Kazushi Kobayashi's Chubu 01 is a robot from an alternate 1957 where robots are the primary mode of transportation. Build-it-yourself model kits are for sale in Harajuku's TOKYO CULTUART gallery at 28.000 Yen a pop ($350 or so).

ハチの巣みたいだトーキョー ハチの巣みたいだトーキョー に関する記事です (Thanks, Francesco!)

Steampunk keyboard maker Datamancer has switched it up with this fabulous keyboard capped with Scrabble keys:

This keyboard was commissioned by a couple of friends of mine from back east (NJ) who are avid Scrabble players. Most of the keys are made from real Scrabble tiles that were all hand-beveled (truly an exercise in patience/masochism!) and built onto a USB, clicky, mechanical-switch keyboard. This keyboard was going into a Mac environment so I decided to use brushed aluminum for the casing and round all of the corners to keep with the sleek, simple Macintosh styling. Near the end of the build, I decided that the keyboard looked a little too minimalist so I added some silver hardware and a seam to put a slightly industrialized twist on the design.

The Scrabble Keyboard (via Make)

Despite only attracting "only" 110,000 attendees, there was still a lot to see and a lot of fun had at 2009's Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. First impressions were downbeat, but we found things to look positive about and ended up having a great time with some of the tech toys we'll be seeing on the streets this year.

Top of the stack was the Pre, a good-looking smartphone that turned Palm's press from tragedy to triumph in a matter of hours. There are seven features that make it better than the iPhone. Don't miss Joel and John's hands-on coverage.

We also took a look at Sony's amazing Vaio P notebook. Though the company hates it when people call it a netbook, it's hard not to notice the resemblance: an Intel Atom-powered lightweight 1.4lb laptop with a 9" display, full keyboard and up to 6 hours battery life. Here's the announcement and the hands-on review. We fawned over it, we did.

LG came up with the first not-awful cellphone wristwatch; Casio announced a point-and-shoot digicam with the same features as the fancy EX-F1; Sharp announced televisions, and Netgear had a TV streaming box almost as small as a deck of cards.

There were hands-on playtime with the OQO model 02+ and other new pocket PCs and MYVU's latest video glasses. John had a strange encounter with Disney zombies and pirate play at the Toshiba press event.

We also covered new gear from Dell, Samsung, Toshiba, Monster Cable, HP (more), Netgear and Logitech.

Not enough? There was also another show called MacWorld, should you be interested in $3,000 laptops.

Boing Boing Gadgets at CES

The Times of India reports that two young girls have been wed to frogs in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district, "to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village''.

The girls, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, dressed up in traditional bridal finery -- gilded sarees and gold jewellery -- married the frog 'princes' in separate, elaborate ceremonies at two different temples in the presence of hundreds of villagers.

Amidst chanting of vedic hymns, the temple priests garlanded the brides and tied the magalsutras on behalf of the frogs pronouncing the two as wives of the amphibians before the sacred fire at the auspicious hour.

The villagers threw themselves into the ceremonies with gusto. While residents living in the western part of the village acted as relatives of the brides and those from the eastern part play-acted as relatives of the grooms. The ceremonies had all the usual elements of a traditional marriage including a sumptuous feast.

However, unlike the fairy tale `Frog Prince', where the ugly toad turns into a handsome prince when the princess kisses it, the Villupuram village belles bid their amphibian grooms goodbye and lead a normal life thereafter. As for the terrified frogs, they are thrown back into the temple ponds after the ceremony.

Two minor girls married off to frogs

Episode two of The Oracle, Max Keiser's irreverant, curmudgeonly finance show on BBC World aired yesterday and it's up on YouTube today -- all financial coverage should be this good.

Today on Offworld we saw an elaborate scientific study on gravity's weight in Super Mario's Mushroom Kingdom, looked at vintage game ads that brazenly promoted their (actually non-existent) gratuitous violence, and saw one developer doing recruitment ads very right.

We also read how the head of Harmonix wants to revive their original cult music-game Amplitude and move onto the iPhone, played Oregon Trail and other Apple II classics in our browsers, read more vintage tales on the making of Doom, and wondered whether the recession was the perfect time to create an indie game.

Finally, we saw a new designer art-pack coming to LittleBigPlanet, prepared for the Adult Swim debut of Offworld favorite brit-com Look Around You with its best games related clip, and, most wonderfully and belatedly, played Gravity Bone, a game that would have easily made The Offworld 20 if only I'd played it sooner.

Also: invites for our three-way Planetside blog-war should be going out soon -- I suggest joining Offworld's Facebook group for more coordinating and pre-game strategery.

The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy has an opening for a science fiction writer in residence, paying $16,000 for four months' work at 14h/week. The work consists of "public readings, workshops, evaluation of submitted manuscripts, and one-on-one meetings with writers from the general public," with leftover time for your own projects.

