The winner of our iPhone Disappointment Haiku competition is Kent Geek, who gets a Mophie Juice Pack:

Winter In Akron
Loved one calling for romance
Off faster, damned gloves!

Runner up! Kleer001 wins the 2009 Seriousness in Gadget Blog Commenting award, with his or her imaginative rendering of the "AT&T sucks!" theme that dominated the 200 entries received.

I bought this black box.
Spoon fed the revolution.
Ashes in my mouth.

Winners, please email rob (@ the usual domain) for your swag.

When I posted about the lives of lovable native lampreys a couple weeks ago, commenter Allegra pointed me to some great videos of vegetarian lamprey in Vancouver's Morrison Creek. For the first couple seconds of watching, I honestly mistook the lamprey for water plants. And then they started building nests and spawning. Which plants don't tend to do.

This video shows a group of male and female lamprey building a nest by moving small stones with their sucker mouths. There's more videos of lamprey working together to build nests if you follow the link. Cool stuff! The group that put this together, the Morrison Creek Streamkeepers, also have a photo page that explains how to tell the difference between a girl lamprey and a boy lamprey--if I haven't burned you out on animal sex this week already.

The title really says it all. Follow this link to see a metric crap-ton of fruit bats (the largest such gathering in the world) converge on a remote swamp in Zambia--an area only about the size of two or three soccer fields.

To take the shots, BBC camera crew had to swoop in on a powered hot-air balloon. Because there were so many bats that a helicopter couldn't fly. Oh. My. God.

One night more than twenty years ago, Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair fired up the photocopy machine at Mark's work and cranked out the first issue of bOING bOING, the print 'zine.* (Our new/old hand-drawn logotype at the top of this page is from that era!) Since those heady, dot matrix days of staples, stamps, and cyberpunks, quite a lot has changed. But some things haven't. Click to 2009. We're just a few months from our ten year anniversary as a blog, and are proud to have nearly 70,000 posts in the archives. We're honored that millions of people resonate with Boing Boing's take on technology, culture, and high weirdness. Thank you for your continued support. But as happy mutants, we must continue to evolve. And so we're pleased to present this re-imagining of Boing Boing.

As you probably noticed, we have a new design. Our goal with it is to highlight our most exciting, provocative, anomalous, and newsworthy posts, even after they've floated down the blog river off the front page. So, please do check out the "display case" of featured stories at the top and right of the site. Speaking of features, there will be more of those. Of course, we'll keep curating and contextualizing the most interesting things we find online, but we're also going back to bOING bOING's 'zine roots by presenting originally-reported articles. Who's writing those? We are, and the "we" is expanding in marvelous ways. We're thrilled to have several fantastic, and familiar, voices joining us on the front page:

• Rob Beschizza and Lisa Katayama, two of our favorite tech writers in the world, are shifting their efforts from BB Gadgets to the front page of Boing Boing. If you're a BB Gadgets reader, don't fret -- now all of that material will be hosted right here. Meanwhile, Rob and Lisa will also get a chance to go beyond the gadget realm to explore the other microuniverses that fascinate them. Rob is also busy as Boing Boing's first ever managing editor -- he does a masterful job of keeping us all in line, even if that line is quite curvy.

• Over at Offworld, Brandon Boyer has spent months charting the esoteric interzone of indie games. Henceforth, he'll also post columns and game reviews at Boing Boing that showcase the best bets for pixelated pleasure.

• Earlier this year, Maggie Koerth-Baker spent two weeks as a guestblogger and delighted us with revelations about giant squid, nasty cytokine storms, and parasites we should know and love. Now, Maggie will be here every day feeding our insatiable appetite for weird science, natural curiosities, odd anthropology, and the edges of eco-tech.

This relaunch was a major undertaking, and several people deserve a tip of the ol' propeller beanie: Rob Beschizza lit a fire under us, did the design, managed its implementation, and kept us calm. He is a creative force of quantum proportions. Master coder Dean Putney did the vast majority of the software development. As always, our stellar sysadmin, Ken Snider, kept things humming in the Jefferies tubes. Thanks to George Triantafyllakos, creator of BPreplay, the open source font we're using for headlines. And thank you to our partner John Battelle, our friend Jason Weisberger, and Federated Media's Mugs Buckley, Neil Chase, and Pete Spande for their business sense (and cents).

So with that, we hope you enjoy this evolutionary leap. Welcome back to Boing Boing: the brain mutator for higher primates.

(* Mark insists he reimbursed his former employer for the paper and toner!)

