Rick Lieder, the talented sf/f artist whose backyard nature photographs have stunned me for years, has released a new book of photos of small birds on the wing, shot in his own backyard in south Michigan. Rick doesn't use fancy fast film or other high-tech treats -- instead, he just uses patience and care to capture these remarkable images. I just got a copy from Rick (I'm at a science fiction convention outside of Detroit) and discovered a lovely bonus: a short introduction by Kathe Koja, the fantastic writer, who is married to Rick.

Aerial acrobats

Could there be a more perfect 1951 Mechanics Illustrated article than "Helicopters for Everyone," which promised a vehicle thus, "The third model has corrected some of the above mentioned faults. The engine now is slung under the seat directly beneath the center of gravity. This warms the pilot in cold air and improves the machine’s balance. The model at present is being tested. There still remains, however, the sense of insecurity—of riding a flying swivel chair with no visible means of support. Pentecost and his associates are perfectly well aware of this natural reaction and have planned a weatherproof enclosure for the machine."

Helicopters for Everybody (Jan, 1951)

Greg Walton, who is Editor of The Infowar Monitor, says:

Kyrgyzstan is under a massive denial of service attack.

Last week IWMP received a phone call from a colleague in Central Asia. Apparently, Kyrgyzstan is under a massive denial of service attack. Three of four ISPs have been taken down, and their upstream providers in Russia, and Kazakhstan are refusing to pass traffic because of the scale of the attacks. At this stage, the motivation appears to be political, and follows several political/mass media websites which have been blocked in the past two weeks by Kyrgyz authorities. The suspicion is that the current DOS attacks are commercial -- commissioned and similar to those we reported back in 2005.

Link to report.

Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets:

• A woman with uncanny valley fingers showed off the phone watch of tomorrow.

• A speedboat in the shape of a guitar went on sale.

• The Phantom of the Opera advertised a chess set.

• Knight Rider could not afford an iPhone.

• John loved the look of Jolicloud, a Linux distro for netbooks.

• Pastel colors came back to rack-mounted synthesizers.

• Spectacles went USB.

• We discovered that laser-etching a Moleskine can kill you.

• Someone invented the better ice tray.

• We discovered the most adorable C-3P0 ever.

• Palm responds to Apple's veiled lawsuit threats: "Bring it."

• Roadside LED signs were easily hacked to warn about upcoming zombie outbreak zones.

• We all revealed our hearts and souls by starting a gallery of our laptop sticker art.

And much more besides!

Link

Toronto author and free software activist Robert Boyczuk's short story collection, "Horror Story and Other Horror Stories" has finally been published. Quill and Quire reviewed the 19-story collection, crediting Bob with "having a real knack for creepy, Twilight Zone-style atmospherics." The whole manuscript's up for free CC download as well, natch.

Horror Story and Other Horror Stories press release (Thanks, Brett!)

Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek specializes in works made from reclaimed wood, like this lovely cupboard. He does floors, too!

Piet Hein Eek (via Cribcandy)

(NSFW, contains nudity and sexual references) Goddamn, Black Dynamite looks good. It's hard to imagine this movie not being awesome, if it's anywhere close to what the trailer promises in glorious "anamorphic duovision." Every second of the preview looks great. Movie just sold for $2MM at Sundance, to the jive motherfuckers at Sony. Worth its weight in CIA ghetto smack. This analysis of the essential elements of blaxploitation by the filmmakers is ROFL-arious:

# Stick it to The Man: Black paranoia is usually right in there. There's usually this conspiratorial thing that The Man is plotting your doom. There's a lot of real blaxploitation movies that involve a plot to exterminate black people. It's a constant storyline. In these movies, white people spend 95% of their time coming up with plots against black people.

# White people by the pool: Every one of those ['70s blaxploitation flicks] depicted white people beside a swimming pool. We actually had that scene, but we cut it. A lot of times they were older character actors.

# The exploding car off a cliff: Cars always exploded for no reason.

# Bad physics: When somebody got shot, they would often fall the wrong direction.

# Random theater actors: You had really terrible actors alongside these theater actors trying to be drug dealers, but they'd over-enunciate everything.

(Thanks, Coop!)

ShareBrained Technology, makers of the wild and wooly Chronulator clock kit, have released a new version of their product. Chronulator is an electronics kit that lets you build arbitrarily weird electronic clocks, from TokyoFlash-style digital numbers to whacky analogue ones that use dials, wheels or other readouts to display the time. John Park from Make tested the kit by building this handsom little fella inside a Romeo and Julieta cigar box.

