GAMA-GO's Greg Long snapped this photo of a flyer for a dog walking service in San Francisco. I agree that the artwork is rather odd. Click the image for the full flyer.

Apparently an increasing number of young people enjoy "smoking" crushed Smarties candy. They inhale the candy dust into the mouth and then exhale, producing what looks like thick smoke. (Above is just one of many video demos on YouTube.) Guess what? It's generally a bad idea. From WCBS:

Mark Shikowitz, a Long Island ear nose and throat specialist, treated a 9-year-old who had pieces of candy lodged in his nose.

"He told his parents that he felt his nose was burning," Dr. Shikowitz said.

The candy eventually dissolved, but Shikowitz said kids could also accidentally inhale the fine powder down the wrong pipe.

"That irritation can cause you to cough, can cause you to laryngospasm, which is your voice box spasming and closing," Shikowitz said.

If the sugar sits in the lungs or in the nasal cavity for a prolonged period of time it could cause an infection.

"Any time you have a substance such as sugar in these areas, which are moist, it creates a terrific growth medium for bacteria," Shikowitz said.

"Alarming Trend: Kids Literally Smoking CANDY" (via Dose Nation)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Lisa's written a fabulous tutorial on building your own dogshit composter -- something that'll bring up the Easter daisies a treat.

This is Ruby's butt, a great source for fresh, fertile minpin poop. She eats pretty healthy food--broccoli, carrots, lean ground turkey, some California Naturals kibble, so I'm assuming her poop's made up of a lot of the same stuff too.

My friend Christian, who famously composts his own (bigger) dogs' poop, clued me into the importance of red wiggler worms, so I decided to go to nearby Buena Vista Park to dig for some. People use them to compost human waste, too. If you're not into digging for worms, hardware stores sell things like septic starter or commercial fertilizer that can also do the trick.

How to make a minpin poop compost bin: an illustrated guide

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Glyn sez, "Statebook is a spoof government site, providing examples of the types of information the UK government holds an an individual citizen. The site also shows what what new information the government want to collect, through new schemes, like the 'Intercept Modernisation Programme' which could even include amassing all of our Internet traffic data in a single government database."

Statebook: A Place to Access Your Citizens' Information (Thanks, Glyn!)

Matt sez, "The weekend of May 1 through 3, Penguicon brings together science fiction, open source software, and other geek interests in southeast Michigan. In its seventh year, the attendance target for the convention is one thousand, three hundred and thirty seven. Guests of Honor are ubergeek Wil Wheaton, alternate reality game creator Jane McGonigal, Rasmus Lerdorf of PHP, steampunk author Sarah Hoyt, and John 'maddog' Hall of Linux International. Hack of Honor is the Candyfab project that prints 3D models with sugar."

I was a Guest of Honor at Penguicon some years ago and it was absolutely brilliant.

What is Penguicon?

Pete sez, "Seems that Manchester police in the UK have decided to deploy CCTV camera cars (in Smart cars) to keep a better eye on motorists at junctions etc. This is getting so completely crazy it's not true. I'm rereading Little Brother at the moment, and in the 9 months or so since I read it the first time I can't believe how much more realistic it's become."

We've got these all over London -- I like to chase them through the streets with my camera.

Anyone seen driving while distracted - eating at the wheel, playing with the radio or applying make-up for instance - is filmed by the cameras.

Later, a letter is sent to the owner of the car, in many cases along with a fine.

Anyone caught using their mobile will be asked to pay £60 and have three points added to their licence. Fines could also be handed out to anyone who is thought to be driving without due care and attention, or similar offences.

CCTV cars snap distracted drivers (Thanks, Pete!)

Rufus sez, "I got a 419 Scam email that was so funny I had to respond. It was from the UN Money Laundering Association of London, NY. I've posted the first of many absurd back and forth emails about Laundering Request Requisition Forms. My address is 123 Sillypants Way, I blamed my delays on being attacked by natives and they don't miss a beat."

I am Mr. Rod Smith, a secretary from United Nation Money laundering Association here in London. We discovered that you needed a financial help and support to achieve your goals for establishing goods Business opoortunities like building of Factories, Estates, Hospitals or more other business opportunities that can yield much money here in europe.

Here is the door open for you for laundering to any amount of money that you needed or desire to achieve your goals and expectations, because our main motives and aim is to make less priviledge and the rich once becomes more successful in life.

