The Arizona Republic is plumbing new lows, quoting "psychics" as though they were experts on the future:

Consider the way the story starts. The word "apparently" is a tip-off that the piece is based on no actual data. Who's the source for this alleged mini-flood of new customers? Why, the people selling the product. Makes sense to me: In I-can-see-into-the-future territory, we can just take their word for it.

Not a single customer is quoted. We hear only from the people who are claiming to be getting this influx of new customers. Can't the newspaper find even one client?

Look. Newspapers run astrology columns -- something I'd ban if I ran a paper, period -- with no disclaimers that there is no scientific basis for what these planet- and star-gazers tell us. But the astrology columns run, typically, near the comics, which is the fiction section of the daily paper.

No newspaper, as far as I know, gives its pages over to self-described psychics. Yet the Republic's story quotes several, along with the astrologers, with a straight face.

Quoting 'Psychics' Like Experts: How Low Can News Judgement Go? (Thanks, Dan!)

I'll be in Brighton, England next Saturday, Oct 17 for a Battle of Ideas event entitled "The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age." I'll be on a panel with Michael Bull from the University of Sussex and Nico Macdonald, chaired by Robert Clowes of Brighton Salon. It's at 8PM in the Jubilee Library and tickets are £7.50 (£5 concessions). Hope to see you there! (I'll also be doing a London Battle of Ideas event on Oct 31, "Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing")

The 21st century looks set to be age of online collaboration. While old forms of community and solidarity have waned, leaving us apparently more fragmented and individualised, the social web enables many of us to work, play and organise with others in ways previously unimaginable. Technologies like Flickr, Delicious and Wikipedia evidence new means of sharing information and working together. Many suggest these technologies will have far-reaching social implications, and even presage a new form of production and work outside the market system. While traditional free market capitalism is compromised by the worldwide recession, the world wide web is said to promise an exciting alternative. Wired's Kevin Kelly suggests we are entering a new collectivist epoch, a 'New Socialism'. Technology guru Howard Rheingold sees these developments as disruptive, and will change the way people 'meet, mate, work, fight, buy, sell'. Charles Leadbeater, author of We-Think, sees the new means of networked collaboration as presaging a new production model: 'Mass Innovation rather than Mass Production'.

The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age

Type design legend John Berry writes in about his upcoming panel on Web font embedding: "It's all about getting new fonts onto a web page, so the content doesn't all end up in default Times or Arial. After a wide-ranging but inconclusive panel on web fonts at TypeCon in July, this time around some of the browser makers will be represented -- and the focus will widen to include *how* fonts are used on the web. "

I hope they put this on the web afterward!

Where: Typ09, the 2009 ATypI conference, Mexico City
When: 26-30 October (web-fonts program on Thursday, 29 October, at Anáhuac University campus)

Web fonts: the talk of Typ09 (Thanks, John!)

Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive says:

Down on his luck, Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (aka "David Seville") bought a tape recorder capable of speeding up voices with his last $200. He quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records. The label was close to bankruptcy, but Bagdasarian convinced them that they might as well press Chipmunk singles with the leftover vinyl pucks and labels in their warehouse rather than just turn the unused stock over to the bank when the business went under. Production commenced and in just a few months leading up to Christmas of 1958, the record shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of the best selling singles of all time. Bagdasarian won two Grammy Awards, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy, and the Chipmunks became a household name with children all over the world.

The History of the Chipmunks

Game research, ghost stories, Alan Moore, and academia: The far reaches of edutainment.
Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun argues that games don't necessarily have to be fun to be engaging: "Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on?"

How'd They Do That? Poison Ivy and Carbon Dioxide Studies
Maggie Koerth-Baker discovers how scientists figured out that CO2 makes ivy grow incredibly fast ... and problematically poisonous.

The ecologist who found his wedding ring
Lisa Katayama writes: "When Aleki Taumoepeau, a 42-year old ecologist, dropped his wedding ring in the murky waters of a New Zealand ... he was determined to find it at all costs"

BBVideo: SYNESTHESIA, a film by Jonathan Fowler.
Boing Boing Video presents a remix of "Synesthesia," a documentary directed by Jonathan Fowler, about people whose senses blend, or mix. For instance: a synesthete might see colors when listening to music, or taste flavors when hearing a spoken word.

Why Halo makes me want to lay down and die
Margaret Robertson on Halo's oneiric call to adventure: "Halo is a place where I feel peaceful. It's partly, I grant you, the pistol in my hand and the rocket-launcher on my back, both of which take the stress out of day-to-day life."

Grab your favorite sugary cereal and pull up a seat. It's time for Saturday Morning Science Experiment! This week, we're finding out what happens to a gummi bear (i.e., sucrose) when it's dropped into molten potassium chlorate.

Got a video you want to see on Saturday Morning Science Experiment? Drop me an email, I'm taking suggestions.

Gummi bear thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user Furryscaly, via CC.

Mathias sez, "Nasty Old People is the first feature film in Swedish history to be released under a Creative Commons license."

Mette is a member of a neo-Nazi gang, her day job is to take care of four crazy old people that all are just waiting to die. Her life becomes a journey into a burlesque fairytale, where the rules of the game are created by Mette herself. Mette is indifferent about her way of life, until she one night assaults a man, kicking him senseless. Waking up the day after, she realizes that something is wrong, and in company with the her crazy oldies she longs for respect and love. She can tell that the old folks are marginalized by the modern society, but together they create a world and a voice of their own.

Nasty Old People

Download legally from the Pirate Bay

(Thanks, Mathias!)

