Oogly says,

On Saturday, The New York Times mis-printed the CERN Large Hadron Collider as being the "Large HARDON Collider".

I have a web site tracking the proliferation of this Sopranos-worthy malapropism. It's funny when a fat New Jersey criminal doesn't know any better, but when the NYT and serious scientific journals make a Freudian slip, it's hilarious.

Link, mildly NSFW.

I wonder if this runs on DONG Energy.

This was the lesson I learned on Sunday evening, during a dinner + Mighty Boosh viewing party with a few friends. Noted grossout pastry expert Andrea James baked the cake, and also takes the cake, for ick-out ingenuity and an improvised recipe that was nilla-wafery, icing-frostily delicious. It was even vegetarian! Andrea explains:

Not vegan - has eggs (chicken haploids) and dairy (cow sequeezins). But no animal products derived from a dead animal. Pudding, which many recipes for this cake contain, has blood and/or connective tissue in it (gelatin). You could do it vegan, by using a vegan cake recipe and vegan wafers, if you wanted.

Above, iPhone snapshots I took (1 + 2 + 3) before we dug in. I thought the photo would elicit more LOLs if I placed the cake on the floor next to actual catfood dishes. The dessert was as yummy as the photos are abhorrent. Note the painstaking attention to reality evidenced by the absorbent (sugar) blue sprinkles! Also the melted tootsie-roll cat doodoos! I could not bring myself to eat them, for I am as much of a fan of this particular candy as I am of poo verité.

Anyhoo. Here are more photos and a HOWTO, from Andrea. Step one: buy a fresh cat litter box...

Jordan Crane's beautiful "Little Pink Pearl" is a 26" x 40" hand-pulled silkscreen print, limited to 53 prints. Link

Dan Shapiro says: "Item #3 on this page consists of an attractive woman smearing superglue on her eyelid, then repeatedly poking herself. The goal is to create a western-style eyelid "crease", and the video is just creepy." Link

I took this photo of a happy front yard in Ojai, CA, a couple of weeks ago. Click photo to enlarge.

Clay Roe says:

The podcast we produce, "Ask Mr. Biggs!", is a fictitious, small town radio call-in talk show.

A simple concept, to be sure. But there's a fun little twist.

Caller audio comes from real calls lifted from real talk radio shows. We remove the original host from the conversation, re-arrange the parts a bit, and insert Mr. Biggs as the new "host." The results are very seamless and comical, but not in ways you might think. We try not to go for easy laughs, but rather for a more subtle, nuanced, character-driven humor.

The podcast is produced by a couple of audio nuts, so the sound quality of the show is as good as you'll hear anywhere. Very clean and realistic. The calls are integrated with great care and precision. In fact, listeners to the podcast often never realize that the calls have been taken from other un-related sources.

It's this reason why we recently decided to lift our skirt, and expose the fact that these callers are from REAL talk radio broadcasts. You can't write this stuff. You can, however, edit and switch around what they're saying to make them even more unusual.

Link

Dav says: "The Feds have just banned IBM as a vendor, across the board: '"IBM and its subsidiaries are barred from receiving any new government contracts, new orders under existing contracts or purchase card transactions, according to a March 28 e-mail the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Procurement Operations circulated to procurement officials.'"

The ban seems to stem from "improperly obtained information about a contract [IBM] was bidding on from EPA employees." Link

IBM is down just 1% in after hours trading.

Pink Tentacle has a nice gallery of old Japanese drawings of heads that look like faces right-side-up or up-side-down.

Joge-e, or “two-way pictures,” are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down. Large numbers of these playful prints were produced for mass consumption in the 19th century, and they commonly featured bizarre faces of deities, monsters or historical figures (including some from China). Only a few examples of original joge-e survive today.

Link

The Collector's Quest blog has an illustrated list of "Thirteen Retro Kitsch Items That Likely Didn’t Survive For You To Collect." Shown here: "Dolls displayed in a dead tree." Link (Via Hang Fire Books)

Magnum Photos has samples of Dennis Stock's stunning photos from his 1966-67 trip through California. Link | Stock's book: Made in the USA (Via NotCot)

Strephon Taylor liked the Bed Bug Murder label I posted about a while back. He also digs William S. Burroughs, whose bug fascination and experiences as an exterminator appear throughout his novels. So inspired by both, Taylor created a fantastic Mugwumps Bug Powder t-shirt!
Link

Previously on BB:
• Bed Bug Murder vintage label Link

It being the tenth anniversary of Mozilla, Jamie "Founder of Mozilla Project" Zawinski has declared today "Run Some Old Web Browsers Day!" He's mirroring a bunch of lovely old pages from "home.mcom.com, the Internet Web Site of the Mosaic Communications Corporation" for your antique browser pleasure.