Chronulieta cigar box clock

On Talking Points Memo, Dan Gillmor makes some stinging points about the media's complicity in manufacturing the financial crisis by unquestioningly promoting reckless bubble spending while pooh-poohing any idea that the bill would come due some day:

When we can predict an inevitable calamity if we continue along the current path, we owe it to the public to do everything we can to encourage a change in that destructive behavior.

In practice, this means activism. It means relentless campaigning to point out what's going wrong, and demanding corrective action from those who can do something about it.

So in Florida, Arizona and California, among other epicenters of the housing bubble, newspapers might have told their readers -- including governmental officials -- the difficult truth. They could have explained, again and again, that the housing bubble would inevitably lead, at least locally, to personal financial disaster for many in their regions, not to mention fiscal woes for local and state governments. How many should have done this, given the media's at least partial reliance on advertising from those who profited from the bubbles? Any that cared to do their jobs.

Some plain-as-day woes don't present any financial conflicts. For example, the threat to New Orleans from hurricane-created flooding was clear long before Katrina, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune did run a series of articles warning of what might happen years before the hurricane struck. What it didn't do was follow up in the relentless kind of way that might have spurred local, state and federal action to prevent or mitigate the inevitable disaster.

The Media's Role In The Financial Crisis

Today on Offworld we saw a pair of pairs of retro-game inspired footwear, possibly the reigning champ of game-cakes, as these are ones you can actually play, explored the possibility that Taito may be returning to the DS for more retro-futuristic Space Invaders love, and saw more of Sega's upcoming Wii title that parodies retro gaming's finest.

We also held a brief service for the death of legendary design house The Designers Republic, best known in the games sphere for their work defining the visual identity of the Wipeout series, saw fantastic new media from Fez creators Polytron on the opening of their new website, and saw the first and likely only set of lesbian artificial intelligence erotica we'll ever see, with a forbidden romance between Portal's GlaDOS and System Shock's Shodan.

Finally, we saw one man's attempt to bring The Wrestler's Randy 'The Ram' Robinson forward from his on-screen 8-bit roots to full next-gen glory, and settled on a game for this weekend's community play: the open beta of London indie Beatnik Games' Plain Sight, a raucous and light-hearted robot arena battle that takes the best bits of Mario Galaxy's spherical worlds and combines it with brutal aerial acrobatics.

Jason Bradbury says:

I build stuff (DIY Hoverboard, Bluetooth Phone Glove, HUD for my car). I play too many video games. I own robots. And I blog and socially network my socks off! But is there a hero that reflects all that? This was the question that started my year-long journey into becoming a children’s fiction writer. The result: Dot Robot, a techno-thriller for the dis-connected generation.

Secret codes, billionaire dot-comers, flying robots, crazy-cool gadgets and hardware overclocked to within an inch of its life. Into this digital mix comes a new kind of hero. A geeks’ geek: Jackson Farley. Jackson is a young mathematics genius and computer gaming virtuoso from Peckham, London. He is joined by American Brooke English, an MIT grad who can build just about anything and the Japanese Kojima twins, two nine-year olds who have earned enough through professional gaming to have identical Ferraris and their own private road to drive them on.

Can Jackson rise to the challenge? Is he boy-enough to lead a band of intrepid roboteers into battle against some seriously malevolent (cool) dot robots? Or will he and his kooky gang of misfits be consumed by the evil that surrounds them?

And yes, given my science fiction fan-boy status, the first thing I did when I got a publishing deal (there’s a trilogy on the way from Puffin) is ask for some money to get one of the dot robots from the book made! See Brooke’s creation, Punk made real by my friend and model maker Mike Strick.

Irwin says:

Jim Flora Art LLC kicks off 2009 with a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1947 Jim Flora Columbia Records album cover, Kid Ory and His Creole Jazz Band.

Kid Ory and His Creole Jazz Band was released in 1947 as a 78 rpm four-disc set, as part of Columbia's Hot Jazz series. Trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory (1886-1973) was a legendary pioneer in the development of New Orleans jazz stylings of the early 20th century. As a bandleader he hired a number of players who later achieved great prominence, including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and King Oliver.

Does the Flora caricature on the cover resemble Ory? No way. "I could never do likeness," Flora once admitted. The cover figure looks like … something Jim Flora would do.

Only twenty (20) prints of Kid Ory were produced for this edition. Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes.

Produced by Flora archivist Barbara Economon, the oversized print (larger then the album cover) was meticulously and painstakingly crafted from a mint-condition artist's proof sheet of the Ory cover in the Flora collection. It is the seventh iconic Flora cover to be issued as a limited edition fine art print.