When a British girl -- who had an undiagnosed tumor -- died shortly after receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine, the British tabloids jumped on the story as proof that vaccines are evil and pad and deadly and dangerous. They even quoted respected scientists who agreed with them. Except they misrepreented those scientists' views, got the science completely wrong, scared people away from potentially life-saving treatment, and failed to adequately own up to their mistakes. Ben Goldacre, the "bad science" columnist for the Guardian, has written a scathing indictment of the way the press handled the story.

The story seemed unlikely for three reasons. Firstly, Professor Harper is not a known member of the antivaccination community, which is vanishingly small. Secondly, it was on the front page of the Sunday Express, which is indeed cause for concern. Lastly, it was by specialist health journalist Lucy Johnston, whose previous work includes "Doctor's MMR fears", "Exclusive: Experts Cast Doubt On Claim For 'Wonder' Cancer Jabs", "Children 'Used As Guinea Pigs For Vaccines'", "Dangers Of Mmr Jab 'Covered Up'", "Teenage Girls Sue Over Cancer Jab", "Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme", and so many more, including a rather memorable bad science story, the front page: " Suicides 'Linked To Phone Masts".

So I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper's position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

"I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a 'controversial drug'. I did not 'hit out' - I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview."

Jabs "as bad as the cancer" (Thanks, Evidence Matters!)

This week's story on the Escape Pod sf podcast is Marc Laidlaw's "Sleepy Joe," a grimly comic, apocalyptic story about paralegals with a secret cable-access show who find themselves caring for (and kidnapping) a brainwashed war-veteran who's been turned into a human weapon. It's a marvellous story and a great reading (the story was originally published on The Infinite Matrix). Astute readers will remember Marc as a former guestblogger, a wildly imaginative sf writer, and the games-writer behind such Valve titles as Half-Life.

The plan must have come to Rog fully formed that first morning, as he stepped off the elevator into the lobby of Szilliken Sharpenwright and saw the old soldier newly stationed there in his omnichair between the potted silk ferns and the coffee tables.

"Oh. My. God. I am in love."

Megan, her arms loaded with Rog-House props and paraphernalia she hadn't had time to ditch yet, said, "You say that an awful lot for someone who styles himself completely asexual. Not to mention atheistic."

"There's no conflict! He's completely post-human!"

"Hm. You two even look a bit alike."

EP219: Sleepy Joe

Direct MP3 link

Sleepy Joe text on Infinite Matrix

Mike sez, "For three weeks only, Amazon and Mojo Nixon are offering his entire catalog in MP3 format completely free, including his latest album, Whiskey Rebellion."

Now there's some good news! There's nothing I don't like about Mojo Nixon. This is the guy who produced the kiddypunk band Old Skull after all (I always suspected he was responsible for the rousing chorus of "I hate you Ronald Reagan!" at the end of their smash-hit "Homeless").

If you're not familiar with Mr Nixon's oeuvre, give a listen to Elvis is Everywhere, Wash No Dishes No More and This Land is Your Land. Especially Wash No Dishes No More.

Update: This only works if your IP address is in the USA.

One of the most outsized personalities on college radio in the '80s, Mojo Nixon won a fervent cult following with his motor-mouthed redneck persona and a gonzo brand of satire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Nixon had a particular knack for celebrity-themed novelty hits ("Elvis Is Everywhere," "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child," "Don Henley Must Die"), but he was prone to gleefully crass rants on a variety of social ills ("I Hate Banks," "Destroy All Lawyers," "I Ain't Gonna Piss In No Jar"), while celebrating lowbrow, blue-collar America in all its trashy, beer-soaked glory. All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B, which earned Nixon some friends in the roots rock community but had enough punk attitude -- in its own bizarre way -- to make him a college radio staple during his heyday.

Mojo Nixon (Thanks, Mike!)

This Russian casemodder included a dollhouse-scale living room in an elaborate PC case... Presumably it's where the computer elves go to relax after a hard day's tallying up spreadsheets.

Заголовок сообщения: Комната в компьютере (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Rachel Maddow did a segment on her always-superb show tonight about Ralph Lauren's recent bogus legal threats against various blogs -- including this one. Those DMCAs sent by lawyers for Lauren demanded the removal of a badly photoshopped ad which morphed a model into a lollipop-headed stick figure. The Rachel Maddow Show segment is embedded above, and is also here: Photoshop of Horrors.

P.S.: And here's Rob on ABC's Nightline. No embed, unfortunately!

Boing Boing guestblogger Mitch Horowitz is author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation and editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin publishers.

One of the oddest and most enduring occult books of modern times is called The Kybalion. Dan Brown mentions it twice in The Lost Symbol. The book exists in a multitude of editions and claims to be an ancient work of practical occult wisdom. Its pages brim with canny advice on how to get what you want from life. The "author" of The Kybalion is a hidden entity called Three Initiates. Speculation rages online that one of these Three Initiates was a twentieth-century magician, occultist, and writer named Paul Foster Case. Case, so the theory goes, co-conceived the popular book in early twentieth-century Chicago, a city bustling with occult impresarios. I consider the Case connection and The Kybalion in Occult America:

Chicago was a great city for a budding occultist in the early twentieth century. It was home to the influential New Thought teacher Emma Curtis Hopkins and hosted bustling subcultures in "mental science" and metaphysical publishing. A Chicago lawyer named William Walker Atkinson produced an imaginative array of occult books from his Yogi Publication Society based in the twenty-two-story Masonic Temple Building, once a jewel of the city's skyline and later demolished. Atkinson himself wrote many books, under the pseudonyms Yogi Ramacharaka, Magus Incognito, and, most famously, Three Initiates. The Chicagoan used the last of these aliases in 1908 to publish his most successful book, one of the occult classics of the twentieth century: The Kybalion.

