Transgender papaya

By Xeni Jardin at 11:08 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Transgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via oxbloodruffin)

HBO's "Terror in Mumbai"

By Xeni Jardin at 10:57 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

"Terror in Mumbai," an HBO film premiering Nov. 19, explores the planning of the Mumbai terror attacks with extensive cellphone audio of terrorists coordinating attacks and preparing to die. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Large Hadron Collider: Now This Is Just Getting Ridiculous

By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 3:52 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Popular Science is reporting that a piece of bread, dropped by a passing bird, has managed to damage the Large Hadron Collider.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

If this really is the work of time-traveling Higgs boson particles, however, they're demonstrating a lot of creativity, but not a lot of competence. The Bird Incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility, which is still scheduled for later this month.

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down the Large Hadron Collider (Really), Popular Science. You should follow the link just to see their illustration "according to eyewitness accounts". Via stevesilberman.

Netted: one Web tip emailed daily

By David Pescovitz at 3:16 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Our pals at the Webbys just beta-launched Netted, an email list that provides one useful Web tip per day. Reminds me of Mark F's book Rule The Web. In the Netted alpha test: a service that sends snail mail postcards with any photo you upload, a guide to the best rooms in various hotels, and visual maps of automated phone menus for 500 US companies. All neat, and all new to me. Sign up here.

Age of the Informavore

By David Pescovitz at 2:11 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

We make technology, but our technology also makes us. At the online science/culture journal Edge, BB pal John Brockman went deep -- very deep -- into this concept. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national German newspaper FAZ and a very, very big thinker. Schirrmacher has raised public awareness and discussion about some of the most controversial topics in science research today, from genetic engineering to the aging population to the impacts of neuroscience. At Edge, Schirrmacher riffs on the notion of the "informavore," an organism that devours information like it's food. After posting Schirrmacher's thoughts, Brockman invited other bright folks to respond, including the likes of George Dyson, Steven Pinker, John Perry Barlow, Doug Rushkoff, and Nick Bilton. Here's a taste of Schirrmacher, from "The Age of the Infomavore":

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.

As we know, information is fed by attention, so we have not enough attention, not enough food for all this information. And, as we know -- this is the old Darwinian thought, the moment when Darwin started reading Malthus -- when you have a conflict between a population explosion and not enough food, then Darwinian selection starts. And Darwinian systems start to change situations. And so what interests me is that we are, because we have the Internet, now entering a phase where Darwinian structures, where Darwinian dynamics, Darwinian selection, apparently attacks ideas themselves: what to remember, what not to remember, which idea is stronger, which idea is weaker...

It's the question: what is important, what is not important, what is important to know? Is this information important? Can we still decide what is important? And it starts with this absolutely normal, everyday news. But now you encounter, at least in Europe, a lot of people who think, what in my life is important, what isn't important, what is the information of my life. And some of them say, well, it's in Facebook. And others say, well, it's on my blog. And, apparently, for many people it's very hard to say it's somewhere in my life, in my lived life.

The Age of the Informavore

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:07 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

We've covered Theodore Gray on Boing Boing a lot, and for good reason -- he's amazing. His Mad Science book was filled with spectacularly fun science experiments, he built a Periodic Table table with little compartments to hold samples of elements, and now he has a new coffee table photo book called The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.

Each element is treated to a gorgeous two page spread, with photos and a fascinating short history.

Did you know:

... if you keep your household smoke detector around for a couple of thousand years, most of the americium will have decayed into neptunium (wait another 30 million years or so and it will become thallium, which the CIA can use to make Castro's beard fall out, if he's still alive)

... if you touch tellurium you will smell like rotten garlic for a few weeks?

... arsenic is commonly added to chicken feed (to promote their growth)?

... a chunk of gallium will melt in your hand (you can buy a sample here)?

... a speck of scandium ("the first of the elements you've never heard of") added to aluminum creates a very strong alloy (like the kind used in the Louisville Slugger that was involved in a recent $850,000 lawsuit)? Books that reveal how truly weird our world is are always welcome in my home. This one's a gem.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

Insta-Beard

By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:48 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Absolutely, positively need a beard now? Simply enjoy looking at photos of cute girls sporting fake beards? Yeah. There's an Etsy for that.

imadeyouabeard store on Etsy. Thanks, Christina!

And, yes, I am getting a little obsessed with the whacked-out wonder of Etsy. Why do you ask?

Does the Baby Bust = a Sustainability Boom?

By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:01 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

I knew that more economic development tends to mean smaller families, and I knew that people were having fewer children in many developing countries. But I hadn't grasped how quickly that shift was happening until I read this comparison from last Thursday's issue of The Economist:

The transition from a [birth] rate of five [births per woman] to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain--from 1800 to 1930--took just 20 years--from 1965 to 1985--in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006--and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.

But, while it's easy to assume that slowing population growth means a more sustainable future, it's not really as cut and dry as all that. Like The Economist points out: With development, you also get more people living the fossil-fuel heavy American lifestyle. Their argument: The problem of creating a sustainable future isn't really tied to birth rate. That's taking care of itself and couldn't go much faster without China-like impositions on personal freedom. Instead, the focus needs to be on the technology and policies that will help those children grow up in sustainable, energy efficient societies.

