Ed. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks.

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James Grimmelmann of New York Law School has written a terrific essay on privacy issues and social networks services entitled Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy.

Grimmelmann is trying to do nothing less than re-shape our attitude towards privacy on social networks, building an erudite and extensively documented argument that our framing of privacy problems, and most of the solutions we have in mind, are bad fits for social networking services.

There are no ideal technical controls for the use of information in social software. The very idea is an oxymoron; “social” and “technical” are incompatible adjectives here. Adding “friendYouDontLike” to a controlled vocabulary will not make it socially complete; there’s still “friendYouDidntUsedToLike.” As long as there are social nuances that aren’t captured in the rules of the network (i.e., always), the network will be unable to prevent them from sparking privacy blowups. [...]

Another reason that comprehensive technical controls are ineffective can be found in Facebook’s other "core principle": that its users should "have access to the information others want to share." If you’re already sharing your information with Alice, checking the box that says “Don’t show to Bob” will stop Facebook from showing it Bob, but it won’t stop Alice from showing it to him. [...]

There’s also another way of looking at "information others want to share": If I want to share information about myself -- and since I’m using a social network site, it’s a moral certainty that I do -- anything that makes it harder for me to share is a bug, not a feature. Users will disable any feature that protects their privacy too much.

For me, the essential pair of insights in this paper are that a) our attitudes towards privacy are shaped by industrial norms -- the individual vs. the corporation or the state -- while on social networks, the most important class of privacy violations are in fact peer-to-peer and b) that these violations, when they happen, are a side-effect of the system doing what it is designed to do, which is to facilitate the spread of personal information.

The first challenge is re-shaping our sense of what a privacy violation means in the context of social network services, and the second is to accept that, since a full stemming of these violations is prima facie impossible, we need a new set of practices around minimizing them where possible and improving recovery from them where possible.

Because of the enormity of the head-shift required to think through peer-to-peer privacy risks, and because Grimmelmann has worked through the issues so carefully and thoroughly, I think this should be required reading for anyone thinking about privacy as it is actually lived.

Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy

Cinematic Titanic -- the creator-driven successor to the fantastic Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- has a new installment just in time for the holidays: this month, the guys kick the crap out of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" (which has plenty of crap to kick!). For those of you who haven't been following this excellent series, the premise is simple: the five Cinematic Titanic comics are present in silhouette, superimposed over the picture, coming up with snappy jokes every second or so. I average about two belly laughs a minute, and about ten times more chuckles. The Cinematic Titanic guys are basically an artist-owned co-op who record and release this stuff off their own bat, direct to you at $15 a pop. Screw "It's a Wonderful Life," and to hell with the merely kitschy experience of watching "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" without commentary. It is only through the auspices of Cinematic Titanic that the holidays can truly be realized.

Cinematic Titanic: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)

Ed. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks.

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As the price of oil has fallen from its dramatic highs of just a few months, ago, I often find myself thinking back to an essay by Yegor Gaidar, an economist and acting prime minister of Russia from 1991 to 1994. The essay, The Soviet Collapse, is subtitled "Grain and Oil" and tells the story of the end of the Soviet Union as the interaction of the price of those two goods.

The Soviet Collapse starts with the history of centrally-managed grain production, an unmitigated but slow-motion disaster, which they then proceeded to patch by importing grain with the budget surplus from rising oil prices, starting in the 1970s. That worked for a while, and then it stopped working.

The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to September 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market. During the next six months, oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms.

As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive. The Soviet leadership was confronted with a difficult decision on how to adjust. [...] the Soviet leadership decided to adopt a policy of effectively disregarding the problem in hopes that it would somehow wither away. Instead of implementing actual reforms, the Soviet Union started to borrow money from abroad while its international credit rating was still strong. It borrowed heavily from 1985 to 1988, but in 1989 the Soviet economy stalled completely.

For an economics essay filled with price and output charts, it's a surprisingly gripping read. It's also a reminder of what's at stake now. Because oil consumption matters more than production to English-speaking countries, our press often covers the price of oil as a question of how often people drive to the mall. For countries like Russia, however, now as much as then, the price of oil has profound existential ramifications. Re-reading this, I got a picture of how geo-politically dramatic 2009 could turn out to be.

The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil

The Obsolete Technology Website has a gallery of 100+ obsolete computers. Lovely.