Royal de Lux, the incredible French mechanical marionette street theatre company, performed in Berlin this week as part of a 20t anniversary celebration of the Berlin Wall's fall. The main performers were the massive Big Giant and Little Giantess, which Cory posted about back in June. The Big Picture has a breathtaking photo gallery of the performance, titled The Berlin Reunion. This stunning photo was taken by Philipp Guelland for AFP/Getty Images.
"The Berlin Reunion" at The Big Picture (Thanks, Kenny Montana!)

Creative Commons has launched its 5th Annual Fundraising Campaign. Donate $75 or more and you'll get a special edition t-shirt featuring this lovely design by Shepard Fairey! For those who may not know, Creative Commons is an incredibly important non-profit making it easier for people to legally use, share, repurpose and remix creative work. It's about a shift from the default all-or-nothing stance of "all rights reserved" to a spectrum of "some rights reserved." Of course, everything Boing Boing does is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Creative Commons isn't about knocking down copyright, but rather complementing it in ways that support, and fuel, creativity and culture. Donate to Creative Commons

Snitches and snoops wanted: Internet Eyes is a new "game" where the public is invited to watch thousands of CCTV cameras for criminal activity. The most successful crimespotters can win cash prizes. The site will also feature a rogues gallery of alleged perpetrators. The service launches next month in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. It's free to watch the cameras and £20 a week to have your CCTV up for monitoring. From the Internet Eyes site (image above from Wikimedia Commons):

The locations of the feeds are not disclosed and Viewers reporting remain anonymous. Viewers can earn money by detecting an event that matches the above scenarios. The Viewers notification is sent to an SMS device of the owner of the video feed. The owner of the video feed is known as a Customer. The customer will also get a screenshot sent to their Customer Control Panel. As a Viewer you'll need to be quick if you're certain of activity as there maybe other Viewers watching the same video feeds. Only the first notification gets through. Internet Eyes

From the Daily Mail:

(Company founder) Tony Morgan, a former restaurant owner, said it would give local businesses protection against petty criminals, and act as a deterrent once 'Internet Eyes patrol here' signs are prominently displayed...

'There are over four million CCTV cameras in the UK and only one in a thousand gets watched, (he said). 

'Crimes are bound to get missed but this way people the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day.

'It gives people something better to do than watching Big Brother when everyone is asleep.

'We've had a lot of interest from local businesses and hope to roll it out nationwide and then worldwide.'

Internet game that awards points for people spotting real crimes on CCTV is branded 'snooper's paradise'

Here's an interview with leather artisan Kara Ginther, who carves Brook's leather bike saddles.

"I'll never forget how nervous I was to make that first cut into the gorgeous seat. Carving leather leaves little room for error; not only can you ruin the design, but with one slip of the blade you can render an object useless!"

To Be, Inspired: Interview with leather artisan Kara Ginther

In honor of this phallo-rific paperback cover that Hang Fire Books proprietor William Smith recently stumbled upon, he has created an "Artists With Issues" tag for the "Ugly and Bizarre" category of his Pulp Fiction Cover Gallery.

On a winter night in 1931, 57-year-old Winston Churchill stepped off the curb of 5th Avenue & 76th St. in New York City and was hit by a car.

SPOILER: He survived. But I think 1000 writers could probably do a lot with what could have happened if he hadn't. Now, the job of speculative fiction authors everywhere has become somewhat easier, thanks to Here Is Where, a project to locate and map the sites of little-known, relatively unimportant historical events in the United States.

Technically, the possibilities for alternate history are just a happy side-effect of Here Is Where, which is really about preserving tiny details of history for people who want to geek out over the parking garage where Bob Woodward met Deep Throat, or the baseball diamond where U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers died in a helicopter crash. According to the New York Times, it was inspired by...

a story founder Andrew Carroll read 15 years ago about a dramatic rescue that occurred during Abraham Lincoln's first term as president. The president's son Robert Todd Lincoln was about to board a sleeping car at Exchange Place in Jersey City one night when he fell between the platform and the train as it started to pull out of the station.

"My coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform," Lincoln recalled years later. "Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name."

Mr. Carroll hopes to install a marker at the site, now a PATH station.

That would be Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes, btw. Right now, Andrew Carroll is traveling cross-country, collecting stories for the project. You can read about what he's found on his blog. Whether you turn what you read there into a best-selling novel is up to you.

A city guide website called Revel in New York makes great mini documentaries about interesting New Yorkers.

Here are a few:

The Pigeon Lady, an East Village pigeon fancier who's been stealing pigeons from prized coops for nearly a decade. (Above)

High Times senior editor David Bienenstock, who explains the different effects of different kinds of pot.

A foot fetish sex worker who talks about her job about the foot-friendly places in NYC.

Molly Crabapple, artist and founder of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School.

Tea blender Nini Ordoubadi, an Iranian born New Yorker who comes from a long tradition of tea blenders.

Here's an update to story I've been following since 2006 about a woman who was denied custody of her 10-year-old son after a judge saw photos of her participating in a SubGenius holiday (an adult-rated parody of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ).