The Economist--"Demography, Growth and the Environment", via Follow the Energy blog.

Brian McCarty's photo of Hello Kitty

By David Pescovitz at 12:43 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Designer toy photographer Brian McCarty shot this lovely portrait of Hello Kitty. The piece is titled "Three Apples," which according to Ms. Kitty's bio is her weight. Brian writes:

Truly an icon for the time, (Hello Kitty) is a totem and emblem of kinship for devotees of cute. With this realization, it was easy to take another step and cast Hello Kitty not just as a revered symbol, but also as a god.

Young Julia Coburn is seen in a desperate (albeit cute) state, floating away under a canopy of balloons. As Hello Kitty looks on, it's purposely unclear as to what role she plays...or will play in Julia's survival.

Hello Kitty "Three Apples"

Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay

By Xeni Jardin at 12:33 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Guido Núñez-Mujica, a 26-year-old Boing Boing reader in Venezuela who is an avid gamer, writes in with this extensive personal observation piece about a new law that widely criminalizes video games in the South American country. As you read the piece, please also bear in mind that publishing this sort of thing under one's full name is not done without personal risk.

These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.

Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted. After the jump, Núñez-Mujica's essay in full.

Read the rest

George McKelvey "My Teenage Fallout Queen" 1964

By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:06 pm Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Michael Simmons of Fretboard Journal says: "Here's an interesting video from olden times [1964] featuring a song called 'Teenage Fallout Queen.' And there's this site devoted to Cold War pop music."

(I love the lettering in the title at the beginning!)

Sex, then amnesia

By David Pescovitz at 11:55 am Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

A woman named Alice, 59, had morning sex with her husband but immediately after, she was hit with amnesia. According to a CNN story, Alice experienced transient global amnesia, complete loss of short-term memory and some problems recalling older events too. Apparently, the curious condition can be triggered by a variety of vigorous exercise, sudden and drastic temperature change, or emotional trauma. Transient Global Amnesia can resolve itself quickly and usually doesn't leave any permanent damage. Alice's memory returned by the afternoon. CNN presented Alice's case and spoke with Harvard neurology professor Louis Caplan about the causes of transient global amnesia. From CNN:

"(Sex) is actually a well-known precipitator. One of the things people have done to look at transient global amnesia is to look at frequency of various precipitants and sex always comes out as one of the most common," said Caplan, a leading stroke expert at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not associated with Alice's care. "It usually is after climax that it develops," he said about its onset...

In 1999, Johns Hopkins University doctors described two patients in their 70s who suffered TGA after having sex. In these cases, the act of "bearing down" -- which occurs when people move their bowels, give birth or have sex -- created pressure in the brain's blood vessels, resulting in temporary lack of blood flow that caused amnesia, according to the study published in The Lancet...

Caplan likened the hippocampus, which is responsible for short-term memory in the brain, to a tape recorder. If blood flow to the brain gets restricted, the hippocampus cannot record new memory.

"The hippocampus is responsible for initially recording the information so you can play it back," he said. "So if it's not working, you won't get the information."

"Sex, then amnesia...and it's no soap opera"

Bicycle defense kit fits in Altoids tin

By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:42 am Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Luke Iseman sells a Bicycle Defense Kit for $19.90.

The Bicycle Defense Kit (BDK) offers options for dealing with aggressive motorists. Contained within an altoids tin, the 8 tools vary in detectability, potential to cause damage, and legality.

Specifically, cyclists can:

• Issue "citizen citations" with official-ish tickets.
• Label offending vehicles with an "I was a jerk to a cyclist" sticker.
• Introduce the risk of paint damage with a Jolly Rancher.
• Create certain coating cremation via DOT3 brake fluid.
• Make cars stink worse than their exhaust with a carefully-placed stink bomb.
• Throw a trusty bolt to dent offending traffic as it passes.
• Lock out loony drivers by filling their keyholes with super glue.
• Cut through tire valve stems with a utility blade.

Bicycle Defense Kit

Fractal weather

By David Pescovitz at 11:35 am Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

New research suggests that the atmosphere can be modeled with fractal patterns and may not be as, er, complex as we thought. The benefit of the new knowledge? Perhaps more accurate forecasts and better climate models. From New Scientist:

The results point to a new view of the atmosphere as a vast collection of cascade-like processes, with large structures the size of continents breaking down to feed ever-smaller ones, right down to zephyrs of air no bigger than a fly.

The implications promise to transform the way we predict everything from tomorrow's local weather to the changing climate of the entire planet. "We may never be able to view the atmosphere and climate in the same way again," says team member Shaun Lovejoy of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "Rather than seeing them as so complex that only equally complex numerical models can make sense of them, we're seeing a kind of scale-by-scale simplicity."

"Tomorrow's weather: Cloudy, with a chance of fractals" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

Photos of a furless bear

By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:27 am Thursday, Nov 5 • Comments • Share

Here are photos of a bear that has lost her fur, save a few tufts around her head. All the female bears at the Leipzig zoo suffer this humiliating affliction. (I think the CIA, which associates bears with communism, sprinkled thallium salts on their paws to cause their fur to fall out.)

Vets baffled by bald bears with mystery condition