Adam Green sez, "On Friday, Lawrence Lessig's reform group Change Congress released a new ad calling out "Blue Dog" Rep. Mike Ross (D-Arkansas) for siding with his special-interest contributors over his constituents on the issue of health care. The ad features an extended cameo by Keith Olbermann -- and is narrated by Lessig. Rather unique. Within hours, it was featured by ABC, NBC, Politico, Huffington Post, and Rachel Maddow. Lessig's group is asking folks to chip in to air the ad on Arkansas TV."

Help us get this ad on the air in Arkansas! (Thanks, Adam!)(

My segment on Sparky — a robot made by San Francisco artist Marque Cornblatt using a Mac Mini, Skype, and a hodge podge of gadget parts — aired this weekend on PRI's Studio360, the arts and culture radio show hosted by novelist Kurt Anderson. Instead of doing a straight up interview, Marque and I took Sparky to the SF MoMa unannounced to see if we'd be let into the galleries. You can listen to the segment here, but for full effect I recommend going to Studio360's web site and watching the audio slideshow (below the Diablo Cody one) — it includes pictures of Sparky in the MoMa, Marque's living room, and the other characters that make appearances on the show.

Cody, Ellroy, Sparky on Studio360

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Let's hope it's a sweet one! No better way to kick it off then with this sweet classic from Moishe Oysher and the Barry Sisters, Halevai.

What a tour de force! Check Oysher's vocal gymnastics as he bounces off of the Barry Sisters' harmonies! He coulda been one hell of a freestyle rapper...

This song makes me happy every time I hear it.

Here's build-notes from a stellar fan-costume for Big Daddy from the game Bioshock:

Starting with the blueprints printed at full scale (HUGE) I made cross sections out of insulation foam and glued them into place. The empty areas between sections were filled with cardboard. This formed what I called the "skeleton" of the body. The empty cavities in the skeleton were then filled in with expanding foam. After drying, the foam was carved into the shape of the main body. After this was completed (and the foam given more drying time so it would retain its shape) the entire form was covered in stretch fabric. This smoothed out a lot of the lumpiness of the foam.

Big Daddy (Bioshock) (via Wonderland)

Dan Gillmor sez, "Students (including some of mine) from a bunch of US journalism schools have outdone themselves with their foundation-funded summer project. Their work combines all kinds of media and ideas around a theme of 'a changing America,' with smart use of modern tools and traditional techniques. The pros could learn something from this."

The nation's leading journalism schools come together in this unique program to experiment with new forms of in-depth and investigative reporting.

Students travel the country to report on critical issues facing our changing nation and then find innovative ways to tell those stories.

News21 | Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education (Thanks, Dan!)

Salon has a refreshing take on the effect of the net on wider culture, courtesy of Dennis Baron, author of the new book A Better Pencil. Baron places hysteria about the net's supposed dumbing-down in context with other panics of years gone by.

Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they're interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn't, they don't buy into it.

I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony.

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

Is the Internet melting our brains?

What a lovely homey touch these 8-bit house-numbers add to a "Gamer geek house." Made by Austin Laser Art.

Gamer geek house numbers (via Wonderland)

Above, Jude Law in fab drag. A still from the forthcoming feature Rage, directed by Sally Potter, in which Law plays a female model named "Minx." The short version: A young student uses his phonecam to shoot interviews with the staff of a New York fashion house, and posts them online without the interviewees' knowledge or consent. A runway accident turns into a murder investigation, then, "denial leads to devastation." Here's a New York Times piece about the film, by Guy Trebay.

Zoolander it is not. Here's a Flickr set with more stills.

You'll spot Steve Buscemi, Judi Dench, John Leguizamo, Dianne Wiest, and Eddie Izzard all in the trailer, which is embedded after the jump.

Required weekend listening. Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America shares word that a special TSOYA feature episode on The Kasper Hauser Comedy Group is now up.

[The] San Francisco-based sketch comedy group [have] been mainstays of The Sound of Young America, and have appeared on Comedy Central and on This American Life. They're the authors of three hilarious books: "SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From A Plane," "Obama's Blackberry," and "Weddings of the Times." They also wrote the website Wonderglen for former Onion editor and Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin.

On this special hour-long Sound of Young America special, they talk about their careers, and we hear their comedy -- both sketches produced for The Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast and all-new pieces.