The good news is that Rachel Bevilacqua (AKA Rev. Magdalen) regained custody of her son. The weird news is that, according to Modemac of the High Weirdness Project, Bevilacqua is "still the only SubGenius officially banned from keeping SubGenius materials in her home, where her innocent son might accidentally come across them and become corrupted into the corrupt, obscene, decadent SubGenius cult that got his Mom into trouble in the first place."

After nearly four years and $140,000 in legal costs, the SubGenius child custody case of Rachel Bevilacqua (Reverend Magdalen) has been dismissed. The end result is an anticlimax: She has custody of her son at last, and the status quo is maintained -- except that she is officially forbidden from keeping SubGenius materials in her home, in order to protect her son from J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.

No, really.  When the initial order in Rachel's favor was handed down by Judge Adams (not Judge Punch) in January of 2007, it specified that she was allowed to keep SubGenius materials only in a special "office" area of her home, so as to prevent her son from having access to it.  This order was never rescinded or nullified, and it has remained in effect throughout the various legal wranglings that took place thereafter.  According to Rachel, the order remains in effect even now, and is included in the final judge's decision, which she will be making available online shortly.

Some might say that because only one person (Reverend Magdalen) is forbidden from keeping the Book of the SubGenius in her home, that doesn't make it a banned book.  The idea of censorship is to use force to keep others from expressing ideas and beliefs, and exposing so-called "innocent children" to those beliefs.  As such, this means that not only is Magdalen being censored -- so is her son.  And so is everyone in the Church who supports her.

(Disclosure: I have been a card-carrying SubGenius reverend for 25 years and have contributed to Rachel's legal fund.)

SubGenius Reverend officially banned from keeping SubGenius materials in her home

Ralph Steadman and Tim Robbins in studio, recording for upcoming production of Paris Records' The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, 2009. Photo courtesy Paris Records

Ethan Persoff wrote an article in the Evergreen Review this month about Paris Records, which, he says, has "produced some of the more interesting records of the last 25 years," including William Burroughs' Dead City Radio, Terry Southern's Give Me Your Hump!, and Allen Ginsberg's Lion For Real.

This is the first published account of the label's entire 25 year history. The article also has news and photos of previously unannounced album The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved starring Ralph Steadman as himself and Tim Robbins as Hunter Thompson. Produced by Hal Willner and Michael Minzer. Due in late 2009 or spring 2010.

"Other bonuses include two free mp3s of very rare out of print material: Ginsberg singing William Blake and Kathy Acker's Savage's School for Girls. Plus video of Burroughs on Saturday Night Live and many photos."

Conversations with Michael Minzer and Hal Willner on one of America's most inexplicably unknown recording projects.

Lechuguilla Cave is part of the Carlsbad Caverns Natural Park in New Mexico and is regarded as one of the most beautiful caves, with some of the most unique geography, in the entire world.

You can't visit.

Because of the delicacy of many of the formations, the cave is only open to scientists and the explorers who are still figuring out what all is down there. Nobody else is allowed in. Or, rather, nobody else but David Attenborough.

This video from the Planet Earth TV series takes you down into Lechuguilla for some amazing sights and fascinating commentary on the chemistry and biology that make this cave so strange and lovely. Even more impressive, nobody knew it was there until 1986.

Psst, Nova has a whole page on Lechiguilla, if you want to read more.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user n3pb, via CC

I photographed this graffiti under an overpass near the Palo Alto Caltrain station. It's a C++ program, called FUCKYOURMEMORY.c. Only in Silicon Valley.

The environmental committee of the city of Taichung, Taiwan is trying something different to clean up its streets — it's offering $3 in shopping vouchers per kilogram of dog poop collected. From the city council's web site:

By means of offering rewards, the bureau hopes to goad the public into spontaneous clean-up efforts that protect the environment.

The problem in Taiwan isn't that dog owners don't pick up poop — it's more an issue of strays, where pet owners get bored of their dogs and leave them on the streets. The poop initiative seems like an odd, half-assed initiative given the greater issue of animal negligence on the island (180,000 strays among a population of 23 million people, according to Reuters), but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Fetch! City pays for dog poo

An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey (well, figures!) is starving sea life near the coast of Oregon and Washington. The phenomenon will probably recur annually, and is caused by climate change, according to Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University. The news coincides with the release of this National Science Foundation briefing about the increasing occurrences of these "dead zones" around the world.

Pacific Ocean 'dead zone' in Northwest may be irreversible (LA Times)

It does have vowels, it's not the oldest language in Europe, and, yes, it does have words for modern technologies. Welsh, or Cymraeg as we probably ought to call it, is spoken by more than 580,000 people and was one of the 55 Earth languages chosen to represent our global culture on the Golden Record launched with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.

But it's still very much a small language and, to English speakers, a weird-looking one, so it's no surprise that tall tales abound. Garic, an evolutionary linguist and Welshman, is out to change that. He's written a series of posts that debunks pop-culture's worst Welsh fallacies and, along the way, makes some interesting points about the way speakers of common languages view the rare and unique tongues of the world...

No words for modern things. Welsh, apparently, lacks words for things like computers and aeroplanes. This is a stupid comment for two reasons:

1. It doesn't;

2. The arguments for the claim are entirely incoherent.

First of all, the Welsh words for 'computer' and 'aeroplane' are cyfrifiadur and awyren. Some words for other modern inventions are, similarly, based on Celtic roots; others are borrowings, like radio, which means 'radio'.