Fine art print of a 1947 Jim Flora Columbia Records album cover, Kid Ory and His Creole Jazz Band: $200

Norman Rockwell is considered by many to be the Great American illustrator. He's pretty great, but I would give the title to another Norman -- Norman Saunders (1907 - 1989) -- because he set the standard for so many different genre illustrations over the decades that it's hard to believe one person could do so much.

A new coffee table art book from the Illustrated Press about Norman Saunders (written by his son David Saunders) just came out and I've been devouring its 368 technicolor pages, filled with examples of his work from the 1920s to the 1980s. The illustrations are arranged chronologically, and the book feels like a history of popular print media. Saunders was a prominent illustrator for Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Modern Mechanics, pulp detective, western, war, and science fiction magazines, men's adventure magazines, and bubblegum cards and stickers, including Wacky Packages and Mars Attacks. Anyone interested in 20th century magazine illustration pretty much has to have this book in his or her library.

NORMAN SAUNDERS (1907–1989) was the legendary illustrator of Mars Attacks, Wacky Packages, Batman, Pre-Code Comics, Men’s Adventure, Paperbacks, Pulp Magazines, and Sci-Fi. His unique artistic vision influenced the visual language of American pop culture throughout a century of changing fashions, and continues to inspire today’s important visionaries. Savvy collectors have long dreamt of a book on the entire lifework of Norman Saunders, and that dream has finally come true with the world’s first book to present his finest paintings in radiant reproductions, to savor the extraordinary artistry behind so many iconic images, familiar from timeworn vintage collectibles.

The artist’s son has written an insightful biography, seasoned with quotes from the artist and his associates, chronicling the frontier childhood and training of an illustrator who rose to the top of his profession, and then spent WWII in China painting travel sketches. When Saunders defied the corporate forces of conformity during McCarthyism he was relegated to underground world of subculture publishing, where he continued his remarkable career by painting countless icons for Pre-Code Comics, Men’s Adventure magazines and Bubble Gum Trading Cards, until his happy rediscovery by fandom in his twilight years.

This is the consummate reference book on the entire lifework of Norman Saunders, with over 880 illustrations, of which more than 300 are from original art, including 30 working drawings, and 30 reference photos as well as 30 historic family photos, and checklists of all published works. 368 pages, 9”x12”, full-color, hardbound with dust jacket.

Norman Saunders

Susannah Breslin sends in this clip, and says even she has no idea what this so-called "sexpert" on Fox News is implying. Whatever it is, it's TMI.

Update: Our well-lubed commenters are probably correct in guessing that the Fox analyst [snort] means "making happy-fun terrorist fist-jabs in the air" when she says "fisting." This just makes it funnier.

Here's a video of Charlene Chua creating an illustration using Adobe Illustrator. (via Drawn!)

Burbia has photos of this sign someone put on their front porch. It says "Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses & our neighbor Jerry NOT WELCOME."

Read the fine print here.

Pioneering environmentalist and author James Lovelock, most famous for proposing the Gaia hypothesis that the Earth is a giant superorganism, is publishing a new book, titled The Vanishing Face of Gaia. It's about... you guessed it... climate change. This year, Lovelock turns 90 and will take his first trip into space. New Scientist had a chat with him about what he considers to be our last chance to deal with climate change. From New Scientist:

So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.

"James Lovelock: One last chance to save mankind" (New Scientist), Pre-order "The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning" (Amazon)

Persuasive Games reimagined their 2006 TSA-mocking "news game" Airport Security for the iPhone. From Boing Boing Offworld (where you can also comment!):

Billing itself now as "the first mobile game for business travelers," Jetset (as it's now known) uses the iPhone's location-awareness to link fliers to whichever airport they're currently in to unlock special local souvenirs (your guess as to which have to be in to unlock the 'poutine' and 'Greek coffee-cup'), which can then be sent to friends via its interconnected Facebook app.

"Persuasive Games' experimental Jetset"

Mark Ryden will be signing copies of his new art book The Tree Show at the MOCA store in Los Angeles on Jan 31st (3-5pm).

Folks in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma are disturbed by an intense blasting sound and window-shaking tremors that apparently have been occurring at noon every day this week. Hundreds of people have called the sheriff's office to complain. The source of the rumble remains a mystery. From KHBS:

Ron Lockhart, the Sequoyah County Sheriff, said the department has checked with every mining company in the county but none have reported any blasting....

The U.S. Geological Survey has reported activity in Sequoyah County but does not believe it to be seismic.

