Avi sez, "John Medina, author of Brain Rules, an excellent summary of 13 neuroscience hacks applicable in daily life, has put the cool companion DVD online for free as an introduction to the paperback release of the book."

Here's what I wrote about Brain Rules when the hardcover came out:

John Medina's Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School pulls off a terrific trick: combining popular science with touching personal memoir and a bunch of practical conclusions for improving work, education and personal life.

Brain Rules takes the brain's mysteries apart into twelve pieces: Exercise, survival, wiring, attention, short-term memory, long-term memory, sleep, stress, multisensory perception, vision, gender, and exploration. He discusses the best, most current science describing what drives each one, delving into psychology, neurology, evolutionary biology, and practical disciplines like behavioural economics, organizational science, and pedagogy.

Woven into the science are a series of vivid anaecdotes from Medina's life and from case histories gathered across the scientific literature, and emerging naturally from that are a series of eminently practical recommendations for reforming the workplace and the education system, and for improving the way that we interact with ourselves and others.

Medina's approach to the subject combines the best aspects of Oliver Sacks and Getting Things Done, making the book into something that's part manifesto and part education. The BrainRules.net site features a ton of audio and video about the book's subject (Medina's descriptions of the value of multisensory learning are very compelling) and other supplementary material, and the book comes bundled with a DVD containing much of this material as well.

Brain Rules in paperback

Brain Rules DVD online

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Wow, this sure is a fun new use for an old media relic.

Amazing art made with old audio cassette tapes

Thanks Adam Wade!

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

I'm not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin' :

As a lad growing up in Wheeling, WV in the 1970s, at approximately the age of twelve, I decided that I was NOT going to eat the food I was being served by my parents any more. In a home where greasy pan-fried hamburgers (or "Steakums") and Kraft macaroni and cheese were the normal dinner fare, I simply wanted to eat healthier. My parents were not very happy about this this demand --for that is what it was-- but what could they do? However, the severity of my new diet must have really taken them by surprise. I became, pretty much a Fruitatarian, almost a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library called "The Mucusless Diet Healing System" by Dr. Arnold Ehret.

I won't go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding "mucus" and "pus" in your food --sounds like an admirable goal, right?-- but suffice to say that while Dr Ehret's work still has many followers --he's thought of as the founder of Naturopathy -- some diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation.

Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn't it? The total disgust he expresses about the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. The absolutist tone must've contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet.

Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman's show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like "The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young" long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding.

The show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk "genius" impervious to the laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a stryrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front!

It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He'd been in Dachau and he'd also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman. He was in "The Burbs" playing Tom Hank's great uncle and was the voice of Gollum in "The Hobbit" cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles' "The Stranger." Theodore was an old Beatnik, that's the way I saw him. (He was even in a porno movie! An X-rated parody of "Jaws" called "Gums." Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. In "Gums" he is seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was late in his eighties. He really wasn't anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties... you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94-years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I'm quite sure he felt that way, too.

Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues --he'd switch off between them when he felt like it-- for over 40 years. One was called "Foodism" -we'll get to this one in a minute and the other was called "Quadrupidism" where he'd extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours.

One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley," Baudelaire's "Les Fleur du Mal," an Edgar Alan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, St Augustine, and... ta da... "The Mucusless Diet Healing System" by Dr Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret's ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his "Foodism" monologue. "I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!" My jaw hit the ground. He'd managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret's zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean... how creative!!

You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from "Foodism" performed on Letterman in the mid-80s.

A Secret Noodle Ring in Minnesota
New York Times obituary for Theodore Gottlieb
Brother Theodore is Dead by Nick Mamatas
Brother Theodore by Jon Kalish (the "TV producer" referred to here is probably me)
A radio tribute to Brother Theodore on WNYC's "The No Show"
Tears from a Glass Eye... with a Tongue of Madness! (Brother Theodore record)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on the Theodore documentary)
To My Great Chagrin (Brother Theodore documentary)

Note that there are several torrents of Brother Theodore performances out there on the Interwebs.

Security expert Ben Laurie has a scorching indictment of the "Verified by Visa" program used by British banks. This system is basically the perfect system for phishers and identity thieves, and conditions honest people to behave in foolish ways that leave them vulnerable to having their life's saving taken off of them.

"Frame inline displays the VbV authentication page in the merchant’s main window with the merchant’s header. Therefore, VbV is seen as a natural part of the purchase process. It is recommended that the top frame include the merchant’s standard branding in a short and concise manner and keep the cardholder within the same look and feel of the checkout process."

Or, in other words: Please ensure that there is absolutely no way for your customer to know whether we are showing the form or you are. In fact, please train your customer to give their “Verified by Visa” password to anyone who asks for it.