Secondly, the claim seems to be based on some bizarre assumption that other languages, like English, did not have to invent or borrow words for new inventions. The implication is that our ancestors failed us somehow in not forseeing the invention of the radio. I've actually heard people say that because Welsh "hasn't got words for modern inventions, it has to borrow them or make them up." This is of course true, but the idea that this is not true of any language spoken on the planet is so obviously, staggeringly dense that explanations for why it's stupid are unnecessary.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user Spixey, via CC

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Red Kuri. It's a winter squash — unlike its summer siblings, it's harvested at full maturity and has a very thick skin. I got this one from my CSA and fell instantly in love with its beautiful orange skin, which is hard to slice without killer knife skills.

Pictured: Two vectors at work. Suwon City Mosquito Monument, Suwon South Korea. Image courtesy Flickr user wmjas via creative commons.

A wise person once said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."* When you start talking about the future of complex systems, it only gets more difficult. Case in point: The effects of climate change on vector-borne diseases.

I've blogged before about London's Junky Styling, a clothing boutique that features original one-of-a-kind clothes made from hacking together thrift-store finds, salvaged textiles, and whatever happens to be lying around. They made my favorite winter coat, my best suit jacket, and my wife's wedding dress (stitched together from Alice-blue men's work-shirts!).

I just received a review copy of Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery, a book written by Junky's co-founders, Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager. The first half of the book is given over to Junky's improbable history, a business started by two young women who knew so little about tailoring that they couldn't produce patterns for their clothes, which meant that each piece they finished was one-of-a-kind. They're naturals, though, and have thrived in the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in East London. This section is lavishly illustrated with photos of their clothes over the years.

The second section is a detailed HOWTO for recreating several of their basic garments: a suit-sleeve scarf, a "shirt wrap halter top," a "fly top" and others, with copious notes about shopping for clothes to rescue and repurpose, instructions for unpicking seams, a glossary of textile types and strategies for working with each and so on.

Junky's tailors are makers, who dive in headfirst, make lots of mistakes quickly, learn and iterate and improve and surprise, and the book and clothes are infused with that heartening spirit. Makes me want to buy a sewing machine!

Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery (Amazon US)

Junky Styling: Wardrobe Surgery (Amazon UK)

ZDnet's Richard Koman accuses Yahoo of having collaborated with the Iranian regime during the recent post-election protests. Koman says the online giant provided names and emails for some 200,000 Iranian Yahoo users to authorities so that those same authorities would "unban" Yahoo on the state-controlled internet. The blog post does not include a response by Yahoo, but promises "to provide further proof as the story unfolds." UPDATE: Yahoo denies all of the claims in the ZDnet article: "The allegations in the story are false. Neither Yahoo! nor any Yahoo! representative has met with or communicated with any Iranian officials, and Yahoo! has not disclosed user data to the Iranian government. "

The idea of blowing bits of the moon up bothers me, because I believe that the moon is not ours to blow up. Blasting synthetic craters on the lunar surface for the purpose of finding water or habitable land -- which we'd have enough of if we weren't screwing things up so furtively, back home -- just disturbs me. But nevermind what I think. What matters is what esteemed "Exopolitics" expert Alfred Lambremont Webre thinks.

["Moon bombing"] may also trigger conflict with known extraterrestrial civilizations on the moon as reported on the moon in witnessed statements by U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and in witnessed statements to NSA (National Security Agency) photos and documents regarding an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon.

If the true intent of the LCROSS mission moon bombing is a hostile act by NASA against known extraterrestrial civilizations and settlements on the moon, then NASA and by extension the U.S. government are guilty of aggressive war which is the most serious of war crimes under the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to which the U.S. is subject.

And that will make them very angry, very angry indeed.

NASA moon bombing violates space law & may cause conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations (Seattle Exopolitics Examiner via Jesse Dylan)

Bonus Video: "America Blows up the Moon," from Mr. Show, (via @georgeruiz).

These may look like Bang & Olufsen TV remote controls from the 1980s but they're actually Sinclair Sovereign LED calculators from 1977. Sadly, the Sovereign was a market failure due in part to the nearly simultaneous domination of the category by its technology successor, the LCD calculator. From Planet Sinclair:

Named patriotically for the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, the Sinclair Sovereign was an attempt to break out of the bottom end of the calculator market and recapture the top end. It was one of the better-engineed Sinclair calculators and was very well-designed - so much so, in fact, that Sinclair designer John Pemberton won a Design Council Award for it. It was available in a satin chrome finish or plated in silver or gold. A few limited edition silver Sovereigns inscribed to commemorate the Silver Jubilee were also produced. Sinclair even produced two in solid gold!

Sinclair Sovereign (1977) (Thanks, Rob Beschizza!)

Rob sez, 'Winny is a file sharing program in Japan. It's developer was found guilty in district court of copyright violations, but now it's been overturned. Some nice common sense quotes from the decision - "...The crime of assisting violations by a large indefinite number of people whom he has never met does not stand... Anonymity is not something to be looked on as illegal, and it is not something that applies specifically to copyright violations. The technical value of the software is neutral."'

The focus of the appeal was whether Kaneko had intended to violate the Copyright Law through the distribution of illegally copied software. Public prosecutors had argued that it was a premeditated crime in which he aided violations of the law. Lawyers argued that Kaneko was innocent, saying, "The purpose (of supplying the software) was purely to verify the technology. The crime of assisting violations by a large indefinite number of people whom he has never met does not stand."

Ogura ruled that Kaneko did not promote the software among users to be used for copyright violations, and said that the charge of assisting violations of the law couldn't be applied. The judge added that if the district court's decision stood, then Kaneko's culpability could stand as long as the software existed, and that caution should be exercised.

