Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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When I first started to follow Japanese culture back in the UK, I saw these bags in anime (Japanese cartoons), manga (comics) and in magazines. I then came over to Japan and started to wonder why all the kids had one and why there were all the same shape n size.

These bags are known as "Randoseru" which is the Japanese pronunciation of the Dutch word "Ransel" meaning "Backpack" and are used by elementary school children in Japan.

They were first introduced into Japan as a backpack for commissioned officers in the imperial army during the Meiji period and then used in governmental schools as the standard commuting bag.

A randoseru is a compulsory school item that ones grandparents usually buy for their grandchildren and usually cost 2 kidneys and a bladder - the most expensive one in this store cost 628 USD! The most expensive randoseru that I've been able to find online costs 1805 USD from Rakuten. Some modern schools these days don't enforce use of the randoseru but those are still the minority. An ad for randoseru below.

So now we know how much it costs to buy a randoseru for elementary school children, I thought we'd look at how much more it costs to send children to school in Japan - costs converted to USD.

-Kindergarten (3 years - public): 7,943 USD
-Kindergarten (3 years - private): 17,536 USD
-Elementary (6 years - public): 21,798 USD
-Elementary (6 years - private): 89,675 USD
-Junior High (3 years - public): 15,392 USD
-Junior High (3 years - private): 41,360 USD
-High School (3 years - public): 16, 995 USD
-High school (3 years - private): 34,078 USD
-Total for all public (15 years): 62,130 USD
-Total for all private (15 years): 182,651 USD

University is not compulsory but for those wishing to go would spend an average of 54,412 USD for the 4 years.

Schooling free or cost a few limbs in your neck of the woods? More photos and sources of figures in the Randoseru article.

Mike sez, "In this lecture hosted yesterday by the Long Now Foundation, Dmitri Orlov describes the Russian economic collapse of the 1990s, and explains how he thinks an American decline/collapse would differ:"

Here is another key insight: there are very few things that are positives or negatives per se. Just about everything is a matter of context. Now, it just so happens that most things that are positives prior to collapse turn out to be negatives once collapse occurs, and vice versa. . . . Prior to collapse, what you want is an effective retail segment and good customer service. After collapse, you regret not having an unreliable retail segment, with shortages and long bread lines, because then people would have been forced to learn to shift for themselves instead of standing around waiting for somebody to come and feed them.

Social Collapse Best Practices (Thanks, Mike and all the other people who suggested this!)

This week on Mur Lafferty's "I Should Be Writing" podcast, a smashing interview of science fiction great Kim Stanley Robinson, conducted by science fiction great James Patrick Kelly. Jim and Stan talk in depth about writing instruction and the Clarion workshops, with which they're both involved (as am I). Jim was the most influential instructor I had the year I attended Clarion.

There's still a few days left to get your application in for this year's Clarion workshop, btw.

ISBW Special Episode #42 - Kim Stanley Robinson Interview

MP3 link

Indie filmmakers have filmed the first two episodes of their new Half-Life-2-based miniseries for a total budget of $500. Now, that's an indie filmmaker budget! "Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series. Filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500." You know what? It's not bad.

Half-Life 2 Short Film - Escape From City 17 (via Warren Ellis)

From the comments: Nylund sez, "Of course a small group of people filming guerilla style with no budget, no time, and no script aren't going to make something that actually rivals your favorite show/movie. That's comparing apples to oranges. But the discrepancy in resources dwarfs the difference in quality. It was done for a teeny fraction of the cost, but isn't really that much worse."

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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What would happen if you went around your local neighborhood pretending to shoot or stab somebody? Would they shoot you back with a real gun? Slap you in the face with the nearest wet dog?
Or just pretend to be shot or stabbed?

Watch how folks in the Japanese city of Osaka pretend to be shot/sliced by an imaginary gun/samurai sword by a complete stranger...

Photo from Osaka Photos.

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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Not only is McDonald's Japan a place for great health food, its also a great place to take a nap when you are plastered from a late nights work wrestling with your boss. There always seems to be folks sleeping in McDonald's over here.

And what do folks do over here when they don't have a Mc Dees handy? They sleep *anywhere* and *everywhere*...

Poll: Do you find people sleeping out n about where you live?
-Always
-Sometimes
-Never

Larger photos in my previous McDonald's Japan article.

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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A nice photo collection of Japanese architecture - of both the old and new can be found at Kirainet.

And if you are thinking of buying some property in Japan, you can read about the interesting regulations including having your roof sloped at a certain angle so that the neighboring house gets enough hours of sunlight per day.

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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Don't you just lurve the taste of fresh juicy tomatoes with yer burger?
A cross section of a Tomato from a Japanese perspective...
Living Tomato.

John Mark sez, "Some past Boing Boing posts have talked about how children's lives in the UK and North America have become more and more stifled by overprotective adults in the last few decades. This 2007 book by Tim Gill, now free in its entirety online, show how many of these efforts are largely misdirected, and even counterproductive. Focusing on the UK, but also touching on other countries, the book includes accounts and data to show how resources are wasted on dubious and costly playground modifications and 'stranger danger' paranoia, when we could instead foster safer and more mature kids by focusing more on independence, social support, and traffic safety."

No Fear joins the increasingly vigorous debate about the role and nature of childhood in the UK. Over the past 30 years activities that previous generations of children enjoyed without a second thought have been relabelled as troubling or dangerous, and the adults who permit them branded as irresponsible. No Fear argues that childhood is being undermined by the growth of risk aversion and its intrusion into every aspect of children’s lives. This restricts children’s play, limits their freedom of movement, corrodes their relationships with adults and constrains their exploration of physical, social and virtual worlds.

Focusing on the crucial years of childhood between the ages of 5 and 11 – from the start of statutory schooling to the onset of adolescence – No Fear examines some of the key issues with regard to children’s safety: playground design and legislation, antisocial behaviour, bullying, child protection, the fear of strangers and online risks. It offers insights into the roles of parents, teachers, carers, the media, safety agencies and the Government and exposes the contradictions inherent in current attitudes and policies, revealing how risk averse behaviour ironically can damage and endanger children’s lives. In conclusion, No Fear advocates a philosophy of resilience that will help counter risk aversion and strike a better balance between protecting children from genuine threats and giving them rich, challenging opportunities through which to learn and grow.

No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society (Thanks, John Mark!)

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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When I first came to Japan, I was shocked to see people wearing surgical masks in public. The first time was when I was on a train. I looked around to see if anybody was looking at the masked middle aged woman but spotted nobody. The only conclusion I came to was that she was a doctor - but she didn't look like a doctor and even if she was - why on earth was she wearing a surgical mask on the train?!

I soon learned that folks in Japan wear masks for a few reasons...

* They are sick and don't want their evil germs to infect others.
* They have hay fever and don't want the evil pollen to affect them.
* They are not sick but don't want to catch any evil germs from others.
* They have a tooth missing and want to cover it up.
* Their breath smells like a fart and want to diffuse the smell.
* They have no mouth and don't want people to know that they are from Mars.

The main reason however is the first one - to prevent others from being infected with ones germs. This poor chap in the photo above is being a good citizen and wants to keep his germs to himself - he wears the mask all day until he gets home. And for those who don't like masks - they choose something like the product below to plug up their nostrils.

I've only seen folks wearing masks in Japan - anybody wear surgical masks in your region out n about in public?

Photo taken during my times at Microsoft Japan with more Japanism cultural shenanigans at the Japan Portal.

Video Link. A cautionary tale for all womankind, from the mid-90s BBC show "Harry Enfield and Chums" (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

Till Death Do Us Part is a new free dating site that purports to connect people with terminal illnesses. I don't think it's a joke, but the creator is all about a sense of humor, quoting Robert Anton Wilson on the front page: "Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." From the press release:

Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com is profoundly different from other dating sites. We're dealing with people who know they are facing imminent death. They are aware that their days are numbered and they know, more or less, how long they have to live. This service does not require members to answer the frivolous questionnaires other dating sites provide, although they can if they want to. We are not interested, as we are sure our clients are not either, in the inane, trivial and essentially meaningless come-ons and delusional fantasies of finding the perfect mate. We assume our members don't care if someone's eyes are blue or green, whether they wear glasses or not. According to Marketing Director Joseph DiAngelo, "This site is designed to cut through the superficiality and embrace issues we think are most meaningful -- the desire and need for understanding, compassion, empathy and comfort between human beings facing their greatest challenge..."

Disclaimer: Worldly hang-ups don't belong here. If you have a profound sense of irony and humor, we welcome you. If not, this site may not be for you.

"Announcing Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com: The World's First Dating Service for the Terminally Ill" (press release), Till Death Do Us Part (tilldeathdouspart.com)

Joey Ellis's Letter Monsters are a hoot. He made the entire alphabet to help his son learn his letterin'.

Earlier this week, I posted about Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a disease where mentally healthy people have very strange and vivid hallucinations. It seems to be tied to visual impairments from old age or eye damage. Over at Omphalos, Aharon Varady considers the possible relationship between Charles Bonnet Syndrome and a Talmudic method for seeing Mazikin (harmful spirits, ie. demons). The magickal technique involves putting ash into the eye. From Aharon's fascinating post, titled "Reality and Hallucination: Towards a Talmudic Ontology of Consensus (by way of demons)":

Mazikin are a class of sheydim (animistic spirits) that pervaded the natural world in the Rabbinic Jewish worldview of late antiquity. From תלמוד בבלי ברכות ו א (Talmud Bavli Tractate Berakhot, 6a):

Raba says: The crushing in the Kallah lectures comes from them. Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to discover them, let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the placenta of a black she-cat [that is] the offspring of a black she-cat [that is] the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it [the placenta] in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour it into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm.

R. Bibi b. Abaye did so, saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered.

Could Raba’s magic recipe for perceiving demons by placing ash in one’s eye create a condition like Charles Bonnet Syndrome? Could Rav Huna’s 10:1 ratio of ubiquitous albeit invisible demons indicate a left-brained dominance when perceiving/hallucinating these creatures? Curious minds wish to know the answer to these arcane questions.