* Trivia Question #1: Do you remember why home1.mcom.com through home32.mcom.com exist?

* Trivia Question #2: Do you remember the behavioral difference the browsers exhibited when they were talking to a Netscape web server?

* Trivia Question #3: When was the <HYPE> tag implemented, and what was its origin?

* I had originally planned on re-hosting these web sites on an SGI Indy running Mosaic Netsite Commerce Server, just for maximal comedic value... and to see how long it took before someone Øwned it, since there must be someone out there who still remembers how to launch an assault on Irix 5.3. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible for political reasons explained below.

Link

Doran sez, "Flickr user el_rebelde has created a small but wonderful set of images from the Big Dipper roller coaster at Chippewa Lake Park, Ohio. His notes say it was built in the 1920's and ended service in 1978." Haunting pix indeed. Link (Thanks, Doran!)

Here's a fun Flickr set of found photos from the 1980s showing a group of friends doing some blow and having a blast. Flickr user foundphotoslj writes: "I found these in a red photo album marked 'Darlene' at a swap meet in Huntington Beach, California."
Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

UPDATE: The majority of the photos have been removed.

Over at the Wired Danger Room blog, Noah Shachtman has an item about a report produced in 2006 for the U.S. Special Operations Command with suggestions that the military consider "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."

Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll.

Link (image: Peter Starman / WIRED)

Science News has a good cover story this week about how chefs are learning more about the science of food to make more interesting and tasty dishes. According to the article, "food science" has traditionally been an industrial pursuit leading to Spam, processed cheese, and other "foodstuffs." The molecular gastronomy trend is changing that though. From Science News:

"Twenty years ago there was no science of the soufflé, béarnaise, chocolate mousse, or custard," says chemist and chef Hervé This (pronounced Tiss), of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris...

The relationship between scientists and chefs, or lack thereof, troubled the late physicist Nicholas Kurti. At a presentation for the Royal Society of London in 1969 he lamented, "I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés."

Kurti's now famous lecture, titled "The Physicist in the Kitchen," was a turning point, says Vega, author, with Job Ubbink, of a forthcoming review on molecular gastronomy in Trends in Food Science & Technology. "It was very impactful on the scientific community." The lecture was peppered with demonstrations by Kurti and his daughter Camilla. They used a vacuum to remove water vapor from meringue and presented a pork loin tenderized with pineapple juice, which contains the protein-splitting enzyme bromelin.

Another milestone, says Vega, was the publication in 1984 of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which explained physics and chemistry for the home cook.

Link to Science News, Link to buy "On Food And Cooking"

Seven members of a Christian cult in Russia have left the cave they had holed up in since Novemeber. Apparently more than two dozen cult members are still inside the cave, located 400 miles southeast of Moscow, waiting for the world to end next month. Part of the cave's roof has already collapsed. According to the BBC News, a priest "specialising in apocalyptic literature" is on the scene talking with them through a ventilation shaft. From the BBC News:

The seven women (who emerged Saturday) were allowed to leave with cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov after he was brought to the scene to negotiate...

Kuznetsov, who calls himself Fr Pyotr, declared himself a prophet a number of years ago and has attracted followers in Russia and Belarus.

He is thought to have ordered his followers into the cave but did not join them.

Link

Treehugger takes a look at clothes libraries.

We love libraries here at TreeHugger. They’re a perfect example of a Product Service System (PSS) where you get the service of an item without having to own it and all the cost and upkeep time that requires. In the past we’ve discussed Toy Libraries and Tool Libraries. But it seems we’ve forgotten to mention Clothing Libraries.

The ones I’m familiar with are like the Belmont Clothes Library in Western Australia. A volunteer run organisation with over 1,500 fashion garments on its books it loans out, for free, male and female apparel to unemployed people, so they can look smart for crucial job interviews.