Best Spam Ever - part 1 (Thanks, Rufus)

Pamela Samuelson, one of America's leading copyright scholars, has published a working paper arguing that the DoJ's and RIAA's theory for calculating damages in downloader lawsuits is flawed:

A working paper coauthored by noted copyright law scholar Prof. Pamela Samuelson of the University of California Law School discusses, in depth, various issues regarding statutory damages under the Copyright Act.

Among other things, the paper concludes that the State Farm/Gore due process test is applicable to statutory damage awards under the Copyright Act, a position which is consistent with the position taken in the amicus curiae brief filed by the Free Software Foundation in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, and inconsistent with the positions taken by the Department of Justice in Tenenbaum and in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud

Working paper by Prof. Samuelson on Copyright Act statutory damages argues Gore due process test applicable to statutory damages (via /.)

My Institute for the Future colleague Lyn Jeffery, of the virtual China blog 88 Bar, turned me on to Neocha.com, an incredible hub of indie Chinese art/culture/music. For example, dig the beautiful music of experimental zither player Zeng Xiaogang.

Anthony Pontius is showing a new collection of his lovely, dark, phantasmagoric paintings at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Seen here, "Hotter Than Hell" (oil on panel, 18" x 24"). The show, titled "The Casual Calamity," opens tonight at Seattle's Roq La Rue gallery. Also showing at the Roq is Nathan Ota. Both exhibitions are up until May 2 and viewable online.

Anthony Pontius preview
Nathan Ota preview

This is not a parody of a workplace safety video. This is an actual workplace safety video. Will You Be Here Tomorrow? (Thanks, John Walsh!)

Why did lightinthebox.com remove this photo of a prom dress and replace it with a different shot of the same model in the same dress?

Over at Total Dick-Head, David Gill has word on the forthcoming comic book adaptation of Philip K. Dick's iconic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Of course, this is the 1968 book that the film Blade Runner was based on. The first issue will have four cover versions with art by Denis Calero, Bill Sienkiewicz and Scott Keating, and Moritat. Warren Ellis is writing the first issue's back-matter, and that concerns Gill. Not me though, I'm a huge fan of Ellis's fiction and comix, and look forward to see what he comes up with in this context. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Become a Comic Book Series"

UPDATE: BOOM Studios' Chip Mosher says the 24 issue series is not an adaptation of the novel but the "full text, fully illustrated." More here!

Designer Sebastian Errazuriz created this dress out of 120 zippers. I dig the idea of reconfigurable clothing that isn't ugly. Zipper Dress (Britannica.com, thanks Alex Pang!)

From the TED blog (Via Jake von Slatt via speigl.org via verylowsodium):

Instructions:
1. Stare at the image for 10 seconds.
2. Look at something -- your hand, a book, your friend
3. Enjoy!

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Beautiful film from Semiconductor.

Here we see the HI (Heliospheric Imager) visual data as it tracks interplanetary space for solar wind and CME's (coronal mass ejections) heading towards Earth. Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission.

Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME's, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.

As in Semiconductors previous work 'Brilliant Noise' which looked into the sun, they work with raw scientific satellite data which has not yet been cleaned and processed for public consumption. By embracing the artifacts, calibration and phenomena of the capturing process we are reminded of the presence of the human observer who endeavors to extend our perceptions and knowledge through technological innovation.

(via cgr)

Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Boing Boing Video wishes you a Happy Friday. And surely there can be no better way to celebrate the end of a work week than to put on a Katamari Damacy head, crank up a favorite song ("Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead), and rock out in front of a webcam. This is what happened with our esteemed interview guests Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College, who participated in Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The interview was over, the chat room was buzzing, the Katamari costumes were just sitting there. I asked our chat room participants what we should force our guests to dance to, and all agreed to Radiohead. You'll hear me shouting out commands from the chat room during this video, and eventually, at the end, obeying a final command myself: to join in.

This moment is also memorialized by paperdummy, whom we thank for the kind loan of the Katamari heads.

Justin McKeating asks: “Now, I’ve never had any medical training so can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what the above procedure is called and what it’s used for in a medical capacity?” (via, Why That's Delightful!)

After having a stroke, a 64-year-old woman reports that she now has a "pale, milky-white and translucent third arm" that she can use to scratch itchy parts of her body. She also says the limb can't penetrate solid objects.