My first experience with a real writer was when Judith Merril was the writer in residence at the Merril Collection (then called The Spaced Out Library). Judy read and critiqued my manuscripts and mentored and tutored me, and inspired me to be a writer. The collection is the largest public sf/f reference collection in the world -- you can get lost in the stacks for days.

There's one week left to apply for the position -- this is quite an opportunity!

Eligibility Criteria:

• Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada

• Minimum of five novels or short story collections of science fiction, fantasy or horror, published by a professional publishing house

• Active in the writing profession

• Experience in teaching creative writing

• Intend to work on a new project, normally intended for book-length publication

PDF Link

Neil Chase at our advertising partner company, Federated Media says:

Several authors have recently found every ad zone on their pages filled with ads for Vimax, which is supposed to enlarge a certain body part. We don't run ads for stuff like that, and of course no FM author or staffer could possibly need it anyway.

But there's malware floating around out there that hijacks your computer's DNS settings and puts its own ads into your zones. Unlike regular viruses, it can attack both PCs and Macs. It seems to often come with free video-processing software.

If it happens to you, rest assured that it's happening only in your Web browser and not to your readers. Here's what to do:

* For Mac users: Apple's forums have info about a couple fixes in this thread

* For PC users, several people suggest Trend Micro's free HijackThis tool.

Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Frank Melton says that even though the city council voted against an ordinance making it unlawful for people to wear saggy pants he still intends to issue an executive order enforcing the dress code. The city council voted 4-2 against the ordinance, saying it was unconstitutional.

"I certainly respect the Constitution," Melton said, "but we have some issues that are much bigger than the Constitution."

I'm not going to argue with him. Anyone smart enough to fold a handkerchief like that (see above pic) must know what he's talking about. Here are a few simpler ones you can try.

(Via The Agitator)

Czech artist David Cerny was given £350,000 from his government to oversee the creation of a sculpture featuring the work of artists from all 27 European Union nations.

Instead, he got together with his pals and made an eight-ton sculpture called "Entropia" that depicted Romania as a "Dracula theme park," the Netherlands as being underwater "with only the tops of minarets sticking out," Bulgaria "as a series of squat toilets," Sweden as being "packed into an IKEA box" and so on.

I think he should be paid double.

The original intention was indeed to ask 27 European artists for participation. But it became apparent that this plan cannot be realised, due to time, production, and financial constraints. The team therefore, without the knowledge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, decided to create fictitious artists who would represent various European national and artistic stereotypes. We apologise to Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and their departments that we did not inform them of the true state of affairs and thus misguided them. We did not want them to bear the responsibility for this kind of politically incorrect satire. We knew the truth would come out. But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.

At the beginning stood the question: What do we really know about Europe? We have information about some states, we only know various tourist clichés about others. We know basically nothing about several of them. The art works, by artificially constructed artists from the 27 EU countries, show how difficult and fragmented Europe as a whole can seem from the perspective of the Czech Republic. We do not want to insult anybody, just point at the difficulty of communication without having the ability of being ironic.

Grotesque hyperbole and mystification belongs among the trademarks of Czech culture and creating false identities is one of the strategies of contemporary art. The images of individual parts of Entropa use artistic techniques often characterised by provocation. The piece thus also lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space. We believe that the environment of Brussels is capable of ironic self-reflection, we believe in the sense of humour of European nations and their representatives.

Statement by Czech artist David Cerny

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

One of the major themes of The Invention of Air, and one that will have special appeal to BoingBoing readers, is how committed Joseph Priestley and the American Founders (particularly Franklin and Jefferson) were to the open flow of ideas. Priestley used every available information network of the day to share his discoveries and insights: he published nearly five hundred books and pamphlets over the course of his life, and wrote endless correspondence to his colleagues, documenting in exhaustive detail the techniques behind his experiments.

When you read through those original documents and letters, there's a distinctly open source vibe to the approach that they all took. Franklin argued for sharing his scientific discoveries--sometimes before he was even convinced of their accuracy--because releasing early and often would "attract the attentions of the ingenious" who would then go on to improve his original discoveries. Priestley famously invented soda water during experiments at a neighboring brewery, and then happily gave away his formula to anyone who would listen. (Anticipating Cory's wonderful OpenCola project by a couple of centuries.)

I've been talking about this quite a bit on the various stops on the book tour, and it's naturally caused some people to ask about my own research method. And it turns out there's a pleasing symmetry between the story the book tells and the information networks of our own time, because this is the first book that I have written where Google Books played an absolutely indispensable role. An amazing number of Priestley's original writings (along with other texts from that period) are available from Google as downloadable PDFs, with scans of the original page design and typography, along with full-text searching. Many of these are texts that would be very hard to find even in a major research library, and of course, even if you could find them, you wouldn't be able to search them. (You'd barely be able to turn the pages, given how old the books are.) There are also some fantastic archives of correspondence available online, most notably the Franklinpapers.org site, which has a searchable database of every surviving letter Franklin wrote or received.

