Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group sez,

I've just come back from Parliament Square in London, where about 30 of us have spent the morning building a giant picture of Prime Minister Gordon Brown out of photos of CCTV cameras and other surveillance state ephemera. Take a look at some of the photos of the day (http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=FnFBigPicture&m=tags) - it looks fantastic (and the great weather helped!)

Last week, Boing Boing helped us put out a call for people to capture the database state on their cameras.

Today, to celebrate an international day of action for democracy, privacy and free speech, we put those images together into a huge 4m x 6m collage, depicting a very Big-Brother-esque Gordon Brown against a background of barbed wire, handcuffs and double helices. Our message was that although as individuals we only see incremental invasions of our privacy, put together, these creeping changes constitute a wholesale shift towards a society predicated not on freedom, but on fear.

As you can see from the photos of the event, despite the seriousness of our message, we had a lot of fun delivering it to Parliament. Thanks to Christopher Scally for artwork and Tom Ackers for coordinating the collage, and to everyone who contributed photos of surveillance state ephemera, or turned up the day to help us build the "Big Picture".

Freedom Not Fear: the Big Picture unveiled on Parliament Square (Thanks, Becky!)

A nice way to end the week. Congratulations to Boing Boing pals Sean Bonner and Tara Brown. (Some related tales of love and photons in this cute WIRED item.)

(Image by Kate Black). In Alaska, a legislative panel investigating vice-presidential Sarah Palin has issued a report finding the governor unlawfully abused her authority by firing the state’s public safety commissioner. Also, remember that hacked Yahoo Mail account she used to hide correspondence from subpoenas? Snip from NYT:

In another setback for Ms. Palin, a judge on Friday ordered the state of Alaska to preserve any government-related e-mail messages that Gov. Sarah Palin sent from private accounts. The ruling, by Craig Stowers of Anchorage superior court, came as the result of a lawsuit brought by a resident, Andree McLeod, against Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Ms. Palin has occasionally used private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and her Yahoo accounts were hacked last month. The judge ordered the attorney general to contact Yahoo and other private carriers to preserve any e-mail messages sent and received on those accounts. An assistant attorney general told the court that the governor was no longer using here private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.

Legislative Panel: Palin Abused Authority (New York Times)

Related: Wired reported earlier this week:

David Kernell, the student indicted this week for gaining unauthorized access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo account, was allegedly involved in computer intrusion about eight years ago when he was in middle school. He and another student guessed the password of a school server while attending Eastern Hills Middle School in Texas, and gained access to some lesson plans, according to one of Kernell's former teachers.

. Palin Hacker Allegedly Involved in Another Computer Intrusion (Threat Level/WIRED)

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 19 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.

Yesterday, I blogged about Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book hitting number one on the New York Times young adult list. Neil read the entire book aloud, a chapter at a time, on his book tour, and uploaded a nightly video, so that when it was done, his reading of the whole book could be viewed for free as a series of video streams.

Coincidentally, I also finished listening to the HarperCollins audio edition of Neil reading The Graveyard Book yesterday, and was overwhelmed with delight at what a wonderful, magical, sweet story this is when it's all done. The Graveyard Book retells the Jungle Book, but instead of an orphan boy lost in the jungle, raised and tormented by animals, the Graveyard Book's orphan, Bod, is orphaned by a serial killer and raised in the graveyard by ghosts (thousands of years' worth -- from pre-Roman to Victorian).

Like the Jungle Book, the Graveyard Book's story takes the form of a series of loosely linked scenarios describing the childhood and coming of age of the orphan boy, in which his mischief and adventures teach him about the world he lives in and what his place in it must be. It's filled with compassion, mystery, wonder, humor (lots and lots and lots of humor), mythology, and a rich, dark, velvety spookiness that makes it especially lovely when read aloud.

Gaiman's reading is, of course, superb. He's part of a very small group of writers who really bring their work to life when they read it aloud (you can hear this for yourself in the videos from the tour). The spooky hurdy-gurdy music on the chapter breaks is also a nice flourish. This is fine work, from beginning to end, and the best bedtime story read-aloud material I've encountered in a long time. Can't wait until my daughter's old enough to read this to. The Graveyard Book audiobook on Amazon The Graveyard Book on Amazon

Ars Technica's Julian Sanchez takes a long, investigative look at the entertainment industry's claim that piracy costs the American economy 750,000 jobs and $250 billion and discovers the truth: they made it up and repeated it until they forgot they had made it up.

With Customs a dead end, we dove into press archives, hoping to find the earliest public mention of the elusive 750,000 jobs number. And we found it in—this is not a typo—1986. Yes, back in the days when "Papa Don't Preach" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" topped the charts, The Christian Science Monitor quoted then-Commerce Secretary Malcom Baldridge, trumpeting Ronald Reagan's own precursor to the recently passed PRO-IP bill. Baldridge estimated the number of jobs lost to the counterfeiting of U.S. goods at "anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000."

Where did that preposterously broad range come from? As with the number of licks needed to denude a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Ars submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Commerce this summer, hoping to uncover the basis of Baldridge's claim—or any other Commerce Department estimates of job losses to piracy—but came up empty. So whatever marvelous proof the late secretary discovered was not to be found in the margins of any document in the government's vaults. But no matter: By 1987, that Brobdignagian statistical span had been reduced, as far as the press were concerned, to "as many as 750,000" jobs. Subsequent reportage dropped the qualifier. The 750,000 figure was still being bandied about this summer in support of the aforementioned PRO-IP bill...