Go have a listen here, or click the embed below.

Authorities are using an assortment of technologies to analyze the contents of property belonging to Phillip Garrido, the accused rapist/kidnapper whose alleged abduction and abuse of Jaycee Dugard is the subject of previous Boing Boing posts. Bone fragments have been found on the patch of land in Antioch where he, his wife, and his victims lived. Along with cadaver dogs, authorities are using "ground-penetrating radar" and forensic archeology tools including magnetometers, in hopes of finding (or ruling out the possibility of) remains of other girls who disappeared around Dugard's age. Here's the website of Bill Silva, an archaeologist assisting in the case. He reported finding an "anomaly in the soil that will require further investigation." Does anyone know more about the specific devices used for this sort of operation? I am interested to know more about the technology involved. Contrary to CSI, none of this is particularly glamorous or fast-paced work.

(PHOTO: Lance Iverson / SF Chronicle. Investigators pore through the back yard of the house next to Phillip Craig and Nancy Garrido.)

Artist Kevin Cyr is building a pop-up camper atop a shopping cart. This is a follow-up to his Camper Bike, a 3-wheeler bicycle with a truck camper on the back. Cyr is looking for donations to help complete the Camper Kart. Cyr writes:

It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making due with less.

I have always been interested in bikes and vehicles and for many years they have been the subject of my paintings. My paintings document odd and derelict vehicles: old delivery trucks inundated with graffiti and rust, well-traveled RVs, Indian rickshaws and Asian bikes.

Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object.

Camper Kart (Kickstarter)
"Kevin Cyr's Camper kart" (Hi-Fructose)

What could be wrong with taking an insane killer to the country fair? Oh, yeah.

Insane killer escapes on trip to county fair (Via Bits & Pieces)

My latest Guardian column, "Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick," discusses the difficulty of making truly 3D movies (that is, movies that lose something crucial in 2D) in a world where movies need to find a home on 2D small-screens in order to recoup.

Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services - none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn't be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project.

What's more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who've shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don't want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don't want to do this when there's plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window.

I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don't support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting "BANG!" and "CRASH!" in your ear.

Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick

The Open Rights Group is hosting a public forum in London on Oct 2 to discuss the new proposal to disconnect Brits from the Internet if anyone in their household is accused of violating copyright:

Peter Mandelson is convinced that disconnecting filesharers will help the music and film industries. He's plain wrong. This extreme option would trample on the rights of internet users - and the rights of their families - without earning a penny for musicians and film-makers. It is clear that Mandelson does not understand the extent to which an internet is now a basic household service, as important as electricity or gas, without which people are handicapped in their ability to work, function, and participate in society.

Open Rights Group, as part of our campaign against the policy of disconnection, is holding a debate on better approaches for public policy and the entertainment industry.

Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist) will kick off with a presentation on the future of music, media and entertainment. Ben Goldacre (Guardian / Bad Science) will then join Gerd on a panel, chaired by our Executive Director, Jim Killock, to take questions from the audience.

(Thanks, Jim!)

The RIAA has updated its Music Rules! school program -- which contains blatant falsehoods about copyright. The new version asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff: "Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or video about your campaign."

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids.

We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases. For instance, the RIAA tells kids, "Never copy someone else's creative work without permission from the copyright holder" -- omitting the important right to make creative fair use of existing content. It also coins a misleading term, "songlifting," (which the curriculum says is "just as bad as shoplifting") [Ed: if only! The penalties for shoplifting are so much lighter than they are for file-sharing!]. Perhaps most disturbing of all given that the curriculum is supposed to be adopted by schools, it teaches kids bad math as part of its lessons on peer to peer file-sharing.

The updated curriculum goes a step further and asks kids to contact their local media and act as the RIAA's own unpaid public relations staff.

(Thanks, Tim!)

The publisher of R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated kindly gave permission to share Chapter 19 with our readers. Click on the thumbnails for an enlargement. Enjoy!

I understand the book will start shipping as soon as September 23rd.

From Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Crumb

This week's Escape Pod podcast story is Madeline Ashby's βoyfriend, a marvellous, sweetly romantic science fiction story about teenagers who use clever artificial intelligences as "training wheels" on the way to their first real love, but who quickly find themselves substituting the warm companionship of their imaginary friends for the confusing and fraught people around them. It's got Ashby's sly humor, heart and it's got clever to spare. I bought Madeline's first published story for Tesseracts 11 and it's wonderful to see where she's gone since.