One thrilling thing about these Google Book resources is that you can now link directly to an individual page of a book that has potentially been out of print for centuries. We need to think a bit more about how to standardize these links, given multiple editions and multiple library sites that might have digital copies. But what you can see happening, slowly but surely, is the Memex and Xanadu and the Information Superhighway -- all those inspiring dreams of information utopia -- finally crossing crossing over into the vast universe of books. Slowly, over time, a page typeset in 1771 might start to get a whole new life, thanks to the growing authority we grant it through that elemental gesture of making a link.

So to bring things full circle, I offer up a link to the page where Priestley describes his discovery and technique for manufacturing soda water. I think he'd be delighted to know his words were still in circulation more than two centuries later.

WorldChanging's Alex Steffen sez, "Politics is never a matter of perfection, but from time to time, politicians make decisions so massively wrong that they stun us. Such is the appointment of Ray LaHood for Transportation Secretary, whose qualifications are minimal and ideas are anachronistic:"

In case you haven't been following the news, LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he's now supposed to regulate. He may be no worse than most of those who've lead the Department of Transportation, but his appointment is a profoundly uninspiring vote for business as usual at a time when we need change, and an strong indication that the administration doesn't get that energy policy, technological innovation, urban planning, environmental sustainability and transportation are all bound up together, and no solution to our problems can be had without tackling them all together.

LaHood's appointment is so disappointing to transportation advocates who've been waiting eight years for change, that they're boiling with indignant disbelief, branding him "an unbelievably disastrous pick," "Status quo we can believe in" and "same.gov" (a dig at the Obama transition site, change.gov). As one insider summed it up: "It's a real read-it-and-weep moment."

LaHood supporters point out that the president-elect promised to appoint Republicans, and LaHood is trusted by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Obama had to throw Republicans a bone somewhere, they argue: why not Transportation?

Because given the crises we face, the U.S. Department of Transportation is not a minor agency. This year it had a $58 billion budget and employed almost 60,000 people. What's more, the Secretary of Transportation will guide the spending of vast amounts of stimulus spending, oversee the auto industry bailout and be responsible for a raft of critical policy decisions that will dictate the shape of our cities and the choices we have for getting around for decades -- and thus indirectly our energy policies as well, since transportation is where much of our energy use goes. In fact, in an era of climate change, energy crisis and economic distress, Transportation may be one of the most important posts in the president's cabinet.

Ray LaHood and Changing our Thinking About Transportation (Thanks, Alex!)

Planet of the Apes font, free for the taking. (Via Filled With Chocolate Pudding)

On his blog, Rudy Rucker writes about his recent visit to New York City. In addition to the many nice photographs he took, he included this old YouTube clip of Camper Van Beethoven's video, "Take the Skinheads Bowling," because he saw the band with his daughter Georgia, while he was there. (Georgia was the designer of The Happy Mutant Handbook.)

I’ve always loved Camper Van. They were big when we moved to California 25 years ago; Marc Laidlaw introduced me to their music. By now, the lead singer, David Lowry, reminds me of an eccentric old professor -— fit, dedicated, and prepared to speak out. My twin. They sang their big hit, “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” What a masterpiece.

“Last night I had a dream—it was about nothing.

Picturing New York by Rudy Rucker

In his most recent Scientific American column, Jesse Bering writes about psychology research experiments from the 70s that could have been harmful to the researchers because they made unwitting subjects uncomfortable.

[O]ne very brave investigator set up shop in the toilet stall of a busy university restroom with a stopwatch and a periscope and used the latter to observe men at the urinals. “This provided a view,” the authors explained in the 1976 paper, “of the user's lower torso and made possible direct visual sightings of the stream of urine.”

If you processed that last sentence, you’re probably asking yourself why anyone would want such a good view of a stranger’s micturating penis. In fact, the researchers were trying to gain a better understanding of paruresis, otherwise known as “shy bladder syndrome” (or “pee-shy,” “bashful bladder” and a variety of other monikers). In extreme cases, someone with a shy bladder cannot urinate in public facilities such as airports, restaurants, or their place of employment. The idea behind this study was that invasion of personal space underlies paruresis—the closer another person is in proximity, the more trouble the pee-shy individual will have urinating. The restroom was therefore rigged so that, in addition to the observer in the toilet stall, another research assistant (called a “confederate” in social psychological parlance) stationed himself either at the urinal next to the unwitting participant or used the urinal farthest away from the participant.

Brave, Stupid and Curious: Dangerous Psychology Experiments from the Past (Via Mind Hacks)

Finally, the inebriated Canadian chemical engineering student we ran into on the streets of Vegas while he was dressed in a furry Yeti costume makes his Boing Boing video debut.

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel Johnson says,

Our last -- and dare I say least essential to the gadget nerd -- video from CES is above for your enjoyment. It's also probably the one that most accurately portrays our day-to-day on the showfloor.

I have to say, I had a blast at this year's CES, hanging out with all the BBG and Boing Boing Video crew, as well as many of our friends within the industry. We puttered around like the dilettantes we are, drinks in hand, and just tried to enjoy the spectacle and the company, while still skimming off the strangest and most interesting products around.

But we couldn't have pranced around the place in good conscience if it weren't for the diligence of sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, CrunchGear, Oh Gizmo!, Shiny Shiny, Wired, Ars, and dozens of other gadget and tech writers out there sifting through products to sort the inspired from the insipid. There's no shame in having a good time when you're working, but I want to acknowledge the hard work of others when I see it.

We may all be competitors in the loosest sense, but when you're walking the floors packed primarily with local action news teams, morning madhouse DJs, and lifestyle section stringers for Ladie's Home Journal, it's hard to see all the other online tech writers out there hustling as anything other than friends.

If you prefer a direct MP4 download, well then just go ahead and download it why don't you?

Join the discussion over at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group sez,

After UK music collecting society people put out a video asking Gordon Brown to nearly double the term of copyright protection afforded to sound recordings in the EU, we thought we'd fight back.

Here, for your delectation is, "How copyright term extension really works". It includes the sad fact that most artists could receive as little as 50 (euro) cents from sales associated with the extended term, and may even be worse off when it comes to royalties from radio airplay. And yet the major labels - who continue to tout this flawed policy as a way to help starving artists - will pocket millions.

Those Europeans who want to do something about this, should write to their MEPs (UK, rest of Europe) and ask them to attend our European Parliament lobbying event.

How copyright extension in sound recordings actually works (Thanks, Becky!)

From Ikeahacker, a moving, seasick composite table made from motorized Ikea Lack tables.

It's from an exhibition called Catalog that consists of 5 sculptures made from Ikea products. He says, "The Catalog (Blue Tables) are made from Lack tables, each one is cut and reassembled and includes a motorized leg that tilts the table gently up and down. The result is a wave-like motion.

Motorized Ikea sculptures (via Make)

As can be seen in this chart, "Google search results for "KH(Ax)N" for x=1 to 100," there's a real spike of "AAAAA"s around 40 and 50. That's a lot of reptitious typing! Also, you have to admire the bloody-minded preserverence of the folks over there at 97-100 "AAAAA"s. Also, RIP, Ricardo Montalban.

Google search results for "KH(Ax)N" for x=1 to 100 (via Negatendo)

Offworld has been challenged to a three-way online scrap with fellow gaming sites Rock, Paper, Shotgun and The Escapist. We've got 70 free accounts to use in Sony's Planetside to use to recruit our own army of Happy Super Mutants to destroy the enemy in good-natured virtual massacre. If you want to join us, pop over to Offworld to find out how to get a free key from me.

Blog War! [Offworld]

Seth Godin asks the question, "When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?" And answers it: "deep investigative reporting." But that reporting is only two percent of the daily rag, and the other 98 percent is stuff the web does well:

What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn't a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.

But then I see the in depth stories about the gowns to be worn to the inauguration or the selection of the White House dog and I wonder if newspapers are the most efficient way to do this anyway....

Punchline: if we really care about the investigation and the analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists.

The reality is that this sort of journalism is relatively cheap (compared to everything else the newspaper had to do in order to bring it to us.) Newspapers took two cents of journalism and wrapped in ninety-eight cents of overhead and distraction. The magic of the web, the reason you should care about this even if you don't care about the news, is that when the marginal cost of something is free and when the time to deliver it is zero, the economics become magical. It's like 6 divided by zero. Infinity.

When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?

Zimbabwe's hyperinflation has become so extreme that the treasury there is set to print 100 trillion, 50 trillion, 20 trillion and 10 trillion notes. 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars are worth about US$300. Wait. Now it's US$290. Quick, spend it, while there's still time.

Even vegetable vendors prefer the U.S. dollar, South African rand or Botswanan pula, and most workers now demand their salaries in foreign currency. Doctors and nurses have been on strike since last September, demanding salaries in U.S. dollars. The strike coincided with a cholera epidemic that now has claimed more than 2,000 lives.

Last week, the state media reported that most teachers had left their jobs. As a result, the end-of-year examinations taken in November are yet to be graded after the markers demanded their wages in foreign currency. Schools are yet to re-open this year awaiting the examination results

Zimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note

The retro media centre was Thomas Thomassen's Final Major Project in BA (Hons) Modelmaking for Design and Media at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth -- it's an atompunk* tailfin fantasy that would look absolutely fantastic atop your giant console TV, serving as your home's media hub. Thomassen's documented the whole process from design to build -- great tips if you want to try it on your own.

Mini Media Centre: retro design - modern functionality (via Make!)

*Yes, I used "atompunk" solely to irritate you. Yes, you. Atompunk, atompunk, atompunk. Atompunk**.

**Steampunk***

***Howdyalikethemapples?

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez:

For two years now, I have been begging the U.S. Congress to loan me DVDs they have of congressional hearings so I can load them up to the Internet Archive. So, I was pretty steamed to see all 4 of the senior leaders of Congress cut a shameless ad for YouTube, making YouTube the official video purveyor of both the House and Senate.