It is "the first case known to doctors of a person being able to feel, see and deliberately move a limb that doesn't exist." The woman underwent an MRI and when doctors asker her to move her imaginary third limb, her brain responded as if she really had the arm. Her visual cortex activity also indicated that she saw the arm. (Via Arbroath)

Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today's Boing Boing Video episode is part 2 of a 2-part conversation with Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College about generative music, experimental audio in video games, new tools for music composition, and how sound changes our experience of gaming.

We conducted this interview during Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Peter Kirn shares a couple of urls that came up during the conversation:

Composer Troels Folmann came up as a source of inspiration - and himself the advocate of something he calls "micro-scoring." His GDC session, in which he boils a waterphone (seen at the tail end of the video!), is here on createdigitalmusic.com.

And here is a previous interview in which he discusses his approach to adaptive music.

Artist, actress, and digital explorer Ann Magnuson has an art show opening up tomorrow night in the remote California desert town of Joshua Tree. The exhibition is titled "30 x 30," at Art Queen gallery, and chronicles Magnuson's adventures in creating 30 art works in 30 days. From the gallery owner's official blurb:

Ann Magnuson is an actress ("Making Mr. Right", "Clear and Present Danger", "Panic Room", series regular on the ABC-TV sitcom "Anything but Love"), writer, performance artist, former singer/lyricist for the psycho-psychedelic band Bongwater and a part-time resident of Joshua Tree. "I've been visiting JT regularly since the eighties" Ann told us. "My husband and I finally got a place out here 5 years ago and I love it." She loved our '30 in 30' exercise. "Making art is more fun than acting!" she told us. "The anything-goes approach gave me a sense of liberation I haven't felt since I was a kid. It's really helped me look at the creative process anew."

Although Ann had always enjoyed making craft projects or fake Jean Michel Basquiat paintings (which are fantastic!) she had never applied her talents to putting together a whole show of her artworks. Ann used materials from local thrift stores as well as organic and inorganic 'found objects' from her rustic desert environment in Joshua Tree. Please join us this Saturday, April 11, 7-10 pm for the opening party with live entertainment by the Plaids, Shari Elf, and maybe even Ann Magnuson!

More on the show here, and Black Book reviews another show she's in right here.

VIDEO: Ms. Magnuson is shown above in a video from 1983, a segment called "Girl Talk" from the Manhattan cable access television show "Your Program of Programs." She's a legend, and we love her.

IMAGE: Below, "Prince Charming is an Asshole," by Ann Magnuson, from the Joshua Tree show opening tomorrow night.

Crafter Becky Stern says: "To go along with my Vicodin earrings, I made this Vicodin ring from sterling silver. I sanded one side of the pill flat (while wearing a dusk mask, of course!), and bezel set it.

Scott Beale blogs,

¡Ay, caramba! On May 7th the US Postal Service will be releasing a series of postage stamps commemorating The Simpsons. As part of the pre-release preview you can vote on your favorite Simpsons character and pre-order sets of the stamps.

Sneak peek at the images over at Laughing Squid. (Congrats, Boing Boing pals Matt Groening + David Silverman!)

bjork (above. seriously. this is. classic.)
salvador dali
on the set
as seen on tv
24: the 1994 pilot
pancake mountain
television obscurities
video home system
ernie kovacs show closing credits

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!)

The Mayor of Mt. Holly posted this terrific movie about World War I starring dogs, "All Quiet on the Canine Front." Here's a bit of information about the Dogville Shorts series (1921-1931). (Wot, no Wikipedia entry?)

Anna Brones of Wend magazine has an article about business that use bikes to deliver goods and provide services. One company profiled, Soupcycle, delivers organic soup. Another Q19, is a house cleaning service that uses petrochemical-free cleaning agents. The article also mentions bike-powered business in Florida (organic produce delivery), Boston (pick-up and delivery service), and Philadelphia (recycling and compost).

Lazar delivers soup to “Souplandistan,” an area that covers most of inner Portland, with an electrical assist trike. The battery assist helps pull him and his bike and trailer up some of Portland’s hillier streets. Fully loaded the trailer and bike weigh a total of about 200 pounds, but Lazar calculates that he only uses the battery assist about 20% of the time; for the rest, it’s all legs.

Pedaling to Profit: The Upswing of Bike Powered Business

Mitch sez, "The small Dune roleplaying community in Second Life got a legal notice from Trident Media Group, the New York literary agency that handles the Frank Herbert Estate, via Linden Lab, which develops and manages Second Life."