High court overturns guilty ruling against developer of file-sharing software Winny (Thanks, Rob!)

This young fellow is Colton "Colt" Harris-Moore, aka "The Barefoot Burglar." Police in Washington State say the 18-year-old is suspected of stealing, joy-flying, and then crashing three small planes in the past year. His nickname came from previous burglaries he committed, sans shoes. He's also jacked luxury cars and boats. This photo was retrieved from a digital camera Harris-Moore nabbed from a Mercedes he had also stolen. The Mercedes shirt he's sporting apparently belonged to the owner of the stolen vehicle. Arrested nine times before he was 15, Harris-Moore squats in empty vacation homes on the state's coast, police say, or sleeps in the great outdoors. He has a fan club page on Facebook. From CNN:

(Island County Sheriff's Office spokesman Ed) Wallace said Harris-Moore has charged thousands of dollars worth of video games, GPS devices and police scanners online, using stolen credit cards.

The theft of a Cessna 182 from the San Juan Islands in November jogged Wallace's memory. He recalled what he had found on a computer he said Harris-Moore used. "He had looked at flight manuals and how to fly a plane," he said...

Harris-Moore's mother doubts her son learned to fly on his own.

"Any time anything is stolen, they blame it on Colt," Pam Kohler told the Everett Herald newspaper. "Let's say you're the smartest person in the world. Wouldn't you need a little bit of training in flying a plane? They're not easy."

"Police suspect 'Barefoot Burglar' is stealing, crashing planes"

UPDATE: BB friend Glenn Fleishman writes:

While it's too late to prevent worldwide coverage of this kid's activities, as a local (about an hour south of Camano Island in Seattle) getting regular updates in the paper and other media about Harris-Moore, I'm concerned about him simply staying alive.

This week, when sheriffs were investigating a theft at a home remote from others, a shot was fired, they report. No one was hit, and the sheriffs are not alleging that Harris-Moore fired it. Nonetheless, I worry that he's already become a folk hero, and we all know how American folk heroes end: in a blaze of bullets, death by police.

While this may all seem remote and romantic, the kid's mother--oddly proud of him for apparently teaching himself to fly and clearly in routine communication with him--fears he'll be killed.

He's clearly a brilliant kid, who would probably have done better in rural Alaska than in exurban Washington state. I just hope he comes out of the cold, accepts some part of his role, and perhaps moves on to a more interesting life.

Following up on Mark's earlier post about the fancy owl tape measure, here's Gama-Go's brand spankin' new Tape Measure. It's $8.

Bone tape measure from Gold Bug in Pasadena, California. (Via Kimagure Gaki)

Attention white supremacist Obama supporters: this attractive vinyl Obama Hope Rebel Flag has been marked down from $24.95 to $12.95. As a bonus, they'll throw in a few dozen unsightly fold creases for free! (Via Reddit)

Reuters reported last week that Natalie Morton, the teenage girl who died shortly after receiving an HPV vaccination, was definitely not killed by the vaccine. Instead, Morton was the victim of a large, fast-growing and previously undetected tumor in her chest cavity.

These kinds of tumors are very rare, and we don't know much about Morton's case. However, the Daily Mail has a heart-wrenching (and medically fascinating) interview with the parents of another teen who suffered a similar fate...

Inside George's chest cavity was an aggressive and rapidly growing tumour the size of a small football. In the few hours after George had gone to bed, the tumour had grown around his windpipe, cutting off his oxygen and causing irreparable damage to his brain. The tumour, which had started in an organ called the thymus gland in the chest cavity, was also crushing his heart and lungs and constricting the vital arteries supplying his body with blood.

Henry Farrell sez:

The US Department of State wants hackers to help build civil society in the Middle East and Africa. They're offering up to $2.5 million in grants for pilot projects that use wikis, blogs and social networking platforms to connect and educate young people and improve civic participation.

You can read the details of this funding opp here.

Over the weekend, I attended Babytattooville, an amazing and intimate art event produced by art book publisher Baby Tattoo. The idea is brilliant -- 45 people sign up to spend the weekend with 11 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists at the stunningly beautiful Mission Inn resort in Riverside, California.

Everyone painted, drew in sketchbooks, ate meals together, sat around talking late into the night, watched a documentary about Robert Williams, and even played an cool alternate reality game that began in the catacombs of the hotel.

The invited artists were all extremely gregarious, and it was impossible to distinguish between the artists and the fans; the artists are all fans themselves and everyone mingled.

Bob Self, publisher of Baby Tattoo Press and producer of the event is really on to something here. This kind of authentic, unmediated experience can't be reproduced online or traded on P2P sites. Many of the attendees were there for the 3rd time -- they told me the $1800 price was well worth it (the price included two nights at the hotel, meals, and a huge goodie bag loaded with books, prints, and original art, including one of these Audrey Kawasaki original drawings on wood). It would be fun to see this kind of model used in other spheres of interest -- a Makerville, or Cookerville, for instance.

I've never been to ComicCon, and I never want to -- it's way too crowded and noisy. Babytattooville was the exact opposite. It's more like joining a club. (If you want to go in 2010, hurry up -- only 5 new memberships are available.)

I took a lot of photos and shot some video, which I'll post in the coming days. To get started, here are some photos of one of the events from the first day of Babytattooville: a figure drawing session produced by Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, and held at the Riverside Art Museum. Founder Molly Crabapple was their to direct the event, and the model, Mosh, was a big hit with everyone there.