The number the ITC actually came up with, based on a survey of several hundred business selected for their likely reliance on IP for revenue, was $23.8 billion—the estimated losses to their respondents. That number was based on industry estimates that the authors of the study noted "could admittedly be biased and self-serving," since the firms had every incentive to paint the situation in the most dire terms as a means of spurring government action. But the figures at least appeared to be consistent and reasonable, both internally and across sectors.

The $60 billion number comes from a two-page appendix, in which the authors note that it's impossible to extrapolate from a self-selecting group of IP-heavy respondents to the economy as a whole. But taking a wild stab and assuming that firms outside their sample experienced losses totaling a quarter to half those of their respondents, the ITC guessed that the aggregate losses to the economy might be on the order of "$43 billion to $61 billion."

750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on piracy

A fifteen year old girl in Newark, OH faces being labelled a "sex offender" for sending naked cellphone photos of herself (a minor) to other minors. If convicted, she'll spend the next ten years on public registries, classed as a producer of child pornography. No word on what compensation she (as the victim of the crime) will be able to get from herself (as the perp).

According to Ohio law, 2907.323(A)(3) states anyone possessing material that shows a minor in a state of nudity is guilty of a fifth-degree felony. The violation also might qualify the juvenile as a Tier I sexual offender, which requires annual registration for a decade.

The section of the law the girl, who is a foster child, was charged with allows parents or guardians to take photos of their unclothed children for a list of acceptable purposes but does not provide an exemption for the child themselves.

Law didn't anticipate cell phone photo case

Ars Technica's Frank Caron plunges into the stormy seas of terrorism recruitment video games, reviewing such modern classics as Night of Bush Capturing, Quest4Bush, War on Americas, and Rescue The Nuke Scientist ("the player is an Iranian soldier seeking to rescue two Iranian nuclear experts who were kidnapped by U.S. forces. The game was designed in response to an American-made game called Assault on Iran that featured almost exactly the same situation, but in reverse").

Bottom line seems to be that jihadis can manage to produce workmanlike first person shooters, but fall flat when it comes to using humor, sarcasm, and novel game-mechanics to drive the point home. Of course, the same can be said for the producers of America's Army -- a recruiting tool produced by the US military tool to fight people recruited by these video games.

NBOC's final boss fight is by far the most disappointing part of the game. The game's central encounter —the final showdown with George W. Bush—simply falls flat on its face. Though the boss's character model bears the likeness of Bush and stands about three feet tall, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish him from any other enemy in terms of both his AI routines and his in-game demeanor.

The developers started down the right path: Bush's evil lair is hidden underneath an abandoned port-a-potty out in the middle of the desert. Within this lair are a variety of pictures depicting a distinguished-looking Bush in the company of various world leaders and diplomats, so it has all the makings of a dramatic final encounter. But the developers, for whatever reason, completely passed up the opportunity to stoke their target audience's anger at the American president as a way of motivating them to defeat the final boss. For instance, they could have had him spout random Bushisms as he attacks (might we suggest, "Bring it on!"), but there's nothing so creative about this fight. Bush simply attacks you with no apparent master plan, shooting away with his M16.

Osama bin Fragged: a review of terrorist propaganda games

Sydney, Australia-based photographer Keith Loutit creates lovely tilt-shifted time-lapse short films. His aim, he says, "is to present Sydney as the Model City, and help people take a second look at places that are very familiar to them." You can see more of his films on the Keith Loutit Vimeo page.

Previously on BB:
• Cranford Rose Garden tilt-shift timelapse

Harvard architecture student Bryan Boyer redesigned the US Capitol building for a grad school project. His motivation is that the US House of Representatives stopped growing in 1911 simply because the building couldn't hold any more seat. As a result, he says, "the US Capitol changed from monument to memorial." More interesting than the elevations and photo illustrations though are the souvenir plates and $50 bill that Boyer designed to support his big vision. Over at the Sceptical Futuryst, Stuart Candy digs into this example of "architectural time travel." From the Sceptical Futuryst:

It's not by the "direct" schematic and traditional design representations of the building that we get a feel for it. Instead, it's through the mediation of the new Capitol building's role as a cultural force -- one iconically reproduced on currency, commemorated in tacky souvenirs, and glimpsed through grubby windows from the backseats of cars -- that the presence of his future makes itself felt. In cinema and television, the artifacts of documentary (jerky camerawork, imperfect vantage points, bad sound fidelity) can sometimes lend a more nuanced and lifelike texture to the story than squeaky-clean realist cinema, with the camera always positioned just-so. Boyer has found his way to a sort of architectural equivalent of documentary, and I think it works.

Architectural Time Capsule (Sceptical Futuryst), Our New Capitol (bryanboyer.com)

Jesse Thorn says:

This is the new project from the guys who invented "Look Around You," Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz. It's a religion/television program called Tarvu.

They're working on an Adult Swim series right now.

Say 'Hebbo' to Tarvuism!

Halloween is decidedly a makers' holiday, ripe for DIY costumes, ghoulish gadgets, high-tech hauntings, and general mischief making. To celebrate, our pals at Instructables are holding a DIY Halloween Contest! To enter, just submit an Instructable, photos, or video in any of the following categories: Hack-o-Lantern, Costume, Gadgets and Gizmos, Decorations, Food, and Green Halloween. (For example, above left, Frankenberry mask. Above right, Creepy Cobweb Shooter made from a hot glue gun.) The prizes include gift certificates to the Maker Shed, vouchers for Ponoko, EL-wire from Cool Neon, Etsy shopping sprees, ThinkGeek zombie gift packs, a DNA kit, and a Singer swing machine. We at Boing Boing are honored to be part of the judging panel. The entry deadline is Novermber 9, so head over to your mad scientist's lair and get making! Instructables DIY Halloween Contest 2008

Russian biker busted for driving a non street legal bathtub. Shots from the life of Road police service from Russia and other post Soviet countries.

