Stanford's Robert Sapolsky, one of the most interesting anthropologists I've heard lecture, gives us 90 minutes on the evolutionary basis for literal religious belief, "metamagical thinking," schizotypal personality and so on, explaining how evolutionarily, the mild schizophrenic expression we called "schizotypal personality" have enjoyed increased reproductive opportunities.

Sapolsky on Religion (Thanks, Avi!)

Grammys drop polka album award (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

The Ukulele Guide includes not only the standard moustache groups, but also exotic and endangered moustaches like the Shirley Temple and the LARP-stache. Recently cultivated strains of moustache such as the Octopus also feature prominently, and the headstock is graced with an inspiring moustache quote, sure to please any moustache fancier.

You may be asking yourself at this point you have survived without such a practical object, and what you can do to obtain one. If this is the case, please contact us.

Under this legislation, however, designers will need to consult with a lawyer throughout the design process to ensure that every new design created could not subjectively be found at a later date to be "closely and substantially similar" to one protected in the Copyright registry...

Further, young, up-and-coming designers would be susceptible to legal intimidation from designing anything new at all, as they would likely not have the resources to fight a legal challenge in court...

While the bill purports to keep all fashion designs that have existed in the past free and open for all to use, the legislation would allow the ability to copyright non-original design elements in the public domain if arranged in an original way.

Moreover, since there is no test for originality, the registry will begin to be populated with designs that from the public domain. Thus, a designer who draws upon inspiration from the public domain, can easily find himself/herself stuck in costly litigation.

Other rides include: chocolate ride, noobs on unicycles, yoga for cyclists, naked bike ride, surprise bike wedding, homeless hotspots bike tour, tour de goats, old French bikes, pun-ishment ride, trek-tosterone ride, pretty panty ride, dead freeways ride, unimproved road ride, Sisyphean cruller crawl, pedal powered pajama party, etc etc etc.

Pedalpalooza (Thanks, Theo!)

You're a super-villain and you want to prepare a transparency (the kind that goes on an overhead projector) with the key points of your plan for world domination so you can present them to the hero/superagent before you attempt to kill him in some ridiculously novel way. You don't want this information to fall into the wrong hands before you're ready. Smart villain that you are, you know you can share the information across several slides so that if the enemy agents capture any 2 of your slides, they won't learn even the tiniest bit of information about your plan. How?

According to PayScale, a call center employee in India with 10-20 years experience makes about $6,400 a year. These folks might be able to afford one of the 1,000 tiny apartments being made by Tata, the company that makes the $2,200 car.

From Business Week:

Luxury flats in Mumbai can cost more than ones in Manhattan. But these apartments won’t be luxurious. The Tata apartments will be built on 67 acres in Boisar, an industrial area where many lower-wage commuters already rent. These apartments will be absolutely tiny. The carpeted area of the smallest units will be 218 square feet, too small even for most Manhattanites. The largest units would be about 373 square feet (Click here to see the floor plans). Can you imagine squeezing a family into one of these units? The community would have its own garden, post office, meeting hall, schools, and hospital.

Above, the first video I saw on this YouTube account about an hour ago. Here was the second, here was the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Wait, don't miss this one either. You kind of need to just take some time and watch all of them. Also this.

Nadja over at Street Carnage says,

[He] looks like he might have Progeria, a terrible disease where your body is elderly even though you're only 8. Regardless of this disfiguring disease, he's a true gangster. He has the balls to go online and be like every other pre-teen boy on youtube, singing along to Papa Roach and generally being awesome. The fact that he does this, that it brings him some kind of happiness, and that he calls himself "chick3n little", is why the internet is amazing and why the world doesn't seem so shitty sometimes.

Looks like the content was previously uploaded to YouTube under another name, deleted, then re-uploaded them under this new account name. His real name is apparently Justin?

He is already huge in France. Here's an english translation of that article.

