Corynne McSherry from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Apple has rejected an iPhone application that exclusively displays content from EFF's RSS feed. Apparently it objects to an EFF blog post that linked to Brad Templeton's Downfall remix (also mentioned on Boing Boing last week, BTW). The parody includes the fleeting appearance of the f-bomb in a subtitle."
This is just the latest example of the failings of Apple's iTunes App Store approval process, which has been revealed to be not just anti-competitive, discriminatory, censorial, and arbitrary, but downright absurd. Just last month, Apple was widely criticized when it rejected the Eucalyptus e-book reader because it could access the public domain translation of the Kama Sutra (Apple quickly reversed course on that one).
Let's be clear: we are not saying that Apple has to carry apps it doesn't like in its App Store. But iPhone owners who don't want Apple playing the role of language police for their software should have the freedom to go elsewhere. This is precisely why EFF has asked the Copyright Office to grant an exemption to the DMCA for jailbreaking iPhones. It's none of Apple's business if I want an app on my phone that lets me read EFF's RSS feed, use Sling Player over 3G, or read the Kama Sutra.
In 1940, "foreign limousines" came with hot and cold running water in a washbasin on the front fender:
THIS new foreign limousine has a hot and cold water folding wash-basin of aluminum built into its right front fender. Beneath the hood is a 2-compartment tank holding two and a half gallons of water. The hot water section is heated by exhaust gases passing through a spiral pipe. The two faucets give water of any desired temperature. The basin is automatically emptied when it is folded into the fender.
National Geographic celebrates the first monkeys in space with a photo-feature of the poor little primates in their capsules:
A squirrel monkey named Baker peers out from a 1950s NASA biocapsule as she's readied for her first space mission. Baker and a rhesus monkey named Able launched aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket on May 28, 1959 -- 50 years ago this week.
The pair returned to Earth alive after a 15-minute flight, becoming the first primates to survive a trip into space. Miss Baker, as she came to be known, spent the latter part of her life at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27.
Nokia's Get Out and Play campaign is that rare beast: a marketing-driven viral Flash/video thinggum that's actually clever and wonderful! It's an implementation of classic Nokia games (Snake, Breakout) as stop-motion-animation 2.5D playable games and videos, made using people. To play the Breakout game, click through below, then watch the video, then play away!
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Anne Sage, of fantastic design blog The City Sage, points us to the "Send Me Your Head" project. Artist Karen Schmidt is seeking headshots for 3" x 3" paintings. "A portrait a day, maybe," Schmidt says. Send Me Your Head
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Need cash? Got a gold grill taking up unnecessary space in your mouth? SellYourGoldTeeth.com is a single-page site representing a buyer of teeth, caps, and crowns. (Thanks, Syd Garon and Greg Long!)
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
The Yellow Treehouse Cafe is built around a redwood tree near Auckland, New Zealand. It was designed by Pacific Environment Architects as part of a marketing campaign for the area's yellow pages. It's no longer open for dinner but will be available for party rentals. Yellow Treehouse(Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)
Dave Cooper's one of my most favorite artists ever. He just did this unbelievably awesome video for one of my most favorite bands ever, Danko Jones. Check it and be thrilled.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
These Star Wars Lucha Libre Masks are available for your printing (and pummeling) over at StarWars.com:
Ever wonder what it would be like to see a tag-team wrestling match with Darth Vader and Darth Maul against Boba Fett and General Grievous? We do too, and better yet, they should be wearing Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) masks!
David Lynch has started a project to interview people and post a video every three days for a year.
Jess was our first interview. We found him sitting on the side of the road during the middle of the day. He told us he was waiting for his trailer to be repaired so he could go live alone in the desert. Although hesitant at first, Jess agreed to spare a bit of his time and talk to us. His rugged delivery and appearance soon gave way to a gentle man who was just looking for some peace in his life. After leaving Jess we headed further easy into Arizona to look for our next interview.
Microsoft had a killer day today, revealing all sorts of updates to the Xbox 360, including full retail game downloads, 1080p live streaming of movies and TVs, and most notably "Project Natal", an attempt to beat the Nintendo Wii at its own game by creating a virtual reality interface that doesn't use control hardware at all, but instead does real-time motion capture using an array of cameras.
It actually looks pretty amazing. Brandon's got everything you need to know, including video, over at Offworld.
Some enterprising readers (faculty? student-journalists?) have gone through the dissertations of Carl Boening and William Meehan, highlighting every passage in Meehan's that can be found, word for word, in Boening's. Neither the University of Alabama (which granted Boening and Meehan their doctorates) nor Jacksonville State University, where Meehan is president, has chosen to take up the obvious questions about plagiarism that Meehan's dissertation presents. As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer's status rises.
LA Weekly reviews the screening of a Daniel Martinico's 15-minute movie, Khaan!, which is a loop of James Kirk winding up to scream the name of his nemesis in The Wrath of Khan. The two-minute clip above, according to reviewer Mark Mauer, "doesn't begin to do justice to the size, sound and hypnotic power of the real thing."
Last week Machine Project in Echo Park showed Martinco's 15-minute meticulously re-spliced creation in a never-ending loop that transforms the moment from one of anguish (or snickering for the the audience) into a meditation, maybe even a mantra.
You'll notice the crowd gets quiet after the first few seconds. It draws you in, forces you to pay attention, even if it's just staring at the back and forth eye tics on Shatner's face for a minute at a time.
"In that moment everyone responds to it," Martinico says. There's laughing at first, but then people get into the rhythm of it and study the various little muscles as they pull and twitch on Kirk's face. "It's a phenomenal range in just a few seconds."
Medgadget reports that the FDA approved Small Bone Innovations' implantable ankle.
This implantable total ankle replacement system is intended for use in patients where there is severe arthritis or other deformities that hinder the range of motion of the joint.
Small Bone Innovations claims that this design of the STAR system is the first of its kind because it relies on movable bearings that glide across the surface of polyethylene. The advantage is that this still affords some joint movement as opposed to traditional fusion surgeries that join the tibia to the talus bone for additional strength but severely limit motion.
I'm surprised that David missed this story about a gentleman in Nebraska who covered his head with a beer carton to rob a convenience store of cigarettes.
Police spokeswoman Katie Flood said Tuesday morning that the robbery was captured on video. She said the man also dropped the empty 12-pack box as he fled, and it will be checked for fingerprints.
I've been traveling in Guatemala for the past few weeks, and following (and blogging) the ongoing political crisis here. BB editors are contributing periodic essays to GOOD Magazine, and the so-called "Twitter Revolution" taking place in Guatemala is the subject of my latest contribution, from the road:
Despite widespread fears the protests would turn violent, and even with government-organized pro-Colom demonstrations just blocks away (the administration is said to have spent millions of quetzales in public funds to organize the events, pay poor participants, and bus them in by the thousands from the country’s interior), street activity has been peaceful so far.
But backlash to online activity has been intense, notably from the sector of Guatemala’s government that controls the country’s financial system. One Twitter user was arrested, jailed, and faces up to 10 years in prison for having posted a single 96-character tweet about the bank at the center of the corruption scandal. Guatemala’s Supervisor of Banks, Édgar Barquín, has proposed sweeping controls on internet use, including a requirement that anyone who wants to log on in an internet café must first register their national ID card (cedula) at the front desk.
In keeping with the hall-of-mirrors, telenovela-like surreality that marks Guatemalan politics, Colom’s chief political rival–former Army general Otto Perez Molina–recently denounced a purported plot to assassinate him . Colom’s party dismissed those claims as having been fabricated “for show.” On Twitter, some countered that the lack of institutional ability to investigate any crime is the root of the current crisis, so all claims of threats should be treated with equal respect and due process.
“All we are saying is give the rule of law a chance,” one “tuitero” direct-messaged me.
“Who are we supposed to trust when all of the institutions of the state are compromised?,” tweeted another.
That overwhelming lack of faith in any state institutions is what many outside of Guatemala see as most concerning.
A recent article in The Economist suggests Guatemala is now well on its way to becoming a “failed state.” Some op-ed writers in Guatemalan papers responded defensively. But the longer Rosenberg’s symbolically important case goes unsolved, the longer corruption is perceived as unchecked, the longer the already horrific violent crime stats in Guatemala continue to climb, and the greater the risk of total collapse.
Glenn Greenwald's appropriately angry screed on Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law. I say +1, every word. For shame. Snip:
The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people?
* Boiler Bar: "Punk, Hot Rod, Geek, Blue Collar, and Maker Culture mixed together with the Petroleum Golden Age of the last century." (Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)
Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part byWEPC.com, in partnership withIntelandAsus.WePC.comis a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."
The visual joke here is that one encounters folksy little oil paintings that look just like this for sale as tourist mementos on the cobblestone streets of Antigua -- minus the Teletubbies, Star Wars characters, and other hacks the artist has added.
The site where the show took place is stunning, and was built about 500 years ago. It began as a Jesuit college, then went through various incarnations after various natural disasters destroyed it a few times over.
This signpoints you to what things you could once find for sale in which sections of the building: vegetables, salted meats, clay cooking pots, whatever the average Guatemalan home in the late 1800s might require. I can't quite make out what all of them say, or mean, but as I read the list I found myself imagining what kind of activity -- and foods, and other products -- I might have encountered if I were standing in this spot 200 years ago.
I thoroughly enjoyed Kieran Levis's Winners and Losers: Creators and Casualties of the Age of the Internet, a collection of case-studies of businesses that have thrived or tanked as a result of their relationship to technology. From record companies to IBM, from Sony to Webvan, from Google to Nokia, Levis examines the clunkers and the strokes of genius (or luck) that made headlines for each firm as it coped with the 'net's disruptivity.
After each case-study, Levis tries to extract the principles embodied by the decisions that led to the companies' fate. These principles contradict themselves: be big fast (Amazon); don't get too big too fast (Webvan); do the right thing and figure out the business later (Google); change fast (the record companies); content is king (BSkyB); content is a boat-anchor (Sony); and so on.
The takeaway for me was that different circumstances demand different strategic responses (duh), and by getting all this meaty context about what worked and for whom, I felt better equipped to make decisions about my own strategies in the future.
Brendan sez, "I saw the 'Unwigged and Unplugged' show starring Spinal Tap members Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest on Saturday in Chicago. Aside from all the expected stuff they played from Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, and other movies, they also sang 'Saucy Jack,' which you will remember David and Derek discuss at the end of the film _This is Spinal Tap_ [ed: It's the title track from their unproduced rock-opera about Jack the Ripper]. Then, they announced that you could download the track for free from the Spinal Tap website. I thought other Boingers out there would enjoy it."
You're a naughty one Saucy Jack! You're a dirty one Saucy Jack!
Tom Steinberg from MySociety sez, "We've just launched Mapumental, which is an a realtime version of our lovely transport journey time maps which BB has covered before.
As well as being realtime generated, they include house price and 'scenicness' data, generated by the web game ScenicOrNot.
Beta's private at the moment but we're handing out invites in exchange for declarations of love."
I got to play with this last week and my jaw dropped -- what an amazing way to visualize your home and the regions around it!
A coalition of young doctors and medical researchers have written an open letter to the World Health Organization asking it to publicly condemn the use of pseudoscientific homeopathic remedies for the treatment of serious diseases, especially in the developing world:
The letter:
# Explains that medics working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed. The promotion of homeopathy for serious diseases puts lives at risk.
# Lists some of the examples of recent and planned developments of homeopathic clinics offering treatment for these five conditions.
# Asks the WHO to make clear that homeopathy cannot prevent or treat these five conditions.
Leading experts in malaria, HIV and other serious diseases affecting the developing world are supporting the young medics' and researchers' call for the WHO to take action.
Jimmy sez, "Someone leaked the minutes for a meeting of food-packaging executives and chemical industry lobbyists seeking to find ways to keep consumers buying goods laced with bisphenol-A. Attending companies included Coca-Cola, Del Monte, Alcoa and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)."
Attendees suggested using fear tactics (e.g. "Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?") as well as giving control back to consumers (e.g. you have a choice between the more expensive product that is frozen or fresh or foods packaged in cans) as ways to dissuade people from choosing BPA-free packaging. Attendees noted, in the past, the different associations have had a reactive strategy with the media, with very limited proactive outreach in reaching out to journalists. The committee agrees they need to promote new, relevant content to get the BPA perspective into the media mix. The committee believes industry studies are tainted from the public perspective.
The committee doubts social media outlets, such as Facebook or Twitter, will work for positive BPA outreach. The committee wants to focus on quality instead of quantity in disseminating messages (e.g. a young kid or pregnant mother providing a positive quote about BPA, a testimonial from an outside expert, providing positive video, advice from third party experts, and relevant messaging on the GMA website). Members noted traditional media outreach has become too expensive (they have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars) and the media is starting to ignore their side. The committee doubts obtaining a scientific spokesperson is attainable. Their "holy grail" spokesperson would be a "pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA."
PS Publishing recently released Secret Histories, a massive, ambitious, 600-page annotated bibliography of the work of Tim Powers: science fiction writer, Philip K Dick protege, and all-round swell fella. They've put a PDF excerpt on the web for free:
We're so proud of Secret Histories that we want everyone to know what it's like. So we've made up a 24-page high resolution sampler PDF file that you can download for free.
It includes a chunk of the bibliography section that lists every edition of Powers' seminal The Anubis Gates, as well as China Mieville's tribute to the novel, examples of Dick Berger's exclusive artwork, excerpts and notes and doodles by Powers himself, and much more - and it still represents just a fraction of what the book itself contains.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the Morbid Anatomy blog, which features anatomical curiosities and news, with a Victorian bent. For example:
I just stumbled upon a review--in English!--of the magnificent catalog Figures du Corps: Une Leçon d'Anatomie à l'École des Beaux-Arts, from an exhibition of the same name previously covered on this blog. The review parses the catalog nicely...
A squirrel monkey named Baker peers out from a 1950s NASA biocapsule as she's readied for her first space mission. Baker and a rhesus monkey named Able launched aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket on May 28, 1959 -- 50 years ago this week.
The pair returned to Earth alive after a 15-minute flight, becoming the first primates to survive a trip into space. Miss Baker, as she came to be known, spent the latter part of her life at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27.
This implantable total ankle replacement system is intended for use in patients where there is severe arthritis or other deformities that hinder the range of motion of the joint.
I thoroughly enjoyed Kieran Levis's 
Brendan sez, "I saw the 'Unwigged and Unplugged' show starring Spinal Tap members Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest on Saturday in Chicago. Aside from all the expected stuff they played from Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, and other movies, they also sang 'Saucy Jack,' which you will remember David and Derek discuss at the end of the film _This is Spinal Tap_ [ed: It's the title track from their unproduced rock-opera about Jack the Ripper]. Then, they announced that you could download the track for free from the Spinal Tap website. I thought other Boingers out there would enjoy it."