Doctor Popular says,

Today is 24hour Comic Book Day. Cartoonists all over the world will be taking part in the challenge of creating an entire 24 page comic book in just one day. Robots Don't Know Anything About Twitter, which was featured on BB a few weeks ago, was created as part of last years 24HCBDay!

Here are some links: Nationwide, in SF, in Minneapolis, in Albuquerque

Image: snapshot from 24HCBDay in New Mexico in 2006, by baaadasssscomics. Also, here's a Flickr pool.

Comment Guidelines

Thank you for being part of the Boing Boing community! Our goal in the discussion threads is to have good conversation, with "good" meaning fun, constructive, informative, entertaining, or all of the above. So, speech is free, but Boing Boing is moderated. Here are the kinds of comments that energize happy mutants:

• More information about the subject of the post! If we post something, it's because we're genuinely interested in the subject. If you know more about it than we do, please share!

• New developments about the subject of a post. As the old comic strip goes, "It isn't that (we) don't like current events. There have just been so many of them lately."

• Opinions that move the debate forward. Disagree with what we or another commenter has to say? Let's hear it! But please be respectful.

• Comments that connect the dots. We appreciate you linking the subject of one post to other posts, even (especially!) when the connection isn't obvious!

• Factual corrections! We make mistakes, we fix 'em.

And now, some less pleasant things that should be self-evident but we'll note for the record:

• Offensive, inappropriate, or just plain annoying comments may be deleted or disemvoweled.

• Spam earns an instant ban.  If you have a history of junk comments, plus promotional copy in your profile, you may be considered a  spammer.

• Astroturfers will be banned.  Cut-and-paste or nearly verbatim talking points are considered astroturf.

• Sock puppets  (alias accounts created by previously banned commenters for the purpose of avoiding a ban) will be banned.

• If the bulk of your comments are whining, hostile, insulting or otherwise annoying, you may be banned.

• Please do not tell the Boing Boing editors what to blog. Writing "But that's not a wonderful thing" is lame. So is "topic [X] bores me,"  or "subject [Y] sucks."

• Please do not make racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or otherwise offensive comments.

• Please don't personally insult, bully, threaten, or harass the writers or your fellow commenters.  Comments referring to other commenters as "idiots,"  "retards," or the like will be disemvowelled or not published.

• Please avoid using offensive words like avttre, snttbg and phag, which have been ROT13ed for your reading pleasure.  If saying it to a stranger in meatspace might earn you a black eye, please don't say it in your comment.  Replacing a few letters with asterisks is not a valid workaround.

• Please don't make off-topic comments about political candidates or parties for the purpose of arguing. If a political party or candidate is the subject of the post or is closely related, it's okay to discuss political parties or candidates. But don't do so simply to troll.

• Please don't suggest that the victim "had it coming" in a civil liberties/human rights thread unless you have some evidence to support your claim.

• We are primarily ad supported, but advertisers have no editorial control. Please don't make passive-aggressive insinuations or other tiresome, generalized accusations to the contrary. We are transparent about our relationships with advertisers. For more on that, please see our advertising policy.

• Please ROT13 spoilers.

• Please don't include e-mail addresses, physical addresses, or phone numbers in your comments for the purpose of self-promotion,  or for the purpose of harassing or publicly exposing the private  data of others. Such comments will be redacted or removed.

• Please don't drag topics from one post to another. The content of a post is the responsibility of that author, nobody else.

• Please don't "hijack" comment threads to controversial topics.

• Please don't make the same comment in more than one thread or repeat yourself (or anyone else) in the same thread. If you accidentally double-post, don't worry, our moderators routinely try to tidy up those sorts of errors.

• Please bring meta-commentary, technical problems, etc. to this thread.

Anonymous Comments

• Anonymous comments are approved when a moderator is available to do so.  If you comment anonymously in the middle of the night, it may be 12 hours before anyone gets to it.  If you comment anonymously when the moderators happen to be sick or on vacation, it may never be seen or approved. For this reason, registering as a user (which one can do without disclosing personally identifying information) is strongly encouraged.

• Anonymous comments are not necessarily approved in chronological order.

• Comments by registered users are given more leeway with regard to the aforementioned guidelines than those of anonymous commenters.

General notes

• Please note that comments are automatically renumbered as approved anonymous comments fall into queue.  Instead of referring to a comment by number when replying to that comment, you may wish to refer to the commenter by name or by pulling a quote from that comment in italics or blockquote format.

• Please note that using the left-arrow/less-than sign initiates unintentional html and the text following it will disappear up to your next line break.  If you Unicode it and preview your comment,   go back to the previous page before submitting or the system will strip your code.