Mysterious Rumble Vexes Sequoyah County (via Fortean Times)

South Carolina Senator Robert Ford is attempting to outlaw profanity. Under his bill, the penalty for lewd language would be up to 5 years in prison and/or $5000 in fines. From WCBD:

Which words are exactly considered profane is still unclear, but the bill does have a list of qualifications for profanity including words or actions that are lewd, vulgar or indecent in nature.

Sen. Robert Ford pushes to outlaw profanity (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

WATCH: Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here.

VIEWER WARNING: This episodes contains verbal descriptions of graphic violence. Discretion advised.

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Today's episode of Boing Boing video is an excerpt from OUTLAWED, a film produced by WITNESS, in partnership with more than a dozen other human rights groups around the world.

The future of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and of the men held there, has been at the top of the news this week -- President Obama has ordered the facility closed, one released detainee has now become the head of Al Qaeda in Yemen, and some around the world are calling for war crimes tribunals to be held over the torture some prisoners survived during rendition.

In this Boing Boing video episode, we are introduced to Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, an Ethiopian man in his thirties (ACLU bio and a detailed report about his case here). Mr. Mohamed survived extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S. government working with various other governments worldwide.

The story of what he endured, which included horrific sexual violence during interrogation, was painful for us to watch in the studio, when we were editing this preview piece. But all of us on the BB Video team felt like this was an incredibly important story for the world to hear, and we were grateful for the ability to draw greater attention to the story at this time.

Speaking on my own behalf here: What happens with Guantánamo and the legal process surrounding the men still held there should matter to each person who reads this blog post. The safety of our nation does not require us to abandon universally-recognized principles of human rights. Torture and disappearances do not make America more secure.

Paraphrasing what one person from WITNESS told us in email -- if more Americans realized they live in a nation where, on a street corner in the town where you live, any one of us could be picked up, pushed into an unmarked van, then moved around detention centers all over the world, tortured, without a charge or a word to your family, surely there would be more outcry.

OUTLAWED was produced around the time when the Council of Europe issued a report on the topic of extraordinary rendition and torture involving America's "War on Terror." To document why those issues matter, WITNESS created a coalition with a number of US human rights and social justice 'project partners' such as Amnesty and the ACLU to distribute the video.

Mr. Mohamed is still being held at Guantánamo Bay.

After the jump, a note with which we updated this BB video episode. You can watch the film in entirety at links provided here, or purchase the documentary on DVD.

(Special appreciation to Boing Boing Video producer Derek Bledsoe. Sincere thanks to Bryan Nunez, Grace Lile, and Yvette J. Alberdingk Thijm from WITNESS. Music in this episode graciously provided by Amon Tobin / Cinematic Orchestra.)

Boing Boing Video archives.

RIP, Jacques Littlefield, a legend in San Francisco machine art culture. Littlefield had the world's largest private collection of restored tanks and other military vehicles on his ranch in Portola Valley, California. The founder of the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation passed away earlier this month at the age of 59. (For more about Littlefield, see this 2003 article in the New York Times. Full photo above and many more viewable at Neil Mishalove's site.) By all accounts, Littlefield was always delighted to share his unusual hobby with the public. BB pal Karen Marcelo of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) emailed me:

I was lucky enough to get a tour with a bunch of other SRL people in the 90s. amazing collection. he had 2 scuds at the time. we got to see this bridge building tank that he turned on for us! also anti-aircraft tanks with matching satellite truck, tanks from russia, britain, us, etc. he even has a huge pipe organ and built a separate earthquake proof building to house it and has a miniature steam train running thru his property that we got to ride.

Military Vehicle Technology Foundation

Devin Crane, lead animator on such films as Kung Fu Panda, Shrek 2 and 3, and Iron Giant, has a show of gorgeous new paintings opening tomorrow, January 24, at Corey Helford Gallery in Santa Monica, California. Seen above, "The Journey Is Long Without Her" (acrylic on panel, 25" x 15"). Crane's work will be exhibited alongside paintings by internationally-known tattoo artist Joey Remmers. All of the art is viewable online at the links below (username: preview, password: preview27).

Devin Crane preview
Joey Remmers preview

( Update: De-typo'd image above, thanks Jess!) The guy who created those Death and Taxes posters has created a new gem: "389 YEARS AGO." Jess Bachman explains, "It's not for the policy wonks but I think people will love it. Probably the only thing with Obama's name on it that you might keep around after he is out of office. Anyways, if black history is your thing, or even if it's not, you can't deny the progress we have ALL made." They're $35 while the first printing lasts, plus S/H.

vapour brothers (their "Radiohead TV" piece for the world's best band, Radiohead, is shown above)
pleix
copy goes here
sticks
gym class
timmy's wish
they are made of meat
pencilface
the bunny boy

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Glyn sez, "Hidden in the new Coroners and Justice Bill is one clause (cl.152) amending the Data Protection Act. It would allow ministers to make 'Information Sharing Orders', that can alter any Act of Parliament and cancel all rules of confidentiality in order to use information obtained for one purpose to be used for another."