Babytattooville 2009 Dr Sketchy figure drawing

(Ken Harman took 110 photos of Dr. Sketchys, every one of them much better than any of mine.)

Regretsy is a blog that chronicles the more special craft projects for sale on everybody's favorite handmade products Web site. The bit I find most interesting about this blog (and, by extension, Etsy, itself), is that there's a whole, separate category for vagina arts/crafts.

Yes, vaginas.

At present, it includes the felted placenta shown above, plus knit tampon cozies, celebrity-inspired uterus dolls, and a few other things. (Elsewhere on the site, you'll find a catnip toy in the shape of a fetus.)

I'll admit, I have a hard time getting these projects from any angle other than humor. But once I stop sniggering, I find myself fascinated by the decision to take a cutesy, "comfort food" medium--knitting, home-made dolls--and use it to illustrate parts of the body that (like most organs) aren't exactly the most visually attractive. In fact, I kind of wish the artists would branch out into spleens, kidneys, or maybe various glands. Or does the meme only work with ostensibly "dirty" organs? What do you think?

BTW: If you want to purchase your own felted placenta, you can find them on the real Etsy. They're made in Australia by user lumiknits.

I love this creative colorful table and chair set by Kamiya Design. When all its pieces are laid out side by side, it literally spells out "Table." Deconstructed, the a, b, and le form chairs that surround the T, which is the actual table.

When Ralph Lauren tried to remove a creepily retouched advertisement from the net, was it embarrassed by graphic design woes, or by a cutting hatchet job by an unknown prankster?

It's obvious by now that Ralph Lauren *hates* being mocked. They hate being mocked so much that they ordered their attack lawyers to send letters trying to fool ISPs into pulling an "infringing" advertisement featuring a ridiculously skinny model (in fact, our posting of the image was fair use, not infringement; Ralph Lauren's takedown notices are bogus and they should know better).

It's also obvious that the photo of Filippa Hamilton used in the Ralph Lauren advertisement was digitally manipulated. But we still have three questions: 1) who, exactly, gave Ms. Hamilton the Olive Oyl physique? 2) If the photo was manipulated after it appeared in the advertisement, why didn't Ralph Lauren's law firm make mention of that in their silly DMCA takedown notice? and 3) Where's the original advertisement?

We're so curious about getting to the bottom of this that we're offering a bounty -- the first person to send us a photo of the real advertisement, along with information about where it ran, gets their choice of any Gama Go Boing Boing T-Shirt.

Our hunch is that a combination of bad angle and bad camera contrived to put a bad ad in an even worse light. In any case, we can at least take heart in one thing: the world has a problem where the best solution is cake.

Even if a prankster warped the ad, it's already embarked on a suppression campaign that becomes even sillier if it turns out to be an anonymous 'shopper's transformative "art." From the outset, Ralph Lauren put its head up its own arse: a bad idea when your ears are further apart than your hips.

Update: Flickr user Tokyo Boy offers an intriguing theory in this thread: that shopkeepers in the far east often make their own ads. Wouldn't it be bizarre if it was not only a fake, but a fake made by Ralph Lauren's own affiliates wandering off the reservation? Jezebel, however, unearths another awful 'shop of the same model, spotted at Ralph Lauren's website.

Update: Ralph Lauren confides to Extra:

On Thursday, Polo Ralph Lauren released the following statement about the retouched ad: "For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman's body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately."

Alas, no apology for the legal nastygrams.

Designer Harry Allen made this LED light by 3D-printing the shape of a firefly caught in his backyard. Previously, Allen made a piggy bank cast out of a real dead pig, which you can actually buy here.

Harry Allen Design via No Smarties

Here's the 2010 calendar featuring art from the great jazz record art director and illustrator of the 1940s and 1950s, Jim Flora.

JimFlora.com is offering three hand-printed 2010 calendars sporting comic Flora illustrations. The spunky figures date from the mid-1950s.

The calendars, which were hand-printed by Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, of Knoxville, and are packaged in clear sleeves, sell for $12.50 (+ shipping) each.

The backing cards are letterpress printed on recycled stock, measuring 10" x 4-1/2". The attached calendar, with 12 pull-off pages, measures 3-1/4" x 4-1/2".

Jim Flora 2010 hand-printed calendars

Building a bit off the "conflusion" (Bravo, btw, insert) post from yesterday, I'm going to launch right into something near and dear to my heart: The way biased and badly done health journalism can really mess up the people who read it.

Biased and badly done are two very different things. I don't have data on this, but I think it's fair to say that, when the main-stream media (which, BoingBoing aside, includes me) gets a health story wrong, it usually isn't trying to be intentionally wack. Trouble is, whatever the intent, it leaves you--the reader--in the same place. Conflused.

Luckily, there are people working to help you. Like, for instance, the good folks at Behind the Headlines, a project of the British National Health System that does Q&A, myth busting and in-depth explanations on the science behind top health news. I first found out about this from Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, which is, in itself, a great site everybody ought to be reading.

Dr. Alicia White, one of the aforementioned "folks" behind Behind the Headlines, has a wonderful primer on the questions you should be asking yourself every time you read health news. Until we police ourselves into doing a consistently better job, sorting the wheat from the chaff is (unfortunately) up to you. This will help. Plus, it's a fun read:

If you've just read a health-related headline that's caused you to spit out your morning coffee ("Coffee causes cancer" usually does the trick) it's always best to follow the Blitz slogan: "Keep Calm and Carry On". On reading further you'll often find the headline has left out something important, like "Injecting five rats with really highly concentrated coffee solution caused some changes in cells that might lead to tumours eventually. (Study funded by The Association of Tea Marketing)".