Among the smaller of these is a group dedicated to Dune, the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi franchise of novels, movies, and other IP. Their leader, Vooper Werribee, counts 130 members who enjoy roleplay in the sands of an Arrakis based in Second Life, taking on the personae of sandworm-riding Fremen, Harkonnen-hating Atreides, and so on. (He believes only 20% of these are currently active.)

Notwithstanding those paltry numbers, last weekend Werribee and other members received legal notices from Linden Lab via Trident Media Group, a New York literary agency which maintains the Herbert Estate. "In particular," the notice reads, "Trident Media Group has complained about your use of characters, concepts and other material associated with 'Dune' in the Second Life environment." Those include roleplay locations entitled "Sardaukar Mask", "Fremen Domain", and "Bene Gesserit Retreat". The Lindens' notice ordered Werribee and his group to remove such titles and objects from Second Life within two days, or the company would do so itself.

Good going Trident! There's 130 Herbert megafans who won't be so quick to enjoy, proselytize and spread your client's work next time. Keep it up and you'll soon have the whole world turned off Dune!

Enforcers of Dune: Frank Herbert Estate Targets Dune Roleplayers In Second Life (Thanks, Mitch!)

A University of Washington engineering professor has come up with a new goop for his 3D printer that costs 1/30 - 1/50 of the authorized goop, using a mix of clay, sugar and nutritional supplements, then open sourced their formula. Basically, these guys are the inkjet cartridge refillers of the 3D era:

About five years ago, Mark Ganter, a UW mechanical engineering professor and longtime practitioner of 3-D printing, became frustrated with the high cost of commercial materials and began experimenting with his own formulas. He and his students gradually developed a home-brew approach, replacing a proprietary mix with artists' ceramic powder blended with sugar and maltodextrin, a nutritional supplement. The results are printed in a recent issue of Ceramics Monthly. Co-authors are Duane Storti, UW associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Ben Utela, a former UW doctoral student.

"Normally these supplies cost $30 to $50 a pound. Our materials cost less than a dollar a pound," said Ganter. He said he wants to distribute the free recipes in order to democratize 3-D printing and expand the range of printable objects.

Glitzy three-dimensional printers have become common in the industrial world, churning out fast 3-D prototypes of everything from airplane parts to running shoes. But the machines also are becoming popular among artists, hobbyists and educational institutions.

3-D Printing Hits Rock-bottom Prices With Homemade Ceramics Mix

I'm still digesting what this means for the future of the internet and entertainment, but something about this feels like (a) the end of all media or (b) the beginning of all media to come. Snoop Dogg has a webshow on Ustream. As I blog, it's live right now. The show consists entirely of him sitting in a chair in his house, smoking a shit-ton of weed, and playing really good old-school music. Sometimes, singing along for a bar or two, or talking back to the chat room intermittently in Snoop-isms. Then, walking away entirely, leaving the webcam fixed on a poster of Snoop on the wall for, like, a half hour at a time. Seriously, that's it. Where the evolutionary arc of reality TV finally ends. Like Father Hood, but with all the plot stripped out. Someone smarter than I will be writing a media analysis column about this soon enough. I don't have anything pithy to say yet, just -- do observe. And, Josh Harris saw it coming. Snoop Dogg Live.

(Image: Laughing Squid / Scott Beale) As Boinged previously, the annual global space party Yuri's Night is happening in hundreds of cities around the world, all week long. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I know a fair number of BB readers are, you'll want to drop whatever you're doing tonight and head over to Yuri's Night Bay Area at the California Academy of Sciences. I believe my old pal Steve Nalepa is on the turntables! Don't know if there are still tickets available, but this will be really great, if you can still get in on late notice.

Event founder and organizer Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides explains,

There will be DJ's, planetarium shows, talks by NASA Ames Center Director Pete Worden and Q&A with NASA Astronaut Steve Robinson who has flown into space 3 times- once with John Glenn and once on the first flight after the Columbia accident. By coincidence, the woman who runs special projects at the Academy and who is hosting YN used to water his parents plants in Moraga, CA...small planet. More info here. Also, check out the "art installation" that Ace of Cakes (the Food Network show) made for Yuri's Night NASA Goddard on Saturday! The piece will stay on display in their visitor center- but the sheet cake they send has all already happily been eaten.

Previously:

• Yuri's Night "global space parties" happen from April 4-12.
• Yuri's Night Bay Area: photos and video - Boing Boing
• Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 call for artists, scientists - Boing Boing
• Yuri's Night: spacemen branded me with Yuri Gagarin's head ...
• Yuri's Night "space raves" around the world on April 12 - Boing Boing
• Yuri's night: Houston, we have contact. - Boing Boing

Thomas built a steam powered iPod generator. From Jake von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop:

I coupled a Lego Technic Motor to a Jensen #75 steam engine to make a crude generator. From there I built a 5V regulator circuit and soldered in a female USB connection to power any USB device. Since I wanted to use it to charge my iPod, I put in a diode and a .5 amp fuse to provide some circuit protection. Attached are some pictures of it and here are some links to videos of it in action. Unfortunately you can't see the charge light on the ipod, But as you can hear, the iPod really loads the engine. I was somewhat surprise it could hack it.

What a cool idea. Just think if they could scale up this idea and use steam to generate electricity for entire cities!

Naz sez, "You guys ran a link on copper band aid a while back; I sent the link to my boyfriend who welds lighting, sculptures and jewelery so he got the idea to make that into bracelets."

Ben-Hur Bandaids. (Thanks, Naz!)

This is quite possibly the best piece of internet video of all time, or at least this week. Police in a Rhode Island town filed charges against 59-year old costume shop owner Ann Bruno for allegedly "cyberstalking" a competitor. A reporter with the local NBC News affiliate attempts to question her about the internet harassment charges. Ms. Bruno responds in character, while wearing several layers of costumes. It's like the dude walked into an acid trip. If I'm not mistaken, this even includes a smidgeon of ukelele. The original video on the NBC affiliate website is here, but a ganked, embeddable YouTube version is here and embedded above. (Thank you, John Andrew Walsh!)

UPDATE: Oh dear god, there's a followup segment, on the same local news channel, where the anchordüde interviews local police. Do watch, below (Thanks, Matty Kirsch)

Robyn Miller has been following the odd phenomenon of floating rocks.

Floating rocks are an event rarely captured on film. Very little is known about them, other than they float only for a short time, sometimes only minutes, before slowly returning to the ground.

Dave Ng sez, "Whilst doing a bit of homework for a chapter I'm writing, I tried to cost out some equipment needed to set up a molecular biology lab. Although a lot of this would require the use of your credit card to buy enzymes and unused plastic ware (not too expensive this part), you would also need some routinely used equipment/hardware that would be on the expensive side.

"However, if you turn to eBay, you can get a lot of this equipment at bargain prices (without even needing to bid). Anyway, a lot of the common equipment needed , as purchased through eBay, would total to less than $1000 (not including shipping that is)."

Using eBay to set up a molecular biology lab: costs less than $1000! (Thanks, Dave!)

Baratunde’s Posterous posted this unwonderful video produced by The National Organization for Marriage, describing it as "Fake People Tell Fake Stories About The Threat Of Gay Marriage."

I don't know if the people are fake or not [UPDATE: They are actors], but they are assholes. One woman whines plaintively, "My freedom will be taken away," if gays are allowed to marry. What -- her freedom to be intolerant?

UPDATE: Here are the audition tapes that show these people are actors.

Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has died. From Ed Grabianowski's post on Robot Viking:

It’s tempting to say that Arneson brought the “fluff” to D&D, while Gygax was the “crunch,” but that’s really too simplistic. It is safe to say that Arneson’s ideas on storytelling, experience levels and rules flexibility shaped virtually every aspect of the RPG as an industry and an art form. Yet he never achieved the widespread fame that Gygax did, perhaps because his personality wasn’t the kind that drew attention. By most accounts, he was easy-going, good-humored and never took himself too seriously. I’ve always thought of him as the George Harrison of D&D.

James Holden's anti-terror billboard generator invites you to remix the infamous British police poster that asks you to inspect your neighbours' trash and report them if you don't like what you see: "This odious billboard appears in my town, encouraging me to rat on my neighbours because I don't understand what they throw away."

Anti-terror billboard (Thanks, Phillip!)

The limited edition book that catalogs Mark Ryden's Tree Show series of paintings comes with a host of goodies, including a pennant, a micro-portfolio, a badge, a book mark, and a wood pencil. It goes on sale 04/16/2009 and will cost $395.00.

The Tree Show Special Edition Exhibition Book

Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today's Boing Boing Video episode is a conversation with Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College about music in games: new tools, new forms of composition, and new ways of thinking about the role music and sound play in the gaming experience. We conducted this interview during Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of GDC, and this video clip -- part one of a two-part conversation -- includes the work of Ganucheau's students in a class about composing music for videogames. One of the works we show is from a young student named Jason Bowers. Here are more details on working with Space Invaders as a teaching tool for interactive music. And here is Max/MSP, the music software used.

Previously:

* Social Games, and The Quest for Virtual Poo.
* Doctor Popular's Awesome Yo-Yo Stylings
* Hideo Kojima on Metal Gear Solid Touch (games)
* Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance.
* Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World.
* Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality
* BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive

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Rex sez, "In light of the recent footage of police behaviour at the G20, I felt it was time to remix the current UK police poster campaign again. Original photo by David Byrne, as posted on BB by Xeni."

Lash Out and Cover Up (Thanks, Rex!)

Boing Boing is collaborating with GOOD Magazine on a series of features written by BB editors. The latest installment in that series is a collection of excerpts from a journal I kept during a recent trip to West Africa. Longer form video and audio features are planned for future release through Boing Boing Video. Here's a snip, there's more, along with more stills from video (like the image above) at the GOOD link, too.

A Bariba settlement near Kouandé, in the far north near Nigeria.

Our car pulls as close to the center compound as the dirt path allows. We open car doors, step out into dust, through grass thatch gates. A crowd of women are dancing, drums and high trills. We landed mid-ceremony. We’re here to pay respects to a healer-queen. A few steps inside her hut, bags of blackeyed peas, flour, and hard candy are stacked like cash along mud walls—payment, tribute, from villagers. We’re seated on the ground, swatting clouds of flies, awaiting her audience.

This is the part I’ll remember forever: One by one, young girls file in, after the ceremony. White mud dots on their faces, scar lines carved in dark brown skin, constellations of scars and stars, ancestor ghost signs. They call out like birds as they step inside. The healer calls back, a long vowel.

“Ehhhh,”

“Ehhhhh,”

“Ehhhh,”

“Ehhhhh,”

Again and again, then quiet. The girls lie down before her, stretched out on their sides, heads bowed into the floor, awaiting a tap from her on the left shoulder. Eventually, she taps each shoulder. They rise, and leave.

Soft, resonant wood thud sounds outside now, a different rhythm. Not drums this time, but older women pounding cassava, singing, trading verses of vowels with one another, as they pound roots into mash.

GOOD -- Dahomey Diary: Notes from Benin (Image: Xeni Jardin)

Here are the Boing Boing on GOOD archives, which include more features from Mark, Joel, Pesco, and Xeni.

Marvel at Shane Speal's cigar box guitar licks.

Shane Speal goofing on the three-string cigar box guitar. He's been playing this instrument for 13 years. It's simply a stick shoved thru a cigar box with three strings added. Free plans are on his website. Song: Guitar Rag by Sylvester Weaver, 1923. Later made famous by Leon McAuliff as "Steel Guitar Rag."

Glyn sez, "French politicians have unexpected voted against a law that would have forced ISPs to disconnect any one accused of copyright infringement. No proof that would stand up in court would have been need. The final vote was 25 to 15 in the poorly attended National Assembly session."

JZ adds, "This is a formidable victory for all citizens. This vote shows that it is still possible to make oneself heard. It is a fantastic example of how to use the Net to fight against those who are trying to control it. Individual liberties, in the end, have not been sacrificed to try to preserve the corporate interests of some obsolete industries. The HADOPI law has been interred earlier than expected.Nonetheless, La Quadrature du Net asks its supportes to remain vigilant. The rejection of HADOPI doesn't mean the end of the government's attempts to control the Internet. We must continue to make use of our collective intelligence and the power of the net to preserve justice and the truth."

Despite the approval of the French recording industry and prominent musicians, including Johnny Hallyday, some attacked the measure.

Civil liberties campaigners and members of the Socialist party said the new surveillance powers were tantamount to "the criminalisation of an entire generation".

Others had said it could end up punishing the wrong people, for instance parents whose children download in secret or employers whose staff use computers at work to break the law.

Breaking ranks from many of their artistic colleagues, a group of French directors and actors including Catherine Deneuve issued an open letter of protest this week.

"The law comes in response to legitimate concerns which we all share - concerns that we will see our work devalued and degraded," they wrote. "However this law ... is merely imposing a punitive system whose constitutionality is dubious and practicality unclear."

French MPs reject controversial plan to crack down on illegal downloaders (Thanks, JZ and Glyn!)

JZ sez,

The Guardian looks at the French Three Strikes law, whose final discussion will happen today in both chambers of the French parliament. I thought you might be interested into making a reply to it. It's pure mantra and doesn't talk about the most disturbing points:

- it gives the entertainment industries the power to police the internet by themselves

- the whole procedure is based on immaterial, unverifiable, unopposable proofs (IP address listings)

- you cannot claim your innocence before the sanction is ordered.

Innocents will inevitably be disconnected.

As the NYT reported today: "Nonetheless, Internet advocates call the French proposal legally unsound on the ground that there are inadequate the provisions for challenging an action, and because it gives industry groups the power to police the Internet. Others question whether the law would unfairly penalize those whose wireless broadband accounts are misused by others. The French law tries to anticipate this by making it a civil infraction for citizens to fail to 'secure' their broadband accounts by using approved filtering technology."

The Guardian piece consists of U2's manager talking about how it would be great if private corporations -- phone companies and music labels -- got the power to take away your Internet connection on the basis of unproven accusations of copyright infringement.

I've written about this subject rather a lot here (see below), but I think this is the most cogent response:

In the past week, I've only used the internet to contact my employers around the world, my MP in the UK, to participate in a European Commission expert proceeding, to find out why my infant daughter has broken out in tiny pink polka-dots, to communicate with a government whistle-blower who wants to know if I can help publish evidence of official corruption, to provide references for one former student (and follow-up advice to another), book my plane tickets, access my banking records, navigate the new Home Office immigration rules governing my visa, wire money to help pay for the headstone for my great uncle's grave in Russia, and to send several Father's Day cards (and receive some of my own).

The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It's only vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day).

This trivial bit of kit is so unimportant that it's only natural that we equip the companies that brought us Police Academy 11, Windows Vista, Milli Vanilli and Celebrity Dancing With the Stars with wire-cutters that allow them to disconnect anyone in the country on their own say-so, without proving a solitary act of wrongdoing.

Why France has the solution to online piracy (Thanks, JZ!)

Glyn sez, "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement designed to combat the 'increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works.' is considering whether to involve internet service providers (ISPs) in fighting copyright infringement. Details of the negotiations have at last been published as a result of Obama's commitment to transparency in government.

Section 4: Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment This section of the agreement is intended to address some of the special challenges that new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights, such as the possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers in deterring copyright and related rights piracy over the Internet. No draft proposal has been tabled yet, as discussions are still focused on gathering information on the different national legal regimes to develop a common understanding

ACTA fact-sheet PDF -- US Trade Rep

Wikipedia on ACTA

(Thanks, Glyn!)

Update: Michael Geist sez, "I blogged this (partially) in response to your recent ACTA posting, which I think has an inaccurate headline and gives too much credit to Obama: 'There are many reports about the release this week of an ACTA summary document that was first made available on the USTR website. These articles suggest that this reflects new support for transparency from the Obama administration. While it may be true that the administration supports greater transparency, making that connection in this case is misleading. The document is a negotiated text between all the ACTA countries (this was made clear in the DFAIT consultation). Some countries (Canada among them) are supportive of greater transparency, others are not. It is not entirely clear where the U.S. stands. Moreover, it is not just the U.S. that made the document available - all ACTA partners are entitled to do so (the Canadian version is here). Finally, while it is not a bad document, there is still far more information available online from non-governmental sources. A commitment to transparency would mean making available actual documents including draft text and "non-papers" used as the basis for discussion.'"

David JC MacKay's "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air" may be the best technical book about the environment that I've ever read. In fact, if I have any complaint about this book, it's in how it's presented, with its austere cover and spartan title, I assumed it would be a somewhat dry look at energy, climate, conservation and so on.