Sure, they talk about how this is only one of many avenues that the modern new socially aware Congress will pursue, but you don't see Pelosi and Boehner cutting any ads for the Internet Archive or C-SPAN (let alone Yahoo or MSN).

In the case of the Internet Archive, the Speaker's actions are especially puzzling, considering Brewster Kahle is one of her constituents and I assumed probably even voted for her! I did note that the Google official PAC gave $34,000 to the four actors who appeared in their ad.

4 resources, decide for yourself if this stinks:

1. The Official Congressional YouTube Ad

2. My remix of that ad, replacing YouTube with yahoo, yowza, yippee. Just try and takedown this public domain data!

3. My report 2 years ago to Pelosi about their webcasts. Not like we haven't been waiting patiently in line!

4. The Federal Election Commission report by Google's PAC. Public.Resource.Org doesn't have a PAC.

(Thanks, Carl!)

In Minnesota, where it's -21F (that's -29.4C for everyone else), Birdchick is amusing herself with a spray-bottle full of hot water: shpritz it into the air and it turns into instant ice-needles that tinkle prettily to the frozen ground below. I love people who really know how to enjoy themselves, no matter what the weather's doing.

Too Cold To Go Birding (via Make)

LightLane is a concept gadget that paints a bike lane around your bicycle with laser-light as you pedal through the night:

Enter LightLane, a safety concept from the clever designers at Altitude, Inc. The system projects a virtual bike lane (using lasers!) on the ground around the cyclists, providing drivers with a recognizable boundary they can easily avoid. The idea is to allow riders to take safety into their own hands, rather than leaving it to the city.

Superb Idea: Bike Lane That Travels With You (via Dvice)

Casemodder Sheyr produced this stunning Castle Wolfenstein-themed PC, called the FuG-01/ET. It features a field phone, bullet-holes (!), and has a matching keyboard and mouse. Bravo!

Besides the side-mounted telephone one of the most striking features on this case are the dual electric gauges. One measures amperage, the other core voltages. This can be implementing by simply buying some cheap multimeters that use a needle, mounting them into the case and attaching their leads to the system's power inputs.

As with many of the case mods I've covered the modder has once again taken the time to "distress" the paint job and give it a used look. This can be done simply by sanding the existing finish on a case, but for a great look you can apply a couple coats of slightly different colored spray paint (say, dark gray and light gray) and then sand certain areas to reveal the layers. The bullet holes are a great addition, it really lends to the feel of the unit.

I realize the "distressed paint" theme has shown up in several of my Best PC Mod picks... I guess it's because Make asked me to pick out the mods I personally found interesting, not necessarily the most complex or fancy. In my online journeys I've seen plenty of awesome mods, many award-winning, but to be honest if I didn't find them visually appealing I passed them over for this series.

Benheck's PC Mod Pick of the Day - Wolfenstein PC! (via Wonderland)

The British food watchdog is asking fast-food restaurants to add calorie-counts to their menus -- and want to adopt a set of "traffic light" labels that indicate dangerously high levels of salt, fat, sugar (or, presumably, eyeball-gnawing maggots, see post below). Pizza Hut is in.

Men in Britain now get a quarter of their food energy intake outside the home, while women get 21%. A number of chains, including KFC, Starbucks and McDonald's, already offer nutritional information on websites or leaflets, but now the catering industry will be expected to go far further. Officials at the agency hinted that if the calorie counting was a success, the drive for information could see an extension of the traffic light scheme, which applies to food sold in stores for home cooking and consumption. Red labels suggest levels of salt, sugar or fats are too high, amber shows they are at medium level and green at a low level. The calorie counting might also reduce portion sizes.

Food watchdog puts calorie count on the takeaway menu

Casu marzu is an illegal Sardinian cheese that is served riddled with writhing maggots that try to jump into your eyeballs as you eat it.

Casu marzu is considered toxic when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is eaten. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine.[6][7] Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by local Sardinians.[1] Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[5][8] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes.[3] Those who do not wish to eat live maggots place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.[9]

Casu marzu (via William Gibson)

(Image: Snob food.jpg, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo in the Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by Shardan)

More on US Airways 1549, the plane that water-landed in the Hudson river in New York -- the first photo from the scene was this stunning image from Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida, who put the photo in his Twitter feed as his ferry steamed toward the rafts to pick up the passengers. What a fantastic, iconic shot.

And Kottke has a fantastic roundup of amateur reporter coverage of the crash, everything from nautical charts and flight-path mashups to learned discussions of the effect of birds on plane-engines.

There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy. (via Consumerist)

The Female Mechanics calendar showcases 12 woman mechanics working hard at challenging, technical jobs, looking competent, happy and awesome. Keith calls it a "21st century Rosie the Riveter calendar," and says, "I bought a copies for my daughters." Fantastic.

2009 Female Mechanics Calendar (Thanks, Keith!)

When markets fall, a young stock trader's thoughts turn to water purification tablets and meat gel. Here's a snip from a feature in New York Magazine about freaked-out workers on Wall Street who gazed into the abyss with a closer view than the rest of us, and made survival plans:

In his book Wealth, War, published last year, former Morgan Stanley chief global strategist Barton Biggs advised people to prepare for the possibility of a total breakdown of civil society. A senior analyst whose reports are read at hedge funds all over the city wrote just before Christmas that some of his clients are “so bearish they’ve purchased firearms and safes and are stocking their pantries with soups and canned foods.” This fear is very much reflected in the market—prices of corporate bonds have been so beaten down at various points that they suggest a higher default rate than during the Great Depression. Meanwhile, while the overall gold market has fluctuated, the premium for quarter-ounce gold coins—meaning the difference between the price for gold you can hold in your hand and that for “paper gold,” such as exchange-traded funds—rose to an all-time high of 20 percent. “Gold is transportable, it’s 100 percent liquid, and it’s perfectly divisible in the context of ounces, bars, or coins,” says the head of a California research firm who keeps a supply of it, along with food, water, and guns, on hand. “And most important, there’s no counterparty”—i.e., it’s an investment beholden to no one, and perhaps one of the few assets that will retain value if the financial system collapses.

While it may look like these Wall Streeters are betting on such a collapse, their embrace of survivalism is an outgrowth of their professional habits of mind: Having observed the economy’s shaky high-wire act from their ringside seats, they are trying to manage their risk and “hedge” against a potential fall. “It’s like insurance,” says an investor who has stockpiled MREs and a hand-cranked radio. “And by the time you need it, it’s way too late.” Leave it for others to weep for the collapse of the social order. These guys would prefer to be in a high-speed boat or ex-military vehicle, heading off toward their fully provisioned compounds in pursuit of the ultimate goal: to win the chaos.

What's Making Hedge-Funders Paranoid (NY Mag)

Image: Here is what an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) looks like when you are ready to eat it. The Flickr user who shot and uploaded this, Adam Henning, says "This is Chicken with Salsa, one of the better (yes, I said better) MREs that they Army makes."

Current contributor Zouheir Alnajjar lives in Gaza, and he produced this video segment about a group of young men identified as "Palestinian militants who make - and set off - homemade rockets headed for Israel." The video includes details on how chemical compounds in these homemade weapons are purportedly isolated from readily available, free materials, such as animal waste. This was filmed before the recent attacks that lead to the current combat. Also, the rocket fails in the end, so whoever these would-be killers are, it looks like they're n00bs.

Snip from video description:

For years Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas have fired these homemade rockets into Israeli towns and settlements as a means of resistance against the IDF and Israeli occupation or embargoes. Thousands of rockets have fallen on Israel and over a dozen have been killed. Collective Journalism, Current's citizen journalism program, works by combining perspectives from around the world to create a picture of the world we live in.

Gaza Rockets (Current.com, thanks Brent Marcus)

Update: I should add that I wondered while I was watching this how one might go about factchecking this video's contents. Some BB commenters weighing in on the thread here questioned whether the video might have been staged, or the science involved might be inaccurate. I'm not saying I believe this to be the case, just noting the questions asked. Any weapons experts or pyro/explosive/chem hobbyists care to weigh in? Can you really make deadly weapons that travel long-distance (15 miles or more) out of horseshit and sugar? I also welcome comments from folks at Current, or the filmmaker, who'd like to address the sources and HOWTO involved. And speaking as a video producer, I have to say -- the video is fascinating and upsetting, but I felt like the use of background music in this piece distracted. I would have edited differently. Trip-hop and violins were a little much in this context, when the footage was so compelling on its own.

Update 2: Andrew from Current weighs in. I didn't doubt the sincerity of the video producer here, but I think it's good to see people asking appropriately skeptical questions about science and sources with news coverage like this, and coming up with answers.

Today on Offworld we saw two Resident Evil revivals with both an Umbrella Umbrella and a mod team's attempt to recreate the whole of Raccoon City inside Valve's Left 4 Dead. We also saw a new iPhone game/app that lets you solve or incite a lover's quarrel musically, and pondered Minotaur China Shop creator Flashbang's newest game, based on its rhythmic-squid inspiration.

Elsewhere we banked with Space Invaders, saw the Dude-a-Day dude abiding with games related dudes, picked our way through a fantastic set of 8-bit inspired pixel fonts, and saw how Guitar Hero 1.0 would have fared in the text-adventure era.

Finally, we saw Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright's Spore honored by none other than the Jim Henson Company, listened to an unofficial but officially sanctioned Fallout 3 soundtrack, and got early word that Leonard Nimoy-voiced Dreamcast sim Seaman might be hitting the DS, as its iPhone related spin-off gets rejected by Apple.

Above, "A Moment of Silence," a short video art piece -- and paper art, red ink on calligraphy stock -- about the conflict in Gaza. Calligraphy and video by Flickr user Yaronimus.

Judging from the very high amount of discussion traffic in Gaza-related posts from last week, our audience still has a lot to say about what's happening in the current conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas, in Gaza. Here are a few quick news items I've been reading today, and space for an open discussion. As always, with topics like this that tend to draw very passionate responses: please, keep it civil and respectful. The Boing Boing community includes friends and family in Israel, and friends and family in Gaza.

* The guys at Wired's Danger Room blog have been posting very astute analysis of recent events, including the use of phosphorus bombs *by both sides*, and impact on civilians.

* Danger Room also has a much-updated post up about today's attack by Israeli forces on a United Nations compound in Gaza. Israel's defense minister has apologized, describing the incident as a "grave mistake." Here's a related report in the NYT.

* Daoud Kuttab, a forward-thinking and peace-minded Palestinian journalist, has the distinction of having been arrested by both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in the past. I tend to think that when a reporter's work upsets officials on both sides in a conflict, he's probably doing something right. Kuttab has a post up today about the independent radio station he co-founded turning to a "citizen journalist" model during the current crisis. The short version: there weren't enough reporters to cover all of the action, including protests in Amman, so they turned to listeners in the streets -- including taxicab drivers. Read: Jordan Radio Goes Citizen Reporter.

Previously on Boing Boing:

* News from a Red Cross Worker In Gaza

* Gaza Attacks: Two Related Reactions, in Second Life and Twitter

* Global Voices' coverage of Gaza Strip Bombings (and how to keep the coverage alive)

* Al Jazeera Releases Gaza Video Archive Under Creative Commons License

* Israel Invades Gaza: Online coverage, "citizen reporter" resources.

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

Just for the record, yesterday's post will be the last thing I say in public about aviation safety. Thankfully, early reports on the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 this afternoon into the Hudson River suggest that -- amazingly -- no fatalities occurred, thanks to what sound like a set of truly extraordinary snap decisions by the pilots, and a perfect water landing. But clearly I am done tempting fate on this issue.

I own quite a few books about the art of Frank Frazetta, but Rough Work just might be my favorite. It's such a treat to see pages from his sketchbooks, as well as roughs of his most famous illustrations. For some reason, I usually like an artist's sketches for paintings more than the paintings themselves. They are looser, and in Frazetta's case, brimming with vitality.

Frazetta also knew his roughs were often better, and he eventually started submitting roughs to his clients (paperback book publishers, and Creepy and Eerie) as finals.

From the forward, written by Arnie Fenner, There's this quote from illustator Roy Krenkel, who shared a studio with Frazetta:

At first we did roughs on everything and got them approved. Often the roughs were superior to the finished art. The roughs had more charm, more color, more everything. Then, finally, I gave up doing the roughs altogether. Frank would say, ‘The hell with roughing this thing, that’s doing it twice! You know I can do it. They’ll take the final painting and like it - the hell with the rough!’ And it worked.

Here are some sample pages (click for big):

Frank Frazetta: Rough Work

I got a kick out of these phony audiophile products. They are almost, but not quite, as silly as genuine audiophile products. Six exciting new Hi-Fi products from the Intelligent Design Team at Elemental Voice!

Next week, CNBC will air a special TV program called Marijuana Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry. To hype the show, CNBC.com invited High Times magazine's "cultivation editor" "Danny Danko" to put together a slideshow of high-grade medical marijuana strains and their prices. True pot porn. Seen above, Super Silver Haze, which apparently 'is renowned for stimulating properties and is sometimes referred to as 'ampheta-weed.'" A Gallery of Medical Marijuana (via Dose Nation)

When I first saw a television commercial for Bumpits (Big Happie Hair!), I thought it was a parody. It isn't. (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!)

Sunday's "Straight Table" is made out of eight industrial levels, with a glass top -- perfect for fulfilling your compulsive need to get the table exactly level. Lovely stuff -- pity the website's a stupid unlinkable Flash blob.

Stupid unlinkable Flash site (via Cribcandy)

Eric Loyer's "Rube & Lullaby" is an interactive narrative for the iPhone. It's billed as a "story you can play like a musical instrument." Brandon has more info and a video demo over at Boing Boing Offworld. Ruben & Lullaby, an iPhone love story

Yesterday, I posted about Thomas Wold's fantastic mushroom coffee table. Turns out Thomas has an exhibition of new installations opening tomorrow evening, January 16, at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco. Thomas posted photos of some of the delightful pieces from the show, titled "Come Together," on his blog. Seen here is "Boy's Room." Of this piece, Thomas writes, "the palette came about from my liking of classic interior decorating images from the 1950's and 60's, the over decorating of rooms with all matching parts."
Thomas Wold's "Come Together"

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

Ever since the heady days of the pre-scream Howard Dean campaign, a lot of us who are interested in decentralized systems and emergent behavior have wondered when politicians would start to use new collaborative technology to do something other than organize rallies and raise money. Sure, it was exciting to see Web 2.0 concepts transform political campaigns, but wouldn't it be even more exciting to see them transform the way we govern?

So it's cool to see on the always-interesting Change.gov site the newly released Citizen's Briefing Book, which is effectively a Slashdot/Plastic/Digg take on public policy. (The underlying technology is Salesforce.com's Ideas product.) Here's the description on the site:

Share your ideas on any issue facing the new administration, then rate or comment on other ideas. The best rated ideas will rise to the top -- and be gathered into a Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama after he is sworn in.

Right now, the top three most popular proposals are: 1) Ending Marijuana Prohibition, 2) Bullet Trains and Light Rail, and 3) An End To Government Sponsored School Abstinence Programs. In other words, what the people want are stoned kids having sex on bullet trains. Sounds about right to me!

Bonnie sez,

Yes, a Star Wars telegraph. Some unproduced toy concepts cause fans and collectors to react "Why didn't Kenner make that back in the day?". Not so much on this one. Kenner's "Concept 2000" telegraph toy was branded with a Star Wars logo in the corner panel to mix the hit film with "high-tech" gadgetry for kids' product concepts. The color scheme could easily be representative of the Empire, but the toy definitely says "A long time ago...". Of course, telegraphs have not been high technology since the early part of the 19th century, yet kids wireless telegraph toys remained popular through the 1970s until they began getting replaced by wireless voice-transmitting walkie talkies.

Star Wars Telegraph (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Glyn sez, "Harriet Harman MP plans to use a special parliamentary order that can become law within 24 hours after being debated by MPs and peers next week. It will exempt details of all MPs' and peers' expenses from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, and nullify all past requests by journalists and campaigners to get them published."

Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, is to use a special parliamentary order that can become law within 24 hours after being debated by MPs and peers next week.

It comes just as MPs were about to be forced, following a victory by campaigners at an information tribunal, to publish 1.2m expenses receipts, covering the period between 2005 and 2008.

In return the government is to increase the number of published categories, such as travel and accomodation, which detail where MPs used their expenses.

Government exempts MPs' expenses from freedom of information (Thanks, Glyn!)

The "White House of Hippiedom" was a legendary Marin County, California mansion that THe Chose Family commune called home in the 1960s. (A Grateful Dead album cover photo was shot outside the house.) In 1969, the house burned to the ground, exposing a pre-1834 Adobe home. Excavation of the site began in 1997 but the discovery of asbestos led to the stuff being put into barrels and stored. Now, researchers from the California Department of Parks and Recreation, aided by hazmat crews, are going through the barrels and finding a mish-mash of interesting pioneer artifacts and hippie detritus. From the San Francisco Chronicle (snip of photo by Kim Jomenich/The Chronicle):

The artifacts from the Age of Aquarius were laid out Tuesday on a plastic sheet in an old barn in Marin County's Olompali State Historic Park.

There, stiff and rumpled from being in storage so long, was a leather jacket with a rainbow colored flower motif, some old boots, dozens of melted records, burned-out speakers, charred beads, monopoly pieces, soot-covered reel-to-reel tapes, pieces of a porcelain toilet and beer cans - lots of beer cans...

No bongs have been found...

"Adobe home found under Marin hippie commune"

Seen here is a bass larvae with two heads. Thousands of such mutated animals were spawned at a fish farm in northern Australia likely due to contaminated water. Other animals at the Noosa River hatchery were also born with birth defects and death rates were abnormally high. From AFP:

"I have been working in aquaculture for 10 years and this is the first time I have ever seen anything like it," (said Matt Landos, an aquatic animal specialist and member of the Australian College of Veterinarian Scientists.)

Tests had excluded the presence of a virus or bacteria, leading Landos to suspect that pesticides from a neighbouring macadamia nut farm were to blame...

The Queensland state government said tests gave no indication that the macadamia farm was using the chemicals against the manufacturers' instructions.

"Contamination fears over two-headed Australian fish"

Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing Gadgets introduces this Boing Boing video review of the open-source video content manager Boxee:

Boxee is one of the more fool-proof ways to get stuff like Netflix, Hulu, Comedy Central and even network television to your computer: here's a live demo given to BBG from the loud and booze-soaked floor of CES Unveiled. You can also download it in MP4 format.

Join the discussion for this video at Boing Boing Gadgets.

About this Boing Boing video episode, Joel Johnson at Boing Boing Gadgets explains:

One of the first thing we actually put our hands on at CES this year was a prototype sign language translation device from Krown Manufacturing called..."The Sign Language Translator". It's essentially just a dictionary that links to videos of man signing words and letters on screen. Basic in execution, perhaps, but also potentially quite handy for teaching yourself how to sign. (I have a couple of deaf friends who can read lips or, you know, words written on paper or typed into a Sidekick.) Still: neat. Here's a direct MP4 download if you'd prefer that version.

Join the discussion around this video at Boing Boing Gadgets.