Uncle Wilco sez, "Andy from the wonderful Workshop Shed has made a Victorian flea chariot in his shed!"

The mounting is an old victorian era french coin about the size of a 2p, the chariot is secured with a small magnet and a tiny piece of steel glued below the axle (brass is not magnetic). I picked up the glass display case on Ebay for a bargain. A new groove was turned in the base so that the dome can be removed and replaced. The carry case in the background is some fake books made from wood which I got from a junk shop many years ago...

Flea Circuses evolved out of the skills of watch makers and jewellers and were made famous in the 1830s by L.Bertolotto who turned the bias from the construction skills to the performance. They remained popular until the 1960s and many peoples grandparents have seen one. I've been researching this topic for about 4 years now and regularly make new discoveries which I publish along with other flea news on the flea circus research library blog.

Victorian Flea Circus Chariot (Thanks, Wilco!)

There's beer in my chocolate! There's chocolate in my beer! Somehow this combo doesn't feel nearly as right as Reese's famous mixing of peanut butter and chocolate. I drink many different types of beer, but I don't think this chocolate beer is going to work for me. Anybody tried this?

--Bruce (via Invertido)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Jake von Slatt sez, "This is a fractal Teddy Bear named Mandelbrot, he was brought into this world a few weeks ago by my friend Captain Mouse as a gift for her brother."

Mandelbrot the Fractal Bear (Thanks, Jake!)

The Chinese Communist Party has reportedly raised a "50-Cent Army" of astroturfers who are paid RMB0.50 for each patriotic, pro-Chinese comment they post on blogs and social media sites. Some estimates have the size of the army at 300,000 people.

Comments, rumours and opinions can be quickly spread between internet groups in a way that makes it hard for the government to censor.

So instead of just trying to prevent people from having their say, the government is also attempting to change they way they think.

To do this, they use specially trained - and ideologically sound - internet commentators.

They have been dubbed the "50-cent party" because of how much they are reputed to be paid for each positive posting (50 Chinese cents; $0.07; £0.05).

China's internet 'spin doctors' (Thanks, Paula!)

I really enjoyed today’s offering over on the Average Jane Crafter blog, where she discusses the loss of an important scar that made her feel like the hard core crafter that she is:

"The needle finally gave and came through the fabric, but not before I'd chipped a chunk out of my front tooth. It looked wonky, but it became my greatest battle scar of all, and every time I'd run my tongue over the jagged spot, I was reminded of my undying dedication to craft."

Our injuries, I think, really do help define us, as trite as that may sound. Most importantly, they give us cool stories to tell, allowing us to present ourselves to the rest of the world in just about any badass way we choose. But what happens to our psyches when our scars are removed? Does it make us any less resilient, less tough? Or does it just give us fewer opportunities to tell cool stories?

--Shawn

But what about my street cred?

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

We have a friend visiting who's on her way up to Yellowknife, Canada, to see the Northern Lights. While poking around the net researching her trip, I found James Pugsley's Astronomy North, a lovely site that has some amazing images of the Aurora Borealis. I also found out that the high temperature in Yellowknife this weekend is going to be -32 degrees F.

Besides the many cool pictures, Astronomy North provides time-lapse photography videos of the Aurora Borealis, weather and viewing forecasts, and loads of Canadian astronomy resources. I also found the icon on today's Aurora Forecast page strangely comforting.

Astronomy North

--Bruce

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Today's XKCD comic is an hilarious, Godwin's-Law-compliant stab at Vista.

Windows 7

Larry Lessig had a great appearance in Colbert Report on Thursday night, promoting his new book Remix. EFF's got a partial transcript, a video embed, and details on the remix challenge that came out of the end of the piece.

Colbert: You say our copyright laws are turning our kids into criminals, because they're keeping kids from doing all the remixing they want of pre-existing art and copywritten material, right?

Isn't that like saying that arson laws are turning our kids into pyromaniacs?? They're breaking the law! You can't just throw the law out the window!

Lessig: "Totally failed war." Is that familiar to you?

Colbert: No. No. You're saying we need a surge?

Lessig: We tried the surge. For ten years we've been waging this war. Artists have not gotten any more money, businesses have not gotten any more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals.

