Over at Orange Crate Art, Michael Leddy linked to a fun page of "Call Letter Origins" revealing the meaning behind the letters of many radio stations. Here are a few:

CILQ
Toronto, ON
CILQ='silk'
Note: was to be easy listening, silky smooth, now rock

HCJB(SW)
Quito, Ecuador
H)eralding C)hrist J)esus' B)lessings
Note: in Spanish - H)oy C)hristo J)esus B)endice

KAND
Corsicana, TX
Wolf Brand Canned (KAND='canned') Chili Company, wanted W)O)L)F) but FCC regulations prohibited

Call Letter Origins

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog has been keeping up on the latest too-real news about the nation's voting machines and the people who sell, buy and operate them. Two recent postings send the outrage meter way into the red.

First is California's continuing effort to clean up the mess it's made over the last few years. It's going to be harder than anyone imagined. As we learn in this post:

Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems --- used in some 34 states across the nation --- fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That's the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier's Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier's tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.

Then there's the incredible charges in Kentucky, where officials are said to have literally changed votes after the fact:

The Kentucky officials arrested and indicted today, "including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers" of Clay County, have been charged with "chang[ing] votes at the voting machine" and showing others how to do it!

It all makes you wonder if we're ever going to have voting we can trust.

London cops have been given the power to "disperse" anyone under 16, gathered in groups of two or more, from almost all of central London, after 9PM. The police don't have to see the kids doing anything wrong, they only have to believe "the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed."

If you’re observant, in central London, you may have seen this notice casually cable-tied to a lamppost. From afar, it looks like a council planning application, or parking bay suspension. It’s actually notifying you that you’re now subject to an anti-social behaviour order, and the Police (and the not-really-Police Community Support Officers) have special powers to remove you from this area if they feel like it. These dispersal areas cover large swathes of London, and other cities in England. There are now over 1000 such areas.

It’s ambiguously worded, but it institutes law that in other words may not seem so palatable. There’s a curfew for unsupervised under-16s, from 9pm to 6am. Any group of 2 or more people can be broken up and/or that the member of the group have to leave the designated area (if they do not live there). Crucially, police do not have to see actual anti-social behaviour, but a constable in uniform has reasonable grounds for believing that the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed...

the kids are alright (via Wonderland)

This gentleman was arrested on Monday for attempting to strangle his wife. Bradley Gellert, of Apollo Beach, Florida, was indeed wearing the "I [heart] My Marriage" t-shirt at the time of the arrest. From WTSP:

The arrest report says that the couple were arguing over drugs, and during the fight at their home, Gellert screamed in his wife's face, threw things, grabbed her neck and strangled her, and knocked her to the ground.

Man wearing an "I Heart My Marriage" t-shirt arrested for choking wife (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

DNA evidence from a multimillion-euro jewelry heist in Berlin leads to twins with a criminal record, but since the evidence could point to either one, German law says that neither can be convicted:

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.

Both brothers have stolidly refused to comment ever since their arrests on February 11. Since no further evidence has become available, police cannot detain them.

(via Kottke)

Corie sez, "The Speculative Literature Foundation is offering a grant of $750 to any writer of speculative literature of 50 years or older at the time of application who is just beginning to work professionally in the field. There are no restrictions on the use of the grant money."

SLF Older Writers Grant (Thanks, Corie!)

Anne sez, "I quickly got bored with the hi-res Tetris game profiled by BB here. So I left it running in a window and forgot about it, until the next morning, when the screen was only filled by a fraction. I've managed to leave it going for almost 2 weeks now, and my friend Dave made a tribute to it. He will continue to post images (and accompanying ungrammatical text in always-apropos Comic Sans) as the screen slowly fills."

Tetris HD (Thanks, Anne!)

Richard sez,

For some time now, a self-proclaimed "freelance anti-terror investigator" named Glen Jenvey has been feeding stories to the media about on-line Islamic extremism, particularly in British tabloids (but also in the famous "Obsession" DVD). However, a blogger, Tim Ireland, has uncovered overwhelming evidence that Jenvey made bogus postings to Muslim discussion sites himself to create panics. Jenvey also boasts of having influenced the James Ujaama trial by releasing videos at strategic moments.

One high-profile British MP who has used his talking-points is currently in the process of repudiating him, and a number of journalists and others are possibly compromised by having relied (lazily) on his material. The link to my blog provides what I hope is a clear short introduction to the story, which highlights a lot about what's wrong with the "old" media. Regards.

Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in Meltdown (Thanks, Richard!)

DeviantArt's Diablo2003 whipped up these Vaderbucks for Star Wars Fan Days 2007, where he was an artist guest. Thomas, who suggested the link, says he thinks they're cooler-looking than greenbacks and I agree -- best note since the hyperinflationary 100 billion Dinar note with Tesla on it.

Starbuck by diablo2003 (Thanks, Thomas!)

UPDATED

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest blogger.

Former VP Al Gore is speaking at the CTIA Wireless show on April 3. But the giant trade show says:

Special Notice: Photography, recording, webcasting and any other reproduction of Vice President Al Gore's speaking appearance is strictly prohibited.