EP216: βoyfriend

Doug says:

Ji Lee is the founder of the reknowned 'Bubble Project', which started 6 years ago. Borne from frustration at corporate advertising agencies, Lee printed and applied 50,000 renegade speech bubbles to street advertisements in New York and other cities around the world. Passersby would then fill the bubbles with musings and Lee would photograph the results and post them on the Bubble Project website.

Presently, working as a creative director at Google Creative Lab, Lee's job is to promote many Google products and Google brand to the world. Lee continues to work as an independent artist, designer, illustrator and teacher. Lee likes to maintain the delicate balance between professional and personal projects, which he believes compliment each other.

Small Talk No. 1: Ji Lee
Thursday 24 September 2009 6:30–8:00PM
Bumble and Bumble, 3rd floor auditorium
415 West 13th Street, New York, NY.

I received this email message yesterday, regarding Dan Brown's new thriller, The Lost Symbol. It looks like the Illuminati have shut down freemasons.org, to prevent further secrets from being revealed.

Spy toy gadget maker Brando has this "Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition" for $49.90.

The FANTASTIC SIZE and COMPLEX IQ Cube!! The GIANT 12 surfaces IQ Pentagon! You may never face this complicated one! Your home cannot miss this one. You may not solve it, you can just disassemble it and try it again! This is the most perfect for your Left & Right Brain Training. Let's GRAB and CHALLENGE it!

The Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition

Mike Outmesguine -- wireless guru, author, and veteran -- is one of the most knowledgeable people out there with regard to post-disaster connectivity know-how. I am digging the instructional piece he has in the current issue of MAKE about "worst-case-internet" kits, with details on what to include, what each component costs, how to set it up, and why.

09.18.09 : avast ye! this be pirate zen 2009
talk like a pirate day
british hq
pirate cats
pirate food
pirates vs. parrots
pirate vs. ninja
the pirate comedy show
pirate family wife swap
pirates for jesus

scurvy dog! 'tis pirate zen 2008
arrgh! tis pirate zen 2007
yo ho ho! pirate zen 2006
yar! this be pirate zen 2005
yar! 'tis pirate zen 2004
yar! this be pirate zen 2003

and for a limited time...
david byrne's pirates
(this will disappear on 09.25.09)

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!)

BB pal Sean Bonner is traveling in Thailand, and spotted this street hawker selling fake identification cards. "Check it," he emails, "For the low price of 3,000 baht I could have bought a California Drivers License!" I dig the assortment of press passes. Pick me up one, Sean, but make sure mine also has the bald white dude's photo on it, just like the one belonging to "Miss Heather Roberts," below (click to enlarge). Flickr image link.

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Here's some more unpretentious wine instruction from Kathryn Borel Jr.

And here's a link to Borel's new memoir, Corked (link). Free sample chapter here (PDF).

James sez,

Four Hackerspaces in Ontario have joined forces (Hacklab.TO from Toronto, think|haus from Hamilton, diyode from Guelph, and Kwartzlab from Kitchener-Waterloo) to put on a mini hackerspace conference!

On Friday evening October 2nd and all day Saturday October 3rd, think|haus will host talks, how to sessions, and a projects gallery at which anyone who is interested can give a 20 minute talk on something related to creating projects, show people how to build/take apart/modify something, or show off their cool projects.

Some confirmed talks so far are: You Let Your Kid Do What? / A brief story about children and taking advantage of applied engineering skills in a positive way.

* Intro to Kite Aerial Photography / Come learn about the kinds of kites you can use to fly your camera, what you need to build your own kite, and how to modify your camera to take pictures automatically.

* RF Countersurveillance / A primer on monitoring police and security frequencies using a trunk-tracking scanner, and how it can assist in penetrating a targetMo< * OpenWRT Demo / Unboxing, flashing, and demonstrating OpenWRT on an Asus WL-520GU

* Intro to Electronics Hardware Design By Someone Who Isn't an Expert / It's not nearly as hard as you think it might be, I'll show you the steps and tools you may want to take, and warn you of some of the potential issues you may face.

Southern Ontario Hackerspaces / Makers Mini-Conference (Thanks, James!)

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Here's what DPA, Germany's national news wire reported this past September 11th 10th:

A terrorist attack occurred in the city of Bluewater, California. The suicide bombers were German rappers, the "Berlin Boys".

A half hour later DPA issued a correction: there had been no bombing. The "Berlin Boys" are not a rap group. The city of Bluewater does not exist.

It was all an elaborate publicity stunt to promote the satirical German film Short Cut to Hollywood. Filmmaker Jan Henrik Stahlberg and his team fooled their entire nation by creating fake websites and videos:

Here's the fake city of Bluewater (link).

Here's the fake local Bluewater news station, KVPK (link).

And here are the "Berlin Boys" with their club hit "Hass":

Wired has a detailed report (link).

Here's a simple way to turn a broken lens -- available in plenty at yard sales -- into a fisheye for your point-and-shoot.

Recycling Project - A Broken Glass To A Fisheye Lens

(via Make)

Smokescreen is a privacy game for kids, it runs them through a series of clever online missions that serve to explain how information disclosed on social sites like Facebook can come back and bite you in the ass:

Horror stories about social networks are legion. From teenagers who announce house parties online only for hundreds of gatecrashers to show up and wreck the place to people who've been fired over pictures they posted or Facebook status updates when they're supposed to be ill... and far worse things can and do happen too. But online social networking isn't going away and age restrictions don't really keep young teenagers off websites, so Channel 4 has come up with Smokescreen, a game that teaches players about the potential pitfalls of posting their every thought and action online...

The game, created by Six to Start, uses familiar-looking social networks to tell a story. Players interact with characters in the game to solve a mystery, and while the problematic aspects of social networks are highlighted along the way, it's fun rather than didactic. So in one mission, you use 'Gaggle' search to find the 'Fakebook' and 'Tweetr' accounts of a girl your friend fancies, then dig around to see where she's going out that night, what she'll be wearing, and what her interests are, so that your friend can better chat her up. Each piece of information that she shared seemed totally innocuous until you put it all together and use it to stalk her: it's scary how easy it is, and how totally plausible.

Smokescreen

Game neatly sidesteps social networking horrors (Wired UK)

(Disclosure: My wife, Alice Taylor, commissioned Smokescreen for Channel 4)

Wouter sez,

From October 29 till November 1, the international Forum on Access to Culture and Knowledge in the Digital Age is organised in Barcelona. Exgae, Networked Politics and the Free Knowledge Institute, three renown and respected organisations working in the field of civil rights are behind this important event.

The Forum will be a major international meeting of the most relevant organizations and individuals working on the international scene, who are engaged in reflecting on the social and economic challenges of the dissemination of culture and knowledge in the digital age.

While the European Union discusses legislation and self-regulation proposals, at the state and community level, the forum aims to articulate the valuable proposals that are emerging from civil society, so that it too can participate in this legislative process. The forum is based on the idea of finding ways to harmonise the recognition of creativity, innovation and investment with the civil rights of access to knowledge and culture and with sustainable development.

Free Culture Forum: Organization and Action (Thanks, Wouter!)

Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast sez,

Celebrating the show's 100th episode, show host and editor Tony C. Smith unveiled StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1, an anthology of some of the finest stories featured on the show. The book was released simultaneously in print-on-demand paperback (deluxe and standard versions) and a free downloadable ebook. This is absolutely the first anthology to present writers of this calibre without big publisher backing - from Science Fiction Grand Master Michael Moorcock to Hugo winners Elizabeth Bear and Jeffrey Ford to the SF writer who's just bagged the £1,000,000 ten book deal Alastair Reynolds (that's almost $2,000,000 in the USA).

Speaking of seeing, that's something you've got to do with this book. Don't take my word for it -- download the free ebook or flip through the pages for yourself with the super-cool online widget. This volume is an homage to the tatty old paperbacks of science fiction past, recapturing the visual wonder of the 1950's pulp paperbacks that we all love so well. Original artwork sets off each story, rendered by top artists published by the likes of 2000AD and Neil Gaiman. Sprinkled liberally throughout are original vintage images and magazine adverts from the 1950's. A true homage to classic science fiction and a daring experiment in the publishing revolution, this is nostalgia nouveau and tomorrow today all in one package.

Anthology (Thanks, Tony!)

A North Carolina man who suffered from terrible lung ailments is recovering nicely now that doctors have removed a 1" piece of plastic cutlery from his lung; the man believes it is part of a utensil from Wendy's that got into his drink: "I like to take big gulps of drink."

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center say the plastic fragment of an eating utensil -- with the Wendy's logo still legible on the side -- was likely to blame for the coughing, fatigue and pneumonia spells that plagued John Manley for almost two years.

They pulled the fast-food foreign object from Manley's left lung during a Sept. 10 surgery. The 50-year-old Wilmington resident said he probably inhaled it while gulping a drink from Wendy's.

"I like to take big gulps of drink," the former home remodeler said. "I don't know of any other ways of it getting in there."

NC doctor removes plastic fragment lodged in lung (Thanks, Anonimouse)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston has a post about the new JUSTICE Act:

Today, Senators Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin -- along with eight other Senators -- have taken the Administration up on its offer by introducing the JUSTICE Act, which would rein in the worst excesses of PATRIOT and last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The announcement of the bill's introduction, along with a fact sheet outlining the bill's details, is here; the text of the JUSTICE Act is here (the "JUSTICE", if you're wondering, stands for Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts").

The JUSTICE Act would renew two of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, PATRIOT sections 206 (John Doe roving wiretaps) and 215 (FISA orders for any tangible thing), but would also add strong new checks and balances to those provisions and to the PATRIOT Act in general, especially those provisions dealing with the government's authority to issue National Security Letters. If passed, the bill would also establish critically important protections for Americans against surveillance authorized under the FAA. Of particular importance to EFF's clients in the Hepting v. AT&T case and to the preservation of the rule of law, JUSTICE would completely repeal the FAA provision intended to legally immunize telecoms like AT&T that illegally assisted in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. Last summer when Congress passed the FAA, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated his intention to revisit that law as part of the PATRIOT renewal debate, and we're very glad that Senators Feingold and Durbin have kick-started that process.

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

This is the incredible true story of a physicist who believed he could project himself to another solar system and live as a swashbuckling interplanetary adventurer. When he was a teenager and living on a Polynesian island, he had read a series of "strange and adventurous" science fiction / fantasy books by an American writer. The protagonist shared his name, and eventually the physicist started thinking he really was the character. But he was still able to maintain a dual identity -- he sort of "astral projected" into that fantasy world while keeping the appearance of a skinny-tie wearing physicist.

The article was written by the man's psychiatrist, Robert Lindner, and appeared in Harper's in 1954. (It was also a chapter in Linder's entertaining case-history book The Fifty-Minute Hour). The physicist, "Kirk Allen" (his name was changed by Lindner), worked in a government research lab, and his superiors were concerned by his behavior (Allen would often space out at work while his fantastical reveries played out in his head) so they sent him to Lindner.

I don't want to spoil the story (and the excerpt below won't spoil it). You can read it in its entirety at Harper's website (Part I, Part II). Harper's kindly opened access to the article at my request, so now anyone can read it for free. (If you subscribe to Harper's for just $16.97 in the United States and CAN$24.00 in Canada, you'll get access to all the archives dating back to 1850!)

Kirk read the numerous volumes of his “biography” over and over again. Soon he no longer needed the books “to refresh my memory,” but was able to recapitulate them entirely in his mind. While his corporeal body was living the life of a mundane boy, the vital part of him was far off on another planet, courting beautiful princesses, governing provinces, warring with strange enemies. Now, using his “biographer’s” material as a base, he took off on his own. Assisted by the maps, charts, diagrams, architectural layouts, genealogical schemes, and timetables he had painstakingly worked out while using the books for his guide, he filled in spaces between the volumes with fantasy “recollections” of his own; and when this was done, he began the task of his life: that of picking up where his “biographer” had left off and recording the subsequent history of the heroic Kirk Allen.

...

For many days I pondered the question of how Kirk Allen could be restored to sanity–and yet remain alive. For there seemed to be nothing that could compete with the unending gratifications of his fantasy. Meanwhile Kirk turned over to me all of his records.

It is impossible to convey more than a bare impression of these. There were, to begin with, about 12,000 pages of typescript comprising the amended “biography” of Kirk Allen. This was divided into some 200 chapters and read like fiction. Appended to these pages were approximately 2,000 more of notes in Kirk’s handwriting, containing corrections necessitated by his more recent “researches,” and a huge bundle of scraps and jottings on envelopes, receipted bills, laundry slips.

There also were a glossary of names and terms that ran to more than 100 pages; 82 full-color maps carefully drawn to scale, 23 of planetary bodies in four projections, 31 of land masses on these planets, 14 labeled “Kirk Allen’s Expedition to —,” the remainder of cities on the various planets; 161 architectural sketches and elevations, all carefully scaled and annotated; 12 genealogical tables; an 18-page description of the galactic system in which Kirk Allen’s home planet was contained, with four astronomical charts, one for each of the seasons, and nine star-maps of the skies from observatories on other planets in the system; a 200-page history of the empire Kirk Allen ruled, with a three-page table of dates and names of battles or outstanding historical events; a series of 44 folders containing from 2 to 20 pages apiece, each dealing with some aspect–social, economic, or scientific–of the planet over which Kirk Allen ruled. Finally, there were 306 drawings of people, animals, plants, insects, weapons, utensils, machines, articles of clothing, vehicles, instruments, and furniture.

The reader can imagine my dismay at the sheer bulk of this material; I do not know if he can appreciate with what misgivings I approached the task of weaning this man from his madness. Aside from everything else, he was my patient under the most inauspicious possible conditions, for he had not come of his own volition. The authorities had sent him, demanding he be treated not only for his sake but because they feared that in his disturbed condition he was a poor security risk who could neither be kept on the job nor discharged.

Speculation abounds on the true identity of Kirk Allen. Alan C. Elms thinks it could be Cordwainer Smith. It's more fun for me to think Kirk Allen's real name was John Carter and that he had fantasized that being on Barsoom, fighting the bad Martians while Deja Thoris stayed at home hatching the eggs containing his and her children.

"The Jet-Propelled Couch" (Part I, Part II) (Thanks, Paul Ford!)

I was honored that BB pal Doug Rushkoff invited me onto his excellent radio show on WFMU, "The Media Squat." We had a great time talking about synthetic biology, futurism, and the notion that "everything is programmable," from the micro to the macro-scale, from our minds and bodies to our cities and ecosystems. At Institute for the Future, we're exploring that idea of looking at the world through a "computational" lens. Doug and I wrapped up our hour with a quick tangent on Bigfoot, belief, and the wonder of the world. It was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it too! Archive of Doug Rushkoff's Media Squat radio show

Our pals at GAMA-GO created this unusual spatula in the shape of a guitar. I wish all my kitchen utensils were this random. It's available in red or black for $9.50.
Flipper Guitar Spatula

Yesterday was the 101st anniversary of GM's founding. Ben Cosgrove of LIFE says, "in light of the super-efficient but very same-y, dull designs of so many of today's vehicles, I put together a look back at those decades when cars had real personality, real spark, real curves. There's a lot to be said for a fender that makes one's heart race faster, or a bumper that can make a person blush ...

Above: "Fiat's streamlined, one-cylinder Volugrafo got 100 miles per gallon, 1947."

LIFE photo gallery of old cars

Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda and his colleagues at Tokyo University are making headway in haptic holography, 3D projections you can actually feel. I first experienced something like this probably 15 years ago at the late holography pioneer Steve Benton's laboratory at MIT's Media Lab. Back then, the hologram was grainy and grayscale and the physical feedback came from a handheld Phantom stylus that provided some sensation of touching a real object. Based on this demonstration, it appears that the technology has come a long way. From Reuters:

By using ultrasonic waves, the scientists have developed software that creates pressure when a user's hand "touches" a hologram that is projected.

In order to track a user's hand, the researchers use control sticks from Nintendo's popular Wii gaming system that are mounted above the hologram display area.

The technology has so far been tested with relatively simple objects, although the researchers have more practical plans, including virtual switches at hospitals, for example, and other places where contamination by touch is an issue.

"Japan scientists create 3-D images you can touch" (Reuters, thanks Bob Pescovitz!)

Touchable Holography (University of Tokyo)

With Austin's Game Developers Conference fully underway, Offworld's got updates on a few of the Indie Games Summit sessions nearest and dearest to its heart, with my own 'New Indie Hotness' show and tell (above), where I ran live demos of seven of the best up and coming indies you need to play (with the help of a special guest star), and a look behind the smash success of Colin Northway's Flash construction kit Fantastic Contraption.

Elsewhere we saw Namco tease a screenshot of its upcoming iPhone version of Keita Takahashi's PS3 game Noby Noby Boy, LucasArts revealed the gorgeously illustrated dream world in its new Lemmings-esque downloadable Lucidity, From Software showed off its upcoming PS3 exclusive 3D Dot Game Heroes -- an 8-bit Zelda inspired adventure pixel-popped into glorious 3D, and Metanet (behind Flash hit ninja sim N) announced Office Yeti, their Skool Daze meets Rampage workplace game.

Finally, former Spore tech lead Chris Hecker announced he'd be going indie with Spy Party, his "asymmetric multiplayer espionage game about subtle behavior and deception", we watched the winner of the Super Mario artificial intelligence contest, art/game/culture shop Attract Mode opened its doors, and for our LA readers: indie musician Chris Schlarb will be performing live versions of his tracks for the upcoming Night Game tonight at the Slow Sound Festival.

And our 'one shot's: Iggy Pop rocks Lego, the Alien origins of Machinarium, Super Mario's Twin Towers, and 3D Tetris of the Magic Eye kind.

BB's secret software hacker Dean Putney spotted this neat "blind" juggling robot. Dean writes:

This machine bounces a ball without any sensory input. The surface it is bouncing the ball with is slightly curved, so that if the ball doesn't hit in the center it will be bounced at an angle and correct for the horizontal motion. The machine actually has no idea where the ball is though, since its feedback control system is purely mechanical. It's surprisingly robust, allowing the machine to be moved under the ball, swung on a pendulum and it works with several different balls, as shown in these videos.

Blind Juggling Robot

Maker Shed is offering the Chumby, a cool programmable Internet media player, in kit form.

At this year's Maker Faire, the Maker Shed offered a unique product, a Chumby in kit form. Created expressly for Maker Shed by Chumby, the kit contains everything needed to build your own Chumby, or alternatively, hack it into into any form of your own choosing. The price for the kit was $99. We sold out almost immediately.

Through a special arrangement with our pals at Chumby, the Shed recently managed to order another batch of Chumby Kits. Last week, the Shed sent out a mailing to a select group of loyal customers, again offering the kit. And again, the positive response was swift. They sold a bunch, but they still have some left, so there's still time if you want to pick one up. This is a great opportunity to get the guts of a versatile Internet appliance, on the cheap, that you can use for all sorts of experimentation, custom projects, and cool casemods. They're still $99 and you can get yours here (there's a limit of 3 per customer).

Note: These kits are still being produced at Chumby, so this is a pre-order. The Shed expects to have them by the end of the month.

Chumby guts -- so delicious!

Canada is apparently a hive of foreign spies and Ottawa is "crawling with them," according to an Ottawa Citizen article about a new book, titled Nest of Spies. The book was written by an investigative journalist and a former intelligence officer with the RCMP Security Service and Canadian Security Intelligence Service. If the article is any indication, this book is just laden with intrigue and scandal. For example, it claims that 1970s/1980s Russian hockey star Vladislav Tretiak was also a spy "talent scout," recruiting new secret agents for the Soviet Union. From the Ottawa Citizen:

Led by the Chinese but including intelligence officers from at least 20 nations including allies, the book says, the infiltrators are stealing an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion annually worth of cutting-edge research in products and technologies, other scientific, business and military know-how and political secrets. Others, it says, are infiltrating ethnic communities, suppressing criticism of homeland governments, recruiting industrial spies, stoking political violence among the diaspora and operating front companies and political lobbies aimed at manipulating government policies.

Proportionately, it estimates more spies operate here than in the U.S...

"The great Tretiak was quite a celebrity in his day, and not only among hockey fans. CSIS was also an avid Tretiak-watcher. A number of good sources inside the organization have told us that Tretiak was 'ticketed' at the time. That means that he was believed to be a 'co- opted' individual, somebody who has been recruited as an informer and was being paid or recompensed in some way. There were hundreds of these back then, especially among Soviet citizens like himself who had received job offers from outside the homeland." But, the book continues, "there was also a hypothesis that he was more than a simple informer." In Friday's interview, Juneau- Katsuya said one of three CSIS sources believes Tretiak worked as a "talent-spotter" for the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR, successor to the KGB.

"The spies who love us" (Ottawa Citizen, thanks Chris Arkenberg!)

Buy "Nest of Spies: The Startling Truth About Foreign Agents at Work Within Canada's Borders" (Amazon)

Gabriela from the Sunlight Foundation sez,

Today is the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution. In 1789, it was made available to the American people by the most modern technology of the day. We should do no less today, and provide the Constitution (along with commentary) in XML.

To celebrate the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the Sunlight Foundation is calling on the Government Printing Office to publish the legal treatise The Constitution Annotated online in XML format as it is updated. (The Constitution Annotated has been written by the Library of Congress for nearly 100 years, and contains analysis of nearly 8,000 U.S. Supreme Court cases.)

Over the decades, GPO has published print versions of this extraordinary resource every two years, with limited electronic versions available from 1992 edition onward. Although the Library of Congress has drafted the Constitution Annotated in XML for a number of years, that data is no longer present when it is published online by GPO. Releasing the treatise in XML would allow for the easy sharing of information between different kinds of computers, applications, and organizations, and provide a roadmap to the underlying data.

In addition to asking for The Constitution Annotated to be published online in XML, Sunlight is also asking that as the data is updated and made available to congressional staff, it also be made available to the general public. 220 Years Later, It's Time to Publish the Constitution Annotated Online in XML (Thanks, Gabriela!)

Jeremie Zimmermann sez, "Organizations from all around Europe share their concern of seeing Net Neutrality being sacrificed during the conciliation procedure of the directives of the EU Telecoms Package. They sent this letter to the Members of the European Parliament, urging them to take decisive action in order to guarantee a free, open and innovative Internet, and to safeguard the fundamental freedoms of European citizens.

"Everyone can take action by calling the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who were supportive of citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms in the past and ask them to do all they can to participate in the conciliation committee of the Telecoms Package."

We Must Protect Net Neutrality in Europe! - Open letter to the European Parliament

Law Enforcement Targets does a handsome line of shooting range zombie targets, including several in inexplicable Nazi uniforms. Good practice, I suppose, for the forthcoming Nazi zombie uprising.

Law Enforcement Targets: Zombie Targets (via Geekologie)

In 2006, my friend Ken Hollings, author of Welcome to Mars, wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 piece about Philip K. Dick's weird relationship with God. As Ken says, it's a "a strange tale of madness, machines and attempted suicide." The star-studded list of contributors include Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Nelson, Brian Aldiss, Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and the PKD android that mysteriously vanished shortly after the program was recorded. The fantastic show, titled Confessions Of A Crap Artist, is now available on Speechification.
Confessions of a Crap Artist

Victoria police are looking for a gentleman who matches this composite sketch in connection with a knife attack. (Via Arbroath)

Sandia National Labs and Boston Dynamics made this cute little jumping robot.

An overall goal of the robots is to decrease the number of casu alties in combat. To that end, the hopping robots will provide enhanced situational awareness for shaping the outcome of the immediate local combat situation, Salton said. Their compact, lightweight design makes them portable, and their semiautonomous capability greatly reduces the workload burden of the operator.

In addition to providing military assistance, the hopping capabilities of the robots could be used in law enforcement, homeland security, search and rescue applications in challenging terrain and in planetary exploration, [Jon Salton, Sandia program manager] said.

Sandia hopping robots to bolster troop capabilities

Toy photographer Brian McCarty shot this dreamy image of the Moon Wanderers, resin figures that are hand-cast and painted by Russian artist Sergey Safonov. Here's what Brian said of the photo shoot:

I fell in love with the characters, instantly imagining a scene of floating figures under a paper moon. To achieve the shot, I mounted the toys on metal rods and drove them deep into the soft mud of Two Ocean Lake inside Grand Teton National Park. The camera was placed on a semi-submerged tripod, and a very long exposure made the water seem glassy, except for the rippled reflection of strobe light off a paper moon suspended in the background.

Moon Wanderers

Seth Roberts made a list of 11 observations while shopping at a Wal-Mart in China. Here are the first four.

1. They sell live turtles.
2. A whole display case is devoted to sea cucumbers.
3. Like any upscale American or Beijing supermarket, they have a sushi case. The prices are half what they’d be in America, but the pieces of fish are much thinner.
4. They cut up meat in front of you. A whole pig was being butchered on a table. A roast duck was being sliced for packaging.

(Here's a slideshow about Wal-Marts in China)

Beijing Wal-Mart

Covered is a blog that posts comic book covers redrawn by different cartoonists. The results are fascinating. Covered