Craziness. But it gets better - obviously not everyone is pre-enrolled in this stupid scheme, so they also allow for enrolment using the same inline scheme. Now the phishers have the opportunity to also get information that will allow them to identify themselves to the bank as you. Yes, Visa have provided a very nicely tailored and packaged identity theft scheme. But, best of all, rather like Chip and PIN, they push all blame for their failures on to the customer

More Banking Stupidity: Phished by Visa

200 children in the UK, some as young as 13, have had files opened on them by the British anti-terror cops as potential terrorists -- even though they have committed no crimes. The children were reported to the anti-terror squad by their teachers on the basis of school work, journals and conversations that, in the teachers' view, indicated that the children were susceptible to extremist beliefs. The programme is only 18 months old and has already identified 200 children who should be treated as terrorism suspects. At this rate, every child in Britain should be on the watch list by, what, 2018?

The police say it's all right, though, so that's OK.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists. The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour."

Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists

Wormbook has a lovely meditation on the hacker mindset and the satisfaction of breaking and fixing computers, quoting from Ellen Ullman’s Close to the Machine, "still the best book I know about the psychology of nerding:" "My computers are not broken, but at times like these I like the look of delicate circuit boards open to the naked air. Several hours ago, in a fit of restlessness, I decided to install a pre-release version of a new operating system. Then there seemed to be problems with some of the internal devices. So I took them out, one after the other. Now they lie all around me—cards, wires, memory modules, screws—all in a jumble. To test components, I do what I’m absolutely not supposed to do: run the machines with the covers off. I’m supposed to discharge static electricity before touching anything. But I scuff around on the carpets, grab things with two hands, hold metal to metal. I recognize the nastiness of this mood, reckless and rebellious, like I could get away with breaking the laws of physics. There’s a perverse comfort in broken machinery."

Reading this, I realised that the rage is itself an attractive part of the process because it feels so good when it is over, and everything dissolves into order. There is something in this process of destruction and recreation that resembles the state that long articles and still more radio programmes get into, just before they get right: everything is spread out in ways that look chaotic to everyone except me, and even I can’t quite explain how they will go back together. I can only show, if I keep my concentration. The element of risk makes it far more attractive than the times when everything goes smoothly and by routine. You feel you have discovered a hidden order to the universe. Alternatively, as sometimes happens, you take it all apart and it never ever goes back together properly. All you are left with is a heap of broken junk. But that’s more common with words than with computers.

Creative destruction (via Memex 1.1)

Make Blog has a great roundup of links and coverage for the opening of Bletchley Park's recreation of the Polish "bombe" code-cracking devices that were instrumental in breaking the German Enigma cipher in World War II. Bletchley's curators gathered all the surviving scientists from the original effort to lead the project, and the result is beautiful and inspiring.

Bletchley Park is a national treasure. Every visitor to Britain should go.

During World War II, British brainiacs helped save their country and defeat the Nazis. Recently, the equipment they used has been rebuilt and the surviving members got together for a reunion.

The rebuild project appears to be a maker's delight: code, electronics, old-school manufacturing, and rapid prototyping all wrapped up in a world-changing quest to win the war.

Code cracker remade

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Jamie O'Shea, for ten years editor of the genre-defining visionary arts magazine, Juxtapoz, probably the largest circulated art monthly in the world --I mean, hey, they sell it at Whole Foods-- is now an internationally known creative director and the editor of a new online blog called SuperTouch. SuperTouch is great --kind of a nice hybrid of PAPER magazine style party pics/gossip and the artistic fare seen in O'Shea's former mag, a cool mix.

I was happy to see a post there about my pal Cheryl Dunn's "Spit and Peanut Shells: American Pictures" show at The Country Club gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cheryl's wicked cool and her website is one of my favorite artist's sites. If you are in Cincinnati, check her show out.

And finally, this is redneck sushi:

These Crayon Rings from Timothy Liles are lovely and would be fun to draw with, though at $50 for 10, they're probably too expensive to give to the kids. If you had a ring mold, though, you and the tots could have a fun afternoon melting down the crayolas, pouring them, and making your own set.

Crayon Rings (via Geisha Asobi)

O frabjous day! Daniel Pinkwater has put most of the text of his news kids' book The Yggyssey: How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There online, along with audio of him reading the first chapter.

Pinkwater may be my single most favorite writer in the entire world -- he's certainly the writer who had the biggest impact on me, through novels like "Alan Medelsohn, the Boy From Mars," collected in his 5 Novels omnibus. Mr Pinkwater, if you're reading this, I owe you one. I owe you several.

And I can't wait to read this book!

When I got home from school, my room was full of ghosts..._again!_ They were being invisible, but I could feel the cold spots in the air.

"Did I speak to you ectoplasms about this, or did I not?" I asked the empty room.