The press, whatever that is these days, has been barred from coverage, too, according to a letter on the Romenesko media blog: No one with a press pass will be allowed in.

(UPDATE: The press has now been given permission to attend. Perhaps the idiocy of this policy got Gore's attention.)

This calls for a) lots and lots of blogging of the event by attendees who are not registered as press; and b) "official" press interviews of attendees and publication of those interviews. (I might also note, just for the sake of noting it, that you don't have to be obvious about waving around a smart phone with a video camera; audio and video recording gear has gotten really small and cheap.)

It would be great if the good folks attending this trade show could help make clear to Al Gore and others in similar positions that a speech to 4,000 people is not off the record no matter how much they may wish it to be so, not anymore.

My own suspicion about Gore's reasons: He probably imagines he's saving the material for a new book or movie. Otherwise the only possible explanation is that he's giving the dullest speech in history and knows that already.

A few years ago, for reasons that are still unclear, restaurants that created web pages went wild for Flash and graphics. You'd go to a restaurant's website and be forced to watch some lame animation or other alleged art, and then have to endure even more of it just to find out what was on the menu. You still do, in many cases.

This customer-unfriendly system is made worse with mobile phones. I'm heading to North Carolina early next month to give a couple of talks and was looking for places to eat in Chapel Hill, one of the stops. Bad move (on an iPhone, anyway). I did a Google map search and got a link to a place that, when selected, produced this image:

Not terribly helpful. But aha -- when I expanded the page I noticed a link called "Menu":

  

This was promising, until I clicked that link and got this:

Maybe they'd have more customers if potential patrons could actually see what they have to offer.

Join Dale Dougherty, Gareth Branwyn, and me for the 3rd episode of Make: Talk, a live call in show at blogtalkradio.com. The call-in number is (646) 915-8698.

In this episode of Make magazine's Make: Talk, you'll meet our new "Country Scientist" columnist, Forrest M. Mims III. He's the author of the famous "Getting Started in Electronics" book published by Radio Shack, and was recently named one of the top 10 amateur scientists by Discover magazine. In addition, the editors of MAKE will present news from the world of making, as well as our favorite tricks, tips, and tools. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program!

Make: Talk episode 3

BB pal Lissa Soep, research director at Youth Radio, recently contributed a short audio commentary to NPR's Day to Day about Facebook, nostalgia, and midlife monogamy. I found it to be a very thoughtful, personal, and provocative piece. Lissa's story has a happy ending, but I know of several relationships that were demolished by a Facebook blast-from-the-past. From Lissa's piece:

With so many people my age riding Facebook like a time-machine to our past lives and loves, you might expect the site would be breaking up marriages, or at least unleashing all sorts of digital infidelity. Some of that is happening.

But what I'm seeing among some fellow oldsters on Facebook is the opposite.We've got a new through-line to our former selves, and that's re-awakening a feeling of desire—and desirability—that might actually strengthen midlife monogamy.

Sure, it's dangerous. Once you've friended an ex, you get to glimpse all these evocative fragments. A photo of him in front of sand dunes, squinting into the sun. The revelation that her favorite quote is Nietzsche's "Without music, life would be a mistake." Here's this person maybe you fooled around with in your parents' bed, or pulled an all-nighter with to finish a take-home exam. Now you're flashing back to all that with a teething child upstairs and a mound of work and let's say you haven't had sex with your spouse in two weeks. The mix of nostalgia and surveillance is disorienting. But it can also create a digital spark longterm partners need. It can reconnect us with who we are by helping us remember who we once were… and who we wanted to be.

"Facebook And The Over-30 Crowd"

A woman in southern Maryland was airlifted to a hospital last weekend after being wounded by a saber saw with a sex toy attached to it. A consensual act led to the injury. The woman has since been released from the hospital. (If you're into this stuff, either as a participant or curious observer, you might also enjoy Timothy Archibald's photo book Sex Machines from Process Media.) From NBCWashington.com:

The man who called 911 about the incident admitted attaching the sex toy to the saw and then using the high-powered, homemade device on his partner, according to the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office.

The saw cut through the plastic toy and wounded the woman, according to TheBayNet.com.

"Woman Injured in Power Tool Sex Toy Encounter"

This Is Why You're Fat is a photoblog of foods you really shouldn't eat but are somehow irresistible, to someone anyway. Above, "Meat(in)loaf," "Bacon And Fudge Danish Breakfast Sandwich," and "Deep Fried Tootsie Roll on a Stick." (Thanks, Jill Miller!)

Aohkigahara Forest west of Tokyo at the base of Mount Fuji is also known as the "suicide forest." According to Wikipedia, it's the second most popular suicide spot after San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. From CNN:

Japan's suicide rate, already one of the world's highest, has increased with the recent economic downturn. There were 2,645 suicides recorded in January 2009, a 15 percent increase from the 2,305 for January 2008, according to the Japanese government

Local authorities, saying they are the last resort to stop people from killing themselves in the forest, have posted security cameras at the entrances of the forest.

The goal, said Imasa Watanabe of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government is to track the people who walk into the forest. Watanabe fears more suicidal visitors will arrive in the coming weeks.

Desperate Japanese head to 'suicide forest' (Thanks, Ed Szylko!)

A court ruling for the (dark) ages:

A condemned Texas inmate who removed his only eye and ate it in a bizarre outburst several months ago on death row is “crazy,” yet sane under state law, a judge wrote in an appellate court ruling today that rejected his appeals.

Andre Thomas raised 44 claims in his petition to the state’s highest criminal court, challenging his conviction and death sentence for the murder of his estranged wife’s 13-month-old daughter five years ago in Grayson County in North Texas.

A Guatemalan police officer has been arrested in connection with the abduction and disappearance 25 years ago of a labor activist named Edgar Fernando García, during Guatemala's civil war -- a period in which extrajudicial executions, dissapearances, and torture by government agents were widespread. The arrest on March 5 of former police officer Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos is the result of an investigation of García's case by Guatemala's Human Rights Prosecutor, and all of this was made possible by using records recently discovered among the massive archives of the former National Police.

I reported about the tech forensics process at these archives for NPR a couple of years ago, and you can listen to that report here. We're talking about a giant, dingy, moldy, bat-infested hellhole that was once the site of a clandestine detention center and torture cells. The police dumped records here during the civil war years, and the whole mountain of rotting documents was accidentally discovered years after the war ended.

Using scanners, database systems, and teams of analysts and "digitalizadors," a large team of people working very, very hard in the years since have accomplished something incredible here. More about the recent arrest and what it means:

García was kidnapped by police agents in Guatemala City on February 18, 1984, during a wave of government repression targeting the left. He was never seen again. The policy of terror used by the Guatemalan security forces to intimidate and destroy perceived "subversives" during the country's 36-year civil conflict resulted in the disappearance of an estimated 45,000 civilians and the death of some 200,000, according to the Historical Clarification Commission in 1999.

Reports published today in Guatemala's Prensa Libre and EFE described the arrest of agent Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos, currently chief of police in Quezaltenango with 28 years of service in the former National Police and National Civil Police. Ramírez was charged with "illegal detention, kidnapping, forced disappearance, abuse of authority and failure of duty." According to Human Rights Prosecutor Sergio Morales, Ramírez was identified by human rights investigators from the recently uncovered records of the old Fourth Corps of the ex-National Police, which described how he and other agents secretly captured García and took him to an unknown location.

Kate Doyle, Director of the Archive's Guatemala Project, commented "The arrest of one of the alleged perpetrators of Fernando García's disappearance 25 years later underscores the critical importance of the archives of the Guatemalan police and military in achieving justice for the atrocities committed during the civil conflict. The government of Guatemala must do everything in its power to see that state records are made public for future human rights investigations if it truly supports accountability and justice for these crimes."

(...)Although there has been no information about his capture since he disappeared in 1984, Fernando García's name appeared in the notorious "Military Logbook," an army intelligence document listing dozens of people disappeared by security forces in the mid-1980s and released publicly by the National Security Archive in 2000. The logbook indicated that García and other young students, professors and labor leaders were the subjects of intensive police surveillance in the weeks leading up to their capture and disappearance.

Read more here at the project's website.

Photos in this post were snapshots I took at the Guatemalan police archives in 2007.

(Thank you, Jorge Villagran of PRAHPN - PDH - Guatemala, and all who suggested this).

On an NYU aid and development studies blog, this video of NYU Professor Leonard Wantchekon talking about a cultural challenge to development in the country where he grew up, Benin. As regular BB readers are probably sick of me mentioning in blog posts by now, I spent the last few weeks traveling and shooting video in that West African country.

So, in this clip from "What Would the Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation," a recent conference held by NYU's Development Research Institute, Wantchekon talks about the lack of interpersonal trust within a community as a major challenge to economic development.

Communities in Benin where he has seen this phenomenon manifest most, he says, are the same communities where the highest amount of slave exportation took place from the 1600s to the 1900s -- villages and towns in the southern part of the country, where the huge slave ports once stood, and where massive numbers of (basically) war captives were sold into bondage. Wantchekon documents all of this in a research paper he co-authored with Nathan Nunn.

I realize the point in this video is to help aid workers think about how to quantify, define, and deal with this factor in development programs in Africa. But as I watched, I kept thinking about what this means in my own personal community back here in the US (and around the internet). How I and my friends and colleagues are, in many ways, really "banking" on that trust with each other to come up with creative ways to survive the economic crisis.

Video: "If You Don't Trust People You Know, It's Over."

You should also watch another clip by Wantchekon at this conference about the "Real Costs of Funerals in Benin." Might sound tedious and weird but it's (at least to me) fascinating. According to Wantchekon, some 30% of the monthly income of many middle-class families in Benin is spent on funerals!

(NYU Aid Watch blog, Thanks, Hugo von Tilborg!)

Hot damn! The 2009 Hugo Awards ballot is live and it's a doozy, and not just because I'm on it twice (Best Novel: Little Brother and Best Novella: True Names, with Ben Rosenbaum). No, it's better than that -- the entire ballot is just killer, especially my competition in the Best Novel category (hell, three quarters of the authors were invited to my wedding, and I'd have been delighted to have the remaining one in attendance). A million thanks to all of you who nominated both works!

I can't wait to see who wins (and no matter who wins, I can't wait for the annual Hugo Losers party, which is bound to be a hell of a thing and a half). I'm going to the WorldCon for the awards, of course -- my tux is hanging in its dry-cleaning bag awaiting its annual airing.

And hey, look at that, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who edited Little Brother, is also up for Best Editor!

Best Novel
* Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
* The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download
* Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
* Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
* “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
* “The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008) – Read Online
* “The Tear” by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
* “True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2) — Free download
* “Truth” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
* “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Jan 2008) — Read Online
* “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2) — Read Online
* “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
* “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s Feb 2008) — Read Online
* “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008) — Read Online

Best Short Story
* “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Jul 2008) — Read Online
* “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick (Baen’s Universe Oct 2008)
* “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
* “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
* “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008)

Another thing about this ballot -- it's the copyfightingest ballots in my memory, filled with writers and editors who advocate for sharing, fanfic, and looser copyrights.

Hugos 2009

The tent-city in Sacramento, the capital of California, is so big and entrenched that the city is debating installing plumbing and other amenities. Meanwhile Sacramento's vacancy rate is higher than the national average: "10.4 percent of rental housing units are vacant and 4.8 percent of owned units are vacant."

The primitive settlement sits in the shadow of the state capitol and is home to about 300 people who have no toilets or running water, creating unsanitary conditions that advocacy groups worry could promote diseases like cholera. With the downturn in the economy and more working-class people losing their jobs and their homes, the tent city is expanding.

The mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, said in an interview that he wants to create a permanent tent city for the homeless, although he is not sure where it should be. He said he recognized that doing so would be difficult politically. But he said a permanent site could bring sanitation services and regulations like a ban on drugs and alcohol.

Sacramento and Its Riverside Tent City (via Warren Ellis)

(Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Wired Science has a good summary of the first federal State of the Birds report, arguably the most successful citizen science project to day, in which individuals from around the US reported local observations to produce a detailed census of bird populations in the nation.

The first federal State of the Birds report was released Thursday, marking the beginning of an unprecedented collaboration between government researchers and conservation groups — and the underlying data comes from you.

"The data that goes into this report is by and large not collected by a few tin-head scientists or conservation organizations, but by millions of individuals," said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. "We can begin to put together spectacularly massive databases that show us, in great detail with fine-grained scope, what the trends are."

The trends identified by the report are generally known. Hundreds of bird species are threatened by habitat loss, pollution and climate change. But in other ways, the report is novel. "It's a break from the one-institution, or handful-of-institution, approach," said Cornell University ornithologist Andrew Farnsworth. "This kind of partnership hasn't happened before."

Citizen Science Is for the Birds

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Alien Nation, aliens among us.

Alien Nation 8

Connecticut's Vote Working Families is offering bus-tours of the luxurious mansions of the AIG execs who are in line to receive gigantic, taxpayer-funded bonuses:

We're all mad at AIG. Their executives bear a large share of the responsibility for bringing the economy to it's knees, and now the same folks are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses -- at our expense. Join us for a field trip to bring them the message.

AIG Exec Homes Bus Tour (Thanks, Slavin!)

Farhad sez, "Here's a story from The Economist about a study that shows you can guess a guy's credit risk by his face. Researchers asked Mechanical Turkers to look at pictures of loan applicants on the peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.com. The Mechanical Turkers rated whether the faces looked trustworthy. The ratings, it turned out, correlated with the loan applicants' credit histories:"

The researchers looked at 6,821 loan applications, 733 of which were successful. Their first finding was that the assessments of trustworthiness, and of likelihood to repay a loan, that were made by Mechanical Turk workers did indeed correlate with potential borrowers’ credit ratings based on their credit history. That continued to be so when the other variables, from beauty to race to obesity, were controlled for statistically. Shifty physiognomy, it seems, is independent of these things.

That shiftiness was also recognised by those whose money was actually at stake. People flagged as untrustworthy by the Mechanical Turks were less likely than others to be offered a loan at all. To have the same chance of getting one as those deemed most trustworthy they were required to pay an interest rate that was, on average, 1.82 percentage points higher, even when the effects of historical creditworthiness were statistically eliminated.

I wonder if you an predict the likelihood that a banker will destroy the global economy by looking at his face?

About face (Thanks, Farhad!)

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight into exile. With this anniversary, there have been renewed calls for Tibetan autonomy throughout the world, and a correspondingly harsh response by China's military within Tibet. In the UK Times, this profile of a Tibetan exile based in Canada named Thubten Samdup, who heads an online outreach program that seeks to counter anti-Tibetan sentiment in Chinese language message boards and chat rooms. Snip:

In a simple office overlooking the Himalayan foothills of India a young Tibetan man sits at a computer, trying to succeed where the Dalai Lama has failed for 50 years — by talking to the Chinese. Every day, Sonam and ten other Tibetans — all fluent in Mandarin — surf social networking sites in search of Chinese people to talk to about their homeland. It can be painstaking work.

“Hi, want to chat?” Sonam, 32, asks one man from Beijing. “You male or female?” comes the reply. “Male.” “Not interested.” Like this one, many of the millions of Chinese in chat rooms are searching for love. Most do not want to talk politics. Some become abusive when they realise they are talking to Tibetan exiles.

Sonam contacts about fifty or so people every day and says that half are willing to chat and five or six want to talk in depth. He now has 200 “old friends” to whom he sends information on the Dalai Lama to circumvent China’s “Great Firewall”, which blocks websites about the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. “We don’t say this is right or wrong, or that the Chinese Government should be overthrown,” Sonam told The Times. “We just give people an alternative source of information.”

The aim of the project is bold: to change attitudes towards Tibet among ordinary Chinese in the hope that they will gradually shape Beijing’s policies. Sonam and his colleagues can talk to only a tiny fraction of China’s 300 million netizens — who are notoriously nationalistic. Arguably it offers better prospects, and more immediate results, than the failed negotiations between China and the Dalai Lama, who fled to India 50 years ago yesterday.

Wily Tibetan messengers outfox censors of 'Great Firewall' of China (UK Times -- did they really have to use the adjective "wily?" / Thanks, Oxblood)

Here's the website for the foundation headed by Mr. Samdup.

Related news: fishy reports of pink suitcases packed with TNT in Lhasa (later said to have been detonated by robots), military occupation of Lhasa during the anniversary of the 2008 riots; "How China Invaded California and Took Over Our Legislature", and an article published in Xinhua demanding that the Dalai Lama apologize to China (funny how that logic works).

BB pal Ian Holmes points us to a fantastically intense electronica mix by Chavy Boys of London. Ian writes:

As a hardcore/punk fan, you might like the following XLR8R podcast...

It's garage/house, but with the choppy, anarchic sampler energy of early rave, and some of the aggression of punk bands like The Exploited.

"Everybody in the club, if you hate someone right now, you need to turn to them and punch them in the fucking face!"

Chavy Boys of London podcast

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Chinese public security officials to release two Tibetan journalists imprisoned last month, or charge them with an offense. Above, a screengrab from a Tibetan language website maintained by one of the jailed Tibetans. Snip:

The public security bureau in Gannan, an area in the south of Gansu designated a Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, arrested Kunchok Tsephel Gopey Tsang on February 26, according to overseas Tibetan rights groups. Kunchok Tsephel, an online writer, runs the Tibetan cultural issues Web site Chomei, according to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Kate Saunders, UK communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet, told CPJ by telephone from New Delhi that she learned of Kunchok Tsephel's arrest from two sources. She has spent the past two weeks in Dharamsala and Kathmandu.

In an unrelated case, officials from the same bureau rearrested formerly imprisoned filmmaker Jigme Gyatso, according to the Tibetan Center and Saunders. The exact date of the arrest is not clear, but it is believed to have occurred around March 10, the 50th anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising.

Jigme Gyatso, a Buddhist monk, had been held from March to October 2008 before being freed on probation, Saunders said.

Two Tibetans arrested amid ongoing media restrictions (CPJ)

Atlanta-based artist Brian Dettmer creates marvelous sculptures by performing surgery on books. He has a show opening April 3 at Chicago's Packer Schopf Gallery. The gallery kindly sent a few sneak peeks at the new work. Click the images to see them larger. (Thanks, Dominic Paul Moore!)

Two mall-shopping girls discuss the meaning of life in Charlie White’s cartoon OMG BFF LOL. More here and here.

I've posted previously about the fantastic sound artist Simon James, creator of the otherworldly audio accompanying Ken Hollings's Welcome To Mars radio series (and book) and also the sound designer for Ian Helliwell's audio history of electronic music, Tone Generation. Simon just emailed me about his latest musical project, The Simonsound, and provided a link to one of their tracks, Bakers Dozen. It's fantastic. Simon writes:

We make 50's and 60's space music, library/mood music and a hint of psych. We just released our first single which is a switched on/moog cover of Jimmy Castor Bunch's 'Its Just Begun'. The original has legendary status due to its popularity with the hip hop b-boy crowd who dug its heavy drums and breakdowns. Our version is heavily inspired by the Switched On craze of the late 60's/70's which saw a whole host of silly Moog cover albums - most of them pretty poor apart from the odd album by Dick Hyman.

We have an album on the way all of which is recorded using tape and old analog gear...

And of course there is the free 60 minute mix 'The Simonsound Transmission' available from our website. It features music from pioneering electronic composer Fred Judd, Canadian pop-psych group The Sugar Shoppe and British jazz artist Bob Downes amongst further library mood music, spaced out rock and electronics.

The Simonsound "Bakers Dozen"

Paul at Old School Tattoo in Bellingham, Washington inked this tattoo, adding a bit of Salvador Dalí's "Elephants" to a Star Wars AT-AT Walker. BMEzine.com has the wearer's story.
Star Wars/Dalí tattoo (Thanks, COOP!)

The BBC reports on a cyber cafe outside Tokyo that has a dark room divided into tiny cubicles where 60 people "who rarely emerge" live. These folks are called cyber drifters and "they have just enough money to stay off the streets." It costs $500 a month to live in one of these "coffin-size booths," which have no natural light or fresh air. "In Tokyo it doesn't get any cheaper than that, or more claustrophobic." The owner of the cyber cafe is making a tidy sum off the rent: 60 X $500 = $30,000

The House of Reps has a solution to those crazy AIG bonuses: a new tax that will claw back 90 percent of the income of anyone paid more than $250,000 by any firm that got more than $5 billion in bailout money.

The House measure would apply a 90% tax on bonuses given to employees who earn more than $250,000 at any firm that received more than $5 billion in bailout money.

A Senate proposal would would impose a 35% excise tax on companies paying bonuses and a 35% tax on employees receiving them. It would apply to all companies that received federal bailout funds.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate Majority Leader, said he doesn't think it will be much of a problem to resolve the differences between the House and Senate. They are hoping to move on the Senate bill next week.

U.S. House OKs bill for new tax on AIG bonuses

David Dennis took this photo of a Mayan skull with jade tooth decorations.

From TYWKIWDBI:

At the height of Mayan civilization, body modification included a variety of alterations of the teeth.

...

Holes in the teeth were created by spinning a drill with a bow (as in firestarting), and using powdered quartz as an abrasive.

Scott from Apartment Therapy sez,

Apartment Therapy New York received a DMCA take-down notice from the NY Times demanding removal of a long list of blog posts containing images from the Times (in posts about relevant Times articles).

We love the Times and write about them (and link to them) frequently. We are shocked & disappointed their first contact with concerns about our use of their images (in posts about their stories!) was a threatening letter & DMCA takedown notice to our ISP who have warned us they will disable our servers if we don't comply with the NY Times request.

Pop quiz: You're a troubled media dinosaur struggling to find your way on the Web. What steps can you take to actively discourage people from linking to you, thus reducing your pageviews and revenue?

DMCA Take Down Notice: The NYTimes Goes to War & Wants to Shut us Down (Thanks, Scott!)

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Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is a remixed series of snips from RiP: A Remix Manifesto, an "open source documentary" about copyright and remix culture. Yes, a remix of a remix of a remix! We're nothing if not meta around here.

The film includes copyfighters such as Lawrence Lessig, Girl Talk, Negativland, Gilberto Gil, The Mouse Liberation Front -- and Boing Boing's own Cory Doctorow.

RiP was some six years in the making, and filmmaker Brett Gaylor is in turn inviting you to contribute to the film by remixing and adding to the conversation. Info on screenings throughout the world here, and Brett invites all of Boingdom to...

Participate in REMIXING TIMES SQUARE at this link. Rotoscope, re-draw, photoshop/illustrate remix times square from a private space to the public domain The results are being compiled and will be screened at the Ann Arbor film festival March 28th! Try the web based video editor - all chapters of the film are available for remix.

The film screened at SXSW last week, and there's a lot of resulting press bubbling up this week. Here's a snip from Indiewire's review:

Brett Gaylor's "RiP: A Remix Manifesto" studies the paradoxes of copyright law and its discontents, but mainly it's a celebration of remix culture in the twenty-first century. Using music sampling artist Girl Talk as his primary case study, Gaylor explores the ways a new generation of artists have uncovered original methods for creating something new from the fabric of something old--and he slyly ties the trend to a consistent aspect of art history. Touching on infamous situations such as the recording industry's sloppy lawsuits against music downloaders, he surveys a wide variety of discussions taking place in both legal and aesthetic circles.

Thanks to the National Film Board of Canada for their kind assistance with today's BBV episode -- their landing page for the RiP project is here.

UPDATE: The doc was picked up by a US distributor at SXSW, BSide, and they are arranging "open cource screenings" where people can request the film and get it for free. The URL to request a screening is ripremix.com.

Previously on Boing Boing:
* RiP: Remix Manifesto -- documentary about copyright and the information age
* Monochrom's love song for Lessig

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(Special thanks to Boing Boing Video's hosting and publishing provider Episodic.)

David Pogue interviewed electric car entrepreneur Shai Agassi about his plans to create electric cars with removal batteries so that drivers can simply drive up to filling stations and get their old battery swapped for a new one in less time than it takes to fill a regular car's tank with gas.

Video above, and Pogue has the full transcript of the interview on his NYT blog.

DP: So what will you guys make? What will you do?

SA: We sell miles, the way that AT&T sells you minutes. They buy bandwidth and they translate into minutes. We buy batteries and clean electrons–we only buy electrons that come from renewable sources–and we translate that into miles.

DP: What are we talking about here? What’s the infrastructure you’re building?

SA: We have two pieces of infrastructure. 1) Charge spots. And they will be everywhere, like parking meters, only instead of taking money from you when you park, they give you electrons. And they will be at home, they’ll be at work, they’ll be at downtown and retail centers. As if you have a magic contract with Chevron or Exxon that every time you stop your car and go away, they fill it up.

Now, that gives us the ability to drive most of our drives, sort of a 100-mile radius. And that’s most of the drives we do. But we also take care of the exceptional drive. You want to go from Boston to New York. And so on the way, we have what we call switch stations: lanes inside gas stations. You go into the switch station, your depleted battery comes out, a full battery comes in, and you keep driving. It takes you about two, three minutes–less than filling with gasoline–and you can keep on going.

(Thanks, Daniel!)

Mike B sez, "For my 7-year-old son's school lunch birthday party, my Japanese wife made faux sushi using Rice Crispy treats, Swedish Fish, Fruit Rollups and licorice. And of course she packed it all in a proper faux lacquer (plastic) sushi box. It was a big hit with my son's classmates."

Birthday treats for school (Thanks, Mike!)

Verizon told George Vaccaro that bandwidth charges in Canada were .002 cents per kilobyte, but billed him at .002 dollars, or 100 times as much as he was quoted.

But Verizon customer service insists there's no difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents. Here's the recording of the call. George was incredibly patient with the Verizon customer service supervisor, who just couldn't understand the many examples George gave him to explain the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars.

VerizonMath (Thanks, Jim!)

The DEA's Office of Forensic Sciences publishes a monthly newsletter called the Microgram Bulletin, which features news and photos about unusual drugs and drug smuggling techniques.

I like reading the newsletter for two reasons: first, it's filled with examples of human ingenuity (the August, 2008 issue has photos of fake kidney bean made to smuggle heroin). Second, it's mind-boggling to see the weird drugs that people like to take: Butanediol? Nandralone? Boldenone? Trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine? Sceletium tortuosum? N,N-dimethylamphetamine? Testosterone cypionate? Bromo-Benzodifuranyl-Isopropylamine Hydrochloride? I've never heard of thse. Apparently, the world is filled with connoisseurs of esoteric inebrients!

The December 2008 edition of the newsletter has photos of colorful ecstasy mimic tablets (above) along with photos of cocaine being smuggled in an "ukelele" (sic), which doesn't seem to be a ukulele.

The Portland Metro Forensic Laboratory of the Oregon State Police recently received 18 vibrantly colored tablets of five different types, all suspected Ecstasy. The exhibits were seized in Portland by the Portland Police Department, incidental to a stop for a traffic violation and subsequent consent search. The tablets were mixed together; there were six round orange tablets imprinted with an Interstate 5 shield logo (total net mass 1.7 grams), four green tablets, shaped and imprinted to resemble a “Transformer” (total net mass 1.1 grams), four round purple tablets imprinted with an JL Audio logo (total net mass 1.2 grams), three pink tablets, shaped and imprinted to resemble the head of Bart Simpson (total net mass 0.8 grams), and one round blue tablet imprinted with the Superman logo (total net mass 0.2 grams). The Transformer and Bart Simpson tablets were very detailed and well-pressed, and more resembled candies or children’s chewable vitamins as opposed to typical Ecstasy tablets. Analysis by color tests (Marquis and nitroprusside), GC/MS, and UV, however, indicated not MDMA but rather a 1 :1 mixture of benzylpiperazine (BZP) and trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) for the orange, green, purple and blue tablets, and a 1 : 2 mixture of BZP and TFMPP for the pink tablets. The piperazines were not formally quantitated, but were present in a moderate to high loading based on the TIC and UV. The laboratory has received numerous Ecstasy mimic tablets containing this piperazine mixture over the past year, but never before in these unusual tablet shapes. Since this initial submission, the laboratory received an exhibit containing another 30 of the green Transformer-shaped and imprinted tablets, also containing the 1 : 1 mixture of BZP and TFMPP.

Microgram Bulletin, Dec 2008

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

Time for some radical thinking in journalism business models, right? OK, try this thought experiment (wait a second while I put on a flame-retardant suit):

What would happen if some top English language journalism organizations simply merged and started charging for their breaking news and commentary about policy, economics and and other national/international topics. That is, what if they were to combine for critical mass and keep most of their journalism off the public Internet for a few days after publication but then make the archives freely available?

Before you spit out your coffee (or whatever) in rage and/or laughter and/or derision, let me happily concede that this approach would raise all kinds of questions -- about elitism, fundamental business issues, the Internet’s linking culture and more. But it's already sparked a great offline conversation. And who knows, it might even work (though as you'll see below, some colleagues have pointed out good reasons why it might not).

Mike sez, "Last month's visit to Washington DC saw the usual exchange of diplomatic gifts - Gordon Brown gave President Obama a pen holder carver from the timbers of a ship involved in the fight against slavery. In exchange, he was given a box set of 25 classic American movies. On DVD. According to the Telegraph, the leader of a government committed to stronger IP laws sat down recently to watch his new present and... ...they're Region 1 DVDs. Would it be terribly wrong to tell Gordon Brown how to break CSS?"

A Downing Street spokesman said he was "confident" that any gift Obama gave Brown would have been "well thought through," but referred me to the White House for assistance on the "technical aspects".

A White House spokesman sniggered when I put the story to him and he was still looking into the matter when my deadline came last night.

Gordon Brown is frustrated by 'Psycho' in No 10

UPDATE

Buried in the Terms of Use of a very interesting and potentially valuable site called Newssift, a just-launched service from the Financial Times that uses semantic-web ideas to help sort through the news:

You may be granted a limited, nonexclusive right to create a hyperlink to Newssift.com Web provided (i) you give FT Search Inc. notice of such link by writing to privacyofficer@newssift.com, (ii) FT Search Inc. confirms in writing that you may establish the link, (iii) you do not remove or obscure the copyright notice or other notices on Newssift.com Web, (iv) such link does not portray Newssift.com Web or any of its products, software, content or services in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise defamatory manner, and (v) you immediately discontinue providing a link to Newssift.com Web if so requested by FT Search Inc. You may not use an Newssift.com logo or other proprietary graphic or trademark of Newssift.com to link to the Newssift.com Web without the express written permission of FT Search Inc.

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Except as expressly approved by FT Search Inc. in writing, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion, or use of, or access to, Newssift.com Web.

Just curious: Who got permission for these links?

And since the Web is a giant copying machine, which means that the Newssift results are copied onto my computer screen, am I not exploiting the service "for commercial purposes" if I learn something that serves my own business purposes, e.g. buying shares in a company based on a story they've, um, linked to?

Newssift has a lot to recommend it, but this stuff -- all too common these days -- is ridiculous. The FT lawyers are doing their best to stomp on their own bosses.

UPDATE: See this comment from the company, which says the terms of service were written during the private beta phase and will be updated to reflect the public launch. That actually makes some sense, but did it take a day to figure out? (I ask because I had a call from Newssift shortly after posting this item (more than a day ago from the time of this update), during which I invited the company to explain what it thought it was doing with these restrictions.)

The Boston Globe's "Images from the Recession" page features pictures from around the world showing the stark reality of the econopocalypse. Here's a storage yard filled with disused newspaper boxes and racks in San Francisco.

Update: Looks like I (and the Boston Globe) got this one wrong! From Nonprophetone in the comments, "San Francisco banned all individual news racks a few years ago and just got around to replacing them. That photo has nothing to do with the economy."

Scenes from the recession (Thanks, Jeff!)

(Image: AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Google has filed a submission with the New Zealand government in response to the new law there, which compels ISPs to terminate your Internet connection if you're accused of copyright infringement three times. In its submission, Google discusses its experience with "notice and takedown," which allows people to censor web-pages merely by asserting that they infringe copyright -- and they note that this process is routinely abused -- check out the numbers they proffer:

In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

This doesn't surprise me: what did the world's governments expect when they allowed the entertainment industry to talk them into notice-and-takedown? If you create a free, easy, largely consequence-free means for censoring the Internet, that it wouldn't be abused?

Google submission hammers section 92A (via /.)

A microcredit co-op bank has sprung up in Northern California, using money pooled from hardware hackers to fund other open source hardware hacking projects. They've found 70 lenders,

Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

The fledgling bank is funding only open source hardware projects using capital raised from other hardware geeks. It's like a community of Facebook friends borrowing and lending among themselves — a peer-to-peer bank.

"This speaks to the rise of the do-it-yourselfer, someone who is not just a consumer but also a producer, inventor and investor," says Huynh. "But someone also ought to be thinking about the money problem when it comes to open source hardware and we are doing just that."

So, this is a major plot element of my science fiction novel Makers, coming from Tor next October: microcredit-funded open source hardware hackers laboring in dead malls (the first third of the book was syndicated on Salon as "Themepunks"). It's always a little weird when sf starts to leak into reality.

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank

Liquidware Antipasto: site for Open Source Hardware Bank

Here's part two of Stanford's Robert Sapolsky incredibly fascinating and illuminating lecture on primate sexuality (I posted part one last week). Sapolsky is a great lecturer: funny and engaging, and his material will make you rethink your relationship with your bits. Required viewing for anyone who has ever been horny, or who ever plans to be.

Prof. Robert Sapolsky on the Neurobiology of Primate Sexuality: Part 2 (Thanks, Avi!)

Here's a short National Geo piece on Abu Talib overseeing the 13 chickens at the Taqwa Community Garden in the Bronx:

In 19th-century Manhattan, hogs roamed the streets and cattle grazed in public parks. Today, chickens are the urban livestock of choice, and not just in New York. City dwellers across the U.S. are adding hens to their yards and gardens, garnering fresh eggs, fertilizer, and community ties, with localities debating and updating their ordinances accordingly.

Urban Chickens (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Photo: Ira Block)

Wikileaks has published the secret list of sites blocked by Australia's state-sponsored parental filter -- a list that the government plans to expand to the entire Australian Internet, making it the basis for a new Great Firewall of Australia. The list is compiled in secret and is not readily inspected or appealed, and the officials who maintain it have secretly expanded its mandate so that "half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist."

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, dug up the blacklist after ACMA added several Wikileaks pages to the list following the site's publication of the Danish blacklist.

He said secret censorship systems were "invariably corrupted", pointing to the Thailand censorship list, which was originally billed as a mechanism to prevent child pornography but contained more than 1200 sites classified as criticising the royal family.

"In January the Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides," he said.

"The Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks."

Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites

ACMA list on Wikileaks (down as of 0618h GMT 19 MAR 09)

Mirrors of ACMA list