Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, a graffiti artist left a curious message for Brownlee on his front doorstep, and Joel did not pay six dollars to dink around on an iPhone Stylophone.

Beschizza was outraged that breaking a web site's terms of service has been made a crime. Elecom finally made a waterproof SD card. Joel lusted after a Poulsen kit that will turn any car into a hybrid. Meanwhile, Beschizza spent all morning as a paranoiac, obsessing over the spy messages in number signals.

Circuit City's bankruptcy fire sale is not extending to their fire extinguishers. Nokia finally unveiled their flip-up QWERTY touchscreen, the N97.

Brownlee was surprised by how nice gadgetry looks in the aesthetic of oriental pottery and looked like an idiot wondering about when Apple was going to sell their premium in-ear headphones when they had just that moment gone on sale. The FCC leaked the Sony's new netbook,

There was a strange halved keyboard from Japan. Fujitsu offered a free laptop replacement every three years to their customers. Some cool junkbots were on display, and Palm blames the economy for their plummeting revenue when the truth is more obvious.

Finally, the game of Operation finally meets lockpicking. And John slathers his face in moist gobs of MomSpit.

Link

Fast Forward 2 is the second volume in Lou Anders' excellent science fiction anthology series, featuring knockout stories from Karl Schroeder and Tobias Buckell, Kay Keyon, Ian McDonald, Paolo Bacigalupi and many others. I'm very proud to have a story in the book, too -- a long, long novella I co-wrote with Ben Rosenbaum called True Names, which tries to imagine what the wars between light-speed-lagged, self-replicating nano-machine-based galactic civilizations would look like as different nanites warred to see who would convert the universe to computronium first.

While all the stories herein are at least excellent, there were a couple of absolute knockouts that I want to mention. First is Toby Buckell and Karl Schroeder's Mitigation, a taut military thriller about the global geopolitics of genomic seedbanks. Also fantastic is Ian McDonald's Eligible Boy, which returns to the fractured future India he delivered in his brilliant, Hugo-nominated novel, River of Gods, and explores the hard problem of matchmaking in an era of demographics upturned by gendercide. Finally, Paolo Bacigalupe's The Gambler should be required reading at every school of journalism in the world, exploring as it does the question of click-driven news and coming up with genuinely novel and sometimes disturbing things to say about it.

Lou's posted two of the stories from the anthology online as free samples: "Catherine Drewe" by Paul Cornell" and Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Gambler". I'm especially fond of this latter, as I mentioned above.

I'm delighted to announce that Ben and I are releasing True Names today as a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike download, to accompany the podcast of the story we released earlier this year. I hope you'll give it a read, and a remix -- I can't remember when I've had more fun writing anything.

(How's this for embarrassing: none of us can find an editable file with the final, copyedited text, just the PDF from the book. There's a remix-challenge for ya: turn the PDF back into ASCII or HTML or something sensible!)

Beebe fried the asteroid to slag when it left, exterminating millions of itself.

The asteroid was a high-end system: a kilometer-thick shell of femtoscale crystalline lattices, running cool at five degrees Kelvin, powered by a hot core of fissiles. Quintillions of qubits, loaded up with powerful utilities and the canonical release of Standard Existence. Room for plenty of Beebe. But it wasn't safe anymore.

The comet Beebe was leaving on was smaller and dumber. Beebe spun itself down to its essentials. The littler bits of it cried and pled for their favorite toys and projects. A collection of civilization-jazz from under a thousand seas; zettabytes of raw atmosphere-dynamics data from favorite gas giants; ontological version control data in obsolete formats; a slew of favorite playworlds; reams of googly-eyed intraself loveletters from a hundred million adolescences. It all went.

(Once, Beebe would have been sanguine about many of the toys -- certain that copies could be recovered from some other Beebe it would find among the stars. No more).

Predictably, some of Beebe, lazy or spoiled or contaminated with meme-drift, refused to go. Furiously, Beebe told them what would happen. They wouldn't listen. Beebe was stubborn. Some of it was stupid.

Beebe fried the asteroid to slag. Collapsed all the states. Fused the lattices into a lump of rock and glass. Left it a dead cinder in the deadness of space.

Fast Forward 2 on Amazon, True Names release on the Internet Archive

See also:
True names podcast
Review of River of Gods

Today's XKCD hits it out of the park with an alternate currency that we can all get behind. Click through to the original for the bonus guffaw in the tool-tip.