"This single clause is as grave a threat to privacy as the entire ID Scheme. Combine it with the index to your life formed by the planned National Identity Register and everything recorded about you anywhere could be accessible to any official body. If Information Sharing Orders come to pass, they could (for example) immediately be used to suck up material such as tax records or electoral registers to build an early version of the National Identity Register. But the powers apply to any information, not just official information. They would permit data trafficking between government agencies and private companies - your medical records are firmly in their sights - and even with foreign governments."

We urge you to write to your MP straight away via http://www.WriteToThem.com - don't wait. The Bill is being rushed through Parliament, even as we write. It contains a number of controversial provisions, but to the casual reader appears mainly to be about reforming inquests and sentencing.

As it progresses, NO2ID will be publishing more information but it is crucial that every MP realises how dangerous the information sharing clauses in the Coroners and Justice Bill really are. This will only happen if YOU tell them.

*In your own words*, please ask your MP to read Part 8 (clauses 151 - 154) of the Coroners and Justice Bill, and to oppose the massive enabling powers in the "Information sharing" clause. The Bill is due its Second Reading in the Commons on 26th January 2009.

Request them to demand the clause be given proper Parliamentary scrutiny. This is something that will affect every single one of their constituents, unlike the rest of the Bill. There is a grave danger that the government will set a timetable that will cut off debate before these proposals - which are at the end of the Bill - are discussed.

+ A CONCEALED ASSAULT ON PRIVACY + (Thanks, Glyn!)

Mashable reports on Monty Python's YouTube channel:

“We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”

And you know what? Despite the entertainment industry’s constant cries about how bad they’re doing, it works. As we wrote yesterday, Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to No. 2 on Amazon’s Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.

Can Free Content Boost Your Sales? Yes, It Can (via Michael Geist)

Today on Offworld, we saw Spore expanding with two new PC games as well as onto the Wii and again on the DS, saw Noby Noby Boy get a firm post-Valentine's date, and wondered if Digital Chocolate's excellent one-button mobile game Tower Bloxx might be moving to the iPhone.

On an artier front, we looked into the soul of an Atari 2600 and what we saw was very similar to late artist Jeremy Blake's digital art output, saw the most sinister(ly cute?) art-game to ever spring from Unreal Tournament, and saw fantastic pixel-chic fineries.

One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson also told us about how Nippon Ichi's strategy RPG Disgaea was "a quest for numerical orgasm," vinyl toy designer Touma turned Animal Crossing into razor-toothed evil, a new PC demo for Puzzle Quest sequel Galactrix sucked half our day away, and finally, Persuasive Games' brilliantly scathing TSA social parody game Airport Security moved to the iPhone and ended up even smarter for it.

(Click images for big)

Daniel Carter, creative director of MAKE, says:

A good old Cajun friend of mine, nicknamed Pecanhead, sent Angelica and me a "World Famous Mardi Gras King Cake" direct from New Orleans this week. It arrived today, and it is magnificently strange, delicious, colorful and bizarre. It tastes like a giant cinnamon roll with bavarian cream filling and sugary frosting and sprinkles on top. Apparently, you can order all sorts of fillings.

Here's the official inventory: A 2-pound gourmet King Cake with bavarian cream filling, a Mardi Gras can insulator, Mardi Gras throw beads, two tiny babies (a.k.a. Baby Jesus, this being a cake celebrating "King's Day," also referred to as The Epiphany) and some Mardi Gras doubloons.

One of the babies is supposed to be hidden inside the oval cake, and whoever gets the baby Jesus is obligated to bring a king cake to the next party. We didn't know that part, so instead we have him displayed on top of our cake.

Order your own delicious and festive cake here.

.

On Offworld, our Brandon's spotted some of the best damned retrogamer shirts I've ever seen. Woah:

Found via a trip through online fashion outlet Karma Loop, this set of games-brut Ts and hoodies from Imperial Junkie and Kiser doing Space Invaders and Galaga chic.

From L to R: The Spaced Invaders Tee, The Galaga Junkie Tee, The Space Junkie Hoodie, The Space Invaders Tee.