Link

Longtime BB readers may remember Ji Lee's fantastic 2005 "Bubble Project" where he stuck blank speech bubbles all over signs and billboards in NYC. Ji just emailed me about his fun new project:

People decorate their walls and floors, but most of them overlook their ceilings. It's such a waste of vast space. So I started to install miniature parallel worlds on the ceilings upon commission. It's fun to watch the reactions of people who after a while discover the parallel universe. They always smile. I think it makes their mind tickle.

I have installed skiing slopes, disaster scenes and art galleries. The theme of the scene is determined by the combination of the commissioner's interest, architectural elements of the ceiling and Ji Lee's suggestions.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Speech bubble sticker gallery Link

The Defaced President pool on Flickr is a hoot. From left, tonx's "A Lincoln Sane" and marabou2005's "Lincoln Mirror Mirror Spock."
Link (Thanks, Mike Love!)

Issue 5 of Flurb, Rudy Rucker's wonderful, bizarre science fiction ezine, is out. Here's Rudy's description: "This issue features a Beat SF story of Rudy Rucker's in the form of letters from William Burroughs in Tangiers, excerpts of John Shirley's lost cyberpunk novel Black Glass, Terry Bisson's hilarious anti-mundane story 'Captain Ordinary,' a Lovecraftian novella by Lavie Tidhar, and some amazing pieces by new SF writers."

One of the other big payoffs in publishing a zine is that every now and then I get a submission that really flips my lid. "Cathedrals," is Alex Hardison's first publication, but I think he's to the purple born. Postcyberpunk!

I was vaguely annoyed by the Mundane SF movement last year --- to the point where I wrote a blog entry attacking it. But my fellow-Kentuckian Terry Bisson, always one for the main chance, went ahead and wrote a story "Captain Ordinary" that he thought might appear in Interzone's Mundane SF issue. But Terry's sense of humor is such that, from a sober-sided editor's point of view, it's as if he were to walk into the office, guffaw, pull down his zipper and piss on the desk. A wonderfully refreshing piece.

Link

See also:
FLURB: Rudy Rucker's new literary zine Cory's "I, Row-Boat" live on Flurb
Rudy Rucker's science fiction webzine Flurb #2 is out Rudy Rucker's science fiction webzine Flurb #3 is out

Boing Boing tv received a classified video message from the People’s Republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf -- a message encoded in an almost-obsolete communist LOLcat cypher.

BBtv's terror analysts have decoded this video for you, dear viewer, and we present it in entirety today. Our encryption advisors from monochrom believe the two men in the movie might be His Excellency the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf — Nikita Chrusov — and secretary Nicolai Jossif Malkin.

WARNING: the last few seconds of this terrorist missive contain not-yet-decrypted data that some viewers may find disturbing. Tighten your tinfoil beanies, and lock down your wigs.

Link to Boing Boing tv blog post, with discussion and downloadable video.

Previously on BBtv:
Nikita Chrusov of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf crashes Disney party at ETech

UPDATE: The Soviets respond. Agent moloshnikov from People’s Republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf says:

Comrades all over the world!

I still shiver! My heart is filled with universal anger! Something unspeakable happened!

Again, the mainstream online media outlet “Boing Boing TV” reports about the diplomatic visit of His Excellency Ambassador Nikita Chrusov to the “United States”! Just a friendly vacation trip! And they label it as “Terrorist Training!” What an unforgivable insult!

Vienna net-art-pranksters Monochrom have just posted their annual call-for-submissions for Arse Elektronika, "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction."

Arse Elektronika 2008 -- "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?" -- will take place at San Francisco's Ft. Mason Center. September 25 thru 28, 2008.

Taking up where the successful conference in autumn 2007 left off, this year's Arse Elektronika stands under the motto "future" -- and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year's conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.

The genre of the "fantastic" is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.

In order to intelligently contextualize the abundance of queries that are involved here, this year's conference will be structured around three day-long discussion panels, each devoted to a specific theme. The impossibility of fitting many of these issues and relationships into such neat categorizations is not only accepted, but also encouraged.

Link

Scumbag griefers defaced an epilepsy message-board with strobing graphics and redirects to animations that were intended to trigger seizures in people with epilepsy:

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she "locked up."

"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."

After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She'd lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible.

Link

An unknown artist fashions animals out of plastic bags and fastens them to subway gratings, and the hot air inflates them and makes them puff up and wiggle.

The story we heard at dinner tonight is that there's an artist who's been making these animals out of discarded plastic bags. He (or she) ties the bags to the ventilation grates above the subway lines so that when the subway rushes through underneath, the animal jumps up and springs to life.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Retired construction worker Wally Wallington of Flint, Michigan is moving one-ton concrete blocks over a ton each by himself without using pulleys or any mechanical equipment. He's reconstructing Stonehenge singlehandedly. Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Here's a video-game that sounds like hours of bittersweet fun:

The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game...

Buying the full version of The Graveyard adds only one feature, the possibility of death. The full version of the game is exactly the same as the trial, except, every time you play she may die.

Link (Thanks, Kris!)

Yesterday, I met my friend (and editor) Patrick Nielsen Hayden for breakfast at Spitalfields Market, our local Sunday market here in London. Spitalfields has been around for centuries, and it's just undergone a massive, years-long renovation. If you ask me, this has not been entirely successful, removing a lot of the market's charm, but there are some lovely grace notes, like the cartoony architectural flourishes in the joists that support the glass roof.

Just as we were arriving at Spitalfields, I got a call from Patrick: "You won't believe what just happened: I was taking a photo of the market and a security guard came up and tried to take my camera away and delete the picture!" Apparently, this guy had invented a new Spitalfields policy prohibiting photography (some of the stalls have had this policy for a long time, including -- hilariously -- a stall that sells photos of Banksy graffiti) and was planning on enforcing it by taking away people's property -- without a warrant or badge, without any kind of posted signage.

Here in London, you get photographed upwards of 300 times a day, by every junior sneak, pecksniff, and petty CCTV operator who can afford a cheap little camera. The cameras often fail to help catch criminals, and they certainly don't deter desperate muggers and junkies and stupid drunken kids. All the law seems to require by way of consumer protection is a sign saying, "You're being filmed."

You can be photographed again and again, but heaven help you if you take a picture back. Your person isn't deserving of any serious privacy protection, but buildings, t-shirts, shop-windows, and market stalls are all entitled to unlimited protection from having their precious photons stolen.

I've bought plenty of stuff at Spitalfields over the years -- like I say, we go every weekend -- but if this turns out to be the new official policy, consider me out. People have been taking pictures at the market since cameras were invented (the town hall archives are stuffed filled with old box-camera shots of Spitalfields during the Jubilee) and any market that doesn't welcome my camera doesn't deserve my money, either.

Generally speaking, I love being a Londoner, but when my fellow residents decide that the best response to terror isn't keep calm and carry on, but rather "When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." it's downright embarrassing -- like being a Bostonian or something.

Taken at Spitalfields Market, 9:20 AM, Sunday, March 30, 2008. I liked the cartoony cloud-trail decorations seemingly supporting the left side of the ceiling, and the fact that the spire of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church Spitalfields was so dramatically framed in the transparent roof.

Right after I took the shot, though, a large security guard walked directly up to me. “We don’t take pictures in here.” “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” he replied, reaching for my camera. “We’ll have to delete that.”

“No you don’t, and I’m leaving the market right now,” I said, walking away briskly. And as I did so, I swear to God, I heard him get out his walkie-talkie and radio for backup. You can’t be too careful with these terrorist photographers.

Out on Brushfield Street, wondering if I was about to be wrestled to the ground by Spitalfield commandos, I phoned the people I’d come to the market to meet for breakfast in the first place. “Hey, Cory,” I said. “You’re not going to believe this, but…”

Link

If you're thinking of getting Circuit City to install your new GPS in your car, think again -- this poor guy had $12,119 worth of damage done to his Civic by the Circuit City contractor (Honda's declared it an undrivable fire-hazard), and now Circuit City is telling him it's not their problem, he needs to take up his beef with their bureaucratic third-party insurance company.

Circuit City caused $12,119 worth of damage to VTECnical's 2007 Honda Civic while trying to install a Pioneer AVIC Z2 navigation system. Honda later declared VTECnical's car a fire hazard and told him it was unsafe to drive. Despite destroying the car's heater ducts, stock wiring harness, and dashboard, Circuit City has refunded only $3,190, and insists that VTECnical speak exclusively to their third-party insurer.

Link

Here's the latest installment in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: this amazing dress made from thrift-store suit-coats, seen yesterday at Junky Styling in the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane in London. Junky has a knack for taking the most generic, bulk-available charity shop clothes and layering and mixing them to make the most extraordinary things. I have an overcoat from there that's so cool that people stop me on the street and ask me where I got it. We always stop in on a Sunday to see what's new there, and we're never disappointed: one week it's a ballgown made from Kiehl's Pharmacy aprons, the next it's a scarf made from the sleeves of an otherwise unlovely suit-coat. Link

Lisa at TokyoMango's spotted a disturbing dog-rental service in Tokyo:

Puppy the World is a dog rental store. You can choose small, medium, or large breeds and rent them for $19/hr, or $100 a night. They have everything from chihuahuas to labs to border collies to papillons—and you get a 5% discount at the cafe if you rent one! You can't lose....

Every day, they have about 10-15 dogs in circulation. The dogs rotate in and out of service every few days. The ones in service stay on-site in a kennel, and the rest are all kept in nearby facility on their days off. The average dog works for about 5-6 years before they retire. Once they retire, they go to a facility in Chiba where they "rest." I wasn't exactly sure what they meant by rest, but I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it means they get to romp in huge meadows with other retirees.

Link

BB pal Vann Hall spotted this great headline at The Register. It's no joke, either. Walter L Wagner and Luis Sancho fear that firing up the new Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that might suck the Earth into a parallel universe. So they've sued to delay the LHC from being switched on. "And people claim we live in a too-litigious society!" says Vann. Link

There are many things to like about this 1972 Ideal toy commercial:

1. The Jean-Jacques Perrey background music.

2. The black set.

3. The announcer's voice.

4. The name of the toy: Bing Bang Boing.

5. The toy itself, which is a brightly-colorted DIY Rube Goldberg kit with lots of fun parts that you can set up in different configurations.

It's got to be a Marvin Glass creation. (Thanks, Richard!)

I've got no idea what the story is with this awesome CGI Flash woman, except that she appears to have been created by a Brazilian design firm, and that she has made every person I've shown her to say, "Oh. My. God." Link (via Kottke)

The New York Times has a loving profile of Mad magazine idiot gang member, Al Jaffee, who at age 87, recently completed his 400th Mad Fold-in!

“When he brings in fold-ins now, a lot of times, it’s, ‘Geez, this guy’s painting better than ever,’ ” said John Ficarra, Mad’s editor.

And Sam Viviano, the art director, seems in awe of Mr. Jaffee’s old-school technique. “I think part of the brilliance of the fold-in is lost on younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on the computer,” he said. “It’s matching the colors and keeping the sense of what exists at two levels, the original image and the folded-in image. We’ve never actually known anyone else who could do that.”

Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds.

“I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

“The computer would make it so much simpler,” he added. “But I think I’m going to remain a dinosaur.”

Link | Interactive Fold-In gallery (Thanks, Coop!)

Porsupah, "You might recall the 'OS-tan' series of manga style characters depicting various operating systems. Here's a similar concept, portraying the various countries surrounding Afghanistan similarly cutely: meet Afuganisu-tan, Kyrgyz-tan, Pakisu-tan, Meriken, and more. Each strip offers a little adventure for the characters, whilst the accompanying text explains some more of the history of the region's countries, rulers, would-be conquerors, and myriad factions." Link (Thanks, Porsupah!)

Mike sends us this: "YouTube video of the oldest TV station sign-offs in existence: KTUL-TV in Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 18, 1979. Backing music is the jazz/lounge classic, 'Dreamsville,' from Henry Mancini's 'Music from Peter Gunn' soundtrack album." Link (Thanks, Mike!)

Jake sez, "Omnisio allows you to string together any number of YouTube videos, with arbitrary start and end points. This is great for making funny mashups, etc, but to me it's true potential lies in the fact that it obsoletes forever the aggravating hunt through the related links for the next part of a multipart youtube. Just upload them, string them together in Omnisio, and post a link in the first part's description." Link (Thanks, Jake!)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Steampunk mixes! Link

Someone posted this magnificent concept painting of Epcot in the Boing Boing Gadgets Flickr pool. More details and links at BBG. Link

I was in a children's store today and my friend pointed out these doll sets from Plan Toys, a company that actually makes very good toys. The choices are "Asian Family," um, "Ethnic Family," and, er, "Doll Family." According to the Plan Toys site, there's also a "Modern Doll Family" available of oddly-dressed white folk. Link to Plan Toys, Link to larger photo (Thanks, Mike Messinger!)