"Reality and Hallucination: Towards a Talmudic Ontology of Consensus (by way of demons)"

Three cheers to Spike Priggen at Bedazzled for compiling this collection of Mareva Galanter's faux Scopitone videos.

Galanter, as you well know, is the world famous French Polynesian ukulele player and yé-yé singer who hosts the program Do You Do You Scopitone.

The FTC's public hearing on DRM is a smash sensation -- they're being flooded with anti-DRM comments, mostly from gamers:

The Federal Trade Commission wants to know about DRM, and it's hosting a March conference on the topic. The agency looks set to get an earful—today is the final day to file public comments, and more than 700 individuals have already done so. Surprisingly, the main concerns in the comments don't appear to be about DVDs or protected music files but about video games. If FTC staff didn't know much about SecuRom, Spore, install limits, and activation codes before the conference, they will soon be experts on the topics.

The big players in these sorts of public hearings follow a predictable plan: they hold their filings until the final day for submissions, apparently out of a desire not to tip their hand to opponents and give them a chance to directly address their arguments. The strategy appears to be in play in the DRM proceeding, with only a fistful of corporate or think thank names appearing among the 700 current submissions.

700 comments tell the FTC "No DRM!"

Here's a fun tour through author Roald Dahl's cramped and -- let's admit it, filthy -- writing hut. Interesting to see where all the magic happened.

My favorite Dahl story is Parson's Pleasure, which I read in his Tales of the Unexpected short story anthology.

New Scientist reports on the research of Princeton University's Alexander Todorov, who finds that "snap judgments are based on an 'overgeneralization' of an evolved need to read facial expressions for signs of danger.

How your looks betray your personality

In the wake of the peanut butter salmonella scare (caused by rats, roaches, and other awfulness inside the factory), an op-ed in today's New York Times examines the government's standards for acceptable levels of gross stuff in food. According to the writer, you likely ingest up to two pounds of "flies, maggots and mites" each year, without being aware. Snip:

In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

The Maggots in Your Mushrooms (E. J. Levy / New York Times)

Here's that happy-fun FDA publication: "The Food Defect Action Levels - Levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans." Bon appetit!

Our friend and BB guest blogger alumnus Lisa Katayama (right) says "My friend Hina and I did this today as part of my reporting for an upcoming travel feature." I became a maid cafe maid for 30 minutes

The BBC set up a video camera in front of the icy steps at Waterloo Station, and taped people slipping and falling. Kind of weird that they didn't warn the people. As Zentinal commented on Twitter, "ho ho ho! jolly good telly! he cracked his coccyx!"

I'm looking forward to seeing Amy Crehore's "Dreamgirls and Ukes" solo show at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles tonight, Fri, Feb. 13th 7-11PM. Amy and her husband Lou will be playing some old timey music at the opening reception tonight.

The exhibition runs through March 6th.

The incredible Mark Ryden opened a new show of paintings last week in Tokyo. Kirsten Anderson -- proprietor of Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery, author of Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art, and editor-at-large of Hi-Fructose Magazine -- made the trip over and kindly shares this report and photos:

Last week, a gaggle of cohorts and I descended on Tokyo to see the Mark Ryden "Snow Yak" exhibition at Tokyo's prestigious Tomio Koyama Gallery, Ryden's first show since 2007's "Tree Show" exhibit in LA. We were treated to a room full of delicate drawings and sketches, with the cavernous main room set aside for the paintings. The new show signaled a slight departure in Ryden's oeuvre, with a marked change in palette, which consisted mainly of different tones of white, grays and blues, with occasional rosy tones thrown in. Closer inspection also revealed a rougher painting technique than his usual creamy and seamlessly blended technique, with some paintings even layered with globular paint applied by spatula. Backgrounds were kept minimal and the frames were a simple clean white as opposed to Ryden's usual hyper-crafted, surreally ornate frames of the past. Staying consistent however was Ryden's trademark imagery that often uses pop iconography for archetypal themes including delicate girls (tellingly named "Sophia" and posed in Madonna-esque poses), bees, disembodied Lincoln heads, and supposed-to-be-really-cute-but-actually-highly-disturbing toy animals, including the ridiculously-expressioned but immaculately-painted title piece from the show, "Snow Yak". Other highlights included "Sophia's Bubbles" featuring the title's goddess figure with strategically-placed bubbles representing the solar system. The show favorite seemed to be "Heaven" featuring a platinum blonde waif and her companion, the benevolent yet mighty Snow Yak.

Mark Ryden's site

Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street is TV Guide writer Michael Davis's book that chronicles the complete history of the show that pioneered educational television. I grew up on the program (who in the US didn't!?) and I'm now watching the new episodes with my own son, and the old ones thanks to the DVD reissue. But I realize that I know next to nothing about how the Street got paved. From CNN:

"The idea they came up with was kind of radical: If you can sell kids sugared cereal and toys using Madison Avenue techniques, why couldn't you use the same techniques for teaching counting, the alphabet and basic social skills? And it works," (says Syracuse University pop culture professor Robert Thompson.)

Indeed, as Davis notes in "Street Gang" (Viking), the genesis of "Sesame Street" was when the 3-year-old daughter of a Carnegie foundation executive was fascinated by television, waking up to watch the broadcast day begin and memorizing commercial jingles. He talked about his daughter with a friend, producer Joan Ganz Cooney. In the liberal ferment of the mid-'60s, both wondered whether educational TV could go beyond the staid classroom shows of the era.

Cooney became the driving force of "Sesame Street." She put together the plan, helped recruit talent, located financing and oversaw production...

Cooney didn't hold much back in telling her story to Davis, and neither did others. From its debut on November 10, 1969, the show was a hit -- within a year, it was on the cover of Time magazine -- but it was not without its personality clashes.

The original Gordon, Matt Robinson, was a producer uncomfortable in the spotlight. Northern Calloway, who played David, struggled with mental illness. The show's primary songwriters, Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss, were constantly in competition; Raposo "fairly seethed with envy" when Moss' "Rubber Duckie" hit the Top 20, Davis writes. The book provides balanced biographies of a number of principals, including producer Jon Stone, whom Davis calls "the heart of the book."

Buy "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street" (Amazon.com), "How Do You Get To Sesame Street?" (CNN.com), Street Gang web site (streetgangbook.com)

Image: A bacon lamp shade, by Kris Kelley of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

bacolicio.us
tiara
bacon of hate
lampshade
usb drive
bbq explosion
bacon cheese sushi
candied bacon ice cream
chocolate covered
maple cinnamon smoked
blt game
bacon list
bacon links
lords of bacon
bacon of the week
bacon fridays
bacon today
bacon haikus

previously on web zen
bacon zen
leftover bacon zen

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!)

For the past couple weeks, I've been working with Thomas "cmdln" Gideon (host of the fabulously nerdy Command Line podcast) on a free software project for writers called "Flashbake" (which is to say, I described what I wanted and Thomas wrote the code). This is a set of Python scripts that check your hot files for changes every 15 minutes, and checks in any changed files to a local git repository. Git is a free "source control" program used by programmers to track changes to source-code, but it works equally well on any text file. If you write in a text-editor like I do, then Flashbake can keep track of your changes for you as you go.

I was prompted to do this after discussions with several digital archivists who complained that, prior to the computerized era, writers produced a series complete drafts on the way to publications, complete with erasures, annotations, and so on. These are archival gold, since they illuminate the creative process in a way that often reveals the hidden stories behind the books we care about. By contrast, many writers produce only a single (or a few) digital files that are modified right up to publication time, without any real systematic records of the interim states between the first bit of composition and the final draft.

Enter Flashbake. Every 15 minutes, Flashbake looks at any files that you ask it to check (I have it looking at all my fiction-in-progress, my todo list, my file of useful bits of information, and the completed electronic versions of my recent books), and records any changes made since the last check, annotating them with the current timezone on the system-clock, the weather in that timezone as fetched from Google, and the last three headlines with your by-line under them in your blog's RSS feed (I've been characterizing this as "Where am I, what's it like there, and what am I thinking about?"). It also records your computer's uptime. For a future version, I think it'd be fun to have the most recent three songs played by your music player.

The effect of this is to thoroughly -- exhaustively -- annotate the entire creative process, almost down to the keystroke level. Want to know what day you wrote a particular passage? Flashbake can tell you. Want to know what passage you wrote on a given day? That too. Plus, keeping track of my todo.txt file means that I get a searchable database of all the todo items I've ever used, with timestamps for their appearance and erasure.

Additionally, since git repositories are made to replicate, you can publish some or all of your projects to the public web or to a private site. I'm hoping that my publisher will use a public git repo to check out the most recent versions of my in-print books every time they go back to press for a new edition, and use the built-in compare ("diff") function to find all the typos I've fixed since the last edition.

It's all pretty nerdy, I admit. But if you're running some kind of Unix variant (I use Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, but this'd probably do fine on a Mac with OS X, too) and you want to give it a whirl, Thomas has made all the scripts available as free software. He's working on a new version now with plugin support, which is exciting!

I love adapting programmers' tools for my writing. They tend to be extremely well-made and stable (because if they aren't, programmers will fix them or find better ones) -- it's like using chefs' knives in the kitchen.

Cory wanted the version to carry prompts, snapshots of where he was at the time an automated commit occurred and what he was thinking. I quickly sketched out a Python script to pull the contextual information he wanted and started hacking together a shell script to drive git, using the Python script’s output for the commit comment when a cron job invoked the shell wrapper.

I added my own idea to the project, borrowing from continuous integration build systems the idea of a quiet period. I could easily imagine Cory actively working on a story, saving continually and a commit happening mechanically in the midst of that writing being less useful than if the script could find a quiet time to commit. This enhancement prompted me to ditch my shell script wrapper and pull that logic all into Python.

Flashbake (Thanks, Thomas!)

Rob sez, "Thought you'd want to know about the first concert for the deaf that will be held in Toronto on the 5th of March. Some of the band members that are going to play the gig are students a Ryerson University and have developed a chair filled with speakers and vibrating devices that communicate music via vibrations to the people sitting in the chair. Results apparently are amazing and deaf people say to have experienced 'the feeling of music' for the very first time in their lives."

Concert for the deaf and the hard of hearing in Toronto (Thanks, Rob!)

I just spotted this new edition of Michael de Larrabeiti's stunning young adult novel The Borribles, packaged to attract a new generation of kids to this marvellous, unflinching story of unrepentant sly criminal immortal children romping through the invisible belowstairs world of London. This is, hands, down, my all-time favorite young adult series. How wonderful!

What is a Borrible? Borribles are runaways who dwell in the shadows of London. Apart from their pointed ears, they look just like ordinary children. They live by their wits and a few Borrible laws-the chief one being, Don't Get Caught! The Borribles are outcasts-but they wouldn't have it any other way....

One night, the Borribles of Battersea discover a Rumble-one of the giant, rat-shaped creatures who are their ancient enemy-in their territory. Fearing an invasion, an elite group of Borrible fighters set out on what will become known in legend as The Great Rumble Hunt. So begins the first of the three epic adventures in Michael de Larrabeiti's classic trilogy, where excitement, violence, low cunning, greed, generosity, treachery, and bravery exist side by side.

The Borribles (Book 1)

The Borribles Go For Broke (Book 2)

The Borribles Across the Dark Metropolis (Book 3)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann's been reading all the submissions to the Copyright Office on exemptions to the DMCA, and he's found this beauty: Apple is trying to ban jailbreaking iPhones:

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking.

Apple's iPhone, now the best-selling cellular phone in the U.S., has been designed with restrictions that prevent owners from running applications obtained from sources other than Apple's own iTunes App Store. "Jailbreaking" is the term used for removing these restrictions, thereby liberating your phone from Apple's software "jail." Estimates put the number of iPhone owners who have jailbroken their phones in the hundreds of thousands.

Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking is Illegal

Britons are planning on rallying at Scotland Yard on Feb 16 to protest the new law that lets the cops throw you in jail for ten years for photographing them in action, if your photo is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."

The National Union of Journalists, in association with British Journal of Photography, has called for photographers to make their voices heard at a rally on 16 February as a new law is introduced that allows for the arrest - and potential imprisonment - of anyone who takes pictures of police officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'...

The NUJ has teamed up with Mark Thomas, a writer, broadcaster, comic and political activisit, along with Chris Atkins, who is behind the documentary Taking Liberties, and BJP for a 'photo opportunity' outside New Scotland Yard on Monday 16 February. 'The plan is simple, turn up with your camera and exercise your democratic right to take a photograph in a public place,' says Marc Vallee, an NUJ member who will be there on the day, and who himself clashed with police over the right to photograph public events

Section 76 ignites new debate (Thanks, Simon!)

Tom "FidoNET" Jennings sez, "Atomic Ed Grothus died in his home today, age 86, after a long illness. If you have never met Ed, or visited Los Alamos Sales Co, better known as the 'black hole' (as Ed said, 'things come in, and never leave') your life is poorer. Artist, curmudgeon, proprietor, anti-nuke activist, Ed was a pain to those who deserved it and a friend to the rest of us. Even his 'enemies' (loosely speaking of course) admired or at least respected him, as he was always honest, spoke truth, and was never afraid. Ed you SOB we miss you already."

Ed Grothus, the legendary proprietor of the Black Hole, a long-standing Los Alamos NM fixture, artist, anti-nuke activist and irritant to death-and-bomb culture proponents of his chosen home town, died at his home today after a long illness.

Ed was well respected by all, even by those whose work he opposed, and his grouchy but amused countenance will be missed by all that knew him. The world is a poorer place without him. He was thrilled to live long enough to see Barack Obama sworn in as president.

Ed Grothus, 1923-2009 (Thanks, Tom!)

Clarence Center Plane Crash, by "SpikeTheCowboy711." Uploaded just as news of the Continental Airlines crash began breaking on cable networks. Update: now "video has been removed due to a terms ot use violation," but that doesn't make any sense to me. If you know more, add it to the comments.

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

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Still thinking about what sort of chocolates to get for your loved for Valentines day? How about something really special, really different - chocolates in the shape of beetles...

Celebrate Valentines Day the Japanese way: with chocolates shaped like kabuto-mushi beetles! Dating an entomologist? Trying to introduce a little entomophagy into your relationship? Namco's Namja Land in Ikebukuro has your back. 4,500 yen (49 USD) for a set of four: one Hercules beetle, one stag beetle, one male rhinocerous beetle, and one female rhinocerous beetle.

Text and photo from Matt Alt.

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "EFF has revamped its legal guide for bloggers, adding new FAQs about, for example, disemvowelling. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. So consult EFF's roadmap of the legal issues and blog away!"

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

Legal Guide for Bloggers (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John's found this delightful video: "A working Gameboy costume built buy a cosplayer at Ohayocon 2009, replete with built-in emulator, which is accessed by hammering the d-pad perpendicular to his junk."

GameBoy cosplayer features torso-playable Tetris

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture. He also works part time for the empire.

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Looks like Amazon is in toraburu for selling Japanese rape simulation games. Excerpt from Belfast Telegraph article:

The shocking 'rape simulator', Rapelay, is set in Japan and carries a sickening game description on the Amazon website. An MP said last night that he plans to raise the issue in Parliament.

Reviews by gaming websites have expressed horror at the basis for the game.

One website review describes "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as she is attacked in graphic detail.

Players begin the game by stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls.

Players are also allowed to enter 'freeform mode' where they can rape any woman and get other male game characters to join the attacks.

Read the article in entirety, with screengrabs of gameplay: "Amazon selling rape simulation game" (Belfast Telegraph via Games Park). Some gaming "action" from the game in question below.

Poll: Folks who play these games are...
- Dangerous
- Harmless

These foxes are having a grand old time on a trampoline. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

Lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee whose case we documented in a previous episode of Boing Boing Video are appealing directly to Barack Obama to release classified information about his treatment while in US custody. They faxed a letter to the White House asking the president to review the case of detainee Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, who they claim was tortured "in truly medieval ways" for more than two years after "extraordinary rendition" to secret foreign prisons. Snip from NYT story:

Attached to the letter was a two-page memorandum outlining the alleged torture; the memorandum was first reviewed by the Pentagon, which redacted it, saying it contained classified information. A copy of the letter and redacted memorandum was provided to The Times by Mr. Mohamed’s legal team, which appeared at a news conference here on Wednesday to publicly press for his release and transfer to Britain, where he lived as a teenager and is a legal resident. At the news conference, one of the lawyers, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, said that Mr. Mohamed had been on a hunger strike since Jan. 5 and was being fed through a tube; she said that when she saw him two weeks ago, he was “skin and bones.”

The Pentagon confirmed that Mr. Mohamed was on a hunger strike, along with 40 other detainees. “We recognize it as a form of protest,” Cmdr. Pauline Storum of the Navy said Wednesday in an e-mail response to questions. She said that Mr. Mohamed “was in good physical and mental condition.”

Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers are also pressing for the details of his treatment to be declared unclassified, contending that what the government considers state secrets are not secret at all, having been revealed in news reports and in the work of investigations around the world. “To reach any other conclusion conflates national security with national embarrassment,” the lawyers say in their letter to Mr. Obama.

(...) The tortured he endured there “would make waterboarding seem like child’s play,” [Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne] Bradley said. Court papers in the San Francisco lawsuit describe horrific abuse in overseas prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco he was routinely beaten and that once his interrogators cut his genitals with a scalpel then poured a hot stinging liquid over the wound. He said he was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.

Guantánamo Detainee’s Campaign Reaches to Obama (New York Times)

Previously: Boing Boing Video: "OUTLAWED" excerpts, pt. 1 -- Guantánamo Detainee Who Survived Torture. (Thanks, Wesly Varghese)

Update: Boing Boing Commenter Stef says,

One of Binyam's lawyers is the truly remarkable, wonderful gentleman who is Clive Stafford Smith. Somewhat strangely, he's not named directly in the article, even though he signs the letter they so heavily reference. (He founded and is the Director of Reprieve.) The closing paragraphs of this letter, which serve to highlight how heavily censored the information provided to the President of the United States on this case is, are brilliant:

"[President Obama]…you should be aware of the bizarre reality of the process under which we operate: That you, as Commander-in-Chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command. This is a state of affairs that you may wish to redress."

Direct links to the letter (PDF 1, PDF 2)

MAKE's Kipkay shows how to make a motion-triggered spy cam. Instructables has the how-to.

This cardboard stool, printed to appear to be a stack of books, can hold up to 200kg.

Tabouret en carton Leseratte (via Cribcandy)

Brazilian designer Anderson Horta made these delightful Pac-man ghost lamps. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Blinky & Pinky & Inky & Clyde"

Crafster user NerdyCrochetGal's retro Nintendo tribute blanket from 2006 is absolutely smashing -- the Tetris-block frame just makes it.

Retro Nintendo tribute blanket (via Wonderland)

One of the absolute highlights of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York this week was Brian O’Leary (Magellan Media), Mac Slocum (O'Reilly), and Chelsea Vaughn (Random House) presenting a panel called Challenging Notions of "Free", which presented a long-term, quantitative study of the effects of ebook piracy on book sales. There's a lot of hot air bandied about by people who argue that free ebooks generate or cannibalize sales, and it's a hard problem to study, but here at last are some good, crunchy stats and analysis to add to the argument.

The authors have generously given me permission to upload their slide-deck to the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerial-ShareAlike license, and they've set up a form for anyone who wants to sign up to get the full report for free when they publish it in a few weeks.

Challenging Notions of "Free"

Video duration: 6:41. 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. And here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is our mini-documentary of the Global Game Jam 2009, a worldwide, networked gamebuilding marathon in which participants have exactly 48 hours in which to conceptualize, design, and build a web-based electronic game.

Boing Boing Video's Jolon Bankey was the head organizer for GGJ Costa Rica, and team members there sent in video reports as the 48 hour game-in unfolded. I attended the Los Angeles edition with Matty Kirsch. Boing Boing Gadgets editor Rob Beschizza represented us at GGJ Pittsburgh. And Boing Boing friends around the world uploaded video sitreps, shoutouts, and random moments of weirdness with which we've produced this piece. We received video submissions from places as diverse as Australia, Scotland, Israel, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Play some of the games! You can browse winning entries, and all of the others who participated, and play on Mac, PC, or other OSes: Game Entry Browser.

Photos below: At top, Jolon's 7-year-old son Gibson Bankey (clearly destined to be a future gaming titan) passes wrathful judgment on entries at the Costa Rica Game Jam. Below that, the winners of that competition (Team Vara Blanca for the game "Muu") proudly holding their trophy. Image by Laura Pardo, here's her entire (lovely) photoset. Bottom 2 photos are iphone snapshots I took during the BB Video shoot at the LA Game Jam, including our BBV guest host Matty Kirsch. Here's my photoset.

Boing Boing Video wishes to thank Global Game Jam founders Susan Gold, Gorm Lai and Ian Schreiber. Special thanks to the GGJ organizers and participants who contributed footage to Boing Boing Video: Caracas, Venezuela (Ciro Durán); Capetown, South Africa (Patrick Marais); Glasgow, Scotland (Romana Khan); Tel Aviv, Israel (Yuval Sapir); London, England (Fiona French); Los Angeles, PA, USA (Joseph Spradley); Newport, Wales (Mike Reddy); Perth, Australia (Simon Witt); Pittsburgh, PA, USA (Tracy Kobeda Brown); San Jose, Costa Rica (Jolon Bankey, Rene Zuleta, Shirley Monge, Daniela Calderon); Waco, TX, USA (Casey Jones); Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, USA (Michael Lee).

Previously:
* BB Video: Global Game Jam Preview
* Global Game Jam continues! Here's live video (without kittens)
* Global Game Jam has begun! (live video stream)
* Global Game Jam (48 hour videogame dev marathon) this weekend!

For those into ambient electronica or computer music, Terre Thaemlitz is an anomaly. In the 1980s, Terre was a very busy DJ in New York City's underground house music scene. In the 1990s, he created pioneering ambient electronica, often collaborating with the likes of Scanner and Bill Laswell. Then, he released a slew of eclectic projects on Mille Plateaux and his own label, Comatonse, that were as much about deconstructing consumer culture, gender identity, the human/machine interface, and politics, as shaking your booty or curling up on a La-Z-Boy with your headphones on. In fact, when he's not cracking cynical snaps like a downtown drag queen, Terre sounds like a college professor. Here's a clip from a profile I wrote about him a decade ago (photo by Bart Nagel):

Thaemlitz is a transgender/transgenre computer musician. A pomo-sexual producer wading through Marxist theory while a soundtrack of Styx, Stevie Wonder, and Japanese techno-pop plays in the background at home. A creator of cultural commentary in the form of computer-generated hard-listening anti-Muzak.

"The overall theme of my work has to do with the fragmentation of identity, and the way that dominant ideologies teach us to conceptualize the singular self, the individual, when really we're forced to play many different roles every day," says Thaemlitz, cruising through his run-down Bay Area neighborhood in a jacked-up Buick Skylark. "I play a musician. I play the anti-musician. I play a fag. I play a drag queen. I play an ex-husband. A business administrator. Queer. Straight. Gay. But we don't really have a popular ideology that directly embraces such fragmentation."

Terre's latest project is the Dead Stock Archive, a collection of every audio release Terre has made under his real name or aliases. It includes 2 DVD-ROM data disks with more than 61 hours of music, all album texts, unreleased audio, all video releases to date, and all cover art. Several packages are available that include the likes of photograph inserts and limited edition posters. For example, one version comes in an aluminum case with a zipper, another in a plush hamburger-shaped soft case packed in a picnic box. The price for this magnificent objet d'art/music is $275.

From the product description:

For over 15 years, Terre Thaemlitz has been producing digital audio in a variety of genres - from ambient to electroacoustic to direct digital synthesis to computer composed piano solos to the self-described "Fagjazz" deep house sound - with projects focusing on themes ranging from anti-Muzak campaigns to transgendered passport and border control issues.

In recent years, iTunes and other major online distributors had been making several of Terre's projects available for commercial download without any contracts, and without disclosing to whom they were paying sales royalties. Clearly, such distributors had no direct interest in Terre's audio projects, but simply wanted to increase the chances of making a sale from their ever-expanding commercial online archives. Now that the files have finally been taken offline, Terre presents this alternative offline archive containing everything from the best to the worst by this "musician's musician."

The "Dead Stock Archive" is intended as a treat for the completist fan, as well as a "fuck you" to the corporate audio thugs who are so successfully moving us toward paid subscription download culture by claiming a need to protect information from illegal sale, all the while themselves partaking in greed-based piracy. But no matter how wide a selection they offer, no archive shall ever be complete. It would be a mistake to allow the mass of noise available to prevent us from hearing the silence of that which is commercially absent.

Terre Thaemlitz: Dead Stock Archive

Image of Steorn's energy machine from story about Steorn at Depleted Cranium.

Steorn, the Ireland-based company that says it has a technology that produces more energy than it uses (aka, perpetual motion), has redesigned its website with a new video containing testimonies from scientists and engineers excited about the technology, dubbed Orbo. It's also announced a program to give free, non-commercial development licenses to 300 engineering companies.

[T]he Steorn site now features a page briefly explaining how Orbo works, and announces a series of talks to be given at engineering universities around the world, beginning in the Middle East this month, continuing to Europe in the summer, and finishing in the United States in autumn. It looks like Steorn is going ahead with the plans they announced in December, to begin the commercialization of Orbo in February. If it weren't for the fact that Orbo is supposed to be impossible, and that there still remains not a single photo or video of a spinning, self-sustaining device anywhere on Steorn's site, this would look like any other exciting but routine product launch. Orbo's promise of free energy feels closer than ever today, but yet again it's still too early to be certain that this isn't all just smoke and mirrors. Hopefully we'll learn more soon as these 300 engineers sign up and begin to try to replicate Orbo on their own.

Steorn opens Orbo to developers

BB pal Greg Long of Gama-Go is a regular at Trouble Coffee in San Francisco's Sunset district. He had fun there this morning and emailed Mark and I some photos (click for larger) and the following note:

Trouble Coffee serves a) coffee b) whole coconuts and c) big slices of cinnamon toast.

That's it.

Today they introduced me to cold press coffee which is ground espresso beans soaked for 24 hours and hand-mixed three times & then all the grounds settle & you're left with this rather amazing, never warmed mellow drink. Almost a liquor in flavor. Strong as shit.

But the real treat was the new art show that went up. This fella by the name of Alberto Cuadros has installed a show based on his dialogs with hobos. I shit you not.

Quite honestly, it's the best art show I've ever seen in a "coffee shop."

Trouble Coffee Company

In commemoration of Honest Abe's 200 birthday, Michael Leddy of Orange Crate Art ran this quote from the great President on avoiding procrastination:

Leave nothing for to-morrow, which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.

From "Notes on the Practice of Law," in The Portable Abraham Lincoln, edited by Andrew Delbanco (New York: Penguin, 2009), 33

As part of a promotion for the DVD release of The Wackness, the film company has hidden a golden ticket in one of the first 1,000 DVDs. The winner gets a trip to Amsterdam and a free bag of pot.

WIN A TRIP TO AMSTERDAM
AND A BAG OF MARIJUANA!

Yes, you heard us correctly! We’re offering the chance for you to win a fabulous weekend break for 2 to the city of smoke itself, the beautiful Amsterdam. But that’s not all… the lucky winner will also be able to pick up a complimentary bag of skunk from legendary Amsterdam café, Hill Street Blues.

Hidden within one of the first 1,000 DVDs of The Wackness is a Golden Ticket. Find the Golden Ticket and you win!* It’s that simple.

Q-Burns Abstract Message, aka Michael Donaldson, has very graciously allowed Boing Boing Video to use his work in our daily video episodes and in BB's (currently-dormant) audio podcasts. I love his stuff, and was excited to hear of a new project he did to help an organization that works to promote health care and sustainable technology in Africa. Michael explains:

OPEN Remix is a charity album conceived by the partnership of renowned African vocalist Youssou N’Dour and global non-profit organization IntraHealth International. IntraHealth’s primary mission is to create sustainable, accessible health care by mobilizing local resources. The purpose of the OPEN Remix album is to put a spotlight on open source technology and how it can be used to advance health care in Africa. (...) I was honored to be asked by N'Dour and the project’s organizers to do a remix of the flagship song "Wake Up."

I had a blast with this mix and worked on it for a solid month, adding many of the instruments and endlessly tweaking the sound in an attempt to help it live up to the gravity of the project. You’ll hear my trusty Fender Stratocaster and Jazz Bass guitars, a bit of tape echo, some Roland Juno-106 action, and the gentle backing vocals of Neneh Cherry. I think you can tell I’m quite proud of this and I think it’s safe to say this production may foreshadow some of the future music you’ll be hearing from me.

Another fascinating aspect of this project is that since it is rooted in the concept of open source technology N’Dour and IntraHealth have opted to give the songs away and to encourage sharing. In other words, you are more than welcome to download my remix for free and pass it around, post it, Tweet it, embed it, etc. In fact, I’m encouraging you to do just that. I’ve also got the remix on my MySpace music page in the player so you can add it to your MySpace playlist if you’d like.

* Q-BAM Remixes Youssou N’Dour (q-burnsabstractmessage)
* Press release on the music project: "IntraHealth OPEN Initiative and Youssou N'Dour Release Charity Album to Fund Open Source Training for Health Workers in Africa," and video press release is below. website: Intrahealth International, and here is Youssou N'Dour.