Larry Lessig on The Colbert Report

Kevin Kelly reports the exciting news that all the Whole Earth-related publications from the last 40 year are scanned and online at wholeearth.com.

One could read back issues if you could find them. I had the privilege of producing many of the issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and some of the Catalogs, so I had my own personal library of them. (Therefore you should also discount my enthusiasm for them.) I can't tell you how many wonderful evenings I have spent sitting in my reading chair re-exploring the fantastic worlds captured in these back issues. It is impossible to pick one up and not be mesmerized, thrilled, amazed, and informed by at least two stories or reviews. There is a timeless nature to this work that is due to their anti-fashionable status. The Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolutions were idea-based journalism, rather than event-based. Instead of reporting on top of things, they liked to get to the bottom of things. These issues zagged while the rest of the culture zigged, only to zag later.

The good news is that all this goodness is now online. Danica Remy and the last holdouts of the old Point Foundation, publishers of the Catalogs and magazine until its last issue in 2002, have given a second life to this gold mine of material by arranging them to be scanned and posted online. The entire 35-year archive of Whole Earth Catalogs, Supplements, Reviews and CoEvolutions are all up and ready to be studied. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee.

The Whole Earth Catalog Archive

As a long-time couple, finding art or photography that we both enjoy can sometimes be difficult. For instance, we’ve been searching for a painting of the rolling hills of Sonoma County that we can both live with for roughly 18 years.

However, the work of Kate Kunath amazes both of us, not only because of the quality of the images, but because of the thought she puts into each of her projects. Whether it’s dilapidated buildings in China or the portraits of people holding rabbits, we both agree these are beautiful and thought-provoking. We first heard about Kunath’s work when Treehugger featured her Stung: Beekeeping in the 21st Century series of photos, which is also full of terrific photos we can both agree on.

Kate Kunath’s Work

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Joel Stein wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times alleging that nut allergies are, by and large, a Yuppie invention.

Your kid doesn't have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. Your kid also spends recess running and screaming, "No! Stop! Don't rub my head with peanut butter!"

Yes, a tiny number of kids have severe peanut allergies that cause anaphylactic shock, and all their teachers should be warned, handed EpiPens and given a really expensive gift at Christmas. But unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.

I wonder if he would have written this piece had he witnessed a child go into anaphylactic shock, as my daughter did when she ate a cookie with hidden nuts in it. It was very scary.

Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention

A collection of 20 different portraits of the outgoing U.S. president by Vanity Fair’s illustrators. Shown here: The Imperial Family, by Edward Sorel. From left: Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice. From “The Monarchy of George II,” by Niall Ferguson, September 2004. Vanity Fair's collected portraits of Bush

Becky Stern of CRAFT shows you how to change the hair on a Blythe doll.

I started getting interested in Blythe when I wanted to make a three-dimensional self portrait, and was dumbfounded by the enormous community of customizers working with the Blythe Doll. One of the main online sources for customization is Puchi Collective, which houses oodles of tops for changing her eyechips, face makeup, and clothes. I was mainly interested in rerooting her hair, as the doll I acquired from co-blogger Jenny Ryan had blonde hair, and I wanted to use my own wavy red hair from a recent haircut. I made this video to illustrate the process, based on text-and-image tutorials I found on Puchi and Flickr. You can see some photos of my self portrait as Blythe in my Flickr set

. Rerooting Blythe Doll Hair - CRAFT Video Podcast

Chris sez, "Craig Finlay has been posting to the Flickr pool 'infiltration' some photos of an abandoned mansion in Beirut that turns out to be the former prime minister's. Amazing."

I saw this abandoned mansion last week from the street and went in with my friend Michel as translator in case we ran into anyone. It took a bit of jimmying to force the door, and inside we found piles and piles of of binders and dozens of black and white photos, all showing one man at various political events.

It turns out the mansion used to be the home of Takieddin el-Solh (born 1908, Sidon, Lebanon; died November 27, 1988, Paris) Lebanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1973-74, and again briefly in 1980. The binders were full of voter lists and various political documents. I'm assuming he abandoned the place during the civil war and moved to a more secure location. The house is in the Sunni section, but was within easy artillery distance of the Green Line.

Abandoned Mansion - Beirut (Thanks, Chris!)

Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Margaret Robertson looks back at Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, in which you control the action by banging on crappy electronic drums. Margaret is the former editor of Edge magazine and I am thrilled that she's now a regular columnist for Offworld. From "One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat":

One of the worst game ideas ever was embodied in Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which is a platform game you control with a pair of cheap electric bongos.

Not, please note, a modern, newfangled, automagic platform game like Assassin’s Creed. A proper, old-fashioned 2D platformer with ledges and enemies and timed swings and all the things that make you cry out for a nice crisp d-pad and a decently sprung jump button. Or, in the absence of those, perhaps at least something with more than two buttons which you can operate without having to pretend to be a toddler who just dropped a jam sandwich off his high chair.

So why go back to Jungle Beat? For a little reassuring schadenfreude that I’m not the only person who can have bad game ideas? No. Because it’s a dazzling, dizzying delight. Bad idea; brilliant game.

One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

New research shows that people with insomnia are five times more likely to be highly paranoid than those who are well-rested. The study was conducted by Wellcome Trust fellow Daniel Freeman who has co-written what promises to be a fascinating new book, Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear. (Excerpt here.) The results of Freeman's latest scientific study were published in the journal Schizophrenia Research. From Science Daily:

"As most of us know, a few nights of poor sleep can make us feel stressed, muddled in our thinking and disconnected from the world," says Dr Freeman. "These are ideal conditions for paranoid fears to take hold. Regular, good-quality sleep is important to our psychological wellbeing."

Although the study shows a clear link between the two conditions, it is unclear which causes the other. Clinical experience indicates that there is a vicious cycle: insomnia makes us anxious and fearful, and these feelings make it harder for us to sleep.

Dr Freeman believes that the research points to a potential treatment for helping to reduce the risk of developing persecutory thoughts.

"The good news is that there are several tried-and-tested ways to overcome insomnia," he says. "In particular, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has proven benefits. The intriguing implication of the research is that use of the sleep techniques may also make us feel safer and less mistrustful during the day. A good night’s sleep may simply make us view the world in a much more positive light.”

"Macbeth's Curse: Link Between Sleeplessness And Paranoia Identified" (Science Daily), Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear (Amazon)

Bonnie is an orangutan who has taught herself how to whistle. Her imitation of a human caretaker is providing scientists with new insight into social learning and the evolution of speech. It's the first time that a non-human primate has been documented mimicking another species' sound without training. Bonnie lives at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Her unique talent is discussed in a new paper in the journal Primates by researchers from the Great Ape Trust and their colleagues. The Great Ape Trust site also has video of Bonnie whistling away. From the Great Ape Trust:

Scientists have long known that orangutans copy physical movements of humans, but Bonnie’s whistling indicates that the learning capacities of orangutans and other great apes in the auditory domain might be more flexible than previously believed, (Great Ape Trust researcher Serge) Wich said. The behavior goes against the argument that orangutans have no control over their vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional – that is, an involuntary response to stimuli such as predators.

Bonnie appears to whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound voluntarily.

"Orangutan’s spontaneous whistling opens new chapter in study of evolution of speech" (via Fortean Times)

French design/photo duo Helmo (Thomas Couderc and Clement Vauchez) created a lovely window installation at the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. Titled "Bêtes de mode," the 2006 work consisted of thirteen human portraits superimposed with animal images that were revealed through the use of various gels.
Bêtes de mode (Helmo, thanks Meri Brin!), Helmo @ Galeries Lafayette (YouTube)

Alt weekly The Boston Phoenix has cast its eye on cryptozoology in a long article featuring BB pal Loren Coleman who has been exploring the realm of hidden and unknown animals for 50 years. "Cryptids are recession-proof," Loren says. The online version of Mike Miliard's article includes a delightful slideshow from the incredible International Cryptozoology Museum which is in dire need of donations. From the article, titled "Where the Wild Things Are" (photo by Matthew Robbins):

"For every square mile that man has walked on the Earth, three hundred square miles exist that have never been touched by human feet — but MAY INDEED HAVE BEEN TOUCHED by the hooves, paws, tentacles, and horrid tongue-foot-pads of the CRYPTIDS." — John Hodgman

Venture out into the waters and woodlands of New England, and there's a chance you'll bump into "Champ," America's own Loch Ness Monster, who allegedly plies the muddy ripples of Lake Champlain. Or, perhaps, the Gloucester Sea Serpent. Or the Granite State Bigfoot. Or Connecticut's Winsted Wildman. Dare you wander into the dark-woven forests of Maine or the eerie and unexplored Hockomock Swamp, smack in the middle of the Bay State's allegedly supernatural "Bridgewater Triangle"?