Welcome to the Obsolete Technology Website (via Beyond the Beyond)

A paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience describes a study that concludes that poor children aged 9 and 10 are likely to have lowered brain activity, comparable to a stroke victim. The researchers say that it's due to growing up in a stressful, "resource poor" environment, with "fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums." However, the effects can be remediated through playing stimulating games.

"When paying attention to the triangles, the prefrontal cortex helps you process the visual stimuli better. And the prefrontal cortex is even more involved in detecting novelty, like the unexpected photographs," he said. But in both cases, "the low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well. They were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."

"These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, no neurological damage," Kishiyama said. "Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as efficiently as it should be. This difference may manifest itself in problem solving and school performance."

Poor Children's Brain Activity Resembles That Of Stroke Victims, EEG Shows

Tor.com's Bridget McGovern sums up my anxiety at the thought of Alex Cox and David Lynch making a sequel to Repo Man called Repo Chick, "set against the background of the credit crunch."

I don’t know. I’m nervous, but also kind of excited to see what Cox comes up with. My biggest question, though, is about the soundtrack: how can the sequel even attempt to match the original in terms of music, when it remains one of my favorite soundtracks of all time? Iggy Pop, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, The Plugz, and The Circle Jerks...the music is the heart and soul of Repo Man, and perfectly captured the essence of the gritty Los Angeles punkdom of the time. Not that there’s not a ton of great music out there, but what really compares nowadays? At least Iggy’s still out there rocking, same as he ever was, but it will be interesting to see who else will help Cox fuel his anarchic punk vision all over again...

Here’s Hoping Alex Cox’s Repo Man Sequel Isn’t One Big Circle Jerk

The CU Edible Book fesitval celebrates my three favourite things: literacy, food and horrible puns. Check out the Lard of the Rings, featured here!

The Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 3rd Annual C-U Edible Book Festival (Thanks, 7-how-7!)

The Internet Archive's public domain audio archive has dozens of vintage radio dramas from the Columbia Workshop -- everything from Shakespeare to Moby-Dick to "The History of the US Patent System".

Columbia Workshop at the Internet Archive, Columbia Workshop on Wikipedia (Thanks, Claude!)

The Chaos Communication Congress, held later this month in Berlin, will feature Open Attendee Meta-Data (OpenAMD) RFID badges that will track attendees' every movement, simulating life in the high-tech totalitarian state that many of the world's "free" nations are busy erecting.

Growing from the success of the OpenAMD Project at The Last HOPE in New York City this past summer, the CCC will be joining forces with SocioPatterns.org to add a real time proximity detection system so users can know what other users are nearby. In addition, users can log into a web interface that will suggest talks they might like and other attendees with similar interests. With this system, attendees will be able to see where they've been, what they've been doing, and with whom.

The OpenAMD system will be using several visual effects to display this, including an AJAX visual accessible from the conference website and a 3-D visual based on cutting edge graphics technology. This year will also introduce "Beacon Royale", an RFID-based game spanning the whole building where participants engage in virtual combat against each other. The system is completely open source, open hardware, and all the tracking data will be made available to the public after the conference.

How will surveillance feel in ten years? (Thanks, Aestetix!)

Prague's sovkitsch (Commiepunk?) Museum of Communism has some funny e-card designs that combine Socialist Realism with snappy captions.

Museum of Communism: E-Cards (Thanks, Marilyn!)

RIP, Forrest J Ackerman, the pioneering science fiction fan, editor and writer who coined the term "sci-fi" and founded Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. 4e left the party on December 4, at 92, after a long illness. of heart failure at home at the legendary Ackermansion in Los Feliz in Los Angeles.

Among those who grew up reading Famous Monsters of Filmland was author Stephen King. Other childhood readers included movie directors Joe Dante, John Landis and Steven Spielberg, who once autographed a poster of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for Ackerman, saying, "A generation of fantasy lovers thank you for raising us so well."

Ackerman was a celebrity in his own right, once signing 10,000 autographs during a three-day monster-movie convention in New York City.

This, after all, was the man who created and wrote the comic book characters Vampirella and Jeanie of Questar and was the ultimate fan's fan: a man who actually had known Lugosi and Karloff and whose priceless collection of science-fiction, horror and fantasy artifacts ran to some 300,000 items.

Forrest J Ackerman, writer-editor who coined 'sci-fi,' dies at 92 (Thanks to all the readers who suggested this!)

(Image: Forrest J Ackerman at the Ackermansion.jpg by Alan Light, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Etsy user SusanKniffinDavidson's "Upsidedown Baby Head Bowl" does exactly what it says on the tin, and what's more, it has a vivid red glaze on the interior, as befits the inside of a head.

Upsidedown Baby Head Bowl (Thanks, Aag!)

Jenny Lens is an LA based photographer who has taken thousands of great early punk rock photos. She is gearing up to release a Ramones photo eBook

Ramones First West Coast Tour, 1976, Highlights, V1, the first in a series of exciting, new photo eBooks from the Jenny Lens Punk Archive. The ONLY way you will see so many rare, large and groovy photos, most seen only by Jenny!

FREE 16 page book sample eBook download.

BUY NOW (or for more info)

HELP SAVE the Jenny Lens Punk Archive! Jenny's seminal, 1976-1980, LA-based punk photos have been published more than anyone on the West Coast for over 32 years. Her photos have been published more than ANY other photographer during that time frame in ALL the numerous major books published the past few years. Her photos are also in documentaries, magazine articles, CD/DVD packaging and more.

But there are thousands you've never seen! Photos which will make you laugh, cry, dance and more!

I dig this classic Sesame Street animation of a Rube Goldberg Machine with an alphabet theme.

WFMU, the only radio station that matters, is holding an art exhibition to raise much needed funds for a new booster antenna in Manhattan.

There will be a lots of reasonably priced work from a really wide range of artists from the well known (Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley & Richard Prince) to up and comers like Dan Funderburgh and Matthieu Gafsou. Much of the work is brand new and has been created especially for our show and is priced to sell.

We also have a website up where people can buy editions including very reasonably priced work by Chris Johanson and James Siena among others.

WFMU art exhibition

Today on Offworld, we looked at how the first pack of downloadable content for Mirror's Edge reminded us (happily) of the best bits of Super Mario Sunshine, went undercover to sneak ourselves out a copy of Japan's exclusive Resident Evil 5 demo, logged into Sackbook, the best new web project to come out of LittleBigPlanet, and went Mario Kart-ing in real life.

We also prepared ourselves for a Metal Gear December Surprise, saw how LittleBigPlanet was invading music/puzzle game Lumines (later, in motion), and nosed around Sega's new Sonic-laden casual game portal.

Finally, we looked at Trine, a forthcoming PC/PS3 game from Finnish developer Frozenbyte that looks to blend the best parts of Lost Vikings, Gauntlet and.. Crayon Physics, saw Obama going all Gears of War, and, most endearingly, rescued wayward beagles across procedurally generated landscapes.

Last month I wrote about Adafuit's Drawdio kit, an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw.

Later, I got an email from JJJ Silver, who invented the Drawdio, and I asked him to tell me how he came up with it. Here's what he said:

Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink...

One day I bought a "harmonium" kit at the street market in Bangalore. I hacksawed the keyboard off to make the first ever Drawdio circuit. We played with it at a local school in the slums using plants, water, our foreheads, etc. My friend told me graphite would work too. Meditating on it, I realized the Drawdio circuit should be literally attached to a pencil to "draw audio," and that's where the name came from: Draw + Audio.

Link, Discuss. An appropriate happy-fun chaser for an eight-year-long bad trip. This would go great in my living room with some Franklin Mint Barack Obama Golden Victory Coins. You are welcome. (Art of Obama, thanks, cavalaxis)

Are you an iPhone user who talks (types) like a sailor and it annoys you when the device autocorrects a perfectly good insult to read "Duck you!" Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Brownlee has a good tip on how to quickly teach bad words to your iPhone. Discussion too.
"Teach your iPhone to swear"

Photos of "dying leaf" and "decomposing leaf" katydids. Unbelievable. (Via Evil Mad Science Laboratories)

Dig this real-life Mario Kart insanity! Video and discussion over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Video: Real-life Mario Kart"

H.M., an amnesiac whose condition opened new doors in the study of memory, died on Tuesday at age 82. A 1953 brain operation left H.M., now revealed to be Henry Gustav Molaison, with no ability to form new long-term memories. From then on, every time he met someone, or experienced something, it would be just like the very first time. His short-term memory was fine. From the New York Times:

“The study of H. M. by Brenda Milner stands as one of the great milestones in the history of modern neuroscience,” said Dr. Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. “It opened the way for the study of the two memory systems in the brain, explicit and implicit, and provided the basis for everything that came later — the study of human memory and its disorders.”

Living at his parents’ house, and later with a relative through the 1970s, Mr. Molaison helped with the shopping, mowed the lawn, raked leaves and relaxed in front of the television. He could navigate through a day attending to mundane details — fixing a lunch, making his bed — by drawing on what he could remember from his first 27 years.

"H.M., An Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82"

Brad Robideau of American Public Media says:

I thought your readers might be interested in Marketplace’s latest “The Marketplace Whiteboard” video making the financial crisis easier to understand.

Mortgages aren't the only financial instruments that get turned into securities. In this video, Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explains how companies make money by buying credit card debt and bundling it.

All of “The Marketplace Whiteboard” videos can be accessed at www.marketplace.org and are part of "Fallout: America's Financial Crisis," Marketplace's comprehensive coverage of the current financial crisis.

Bill Gurstelle says: "Recently, I've become aware of what I call "ghost pigeons, " the imprint a pigeon makes on a glass window of a building when it unwittingly flies into it. They are spooky and depressing and kind of pretty all at the same time."

Ghost pigeons

Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America says

On the Hour is the funniest thing I've ever heard on the radio, and I just learned (accidentally) that it's in iTunes. It is the predecessor to "The Day Today" and "Brass Eye," which are two of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. All three projects were spearheaded by the British satirist Chris Morris, who in my book might be the great comedy genius of our time. It predates The Daily Show, and is (imo) funnier.

Seasons one and two are on sale in iTunes now for $11.99 each:

And there's a podcast of short (~90 second) excerpts as well:

I swear to God this is the funniest, most amazing thing in history.

John Ptak, dealer in rare science books says:

This letter, written in 1957 by Colonel Leslie S. Moore of the U.S. Biological Weapons Program at Fort Detrick, Maryland, to a member (whose name I've removed) of the A.S. "(Atmospheric Sciences") division, was basically a get-out-of-hell-free card for its bearer in the case of devastating nuclear attack.

"In the event of a mass destruction attack on Fort Detrick with the resulting loss of Biological Warfare physical facilities, it is anticipated that it will be necessary to re-establish the BW activities at some other location."

"In order to accomplish this in the most expeditious manner, the availability of certain designated personnel...is deemed essential."

The "letter serves as notification that you have been selected as a member of this group which is to be evacuated" to get the biological weapons program up and running again. As you can read in the clickable version of the document, there are directions about what top do and when to do it. There is no mention of family. My read is that this is Endgame stuff, end of civilization as we know it, and that this was the Darwinian sweep of necessary people. Or is it Dr. Strangeloveian? I get the two confused.

Suffice to say that Fort Detrick, which had been established in 1943 (constructing and delivering anthrax bombs by 1944) as Camp Detrick, already had a fairly full career before it was up-named to "Fort" in 1956. It was the recognized home/collecting node for the American Chemical and Biological Weapons programs until Richard Nixon, of all people, disbanded that capacity at Detrick in 1969.

Read the rest at John's blog.

Two Minutes to Doomsday: "Get out of Hell Free" Card, 1957. Armageddon and All That...

Los Angeles's Furious Theatre Company is known for its edgy, intense, and experimental plays. Last year, I posted about their staging of "Canned Peaches In Syrup," a post-apocalyptic comedy whose cast included my brother, Robert Pescovitz. Furious's current production is "The Night Before Christmas," a holiday comedy for adults. Anthony Nellson wrote the play and my brother directed it. "The Night Before Christmas" runs until December 20 at the Pasadena Playhouse. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times gave the production a glowing review, describing it as a "a notably smart adult-oriented standout." From the play description:

In the Los Angeles premiere of this “adults-only” Christmas comedy, two cockney thugs discover what could be a real-life elf during the night shift at a London warehouse on Christmas Eve. A hooker with a (somewhat) heart of gold also shows up expecting to collect the coveted toy of the season, which was promised to her in exchange for sexual favors. Together, the three try to sort out if the elf is real and may just stumble upon the true meaning of Christmas.

The Night Before Christmas (Furious Theatre Company), "Review: Furious Theatre Company's 'The Night Before Christmas'" (LA Times)

Ryan Heshka has a few of his pieces in exhibitions this week:

December 4th: Mark Murphy's KNOW exhibition, taking place in Miami, Florida, during the week of Art Basel. My piece, "Doctors Stories", is no longer available, but there are many incredible artists taking part in this exhibition.

December 6th: The third "Don't Wake Daddy" show at the Feinkunst-Kruger gallery in Hamburg.

Oh, what a week we had in Boing Boing television.

♦ MONDAY: Our Weekly Update featured Dale Dougherty speaking with us about why he believes television news (specifically CNN) is having a hard time covering the economic crisis. We spoke to Julie Amero, the substitute teacher in Connecticut whose life became an extended living hell because of pop-up porn on a computer in her classroom, and the stupidity of overeager prosecutors, lying IT "experts," and corrupt, buck-passing bureaucrats who don't know jack about technology (an extended audio interview with Amero is coming up on Boing Boing, soon). We viewed snapshots of the tragedy in Mumbai, a city known and loved by editors and commenters alike, here at Boing Boing. WATCH IT. Here's a direct MP4 Link.

♦ TUESDAY: In our weekly Boing Boing Gadgets Video feature, Joel Johnson did not show us his junk. But he did give us a naked shower review of an underwater MP3 player. He did not like the device, but many of our commenters rather liked seeing him make a lovable oaf of himself in the buff. WATCH IT. Here's a direct MP4 link.

♦ WEDNESDAY: We enjoyed a fantastic new Bill Barminski music video, an ode to the joy of vinyl and surf musique. WATCH IT. Here's a Direct MP4 Link.

♦ THURSDAY: Joi Ito invited Silicon Valley's Web 2.0 elite to Tokyo for a tour of the otaku district, led by Danny Choo in Stormtrooper finery. Danny is a big internet celebrity in Japan, and he is also the son of legendary shoe designer Jimmy Choo. This is already one of my all-time BBtv favorites. WATCH IT. Here's a Direct MP4 Link.

♦ And we end this week in BBtv with a Friday Unicorn Chaser: John Hodgman Spamasterpiece Theater Bloopers . They've been authenticated as The Real Thing. WATCH IT. Here's a Direct MP4 Link.

Over at the Make Blog, Gareth Branwyn has compiled a great list of robot gift ideas.

Maker Bundle #1
The Maker Shed has put together the first in a series of parts collections, called Maker Bundles. Maker Bundle #1 combines all of the electronic components to make four of the beginner-to-intermediate robot projects we've covered in MAKE magazine. For $20 off the cost of buying the parts separately, you get all of the components you need to make the iconic Mousey the Junkbot, two fundamental BEAMbots (a Trimet solar "top" and a SolarRoller), and Jerome Demers's awesome BeetleBot, a robot that uses only switches to create obstacle-avoiding behavior. My article on how to build Mousey can be found in MAKE, Volume 02. I covered the basics of BEAM and how to build the Trimet and SolaRoller in MAKE Volume 06. Jerome's BeetleBot article can be found in MAKE, Volume 12. You can also get my three project articles in The Best of MAKE collection.
Price: $55.00

Holiday Gift Guide: Robots!

My friend John Law is a legend of San Francisco's underground culture. He's perhaps best known publicly as the co-founder of Burning Man, but he's done much more during his thirty years of high weirdness in the Bay Area. In 1977, he was part of the Suicide Club, a Dadaist group of urban explorers and adventurers that eventually led to his co-founding of the Cacophony Society (and Burning Man). These days, he's involved with Laughing Squid, Survival Research Laboratories, and other more covert prankster activities. John is also a writer of short stories, and Furnace Press has just published the first collection of his tales. Titled The Space Between, it's a short compilation of three stories inspired by John's fascination with bridges. An excerpt is available online. I can't wait to read the whole thing! Congratulations, John! From the book description (photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid):

An avid urban adventurer and bridge historian, the author shares his passion for these engineering marvels while delving into their potential to fuel our dreams, fears, and nightmares. Part dreamscapes, part adventure tales, these narratives take the reader on an exploration of bridges to inspire their contemplation on a structural as well as metaphysical level.

John Law's The Space Between

Military contracting behemoth Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) has been in the news previously for allegations of widespread sexual harassment. Here they are again, committing more horrors.

A lawsuit against the company recently filed in Houston federal court accuses its workers of exposing military and non-military personnel in Iraq to contaminated food, contaminated water, and improperly incinerated human remains. Yeah, that's right. Human remains. Joshua Eller, the principal plaintiff, says he witnessed a wild dog running around base one day carrying a human arm in its mouth.

KBR Sued Again, Featuring Dogs Running Around With Human Arms In Their Mouths (Houston Press, thanks Martha Clayton)

NPR's Adam Burke has produced an amazing audio tour of the subterranean storm drains in Vegas, which some people (hmmm, Hodgmanic mole men?) call home.

It would be easy to go a whole weekend on the Las Vegas Strip without spotting a sign of a crisis. Never mind that more than 14,000 people are living on the streets — and that Nevada ranks second in the nation in homeless population per capita.

Seeing evidence of this is a matter of knowing — or perhaps choosing — where to look.

One might begin with the slot machines on a busy casino floor — tourists, blackjack tables, cocktail waitresses in impossibly tiny outfits. And if one were willing to pay the price of admission, an elevator could transport the seeker to more vice and excess upstairs — rooftop pools and lavish suites. But the homeless still wouldn't be found.

But what if there were an elevator that went downward? Let's say that you could descend below the sunken lounges, past kitchens and utility closets, through layers of concrete. It is here that Las Vegas' truly gritty underbelly can be found; a hidden matrix of tunnels beneath the Strip, another version of the city born out of storm drains.

Sucked Into The Tunnels Beneath Las Vegas (NPR, image: Danny Mollohan)

If it's Friday, and, why, yes it is, it's time for a Unicorn Chaser on Boing Boing tv. Today: SPAMASTERPIECE THEATER bloopers, out-takes, and oblique lulz from the amazing John Hodgman, minor television personality and author of More Information Than You Require (Amazon link). Direct MP4 Link, if you prefer download.

Update: proof they are the REAL THING.

The gentleman above is Michael Campbell in two mug shots taken five years apart. The photo at left depicts Campbell in 2003 and the right is from October. "Mug Shot Metamorphosis" (The Smoking Gun, thanks Gil Kaufman!)

New research suggests that the birth control pill can affect some women's taste in men. The reason is that the pill seems to shift a woman's preference toward men who share a particular group of genes with them. The genes, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) gene family, are expressed in odor. From Scientific American:

Women who start or stop taking the pill, then, may be in for some relationship problems. A study published last year in Psychological Science found that women paired with MHC-similar men are less sexually satisfied and more likely to cheat on their partners than women paired with MHC-dissimilar men. So a woman on the pill, for example, might be more likely to start dating a MHC-similar man, but he could ultimately leave her less sexually satisfied. Then if she goes off the pill during the relationship, the accompanying hormonal changes will draw her even more strongly toward more MHC-dissimilar men. These immune genes may have a “powerful effect in terms of how well relationships are cemented,” says University of Liverpool psychologist Craig Roberts, co-author of the August paper.

"Birth Control Pills Affect Women's Taste in Men" (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

The Hot Dog Launcher is a familiar sight at Philadelphia Phillies baseball games in Citizens Bank Park. The bazooka shoots frankfurters high into the stands in between innings. Ad agency Red Tettemer made a funny short documentary about the invention of the Hot Dog Launcher. It's a great bit of marketing for Hatfield Quality Meats, sponsors of the Launcher. Hatfield Hotdog Launcher Documentary

Previously on Boing Boing Gadgets:
• Behold the Meat Cannon of Philadelphia

An atheist group placed this sign beside a Nativity scene at an Olympia, Washington government building, and some people aren't pleased. The Freedom From Religion Foundation previously posted a sign in Madison, Wisconsin that protestors have reportedly turned around so it can't be read and thrown acid on it. From CNN:

"Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds," the sign says in part.

Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher who now heads up the atheist and agnostic Freedom From Religion Foundation, said it was important for atheists to see their viewpoints validated alongside everyone else's...

"It's not that we are trying to coerce anyone; in a way our sign is a signal of protest," Barker said. "If there can be a Nativity scene saying that we are all going to hell if we don't bow down to Jesus, we should be at the table to share our views."

He said if anything, it's the Nativity scene that is the intrusion.

"Most people think December is for Christians and view our signs as an intrusion, when actually it's the other way around," he said. "People have been celebrating the winter solstice long before Christmas. We see Christianity as the intruder, trying to steal the holiday from all of us humans."

Atheists take aim at Christmas (Thanks, Mark Pescovitz!)

Greg Conti -- a West Point instructor in computer science and information war -- has taken a long, hard look at the amount of information Internet users explicitly and implicitly disclose to Google and the results, collected in his book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? are sobering.

Conti enumerates all of Google's (often fantastic) services, describes how compelling they are, and then notes what information you disclose when you use them -- even when you only use them inadvertently (say, when you send email to someone with a Gmail account, or when you load a bookmarked Gmap that's been sent to a group of logged-in Google users, thus tying yourself to those users as part of the same group).

In slow, methodical steps, Conti builds his case: our complacency, Google's capacity for building compelling services, and the inadequacy of our browsers and other tools in alerting us to potential information disclosure have created a situation where Google ends up in possession of an alarming amount of information about us, our beliefs, our movements, our finances, our health, our employment and our social circles.

Conti's explanations are extremely accessible, even when discussing difficult and counter-intuitive subjects like cross-site scripting and cookies. Likewise accessible are his concrete recommendations for staunching the flow of personal information from your computer into Google's records. Finally, Conti does a great job of explaining why people who "have nothing to hide" might still want to keep their information to themselves (the approximate dimensions and characteristics of the body under your clothes aren't a secret -- but you still don't walk around naked in public and you'd resent it if someone forced you to. Private and secret aren't the same thing).

I've given the subject of privacy and Internet use a lot of thought, but even so, Conti's book opened my eyes to potential risks I'd never considered. I'd recommend this to anyone who's worried about what's happening to our ability to control the aggregation of our personal data.

Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?, Slashdot review

The deplorable British policing practice of storing the DNA of suspects who've been exonerated or never even charged has been found to be illegal by a European court, and now the database must be destroyed. Remember the kid who was going home on the tube in 2005 and was mistaken for a subway bomber, taken into custody, apartment raided, all data on his computers copied, and his DNA stored forever -- even though the police admitted it was all a misunderstanding? Well at last his DNA should be removed from the database.

The court said there was a particular risk that innocent people would be stigmatised because they were being treated in the same way as convicted criminals. The judges added that the fact DNA profiles could be used to identify family relationships between individuals, meant its indefinite retention also amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private lives under the human rights convention.

The case provoked an expression of disappointment from the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the promise that a working party, including senior police officials, will report back to Strasbourg by next March on how the government will comply with the judgement.

"The government mounted a robust defence before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice. The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."

Christ that Jacqui Smith is a piece of work. Remember, come the next election: a vote for Labour is a vote for the party that thinks 1984 is a manual for statecraft.

17 judges, one ruling - and 857,000 records must be now wiped clear (Thanks, beep1o!)

Smartbolts have little discs in their heads that change color as the right amount of tension is applied to them. I recently installed a child safety gate with a similar mechanism: a red, spongy washer between the bolt and the frame; once the right amount of tension was on the bolt, the washer was squished down so much it disappeared and you could stop tightening.

Unfortunately, a torque-wrench does not measure bolt tension accurately, usually only about +/- 30%, because it does not take friction into account. The friction depends on bolt, nut, washer-material, plating, surface smoothness, machining accuracy, degree of lubrication and the number of times a bolt has been tightened. Fastener manufacturers often provide information for determining torque requirements for tightening various bolts, accounting for friction and other effects. However, in field applications, this information is often not available, practical or administered poorly.

SmartBolts (via Red Ferret)

Instructables user TotusMel made this beautiful tatted mask from a pattern of her own devising. I love the lacy severity of it all!

Tatted Mask (via Craft)

Designer Richard Howe worked for two years to photograph all 11,000+ street corners in Manhattan:

The Manhattan Street Corners is my working title for a project to produce a comprehensive photographic portrait of everyday life at street level in daytime Manhattan. Between March and November, 2006, I systematically photographed each and every one of the island’s roughly 11,000 street corners (the exact number is a matter of definition and, in some ambiguous instances, even a matter of judgment).

The Manhattan Street Corners (via Kottke)

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper avoided being kicked out by the elected representatives of the majority of Canadians -- he asked the Governor General to let him shut down Parliament for two months. So it was inevitable that someone would violate Godwin's law and post a Stephen Harper/Hitler remix of "Downfall (Der Untergang)" -- the infamous, infinitely remixable clip that's been used to parody every subject under the sun.

The Harper Dictatorship (via Mighty God King

Otto the Octopus, a resident of Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, is bored because the aquarium's closed for the winter -- so he's making mischief. First he squirted an overhead light until it shorted out, and now he's taken to juggling the hermit crabs.

"Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants."

Otto the octopus wreaks havoc (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: EUROPICS)

My fall class at ITP has been tracking the creation and distribution of video produced by people other than political professionals, and I wanted to share some of the things they found here. The story of 'Obama <3s teh internet <3s Obama' has been told many times; less well appreciated is the effective Republican/Conservative use of video.

There is a certain (inevitable/dangerous) triumphalism in the Democratic win, because losers always take better lessons from the battlefield than winners. (It's hard to remember now, but before the 2004 election, much the political conversation was around describing the dominance of the warbloggers.)

Looking at Republican uses of video that my students analyzed was quite instructive in this light, because a) those strategies weren't just weak mirrors of the Democratic camp, they were strong but different ones and b) these strategies are going to become much stronger in 2010 and then again in 2012. I'll point to a few of these examples while I'm guest blogging.

First up, and my vote for the single most affecting video of the election, is Dear Mr. Obama, above. I am an anti-Iraq-war Democrat, and it nevertheless brought tears to my eyes (and I don't cry easy -- will.i.am's Yes We Can left me fairly cold.) Watch it all the way through, or, if you can't, skip to the end before you close it.

This is a video made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Stuff like the American flag draped just in frame looks hokey to the godless/ sodomite/ baby-killing wing of the Democratic party (my people), but is part of a "plain speaking and right thinking" package that clearly hit just right with the target audience. It was seen 13 million times in 3 months, which topped Obama Girl in absolute views, and I've got a Crush...on Obama was up a year and a half.

This is why this video is really really important: the simple message and Blair Witch production values (good enough to be effective, bad enough to seem unplanned) made this video like Democratic kryptonite. The video was largely circulated via homophilous forwarding along conservative channels. Despite the incredible viewership, I'm betting that the ratio of BoingBoing readers who have seen Obama Girl to those who've seen Dear Mr. Obama is at least 10:1. (When my students presented it to ~100 NYU students on election eve, something like 3 of them had seen it.)

The lovely non-partisan view of voting -- make your case to everyone, see what happens on election day -- masks the fact that there are really three different voter games being played in elections. The first is 'Mobilize the base' -- at ~50% voter participation, there's a lot of juice in just being able to get people who want you to win out to actually get to the polls. The second game is 'Swing the undecided.' There is, to a first approximation, no such thing as an 'independent' voter. People who don't make up their minds until late in an election are less political, less involved in the issues, and less likely to vote overall than partisans, so their minds have to be changed with something emotionally engaging. And the third game is 'Depress the turnout of your opponent' or, at the very least, to avoid enraging them to the point that they are willing to do something rash, like vote.

And in that regard, Dear Mr. Obama was a trifecta. For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems -- nothing. The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video's sole speaker can't be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.

For most of the life of the Republic, it was not just possible but imperative to say different things in different places -- what politician would tell auto workers and orange pickers the same thing! That old world had a stake driven through its heart by the Macaca Moment; every politician knows that anything they say to anyone, they say to everyone everywhere.

Now, the job of saying one thing to one group, and something different to another, falls to the supporters. The social solidarity of weblogs and mailing lists replaces the old world of media buys and Chamber of Commerce speeches, recreating through the echo chamber what was once the province of geography and cost. Dear Mr. Obama was music to Republican ears while being inert in Democratic hands; expect it to be a template for 2010.

As previously mentioned, today Offworld moved just a little closer to that long-stated goal of bringing in more influence from outside the games industry proper with its first new feature from Ignatz Award winning and Eisner nominated comic artist James Kochalka, who will be creating new monstrous Miis for the site which you can bring home to your own Wii.

We also saw that Rock Band is about to get a little bit country, made a plea for more developers to praise rather than scold their players, found new iPhone games based on bondage and argument-settling by music, and saw Sega racing classic Outrun re-made for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.

Finally, we saw a very Weezer Christmas coming to iPhone and a Sega Master System's circuits bent to create real-time guitar effects, got jealous over a fantastic scheme to bring freelance illustrator work into LittleBigPlanet, and got ready to take a ride on the Raptor Copter, a brilliant looking and literally-named new iPhone game.

Love the little adventure dudes on the ends of these teabags, custom designed for a posh cafe in Istanbul.

Activitea... (see what I did there)

A site about restoring an old Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter to pristine condition.

Although I have never actually seen one before, I have been looking for a Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter for about ten years. Designed for use by private pilots and boaters, this neat little unit will run 35mph using a Clinton engine, and folds up to a large suitcase-sized package that weighs about 50 lbs. This particular scooter was in a friend's garage - he had bought it from another TRAACA club member, but decided he didn't want to mess with it.

Lombard Industries Centaur folding motor scooter (Thanks, John K.!)

Anonymous says: "It's an old watch, asploded into a necklace. How was this not on BB already? Plus it costs close to a G, so all of the commentors will flip the hell out. Hooray!" Victorian Watch Cock Necklace