Update: Some background on the meme provenance in this BB comment. Some have stated that the current YouTube channel is not controlled by the person in the videos, but was reconstructed by someone else. In other words, the videos appear to have been created and originally published online by this young person, but the "Tsimfuckus" YT channel, and the descriptions/titles therein, not actually his. Various accounts name the person in the video as Justin Tsimbidis; he called himself "tsimfuckis"/"tsimfuckus" in one of his videos. The uploads are fascinating, but it sucks that anonymous jerks on the internet are being cruel to this person.

(Thanks, Sean Bonner and Richard Metzger!)

I get about three or four review books in the mail every day. Very few interest me, but once in a great while I get a gem of a book, and Underground Classics - The Transformation of Comics into Comix is one of them.

There have been a few histories of underground comics as of late, but this is the first one to really focus on the artwork of underground comics, as opposed to their cultural significance, which most histories cover. That's not to say the book doesn't look at the era in which these comics were made -- it does, but it's first an foremost an art book.

Most of the pages are devoted to high quality scans of original art by all the usual suspects -- R. Crumb, Rand Holmes, Vaughn Bode, Robert Williams, William Stout, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Trina Robbins, Jay Kinney, and the rest.I love seeing the zip-a-tone, blue lines, and white-out that you don't get to see in the printed comics. I have a lot of the comics this art came from, and it's a treat to see it presented with such great attention to detail. Each illustration is accompanied by enlightening commentary.

The book is edited by Denis Kitchen and James Danky, co-curators of the exhibition of underground comics at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisonsin-Madison that this book is based on.

The book includes essays by Paul Buhle, Trina Robins, Jay Lynch, and Patrick Rosenkranz (who wrote a great history of underground comics called Rebel Visions).

(Also -- the Crumb illo on the cover is from Snarf #6 [1975]. The guy in the car would be very welcome at Maker Faire!)

Underground Classics - The Transformation of Comics into Comix

Cat Workout. You may want to begin with low-impact moves like Twists or Bench Press. Then, work up to a Keyboard Cat Variant. When you're done, be sure to hydrate, Twitter, and do cool-down stretches. (thanks, Sean and Tara!)

There's talk that this illustration of Sonia Sotomayor depicted as an Asian on the cover of The National Review is racist, which I kind of think it is. But I also have to admit the craftsmanship of the illustration is top-notch. It reminds me of Artzybasheff or Covarrubias (see here and here).

Herzog and Hertwig used the insights of the “wisdom of crowd” perspective to make one head nearly as good as two. After participants made their first guesses at the dates of historical events, they then made a second estimate using one of two methods. In one condition, participants simply gave a second estimate. This condition did little to increase either knowledge or diversity.

In the second condition, participants were given detailed directions for making their follow-up guess: “First, assume that your first estimate is off the mark. Second, think about a few reasons why that could be. Which assumptions and considerations could have been wrong? Third, what do these new considerations imply?... Fourth, based on this new perspective, make a second, alternative estimate.” When the participants used the more involved method, the average was significantly more accurate than the first estimate. The “crowd within” achieved about half the accuracy gains that would have been achieved by averaging with a second person.

Remember Star Simpson? We do (previous BB post here), and we think she's pretty great. Star emailed today and said,

I've been working at MonkeyLectric (the POV bike wheel makers, boingboing covered their very first stuff), and just finished this video of the latest wheel display at MonkeyLectric.

A guy who served 17+ years for child murder in Japan was proved innocent and freed yesterday. He claims he was threatened and beaten into making a confession, and his dad died from shock after his conviction. Sad.

I don't purport to be an expert in things computer and Internet related. Usually I just read what people I respect say and go with that. Often, they point me me to Google's stuff (search, gmail, Picasa, youtube, etc) and I've always been pretty impressed with their services.

Microsoft just introduced Bing to compete with Google search. My friend Mark Hurst sent me a very interesting article he wrote about it.

Everything Microsoft has tried recently hasn't worked. They tried the "I'm a PC" ads, a knockoff of the Mac ads - didn't work. Tried the Zune, a knockoff of the iPod - didn't work. Tried redoing MSN Search again and again, as a knockoff of Google - didn't work. What's the world coming to, when Microsoft can't build a monopoly around a knockoff?

It's those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience.

I have to imagine this is tough on Ballmer and whoever else over there. No matter what they try, the customers refuse to take orders from Redmond. Sure, lots of people still pay the upgrade tax on Windows and Office every two years, but only because they have to. There's no love.

So what does Microsoft do? They launch - I'm still reeling from this - they launch a search engine. To compete head-on with Google. In search. I just need to type that again: Microsoft wants to unseat Google with a search engine.

Now here's where it gets really nuts.

Microsoft's strategy, to win market share from Google, is not to compete on user experience. No. Microsoft's strategy is to advertise the heck out of the thing and hope people flock to the site.

They are spending - wait, let me try my best "Dr. Evil" voice - one hundred million dollars to order the world to use their search engine. According to a Microsoft exec in charge of the launch, "The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising."

A hundred million dollars to "connect with people emotionally in the advertising." If I've learned one thing in my customer experience work over 12 years, it's this: any online strategy built on emotional connection, based on flashy ads or a new font or color scheme on the website, is guaranteed to fail.

Wow, it's Mike Hargrove week here at BoingBoing. Yesterday, I wrote about the 35th Anniversary of the 10-Cent Beer Riots at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. As baseball buffs may remember, rookie first baseman Mike Hargrove was a prime target of drunken fans, getting pelted with missiles of all sorts including an empty jug of Thunderbird. (As one commenter pointed out, who would in the world would smuggle in a bottle of T-Bird when beer is only a dime?) But Hargrove survived, and played well in the pros for the next 10 years.

I thought of Hargrove last night while watching the not-worth-watching fourth quarter of the Laker-Magic game. Now, you may be asking yourself, what does Mike Hargrove have to do with the NBA playoffs? Well , Hargrove had a nickname as a player. He was called "The Human Rain Delay" because he took soooo long to stand in the batter's box. He drove pitchers (and fans) crazy. Hargrove may be extreme but there seems to be a lot of waiting around in pro sports.

I'm making up a highlight reel of the least exciting moments in professional sports. It's for those nights when I need help falling asleep.

1. The point after touchdown. Why does this still exist? This is nothing more than an excuse to go get another beer.

2. The intentional walk. Wow, the excitement of watching a pitcher and catcher to stand up and lob baseballs to one another. Definitely something I can't get enough of.

3. Watching a relief pitcher throw yet more warm up pitches on the mound. Hasn't this guy been throwing in the bullpen for last 10 minutes?

4. Any NBA game where there's a 10 point difference with less than 3 minutes to play. Garbage time. (Okay, this isn't hard and fast rule. In 1977, the Milwaukee Bucks overcame a 29 point deficit with 8:43 seconds remaining. But that's pretty darn rare.)

5. The NFL instant replay challenge. When Ed Hochuli walks to the sideline and puts on the cans, you know you're in for excitement.

Why do you think children’s music has such a universal appeal?

Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky: “Something about children’s music plays on the innocence and openness that children have. You can’t listen to kids music without a sense of wonder at the simplicity. I think children’s music is catchy precisely because it is about memory - we always strip memory down to its most essential components. That’s why people like “riffs” - it’s a way of simplifying and connecting fragments, just like sampling.”

I had two major motivations for writing my new book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. First, I wanted to provide readers with the logical arguments behind living a slightly dangerous life; and second, I wanted to research and document some interesting ideas for getting started. One easy idea is sampling absinthe. Now, it's true there is no real danger involved in imbibing any of the fine, modern absinthes now on the market, if done in moderation. But when living dangerously, reputation and history very important.

At one time, drinking the stuff could be pretty dangerous. The icon of the bohemian life, l'heure verte, or green hour was a daily event among hip European imbibers. Indeed, the image that often comes foremost to mind when considering absinthe is a streetful of dissipated Parisian intellectuals, some of whom sunk into poverty and madness by dancing a bit too closely with the Green Fairy.

Maybe the most well known absintheur is Vincent Van Gogh. Long unknown and impoverished, he became famous and successful only posthumously. Van Gogh was a clinically depressed epileptic, and a social outcast who also happened to drink a whole lot of absinthe. Famously, he shared rooms with Paul Gauguin in Provence for several weeks until he sliced off his ear in a fit of rage. In 1889 the townspeople of Arles forcibly sent him to a mental hospital to rid themselves of their frightening, alcoholic neighbor.

Was Van Gogh truly plunged into madness by absinthe? Maybe, but probably not because of any psychotropic chemical contained in the wormwood from which absinthe is distilled. Some researchers say it was the drink's extremely high alcohol content required to keep the natural oils in suspension that made it dangerous. Others claim it was the way the drink was manufactured. According to Scientific American, low-cost, low-grade absinthe, accounted for the majority consumed at the turn of the 19th century. And this was true rot-gut, often adulterated by cheap, poisonous chemicals such as antimony salts and copper sulphate.

The ban on absinthe was lifted a few years ago and absinthe distillation has reemerged as a boutique industry with several small distillers turning out handmade, small batches of the stuff. My personal favorite is called Taboo and it comes from, of all places, Canada! It's intensely anise flavored and the wormwood bitterness is pleasingly apparent at the start. Lucid is a well known brand and is similarly intense. Interestingly, both of these are considerably paler in color than typical French and Swiss absinthes but they do produce the well known "louche" or milky colored opalescence when water is added.

I'm glad it's Friday. I can hardly wait until 5 O'clock for my cocktail. A votre santé!

In her latest One More Go column for Offworld, Margaret Robertson murders Steven Spielberg. Three dozen times she murders him, for his appearance at E3 and his "increasingly asinine - and frankly pretty arrogant - repetition of the 'games won't be important until they can make you cry, which up until now they haven't been able to, but don't worry I've come to fix things' line", as she otherwise looks at the game she can't stop returning to, Intelligent Qube, which she proclaims is the 'Modern Times' of videogames.

Elsewhere, 5th Cell's DS game Scribblenauts, in which the player can conjure, well, just about anything simply by writing in its name, solves the immortal "God vs. Kraken vs. Keyboard Cat" debate, and Metal Gear producer Hideo Kojima takes on Konami's Castlevania franchise, with a newly announced Xbox 360/PS3 version that could be the 3D 'vania we've always been waiting for.

And we sum up a number of the DS and Wii games that went undermentioned at Nintendo's E3 conference: the WiiWare port of gold-standard indie platformer Cave Story, the gorgeously serene 'gaming's version of the bedtime story', Night Game (above), twisted indie platformer And Yet It Moves announced for WiiWare, the Kid Icarus-esque WiiWare game Icarian, and the possible localization of the brilliant DS logic puzzler Picross 3D.

Finally, Fez creators Polytron unveil their latest retro-future logo for Infinitron Polypharma, which can only mean that work steadily continues on Power Pill, their iPhone collaboration with Paper Moon creators Infinite Ammo.

Алёна C++

Coral Cache mirror of map

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group.

Skin Deep pairs ingredients in more than 42,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind. Why did a small nonprofit take on such a big project? Because the FDA doesn't require companies to test their own products for safety.

AMERICAN BEAUTY DOUBLE LUSH MASCARA PLUS PRIMER (ALL SHADES)

Ingredients in this product are linked to:

Cancer
Developmental/reproductive toxicity
Violations, restrictions & warnings
Allergies/immunotoxicity
Other concerns for ingredients used in this product:
Neurotoxicity, Endocrine disruption, Persistence and bioaccumulation, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Multiple, additive exposure sources, Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Enhanced skin absorption, Contamination concerns, Occupational hazards, Biochemical or cellular level changes

Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Reviews (Thanks, James!)

Crawling Zombie Torso Gelatin Mold (Thanks, Alice!)

Jabba the Hutt Supreme Edition Costume (via Wonderland)

35 years ago today, on June 4, 1974, one of the most infamous events in sports history occurred. In 1974, the Cleveland Indians played at the extremely capacious Municipal Stadium. Unfortunately, the '74 team was mediocre at best, so there weren't many fans (about 8000 was normal) and the place often looked deserted. The Cleveland brain trust hit on what they thought was a great idea to increase attendance - 10 cent beer night.

Well, beer night worked. Lots of people did show up, about 25,000 in fact. The Tribe took on the Texas Rangers that evening. The box score shows the Rangers surged to a 5-1 lead in the early innings. The fans took it harder than normal since they had been drinking cup after 10¢ cup of Strohs beer pretty much since the gates opened. According to Wikipedia:

. . . the crowd in attendance continually misbehaved. A woman ran out to the Indians' on-deck circle and flashed her breasts, and a naked man sprinted to second base as Grieve hit his second home run of the game. A father and son pair ran onto the outfield and mooned the fans in the bleachers one inning later. The ugliness escalated when Cleveland's Leron Lee hit a line drive into the stomach of Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, after which Jenkins dropped to the ground. The fans in the upper deck of Municipal Stadium cheered, then chanted "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again! Harder! Harder!"

As the game progressed, more fans ran onto the field and caused problems. Ranger Mike Hargrove (who would manage the Indians and lead them to the World Series 21 years later) was pelted with hot dogs and spit, and at one point was nearly struck with an empty gallon jug of Thunderbird.

The SEC charged Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo with securities fraud. He is accused of "selling his Countrywide stock for nearly $140 million in profits while knowing that Countrywide's business model was deteriorating."

Countrywide's Mozilo accused of fraud

Hydroxatone is so effective, it was given away in gift bags at international film festivals!

Paw for hand. Лапы для рук

In this BBC news video, a reporter with all the necessary documentation tries to visit Tiananmen Square with a cameraperson, only to find himself surrounded by umbrella-wielding goons who use their unfurled bumbershoots to block every shot the camera-person tries to catch.

Media banned from Tiananmen Square (Thanks, Nat!)

Kasper Hauser, the comedy group that wrote the supremely funny parody of the SkyMall catalog called SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane, has a new book out called Obama's Blackberry, which the Iranian media seems to think is some kind of terrorist hacker document. Jesse Thorn says:

The Iranian State-funded english-language TV network Press TV is currently reporting that Kasper Hauser, the noted "virtual reality 'terrorist' group," of "cyber hackers" have plans to "circulate President Barack Obama's private text messages."

American publisher Little Brown has decided to circulate President Barack Obama's private text messages after cyber hackers cracked into his Blackberry.

The publisher announced plans to expose the president's messages on June 8.

On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.

Anyone know who built this superb monster head kiddie car? I want to have them write a how-to for MAKE!

Pesco adds: "Bill Robbins of Elmer Presslee Industries created this monstrously cool Basil Wolverton-inspired kiddy car. Wowza!"

It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky's favorite word to say in Congress is "Indiana." While staying out of the spotlight in Washington, he has been a champion for his Northwestern Indiana congressional district, bringing home millions of federal dollars to create jobs and win fans. Since the decline in manufacturing, new jobs have become essential for this Rult Belt region and Visclosky, from his position on the House Appropriations Committee, has sought to get as big a piece of the federal pie as he can for his constituents.

This hard work bringing home federal dollars has made Visclosky a national news name as his connection to a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, which represented many of the recipients of federal money earmarked by the congressman, has brought him under investigation by the FBI. In the past two weeks, Visclosky's offices and campaign committess have been subpoenaed and he has reliquished control of the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to Rep. Ed Pastor.

All of this is due to the connection between campaign contributions flowing from the PMA Group and their clients to Visclosky's campaigns and the millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA Group clients that Visclosky secured in his post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

After studying campaign contribution data for 1998-2008 (compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics) and earmark data for FY2008 and FY2009 (from both Taxpayers for Common Sense and Legistorm), the connection between those PMA Group clients that contributed money to Visclosky's campaigns and the earmarks they received is clearly evident. The visualization -- created by the Sunlight Foundation's terrific designer Kerry Mitchell -- shows how connected the earmarks are to the receipt of campaign contributions.

Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, "You just hit our line."

Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center on Spring Hill Road. But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was "black" wire -- a secure communications line used for some of the nation's most secretive intelligence-gathering operations...

Black wire is one of the looming perils of the massive construction that has come to Tysons, where miles and miles of secure lines are thought to serve such nearby agencies as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center and, a few miles away in McLean, the Central Intelligence Agency. After decades spent cutting through red tape to begin work on a Metrorail extension and the widening of the Capital Beltway, crews are now stirring up tons of dirt where the black lines are located.

Primatologist and psychologist Marina Davila Ross of the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth led a team that tickled the necks, feet, palms, and armpits of infant and juvenile apes as well as human babies. The team recorded more than 800 of the resulting giggles and guffaws.

"Terms of service form the foundation of your relationship with social networking sites, online businesses, and other Internet communities, but most people become aware of these terms only when there's a problem," said EFF Activism and Technology Manager Tim Jones. "We created TOSBack to help consumers monitor terms of service for the websites they use everyday, and show how the terms change over time."

At www.TOSBack.org, you can see a real-time feed of changes and updates to more than three dozen polices from the Internet's most popular online services. Clicking on an update brings you to a side-by-side before-and-after comparison, highlighting what has been removed from the policy and what has been added.

TOSBack | The Terms-Of-Service Tracker

7 Factors That Led to Crisis (Thanks, Barry!)

I hope he publishes a book of them.

Internet Mapping Project

I loved Theo Gray's frozen mercury fish but, as he says, mercury is bad for you. If you want to play with a nontoxic metal that melts at low temperatures, you can buy little bottles of it at scitoys.com. Simon Field, the proprietor, sells two kinds.

In the photo above, I am holding two small vials of liquid metal. The vial on the right contains gallium, an element that melts at 29.76° Celsius (85.57° Fahrenheit). The vial on the left is an alloy that contains gallium, indium, and tin, and melts at -20° Celsius (-4° Fahrenheit).

(Download MP4)

Boing Boing Video teams up with PopSci and Theo Gray to bring you today's episode -- in which the MAD SCIENCE author shows you how to make delicious mercury-sicles shaped like fishies and turtles!

Okay, okay, you're not supposed to eat them at all. In fact, the safety precautions in the production of this episode were probably more extreme than in any video we've ever published, because even the tiniest amount of mercury is incredibly toxic to humans.

I don't want to spoil the surprise here, so -- hop on over to PopSci.com for the whole story on this dangerous but beautiful experiment in how to work with mercury as a solid: Frozen on Video: Theo Gray Sculpts in Solid Mercury, with Some Help from Liquid Nitrogen.

The story that the CIA uses tiny homing beacons to guide their drone strikes in Pakistan may sound like an urban myth. But this sort of technology does exist.

The military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars researching, developing, and purchasing a slew of "Tagging tracking and locating" (TTL) gear -- gizmos designed to keep covertly tabs from far away.

Most of these technologies are highly classified. But there's enough information in the open literature to get a sense of what the government is pursuing: laser-based reflectors, super-strength RFID tags, and homing beacons so tiny, they can be woven into fabric or into paper.