Silence. The ghosts were dummying up.

"Rudolph Valentino! I can smell your lousy cigar!"

There was a faint smell of cigar smoke, the trademark of the ghostly Valentino, so I knew he was among them. And my bedspread was rumpled. Probably they were sitting on my bed, playing cards.

"Look, you spectres--this is a young girl's bedroom, not a club! Why do you have to hang out here all the time? You have an eight-story hotel to haunt. There's a complete apartment reserved for your personal use. Why don't you stay there? It's the nicest one in the whole building."

The Yggyssey: How Iggy Wondered What Happened to All the Ghosts, Found Out Where They Went, and Went There

The Yggyssey

MP3 link to Pinkwater reading chapter one

(via Neil Gaiman)

Kinetic artist Reuben Margolin was featured on a recent episode of MAKE: television. He uses salvaged wood, metal, cardboard, and other recycled materials to create massive mechanical wave sculptures. Absolutely incredible work.

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Try this shit on for size:

Next, the inevitable remix!

Thanks Russ Gooberman!

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Have you ever been walking around a 99 Cents store and seen a bottle of cheap cologne with a sticker on the box that reads: "If you like "Calvin" you'll love "Kevin!"?

Apparently the same sort of thing applied to crooner/goofball double acts in the 1950s.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet ersatz Martin and Lewis, Sammy Petrillo and 'Duke' Mitchell.

There is not very much information about these guys online, but these four links, to the Wikipedia entries for Sammy Petrillo, Duke Mitchell, an interview with Sammy Petrillo, and an interview with "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" director Herman Cohen are probably all you'll need.

Thanks Tara McGinley!

Today is the final day of Boing Boing Video's live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, with  Killscreen TV + Offworld. We're streaming live video around the clock on our new Ustream channel. Tune in for conversations in our BBV@GDC studio with hosts including Matty Kirsch from Killscreen TV and Xeni from Boing Boing, visits from fellow Boing Boing bloggers, and the following special guests today, Friday March 27, 2009, the final day of GDC:

* Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy, talking about his most recent game, Noby Noby Boy (note: previously recorded on-site at GDC)
* A planned interview nearby with Hideo Kojima, CEO of Konami. He's the creator of the recently released Metal Gear Solid Touch game for the iPod touch and iPhone (it's currently available on the Apple App Store). He's doing a talk at 3pm at the San Francisco Apple Store, if you're in SF, you should try to go!
* In-studio visit by game developer and researcher Jane McGonigal, whose amazing GDC talk Cory blogged about here.
* Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music, talking about music and video games, and hopefully demoing some music-making gizmos!
* Vlad Micu, "Videogame Visionary" from the Netherlands
* Alice Taylor, game researcher, blogger, and developer, of Wonderland and Channel 4
* Tracy Fullerton of the USC Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab

For BB Video + Offworld's complete video and blog coverage of GDC09, visit offworld.com/gdc09.

Chat room after the jump, or you can hop directly to our Ustream page to view chat + video stream side by side.

Charlie Stross and I are doing a benefit talk for the Open Rights Group on May 1 in London, entitled "Resisting the all-seeing eye." Hope to see you there -- Stross is a ball, and ORG is a damned worthy cause, especially in this era of ubiquitous surveillance.

From technologies like PGP and Tor to the arguments that will convince people - friends and family as well as media and politicians - to watch out for their digital rights, this event is your anti-surveillance 101.

Cory Doctorow - science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist - and Charlie Stross - science fiction writer and former programmer and pharmacist - will share how and why to control your data. The event will be moderated by Ian Brown - academic, activist and Blogzilla.

The entry price is either joining Open Rights Group - by handing door staff a completed form (link to PDF) - or making a one-off £10 donation on the door. Please register for tickets here. Drinks will be available, as is The Three Kings - a local pub - to continue the debate.

What: Doctorow and Stross: Resisting the all-seeing eye
When: 1830, Friday 1 May 2009
Where: Crypt on the Green, St James Church, Clerkenwell, Clerkenwell Close, London, EC1R 0EA - Map

Event - Doctorow and Stross: Resisting the all-seeing eye

Update: Here's Rogers's' slides from the talk

Today at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco, I saw an outstanding talk on the lessons for level design to be had in the design of Disneyland. It was presented by Scott Rogers, Creative Manager at THQ in Los Angeles, who taught himself level design for Pac Man World by thinking about the experiences he'd had on many visits to Disneyland. The talk was full of lively insights and fun facts about both Disneyland and game-lore, and Rogers was a great presenter. I took copious (for me) notes and photos of most of the slides and I've just put them online (Rogers says he'll put the slides up in better form shortly, I'll link to them when he does).

* Walt invented lots of "moving people around" tricks that are useful in level design e.g. weenies (landmarks that draw guests towards certain locations)
   * Good navigational points for open worlds like GTA
   * Provides "picture spots" to stop and think, "Wow this is cool" -- Athens coming into sight in God of War

* How Weenies Work
    * First weenie is the castle -- you walk down linear Main St, and as you reach the hub, more weenies open up, the fronts of the lands, prompting the player/guest to choose where to go
    * As you go further, more weenies open up, the rivers, treehouse, Matterhorn, Space Mtn -- peeking over the horizon, giving a tantalizing glimpse

* Enhancing Weenies:
    * Draw players towards goals geographically and visually
    * Change altitude to enhance drama/scale
    * Make player backtrack/change direction to give more information
    * Switchbacks can do this
    * See ratchet and clank games

Notes from the talk

Slides from the talk

Scott Rogers' homepage

From the TED archive, a new video:

Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering new, deadly viruses where they first emerge -- passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa -- before they claim millions of lives.

Armed with blood samples, high-tech tools and a small army of fieldworkers, Nathan Wolfe hopes to re-invent pandemic control -- and reveal hidden secrets of the planet's dominant lifeform: the virus.

TED Talks: Nathan Wolfe (thanks, Jason Wishnow)

Jason Leroy Savage will go to prison for 90 days for having sex with a vacuum at a car wash in Thomas Township, Detroit. From the Associated Press:

(He) must also submit to drug testing.

The 29-year-old from Michigan, was sentenced Wednesday at Saginaw County Circuit Court. Savage pleaded no contest to indecent exposure last month.

Man caught in vacuum sex act gets 90 days

Morbid Anatomy's Joanna Ebenstein visited the Cabinet of Curiosities of Bonnier de la Mosson, a magnificent 18th century collection of marvelous natural wonders now installed in a library attached to Paris's Museum of Natural History. The actual cabinets themselves are absolutely incredible! From Morbid Anatomy:

This collection is discussed at length by Celeste Olalquiaga in a piece entitled Object Lesson / Transitional Object which ran in a 2005 issue of Cabinet magazine. Here is an excerpt from that piece, which discusses the original cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson at great length:

Hidden away in the endless folds of Paris’s Jardin des Plantes, the Cabinet Bonnier de la Mosson stands as a unique manifestation of the intersection between aesthetics and science. Dating back to 1735, this luxurious cabinet, amassed and exhibited thanks to a family fortune based on the procurement of regional taxes, has the rare quality of combining the atmospheric mise-en-scène of the preceding Wunderkammern with the organizational intent of the later cabinets, producing an original blend of system and fantasy. Considered by many the richest and most imaginative French cabinet of the early eighteenth century, this curiosity cabinet was housed in the hôtel particulier, as the city residences of aristocrats and royalty were known, of Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson (1702-1744), located in the now extinct rue des Dominiques...

Cabinet of Curiosities of Bonnier de la Mosson

squirrel messenger
unidog
wiggles dog wigs
dancing chicken
owls
daily mail picnic
frog
inner city snail
counting sheep
squeek the squirrel
hamsters in hats
uni the hedgehog

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!)

Yesterday, I blogged about the photos I'd caught of some beautifully detailed artist's anatomical models on sale in the dealer's room at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco. I ended up going back later in the day to buy one of the models (they brought their "slightly irregular" stock to the show and are selling it at half off), and I got to talking with the staff about their wares.

It turns out that they're on something of a holy mission to introduce high quality, affordable artistically rendered anatomical models to the fields of science, art and medicine, replacing the standard, multi-thousand-dollar, low-quality anatomical models with sub-$500 versions that are much better rendered and easier to grasp.

But these are more than teaching aids or artist's reference -- they're absolutely drop-dead gorgeous sculptures, created by a Bay Area artist called Andrew Cawrse. The more I look at the model sitting here on my desk, the more enthralled I am with it, and the more clever grace-notes I spot in the various cutaways that make clear a thousand myriad elements of anatomy (and I had to laugh to discover that the cross-sectioned penis is attached by a magnet, so it can be removed by customers who aren't allowed to show penises in their workplaces).

Freedom of Teach/Anatomy Tools

Artist Justine Lai's new project is a set of oil paintings of her having sex with every president of the USA, in order.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

NOTES ON JOIN OR DIE (Thanks, Frank W!)

Wil Wheaton is leading a kitchen-table game of Dungeons and Dragons with his teenaged son and some of his son's friends, and documenting the campaign in his blog. This is absolutely charming, a heartwarming tale of our proud geek heritage being passed down through the generations.

D&D was the first thing to capture my attention as thoroughly as reading had. I remember just falling head over heels for it -- the miniatures, the painting, the storytelling, the dice, the paraphernalia, the social circle. It was all I could think about for years. I haunted the downtown D&D stores like The Four Horsemen and Mr Gameway's Arc (which had a full-scale replica of the bridge of the Enterprise on the top level!), and hoarded graph-paper like it was going out of style. Reading this brings it all back to me.

As John Rogers notes, "They are, in the end, about a father sitting down at a kitchen table, for hours, teaching and telling stories with his son."

He looked up at Nolan and their other friend. "If I get behind her, I can get out of reach of her claws, and I do all kinds of cool stuff when I'm flanking someone."

Yeah, this kid is really into being a rogue.

They agreed that he could go for it. I decided that this was incredibly difficult: DC 20.

"Make an athletics check," I said. Then, "are you sure you want to do this?"

But the die was out of his hand. It rolled across the table in front of him and landed at the edge of the map: 19.

"What's your athletics bonus?" I said.

"Plus 1," he said.

"Well, I can't believe you pulled it off, but you did it."

"YES!" He said, with a major fist pump.

"Let's see if the Dragon hits you, as you leap away," I said. She rolled a four.

"As you crouch down to leap away, she looks down at you and snorts contemptuously. She slashes at you with her left claw, but when it snaps closed, you've already lept through her grasp! You lock your hands around the neck of this statue, and spin around it, tucking your feet in and avoiding the wyrmling's bite. You let go of the statue, somersault in the air, and land on your feet behind her."

"That was so cool," Nolan said.

His friend and I both nodded. I realized that I was having a lot of fun visualizing the action in my head, and describing it to them all as evocatively as possible.

and so the campaign begins... (Part I)

and so the campaign begins... (Part II)

and so the campaign begins... (Part III)

and so the campaign begins... (Part IV)

a few thoughts and lessons learned from behind the dm screen

From the 11/5/99 New York Times: "CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS By STEPHEN LABATON":

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS (11/5/99)

Roy Trumbull, a talented reader, is working his way through the best of Project Gutenberg's texts, reading them aloud in a podcast called "Story Spieler." He's got a lot of classic science fiction, Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" and lots more. Roy read some of my work aloud and did a fantastic job with it, and I'm really enjoying listening to his work on these stories, too. It's a great way to mine the past for some of the great and forgotten works of literature.

Story Spieler Podcast

Podcast feed

The folks at NYC Resistor laser-cut this sweet little flying-V ukelele, designed with open source tools. It's just a half-size prototype. but there's some there there for sure.

2) With the help from a kind friend, I got this file into the proper format for printing, stuck a sheet of 1/8″ x 24″ x 12″ plywood into the laser, and then hit the “GO” button. Just before you hit that button, you are required to shout “FIRE THE LAZZZZOR”, just so people know, well, that something magic is about to happen.

3) After about twenty minutes of laazzzoor (which costs me $20… $1 per minute of laser use), out came the piece of wood, from which I could easily pop out the various parts of my new uku. From there, some simple wood glue and human hand pressure produced the outcome seen below.

Open-Source Ukulele Proto Uno Lazzzzored FTW! (Thanks, Nathan!)

Becky Stern has followed up her plush model of her damaged femur with a complete, anatomically correct plush knee. Go Becky! She adds, "I used elastic to give the ligaments realistic stretch, and even gave it the capability to dislocate, just like my real knee. Built using anatomical models and the pictures my doctor took from inside my knee during surgery as references."

Plush Knee (Thanks, Becky!)

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Reclusive British comedy genius Chris Morris came out with his darkly surreal masterpiece of weirdness, "Jam" (based on his "Blue Jam" radio show) in 2000, but sadly because of expensive music rights issues, "Jam" has seldom been seen outside of the UK. This is a shame, because "Jam" is a uniquely...um... well... ah...hmmm... I hesitate to call it "comedy" because it's so odd and disturbing, but if I called it "David Lynchian" comedy, we'd be in the right ball park at least. "Jam" is like a bad --make that very bad-- acid trip played for laughs. Take a look at one of the show opens:

Not exactly "funny ha ha" stuff. In fact, there's nary a traditional "joke" in the entire series. There are six episodes of "Jam" and although I'd classify myself as a huge fan of the show, six episodes of something like this is plenty!! The style would've become a creative dead end. But a great talent like Chris Morris wasn't to repeat himself anyway --his next project, the wonderfully vicious satire of dotcom dickheads, "Nathan Barley" was quite a shift away from the brooding psychopathy of "Jam." I eagerly await his feature comedy debut, rumored to be about Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers.

This is one of my favorite "Jam" moments, "Mister Lizard" featuring the always brilliant actor, Mark Heap --he's in tons of stuff-- as a creepy television repairman.