You well may. After all, could what's living in there be any scarier than what's living out here? We find ourselves in a world where presidents swindle their countries into wars, governors shake down children's hospitals, and con men abscond with $50 billion from their investors, many of them charities. Is it any wonder that some people spend hefty chunks of each day dreaming of a world inhabited by unseen creatures untouched by the mean banality of mankind?

Can it be a coincidence that the field of cryptozoology — literally, the study of "hidden animals" — has evolved from a discipline cloaked in shadows and pooh-poohed by science into a full-fledged pop-cultural explosion? In short: the world of late has gone cryptid crazy.

"Where the Wild Things Are" (The Phoenix), Loren's take on the article (Cryptomundo)

Billionaire Broadcom founder Henry Nicholas lost his fight to keep the following email message from being admitted as evidence in his trial for "21 counts of conspiring to commit accounting and securities fraud by misreporting $2.2 billion in employee stock options." You can't blame him for trying.

An Email Visit with Broadcom's Henry Nicholas

This rickety old suspension bridge in Japan is the stuff of nightmares. The sound of the wind adds to the dreadfulness. (via Japundit)

Flash embed above, downloadable MP4 here.

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Full Disclosure: Boing Boing's video production at CES is sponsored by WEPC.com, and they're also the subject of this episode. We were not paid to produce a piece about them, nor were we required to cover their presence at CES as part of the sponsorship. They had no editorial control or involvement in the content we produced, including this episode. Netbooks were sort of a hot topic at CES 09, and since Asus was something of a pioneer in this product sector, with interesting products out this year, we chose to cover this project's presence.

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Xeni from the motherboing here with a new Boing Boing Gadgets CES video installment! Beschizza and I visited the Asus booth to check out some of the netbooks and other devices they're developing. Rob got some hands-on time with some of the more visually interesting models, including one netbook covered in bamboo, and others covered in very Vegas-appropriate gold lamé or Lamborghini co-branding. (Ay, que Elvis, hombre!) We also spoke with one of the senior designers with Asus from Taiwan about the Intel co-partnered WEPC project, in which they're soliciting feature requests from the public, then sorting through those crowdsourced suggestions and figuring out what makes sense to implement in production.

Join the discussion for this episode over at Boing Boing Gadgets.

(Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes!)

More Videos: BB Gadgets at CES

* CES Video: Palm Pre Hands-On with Joel and Brownlee, post-review huddle with Ars Technica
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day Two
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One

Timothy Leary wrote this postcard to his kids while on the lam in Egypt in 1970. It's currently on eBay with a starting bid of $450. Here's what Tim wrote:

Tripping around the Middle East grooving with the guerillas… New life, fabulous adventures. We are happy that you are happy. Love, Timothy.

Timothy Leary signed postcard from Egypt (click images for larger pictures)

I found this chart from the IEEE Spectrum showing the worldwide breakdown of industrial robots to be fascinating. I'm not surprised that Japan has the highest density of robots per manufacturing workers, but I was surprised by how far ahead they were of every other country.

IEEE Spectrum: The Rise of Machines (via TokyoMango, illustration by Mike Vella)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Many years ago I wrote an article for Wired about strange candy. If X-Ray Fish had been around then, I would have included them in the piece.

Strange Candy: Gummi X-Ray Fish

With an Eastwoodian cheroot dangling from his lips, this gun-toting convenience store robber looks like an action movie anti-hero. As Joshua Bearman says, "Just look at this fucking guy and tell me he wasn't supposed to go out like this." Take a look at the photos by the very brave David Proeber.

Our friend and guest blogger alum, Douglas Rushkoff is teaching an online course, Life Incorporated, through the MaybeLogic Academy beginning January 12, for six weeks. “

Students” will get a working draft of book chapters (to be published in June by RandomHouse US and UK) as well as six weeks of discussion and interrogation of the issues within and beyond them. I’ll be doing some live video lectures, as well, and inviting participants to help devise ways of restoring bottom-up commerce and social exchange to a world that seems incapable of abandoning its faulty, top-down, disconnected way of extracting value from people.