Earlier, I posted about artist Kristin Baker's paintings inspired by auto racing. My wife Kelly Sparks had turned me on to Baker a few months ago. But Kelly, a fashion designer, was reminded of the paintings again when she saw Hussein Chalayan's spring 2009 ready-to-wear collection. The abstract nature and colors of the prints align beautifully with Baker's paintings (example at left). And Chalaya's remarkable garment structures definitely convey the motion of a speedway. Hussein Chalayan spring 2009 collection (style.com)

Previously on BB:
• Kristin Baker's speedway racing-inspired paintings

(Video: Interview with former Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson)

Esther Kaplan, Investigative Editor for The Nation Institute, says:

While the McCain camp continues to hammer home Barack Obama's ties to a former '60s radical, the press corps has yet to report on how far-reaching Sarah Palin's ties are to contemporary radicals -- specifically, the paranoid anti-government figures behind the Alaskan Independence Party. Reporters Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert found that AIP activists played a critical role in Palin's election as Wasilla mayor and that Palin in turn sought to reward them with plum political appointments and appearances, as recently as this year, at AIP conventions.

Their story, "Meet Sarah Palin's Radical Right-Wing Pals," below, was supported by a research grant from the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and appeared this morning at Salon.com.

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

Leah of Current says: I thought you might get a kick out of this literal animated remake of Aha’s "Take Me On." Take On Me: literal video version

I was Googling to see how people used the word "subterranea" and I stumbled across the fantasitc Subterranea Britannica, the Web site for a 35-year-old society "devoted to the study and investigation of man-made and man-used underground places." Here are some of the categories of underground sites that interest them: Adits, Air Raid Shelters, Cave Dwellings, Chalk Wells, Control Cenres, Earth Houses, Fougous, Funicular Railway Tunnels, Mines, Mushroom growing, Priest Holes, Sallyports, Secret Hiding Places, Show Caves, Souterrains, Subways, Underground Railways, Wells. And that ain't the half of it. These folks dig deep into, er, underground culture. Their site is filled with site records, photos, and maps. The England-based society also has a zine, Subterranea, and hosts conferences and field trips in the UK and Europe. Subterranea Britannica

My wife just ran into the office and excitedly told me about this new video that Eric Wareheim of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show -- Great Job!" fame directed and posted on his Facebook page this morning. "It's really trippy, dude. I think Boing Boing readers will love it." I think she might be right. Check out this amazing video for "The Youth." (Thanks Tara McGinley!)

Kristin Baker is a hypertalented New York City-based artist who paints incredibly dynamic, energized abstractions influenced by her passion for Grand Prix auto racing. She uses acrylic to paint on mylar and PVC. If someone decides to make an animation of JG Ballard's novel Crash, I nominate Baker to be the art director. Seen above, Big Bang Vroom (acrylic on PVC, 243.8 cm x 304.8 cm). Kristin Baker (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)

Today on Boing Boing tv, we continue our SPAMasterpiece Theater series, featuring author, PC, and minor television personality John Hodgman, whose new book, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE launches next week.

Hodgman himself describes this series as the dramatization of "true tale[s] of romance, adventure, infamy, and low-cost prescription drugs, all culled from the reams of actual, unsolicited emails, received here by us and people like you -- what we call SPAM."

Today's installment: Barrister Abbey and Diana Khan in "Wuthering Wire Transfers," a tempting tale of financial transactions and naked lust that requires your soonest response.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with instructions on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast, which you really ought to do. Direct MP4 link.

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A note from our musical director: The adaptation of Jean-Joseph Mouret's "Rondeau: Fanfare" (1735) which opens today's episode was remixed in flagrante 8-bit by Hamhocks Buttermilk Johnson.

* Previously on Boing Boing tv: SPAMasterpiece Theater, Vol. I

Video Link, via DLISTED. Previously on BB: the original, and another, and another, y la ultima.

But a request: The world NEEDS a La Pequeña Sarah Palin. *Needs.* WHYYYYYY? WHYYYYY doesn't this episode exist yet? Por favor, Felipe Avello, te pido con toda mi corazon. (thanks Susannah!)

I love the illustration for Christopher Hitchens' Vanity Fair story, "America the Banana Republic." It's based, of course, on the beautiful Jack Davis poster for Woody Allen's Bananas from 1971.

Hitchens' piece is well worth reading, too.

I was very struck, as the liquefaction of a fantasy-based system proceeded, to read an observation by Professor Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, of the Yale School of Management. Referring to those who had demanded -— successfully -— to be indemnified by the customers and clients whose trust they had betrayed, the professor phrased it like this:

These are people who want to be rewarded as if they were entrepreneurs. But they aren’t. They didn’t have anything at risk.

That’s almost exactly right, except that they did have something at risk. What they put at risk, though, was other people’s money and other people’s property. How very agreeable it must be to sit at a table in a casino where nobody seems to lose, and to play with a big stack of chips furnished to you by other people, and to have the further assurance that, if anything should ever chance to go wrong, you yourself are guaranteed by the tax dollars of those whose money you are throwing about in the first place! It’s enough to make a cat laugh.

America the Banana Republic (Thanks, Dale!)

After announcing that they'd be shutting off their DRM servers and nuking their customers' music collections, Wal*Mart has changed their mind. Now they've told their customers that they'll be keeping these servers online indefinitely -- which means that they'll be paying forever for their mistaken kowtowing to the entertainment industry's DRM mania.