Imperial Junkie & Kiser: pixel fashionistas, Discuss this on Boing Boing Offworld

Great garage mod punk from The Easybeats (1966). According to Frank at Save vs. Death, "George Young, the rhythm guitar player, is the older brother of Angus and Malcom Young and produced the first six AC/DC records. How's that for an awesome pedigree?" There's a family resemblance for sure!

(If you like this kind of music, you should listen to Little Steven's Underground Garage on Sirius, which plays the greatest songs from the 60 years of rock and roll. Drew Carey has a DJ spot a couple of times a month, too! You can listen to the show from the website, too.)

It probably didn't work worth a damn. (Via How to Disappear Completely)

I enjoyed this long essay by Kevin Kelly about how "all goods and services are candidates for rental, sharing, and the social commons." He raises a lot of interesting points. Here's one:

Very likely, in the near future, I won't "own" any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won't buy – as in make a decision to own -- any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won't own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to "own" it. I can consume a movie, music or book without having to decide or follow up on ownership.

For many people this type of instant universal access is better than owning. No responsibility of care, backing up, sorting, cataloging, cleaning, or storage. As they gain in public accessibility, books, music and movies are headed to become social goods even though they might not be paid by taxes. It's not hard to imagine most other intangible goods becoming social goods as well. Games, education, and health info are also headed in that direction.

Better Than Owning, by Kevin Kelly

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, this fabulous bug-sculpture made from a sparkplug.

Spark plug bug, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

This black-light skeleton tattoo is tufneltastically great. It's invisible in normal light, but under black light, everyone gets X-ray spex.

Tattoos - UV Blacklight Ink (via Street Anatomy)

Andrew sez, "The National film Board of Canada (NFB) has opened up its vault - more than 700 films, clips and trailers are now available on the film board's new website launched today. From entertaining shorts and cartoons, to deeply moving or disturbing documentaries - they're all there for free, with more being added every week."

Hell yes. This is how public money should be spent. And yes, they have The Big Snit, my all-time favorite NFB short.

Films : All - NFB (Thanks, Andrew!)

Stef Magdalinski, co-founder of MOO Cards, who make the awesome little custom business cards, sez,

I'd like to say that it was in celebration of Obama's inauguration, MySociety's victory for transparency or even because of the weather. But it isn't. It's just cos we're nice, and it's January, so we'd like to offer all Boing Boing readers a free holder when they order a pack of our minicards (add a holder to your basket on your way out, and use code MOOBOING09 at the checkout)

MOO MiniCard Holder (Thanks, Stef!)

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at an inexplicable, gravitationally-defiant watch and discovered that Malia Obama uses a cute little Kodak digicam.

An inflatable gladiator set gives co-workers the option of non-lethally beating each other's brains out, and Brownlee pined for a button-cute proto-Roomba from 1985.

Apple threatened to sue Palm, kinda. A neato lamp was both a bookmark and a lighting source. Robot Insects, spark plug bugs and butterfly ornithopters.

We also discovered the history of the Mac boot-up beep and the surprising fact that Darth Vader likes to drag race. Joel pined to be a little girl on Sesame Street eating Maraschino cherries and Dr. Manhattan kicked the crap out of the Viet Cong.

Rob revisited a 1984 Mac review while Xeni linked a Casio Watch with the closing of Gitmo. And, as always, there were a couple of fun little iPhone projects.

Link

WATCH: Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here.

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Earlier this week, we aired a Boing Boing video episode in which we visited Shepard Fairey's gallery in LA, and spoke with him about the most well-known of his works, the Obama poster. That episode was shot as another artist's work was being hung on the walls: legendary punk / hiphop / skate culture photographer Glen E. Friedman. Together, Shepard and Glen were also working on a collaboration together that brings Shep's visual style together with some of Glen's most iconic images.

Today, we present the second episode from that evening of conversations. This one's all about Shepard and Glen's new collaborations together.

One of those creative collaborations involves the great DC hardcore band Bad Brains. The image below, of lead singer H.R. mid-scream at The Whisky in LA in March 1982, was shot by Glen (and appears in this book). The first punk show I ever saw was the Bad Brains live (as I mentioned in yesterday's guest DJ spot on KCRW!), and this image captures exactly what those moments of stillness in the midst of phenomenal speed and force felt like, up close. Watching H.R. perform in those early days was like watching a plane take off -- headed right towards you.

Glen's books are available here, and they're amazing.  Below, here is a short film based on his book "Recognize." The video includes every image in the book, which is available in limited edition through his website.