It's not. This is to energy and climate what Freakonomics is to economics: an accessible, meaty, by-the-numbers look at the physics and practicalities of energy. MacKay, a Cambridge Physics prof, approaches the subject of carbon and sustainability with a scientific, numeric eye. First, in a section called "Numbers, not adjectives," he looks at all the energy and carbon inputs and outputs in Britain and the rest of the world: this is how many kWh of energy are needed to power all of Britain's vehicles. This is how many kWh you would get if you covered the entire British shore with windmills, or wave-farms. This is Britain's geothermal potential. Here's how much carbon vegetarianism offsets. Here's how much carbon unplugging your idle appliances saves (0.25%, making the campaign to switch off energy vampires into a largely pointless exercise -- as MacKay says, "If everyone does a little bit, we'll get a little bit done"). This is the carbon-footprint of all of Britain's imports, gadgets, office towers, and so on.

Using a charming, educational style that teaches how to think about this kind of number, how to estimate with it, and what it means, MacKay explains these concepts beautifully, with accompanying charts that make them vivid and clear, and with exhaustive endnotes that are as interesting as the text they refer to (probably the best use of end-notes I've encountered in technical writing -- they act like hyperlinks, giving good background on the subjects that the reader wants to find out more about while allowing the main text to move forward without getting bogged down by details).

Next, in "Making a Difference," looks at what it would take to balance Britain's (and, eventually, the world's) energy budget so that the consumption is sustainable (that is, so that it uses only renewables or fuels that would last for 1000 years -- and emits so little carbon that we avert a 2C' rise in global temperature). He looks realistically at conservation, considering the theoretical limits on efficiency for rail, electric cars, air, as well as factories, home design and so forth, giving examples ranging from better insulation to tearing down all the housing in Britain and rebuilding it for maximum efficiency (factoring in the energy and carbon costs of the new building, of course).

This chapter also has a lot of sensible personal advice for things you can do to reduce your energy consumption -- especially identifying those few badly designed devices in your home whose idle power-draw really is punitive and replacing them (one Ikea lamp he cites draws nearly as much switched off as running, because of a transformer design that was one penny cheaper to manufacture than a more efficient one would have been).

Finally, in a long technical appendix, MacKay delves into the physics of maximal performance in transport, manufacturing, housing and energy generation, explaining it in a way that I -- who have not studied physics since I was 18 -- was able to follow.

This reminded me of nothing so much as Saul Griffith's wonderful talk on climate change as an engineering problem. Add up all the energy we can make if we harness every erg, every photon. Subtract all the energy we want to use. Examine this difference and come up with strategies for bringing the two into balance. Once you get this approach, it becomes a lot simpler to figure out what is and isn't worth doing.

My only complaint about this book is its packaging: if it were tarted up to look like the transformative, important popular science book that it really is, I think it would be at the center of the environmental debate today.

The entire book is available as a free 10MB PDF download so you can start reading immediately

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (US)

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (UK)

Without Hot Air -- MacKay's site for the book, including the whole book as a free download

Here's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston doing a kick ass job on Keith Olbermann's show, discussing the Obama DOJ's radical interpretation of the PATRIOT Act that says that the president can't be sued for anything he does, even if it's illegal.

EFF's Kevin Bankston on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"

The Hugo Awards -- one of science fiction's leading honors -- have a beautiful trophy, a silver, streamlined rocket-ship. What they don't have is a logo that can be used on things like anthologies of Hugo-winning fiction, the spines of Hugo-winning books, and so on.

So they're holding a contest to design a Hugo logo. You have to use the rocket-ship, and you get $500, a ticket to the Worldcon and a signed Neil Gaiman book if you win. Judges are Neil Gaiman (3 time Hugo Award-winning author), Chip Kidd (graphic designer, author, editor), Geri Sullivan (SF Fan and graphic designer pro) and Irene Gallo (art-director for Tor).

Hugo Awards Logo Contest Official Rules (via Tor)

The Associated Press, in its zeal to keep the news a secret, has begun to send legal threats to itself. WTNQ-FM, an AP affiliate in Tennessee, received the legal threat over its YouTube channel, through which it makes its/AP's material available to its listeners. When WTNQ-FM's Frank Strovel called up the AP exec in charge of the anti-YouTube campaign to discuss this, he discovered that "nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos."

Strovel: And we're an A.P. affiliate for crying out loud! I stumped him on that one. . . . What is really shocking is that they were shocked that they've got a YouTube channel that people are embedding on their Websites. He seemed shocked by that. 'Oh, I am going to have to look into that" is what he told me.

Grantham: What an idiot!

Strovel: I know, I know.

A.P. Exec Doesn't Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos (via Memex 1.1)