All those companies (cough Amazon cough Apple cough) that say they're only doing DRM for now, until they can convince the stupid entertainment execs to ditch it, heed this lesson: you will spend the rest of your corporate life paying for this mistake, maintaining infrastructure whose sole purpose is to lock your customers into a technology restriction that no one really believes in. Welcome to the infinite cost of doing business with Hollywood.

Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. What this means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no action required on your part. Our customer service team will continue to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com.

While our customer support team is available to assist you with any issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.

We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best service possible to you. As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store, we'll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service and your account via email.

Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.

The Walmart Digital Music Team

(Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

Yishay sez, "On 6 November 2008, London will host an Open Everything event, a global conversation about the art, science and spirit of ‘open’. The conversation will cover, well, everything. Qualifier: the ‘thing’ in question is built using openness, participation and self-organisation. There are people coming to talk about open technology, media, education, workplace design, philanthropy, public policy and even politics. These people want to tell you what they’re doing and find out what you’re up to. And they’d like to have lunch with you. That’s why they’re coming to Open Everything. " Open Everything London) (Thanks, Yishay!)

Ari Cohen says: "We have started a blog of our own that documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age. We noticed so many amazingly dressed older people in New York and are having a great time getting to know them, hearing their stories and capturing a bit of their style to share with others." Advanced Style

Tim Biskup has a new show in Paris and the paintings (and packaging!) look terrific.

O/S (Operating System)
New Paintings, Sculptures & Prints
October 11th - November 16th
Addict Galerie
14/16 rue de Thorigny
75003 Paris - France.
T: +33(0)1 48 87 05 04
T: +33(0) 971 41 45 39
info@addictgalerie.com
www.addictgalerie.com Opening reception: Saturday, October 11th (open to the public)

With Tim Biskup's new collection of sculpture/painting combination pieces he presents the duality of his recent work in a neatly organized fashion. Each of the twelve pieces in the exhibition are self contained units which include an original painting packed into it's own shipping crate along with an elaborate pedestal that can be assembled using parts that come inside the crate as well as the crate itself. These "systems", as the artist calls them, constitute a fusion of Biskup's aesthetic style and his conceptual theories. The pieces are intended to represent the interconnection between art itself and the peripheral elements that allow it to exist. As a metaphor, the "systems" ask the question of weather the peripheral elements actually add to or distract from the the artwork being presented.

Also included in the exhibition is a large scale serigraph, "Tree Of Life". This 30-color print depicts the artist's familiar Cyclops character, known as "Helper", perched among the branches of a lush tree, surrounded by flora and fauna and wielding an ax. Biskup has said that the character is a symbol of mankind corrupted by his own sense of spiritual knowledge. The image was originally created as the cover of "American Cyclops" a catalog of artwork from an exhibition of the same name that took place at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona in July of 2006.

Mark sez, "Colin Jackson is a well-known IT consultant in New Zealand and former President of InternetNZ. Colin attended a meeting with the Minister in charge of copyright on Monday to talk about a proposal to kick people off the internet on the basis of three unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringement, and she lost her temper and yelled at them."

The meeting was set down for 45 minutes from 3:45. When it opened, Judith Tizard spent 30 minutes telling us why the change had to be made. She began by strongly expressing her anger that we had complained to her at this stage in the proceedings. None of us, she said, had been to see her before this on this topic. When we protested that we had worked with the Select Committee, which had removed this provision - and balanced it with one which made licence holders liable for false accusations - she said that this was completely inappropriate of the Select Committee, because Cabinet had already decided this was going ahead. We should not have been surprised, we were told, that this provision was reinserted by the government at the last minute before the bill was passed. (It’s worth noting here that Judith has been to the two New Zealand Foo Camps and was engaged roundly on copyright both times.)

She set forth strong views about how the launch of Sione’s Wedding had been ruined, about how studios in Auckland were running out of work, and about how artists were mortgaging their homes to make films and music and were not making any returns on their investments, all, she said, because of Internet piracy...

When we suggested that natural justice would imply that it was unreasonable to withdraw Internet access based on an accusation, she reiterated her position that something had to be done and that ISPs had to do it. ISPs, she said, need to negotiate with the licence holders to put in a regime to prevent copyright infringements. The licence holders’ associations had assured her that they would not be unreasonable.

In response to being told that it is technically impossible for ISPs to tell what people are doing, Judith said that it had been done for child pornography and that ISPs need to apply the same standards. It was pointed out that the state defines objectionable material, possession of which is a crime, but there’s no equivalent definition for copyright, infringement of which is a civil matter to be determined by courts.

Of all the unreasonable and awful proposals to come out of the entertainment industry, none is so bad as the three-strikes rule, a rule that would leave everyday people vulnerable to having the connection that brings them freedom of speech, of assembly and the press, the link that connects them to family, school, work and government, terminated because someone, somewhere made three accusations of copyright infringement, without having to offer a shred of evidence.

I think there's an easy answer to this: a three-strikes rule that cuts both ways: so yes, we'll cut off anyone who's thrice-accused of copyright infringement, but we should also permanently terminate Internet access for any corporation that makes three improper or incorrect accusations: once Sony or Warners or what-have-you make three bogus accusations, they have to do all their sales, marketing, production and communication by phone and fax. Forever. Ministers: why we changed the Copyright Act (Thanks, Mark!)

D. T. Friedman of the nonprofit OxenFree in Indiana writes:

I’m the Resource Coordinator for a non-profit organization that works with homeless and indigent teenagers, as well as teens who are in bad home situations. OxenFree is a really fantastic program that engages at-risk teens through punk rock music, and provides support in a drug-free and alcohol-free environment.

