SciAm)

I like designer Alex Bec's "Smile" stickers. They're simple but effective. He's posted a slew of "installations" in his Flickr photostream. Smile (alexbec.com), Smile photos (Flickr)

This tiny handbag, designed by Sylvia Toledano, is encrusted with Swarovski crystals. The description in the Vivre catalog reads: "Green 'leaves' are innocently set against a smoky topaz-hued pavé background." And yes, the word "leaves" is in quotations. Store your stash in here for just $1400. Other variations are also available, including one with a skull emblem. Each bag also comes with a blinged-out pen too. Marie-Jeanne Crystal Minaudiere (Vivre)