• Please note that the only html that is supported in comments is italics, bold, blockquote and links. (see link policy)

• The eye icon in the top right-hand corner of messages tells the moderator to look at that particular message. Please don't try to use the eyeball to post comments.

• Offensive or spam/commercial (website) user names may be banned.

• If you give us a non-working e-mail address when you register, please don't complain that we didn't contact you if your account is suspended.

• Please forward personal service requests such as display name changes to Antinous.

Link Policy

• Links are allowed in comments as long as they add value in the form of information, images, humor, etc. It's generally OK to link to large information sites (such as Wikipedia, IMDb), news sites (NY Times, Yomiuri Shimbun, local TV stations), general technology and interesting-stuff sites (Mental Floss, Gizmodo, Neatorama), maker sites (Etsy, Make) if they're relevant to the topic at hand.

• Links to opinion pages on news sites are okay, but we'd much rather that you coherently voice your own opinion here.

• Links to the front page of your personal blog or website are not okay (you can add this information in your user profile, instead). This helps us prevent the abuse of the comment threads for spam.  You may link to a specific post on your site if it adds to (rather than repeats) the post/thread.

• Links to commercial sites are okay if they are on-topic for the post/thread or likely to be interesting to fellow readers.

• Links to NSFW (including gore/violence) sites are okay if there's a good reason for them to be part of the discussion. As a courtesy to your fellow commenters, please label them with "NSFW," or similar.

• Mislabeled links are not okay and will be treated as spam.

• Unidentified links (urls pasted without description) are not okay.

• Links to offensive material such as racist, anti-Semitic, etc. websites, images or videos are not okay, unless the topic at hand involves a discussion of this material (example: comments around a BB post on newly-discovered early 20th century photos of Klan rallies might include links to similar collections). If the intent is simply to shock or offend, it's not okay. If the intent is to broaden discussion on a given topic with your peers, it may be okay.

• Unwelcome links will be redacted.

• Full URLs (http://...) are automatically hyperlinked, but you may also mask URLs.  Long URLs (over 75 characters) should be masked, please.

Errata and attributions

• We welcome alerts about typos, incorrect names, factual errors, and the like.

• We generally do not correct quoted text.

• Factual errors will be corrected if verifiable documentation is available. The correction is at the discretion of the post editor and may not happen immediately.

• Requests for credit or attribution may be honored if verifiable documentation is submitted. This modification is at the discretion of the author/editor of the post and may not happen immediately.

BB guestblogger Aman Ali's post about a modest bathing suit designed by Muslim women for Muslim women has sparked debate. At the time of this post, I'm also seeing that an anonymous Muslim woman has voiced her thoughts in the thread, and I encourage you to go read. She ends: "I own a burqini and LOVE IT."

Still, some non-Muslim commenters in the related thread take the position that "modest swimsuits" such as the burqini are a form of Muslim oppression against women. I think that's a silly, narrow, and factually inaccurate position.

I thought it might be helpful to point out a few related Western apparel websites:

* Stitchin' Times Women's Swimsuits
* Lilies of the Field: Modest Women's Apparel
* Simply Modest Swimwear Solutions

...and, I want to point out this series of posts about Victorian Bathing Machines, contraptions that allowed 18th century folks in England to bathe in the sea while adhering to the cultural norms of the era. Above, one proponent of modest sea-bathing in that era.

My point, such as it is: why must our first reaction to stuff like a Boing Boing post about burqinis be to judge or condemn? You may or may not choose to wear one, but the world doesn't revolve around you. I believe it is more fruitful to try and learn about and appreciate cultural differences than to get all flustered about whether or not you approve.

The commenter who loves her burqini (or any one of the smiling American customers on this "modesty swimsuit" website) does not care what you think about her garments or her beliefs. Nor should she.

Let all forms of happy mutancy prevail. (Thanks, Clayton Cubitt)

Do you use Twitter? Now you can use it to suggest links! All you need to do is follow BBSuggest and start tweeting @ it.

For example, if you're an amateur astronomer and spot a report concerning Earth's impending destruction at the hands of a planet-destroying robot the size of the moon, tweet "Unicorn chaser! [link here] @bbsuggest" -- easy! Your contributions will head into our bloggin' brains -- and then into the collective superconscioussness of the Boing Boing trend tracker, an info-dense visualization of the topics and trends hit up by BB readers.

Many thanks to Palm, which is sponsoring the tracker, as you'll doubtless notice when you visit it.