Here's another great "Jam" clip with another UK comedy auteur, Julia Davis, creator of the "wheelchair Gothic" classic, "Nighty Night" as a particularly stupid woman:

Mary Robinette Kowal sez, "For Shimmer magazine's 10th issue, we've got twelve fantastic new stories and an interview with none other than Cory Doctorow. In honor of Cory's work with Creative Commons, we are giving away the pdf of this issue as a free download."

Issue Ten (Thanks, Mary!)

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Kenneth Anger's creepy/funny homage to Mickey Mouse:

Day 3 of Boing Boing Video's live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco with  Killscreen TV + Offworld. We're streaming live video around the clock on our new Ustream channel. Tune in for conversations in our BBV@GDC studio with hosts including Matty Kirsch from Killscreen TV and Xeni from Boing Boing, Jolon Bankey and Daniela Calderon from Mysterious Development, visits from fellow Boing Boing bloggers, and the following special guests today, Thursday March 26, 2009:

Alice Taylor of Channel 4 and Wonderland

John Seggerson of Telltale Games

Derek Johnson of Chalice Games

Troy Gilbert of Mockingbird Games

Sebastien de Halleux of Playfish Games

and our pal Kevin Kelly from Joystiq

For BB + Offworld's complete video and blog coverage of GDC09, visit offworld.com/gdc09.

(Special thanks to our live stream host Ustream TV, to Wayneco Heavy Industries, and to our transportation provider at Virgin America. Video Crew members in the house this week: Jolon Bankey, Wes Varghese, Derek Bledsoe, Xeni Jardin, and Killscreen TV's Matty Kirsch and Allison Kingsley).

Maria Zacharopoulou commissioned Archivirus Architecture and Design to transform her Athens home into a "skatable habitat." The result is the stunning Ramp House. From AR Plus (snips of photos by Theo Vranas):

The architect wanted the ‘skateboarding’ element to be more than simply putting a mini ramp in the living room. Rather, the ramp, the bowl and all the interpretations of those terms would actually become the building elements for this space. It is intended to be a ‘ramp house’ and not a ‘house with a ramp’. Straight lines are curved and the flat surface becomes a ramp or a bowl. Basic house elements such as the fireplace and storage units are hidden inside the ramp forms.

The Ramp House (Thanks, Dave Gill!)

My Institute for the Future colleagues Jason Tester and Rachel Hatch have launched a new alternate reality game in collaboration with United Cerebral Palsy and AARP. Titled Ruby's Bequest, it's all about the future of caring in the United States. Ruby's Bequest takes place in the fictional 2011 community of Deepwell where folks are sharing their stories, solutions, and worries about how to best care for each other, in sickness and health. Participants have already contributed nearly 200 personal stories and advice about how we can work together to build better structures for caring, from elder care to health care systems to community involvement. Please check it out!

Set in the fictional town of Deepwell, Ruby’s Bequest begins with news of a sizeable bequest from Ruby Wood to strengthen the ecosystem of caring in the community. Charged with improving the town’s caring infrastructure the residents of Deepwell have created the online forum at www.rubysbequest.org to solicit the whole community and beyond to participate and achieve this mission. Participants are invited to share their own experiences on caring and care giving by logging on, creating a profile and contributing text, photos, videos, and other personal narrative. Subject matter provided in the fictional narrative will include things like “caring from a distance,” “tough conversations,” “making the system work (better!) and so on. These subjects are intended to spark further discussion and debate among the community at large about other aspects of caring.

“The caring infrastructure as we know it is changing fast. Federal and local services that we once relied upon—from adult day care to Medicare and Social Security—are quickly eroding,” said Jason Tester, IFTF researcher and lead developer of Ruby’s Bequest. “This means that more of the burden of caring will fall to individuals and communities in the near and long term. A key charter of the Institute is to encourage broader and deeper examination of our future now so that the public can help shape it and be better prepared to face it.”

Ruby's Bequest

Our pals at Mythbusters made a big bang in the the small town of Esparto, California. Their aim was to "knock the socks off" a mannequin with an explosion of ammonium nitrate. The boom blew out some residents' windows that Mythbusters replaced. One woman whose glass was shattered was delighted by the surprise. Others, not so much. From KCRA.com:

"Course all the neighbors ran out into the street. We didn't know what was going on," said Paul Williams, who heard the explosion...

Williams said the school and others in town should have been notified the blast was going to happen.

Chief Barry Burns, of Esparto Fire Department, had several firefighters on hand for the explosion. He said he made the decision not to notify anyone in town for safety sake.

"Mythbusters is supposed to be a really popular show. Everybody would have been out there. We would have had to cancel it because it would have been too dangerous," Burns said.

Mythbusters 'Big Bang' Shatters Windows (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Gabe Delahaye at Videogum points to this gem, and says, "I copied out the lyrics so that they're easier for you to cut and paste into your Livejournal."

While chatting, first greet happily / Use polite words in a cordial way / During the game always be open, honest and do the right thing / Be careful on the keyboard / I know who did it (be careful) / I know I am the internet guardian angel / I will be the first to protect / I want to be the first to protect / Though faces are unknown, it's a warm neighborhood / Precious Internet friend / Precious Internet friend (friend!) / Netiquette!

Kids Sing A Made Up Song About Netiquette The Darndest Things

Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger

Soon, I'll be taping an interview with Charles Hugh Smith and posting it here at Boing Boing. In the meantime, Charles has posted Chapter 2 of his new (free) e-book, "Survival+" at his Of Two Minds blog, which I encourage you all to visit daily. Many of you reading this are starting to wonder what society will look like: in a few months, a year from now, five years from now and Charles Hugh Smith is an indispensable thinker and tour guide for what we should be preparing for. I believe that he's one of the sharpest, smartest --and sanest-- writers around today, and I enjoy batting ideas around with him corresponding over email, some of which makes it into his more informal columns. I'm pleased and grateful to have a forum here at Boing Boing where I can help promote his work.

Some recent Charles Hugh Smith essays:

Survival+ Chapter 1

The Dematerialization of America

The Return of Big Government and the (de facto) Welfare State

Has Capitalism Failed?

The Road to National Insolvency

What's Obvious III: Some Transformations Will Be Positive

End of An Era: What's Not Coming Back

Of Two Minds: An Interview with Charles Hugh Smith

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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!)

Ivan covered this found coffee-table with a pushpin Super Mario mosaic (protected by plexiglass) and painted and decorated the legs to match. Apparently pushpin mosaics are unexpectedly hard on the thumbs.

Super Mario Coffee Table (Thanks, Ivan!)

Glyn sez, "The EU's Telecoms Package is back for its second reading. The French are attempting to push through their 'three strikes and you're out' approach again, the UK are attempting to get rid of net neutrality and get rid of peoples right to privacy. The ITRE/IMCO committee are meeting on the 31 March 2009 to dicuss these and other alarming amendments. The Open Rights Group have more details:"

One of the most controversial issues is that of the three-strikes strongly and continuously pushed by France in the EU Council. Although most of the dispositions introducing the graduate response system were rejected in first reading of the Telecom Package, there are still some alarming ones persisting. France is trying hard to get rid of Amendment 138 which seeks to protect users' rights against the three-strikes sanctions and which, until now, has stopped the EU from applying the three-strikes policy. Also, some new amendments reintroduce the notion of lawful content, which will impose the obligation on ISPs to monitor content going through their networks.

The UK government is pushing for the "wikipedia amendments" (so-called because one of them has been created by cutting and pasting a text out of the wikipedia) in order to allow ISPs to make limited content offers. The UK amendments eliminate the text that gives users rights to access and distribute content, services and applications, replacing it with a text that says "there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions to and/or use of applications and services, and of any traffic management policies ."...

Also a very dangerous amendment to the ePrivacy directive is introduced by the UK, allowing the telecommunications industry to collect a potentially unlimited amount of users' sensitive and confidential communications data including telephone and e-mail contacts, geographic position of mobile phones and websites visited on the Internet.

Click through to find out more about what you can do.

Telecom Package in second reading - dangerous amendments? (Thanks, Glyn!)

Yesterday's remix challenge -- to mock the ridiculous new "anti-terrorism" posters the London police have put up that tell you to spy on your neighbors -- was a smashing success. I've collected the 25 or so that came in to date below (sorry if I missed one or two -- I did it all by hand!) -- click through to see them all and prepare to laugh and weep and laugh and weep.

Sprig toys are lovely, heavy-duty and made from reclaimed plastic and wood in a shop in Colorado. The toys are kinetic and drive their internal motion from their wheels, not batteries.

Out in the backyard lives a magical world called Sprig Hollow.

Our friends Bee and Butterfly, the architects of Sprig Hollow, specifically designed all the farm vehicles for maximum utility in water, sand and garden environments. All of the vehicles at Sprig Hollow come equipped with detachable tools and water-resistant materials in order to sustain play and expand possibilities. The playful, cartoon-like designs of our chunky vehicles, characters and play sets make them irresistible to preschoolers, and parents love the eco-friendly, kid-powered construction. So jump into a place where imaginations blossom as preschoolers and their grown-ups play and learn in the fresh air! Recommended for ages 3 and up.

Sprig Toys Sprig Toys manufacturer's site (via Babygadget)

A cotton swab may be the most wanted criminal in Europe. For years, cops across southeastern Europe have hunted an cop-killing eastern European woman whose DNA turned up at 17 crime scenes. The crimes were wildly diverse, geographically separated, and had no visible pattern.

You see where this is going, right? It's now believed that the DNA was introduced to the forensic swabs at the factory, and that cops have been hunting someone who probably sticks q-tips in baggies all day and has never committed a crime.

It now turns out that the several-hundred-men task force might have really been chasing a phantom. Alarmed by the apparent randomness of the crimes, involving both highly professional work and seemingly amateur break-ins, they started checking for contaminations in the labwork. The likeliest suspect now are the cotton swabs used to collect evidence at the crime scene. All the swabs used in the forensics works were sourced from the same supplier, a company in northern Germany that employs several eastern-European women that would fit the profile. Even more incriminating, the state of Bavaria lies right in the center of the crimes’ locations, without ever finding matching DNA in crimes on its territory. Guess what: they get their cotton swabs from a different supplier.

By the way: contaminated cotton swabs aren”t as trivial to avoid as one might think. It’s relatively easy to sterilize cotton to prevent infections. Forensics however require a complete destruction or removal of any DNA contamination, which is apparently a lot harder.

The Heilbronn DNA Mixup (Thanks, Oliver!)

Brando's latest dubious-but-promising gadget is a cigarette-pack-sized, battery powered LCD projector shaped like a retro 8mm film projector camera. No idea if the image quality or light intensity are any good, but the concept's lovely. I don't know that I'd risk $219 on it, though.

Retro Cuboid Tiny Handheld Projector

I don't know anything about this public cigarette lighter shaped like blackened lungs, but I assume they were part of an anti-smoking campaign, somewhere.

Light Up Your Lungs

An exhibitor at the Game Developers' Conference was selling these anatomical models (from anatomytools.com) for use as artist's reference -- they were very beautiful, and my photos came out great (if I do say so myself).

Anatomical models

One of my highlights from the Game Developers' Conference for me was the "Oh No Banjo" exhibit, showing off student work from the Rochester Institute of Technology's "Alternative Controllers Seminar." The students gutted a guitar game-controller and built a very credible banjo using its buttons and electronics, then wrote custom software and musical arrangements for it (apparently the Scruggs people rightsholders wouldn't let them use "Duelling Banjos," even for a noncommercial, student project). I played it for a while and found it very fun -- I totally rocked the banjo for MC Chris's "Fett's Vette."

Final Reports and Pictures from the Alternative Controllers Seminar

My photos

British local councils have a new weapon in their arsenal of devices that collectively and indiscriminately punish teenagers simply for being young. The new tool is a pink overhead light designed to exaggerate acne, with the intention of making children so unhappy and insecure about their appearances that they go somewhere else (mind you, these councils are almost certainly also allocating funds to helping teenagers cope with low self-esteem and avoid the problems associated with it, such as depression and vulnerability of recruitment into violent activity).

Other weapons in the arsenal against youth include the "Mosquito" -- an annoying high-pitched tone that adults can't hear, that shopkeepers and councils have deployed against teens and kids (and, of course, any babies that happen to be in the area), and "anti-kid steps" that are supposed to prevent the menace of kids staying in one place, talking to one another.

Anti-teenager “pink lights to show up acne” (Thanks, Dan!)

(Image: BBC)

My friend Janet Klein made an instructional video to teach you how to play "Tonight You Belong To Me" on the ukulele.

Eileen sez, "For Lovelace Day, I chatted with geek-grrl guru and virtual-worlds visionary Linda Stone, who tells how she introduced Apple-like compassion to Microsoft's rough-and-ready corporate culture. Wish I'd been there to see that!"

Linda's one of my favorite people of all time -- what a great appreciation of a deserving subject!

I brought in interesting speakers when I was in Microsoft Research, and then started the Visiting Speaker Series in 2000, which is still around today. I brought in thought leaders and critics like Eric Raymond, Larry Lessig, and David Farber, to talk and meet with people. I brought in Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, and John Lasseter. These are people who inspire all of us, who open our minds and stimulate our thinking. The series gave employees access to these people and their ideas, and that proved to be a very powerful way of keeping dialog flowing. Many other companies have now instituted their own series, and Kim Ricketts, a bookseller in Seattle who supported my efforts at Microsoft when she was at the University Bookstore, has now created a business around organizing and hosting book signings and author tours in corporations. While I worked for Ballmer, I managed and significantly improved Microsoft’s relationship with the World Economic Forum. At conferences, in the Valley, in NYC and elsewhere, I was visible and accessible, so that people could talk to me and I would be aware, as much as possible, of problems as they arose and before they became serious. I also helped nurture dialogs on important topics like open source, and followed up on them. I wanted to encourage a general curiosity in the Microsoft community, and to encourage Microsoft employees to develop relationships with the larger community outside of the company.

Welcome to Ada Lovelace Day! :: An interview with Linda Stone (Thanks, Eileen!)

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

It's sure gonna be a long, hot FUN summer...

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Mahalo G20 Protests round-up (frequently updated)