The reason I’m invading blogs today? My job with OxenFree is to receive requests from the phenomenal people who run the program, and to figure out a way to fill them. My current assignment is…SOCKS. And I have to admit, I’m a bit at a loss. Socks are not a large-volume item at clothing centers (people usually just wear them out instead of donating them), and they’re surprisingly expensive. Homeless teenagers, especially hitchhikers, go through socks like you wouldn’t believe. My friend Margie can no longer afford to keep stocking her “free socks” drawer by herself, and asked me if I could try working my magic.

So, would you be willing to help me sock my punks?

Help with sock donations (Thanks, Mary!)

Last week, I wrote about Neil Gaiman's video book-tour for his new young adult novel, The Graveyard Book. Gaiman read a different chapter at each day's tour-stop, and videos of the readings were posted, in sequence, to a website, so that you could follow along and hear Gaiman (a virtuoso reader) perform the full text of this wonderful book.

Seems like it worked. The Graveyard Book is now number one on the New York Times's Young Adult bestseller list. And deservedly so: Gaiman's combination of The Jungle Book's elegant and sweet structure and style with a genuinely creepy setting and situation (Bod is abandoned in the graveyard as a baby after his parents are murdered by a serial killer; he is raised by the graveyard's ghosts, who go back to pre-Roman times, and who give him an eclectic education and rescue him when he goes astray) is utterly inspired, and beautifully executed.

This is a book that is especially fabulous when read aloud -- a perfect bedtime book for your little monsters. Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book -- video tour, The Graveyard Book on Amazon

Jeff, an artist, created the Dream Captcha to mashup the traditional dream-catcher and anti-spam gunk -- as a result, his dreams are free of spam:

Dream Captcha is a play on the idea of a traditional Ojibwa dreamcatcher and the technology of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

So the idea of the dreamcatcher is something I’ve been exposed to since I was a young kid. In elementary school we learned how to make them. When I went on school trips to historic Waterloo Village in New Jersey, we saw them on display. After reading the entry on dreamcatchers in Wikipedia, it was interesting to read that they’ve become somewhat “tacky and over-commercialized due to their acceptance in popular culture”. I’m definitely from a generation that saw it as part of popular culture, kind of like it was the thing-to-do to wear a ‘holy rosary’ as a necklace.

Then there’s the idea of Captcha. Silly trivia: I went to Carnegie Mellon University where the Captcha technology was developed. Don’t you love that? As Wikipedia defines it, a Captcha “is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer”. You’ve probably encountered a Captcha before. You’re at a website, about to fill in a comment, and then the website asks you to type the letters you see in a box—the letters are all squiggly and distorted. Basically, a robot can’t read those letters, but a human can, so hurray, the site isn’t overloaded with spam and porn and whatnot. However, the Captcha technology isn’t limited to squiggly letters, and in fact, is readily deciphered by newer robots today.

Dream Captcha (via Neatorama)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John notes that watching Sleeping Beauty on Blu-Ray requires that you accede to over 120 pages of legal garbage in various EULAs before you can start the movie.

Disney has a sickness when it comes to abusive EULAs and contracts. I once had to cancel a speech at Imagineering because the legal department wanted me to sign something saying that I'd never use the word "Disney" in print again without permission. The Laugh Factory attraction at Disney World's Tomorrowland had a ridiculous EULA on a sign (you agreed to the terms by passing under the sign) (!) in which you promised that any jokes you suggested were your own and that you would indemnify Disney from any copyright suits arising from the telling of the jokes (the sign was not a joke). As though eight year olds can form contracts (they can't), by standing under signs (they can't), and as though most jokes people tell are original (they aren't).

People worry that Disney trains their kids to grow up to be princesses and whatnot, but that's nothing next to the risk that watching Sleeping Beauty on Blu-Ray will lead your kids to believe that it's normal to have to agree to hundreds of pages of garbage every time you want to experience culture. Imagine how awful their dinner-parties will be! Sleeping Beauty Blu-Ray requires viewers to agree to 57 page EULA Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on YPulse blog, a fantastic critique of a USA Today story on young girls and weight:

At first I was stunned that girls who had nutritious eating habits and worked out at least once a week gained 5.5 pounds. I was even more surprised that those who ate small portions and worked out at least five times a week still gained three pounds. How could this be? What does this mean for the rest of us who never work out and slurp double-whip mocha lattes five days a week?

Then I realized that the girls they surveyed were between junior high (14) and college (22) ages. Of course they're gaining weight, they're going through puberty! Their bodies are changing from little girl to grown-up. We should be alarmed if they aren't gaining weight, because that would mean they aren't going through the proper stages of adolescence.

The article says that "most of the older girls had reached their full maturity and their weight gain was more likely to be unhealthy." I'm not a doctor, but even at 18, 19 and 20, it seems like girls could still be growing. That means that maybe 10% were close to full maturity.

Teen Girls' Fear Of Fat

Geckos are able to climb walls thanks to a coating on their toes of tiny hairs, called "setae," that are tipped with flat "spatulae." The large surface area of the spatulae exploit the van der Waals force, the weak attractive force between molecules, enabling the gecko's feet to stick. For years, scientists have worked on the development of synthetic adhesives inspired by this wonder of nature. Researchers at the University of Dayton and the Georgia Institute of Technology have now made an array of artificial setae that are actually nested carbon nanotubes. Eventually, the resarchers think the material could replace solder as well as more traditional adhesives. From New Scientist:

(The researchers) controlled the (carbon nanotube) growth process to make a forest of vertical nanotube trunks turning into a canopy of tangled ends on top. The curly entangled mess acts like natural spatulae – when pressed against a surface, they have a large contact area and hence a strong hold.