The "30 mosques in 30 days" blog documents Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq's "Ramadan journey through NYC's Muslim Community." It's a really neat project, and ends on September 19th (the last day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan). Snip from one post, each one is about a different mosque, all are delightful.

After the dhikr session, we broke our fast with dixie cups of water and prayed. The imam's recitation was incredible. This may sound hokey, but his voice sounded a lot like a perfect pitch violin, the way his voice glided seamlessly from letter to letter in his recitation. You couldn't help but close your eyes and take it all in. (...)

After a few minutes of breaking the ice, I mentioned the word "Call of Duty 4" and immediately a group of kids swarmed me. We had a blast during dinner cracking jokes. One thing I really love is seeing younger kids come to mosques because they genuinely enjoy being there, not because they are dragged by their parents. Its kids like these that make me feel good about where the Muslim community as a whole is headed in this country.

(via @ethanz via Global Voices)

From a 2001 story in New York magazine written a couple of weeks after the attacks, by David Carr:

# Everyone who comes after will never understand.
Not a new brand of New York provincialism but a cold fact. This is the place where the world seemed to end in a single morning. That day, as it was experienced here, was not televised.

# The jumpers will always be with us.
Faced with the most horrible of all human choices, the kind of riddle that grade-school children use to torture each other, many leaped rather than burn. And as the debris falling from the top anthropomorphized into human beings, people watching understood that for the time being, we were all beyond help. "I don't remember faces, just bodies jumping out," says Alexandra Rethore, a second-year analyst at Lehman Brothers. "And the girl next to me was hysterical. She kept saying, 'They're catching them, right?' I said, 'Yeah, they're catching them. Let's go.' " It was a noble act, a message to loved ones: "I'm gone but not lost. I'm still here. Find me."

18 Truths About the New New York (New York, 10-2001)

Worth reading today:
A Fortress City That Didn't Come to Be (NYT, 09-2009)
What Would 9-11 Be Like in the Age of Social Media? (LA Weekly, 09-2009)

Strangpork sez, "Boing Boing fan art created with Quartz Composer, using appropriate iconography." Nice work! Love the repurposed Boing Boing video art!

Boing Boing Iconography / Plaid TV (Thanks, Strangpork!)

San Franscisco Mayor Gavin Newsom today announced the beta launch of DataSF.org, a website designed as a clearinghouse for the City of San Francisco's public data. TechCrunch has this launch statement from the mayor. Here's a snip:

The new web site will provide a clearinghouse of structured, raw and machine-readable government data to the public in an easily downloadable format. For example, there will be updated crime incident data from the police department and restaurant inspection data from the Department of Public Health. The initial phase of the web site includes more than 100 datasets, from a range of city departments, including Police, Public Works, and the Municipal Transportation Agency.

We imagine creative developers taking apartment listings and city crime data and mashing it up to help renters find their next home or an iPhone application that shows restaurant ratings based on health code violations.

And here's a related item on a Gov 2.0, an O'Reilly/Techweb event/website devoted to topics of government IT.

It's a great idea, but I'm not clear on how much of this is a PR stunt, and how much is actually more open access than citizens had before the site launched. Perhaps those who've examined the actual data being offered can weigh in, in the BB comments.

I live in Los Angeles, and I hope the powers-that-be down here are watching. I'd love to see our city open data to more public access, and scrutiny. For instance, the LAPD crime maps website is great in concept, but poorly executed (not to mention the horrible data omissions). I can think of many services I'd like to see built with city data here in my home town. (via @laughingsquid)

Doug Rushkoff's latest piece for the Daily Beast is something of a post-mortem on the recent Anonymous vs. AT&T internet battle, with a dash of cultural anthropology and spaghetti western for good measure. Snip:

When AT&T recently blocked access to a hugely popular hackers' Web site, 4chan.org, many of us Internet old-timers froze in place. It was like one of those bad Westerns, when an arrogant newcomer sits down in the saloon, and then insults the baddest, most trigger-happy gunslinger in the county. People move to the side of the room, climb under tables, and wait for the shots to fly.

The 4Chan community--a diehard, if ever-changing assortment of the Net's most-desperate, most-anonymous, and most-wanted, well, punks--smelled censorship, top-down control, and an evil corporation trying to keep down the world's last squat for hackers. They went batshit. The site's founder posted a note telling his minion's to write and complain to AT&T, and the dog whistle having been heard, a posse called "Project AT&T," quickly formed, dedicated to revenge.

It turns out AT&T was really just trying to protect the site, and its own servers, from a typical "denial of service" attack. (Hackers create a feedback loop of pings and requests that overloads the target Web site.) AT&T's solution--to move 4Chan to a new IP address--was crude but ultimately effective. Project AT&T called a temporary truce, the bar piano started playing again, and the world went back to normal.