Evocative image courtesy Flickr user bdjsb7, under CC.

Next week, Palm Pictures launches a 25th-anniversary Blu-ray release of Stop Making Sense, considered by many to be one of the greatest concert films eve made. Back in 1983, Director Jonathan Demme teamed up with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth and the Talking Heads to document three nights of shows at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. And what performances they were.

The new set includes lots of bonus material, I'm told. I don't have a device that plays Blu-ray discs at home, but this is the sort of thing that makes me wish I did. As you may already be able to guess from the sheer volume of fannish posts we do on BB about David Byrne, and about solo work from other former members -- 'round here we do love the band whose name is Talking Heads.

Here's an item at the LA Times, and here's a post at bluraywire about the disc set.

Stop Making Sense (Amazon) Trailer video (YouTube).

Biologists have newly identified seven mushroom species that glow-in-the-dark. (The mushrooms may look psychedelic, but they are not in the psilocybe genus.) San Francisco State University biologist Dennis Desjardin found the glowing fungi in Belize, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico. From National Geographic:

Desjardin and colleagues scouted for mushrooms during new moons, in rain forests so dark they often couldn't see their hands in front of their faces, he said.

But "when you look down at the ground, it's like looking up at the sky," Desjardin said. "Every little 'star' was a little mushroom--it was just fantastic."

From SF State News:

These latest findings shed light on the evolution of luminescence, adding to the number of known lineages in the fungi family tree where luminescence has been reported. "What interests us is that within Mycena, the luminescent species come from 16 different lineages, which suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some species later lost the ability to glow," Desjardin said. He believes some fungi glow to attract nocturnal animals that aid in the dispersal of the mushroom's spores, which are similar to seeds and are capable of growing into new organisms.

"GLOWING MUSHROOM PICTURES: Psychedelic New Species Seen" (National Geographic)
"New glowing mushroom species" (SF State News)

I was literally raised on Conan stories. My dad was a Conan fan, and when I was a kid, he would spin out half-remembered Conan tales for me on long car trips, changing Conan into a gender-diverse trio called Harry, Larry and Mary, who would vanquish evil rulers and then create a dictatorship of the proletariat in their wake (Dad was, and is, a Trotskyist, after all).

When I was old enough to start reading on my own, I fell in love with heroic fantasy and with RPGs, and I went out and devoured the whole Conan canon on my own, buying stacks of used paperbacks from Bakka in Toronto, reading and re-reading them indiscriminately -- the Robert E Howard originals, the L Sprague De Camp books, all of it. The first book I ever attempted to write, at the age of 12, was a blood-soaked homage to Conan, in which the phrase "mighty thews" appeared in practically every paragraph. (As I recall, I also talked my mom into reading some of the Conan stories aloud for bedtime and when I was sick, which speaks volumes about her patience!).

But I haven't read any Conan in, oh, decades. Nevertheless, when legendary science fiction and fantasy scholar John Clute told me that he'd just finished editing Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan a new collection of hand-picked Robert E Howard stories, spanning Howard's astonishingly prolific career as a pulp adventure writer of everything from westerns and boxing stories to the legendary Conan tales, I found that I was overcome with an urge to revisit the heroic tales of my boyhood.

I did, and I am every bit as delighted by them as I was when I was 10 years old.

Somehow, I never knew much about Howard. I had a dim recollection that he had killed himself, but that was about it. So it was with incredulity and a little bit of awe that I read Clute's superb introduction to the collection, and acquainted myself with the biographical facts of Howard's life. He was a driven, small-town Texas boy, a boy who loved his wasting, tubercular mother and applied himself to literary hackdom like no other in order to support her. Howard wrote and sold more than 160 pulp adventure stories between 1928 (when he was 22) and 1935 (when he was 29). He typed these stories in a fury all night long, screaming the words aloud as he pounded them into the keyboard (to the horror and bemusement of his neighbors). He had few friends and only one short romance. When his mother died, he stopped writing. Not long after, he blew his brains out.

Clute's analysis of Howard's work and life (drawing on Howard's extensive correspondence with HP Lovecraft) is a fascinating read, and it sets up the stories wonderfully. The stories themselves sample some of Howard's most iconic creations -- Kull the Conqueror and Solomon Kane -- and span many genres, including a wonderfully brutal short western novel, Vultures of Wahpeton.

The final third is given over to Conan stories: "The Tower of the Elephant," a tense dungeon-crawl; "Queen of the Black Coast," a smouldering, sexy pirate epic; "A Witch Shall Be Born," a blood-soaked revenge-play; and the novel-length "Red Nails," a story of decadent fallen tribes waging war on one another in a dead walled city.

Howard's writing is muscular, unapologetically dramatic, and, for all that, innocent and genuine, without a hint of self-reflexive hesitation or doubt. Just look at this:

In an instant he was the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and lashing clubs. But he moved in a blinding blur of steel. Spears bent on his armor and swished empty air, and his sword sang its death-song. The fighting-madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood.

Invulnerable in his armor, his back against the mast, he heaped mangled corpses at his feet until his enemies gave back panting in rage and fear. Then as they lifted their spears to cast them, and he tensed himself to leap and die in the midst of them, a shrill cry froze the lifted arms.

Imagine a haunted Texas lad in his crappy apartment in the middle of the night, screaming those words at the wall as his fingers tortured the keys! What romance! What adventure!

Robert E. Howard, Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan