Bill Massiola, who adapted my novel Little Brother for a critically acclaimed stage-play running in Chicago right now at the Griffin Theatre Company performing at the Athenaeum Theatre, sent me these three video clips from the production. I'm coming through Chicago on July 9 to see the play (it runs until July 19); based on these clips I'm incredibly excited to see more!
"Flying from Los Angeles to New York for a signing at Jim Hanley's Universe Wednesday (May 13th), I was flagged at the gate for 'extra screening'. I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then 'discovered' the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated.Comics artist Mark Sable detained for Unthinkable acts (Thanks, Nosehat!)"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics.
"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks.
"In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium."
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
Barometer World is a store in Okephampton, England that specializes in the sale and repair of instruments that determine atmospheric pressure. After two years of research, its proprietor built a reproduction of one of the most whimsical weather-forecasting devices of all time, the "Tempest Prognosticator," a.k.a. the "Leech Barometer," a.k.a. the "Atmospheric Electromagnetic
Telegraph." The instrument, which uses fresh water leeches to predict incoming storms, was first exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in
1851:
A contemporary account of the invention described it as an "elaborate and highly ornate apparatus... evolved by a certain Dr. Merryweather (no epigram intended) who had observed that during the period before the onset of a severe storm, fresh water leaches tended to become particularly agitated. The learned Doctor decided to harness the physical energy of these surprisingly hysterical aquatic bloodsuckers to operate an early warning system. On the circular base of his apparatus he installed glass jars, in each of which a leech was imprisoned and attached to a fine chain that led up to a miniature belfry--from whence the tinkling tocsin would be sounded on the approach of a tempest."
The more bells that rang, the greater the likelihood of an impending storm.
UPDATE: The above photograph is of the other Tempest Prognosticator reproduction, built in 1951 for the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire.
Barometer World & Museum [Atlas Obscura]
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
Recently the most perfect spheres in the world were created as an answer to the "kilogram problem." Made to replace a chunk of platinum and iridium that has defined how much a kilogram weighs for 120 years (the weight of the metal has been changing ever so slowly ) the spheres are about the size of a melon and almost perfectly round. They are likely the most perfectly spherical objects on the planet.
"If you were to blow up our spheres to the size of the Earth, you would see a small ripple in the smoothness of about 12 to 15 mm, and a variation of only 3 to 5 metres in the roundness"
With this in mind we present you a collection of a few of the more interesting spheres found around the world.
Sweden Solar System: The world's largest model of our planetary system centered around the largest spherical building in the world.
The Mapparium: An three story inside-out glass globe built in 1935.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory: A gigantic spherical neutrino detector built into the largest man made underground cavity in the world.
Costa Rican Stone Spheres: Mysterious spherical rock formations from an earlier era.
Paris Sewer Museum: Giant wooden balls helped keep the Parisian sewers clean.
The Republic of Kugelmugel: A spherical "micro-nation" in the heart of Vienna.
Previously:
Our pal Stefan took photos of a fireworks stand. Fun!
I grew up in New York State, where even sparklers were illegal. Firecrackers, bottle rockets, and other goodies will be sold out of car trunks. Scoring even a pack of firecrackers was a big win.In Oregon, stuff that explodes or shoots into the air is illegal, but in the week before the Fourth firework stands are plentiful and stuffed with eye candy.
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
From Atlas Obscura's newest team member, the terrific Annetta Black.
In Rome the cats have an ancient temple all to themselves. The site is known as Torre Argentina and was excavated under Mussolini's re-building efforts in 1929, revealing extensive multi-level temple grounds about 20 feet below modern street level. The site is actually composed of several temples as well as part of the famous Pompey's theatre, where in 44 BC Caesar was betrayed and killed on the theatre steps.
Today volunteers care for approximately 250 cats. After the site was excavated, Rome's feral cats moved in immediately, as they do all over the city. The gattare, or cat ladies began feeding and caring for them. Since the mid 1990s the population has grown from about 90 to the current nearly 250, and the organization has ramped up with care for sick or wounded cats, and an extensive spay & neuter program to try to keep the feral population in check. Most of the permanent residents have special needs - they are blind or missing legs or came from abusive homes.
On any given afternoon a small crowd gathers to watch the cats sunbathe on ancient pillars and steps.
Whether the cats rule themselves via Republic or recognize a cat Emperor is, as of yet, undetermined. More on Torre Argentina here.
Water Brain Complete Edition（16：9） from Johann.Poo on Vimeo.
Jason sez, "I did a short post today on a "Chinese steampunk animation" I found the other day. It's a 15-minute 3d animation with some great visual combos of traditional Chinese symbols/icons/patterns with the steampunk aesthetic."
Chinese steampunk animation (Thanks, Jason!)
Von Hagens said that he spoke with representatives of the Jackson family 'many months ago' and it was agreed that his body will be plastinated and placed next to Bubbles, his late pet monkey who was plastinated a number of years ago and is exhibited at The Body Worlds & Mirror Of Time exhibition at the O2 Centre in London."Michael Jackson set to be embalmed at the O2 Centre after missing the deadline for cryogenic freezing"
Von Hagens also confirmed it was one of Michael's final requests to be reunited with Bubbles.
'There is no better place than to do this at the venue where Jackson was due to perform his world record 50-date tour,' said a spokesman for Von Hagens.
He added: 'Von Hagens has hinted that a moonwalk pose would naturally be favoured. 'It is hoped the exhibit will be unveiled towards the end of July.'
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
If you're looking for a good way to lose a day, I simply don't know any better resource than Natural History magazine's "Picks from the Past" page. The editors have assembled an inspiring selection of articles dating back to the magazine's early days at the turn of the last century. Here are a few of my picks from the picks:
Insects as Food: How they have augmented the food supply of mankind in early and recent times. By John S. Patton (1921)
Rains of Fishes: Do fishes fall in rain from the sky? By E. W. Gudger (1921)
Monkeys Trained as Harvesters: Instances of a Practice Extending from Remote Times to the Present. By E. W. Gudger (1923)
Floating Gold: The Romance of Ambergris By Robert Cushman Murphy (1933)
The Pearl of Allah: The giant clam yielded its treasure only after slaying a native diver trapped when its great jaws snapped shut. Worshipped as the gift of Allah, the 14-pound pearl was finally presented to the author by a Mohammedan chief whose son he saved from death. By Wilburn Dowell Cobb (1939)
Man and His Baggage: All along the rough road from savagery to civilization, man has found it an increasingly complex problem to carry the things needed for life. By Clark Wissler (1946)
The Crowninshield Elephant: The surprising story of Old Bet, the first elephant ever to be brought to America. By George G. Goodwin (1951)
One Man's Meat Is Another's Person: Humans may taste good, but most societies are a long way from cannibalism. By Raymond Sokolov (1974)
On the other hand, I believe that the UK system of caring for elderly people is better than the others; Costa Ricans have better services for rural people; and the US has a better culture of retail service (outside of healthcare) than anywhere else I've lived.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.Debunking Canadian health care myths (via Digg)
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.
fake receipts, free templates for store receipts, print fake receipts (via Schneier)The process is simple:
You pay us a small fee- using your credit card
Email us the answers to a short questionnaire about the false receipt you want designed and printed (see below)
Within 24 hours, we will send you a draft scan by email of the fake store receipt.
You give us feedback/changes you may require
We print the fake register receipt with a real Point of Sale (POS) Thermal Printer and post 2 copies of the real receipt to your address.
You use them for whatever purpose you choose, we don't ask questions
I realized that this lament was like the one you hear from people who bemoan kids having sex and getting pregnant or catching diseases, "If they'd just abstain..."
Abstinence programs don't work -- not in IT, and not for teens' sex:
Every time a state secret disappears from an internet-connected PC, every time a hospital computer reboots itself in the middle of a surgical procedure because it has just downloaded the latest patch, every time an MRI machine gets infected with an internet worm, I hear security experts declaiming, "Those computers should never be connected to the internet!" and shaking their heads at the foolish users and the foolish IT department that gave rise to a situation where sensitive functions were being executed on a computer connected to the seething, malware-haunted public internet.Like teenagers, computers are built to hook upBut no amount of head-shaking is going to change the fact that computers, by and large, get connected. It's what they're designed to do. You might connect to the internet without even meaning to (for example, if your computer knows that it's allowed to connect to a BT Wi-Fi access point, it will connect and disconnect from hundreds of them if you carry it with you through the streets of London).
Operating systems are getting more promiscuous about net connections, not less: expect operating systems to start seeking out Bluetooth-enabled 3G phones and using them to reach out to the net when nothing else is available.
All evidence suggests that keeping computers off the internet is a losing battle. And even if you think you can discipline your workers into staying offline, wouldn't it be lovely if you had a security solution that worked even if someone broke the rules? "You shouldn't be having net at your age, but if you do, you should at least practice safe hex."
I'm not a fan of vampire fiction, but The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is more along the lines of a vampire-zombie-epidemic-in-New York-City, and wow is it terrific.
The first chapter (after the short prologue, which didn't interest me and almost made me abandon the book) is about an airplane that lands at JFK from Germany and goes completely dark on the runway. It's so creepy that when I told my wife and daughter about it *they* got creeped out just from my description.
Someone said The Strain is a combination of The Stand, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I am Legend, which I'd say is a pretty fair way of describing it.
I was sent a review copy by the publisher, but I wanted to read it past our usual bedtime so I bought the Kindle version and read it in the dark on my iPhone so as not to keep Carla up with a reading light on. I recommend reading all scary books in the dark this way.
She tried to wake him up (when she woke to find him urinating in the closet), but she said he pushed her out of his way. Scared he might hit her, she said, she grabbed a knife and held it up as he approached, cutting him. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening."Man stabbed while sleepwalking"
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
User curiosity_nl recently added the Bottle-Ship Museum in Enkhuizen, Holland to the Atlas Obscura. It sounds like a place I'd like to visit:
This tiny museum is said to hold the world's largest collection of bottle ships--over 750 of them. An incredible variety of miniature boats--rescue boats, whaling ships, steamships, and modern dredgers--have been stuffed into every variety of bottle, from the tiniest light bulb to a 30-liter wine jug. Magnifying glasses are available where needed. On occasion, there are demonstrations of how to build bottle ships.
Shown above is a model of the Half Moon, the ship Henry Hudson was sailing when he discovered Hudson Bay and the Hudson River. It's builder, Ralph Preston, estimates that it took about 500 hours to assemble.
Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.India plans hot chilli grenades (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)
The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.
Scientists at India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are quoted as saying the potent chilli will be used as a food additive for troops operating in cold conditions.
Rolly Crump, the Disney Imagineer who Kevin Kidney wrote about on Dinosaurs and Robots, drew these incredible beatnik posters in 1960. Here's one, here's another. (I like the sound of the Weed Quartet: "Lou blows Kazoo," "Turk on the Twig," "Betty bangs Tambourine," and "Booboo on the Bottle.")
Here's Rolly Crump's Tower Of The Four Winds, a 120 foot tall kinetic sculpture unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair
And just look at the Disneyland ticket booth for Tomorrowland that Crump designed in 1967.
Jason Groh has some more outstanding 1960s work by Crump. Says Groh, "Rolly was Tim Burton before there was a Tim Burton!"
Here's Rolly Crump's website. He's still creating wonderful art!
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
When conquistadors arrived from Spain they were shocked. Spanning vast canyons, and longer than any existing European or Roman bridge was a type of bridge which they had never seen before: an Incan suspension bridge. Today only one example remains.
Made of woven grass, the bridge spans 118 feet, and hangs 220 feet above the canyon's rushing river. The Incan women braid small thin ropes which are then braided again by the men into large support cables, much like a modern steel suspension bridge. Handwoven bridges lasted as long as 500 years and were held in very high regard by the Inca. The punishment for tampering with one was death.
Over time, however, the bridges decayed, or were removed, leaving this single testament to Incan bridge engineering. This previously sagging bridge is now repaired each year, and christened with a traditional Incan ceremonial bridge blessing. The bridge is in extremely good condition and is a perfect location for all of us wishing to indulge in long harbored Indiana Jones fantasies.
Though the Spanish tried many times to build stone arch bridges all were failures until steel and iron bridges were introduced to the mountainous Peruvian countryside. Today the rope suspension bridges are being studied, and even recreated by MIT students. The students made a 60-foot-long version of the Incan bridge which was stretched between two campus buildings.
More on the Atlas here, more on the story of the bridge here, and about the MIT recreation of the bridge here and slideshow here.
That's why I took an inactive iPhone with me to Spain. I used WiFi and Skype on it and it cost me nothing.
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
In 1995, the Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe made a splash when he proved that pigeons could be trained to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. Now he has taught them to recognize the difference between good and bad art. New Scientist reports:
He trained four birds - on loan from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons - to appreciate children's art by linking correct assessments of paintings with food. Works deemed good (see image) had earned As in art class, while bad paintings (see image) garnered Cs or Ds. Watanabe also put the paintings to a jury of 10 adults, and pigeons viewed only works unanimously declared good or bad by the panel.
After a series of training sessions consisting of 22 paintings on average, Watanabe presented the birds with 10 paintings they hadn't seen before: 5 bad, 5 good.
The birds had been trained to peck at a button for good paintings and do nothing in response to bad works. With never-seen works, pigeons picked good paintings twice as often as bad paintings, a statistically significant difference.
Watanabe's paper, "Pigeons can discriminate 'good' and 'bad' paintings by children," is published in the latest issue of Animal Cognition.
Now, if only pigeons could be taught to pilot missiles.
As Steve Lodefink says: "Awesome teen angst comedy mischief pop by Chair."
Yup, it's true, it's hard for Apple to adequately assess the conflicting claims about proprietary rights on the iTunes Store. Say, I've got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?
As for the sleazebags who shake down programmers by claiming to own the rights to Muni arrival times, someone needs to give them the "Hey, dipshits, facts aren't copyrightable," speech and a smack upside their collective heads.
Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times? (Thanks, John!)
This is [Sona restaurant chef de cuisine Kuniko Yagi's] recipe for making tofu from soy milk, and it's the one Yagi uses: Add a teaspoon of liquid nigari to 500 milliliters of cold soy milk and stir. Then pour it into heat-proof bowls and cook (in a water bath or steamer) until it sets like custard. That is it. There's no heating the soy milk to bring it to a certain temperature before adding the nigari. No separating liquids from solids. No straining once it's cooked.Do-it-yourself fresh tofuKariya had figured just the right amount of soy milk (which he makes -- so he knows that the brix, or percentage of dissolved solids, is 14%) to use with a certain amount of nigari (which he imports from Japan and has magnesium chloride and other trace minerals), so that his tofu recipe works consistently. He sells both the milk ($3.50 for a half-gallon) and the nigari, which isn't cheap but will make a lot of tofu and will last almost indefinitely ($25 for a pint).
Fun video of a toy train that floats about the track using a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor. (Via Evil Mad Scientists)
ATLAS/CERN Multimedia Contest and Intern Program: (Thanks, Joao!)CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, birthplace of the World Wide Web and home of the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a great opportunity for you. We are about to kick-start the most complex scientific project ever conceived by mankind, and would like you to witness and record its unveiling, and help us spread the news.
We want you to start by showing us your communication and creative skills by producing an original short film or multimedia piece, incorporating material about ATLAS, the biggest experiment on the LHC. The best submissions will be posted on the ATLAS website and YouTube page with full credit to the author, and enter a competition for a paid internship at CERN or alternatively win a Adobe Production Suite package. The winner will be offered a trip to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and given exclusive access to scientists working on the project as well as all the equipment and expertise in CERN's audiovisual lab.
What we want from you is your unbridled creativity. In return, we offer a chance to experience history in the making, and a global platform for your work as the world's eyes look towards CERN this fall. To apply, read the official rules and register below. What are you waiting for?
The deadline is July 31, so lights, Camera, Action!
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
I've recently been enjoying Edward Rice's wonderful biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer, soldier, diplomat, linguist, translator, and self-described "amateur barbarian," who became one of the first non-Muslims to make the Hajj to Mecca.
Burton was a sponge for languages, and by the time of his death he was said to be fluent in 29 of them--plus at least a dozen dialects.
This got me wondering whether he might have been the most multilingual person in history.
Far from it, it seems.
Wikipedia has compiled a list of the world's most prodigious polyglots, including Sir John Bowring, who supposedly knew 200 languages (but only spoke 100), and the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak 38 tongues, despite having never left Italy.
I was led to Charles William Russel's 1863 biography of Mezzofanti, which excerpts an incredible run-in between the cardinal and Lord Byron, as described in Byron's memoirs:
I don't remember a man amongst them I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzofanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot, and more; --who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter. He is, indeed, a marvel--unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-houses, post, everything; and egad! he astounded me--even to my English.
Russell then adds (with a note of skepticism) a postscript describing a comical swear-off between Mezzofanti and Byron:
When Byron had exhausted his vocabulary of English slang Mezzofanti quietly asked, "And is that all?"
"I can go no further," replied the noble poet, "unless I coin words for the purpose."
"Pardon me, my Lord," rejoined Mezzofanti; and proceeded to repeat for him a variety of the refinements of London slang, till then unknown to his visitor's rich vocabulary!"
What a great scene!
The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti by Charles William Russell [HTML book]
An Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern (preface to Russell's biography of Mezzofanti)
(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)
A spectacularly campy "Scopitone" music number featuring Joi Lansing from 1965 which appears to be a cautionary tale about the perils of online dating, or spiders, or both.
Scopitones were basically 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."
More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:
* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day
The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco.
Where to Find Boing Boing Video: boingboingvideo.com. RSS feed for new episodes 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.
(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)
"We have reached the conclusion that we do not agree with the conflict of interest claim," Sweden Court of Appeal Judge Anders Eka told Swedish media. In the appellate court's written opinion, the three-judge panel said that backing "the principles" of copyright law "cannot be considered bias."Pirate Bay Retrial Denied (Wired / Threat Level)
Thank goodness Michael Bay made the new Transformers movie, because if he hadn't Charlie Jane Anders wouldn't have written this stupendous review for io9.
Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie
Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper.Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time (Via Orange Crate Art)Step 2: Email the file to your professor along with your "here's my assignment" email.
Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is "unfortunately" corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!
Note: The only difference between each Word file is its file size, because it will look a bit odd if your 10 page term paper is only 1k in size! Yes, we thought of everything! We guarantee and stand by our product!
They're saying on BBC radio right now that when news of his death started to hit late Thursday, so many search queries for "Michael Jackson" were hitting Google and other search engines, the flood was perceived at first as a malicious automated attack.
Above: my own personal favorite.
Below, words from music industry writer Bob Lefsetz (Twitter, blog) on the passing today of one of the most important pop culture figures of our time.
He missed his childhood and now he's gonna miss his old age.Read the entire post by Bob Lefsetz here.How fucked up is that?
Michael Jackson never had a chance. He had to succeed for his family, his parents' dreams were dependent upon him.
And a boy with that much pressure delivers. He works truly hard, so he will be loved. That's all Michael Jackson was looking for, love.
He wanted to be accepted. Wanted to be so good that he couldn't be denied. But you can't change family history, and the public no longer treats you as human, as an equal, once you break through. People want to rip you off or tear you down, or shower you in faux love that's more about their unfulfilled desires than yours. It gets so confusing that you retreat.
There was no discernible reason why Japanese developer AQI should have to parody Steve Jobs to announce a new version of their portable Korg DS-10 synthesizer, which makes the fact that they did (above) -- and pulled it off with pitch-perfect style -- all the more fantastic, and sets a high bar as one of the cutest game announcements in recent memory.
Elsewhere on Offworld, we saw more game/music crossovers, listening to the latest and most accessible chiptune/downtempo/glitch sampler for San Francisco's DUTYSTYLE III show, happening tonight at 8pm (check the post for full details), and finding Open Emu, a new modular Mac emulation system that's a boon for budding 8-bit VJs, as it lets you control both the visuals and the play of emulated games with audio and MIDI.
We also saw that early-oughts cult classic shooter Serious Sam (which shipped with our favorite cheat-mode of all time, turning gibs and blood splatter into hamburgers, fruit, and bursts of blooming flowers) was being remade for Xbox Live Arcade, and that EA/DICE's similarly tongue in cheek free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes had quietly gone live, and will likely be taking up the majority of our weekend (as it should yours).
And our 'one shot's of the day: the mathematical beauty of building pixel Invaders, the aching shoulder-slump of BioShock 2's original Big Daddy concept, the certifiably longest beard in gaming's history, and, of course, Michael Jackson, in memoriam.
Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and we're not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough. ...Hmm, I dunno. Regulation is an impediment to innovation (for example, it's hard to play with cognitive radio when the FCC says that you can't talk in claimed bands, guard bands, etc). But SEZs are also places where countries have experimented with horrendous working conditions, human trafficking, rampant environmental degradation, and other subjects of regulatory "red tape." And it's not easy to say where one ends and the other begins -- take the cognitive radio example. If you've got a theory that you can use cooperative frequency-hopping, directional transmission with phased arrays, and other technologies to make more signal happen in the same spectrum, is the "safety" regulation that prohibits emitting in bands used by emergency services or radio astronomers "red tape" or "safety"?In many ways, the Global North is as hamstrung in the face of bright green challenges as China was in the face of capitalism. What if the answer is a sustainability and social innovation equivalent of China's answers: a sort of "Special Innovation Zone"?
Imagine a place -- perhaps a shrinking city, or a badly savaged brownfield neighborhood -- where laws were set up to strip rules and regulations down to a do-no-harm minimum (maintaining criminal laws and protecting health, safety, workers' rights and civil liberties, but perhaps limiting liability and certainly slashing red tape and delays) allowing for wild deviations from existing patterns for buildings, systems and operations. Imagine a free-fire zone for sustainable innovations, where new approaches could be iterated and tested rapidly, and, when they work, sent to proliferate outside the Zone. Conversely, some of the freedom might paradoxically come from imposing boundary limitations that can't yet be made practical or survive politically outside the Zone, such as bans on broad classes of chemicals or strict greenhouse gas emissions limits.
Special Innovation Zone: Imagination Without Regulation (Thanks, Alex!)
Steampunk Transhuman Artifacts (Thanks, Marque!)
But to answer the question properly - what are we missing out on - my own regret is that I don't get to read French steampunk!MIND MELD: Guide to International SF/F (Part I ) (via Beyond the BeyondI know there's a lot of it - I did a panel on steampunk a few years ago in Nantes and it was horrible, being surrounded by steampunk writers telling me about their (very cool sounding) books and I can't read any of them! I'd also love to see some of the Chinese SF novels, and at least get a glimpse into the Arabic SF that's being published. I'd love to read some of the Cuban stuff... stop me when you've had enough. Israel has some very interesting home-grown YA fantasy at the moment. To be honest, the way I get to read non-Anglophone writers is mostly in the crime genre, which seems to be a lot more open to translating in the field - so the Cuban or Japanese or French writers I do read are crime writers - check out Detectives Beyond Borders, which is a great introduction. But I think things are changing in science fiction and fantasy a little, too. Certainly, since I started the World SF Blog I've been amazed by how much was out there - in English - translations from Korean and Spanish, writers who occasionally sell an English story but work predominantly in other languages, and a huge amount of articles, blog posts, online communities, a great deal of discussion, from people around the world who are simply passionate about the genre and want others to know about it, too. The problem with the old model of World SF was that it was Anglophone-led, but now it's not! The Internet's been a major catalyst in that regard. A few years ago, three German fans started InterNova, which was meant to be a magazine of international SF. They only managed to do one issue, and it was plagued with distribution problems, but the remarkable thing about it was that the initiative came from the outside, and the contributors, editors, proof-readers, translators - everyone involved - was likewise from the non-English world. And that was quite remarkable to me, this idea that you can do this, you don't need one of the old English writers or editors to do it for you. You can do it yourself. We're seeing more and more of this now, and the Internet's been great in allowing people from all around the world to communicate with each other, talk to each other, exchange ideas - there's a real cross-polination taking place, and it's very exciting and rewarding to be able to do that.
Meet the chief US ACTA negotiator: Kira Alvarez, the Deputy Assistant USTR for IP Enforcement (Thanks, Jamie!)
Google China mess gets messier (China Economic Review, via @rmack)Gao (shown here during the broadcast) complained that the pornographic content on Google.cn was particularly harmful. He said in the interview, 'I have this fellow student and he's been curious about these kinds of things. He visited porn Web sites and ended up becoming absent-minded for a while.'
Which sounds pretty authentic. Viewing porn sites causes memory loss. Not a known syndrome but possible, possible.
Some viewers doubted the truth of Gao's comments and suspected that he had been coached beforehand. So an Internet search was carried out -- there is no place to hide -- and it appears that he is a current intern with CCTV. His page on the popular Chinese social networking site Xiaonei.com seemed to support the claim that he was working for the state broadcaster at the time of the interview.
"Day in the Clouds," The Virgin America + Google in-flight internet gaming competition we published a BB Video piece about today, netted yet another honor for multiple world puzzle championship Winner Wei-Hwa Huang. He's shown above, on our flight, using one of the tools of his win: a notebook. Not the notebook computer, a notebook.
He has an extensive blog post about his experience at the event here, which includes the impossibly awesome phrase "Parallel slave processor friends," used to describe his seat-mates, off whom he bounced thoughts as he sorted out answers.
My favorite part of his post? The lyrics he wrote as an answer for one of the puzzles. You should read the whole entry, because it's rare to read such a subjective, intimate account of how genius prepares for a competition in his field. But, I have to just blog the song he wrote, here:
Enjoy the world
with the day in the cloud
Never be bored
and say this aloud:
Everything is connected
when you live in the clouds
Every line is expected
when you live in the clouds
Everyone can do it
no matter your status
have fun anywhere
while flying through a stratus!
Everything is awesome
when you live in the clouds
Everything and then some
can be found in the clouds
Don't worry so
about problems in flight,
Because you know
Everything's going to be all right!
Day in the Cloud -- Virgin America Flight 921 (Onigame livejournal; image via Virgin America)
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
As one who answers the Call of Cthulhu, I have a special interest in locations that have to do with Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos. Risking my grasp on reality and sanity I have assembled three places that display the distinct geometry of evil that occurs when Lovecraft and the Atlas Obscura meet:
The home of Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges involved in the Salem Witch Trials, which sentenced nineteen "witches" to hang and crushed one man to death in an attempt to make him confess to witchery. It is the only structure left with direct ties to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and referenced in Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House."
Danvers State Hospital for the Criminally Insane
The insane asylum was the basis for Arkham Sanatarium in H.P. Lovcraft's Horror stories and Batman's Arkham asylum but is now a horrifying condo. However a nearby cemetery where the residents of Danvers were buried went unmolested by the condo developers and is worth a visit. The hospital is referenced in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Pickman's Model."
The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was built in 1844, and is possibly the worlds oldest subway tunnel. The tunnel lay sealed and hidden under the busy Brooklyn street for almost 140 years until it was rediscovered by a twenty year old in 1980. One can take a tour of the site, which the discoverer of the tunnel still gives. Be prepared to enter via manhole in the middle of Atlantic Ave. Referenced (not by name, but Lovecraft was likely referring to it) as the location of devil worshippers in "The Horror at Redhook."
A much more detailed list of Lovecraftian sites can be found here at the HPLA , and great Lovecraftian travelogs here and here.
The ACLU reports that "the Supreme Court ruled today that school officials violated the constitutional rights of Savana Redding, a 13-year-old Arizona girl who was strip searched based on a classmate's uncorroborated accusation that she previously possessed ibuprofen. This is the biggest victory for students’ rights in the last 20 years."
When Savana Redding was just 13 years old, she was strip-searched for allegedly possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen. This traumatizing search was based solely on the false and uncorroborated accusation of a classmate who was caught with similar pills.Supreme Court declares strip search of 13-year-old student unconstitutionalSavana's case was argued before the Supreme Court by ACLU attorneys seeking to protect the privacy of all students -- and make it clear that such conduct has no place in America's schools. But this case would never have been heard if it weren’t for the bravery of Savana.
It's all over the everywhere, but I just felt like it was worth mentioning here, too. Michael Jackson was a supreme talent and dealt with a tremendous amount of pain. He made many critically bad choices over the years, but it's impossible for me to not still respect his talent and imagination.
Image: Bijioo
Update: This is heartbreaking. And it's apparently a Pepsi commercial. (via Anil Dash)
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
This week's Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker had an amazing piece about a series of mysterious youtube videos of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Vaslav Nijinsky is known as the best male dancer of the twentieth century. Unfortunately Nijinsky died retired at 29, and left behind no known footage of his dancing. Yet about a year ago videos of Nijinsky dancing began appearing on youtube, such as a clip from "Afternoon of a faun" seen below.
If there is no known footage of him, where was this archival footage coming from? From the New Yorker article:
"Because it turns out, these aren't films. They are computer-generated artifacts, made by Christian Comte, a French artist who has a studio in Cannes. Reached the other day, Comte acknowledged his authorship. "These films are animations of photographs, achieved thanks to a process that I invented," he said. "I work as an alchemist in animated cinema." He uses still photographs and, by employing a computer to alter them--tilt a head, move an arm--fills in the gaps between successive shots."
Link to the New Yorker Article, Comte's youtube account of the strangely mesmerizing videos.
Our pal Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching says:
I am extremely proud to have Jim Woodring's patterns as part of the Sublime Stitching Artist Series. Growing up reading alternative comics (snuck from my brother's room), exposed me to Jim's work when I was a young teen and working with him has been a dream come true. Woodring's inimitable, dreamy imagery from his beloved, surreal comic, Frank will take you, and your embroidery, to another world.Jim Woodring Sublime Stitching embroidery patterns
Ignore the gobbledegook text that runs for the first minute and eleven seconds. Just forward past it and enjoy the rest. (via Robert Popper)
James of Japan Probe reports that a Japanese hackberry tree, which sprouted from a seed in a junkyard 25 years ago, has managed to lift a car in the air. "Workers at the junkyard have built a small fence around the tree, and are protecting it as it continues to grow," he writes. Video here.
• HTC announced the Hero, the latest Android phone.
• But will the Hero be any good? Joel appeared on TechVi to discuss.
• Video on the iPhone 3GS is just ok. See for yourselves.
• A review of $250 desk chair that's an exercise ball (yes, $250!)
• Is using Virgin's in-flight wi-fi as glorious as it sounds?
• Video: "Buzz Aldrin is so gangsta..."
• Everything is turning into a pc. Exhibit A: Vizio's HDTV remote.
• Lightning's fingerprint encased in a $175 block of acrylic.
• A list of iPhone accessories that don't exist, that people WANT.
• Franz Liszt is the new black (again).
• Would you rather remove a tick with a lasso OR cryotherapy?
• The used iPhone market mirrors the used Mac market. Discuss...
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