But the whole episode reminded me that, in spite of the Web's seemingly secure and consumer-friendly facade, there is still some Wild West left out there. And 4Chan is the OK Corral. So like a middle-aged Australian businessman going on walkabout, I decided to spend a couple of weeks embedded in this famously depraved, raucously fertile community.

The Web's Dirtiest Site (Daily Beast)

Doug's new book: Life, Inc.

What the look at left says, according to a Comic-Con facial analysis essay at trueslant.com: "How am I going to get from the Burn Notice panel discussion, which ends at 3:30 p.m. and features my man Bruce Campbell, to the can't-miss Q+A with James Cameron about Avatar, which starts at 3 p.m.? Without a time machine, I mean? Sheer force of will, that's how. But hell, it would be pretty cool if I had a time machine." (thanks, coates)

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

A friend of mine just returned to the US after a year spent teaching, spear fishing, and eating giant clams in the Marshall islands. The Marshall islands are most known for being home to Bikini Atoll site of the U.S. nuclear tests. (It is also home to the Cactus Dome, a gigantic concrete slab built to cover the enormous pile of radioactive dirt left behind.) One of the interesting things my friend told me is that the largest group of Marshallese living outside the islands can be found at the foothills of the Ozarks in Springfield Springdale, Arkansas.

The Marshallese diaspora can be traced to one man, a Marshallese man named John Moody who took a job at Tyson Chicken in the 1980s. When he returned home to the islands, he let everyone know that there were jobs available at Tyson and that he would help people get setup in Springdale. Unfortunately the Arkansas Marshallese diaspora hasn't been much of a boon to the islands, with most of the money going out of the islands and into Arkansas to help with the expenses of America. Today roughly 6,000-8,000 Marchellese live in Springdale, and at a given time fifty percent of Tyson Chicken's floor staff are from the Marshall islands. The Marshallese do not generally wear shoes inside, and work at Tyson barefoot with mesh booties covering their feet. You will also note a large number of CB antennas on cars in the area as the Marshallese tend to use CB radios, as they do on the islands, rather then cell phones to communicate.

This also reminded me of another unexpected diaspora I had read about, the large Mennonite community in Belize. Roughly 10,000 Russian Mennonites live in Belize, farming the land and living according to their religious beliefs. All of which leads me to the question, what are some other unexpected diasporas around the world? A good overview of the Marshallese in Arkansas can be found here

The Open Video Conference takes place June 19-20 in New York, and the event promises ample awesomeness. Speakers include, NYU's Clay Shirky, Harvard's Yochai Benkler, DVD Jon, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, EFF's Corynne McSherry, and many many more. I'll be delivering a keynote on Saturday afternoon.

Check out the full agenda here.

The organizers have kindly granted a discount for friends of Boing Boing: 15% off for regular/corporate attendees (you have to sign up before Monday 15th). Use this link. Entry includes access to the two-day event, lunch on both days, and a video remix dance party on Friday night! W00t.

About the Open Video Conference:

At this very moment, in 2009, we have a chance to ensure that internet video retains key characteristics of the internet at large. It's still early and things are looking good, but we need devices that play nice with each other, networks that aren't totally neutered, and playback and production tools that are low-cost (ideally free/open source) and easy to use. Developments like Hulu are interesting for the user, because they can watch what they want, when they want. But we don't want internet video to be a glorified TV on demand service. We want video to be a dynamic medium that invites clipping, archival, remix, collage, repurposing, and many other uses that are currently inhibited by law or by lack of tools.

Hope you'll join me there! - XJ

Here's the deal: Boing Boing has come into possession of some wicked footage of an anonymous Atari Computer Camp excursion that has everything you could ever want from grainy stock video: namely, yellowed and over-saturated money shots of retro-tech, and a bevy of over-eager and still-innocent pre-teens banging out BASIC to make crossword crosses out of the words Van Halen (no joke!) and gawping at the awesome limitless power and future of computers.

Here's the catch: neither of the videos -- the first clocking in at about seven minutes, and the second coming in at seven and a half -- have any sound at all.

And so: given Offworld/Boing Boing's sizable audience of chiptune/junk-tech musicians, we thought we'd throw the score open to you. If you're interested in submitting some of your music for the videos, which will be broadcast on BBtv at a later date, send an email to brandon@offworld.com with the subject line "Atari Computer Camp" and we'll dig through and select our favorites from there. Bonus points awarded for (but certainly not limited to) composing on actual 8-bit Atari tech.

See the original post on Offworld for more inspirational shots of the kids at work (and play).

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

As we all learned in preschool, Muppets are native to New York City, and once freely roamed (in a floppy, yet oddly stiff-limbed sort of way) the whole of the five boroughs. Sadly, those days have passed. But now, kindly urban planning wonks are hoping that new, livable-streets initiatives can help the good old days return.

In the early part of the 1900s, Zozos - large, furry, innocent, purple creatures - once freely roamed New York City's streets, and were seen frequently mingling among its denizens and enjoying the public realm. But with the advent of the automobile their numbers slowly dwindled, until the 1930s when sightings became rare and they were thought to go extinct. But now thanks to a burgeoning livable streets movement and a marked improvement in public spaces in NYC, Zozo sightings have been reported. World-renowned crypto-zoologist Donald Druthers has convinced us to document the facts - and yes, it looks like Zozos could be making a comeback! See the evidence for yourself."

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

The most intriguing, and hard to pin down, questions I've gotten from readers over the past few days have revolved around overblown crises, fear, and why news organizations (and the public) seem to <3 both those things. People cite SARS and the 2006 bird flu publicity blitz, and wonder why the media is so quick to turn into Marvin the Paranoid Android, jumping in every five seconds with, "So this is it, we're all going to die."

First off, it seems pretty clear to me that this phenomenon does happen. While there are some things the media gets unfairly beaten up over, this isn't one of them. As Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University's College of Communication and former editor of the Miami Herald told the Washington Post this week,

We [meaning the media] have a tendency to reach for the apocalyptic, but the apocalypse hasn't reached us yet."

Obviously, some of this has to do with the format of a modern 24-hour, non-stop news cycle. Unlike 30 years ago, when your news came in fits and spurts, it's now expected to be a continuous stream. But more information doesn't necessarily come along to fill that increased news hole.
If you're CNN, you've long ago committed yourself to the stream. It's a little late for Wolf Blitzer to glance down at his watch, shrug his shoulders, and say, "So that's all we know for today, folks. See ya in the morning." I think that the unconscious pressures served up by that dilemma have been the cause of EXTREME!News (WOOOooo! Rock n' Roll!) at least as often as any temple-fingered, evil-y cackling, calculated push for ratings.

But I've always thought this wasn't just a media thing. The feedback loop of positive ratings that tells CNN to keep freaking you the frack out isn't based only on them manipulating you into being captivated. As any fan of zombies can tell you, average people are going around offering a hand to the apocalypse at least as often as their heavily made-up TV news counterparts. So what gives? Why are we so fascinated with (and almost damn-near excited by) the prospect of civilization collapsing any....minute...now?

For a good theory on that, I naturally had to turn to America's #1 Most Trusted News Source...and Philip Alcabes, a man who is surely feeling a strange mix of guilt and elation over the oddly fortuitous timing of his new book, Dread

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Philip Alcabes
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

I'm interested in y'all's thoughts on this.

For the record: I do not think swine, excuse me, H1N1 flu is just a toothless scare. This really is a virus with pandemic potential and, as has been said, you should be concerned...but not freaked out. I don't think there's a lot of point in "what ifing" this into the death of civilization.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

I know, I know. The recession blows. The job you may soon lose* is stressful and unpleasant. And beards are more popular these days. But before you abandon your fast-paced lifestyle for a quieter, more-cow-filled one, I recommend consulting my book, Be Amazing. There are a few things you need to think about.

1) Can You Tell the Difference Between Amish and Mennonite?
You're never going to endear yourself to your new neighbors if you can't tell 'em apart from their theological cousins down the road. Historically the older of the two sects, Mennonites believed in plain, unadorned living and adult baptism, making them not all that different from the other Christian groups that popped up in Germany and Switzerland in the 17th century. But, around 1693, one of their members, a guy named Jakob Amman, started to get a little rowdy. Amman traveled around the countryside preaching a more hard-line version of Mennonism that called for, among other things, a return to traditional clothing, avoidance of worldly grooming trends like moustaches, mandatory un-cut beards, and the public shunning of excommunicated church members. Taking their name from Amman's, his new followers called themselves "Amish."

Over the next few hundred years, both groups did their fair share of theological off-shooting. Today, there are numerous sub-groups of both Mennonite and Amish, making it difficult to pin them down with generalities. However, in most cases, the easiest way to tell the two apart is to look for a family car--most Mennonites drive them, most Amish don't. But, just because they enjoy a faster mode of travel doesn't mean the Mennonites are ostentatious about their automobiles. In fact, it's common practice to cover any Detroit-installed chrome with black paint, just to let the world know they aren't trying to be flashy.

2) Do You Know the Best Place to Move?
Obviously, your city digs will have to go, but contrary to popular belief, the geographic epicenter of Amish life is not Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Turns out, several counties in east-central Ohio are actually home to the largest Amish community in the world--population 29,000, and growing. Each Amish family has an average of 7 children, so their numbers have seemingly doubled every 20 years since outsiders started keeping records in the 1940s.

3) Can You Find Where the In-Crowd Hangs Out?
Earn your dirt-road cred by taking a shopping trip to Spector's. This department store in Middlefield, Ohio caters to Amish customers. Since 1937, they've dealt in things like quilting supplies, fabric, and the other necessities of Amish life that can't be easily made on the farm. And with several locations around the state, it may well be the world's first Amish-centric chain store.

4) Will You Be Able to Buy a Farm?
It's harder than it sounds. There are two things working against you. First, that whole population growth issue means that every generation sees even more young men in need of a farm of their own. The other problem, however, comes from the outside. Across the country, the rural areas the Amish inhabit are rapidly becoming exurbs, and what was once farmland is being sold to make way for subdivisions and Wal-Marts--making raw land, even when it is available, prohibitively expensive. In Lancaster County, for instance, 100 acres cost as much as $1 million in 2007. Things may be a bit easier now, though, what with the bursting of the real-estate bubble. So, if you can get your hands on some good farmland, do be ready to build a lot of barns. You probably already know that Amish construct their own, and their neighbors', in massive 24-hour barn raising parties. But, because many Amish groups don't believe in using "worldly" devices like lightning rods, those hand-built barns often end up having to be re-hand-built.

The Electric Amish really are a band, and you should listen to their music.

*ETA: Thanks for the heads-up on my grammar brain-fart. It's Saturday. My brain takes the day off today.

Sal sez, "Three years after Cory's novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town,' somebody actually made a router that does what the fictional mesh-network routers from the book could do. The Fonera 2.0 made by FON, (the Spanish WiFi sharing people) is released today (barring the occasional retail glitch) for 45 euros. It comes complete with OLPC's mesh-networking system. You can plug it into Ethernet or a 3G dongle. Share your bandwidth with any other router in range that implements OLPC's mesh-networking standard. The Open WRT software is designed to run on just about any hardware so you do not actually have to buy a Fonera to join the fun. The software is based on Open WRT, which in turn is based on the Linksys WRTG54G firmware which the community forced Cisco to open-source (since it made use of Busybox + Linux Kernel). As a result of this we now have a router far more featured than the most expensive access point you can get in the shops, costing a fraction of the price and based on entirely free firmware. With a few of these we could all build community networks like the one from Cory's book."

Fonera 2.0 (Thanks, Salim!)

Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger

Soon, I'll be taping an interview with Charles Hugh Smith and posting it here at Boing Boing. In the meantime, Charles has posted Chapter 2 of his new (free) e-book, "Survival+" at his Of Two Minds blog, which I encourage you all to visit daily. Many of you reading this are starting to wonder what society will look like: in a few months, a year from now, five years from now and Charles Hugh Smith is an indispensable thinker and tour guide for what we should be preparing for. I believe that he's one of the sharpest, smartest --and sanest-- writers around today, and I enjoy batting ideas around with him corresponding over email, some of which makes it into his more informal columns. I'm pleased and grateful to have a forum here at Boing Boing where I can help promote his work.

Some recent Charles Hugh Smith essays:

Survival+ Chapter 1

The Dematerialization of America

The Return of Big Government and the (de facto) Welfare State

Has Capitalism Failed?

The Road to National Insolvency

What's Obvious III: Some Transformations Will Be Positive

End of An Era: What's Not Coming Back

Of Two Minds: An Interview with Charles Hugh Smith

Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger

A few hours ago I was interviewed by Douglas Rushkoff on his new WFMU radio show, The Media Squat. Also on the program was Miriam Raymon from The Financial Times. Topics include the financial crisis (is there anything else to talk about?), local currencies, Karl Marx being trendy again, Crass, punk rock, counter culture, Boing Boing being the most successful underground publication in history, socialism in the US and of course, we end with the financial crisis.

iTunes link, Stream from WFMU.org

I am moving to Eugene, Oregon, because I am in love with a girl.

I'm also in love with my dog Porter who, as an English Bulldog, has a not-impossible chance of dying in the cargo hold a jet (even one heated and pressurized; bullies have breathing issues). So I'm gonna lash him in to the passenger seat of a rented minivan, test out my new awkwardly large Pioneer GPS unit, and bop across the country from Brooklyn listening to my first audiobook ever. (Ender's Game, which I've never read. I know.)

Along the way, I'll be doing the things one does when hauling ass on the interstates—gulping coffee, then slathering umeboshi plum paste on my teeth to try to counteract the acidity; asking truckers where to find the best chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, America's perfect food; falling asleep in the mountains to die in flames at the bottom of a ravine, my organs shimmering on my outsides like a grotesque Nudie Cohn suit—and I'll be recording them all on the video machines.

I have to cut through Kansas City to drop off an old Kustom amp that my buddy Jason had to leave when he moved back home. And I hope to be rolling into Oregon by the weekend. But along the way, I've got a little time to sightsee and visit. What should I see? Want to meet up?

Thought I forgot Tweet Week? Well, I sort of did, but it's because I've been busy today getting ready for my move to Eugene, Oregon. (More on that tomorrow!) But in the meantime, let me give out some more stuffs. Up first is a NeatReceipts, a scanner designed specifically to get your documents, receipts, and business cards in order and slurped into your PC or Mac. (I've actually got one in here for review, but this whole moving thing has got me in the weeds.)

Tonight I'll also give away a SleepTracker Pro watch that monitors your night thrashings and wakes you at the most opportune time for restfulness. (I did review that and liked it quite a bit.)

Haven't put in your entries for Tweet Week yet? Here's how: Follow us on Twitter and you'll be entered to win. Here are our accounts again; Each follow is an entry: • @joeljohnson; @xenijardin; @beschizza; @brandonnn; @doctorow; @johnbattelle; @frauenfelder

(By the way, it's been awesome to get to know so many new people over the last few days. I am a very lucky person to be able to get to know so many quick and clever people. The lesson: It's easy to make friends when you give away prizes!)

We're starting off today's Tweet Week giveaways with a bang: I'm going to pick one of you to win some panties from Dirty Dolls, a just-launched lingerie company that "specializes in catering to the needs of voluptuous women." (Bless them.) Founder Courtney Leigh Newman is giving us two items, the Organic Cha Cha Cheeky Short [pictured] and the Organic Thrilling Thong. (Which, despite first glance, is a technically SFW image. Subtle!)

On deck for later today: Five Didj handheld gaming systems for kids from LeapFrog, plus three games for each. (Unintentional awesome: We give away videocameras, then lingerie, then kids' toys. Narrative is a powerful form.) We've also got a couple of Bluetooth headsets from iVoice, the Diamond-X and GX7.

How do you get a chance to win this stuff? I've explained the details already, but in short: if you follow the Boing Boing editors on Twitter this week, you have a chance to win fabolas prizes. Here are our accounts again; Each follow is an entry: • @joeljohnson; @xenijardin; @beschizza; @brandonnn; @doctorow; @johnbattelle; @frauenfelder

Do you like stuff? We like to give you the stuffs. So here's how we're going to do it: Every time you follow one of the Boing Boing editors' Twitter feed, we get an email. We'll select from those emails at random and award a prize. If you've won, I'll let you know by direct message on Twitter. We'll do this all week or until we're out of prizes. (That's how I getcha! So at the least, you should follow us this week before you leave en masse next Monday.)

For each editor you follow you'll gain another entry, so if you're already following some of us you can still get a crack at winning by following another editor. (We started collecting entry emails since yesterday and will put all of those in the hat.)

That's it. Easy. We get followers to squawk at about our bunions, you get stuff. I'll be putting up a post a day until we have all the prizes distributed. As befits a Boing Boing contest, we've got a bunch of different stuff: a guitar; a videophone; some random iPod and iPhone cases; lingerie (!); and what I'll be starting with today, three of these custom-printed Flip Mino HD camcorders from CafePress. (One per winner, of course.) More on the prizes as we go along.

Here are our accounts. Collect them all!:
• @joeljohnson (Boing Boing Gadgets)
• @xenijardin (Boing Boing/Video)
• @beschizza (Boing Boing Gadgets)
• @brandonnn (Boing Boing Offworld)
• @doctorow (Boing Boing)
• @johnbattelle (Boing Boing)
• @frauenfelder (Boing Boing)

(We always have questions about if these contests are okay for readers outside the U.S. or not. Because most of these prizes are being shipped direct from the companies, I can't always promise that they'll be able to be shipped to everyone, but I'll do my best to work it out if it comes up. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions.)