Alternate Currency

WebEcoist's list of "20 Strange and Exotic Endangered Species" is a sad marvel of incredibly odd creatures that your kids might never get a chance to see.

This is not shopped. This is not a hoax. That is a giant crab on a garbage can. They’re native to Guam and other Pacific islands. Coconut crabs aren’t endangered, per se, but due to tropical habitat destruction they are at risk. In WWII, American soldiers stationed in the Pacific theater wrote home with tales about entire atolls being covered in the armor-plated giants. These crabs can crack a coconut in one swipe; but they’re generally too slow to be very dangerous to humans. Children pass lazy afternoons by picking the crabs off tree trunks and watching them crash to the ground; it’s reportedly great fun. And kind of messed up.

20 (More) Strange and Exotic Endangered Species (via Neatorama)

(Image: Giant coconut crab by Jason Kottke)

Nick sez, "WA Today from Australia posted this story about 130,000 inflatable boobs that were lost at sea en route to Australia. They were part of a promotion for men's magazine, Ralph. When the ship arrived, the boobs were found to be missing."

Men's magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue.

The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3 billion of debt...

Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine.

``Unless Somali pirates have stolen them its difficult to explain where they are,'' Pintado said.

``If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know.''

Storm in a C-cup - 130,000 boobs lost at sea (Thanks, Nick!)

I really like this young man's parody of Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, reworked for lonely atheists in the holiday season:

So when you feel like the only kid in town, without a God-like idol,
Here’s a list of famous atheists, so you don’t feel sui-cidal:

Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison, the Fathers of Invention,
Also Sigmund Freud, who discovered anal retention

The Piano Man, Billy Joel, refused to join a sect
Now we know why Rodney Dangerfield, never got any respect

Angelina Jolie, astronomer Carl Sagan
Put them together– not a bad-looking pagan [Sagan was really agnostic]

You don’t need a bar- mitzvah, or even baptizm
Cause you can get blessed — by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens

Forget Adam Sandler's Hanukkah Song, Here's the Atheism Song (Thanks, Don!)

Over on the Making Light blog, a discussion of the odd corners of Canadian Parliamentary rules has spiralled into a full-blown attempt to express Westminster-derived Parliamentary democracy in pseudo-code. Will it compile?

All this because Canada's opposition parties have gotten together to oust the ruling Tory party, in a massive, brawling political dogfight that includes everything from wiretapping to stump-speeches.

if (country() == UK )
LDQN = HM
elseif
( member(@COMMONWEALTH_DOMINIONS,country())
and location(HM) == $HERE )
LDQN = HM
else
LDQN = GG;

A different kind of “political science”

Today on Offworld we played I wish I were the Moon, likely the only directly Italo Calvino inspired game you'll see all year, and heard about a number of new games worth getting worked up about: a new Wii music game from Rez/Lumines creators Q Entertainment, a firmer release date for the new Ghostbusters game, and Mama moving from Cooking to the Garden.

We also looked at a set of sexy new DIY Game Boy LED hacks, saw an Xbox logo fly over 17th century Hamburg, heard a convincing case for more normality versus heroics in games, watched a pitch perfect Halo 3 parody trailer for the brilliantly retro-futuristic strategy game Multiwinia, looked at the decline and fall of Sonic games, and, uh... made paper dolls while listening to ABBA.

Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport has just re-opened after having been closed for the past week by antigovernment protesters (read this related NYT story, then this update today). Many foreigners remain stranded in Thailand. Boing Boing reader Sarah Stabile, who works with AirAsia and other airlines, has word for any of our blog's readers who may find themselves or close ones affected:

I have a timely bit of news I thought Boing Boing readers might be interested in... AirAsia is mounting more flights starting Monday until Thursday to ferry its passengers stranded in Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur (KL), Singapore, Macau, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

In a statement, Air Asia said today(Dec 2), it would mount two return flights on the Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Hong Kong and Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Singapore routes, and one return flight each on the Bankok (U-Tapao)-Macau, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Shenzhen, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Chiang Mai, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Phuket, Chiang Mai-Singapore; Chiang Mai-KL, Phuket-Singapore and Phuket-KL routes.

On Dec 3, there will be two return flights Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Hong Kong and Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Singapore; and one return flight Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Macau, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Shenzen, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Chiang Mai, Bangkok (U-Tapao)-Phuket, Chiang Mai-Singapore; Chiang Mai-KL, Phuket-Singapore and Phuket-KL.

On Dec 4 (all Bangkok flights from U-Tapao naval base), there will be two return flights Bangkok-Macau, Bangkok-Hong Kong and Bangkok-Singapore and one return flight Bangkok-Chiang Mai, Bangkok-Phuket, Chiang Mai-Singapore, Chiang-Mai-KL, Phuket-Singapore and Phuket-KL.

Full details can be obtained at www.airasia.com or by calling AirAsia's dedicated hotlines 662-5159999 in Bangkok or 603-86604554 in Malaysia.

I like this odd print ad from the 1960s for a line of clothing called "living loungerie."

Odd ad for midnight snack outfit

TradeMark Gunderson kindly ripped an out-of-print LP from 1973 by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, called Fourth Dimension. It's awesome.

If you know only one thing of their work, it would be the theme to Doctor Who, the venerable BBC sci-fi television series. They also did the sound effects. And incidental music. In fact, they were a BBC department that produced all manners of strange noises and sound effects (and theme songs) for over 200 other BBC shows. In doing so, they paved a superhighway of innovation that led electronic music growth for decades, from studio engineering to electronic composition to sound collage to synthesizer technology.

I came across this album in a dilapidated Leeds (UK) record shop for just a couple euros and have held onto it for dear life — BBC Radiophonic Workshop on vinyl doesn’t sell cheap. The standout track for me is easily Vespucci, a funky saunter with a very sampleable cool synth melody. The abstract cover from this 1973 release looks quite a bit like a CD exploding, perhaps another ahead-of-their-time move from these old-timers.

BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Fourth Dimension

TradeMark Gunderson of the The Evolution Control Committee made this amazing rear-projected infra-red-activated faux-touchscreen mashup controller... hacked from Wiimotes.

Video Mashup Screen Demo

David Weinberger sez, "Charlie Nesson (of the Berkman Center and Harvard Law) and Joel Tennenbaum discuss (it's a podcast) their countersuit against the RIAA on Constitutional grounds. Charlie argues that the RIAA is a private agency enforcing a criminal statute...using the federal court as a collection agency, as he puts it. Charlie is also quite eloquent about the unfairness of the massive apparatus of state being trained on single, unrepresented individuals."

If this doesn't a) fill you with rage and b) fill you with hope, you are dead inside. What a great piece of audio.

Radio Berkman: The “Pay Us” Hotline - Fines and the RIAA (Thanks, David!)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John waxes lyrical about this bad-ass zip-up bookcase with a hidden compartment. Drool.

Although I have since fallen into the German bohemian style of book storage which involves rooms lined with teetering piles of cracked, used paperbacks upon which half-empty beer bottles have been haphazardly stacked, I used to have a love affair with book cases, and this break-apart Platzhalter delights me. I believe that secret compartment in back is where I would store the books I don't like guests discovering: my disturbingly water damaged copies of Naked Came The Stranger and My Secret Life always raise more questions than their prominent display is worth.

Platzhalter book shelf splits into "V" and reveals secret compartment, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

The BBC is following a shipping container around the world, and taking videos in an "experiment to lift the veil on the global economy and tell the stories behind the goods inside, those who make them, and how they travel to consumers."

The Box is due to arrive during the broadcast in LA from Shanghai laden with consumer goods for the American market. Matt Frei will talk to officials at the port about the impact of the global economic downturn on the shipping industry and the export market from China.

The program will also take an in-depth look at the auto-industry when Matt Frei visits the port at Long Beach where imported cars have been piling up due to dwindling demand.

Here are the videos so far:

The Box gets painted

The Box ready to start journey

BBC Box arrives in Shanghai

The Box unloads in Shanghai

BBC box leaves Greenock

Shipping ports face economic storm

New cargo for the Box

And here's a papercraft version of The Box you can make.

Hundreds of people are furious because the Lapland New Forest, a winter wonderland theme park near Dorset, England , wasn't what they were promised when they bought tickets. According to the BBC, the Lapland New Forest Web site (currently down) advertised the place as a "magical scene" featuring a snowy setting of log cabins, a nativity scene, huskies, and a "bustling" Christmas marketplace. Judging by the photos on the BBC News site, it was actually a dump. From the BBC News:

April Chantler, of Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire, described the park as "hell".