Special thanks to Boing Boing pal Sean Bonner, who pulled this awesome series of conversations together. I really enjoyed hearing two of our creative heroes talk about their work, and I hope you dig the video as much as we did the experience. Also, special thanks to Glen, who put up with a lot on our behalf: he'd just got off a long plane flight from NY to LA, and survived hellish Friday LA rush hour traffic, to get to the taping.

And a very special thanks to Ian MacKaye, Fugazi, and the Dischord records family for generously allowing us to use a couple of Fugazi clips (from the album Instrument) to accompany Glen's work in this piece. You guys f'n rule. Boing Boing is grateful!

Previously on Boing Boing:
* Glen E. Friedman's photo show at Shepard Fairey's gallery
* BB Video: Shepard Fairey and the Obama Poster, on Inauguration Day

Today's Very Short List reviews Henchman's Helper: a webpage filled with live video cams and weather information from around the world.

The site’s attractions include 42 live webcams from around the world, 9 constantly updated weather graphics, and a large, ominous-looking infrared satellite image of North America.

VSL reviews Henchman's Helper

This site has lots of photos and descriptions of rationing books, tokens, and coupons used in WWII. Aren't those little colored tokens cute!

During the Second World War, you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy as much sugar or butter or meat as you wanted, nor could you fill up your car with gasoline whenever you liked. All these things were rationed, which meant you were only allowed to buy a small amount (even if you could afford more). The government introduced rationing because certain things were in short supply during the war, and rationing was the only way to make sure everyone got their fair share. War ration books and tokens were issued to each American family, dictating how much gasoline, tires, sugar, meat, silk, shoes, nylon and other items any one person could buy.

World War II Rationing (Thanks, Sam!)

Here's a detail of an entertaining heavy metal band name taxonomy. The chart was made by graphic designer and comedian Doogie Horner. Full image available here. (Thanks, HC!)

Our friend Craig Yoe, an illustrator, designer and comic historian has a new book called Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.

Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster showcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics, Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after suing his publisher, DC Comics, over the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called Nights of Horror, published under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Senate. Juvenile deliquency, Dr. Fredric Wertham, and the Brooklyn Thrill Killers gang all figure into this sensational story.

The discovery of this artwork reveals the "secret identity" of this revered comics creator, and is sure to generate controversy and change the perception of the way we look at Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Jimmy Olsen forever. The book includes reproductions of these images, and an essay that provides a detailed account of the scandal and the murder trial that resulted from the publication of this racy material.

Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster

Here's my latest contribution to a series of essays by Boing Boing editors at GOOD -- a review of a "green move" service called RentAGreenBox.com, which I tried when I relocated not long ago. It priced out cheaper than cardboard boxes. The basic idea is to use materials made from 100% post-consumer waste. It was super convenient, they drop it all off, and pick it all up when you're done. Snip from my review:

They send a truck to your home with whatever number of boxes you need (they’ll help you estimate). The boxes are made from recycled plastic containers, and come in various sizes—smaller ones for heavy objects like books, larger ones for more lightweight things like clothes or bedding. The service comes with recycled packing materials, too, so you don’t have to use über-wasteful, petroleum-based stuff like bubble wrap or Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Spencer drove the (100% veggie biodiesel) truck to my home himself, and showed me around the truck and demonstrated the process in person. My dog liked him, and she liked rolling around in the “expandos” and “recocubes.”

Apart from being (surprise!) made from recycled materials, these packing materials also look attractive. The expandos are cute papercraft-oid thingies (like something Buckminster Fuller might fiddle with while bored at his desk), and we found the recocubes serve a second, sinister purpose: they’re great for tossing at whoever’s helping you move, when you’re all sore and tired and frustrated and want to blow off steam.

Read "My Ecologically Correct Move" at GOOD, and here's the comment thread, and GOOD published a bunch more iphone snapshots I took of the supplies, the process, and our cute golden retriever who thoroughly approved. Here's the website for RentAGreenBox.

Previously:
* Boing Boing posts on GOOD!
* Boing Boing on GOOD: "All the Web's A Stage"
* Good: The return of amateur science
* Boing Boing on GOOD: A Mayan Village Reacts to Obama

An internet prankster and hacker known on LJ as tongodeon says,

For the last year or two, a friend and I have been giving our friends Casio F-91w wristwatches. They are cheap, reliable, and a reason why 28 prisoners have been held in extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo. In late October I attended a rally in Reno, NV and gave an F-91w and letter to Barack Obama via a senior staffer on the national campaign team. Today Barack Obama issued an executive order closing Guantanamo. The wire photos don't show him wearing my watch, but I still feel a little vindicated today.

Here's his post about the affair, and here's a snip from his letter to President Barack Obama (OMG that feels awesome to blog for the first time):

I've been volunteering for your campaign because of this watch, the Casio model F-91w. These watches cost $7.50 in quantity. They are cheap, waterproof, and reliable. They are common throughout the developing world. And they have been listed by the Department of Defense as a reason for the continued extrajudicial detention of the 28 Guantanamo detainees listed on the following page.

In 1995, US intelligence recovered a document in Manila by Ramzi Yousef describing how to use this watch as the timing device for a bomb. Ahmed Ressam, the "millennial bomber" was captured with two Casio F91Ws. As a result, when Pakistani police and the Northern Alliance turned over alleged Taliban members to the military, their ordinary watches were identified as evidence that they were terrorists.

My five-year-old daughter's current favorite book is The Donut Chef, by Bob Staake. I'm glad she wants me to read it to her at least once a week, because I enjoy it as much as she does. It's the story of a chef who opens a donut store that becomes a big hit. But then a rival donut chef opens a store around the corner, and the two chefs compete by making increasingly elaborate donuts with flavors like "cherry-frosted lemon bar, peanut-brickle buttermilk, and gooey coca- mocha silk."

Staake is one of the best illustrators out there, and I'm amazed that he does it all with Adobe Photoshop 3.0 on Mac OS 7. The Donut Chef, by Bob Staake

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.

A show as complicated as "Lost" deserves an equally complicated spoiler alert: if you have never seen an episode of "Lost" past, say, Season Two, and plan on immersing yourself in the show sometime soon, you might want to bookmark this post and revisit sometime in the future, once you've gotten up to speed. Otherwise I will keep this relatively vague, so that hardcore fans (for whom there will be no surprises) and Lost-dabblers can both read with no worries.

I posted yesterday about the often insurmountable complexity of seasons 1-4 of "Lost," but the first episode of season five held out the distinct possibility that that complexity might well be conquered by the end of the series. Not just because all the questions would be dutifully answered in some kind of contrived, ad-hoc fashion, but because the events in last night's episode suggest--in a way that earlier episodes have only delicately hinted-- that all the madness of the last four years, all the implausible speeches, connections, surprises, and attacks, have at their root one small change in the core bylaws of Reality As We Know It.

This is a formal innovation worth noting, though of course it's unclear from just a single episode whether the innovation has long-term significance or whether it turns out to be just another distraction. But I'm rooting for the former: "Lost" has the unique opportunity of proving you can build a narrative of mesmerizing implausibility that ultimately turns out to be entirely plausible simply by changing one elemental rule of the universe--and then not telling your audience about the rule change until the third act. Mainstream entertainment toys with the conventions of reality constantly (see Back to the Future, or pretty much every Jim Carrey movie) but invariably it lets the audience in on the rule changes early in the story. "Lost," not surprisingly, is playing hard-to-get with its revelations: not just in the backstory and mythology of its characters, but the basic laws of the genre.

That a mass audience is willing to embrace this kind of storytelling innovation is truly remarkable, and has a kind of sign-of-the-times quality to it. (The ultra-complex serial narrative show is to our own moment what the concept album was to the late sixties culture.) In a small way, "Lost" was actually an inspiration for The Invention of Air: I had a moment early in trying to figure out what the book would be like when I imagined that I would write a founding fathers history book that would be structured like a season of "Lost." (There's a middle chapter, for instance, that jumps back 300 million years, to the Carboniferous Era, before zooming back to the late 18th-century.) It's probably good that I didn't fully try to emulate "Lost" in the end, but just the fact that one could look to a prime time network mega-hit for inspiration in writing a book of science history is a sign that something has changed -- most of what I was watching as a kid in the seventies would not have been quite as inspirational.

I'm sure there are plenty of strong opinions about last night's episode: I hereby declare the comments thread below open to all spoilers. If you haven't seen the show yet, you are duly warned.

Grandma's Graphics hosts a really lovely collection of web-resolution public domain children's artwork, perfect for design projects:

From Harry Clarke to 1890's storybooks, if you're looking for unique images or clipart for use on your web pages or in other design or craft projects you've come to the right place. There's a treasury here at Grandma's Graphics that you probably won't find anywhere else online. Some of these graphics are quite large and take time to load, but be patient, they're worth the wait.

Grandma's Graphics: Unique Images from the Past (via Making Light)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel needs your help to re-make this lovely table-less table created from a crocheted tablecloth stiffened with resin:

This low-slung table, created from a woven tablecloth petrified with sort of resin, may not be a retail product, but it could always get work as a set piece in an Aqua Net commercial. If I were to try to build one, what sort of resin should I use?

Tablecloth sans table as table, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets