Parenting in the Internet age is great: since I'm the one who gets up with the baby first thing in the morning (we're both early, 5AM risers), I entertain her until breakfast. Sometimes she'll carry my laptop over to me, climb up onto my lap, and we'll watch videos from the net; there's plenty of great stuff on YouTube, but lately we've been exploring the Internet Archive's collection of public domain animation and cartoons. This morning we had a great time with Max Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoon The Old Man of the Mountain with Cab Calloway.

What I'm really hoping to find is those old Max Fleischer sing along follow-the-bouncing-ball cartoons, like "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" and "Give My Regards to Broadway," but haven't turned those up yet.

Here's a gallery of photos by seven contemporary Detroit photographers: "These seven artists have been working in the city as explorers, adventurers and pioneers for years to capture the city as it changes, evolves, devolves and transforms into something unbelievable, profound and heartbreaking. In the end they hope as a group to show Detroit as it is, not what it should be or what it was, but how it is. This in itself a provocative gesture as there are not many who feel content with the Detroit of today."

The shooters are Corine Smith, Mitch Cope, Clinton Snider, Mark Alor Powell, Antonio Gomez, Ingo Vetter and Scott Hocking; and Mitch Cope, who assembled the gallery, wants to do a book of these shots. I'd buy it.

7 CONTEMPORARY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHERS (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Mark Alor Powell )

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

I love a good hoax, and this one seems particularly well done: essentially, Renier Hubert Ghislain Chalon, a historian, researched the sorts of books that Europe's most noted book collectors would find irresistible. He then made up a Count, Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, who had a book collection of only one-of-a-kind books. If another was found of any book, the Count would burn it, insuring he held the only known copy. Each of the 52 books listed in the catalog was specifically designed to appeal to a particular collector.

The eager collectors were instructed to arrive in the Belgian town of Binche for the auction, where they were all roundly zinged. They all descended on the town, a long, difficult journey for many of them, only to find that the town had decided to buy the incredible collection for their library. Only none of the locals knew about the count, the books, or even their town having a library. All the noted collectors, many of whom bore heated rivalries with one another, had all been led on a wild goose chase, and were now crammed, fuming, in the local tavern. Eat it, mid 19th-century noted rare book collectors!

There's more details here as well, from a 1909 book of "literary curiosities."

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

Last Saturday, the day of no rules, I posted a video made by my old comedy group, the Van Gogh-Goghs that took the old Knight Rider conceit and added a colostomy bag. This week, we're taking the Spiderman story and replacing the spider with a pack of radioactive bears, who do something worse than biting.

So, people with decency, you've been warned. Of course, it's probably NSFW. To be safe, I'll include the video after the jump. If possible, enjoy.

Jon Taplin reproduces this jaw-dropping chart: Floyd Norris's scary graph of Durable Goods Production, adding, "We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war." He goes on to quote Toynbee on Rome: "The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories... With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry."

Update: The total numbers are better than the percentage changes: The US "remains primarily a civilian economy. Military now takes 8% of all durable goods, up from 3% in 2000."

National Security State

I finally got around to uploading this 2007 video of our guest blogger, Jason Torchinsky explaining how his Dorkbake oven works.

In 2007 Machine Project in Los Angeles held the Dorkbake competition. Contestants were given a 100 W incandescent bulb and had to make an oven out of it. I think Jason came in second place.

Marilyn sez, "Bobby McFerrin uses the pentatonic scale and an audience's expectations to demonstrate neural programming at the World Science Festival 2009"

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale (Thanks, Marilyn!)

We just got back from a pleasant morning at the London Zoo in Regent's Park with the baby. Just before we left, we stopped at the cafe for a snack. I took care of the kid while Alice lined up to buy some goodies. As the queue moved along, she grabbed a packet marked "Carrot Stix" thinking that they must be, you know, carrot sticks. Or maybe dried carrot sticks. Something that was, approximately speaking, food.

After all, the company that makes it is called "Organix." And they have a "No junk promise." And they say that there's "reduced salt" and "reduced fat."

Wait, what?

I didn't know carrots had fat or salt.

In fact, they don't.

That's because "Carrot Stix" are not, in fact, carrot sticks.

They're cheezy-poofs: deep fried powdered corn/potato snacks, dusted with "powdered carrots." They are not, in fact, carrots.

They're not even food.

Caveat emptor.

Carrot Stix

MTV Splash Page blog editor Rick Marshall says, "I interviewed Stan Lee during Comic-con, and asked him about that late-'90s deal that almost had him and Michael Jackson buying Marvel Comics. During his response, he mentioned that Jackson wanted to buy the rights to Spider-Man so he could make a movie... or possibly to star in it?! It's an intriguing "What If?" scenario, if nothing else." Neat video of Mr. Lee's reply to that odd question is here: What If Michael Jackson Made 'Spider-Man'? Stan Lee Explains How It Almost Happened!

The video of a couple's awesome dance-number wedding entrance I posted last week featured Chris Brown's song "Forever," used without permission. Instead of suing or having the video taken down, Brown's label opted to add a link to buy the track to the page. And made a truckload of money.

So many of the record industry giants are publicly traded companies. Why aren't their shareholders howling for more stuff like this -- which actually makes money -- and less pointless Grand Guignols to extract a couple grand from some hapless teen, alienating a future customer and her family and friends for life?

This traffic is also very engaged -- the click-through rate (CTR) on the "JK Wedding Entrance" video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading "Forever" goes beyond the viral video itself: "JK Wedding Entrance" also appears to have influenced the official "Forever" music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown's "Forever" has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon's best selling MP3 list. We've seen similar successes in the past with partners like Monty Python.

I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study

Evan from Toronto's Coach House Books sez, "After three decades in business, indie bookstore Pages Books and Magazines is shutting its doors on August 31, but not without a proper farewell from Toronto. On Tuesday, September 8, 'Afterword: A Celebration of 30 Years,' will bring together friends and family of Pages to share their stories and images, which we're asking you to submit for consideration for the event."

For the past thirty years, Pages Books & Magazines has been a place where the culturally engaged citizens of Toronto met one another, conspired, fell in love, debated aesthetics and, occasionally, bought books. Skyrocketing rent, not a drop in sales, has forced Proprietor Marc Glassman to close his iconic indie shop at Queen and John streets on August 31, 2009.

We are collecting material to be presented at 'Afterword: A Celebration Of 30 Years', an event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Coach House Books, Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, Spacing Magazine, and This is Not A Reading Series, to be held at Gladstone Hotel on Sept 8. What has Pages Books meant to you? Tell us your tale. Do you have photos? We'd love to see them!

SEND YOUR STORIES AND IMAGES TO: my.pagesbooks.story@gmail.com.

DEADLINE: August 24, 2009

Pages requests memories for send-off bash (Thanks, Evan!)

(Image: Matthew Kim)

These beautiful high-voltage towers in Istra, Russia, near Moscow are the Experimental Grounds for High-Voltage Generation. They still light up and fire streaks of lightning into the night.

Creepy High Voltage Installations (Thanks, Bill!)

(Image: Master Z Great)

Sony Online's multiplayer game The Matrix Online is now dead, as of yesterday. But rather than simply announcing that they were pulling the plug and then watching the players dwindle away as D-day approached, Sony decided to work the shutdown into the storyline of the game, changing the game's graphics so that they decayed and crumbled. The last weeks of The Matrix Online were a party, with all players -- past and present -- invited along.

It's a rare institution that contemplates its own orderly demise. Think of all the clubs and mailing lists and communities you've been a part of that have gone out with a whimper, bleeding out by drips, until there's nothing left. Kudos to Sony for giving a proper send-off to a place that so many people had loved and played in.

This week is the last week for The Matrix Online and all former subscribers are welcomed to come back to play one final time before the machines pull the plug for good. The Matrix crashes on July 31st, so be sure to be logged in on that day to be assaulted by pretty much everyone and everything until everyone's RSI is smashed into a tiny, tiny ball.

Reminder: Check out The Matrix Online before it decompiles (via Wonderland)

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

First off, I love cars, I own an odd one, and, thanks in part to Make: magazine, I've even raced them a little bit. That's why I've deluded myself into thinking my opinion on this has any relevance here at all. So, if you don't mind, indulge me.

Recently, a study showed that people tended to prefer cars with "angry" faces. Auto designers have known this for a while, as the vast majority of cars available today have "faces" (you know, the front end arrangement of headlights, grille, and shapes that we tend to read like a face) that are at least aggressive, and at most absolutely freaking livid. This is across the board, too-- from entry-level cars to minivans to expensive sports sedans-- they all look like pissed-off turtle robots. There are exceptions, of course, but many of the most notable ones (New Beetle, Mini) are modern updates of vintage designs.

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Someone called Joester is purporting to show us how to block out gmail ads by using magic words in email messages, such as 9/11 or "suicide."  In other words, the ads that appear when your email is catastrophe-free:

...are gone when the email you receive contains trigger words:

But it's not as easy as it sounds. Putting the key words in a signature file doesn't work; the ads return. Also, writes Joester:

If the message runs long google turns the ads back on. However, if you add another "sensitive" word they go off again. After extensive testing I've discovered you need 1 catastrophic event or tragedy for every 167 words in the rest of the email.

Questions remain. What are all the trigger words? How do you avoid scaring the people who receive your emails with your seemingly pointless references to incest and gang rape? More importantly, shouldn't this be more accurately described as a method for helping the people who you email who have gmail avoid ads?

Link (via Adlab)

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

Before computers became small, cheap, and reliable enough for this purpose, people still had the desire to stand in front of armoire-sized cabinets, stare into a glass panel, and pretend to do things they normally didn't do, like kill aliens, drive like a madman, or work in a junkyard. The way they did these things was with wonderful, complicated electromechanical arcade games.



These electromechanical games are incredible contraptions, using every kind of trick-- projections, spinning drums, remotely articulated models, whirring discs, mirrors, lights-- to give the illusions of speed, action, explosions, distance, and more. Looking at them, it's amazing they worked so well in such a high-abuse public environment. These are real engineering gems, long gone, and very rare now. Luckily, there's a bunch of videos out there, since stills really don't do these justice: Speedway, Hill Climb, Invaders, Haunted House. Enjoy!

From the Rules of Thumb website:

A deep oil well has the same proportions as a human hair ten feet long. -- Harold E. Haynes

Picturing an oil well

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

This article at National Geographic gives a good gist of what's going on: apparently, regular old blue food coloring, like the stuff you find in Gatorade or M&Ms, has been found to reduce spinal cord trauma and inflammation, leading to at least a partial reversal of paralysis, at least in some mice. And, unlike other treatments, there's no toxic effects.

And the best part? They turned blue! Now there's hope for anyone hoping to both regain use of paralyzed limbs and a desire to look like a really cold guy in a cartoon.

Susan Blackmore, author of the excellent book The Meme Machine, has suggested that beyond genes and memes, there is a new evolutionary "replicator" on the scene. She doesn't have a name for it, but it's related to the difference she sees between memes and digital information. From New Scientist:

Memes work differently from genes, and digital information works differently from memes, but some general principles apply to them all. The accelerating expansion, the increasing complexity, and the improving interconnectivity of all three are signs that the same fundamental design process is driving them all. Road networks look like vascular systems, and both look like computer networks, because interconnected systems outcompete isolated systems. The internet connects billions of computers in trillions of ways, just as a human brain connects billions of neurons in trillions of ways. Their uncanny resemblance is because they are doing a similar job.

So where do we go from here? We humans were vehicles for the first replicator and copying machinery for the second. What will we be for the third? For now we seem to have handed over most of the storage and copying duties to our new machines, but we still do much of the selection, which is why the web is so full of sex, drugs, food, music and entertainment. But the balance is shifting.

"Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?"

A London-based shrink named Dr Richard Graham wants to create an all-psychiatrist guild for World of Warcraft to treat "addiction" to the game, in the game. And he wants them all to get free accounts.

He has called on Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes World of Warcraft, to waive or discount the costs associated with joining the game so that therapists can more easily communicate with at-risk players in their preferred environment.

"We will be launching this project by the end of the year. I think it's already clear that psychiatrists will have to stay within the parameters of the game. They certainly wouldn't be wandering around the game in white coats and would have to use the same characters available to other players," said Dr Graham.

"Of course one problem we're going to have to overcome is that while a psychiatrist may excel in what they do in the real world, they're probably not going to be very good at playing World of Warcraft.

"We may have to work at that if we are going to get through to those who play this game for hours at end."

Addiction therapists signing up to World of Warcraft (via Futurismic)

This handsome chair looks like a prototype you'd find in the workshop of a mid-century furniture designer. Instructions are at Instructables.

How-To: Rubber hose chair

A 66-year-old woman lived with her dead husband for two months in their home near Copenhagen. The man had cancer and his death was only discovered by authorities after family members called police. The Copenhagen Post reports that the "woman will be charged with failing to ensure medical assistance for her husband." "Woman lives two months with dead husband" (via Fortean Times)

Bill Maher is seriously funny in this LA Times op-ed about the growing threat of the birther movement. (Maher wrote this before poll results came out showing that a majority of Republicans either don't believe or aren't sure Obama was born in the United States).

This flap might be a deluded right-wing obsession that is a total waste of time, but so was Whitewater, and look where that ended up. A handful of Republican operatives, enraged at Bill Clinton's unprecedented economic growth and budget surpluses, found a woman named Paula Jones, which led to a woman named Monica Lewinsky, which gave me enough material to eventually be able to buy a big house in Bel-Air. Which I'm still conflicted about.

More recently we had the Swift Boat allegations against John Kerry, in which Kerry was accused of volunteering to serve in Vietnam so he could jump in front of a bullet so he could get a medal and then throw it away to satisfy his urge to insult real Americans. This was so stupid that Kerry refused to even discuss it.

And we all know how well that worked out.

No matter how dumb, the people who are questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. could eventually cause real problems.

UPDATE: This graph shows the geographical breakdown of birthers and fact-based thinkers.

Who needs to explore outer space when our own world has so many wonderfully weird animals!

Freakish And Odd Creatures

The Jetlev-Flyer is a tethered jet pack that uses water instead of rocket fuel. The pressurized water is pumped up a hose attached to a custom Jet-Ski. From Popular Science:

It took four prototypes and more than 200 flight tests to get it right. But now, with a mere 30-pound pack, the Jetlev-Flyer is almost ready for production, generating 430 pounds of thrust and letting (Raymond) Li fly forward at 22 mph up to three stories high. His next unit will get up to 35 mph. Want one? Late this year, the craft will go on sale—just be ready to dish out close to 130 grand.

"A Water-Powered Jetpack"

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

1. If you were designing your own superhero costume, how would you accessorize?
a. Cape
b. Scarf
c. Sidekick
d. Gun
e. Stack of fliers saying you are a superhero


2. What part of Canada would you most like to sleep with?
a. Victoria
b. Regina
c. Moosejaw
d. Calgary
e. Prince Edward Island

This may be your last chance to buy the T-shirt my daughter Sarina and I designed for Woot. It's ranked at 26 and if it doesn't make it to the top 20 by next week it'll go out of production. A steal at $15!

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

I was all set to post the Philharmonicas doing Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" but just realized that Mark already did. Fie! Well, here's an equally swank soundie: the Don Redman Orchestra featuring a curious duo known as Red and Struggie, who = the bomb. Totally hilarious. (Both of these appeared on a 1994 MGM swing compilation.)

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

It's a long (or, rather, uninteresting) story but our book, Ad Nauseam, doesn't have an index. I was hoping that Amazon's "search inside" feature could help fill that gap, but our publisher says it takes a while for Amazon to make it functional.

So I've gone ahead and made an index myself. I have no idea how to make an index, frankly, and there are no doubt a number of typos, but for those of you who have bought the book or are considering buying it, it's better than nothing. And if anyone wants to list typos in the comments, I'll update the index accordingly. Thanks.

Link (pdf)

In the history of the company, there's only been one Nintendo-published game that has been overtly about "fighting and fucking": GameCube game Animal Leader (Cubivore in the states), and it's the subject of Margaret Robertson's latest One More Go column, where she peers into Nintendo's heart of darkness and prods at some of the company's more whitewashed ugly truths (see: the true relationship between Mario Bros' Bowser and Peach).

Elsewhere, we see artist Jude Buffum reflect on the financial crisis also through Mario's lens (and made an open plea for more financial system gaming), saw how Shigeru Miyamoto lifted ancient Japanese legend when creating Super Mario, and wolf-whistled at PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies doing an absolutely phenomenal job of parodying the ubiquitous bosomy banner ads for free-to-play game Evony (above).

We also took a guided tour through the Nintendo DS's new Facebook Connect features, saw more mind-melting footage of "type anything" DS puzzle game Scribblenauts and Left 4 Dead invading The Sims, found new official Monkey Island fashion, and watched the latest fantastically expressive 50x50 pixel video from Garth + Ginny.

And, for the final few that haven't seen it, we also saw the first concept art of the Magic Kingdom's steampunk dystopia in Disney's upcoming Wii project Epic Mickey, and our 'one shots': an ode to Fallout's Nuka-Cola Quantum, the domestic bliss of Mr. and Mrs. Pac.

how to pick the right gnome
arborsmith studios
garden zombie
led garden lamps
strange fences
die screaming...

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!)

Awesome. (via @rmack)

India's ailing private aviation companies have agreed to suspend all domestic flights for one day -- Aug 18 -- to see if they can coerce the government into bailing them out.

No private airlines to fly on Aug 18

Chet sez, "Steampunk Monkey Nation is a 20 card set inspired by turn-of-the-century cigarette card design. These portraits, with biographies on the reverse, explore an alternate world of Simian Steampunk."

Chet Phillips Illustration Steampunk Monkey Nation (Thanks, Chet!)

Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci's wonderful anthology of nerdy fiction and comics, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd was a great read: the short fiction ran the gamut from soul-searing angst to high comedy and all the territory in between. Of particular note were Scott Westerfeld's "Definition Chaos" (a story about a gun-toting gamer and his nutsy ex-girlfriend transporting $80,000 by train to Florida to pay for a con's hotel deposit); Garth Nix's "The Quiet Knight" (a disabled LARPer finds his true self in boffer armor); Lisa Yee's "Everyone But You" (a baton-twirling midwesterner reinvents herself in a Hawaiian high school); Kelly Link's "Secret Identity" (the book's top piece; a novella about a girl who travels to New York to hook up with a man she met in an MMORPG, despite the fact that doing so will reveal to him that she has lied about her identity); and Libba Bray's heartbreaking "It's Just a Jump to the Left" (a girl discovers she can't escape her life at Rocky Horror)

Intercut with the stories is a series of charming one-page comics drawn by Hope Larson and Brendan Lee "Scott Pilgrim" O'Malley.

All told, Geektastic is a cliche-busting, smart, and funny book about celebrating your inner mutant. Highly recommended.

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

A study by an international team published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition finds that when seniors do odd, complex motor tasks while taking medication, it increases the likelihood that they'll remember to take their meds next time. I love this stuff -- the idea that thinking takes place in the body as well as the brain -- and I bet it works for non-seniors just as well.

"In extended medication-taking situations, the habitual nature of the task may make it difficult for older adults to remember whether or not they took the medication on a particular day, especially if pill boxes are not used," explains Mark McDaniel, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

"To remedy this potential problem, older adults could be instructed to take their medication while placing one hand on their head or in some other unusual or silly way, like crossing their arms," he suggests. "Our results indicate that older adults can use these sorts of more complex motor tasks to effectively reduce repetition errors in habitual prospective memory tasks, such as taking a daily medication."...

In another phase of the experiment, participants were asked to do the letter-recognition task while simultaneously carrying out an additional more complicated and distracting task -- listening to a series of random numbers and pushing a clicker whenever they heard two odd numbers in a row...

"When ongoing task demands were challenging, older adults committed more repetition errors than younger adults, regardless of whether they'd been told in advance to err on the side of omission -- told not to push the F1 key if they had any doubt about whether it had already been pushed once in the same trial," says McDaniel.

However, older adults asked to carry out the more complex motor task (placing hand on head) while pushing the F1 key made significantly less repetition errors than older adults not making use of this memory enhancing technique

A Silly Pat On The Head Helps Seniors Remember Daily Medication

Jared sez, "Prison Proxy is a blog maintained by an acquaintance (friend?) of an inmate serving a life sentence in an unspecified "Texas Penitentiary." The blog, purportedly based on daily snail-mail letters from the prisoner, provides fascinating, 'live' insight into prison life. The July 30th post explains how inmates create soldering irons to 'fix headphones and alter radios.'"

To make the soldering iron, one must first fill up his hotpot with water. Then, he laces each prong of the hotpot's plug with wire, the left side of which is readied to be inserted in the plug, and the right side of which is for the iron.

He then takes a pencil and shaves an inch or so of wood off the end, so that the lead sticks out that far by itself. He uses fabric to wrap two pieces of metal--each shaped like a long hockey stick with the L-curve on both ends--to the pencil with their L-curved ends clamping down on either side of the exposed lead.

How It's Made: Soldering Irons (Thanks, Jared!)

70+ Canadians in Sarnia, Ontario have committed to dropping their pants and mooning a spy balloon that a US company is launching to surveil the border, including their town.

In a letter to the PM Thursday, Mike Bradley said the camera hovering over Port Huron, Mich. is scanning Sarnia's waterfront, which includes many homes, private businesses and government offices.

"There was absolutely no consultation with the local community and I am not aware if there has been at the national level about this particular initiative," he said.

The surveillance balloon based on Port Huron's waterfront is equipped with a $1-million camera and is being tested on the international border.

The 50-foot dirigible, shaped like an airplane wing, is owned by the Sierra Nevada Corporation and operated by True North Logistics of Port Huron.

It has clearance to fly to 1,000 feet and can read the name of a ship from nine miles (14 kilometres) away. Its owners hope to draw interest from U.S. Homeland Security.

'Moon the Balloon' protest grows, mayor writes PM (Thanks, Gord!)

Marilyn sez, "The East Hampton Library on Long Island wants to add a children's room, but the East Hampton Village Zoning Board has blocked it for a year, even though the money for the expansion ($4 mil) has been already been raised by private donations. What's their objection to a children's room at the library?"

Library Director Dennis Fabiszak has said that the East Hampton Village Board of Zoning Appeals has expressed concern that an expanded children's collection would lead to more library usage by those who live in the less affluent areas of Springs and Wainscott...

The proposed 6,800-square-foot addition to a community that includes Martha Stewart, Rudolph Giuliani, and Katie Couric as summer residents would enable the library to add 10,000 additional children's books to the library's collection. Last year, the Long Island library ranked last for books available per child...

The library serves not only the Village of East Hampton but also the less affluent communities of Springs and Wainscott.

Library Expansion in Posh NY Hood Goes On (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

If you're one of the (most likely imaginary) people that have been following my posts religiously, you might remember when I posted about the Black Widow turbine-powered Beetle a few days ago. Now, I have some scans from Turbonique's Hot Rotor magazine, which is jam-packed with great pictures of truly bonkers jet-powered vehicles, and jam-unpacked with words.

Many of the images have the parts presented on flat-color backgrounds, making for some really satisfying compositions, aesthetically. And, in the few pictures with people, they always appear stiff and with oddly blank expressions, which makes the images even better, somehow. Enjoy.



(Thanks, Chris!)

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

By nature, I'm not a guy particularly interested in safety concerns, but when I saw these massive wheel spikes on this big rig on the 5 freeway the other day, I couldn't help but wonder if having something normally associated with a brutal chariot race is such a hot idea.

This picture doesn't quite do them justice, but these spikes are no joke; they could easily turn a close call into a harrowing, screaming gash torn into the bodywork of your car. I've never seen these before, but, then again, I don't really do that much driving in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland ruled by gangs of mechanized toughs.

Dead-Air sez, "At the Science Fiction Message Board the results are in for our 2009 'Author August' post-a-thon extravaganza! The regular members, along with some visitors lured by news of the upcoming event, have nominated a wildly diverse range of authors. From SF's earliest days to the latest hot new talent, this 4th annual event has as wide-ranging a list of writers as anyone could wish to see. Every day during August a different author will be spotlighted in their own thread in our Author Central forum. We encourage all to visit on that day and post photographs, reminiscences, cover scans, links to appropriate sites, reviews, and other reactions. With 31 days and 31 authors there's a chance to share what you know as well as learn new things, so come and join in the fun!"

8/1 Alfred Bester; 8/2 William Tenn (Phillip Klass); 8/3 Gene Wolfe; 8/4 E.T.A. Hoffman; 8/5 Norman Spinrad; 8/6 Lucy Sussex; 8/7 Robert J. Sawyer; 8/8 Phillip Reeve; 8/9 Ian McDonald; 8/10 Ken MacLeod; 8/11 Dan Simmons; 8/12 S.M. Stirling; 8/13 Sean McMullen; 8/14 James Blish; 8/15 Kelley Eskridge; 8/16 Octavia Butler; 8/17 Charles Stross; 8/18 Colin Kapp; 8/19 Fritz Leiber; 8/20 Nicola Griffith; 8/21 Hal Clement; 8/22 J.G. Ballard; 8/23 Alison Sinclair; 8/24 E.C. Tubb; 8/25 Neal Asher; 8/26 Karl Schroeder; 8/27 Jack L. Chalker; 8/28 John Varley; 8/29 Alan Dean Foster; 8/30 David J. Williams; 8/31 Kurd Lasswitz

Author August 2009! (Thanks, Dead-Air!)

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Iranians protesting the results of the recent election found an outlet and a means of organizing with the Internet, and showed that new digital media can help free speech and fight repression globally. But what happens now the headlines and the Twitter trends have died down? Join EFF for a panel discussion Monday Aug. 3 from 7pm - 9pm PDT. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can find details on attending in person here. If not, you will be able to watch the live stream here. Let's make technology useful and safe for netizens in authoritarian regimes!"

BayFF on August 3: Iranian Protests and Digital Media (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Sharna sez, "Already known for her stand against criminalizing music downloaders, now Lennox has given DJEarworm her multi-track masters to mash up. The resulting track 'Backwards/Forwards' is stunning and is featured on his site and hers and on both artists' youtube channels."

Annie Lennox: Backwards/Forwards (Thanks, Sharna!)

A former British fraud cop has assembled a database of 4,000,000 British identities, including credit card numbers and PINs, seemingly by buying data from hackers and phishers. Now he's selling access to the database to panicked members of the public who want to know if their identities have been stolen.

Highly sensitive financial information, including credit card details, bank account numbers, telephone numbers and even PINs are available to the highest bidder...

The information being traded on the web has been intercepted by a British company and collated into a single database for the first time. The Lucid Intelligence database contains the records of four million Britons, and 40 million people worldwide, mostly Americans. Security experts described the database as the largest of its kind in the world...

The database is held by Colin Holder, a retired senior Metropolitan police officer, who served on the fraud squad. He has collected the information over the past four years. His sources include law enforcement from around the world, such as British police and the FBI, anti-phishing and hacking campaigners and members of the public. Mr Holder said he had invested £160,000 in the venture so far. He plans to offset the cost by charging members of the public for access to his database to check whether their data security has been breached.

Four million British identities are up for sale on the internet (via Making Light)

John McCardell (a president emeritus and a professor of history at Middlebury College) in the Atlantic argues that the US national drinking age of 21 is a failure -- it has failed to stop underage drinking, and has instead driven it underground and made it more dangerous. I grew up with Ontario's drinking age of 19, but I started drinking at parties and so on at about 14 or 15, often to bad result; ironically, once I was old enough to drink in bars, I drank a lot less, as the culture in bars was generally different from the parties I'd drunk at until then.

The way our society addresses this problem has been about as effective as a parachute that opens on the second bounce. Clearly, state laws mandating a minimum drinking age of 21 haven't eliminated drinking by young adults--they've simply driven it underground, where life and health are at greater risk. Merely adjusting the legal age up or down doesn't work--we've tried that already and failed. But federal law has stifled the ability to conceive of more creative solutions in the only place where the Constitution says such debate should happen--in the state house--because any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its federal highway funds. This is called an "incentive."

So what might states, freed from this federal penalty, do differently? They might license 18-year-olds--adults in the eyes of the law--to drink, provided they've completed high school, attended an alcohol-education course (that consists of more than temperance lectures and scare tactics), and kept a clean record.

Teach Drinking (via Kottke)

High school student Justin Gawronski is suing Amazon for deleting his Kindle copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, because in so doing, they messed the annotations he'd created to the text for class (the annotations say things like "remember this paragraph for class" but the paragraph in question has been deleted). The case is intended to become a class-action on behalf of other Kindle owners whose annotations were deleted rendered useless by Amazon when it improperly deleted an infringing copy of the Orwell book from Kindles. Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit to me.

PDF: UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE (via Engadget)

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, we visit the Ojai studio of artist Cassandra C. Jones, whose "Google-found" digital photo collages and video loops explore how we "create, communicate with, and consume photography in today's 'remix culture.'" San Francisco gallery Baer Ridgway is hosting a solo exhibition of her work, titled "Send Me A Link," August 1st - September 5th 2009.

Some of the works included are constructed by compiling hundreds of professional and amateur snapshots of the same subject taken by different people. Ranging from full-color lightning bolts to old black and whites of horses jumping over a fence, she links them in ways that depict motion, line and non-linear narrative. Other pieces are made by deconstructing single photographs, removing their backgrounds and reducing them to isolated shapes. Jones then duplicates and arranges these forms to create compositions where singularity and multiplicity exist simultaneously. There is both an order and a chaos present in the body of work, which overall asks the question, what does it mean to organize and interpret imagery in the digital realm, where the archives of visual information are in a constant state of growth and evolution?

More images after the jump, and you may also want to read this article about her work today in the San Francisco Chronicle.

In addition to meeting comic book historian Craig Yoe last night, I was also lucky to meet artist Dean Yeagle, who was in attendance. Dean is an incredible illustrator with an impressive resume. I've long been a fan of his work and was thrilled when he gave me a copy of his new book, Mandy Godiva, which was a big hit at Comic Con last week.

The images above are from Mandy Godiva (click images for full size), and are some of the only pages that wouldn't get a NSFW label.

You can see more of Dean's work and buy his books at his website, Caged Beagle.

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

To a certain group of dedicated dorks, videogame controllers and their history is fiercely interesting, even to the point of having dedicated T-shirts. It's to those folks I present this discovery: this looks like it may be the first product (image from a 1977 ad) with a joypad-like device, used for user input (enlargement mine):

Ah, the CALCUPEN. Now, I know Gunpei Yokoi usually gets credit for those little 4-way rocker switches first used on the famous Game & Watch series, but it sure looks like our little Calcupen has five of the things running up its nerdy spine there. Granted, they're used for numerical input as opposed to direction control, but it's essentially the same device. I bet, if one was lucky enough to find one, a Calcupen could be wired to act as an old Nintendo controller!

Maybe the Calcupen is really that missing link between nerd productivity culture and nerd time-wasting culture. I smell a dissertation.