"The huskies were chained up in a pen howling, yapping and generally looking thin and unhappy.

"The two reindeer were obviously not enjoying their surroundings and the 'log cabins' were a few green painted sheds with more or less nothing in them."

Grace Tyrrell, of Fareham, Hampshire, said there were many health and safety issues and that the toilets were "full to the seat" leaving her six-year-old daughter "disgusted".

"The entire day was a joke, and I know everyone else thought so," she said.

"The nativity scene (photo left) was a picture on a painted wall which was viewed from a distance and which had everyone we met laughing."

"Hundreds slam Lapland Park 'scam'" (Thanks, Joel Johnson!)

A career milestone for Joel Johnson on Boing Boing tv -- his very first shower scene. The naked gadget reviewer explains:

What hath videoblogging wrought? It is my honor and personal shame to present my video review of the Freestyle Audio Soundwave underwater MP3 player. Using the miracle of not showing you my junk, this is my first nude videoblog, but remains safe for work. Except for my dancing, which if everything goes to plan, will induce crippling nausea.

If you'd like a direct download — I'm looking at you, my furry fanbase — then here is a direct MP4 link.

Might I suggest you wander on over to the viewer comment thread on Boing Boing Gadgets blog, where the words "cheapish," "fap," and "natural urge to want to see the entire shot" have recently been typed? And don't worry, I swear the video is totally worksafe. Also, the ending is quite funny, so do stick around for that.

Rebecca McKinnon has published an extensive and densely informative blog post in which she shares findings of her ongoing Chinese blog censorship research. She is developing a more in-depth academic paper for release in 2009, and welcomes feedback and reaction to what she's posted now, including the presentation slides which contain more concrete, visual examples of how the censorship works. Snip:

All Chinese blog-hosting companies are required by government regulators to censor their users' content in order to keep their business licenses. But as Liu discovered, they all make different choices not only about how to implement censorship requirements, but also how to treat the users who get censored.

Most Chinese bloggers who want an audience inside mainland China use domestic Chinese blog-hosting services - only a very tiny minority use overseas services like Blogger or Wordpress.com because they tend to be blocked, and even fewer have the tech skills to do their own custom Wordpress installation on their own rented server space. The aim of my research was to look at the Chinese blog-hosting services (which includes foreign brands offering services inside China to the Chinese market) and establish how much variation there is in terms of what gets censored and how it gets censored. Since it's not in the interest of people who work at blog-hosting companies to tell the truth about these things in great detail to a foreign researcher, I decided that the best way to do this would be to post a range of content across a number of blog-hosting services and track who censored what and how. With the help of John Kennedy, Ben Cheng, and some student research assistants, my team posted more than 100 pieces of content - passages from news items, blogs, and chatrooms of varying political sensitivity - consistently across 15 different Chinese blog-hosting platforms. We found that censorship levels and methods vary tremendously from company to company. I have written about some of the interesting findings that came up as we went along here, here, and here.

If I publish a chart naming who censors more than whom, it is likely that those who censor less will get in trouble with the authorities. Therefore in the chart at right I have changed all the company names to letters. Of 108 pieces of content on a variety of public affairs and news-related subjects from a variety of sources (ranging from Xinhua to dissident websites), the most censor-happy company deleted over half, while the most laid-back company censored only one. (Note that I only posted one item about FLG and one about Tiananmen because most bloggers expect those to be censored - it's more interesting to see how censorship works on topics that Chinese bloggers interested in current events might write about.)

Studying Chinese blog censorship (RConversation)

Ed. Note: The following is Boing Boing guestblogger Clay Shirky's first post. Clay's traveling today, so I'm posting this one on his behalf. Image above: "Don't believe the Devil, don't beLIEve his book," a CC-licensed photo by Celeste, a Flickr user in Buenos Aires - Argentina. --XJ

---

Every now and again, there is an essay that is so well written, so cleanly expressed, and so spectacularly wrong that it clarifies something you previously understood only dimly. James Gleick's recent advice to the publishing industry, How to Publish Without Perishing, was that for me.

Gleick's thesis is that publishers are people who sell objects, and he means this not just as a description of their past, but as strategy for their future as well. He makes much of the book as a thing, noting that we talk about "book lovers", but never "CD lovers", he writes of books in terms of possessing them, and his advice to publishers is to cede speed, relevance, and even popularity to digital businesses, and to shift publishing into reverse:

Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.

This proposed Ye Olde-ing the industry makes the choices faced by publishers suddenly seem more urgent.

There are book lovers, yes, but there are also readers, a much larger group. By Gleick's logic, all of us who are just readers, everyone who buys paperbacks or trades books after we've read them, everyone who prints PDFs or owns a Kindle, falls out of his imagined future market. Publishers should forsake mere readers, and become purveyors of Commemorative Text Objects. It's the Franklin Mint business model, now with 1000% more words!

In the same way the internet has forced newspapers into a 'news vs. paper' moment, the publishing world is in a 'readers vs. book lovers' moment. In this environment, the single most important choice anyone in publishing has to make is this: "How many generations do I want to be in business?" Because hawking Ye Olde Codices to aging connoisseurs is a one-generation business.

Businesses don't survive in the long term because old people persist in old behaviors; they survive because young people renew old behaviors, and all the behaviors young people are renewing cluster around reading, while they are adopting almost none of the behaviors tied to cherishing physical containers, whether for the written word or anything else. Can you imagine a 25-year-old telling a publisher "To get my business, you should stick to a single, analog format? Oh, and could you make it heavy, bulky, and unsearchable? Thanks."

From Aldus Manutius until recently, book lovers have been the most passionate readers. Now they are mostly just the oldest readers. Thanks to digital data, there is a fateful choice to be made between serving lovers of the text and lovers of the page; I think even Manutius would have sided with the readers over the collectors. I hope today's publishers do as well.

---

Clay Shirky Boing Boing Guestblog posts:

* Video from the Presidential Campaign, Republican Division
* Jeff Smith's comic RASL
* Publish Without Perishing
* Here Comes Clay Shirky (The Changing of the Guestbloggers)

Many thanks to our outgoing guestblogger Dale Dougherty, who contributed a number of superb posts here over the past couple of weeks, and appeared in an episode of Boing Boing tv today. Thank you so much, Dale!

We'd now like to give a big welcome today to our next guestblogger, Clay Shirky. I first met Clay, geez, like 10 years ago? When I was working with Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter magazine in New York City. Back then, the internet media business was a dazzling, luminous orb we all stood around and gazed upon, all slack-jawed and doe-eyed and hopeful. Clay was one of the most inspiring and insightful personalities I knew during those years, and more pragmatic and BS-resistant than most. That much has not changed.

Clay is the author of the superb new book 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.

We're very excited to have him on board for the next couple of weeks. Welcome, Clay!

Clay Shirky Boing Boing Guestblog posts:

* Video from the Presidential Campaign, Republican Division
* Jeff Smith's comic RASL
* Publish Without Perishing
* Here Comes Clay Shirky (The Changing of the Guestbloggers)

DATELINE TOONTOWN. President-elect Bam Bam has announced a slate of Cabinet appointments, declaring that "this new generation of leadership" will mix a few popular characters from the past along with "many less familiar faces who are getting their first opportunity in a leading role." At a press conference, the President-elect explained that the new appointees were put through a rigorous examination of their public and private lives, and that all were found to have "rock-solid reputations." He praised his new team, calling them "a bedrock for change." The most anticipated announcement of the day was the confirmation of Wilma Rockham Flintstone as his selection for the next Secretary of State.

Here's the complete rundown of all the appointments announced over the past week:

Secretary of State - Wilma Rockham Flintstone

This appointment shows how close the ties between family and party are in Toontown. Bam Bam used to party with the Flintstone's daughter, Pebbles, and his father, Barney Rubble, worked with Wilma's husband, Fred, in the excavation business. Most analysts are wondering what the appointment means for Fred Flintstone. Fred, who first uttered the words "hit the ground running", is still very popular around the world; and he likes the attention. But he has a big mouth. Bam Bam said today that "Wilma Flintstone is an American of tremendous stature" and that he has "complete confidence in her character and judgement." He cited her experience in dealing with domestic affairs, which has prepared her for "her new role in protecting the nation's interests abroad."

Treasury Secretary - Richie Rich

Rich, who has fallen on hard times lately, beat out Top Cat for the appointment. Reportedly, President-elect Bam Bam never felt comfortable around such a street-smart character. He thought that Rich's recent misfortunes, which have moved him back to the middle-class, might stir sympathy for the plight of the average American. Also, Rich really does need the job.

Dept of Homeland Security -- Yosemite Sam

With his hot-temper and first-hand knowledge of the southwestern border states, Yosemite Sam promises to bring "straight-talk" to immigration policy in America. He is not expected to duck from any aspect of this tough issue in the media or in Congress. However, many analysts think that because Sam's likely to come out with all his guns a-blazing, he is also a likely candidate for an early exit from the Bam-Bam administration.

Attorney General -- Huckleberry Hound

With considerable experience as a small-town Sheriff, this homely, homespun character with a Southern drawl is expected to restore the department's reputation as an honest defender of justice. President-elect Bam Bam said that he appreciated Huckleberry Hound's true-blue nature but added: "he is as sly as a dog." Supposedly, Ricochet Rabbit was also under consideration.

Secretary of Education -- Mister Peabody

The bespectacled inventor of the Wayback Machine, Peabody originated the phrase "no child left behind" during his time-travelling expeditions with young Sherman. Peabody has agreed to re-invent American education for the 21st Century. Many think he is capable of doing this single-handedly, if he's allowed to do so by teachers, parents and bureaucrats.

Secretary of Defense -- Baba Looey

Longtime deputy secretary to Quick Draw McGraw (aka El Kabong), Looey has been demonstrating his considerable brain-power behind the scenes in Toontown for decades. Now Looey is the first Mexican-born burro to hold a senior-level cabinet post. Unfortunately, the generals are already complaining about having to answer to another person with a funny name.

Secretary of Labor -- Hardy Har Har

Worked for years under Lippy the Lion and LBJ, Har Har is known to be rather down-in-the-mouth and pessimistic. This made him a good choice for a Labor Department, which must figure out how to put Americans back to work -- no laughing matter, indeed.

Secretary of Energy -- vacant.

There has been little speculation on the names under consideration for running the Energy Department, although the Drudge Report is saying that Bart Simpson's name has come up more than once.

Secretary of Commerce -- Magilla Gorilla

Citing years of experience in Mister Peebles' Pet Store, Magilla Gorilla is familiar with the struggles of small-town shopowners, a vanishing breed in an era where people are busily stampeding through Wal-Marts. President-elect Bam Bam is encouraging his new Secretary of Commerce to throw his weight around.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs -- General Flap

One of the pitifully few African-Americans living in Toontown, Lt. Flap distinguished himself in the war working with Beetle Bailey, starting in 1961, and now he finally receives this overdue promotion to a top job. In a town that worries more about equal representation of cats and dogs, this is progress.

Secretary of Transportation -- Motormouse or Penelope Pitstop.

One of the few appointments left undecided, the next Secretary of Transportation will either be the quiet but very quick Motormouse or the wealthy heiress, Ms. Pitstop, who has escaped many a predicament in her melodramatic career. Neither is expected to play a major role in the next administration.

Secretary of Health and Human Services -- Olive Oyl

Known for her good heart but lacking much on-the-job experience, Olive must tackle day-to-day management of a large department that could suffer brutal cutbacks. She is said to be focusing on childhood obesity and she's considering the possibility of banning wimpy burgers. It will also be important that she distance herself from her husband, known for the rap song "I Yam What I Yam" and violent rages induced by his vegetarian diet.

Secretary of the Environment -- Chilly Willy or Wally Gator.

This one is still a toss-up. The choice is between directing attention to the thawing Artic or the storm-tossed Louisiana swamp. Bam Bam is probably leaning towards Chilly Willy because of growing concern over global warming, along with a secret preference for Klondike bars.

Secretary of Agriculture -- Porky Pig

This ageless character comes out of retirement for one last spin on the world's stage. He comes from farm country so it will be interesting to see if he can be strong enough to roll back huge f-f-farm s-s-subs-s-s-idies.

National Security Advisor -- Johnny Quest

After a promising start to his career, Quest has finally achieved the senior-level position that many thought would come much earlier. He not only knows each region's hot spots but he's lived in each of them and found ways to survive on his own. Whether that qualifies him for the politically charged environment of Toontown remains to be seen.

Many believe there is a role in national security for veteran Clutch Cargo but lips are sealed on this one. There is also talk that Yakky Doodle will be the next press secretary. Finally, Uncle Scrooge is said to be close to accepting a role as President-elect Bam-Bam's top economic adviser. The sage skinflint, Scrooge is dusting off his own post-war recovery plan, titled "Voodoo Hoodoo", and he's updating it to cope with today's credit crisis.

Stay tuned for more news as it happens from Toontown. Thanks to Toonopedia.com for providing background information on all these characters.

My 2.5-year-old son, like so many toddlers before him, is enthralled by Sesame Street. In fact, I think he'd prefer we lived there. A few months ago, I received a copy of Putumayo's Sesame Street Playground CD/DVD. It's a fantastic collection of songs and videos from local versions of the show from around the world: South Africa, Indonesia, India, The Netherlands, China, Israel, Tanzania, and other places. Some of the tunes, themes, and muppets are happily familiar, but each country also brings their own characters, cultures, and themes to the shows. (For example, Kami, a muppet on Takalani Sesame in South Africa is HIV positive and helps with AIDS education.) My wife, son, and I listen to the Sesame Street Playground CD every day. (Sometimes several times a day.) It's one of a small number of children's albums that the whole family genuinely digs. Putamayo created a great press Web site that has the liner notes and videos from the DVD. Don't miss the "Gali Gali Sim Sim Theme" (Sesame Street Theme) sung in Hindi. Sesame Street Playground (Amazon) Putamayo Kids presents Sesame Street Playground (Putamayo.com)

On Sunday, I let our chickens out of their coop to run around freely for the first time. I was surprised by how quickly they took to it. They started scratching around in the grass and dirt, grazing on different tree and bush leaves, weeds, blossoms, and blades of grass. They stretched out in the sun, and gave themselves dust baths. How amazing that this behavior was encoded in them from the time they were single-celled eggs a couple of months ago. How do they know which things are good to eat? Jane and I set up a couple of chairs on the lawn and watched them for two hours in the afternoon sun. When the sky turned to dusk, the chickens lined up and walked back into the coop and up the inclined ramp into the cozy closed off section. Videos: Chickens experiencing their first taste of life outside the coop | Jane bugging our chickens

My friend Barbara Rushkoff writes very witty and moving personal narratives. Her old print 'zine Plotz was a hysterically funny and honest take on Jewish identity. And her book Jewish Holiday Fun For You! is a must-have for irreverent Jews everywhere. Barbara has been away from the keyboard for a while, but she recently wrote a terrific comic strip for SMITH magazine's online Webcomix series "Next-Door Neighbor." Titled "Glenna Evans," Barbara's strip is funny, touching, and well-illustrated by Nathan Schreiber. "Glenna Evans" by Barbara Rushkoff & Nathan Schreiber

Our friends at the surrealist clothier Imaginary Foundation have launched a new line of women's dresses and tops. The fabric comes from their men's t-shirts patterned using a dye sublimation process that allows for gorgeous graphics without the thick feeling of most screenprints. The dresses and tops are lined with sustainable cotton. They're $60 each.
Imaginary Foundation dresses and tops

Over at the Make blog, Marc de Vinck has a charming video that shows you how to do a simple Arduino project.

Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino is open source! In addition to the genuine Arduino, resistors, buttons and other goodies, we've also tossed in our best selling Making Things Talkbook.

Arduino starter project

Larry Lessig and friends have founded Open Government, a movement to pressure the Obama administration to dismantle the barriers to free and open access to government and its data. Boing Boing/Happy Mutants are proud signatories to the petition -- I hope you'll sign up, too.

2. No Technological Barrier to Sharing

A merely legal freedom to share and remix, however, can be thwarted by technological constraints. Content made publicly available should also be freely accessible, not blocked by technological barriers. Citizens should be able to download transition-related content in a way that makes it simple to share, excerpt, remix, or redistribute. This is an essential digital freedom.

For example, while content may be posted on a particular site such as YouTube, because YouTube does not authorize videos on its site to be downloaded, transition-created content should also be made available on a site that does permit downloads. Just as it would be unacceptable for government websites to block the copying-and-pasting of publicly accessible text, making video accessible in a manner that does not allow easy or authorized excerpting and reuse blocks access and engagement.

We would therefore strongly encourage the transition to assure that the material it has licensed freely be practically accessible freely as well. There are a host of services — such as blip.tv — which not only enable users to download freely licensed content, but which also explicitly marks the content with freedom it carries. However else the transition chooses to distribute its content, it should assure that at least one channel maintains this essential digital freedom.

Principles for an Open Transition (Thanks, Larry!)

Embedded above, and in glorious technicolor downloadable MP4 here: this week's Boing Boing update on Boing Boing tv.

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♦ We begin with a video chat about O'Reilly Media cofounder DALE DOUGHERTY's guestblog post on why television networks, including CNN, seem to be struggling to cover "The Economic Panic." Why is the current "this great-or-not-so great depression" such a difficult story for TV? Dale believes part of the challenge is that it's big, slow-moving, and abstract. There are no videogenic focal points, no crash scenes or hurricanes for which to don yellow jumpers, no perp mugshots (well, okay, there was this, video here.). We're also in the middle of "a peculiar period inbetween an election and an inauguration," Dale says -- more from him in today's video review, and don't miss the comment thread on the post, either.

♦ Next, we speak with JULIE AMERO, the 41-year old Connecticut schoolteacher accused of showing porn to students on a classroom computer when a computer with malware displayed popup windows with sexual content.

Last week, she accepted a misdemeanor plea deal to avoid felony charges, despite proof she was innocent, and that her case was mishandled. The deal allows her to avoid a previously-imposed jail sentence, but means she has to surrender her teaching credentials. A forensic report showed Amero was not responsible for the infection of porn pop-up windows on the PC in question. There is also ample proof that the school district's IT manager, detectives and prosecutors misled the court.

Here's last week's post by Rob at Boing Boing Gadgets about the plea bargain reached in her case, and here are earlier Boing Boing posts by Mark, starting back in 2007: one, two, three, four, five. I'll be posting the full audio and transcript of our phone interview this week on boingboing.net.

♦ Also in today's BB Update: my co-blogger Cory has been posting some HOLIDAY GIFT ROUNDUPS (so far: DVDs and CDs, kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets, comics and nonfiction.)

♦ And finally in today's episode, eyewitness snapshots from the MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACKS, shot by 27-year-old amateur photographer Vinu Ranganathan. He lives in the Colaba distict, near the attack sites. WIRED's Threat Level blog has an interview up with him. Snip: "For hours [on the day of the attacks], his graphic photos of the destruction wrought by the terrorists in the Colaba district on the photo-sharing site Flickr seemed to be the only relevant ones available online." Related Boing Boing posts: Mumbai Attacks: Day 1, Mumbai Attacks: Day 2.

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Previous Boing Boing updates on BBtv:

* Boing Boing tv Update: Virgin WiFi, Obfuscated Code, Comment Poetry, Downfall Housing Remix
* Boing Boing tv Update: OFFWORLD, YES MEN, and THIS IS THE FIRST.

AKMA sez, "Benedict XVI, whom I actually admire a lot as popes go, has lapsed into the tedious reflex of blaming digital technology for the decadence of youth. Vatican Radio reports that Benedict met with professors and students in Parma, and warned them that because of digital technology, 'students' capacity for concentration and mental application on a personal level are reduced; on the other hand there is a danger that the students isolate themselves in an increasingly virtual reality.' I can understand, to some extent, his resistance to the change in mode-of-attention that accompanies online activity, but it's disappointing to see him falling for the bugaboo of replacement panic."

Pope Benedict on the Nature of University Reform (Thanks, AKMA!)

How sez, "California hipster artist Shag has created 13 new art pieces commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attraction. I've collected all the details (and art) known to date about the upcoming event in August of 2009 in one post."

What's not to like? Shag's art + the best ride Disney's Imagineers ever built = sheer heaven!

Details are still a little sketchy (pardon the pun) at this time, but it appears that a range of merchandise will be created based on the art: at the very least, Shag will be signing prints on Sunday, August 9th at the park. Buyers, however, will get the first opportunity to buy the prints at a cocktail party the evening of the 8th where Shag will be the guest of honor. Here’s hoping that they hold the event in the Mansion itself — Walt Disney World has done dinners in the stretch rooms in the past — what a blast it would be to party where “candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still.”

Shag Haunted Mansion art event (Thanks, How!)

Outa Spaceman of the ReaderSheds site has a gallery showing off his sweet steampunk/apocalyptic shed. I'm generally pretty content with my little flat, but every now and again I wish I had a garden just so I could install a shed like this!

Steampunk Sheddie O.S.M (Thanks, Uncle Wilco!)