The new material was tested for stickiness on surfaces ranging from Teflon to sandpaper. Attached to a glass surface, a single square centimetre of it can support over 1600 grams when pulled roughly parallel to the surface.

That is roughly 10 times better than some species of gecko and three times better than the best artificial competitor.

But removing a pad of the material is simple, unlike some rival materials. Pulling it perpendicular to a surface means only the tips of the nanotubes remain in contact with the surface, and the setae will easily loosen their grip. A weight of 160 grams on a square centimetre is enough to do that.

"Gecko-grip material aims to be the end of glue"

Prankster artist Banksy opened the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill on New York City's 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street. The shop is stocked with an animatronic-powered menagerie teeming with the likes of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets drinking barbecue sauce, a CCTV camera and its offspring, a bunny at a vanity, and other faux furry friends. Wooster Collective paid a visit to the shop which will be open daily from 10am to midnight until Halloween. Banksy's Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

In today's New York Times "Home & Garden" section, a visit to the Oklahoma City compound of Wayne Coyne, singer and guitarist for the amazing psychedelic pop band The Flaming Lips. His residence consists of four adjacent houses, one for living, one for storage, and two guest houses. From the New York Times (photo by Paul Hellstern):

“It’s our firewall,” Mr. Coyne said, standing under a pecan tree in the fenced-in courtyard surrounded by the houses. “It staves off the crack dealers..."

Seen from the street, it resembles a do-it-yourself version of a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie House; inside it feels mazelike and eccentric, qualities the couple have tried to enhance with color. (J. Michelle) Martin-Coyne painted an upstairs bedroom “breathless blue,” she said, after a sky blue shade of nail polish, and her art studio across the hallway has a pink rubber floor.

She was showing off the contents of her studio, including a collection of vintage children’s lunchboxes and an old jukebox she got from her grandfather, when Mr. Coyne reappeared. Glancing around, he said, “We’re maximalists; Michelle and I both have the junk gene...."

The house is less a quiet sanctuary than a full-time Flaming Lips headquarters: a place where band members crashed in the early days; where rehearsals still take place in a cramped back room; and where Mr. Coyne can work up visual elements for concerts (like the mirrored disco balls sitting in an open-sided shed in the yard). On this particular day, the band’s roadies were in a workshop behind the house building a “500-pound human brain,” a Halloween display designed by Mr. Coyne (and actually made of lightweight foam). “There are still kids who think we showed off a dead guy,” Mr. Coyne said, referring to the year he put a bloody, life-size rubber man on the porch.

At Home With Wayne Coyne

The things that has always alarmed me most about the right wing Republican/conservative/FOX News-watching types is how they wear their own IGNORANCE as a badge of honor! I can't get my head around the notion of how unashamed they are of their own ignorance. It used to be that abject stupidity was something to be embarrassed about. Is it somehow now HIP these days to be a total dumbass? Did I miss the memo?

It's even worse when Republican politicians stoop to cultivate the least intelligent amongst us. Why is it that the Republican party seems to consist solely of the top 5% of America's wealth holders and the lower third of the IQ spectrum with NO ONE in between?

Here is what Blogger Interrupted saw at a McCain-Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio:

The fact that my videos of McCain-Palin supporters are blowing up online tells me a lot.

First, the media should be ashamed of themselves for not covering this until now. The McCain-Palin supporters in my videos are not new, they are not exceptional, they are not hiding. This is who they are. It has been brewing for months, and not one mainstream media outlet has taken the time to expose them. Not one. And that is dangerous. If America is about to decide on its president based on this level of hate and ignorance, without a single question being asked as to why, then America is in for a rude awakening.

There are some seriously ignorant people on display in these videos (and no, not just the governor of Alaska). These people are clearly SO DUMB that they'd believe any darn thing you told them! Be afraid, be very afraid... McCain-Palin Mob in Ohio (video) part 1 | McCain-Palin Mob in Ohio (video)part 2

(Richard Metzger is a guestblogger)

From the Daily Mail:

"A married couple who decided to go their separate ways agreed to divide their home and its contents literally - by sawing the house in half.

One day the house was standing on stilts in a Cambodian village. The next, only half was there.

The wife will keep the half that is standing, while the husband has carried off bits and pieces of the home to put them up in a nearby field."

The house LITERALLY sawn in half by divorcing couple (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

(Richard Metzger is a guestblogger)

Earlier this year as the euro trounced the dollar on the exchange markets, it occurred to me that holding euros was much, much more tenuous than holding dollars as it was not the currency of a single sovereign nation. Clearly the Fed has every intention of propping up the dollar, but can the same be said of Germany, France, England or Italy when it comes to their common currency? Highly unlikely, as prescient Telegraph reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:

"Who in the eurozone can do what Alistair Darling has just done in extremis to save Britain's banks, as this $10 trillion house of cards falls down? There is no EU treasury or debt union to back up the single currency. The ECB is not allowed to launch bail-outs by EU law. Each country must save its own skin, yet none has full control of the policy instruments.

Germany has vetoed French and Italian ideas for an EU lifeboat fund. The former knows exactly where that leads. It is a Trojan horse that will be used one day to co-opt German taxpayers into rescues for less Teutonic EMU kin. One can sympathise with Berlin. But sharing debts with Italy and Spain was implicit when they agreed to launch the euro. A shared currency entails obligations. We have reached the watershed moment when Germany has to decide whether to put its full sovereign weight behind the EMU project or reveal that it is not prepared to do so in a crisis.

This is a very dangerous set of circumstances for monetary union. Will we still have a 15-member euro by Christmas?

Think that's scary? Try these tidbits, from Nouriel Roubini's weekly round-up newsletter of September 26th, 2008:

• Daniel Gros, Stefano Micossi: The 'overall leverage ratio' -- a measure of total assets to shareholder equity -- of the average European bank is 35 due to large in-house investment banking operations, compared with less than 20 for the largest U.S. banks. This means that relatively small writedowns on their assets could have a devastating impact on a their capital --> some EU banks have become too big for any one European country to save while an official cross-border crisis management mechanism with ex ante burden sharing is not in place

• The crucial problem on this side of the Atlantic is that the largest European banks have become not only too big to fail, but also too big to be saved. For example, the total liabilities of Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50) amount to about €2,000bn (more than Fannie Mae) or more than 80% of Germany's GDP. This is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state

Financial Crisis: Who is going to bail out the euro?

(Richard Metzger is a guestblogger)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, the morning started with the shrill tintinnabulation of a green tea telephone, which we profusely stabbed with a handy philips head.

That accomplished, dived into the techno-flotsam: Beschizza claimed to have a thousand uses for a pocket LED scroller, yet cited none. We looked at a fake electro-cigar for cyborg cigar aficionados, and then dug into our breakfast with LEGO fork and spork.

Realish news: the 360 may get Blu-Ray and the new Nintendo DSi will get more RAM. Brownlee revealed his lack of foresight by oggling some L-bent HDMI cables, and admired a Portal-style oviposited recycling egg.

Tron? It really happened! Toy Story's creepy baby doll robot spiders crawl all over you. A backseat car window becomes a kick-ass SHMUP. And Disney's latest DVD release contains a 120 page EULA.

Joel looked at a swank calculator made in a video game and reviewed the iPhone's surprisingly wonderful arcade RTS, Galcon. We learned that there may well be an $800 laptop announced by Apple at its October 14th notebook event, and Rob crunched some numbers, proving its physical dimensions.

And finally, an egregious lapse in geek cred: Joel "Rainbow" Johnson has never seen Aliens.

Andy Jordan of the Wall Street Journal has a fun video profile of Andrew Schneider, a wearable tech artist from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Link

I'm really sick and tired of these online series that use the first personal confessional --like Lonelygirl15 and the totally awful Gemini Division with Rosario Dawson -- in service of the hokey dramatic trope of overly expository webcam monologues. In the case of Lonelygirl15's fictional over-sharing protagonist, Bree, I suppose it was creatively justified, but with NBC's Gemini Division, it just feels forced, crammed down for the medium and much better suited for radio! There is about as much tension inherent in this kind of gimmicky storytelling as there is in making the audience listen to an answering machine message. A particularly long one at that. And then do it again in the next day's installment. Count me out.

Now there's a new entrant in the genre of "webcam narrative": Web Therapy starring, co-written and co-produced by the brilliant Lisa Kudrow. But Web Therapy as the name might imply, is not another one-sided windbag borefest, it's -- hello -- actual two-way conversations that purportedly take place in real time (just 3 minutes per session!) over dual webcams between annoying psychologist Dr. Fiona Wallace and her exasperated patients. What a simple, yet clever idea! One that makes sense that it occurs over webcams. The initial episodes of Web Therapy -- each co-starring Bob Balaban Tim Bagley -- are terrific viewing, and really hilarious. It's the very first web series where I thought "I'd watch every episode" and that's really saying something. There needs to be more stuff like this. Kudos to Kudrow and her collaborators for this little gem of a show.

Web Therapy

(Richard Metzger is a guestblogger)

Today's Boing Boing tv is an installment of our ongoing BBtv WORLD series, in which we bring you first-person glimpses of life around the globe.

From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold
 into slavery, transported on ships 
to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions 
including Voudun, which we now 
know as “voodoo.”
 Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom 
on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin.


In today’s episode, I 
travel to Benin’s port city of Ouidah,
 one of the most important slave trade ports, 
and a center of the Vodoun religion.

We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade.

We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candomblé.

Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah's residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return. -- XJ

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Link to Boing Boing tv post , with info on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast. and direct MP4 link here.

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(Photos: Xeni Jardin, CC license)

Sarah Kershaw of the New York Times reports on research published at Siggraph about a computer program developed at Tel Aviv University that changes the geometry of faces in photographs to make them more beautiful. (Photo: Lars Klove for The New York Times, manipulation by Tommer Leyvand)

The photograph on the right was doctored by the “beautification engine” of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an “unmistakable similarity” to the original.

The software program, developed by computer scientists in Israel, is based on the responses of 68 men and women, age 25 to 40, from Israel and Germany, who viewed photographs of white male and female faces and picked the most attractive ones.

Scientists took the data and applied an algorithm involving 234 measurements between facial features, including the distances between lips and chin, the forehead and the eyes, or between the eyes.

The Sum of Your Facial Parts

The Jed report comments on the Salon article about the Alaskan Independence Party, which Todd Palin joined and Sarah Palin supports:

David Talbot reports on what would have been the crowning achievement of Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Vogler had he not been first killed in a plastic explosives deal gone bad:

Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

The following year, Todd and Sarah Palin attended the AIP convention, and Todd Palin joined the party shortly thereafter.

Link

Happy birthday, Mr. Lennon.

Yoko Ono sends the Boing Boing community a video (link updated), embedded above, and explains a project launching this week in honor of John Lennon's birthday, the "Imagine Peace Tower" in Iceland -- a country that could use a little extra compassion this week, for sure, given the harsh effects of the economic collapse there. More on the project:

On 9 Oct 2008, John Lennon’s birthday, Yoko Ono asks the people of Iceland to join her and many others across the rest of the world in praying for peace and stability.

At 8pm, as IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is illuminated on the island of Viðey, she asks everyone to join together and let the power of light and prayer become a collective expression of the desire for peace and harmony on our planet.

And Ms. Ono herself says, to all Boingdom:

Dear Friends

Please join me not only in remembering John on October 9th but also in spreading the message of peace. This is something that was so important to John - the fact that we could all work together for the positive good of our planet. He would have loved how we are all mobilizing ourselves in thought and in action. It's time for action and the action is peace!

with love, yoko

Yoko Ono 9 Oct 2008

More info, and how to participate: IMAGINEPEACE.COM.

Below: Ms. Ono also reminds us today of John's belief that War Is Over If You Want It.

UPDATE 12pm PT: Simon, who works with Ms. Ono, says: "We'll have a webcam up shortly to show the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER lighting up live at 8pm Reykjavik time (1pm LA, 4pm NY, 9pm Liverpool, 5am Tokyo)."

In 2010 Ford will introduce a car key that parents can give to their teenage drivers, which changes the settings on various safety features in the car.

The MyKey system allows the parent to program any key through the vehicle message center, which updates the SecuriLock™ passive anti-theft system. When the MyKey is inserted into the ignition, the system reads the transponder chip in the key and immediately identifies the MyKey code, which enables certain default driving modes, including:

- Persistent Ford Beltminder™ with audio mute. Ford's Beltminder system typically provides a six-second reminder chime every minute for five minutes. With MyKey, the Beltminder chime continues at the regular interval and the audio system is muted until the safety belt is buckled. A message center display "Buckle Up to Unmute Radio" also appears on the instrument cluster.

- Earlier low-fuel warning. Rather than a warning at 50 miles to empty, MyKey provides a warning at 75 miles to empty.

- If MyKey is in the ignition, features such as Park Aid and BLISTM (Blind Spot Information System) with Cross Traffic Alert cannot be deactivated.

Additional MyKey features that can be programmed through the vehicle's message center setup menu:

- Limited top speed of 80 mph

- Traction control system, that limits tire spin, cannot be deactivated

- Limited audio volume to 44 percent of total volume

- A speed alert chime at 45, 55 or 65 mph

Ford Introduces MyKey

When most people think of "Adult Animation" they think of things like Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat or Heavy Traffic, but Bakshi's lurid seventies shockers have got nuthin' on Shaun Pye and the late Harry Thompson's ultra bleak -- and often quite smutty -- BBC3 television series, Monkey Dust. Truly, it can be said, Monkey Dust raises the bar!

A three season (2003-2005) anthology of loosely themed animation, the main thread connecting the pieces seemed to do with how dark, shocking and provocative they all were. There's never been anything quite like Monkey Dust. It's hard to describe it due to its anthology nature, but it might help you decide if this kind of "comedy" is for you, when I tell you that the subject matter includes things like n'er do well terrorists, chat-room pedophiles, kidnapping, drug addiction, sleazy sex, Nazi grandfathers and murder. Monkey Dust is, beyond the slightest doubt in my mind, the most far-out TV show yet. And one of the most offensive, certainly. Man oh man is it just great stuff. With the most amazing pop soundtrack including songs from The Eels, Goldfrapp, Pulp and many other notables. Much of the individual animations have made it onto YouTube, but only the first season has made it to DVD. Seasons 2 and 3 are easy to come by on various Bit Torrent trackers. Maybe NSFW. Everyone will think you're a freak if you watch this at work.

Monkey Dust.

Benji and Charlotte

(Richard Metzger is a guestblogger)

ABC News reports that, "despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary," the NSA listens in on ordinary phone calls of US citizens overseas, and military intercept operators who work at the National Security Agency (NSA) enjoy sharing and saving recordings of US officers' pillow-talk and phone sex calls with their spouses back home.

[Intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk] says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.

"I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me," he said.

In testimony before Congress, then-NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, said private conversations of Americans are not intercepted.

"It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda and those organizations who are affiliated with it," Gen. Hayden testified.

Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John's found these superb recycling egg multi-trash-cans:

The Ovetto Recycling Egg is an expensive, dual-slot trash can that, for $250, allows for the separation of plastic and aluminum in one receptacle... a goal which can just as easily be accomplished for the price of a couple $5 trash buckets. But you aren't paying for the function, you're paying for the design, and who amongst us does not want to turn our kitchen into the microcosmic eating lounge of Aperture Science, with helpful (albeit homicidal) recycling eggs (oviposited by glorious GLaDOS herself) pristinely hovering about, electronically warbling invitations to deposit our spare cans, or perhaps just our spleens, in their plastic, opalescent bellies?

Look at me still talking when there's recycling to do: Ovetto Recycling Eggs, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

I have no idea if The Manga Guide to Databases will be any good (the publisher sez, "In The Manga Guide to Databases, Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management. We follow along as they design a relational database, understand the entity-relationship model, perform basic database operations, and delve into more advanced topics. Once the Princess is familiar with transactions and basic SQL statements, she can keep her data timely and accurate for the entire kingdom. Finally, Tico explains ways to make the database more efficient and secure, and they discuss methods for concurrency and replication.") but I sure hope it's the start of a trend. I want a manga guide to supersymmetry, the surplus labor theory of value, tensor calculus and many other elusive concepts.

I'm aware that this sort of subject is often covered in Japanese manga books, but to understand them, I'd need a Manga Guide to Japanese first. The Manga Guide to Databases (via Global Nerdy)