But the bulk of the exploration will be history, economics and social theory: How did corporatism become the dominant cultural ideology and operating system, who did it benefit, how did we internalize it, and what keeps it running?

Corporatized: An Alternative To Corporatism & Beyond

New Scientist reports that the Arctic could become ice-free during summers by 2030.

At the time, researchers including Mark Serreze of National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado claimed that the Arctic had reached a "tipping point" - a dramatic and irreversible slide towards ice-free conditions.

As the summer melting season finished up this year, they waited with bated breath to see how much, if any, ice would survive.

4.67 million square kilometres remained at the end of September. A positive interpretation says that the Arctic defied the apocalyptic prophecies by recovering slightly, thanks to a pattern of colder and windier weather.

But Serreze is sticking to the idea that we have reached a point of no return.

"If you look over the past five years, you see an acceleration of ice loss," says Serreze. Though 2008 did not beat the record set by 2007, it is still the second-lowest amount on record, below the record lows of 2002 and 2005.

Arctic melt 20 years ahead of climate models (Thanks, Alex!)

(Flash video above, downloadable MP4 here.)

Hello from CES in Las Vegas! Boing Boing Gadgets' Joel and Brownlee got a hands-on demo with the new Palm Pre here, and Boing Boing's video team was there to cover them. Watch the whole review above. In the first half of the video, Brownlee and Joel grill a Palm rep -- who doesn't want to let either of them touch the device -- about features and what's under the hood. In the second half of today's video, our fellas huddle over brews and watered-down show floor drinks with Jon Stokes from Ars Technica for a post-game analysis. Verdict seems to be that if this is Palm's "hail mary," it just might work. The Pre seems pretty sweet. Here's the Pre product page at palm.com.

Join the discussion about this video over at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Previously on BBG: Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

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Sponsor shout-out: Boing Boing's video coverage of CES 2009 is sponsored by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is intended to be a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "could influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

(Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes!)

More Videos: BB Gadgets at CES
* CES Video: Asus Netbookstravaganza, with Bamboo, Gold Lamé, and Lamborghini.
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day Two
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One

Here's the Air Force's blog assessment chart, developed by its Emerging Technologies Division.

(Thanks, Brian! Via Global Nerdy)

Lovable financial curmudgeon, goldbug, and activist Max Keiser has a new show on BBC Worldwide: The Oracle, in which he predicts the future outcomes of today's financial chaos. You might know Keiser from his startup, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, or from his wooly, profane and hilarious radio programme in London, Karmabanque. The first episode of The Oracle aired last night -- if you're out of broadcast range, try your local torrent tracker...

Back in 2006 Max Keiser predicted a global banking crisis triggered by subprime debt. Now, he's bringing his predictive powers to BBC World News in a series called the Oracle...

The Oracle with Max Keiser

On YouTube: 1, 2, 3 (Thanks, Sal!)

Silver Dragon Studio makes $50 flails out of novelty outsize D20s. It's the ideal B&D/D&D crossover item!

D20 Flails (via Wonderland)

Guangdong province may be the "world's factory," prosperous and bustling (modulo a few toy-factory riots), but the development there is wildly uneven, as is evidenced by this shambolic school in Heyuan City:

On December 25, 2008, the South.cn's Guangdong Development Forum carried a series of photos of the perilous conditions at the Jiutang Elementary School in Zijin County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province. The school was called as the "most run-down school in Guangdong province."

The person who made the post also divulged: "Jiutang Elementary School has witnessed 60 years of storms under which the helpless children attempt to learn. During the rainy season, the teacher and his students lived in fear. The relevant government departments paid no attention to them. Can the young flowers of the motherland be neglected this way?" In the same post, there were also photographs of the majestic buildings of the relevant government departments in Zijin county. This was a way for expressing the anger over the long-term negligence of the problems at the Jiutang Elementary School.

This story about the bitter lives of these children was shocking. Within a few days, the photos became red-hot on the Internet.

But many Chinese people clearly do not have knowledge about the uneven development within Guangdong province. Given the "aura of the number one province in terms of the economy," many netizens were skeptical about these photos who looked like as if they belong in western China. "Can there be places that are this impoverished in Guangdong province?"

The Most Run-down School in Guangdong Province

JD sez, "In the grand tradition of amazing edible sculpture comes this nerdy piece of jaw-dropping confectionery. It's holding a d20, and sitting on a white chocolate hoard. There's a lot of really amazing detail in this thing. Seriously. A dragon made of cake." Dragon cake (Thanks, JD!)

Retro Sabotage (humorous homebrew levels for vintage video games) has produced a nice little 1985 Super Mario remix with a pretty good punchline. The makers have a little tool to customize the level and share it with your pals.

Retro Sabotage - Super Mario Bros. (via Neatorama)

My latest Locus column, "Writing in the Age of Distraction" is up -- a grab-bag of practical tips for getting the writing done in the internet era.

We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.

The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn't help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.

But the Internet has been very good to me. It's informed my creativity and aesthetics, it's benefited me professionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I'd no sooner give it up than I'd give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice.

I think I've managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I've been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that's rare. Most of the time, I'm on top of my workload and my muse

Writing in the Age of Distraction

In "The Altruist," artist Laurie Munn documents her adventure in found portraiture: working from a 1965 yearbook from Emerson High in Union City, New Jersey that she found in the trash, Munn painted portraits of all 220 members of the class of 65. Then she returned to the Emerson High and tracked down the subjects of her portraits to show them the great work -- discovering the heartbreaking story of the original yearbook on the way.

It's a fabulous short feature, with humor, pathos, art and nostalgia all swirled up together in a mad project.

The Altruist by Laurie Munn (Thanks, Marilyn!)

See also: Artist draws entire yearbook

Wagner James Au sez, "Here's the latest CC-licensed Second Life machinima from Lainy Voom, the UK artist who's 'Dumb Man' Boing Boing blogged last year. I wrote a short post on how she did some of the cooler visual effects. The air bubbles, for example, were achieved by attaching an invisible aquarium rock to the avatar's mouth and nose."

Fall (Mini Project 3) (Thanks, James!)

This ittty bitty DV camera could be used where photography is not permitted by authorities. It's $147.00.

# The Tiny DV Camera Recorder
# Thumb size alloy housing
# Manually and sound activated recording
# Web camera for online video chat
# Support AVI video format
# Low illumination, high resolution image with 2000K pixels
# High speed recording and quick light response
# 30 frames per second for 640*480 video output
# Built-in Li rechargeable battery lasting for 2 hours
# Provide 2G Micro SD card and Support up to 8G memory card
# Easy operation with LED indicator
# Support USB 2.0
# Flexible installation with clip and bracket
# Support JPEG picture format

The Tiny DV Camera Recorder

TiltShiftMaker.com gives your photos that delightful tilt-shift look. (Above: From an original photo by Daveness_98)

Tilt-shift miniature style photos are pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs.

Now you can easily transform your existing digital camera photos into tilt-shift miniatures using tiltshiftmaker.com.

(Thanks, Bevin!)

Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we hit CES 2009!

We commenced "reporting" (re: boozing) at CES Unleashed, where it became clear — even early into the conference — that the recession had hit CES hard. Never the less, Beschizza found a touching reason to be optimistic, and so, galvanized, we went into CES Day Two with high spirits.

Live blogging was the order of the day on Day Two. Joel covered Ludacris and Monster Cable while Brownlee watched LG announce a Dick Tracy camera watch and declare life to be grim. Beschizza was there to write up Netgear's announcement of a deck-of-card-sized video streaming device. Then came Casio, Sharp and Toshiba, and Samsung... although all of the day's announcements had their thunder stolen by Sony's announcement of the sexy not-netbook, the Vaio P. Rob even got a chance to get a hands on. To finish off the day, Joel harassed some people in line at the Ballmer keynote.

Today is Day 3, and the first day the CES showfloor is actually open. Beschizza rushed off early to cover Sir Howard Stringer's Sony keynote, and applauded the CEO for noting that the future is in open source. Meanwhile, Brownlee feasted upon omelettes courtesy of Dell. Joel puttered around the Las Vegas Convention Center, snapping shots of blinged out iPod boomboxes and television mounting kits for idiots. And Rob really wants this car.

We're at CES for another couple of days, so make sure to keep up with our coverage over at Boing Boing Gadgets. It can only get even more random and profane as exhaustion sets in!

Link

I dig Psycho Bunny's Safety Pin Tie. It's silk, handmade, and $110.

Hudson sez, "Fictionwise used Overdrive to provide DRM encrypted ebooks to their customers and Overdrive has informed them that they will be shutdown on 30 January with no reason given. Since Fictionwise doesn't have the decryption keys, they are not able to provide new versions of the books to all customers."

Fictionwise strives to maintain your purchases indefinitely, but our terms of service do not guarantee they will be available forever. Forever is a long time. We have control of our MultiFormat files and we have control of the Secure eReader format, so that gives us the ability to ensure we will continue to be able to deliver those formats to you. However, as noted above, other formats are delivered through third party aggregators. We do not have legal control of those third party servers. If those third party servers "go dark" for one reason or another, we have no way to continue delivering those files.

And publishers wonder why their customers rip books off on #bookwarez sites rather than paying for them...

OverDrive and the eReader Replacement File Program FAQ (Thanks, Hudson!)

The Consumer Electronics Show carnage continues over at Boing Boing Gadgets. Above, Lasonic's Rap-Up boombox and Palm's "Hail Mary" smartphone. Boing Boing Gadgets @ CES

Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center says he and his colleagues have discovered a mysterious "booming noise" coming from space that's six times more powerful than all other space radio sources combined.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars.

Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected

I’m not really sure what it means that the two people I showed this Electric Bath Duckie to both said it was a good gift idea, but I really like that on the back of the package it suggests: "Please make sure you have made the right decision."

--Shawn (via Book of Joe)

Electric Bath Duck — 'One use only'

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

If this is real, it's my favorite photo so far this year. (Via Neatorama)

CNN has a series of photos showing how the stress of being president takes a physical toll in the form of accelerated aging. Above, a guess at what Obama will look like after 4 years.

The president ages twice as fast while in office, according to a theory advanced by Dr. Michael Roizen, a chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic.

"The typical person who lives one year ages one year," he said. "The typical president ages two years for every year they are in office."

(Via IssTumBul)

Gordon Stewart, 74, was found dead in his Buckinghamshire, England home inside a maze of tunnels he had burrowed through the garbage that packed his property. The hoarder apparently died of dehydration. (For a fascinating book about the world's most famous hoarders, the Collyer brothers, I highly recommend Franz Lidz's Ghosty Men.) From The Telegraph:

The Thames Valley Police Specialist Search and Recovery team, who usually deals with underwater rescues or explorations of contaminated sites, used their cutting-edge equipment to navigate their way through the rubbish, locating his body in one the tunnels. The highly-trained team carry breathing apparatus, gas detectors, analysers and remote cameras, and wear protective clothing....

One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "He was slightly eccentric, but very clever. He was just a collector. He came home with a load of cardboard boxes and lived in his own world."

"Pensioner 'entomed in labyrinth of tunnels carved into rubbish'" (Thanks, Robert Pescovitz!)

Scientists report that people who are high on nitrous oxide (laughing gas) have more vivid imaginations and are also more open to hypnotic-like suggestions. The researchers from the University College London were spurred to conduct their study based on reports from dentists that "patients under nitrous oxide sedation are particular suggestible. A number of investigators, they write in the journal Psychopharmacology, also "have noted the clinical advantages of using a hypnotic voice when administering nitrous oxide." One of the authors of the current study is psychologist Matt Whalley, who maintains the fascinating Hypnosis and Suggestion site. From Mind Hacks (image of 1839 laughing gas party from general-anesthesia.com):

The researchers randomised patients at a dental surgery to either receive a nitrous oxide and oxygen mix, or just oxygen, with the patients not knowing which they were receiving. Two weeks later they were invited back and given which ever type of gas mix they hadn't already had.

While inhaling each gas mix, the participants were asked to complete a measure of imaginative ability, rating the clarity and vividness of their visual imagery, as well as being given various suggestions - without the hypnotic induction - from the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale.

This includes suggestions that your hands might move of their own accord, to suggested temporary paralysis, to a suggestion to experience hallucinated sounds - to name but a few.

"Laughing gas increases imagination, suggestibility" (Mind Hacks), "Enhancement of suggestibility and imaginative ability with nitrous oxide" (Psychopharmacology)