The much-ballyhooed opening of Heathrow's £4 billion Terminal 5 has been a debacle. British Airways has canceled 208 flights since Thursday, and has "stranded" between 15,000 and 20,000 bags. Area hotels are crammed with stuck BA passengers and are gouging on pricing, prompting BA to lift its stingy (and possibly illegal) £100 limit on hotels for stuck passengers. This is the terminal with the that just cancelled its crackpot fingerprinting procedure -- passengers are fingerprinted at check-in and at boarding.

And lest you think you might try to get there with a change of underwear by going hand-baggage only, think again. BA's baggage-checkers are being serious rules-lawyers about hand-luggage limits, forcing passengers to check hand-bags that are less than an inch oversize, dooming the luggage to the nonfunctional baggage system at T5.

On one of the delayed planes, passengers on flight BA0662 to Larnaca were held on the tarmac for some four hours before leaving at 1205 GMT.

One, Elizabeth Drury, told the BBC the captain said they would be leaving without any luggage.

They had been told this was because some of the bags initially put on the plane had not been screened properly.

"The whole experience has been meltdown," she said.

A group of school pupils on flight BA285 to San Francisco also said they were told by the airline that their bags were not on board and they could choose whether or not to travel. They were bound for a skiing trip.

"It could ruin it because we are scheduled to start skiing tomorrow," said one schoolgirl, Natalie Bakhurst.

Link

See also:
Heathrow Terminal 5 to fingerprint domestic passengers
Heathrow Terminal 5: Electricity-free no-laptop zone?

Espen sez, "I thought you would appreciate this cartoon that explains the difference between covariation and causality. In English, the caption is 'During a convivial gathering there is talk of the unhygienic aspect of using galoshes. One of those present chips in: "Yes, I've also noticed this. Every time I've woken up with my galoshes on, I've had a headache."'" Link (Thanks, appliedabstractions)

New York Times writer John Schwartz took a joyride in a new NASA lunar vehicle that sounds like it ought to come with a Garth Brooks CD:

IT turns on a dime and parallel-parks like a dream. On the downside, it’s a little pricey (at $2 million or so) and its top speed is a pokey 15 miles an hour. Still, there’s a lot to like about the concept car taking shape here at the Johnson Space Center.

Did I say car? The new moon buggy conceived by space center engineers is anything but a car or a buggy. Its official name is Chariot, and this, my friends, is a truck. A heavy duty workhorse of a truck.

“America basically created the truck,” said Lucien Junkin, the chief engineer on the project. And so, he says, why not take a truck to the moon if NASA, as planned, takes humans back, as early as 2020?

It is a beguiling idea, especially as realized in a vehicle infused with the lessons learned from the Apollo-era moon missions and the subsequent success of the Spirit and Opportunity robotic rovers on Mars. This model took a year to build. It looks kind of like what you’d get if a monster truck had a ménage à trois with a flatbed trailer and a medieval siege engine....

Link to full story, with more great photos, and additional links. Image: Erin Trieb for The New York Times

In this video, an elephant is led to an easel, picks up a paintbrush, and paints a picture of an elephant holding a flower. Or at least, that's what appears to happen -- there are lots of cuts in the video and it's hard to say what's really going on. Fake or real, it's a great way to spend 8 minutes. Link

See also: Elephant artists

Carolina Botero of the Colombian Creative Commons project writes in to tell us about a new, rush-rush project to change the Colombian school curriculum to emphasise, a one-sided, protectionist view of copyright, without reference to the values to Columbian society arising from sharing, fair use, and the public domain. The clock is ticking, and Colombians need to get involved now before this becomes policy:

A comprehensive reading of the document suggests that the Colombian state is focusing its efforts and resources into developing our own version of "Captain Copyright" that will give educational recommendations for children, academics and public officials and will likely produce a surveillance state.

The document's main argument is that our country's intellectual property development relies solely on "protection and enforcement". Such a conclusion is based on the fact that the revenue for intellectual property related industries is higher in developed countries than in ours. The document has absolutely no references or background research, achievements and implications of recent approaches such as Free Software, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Business, etc.

Link (Thanks, Carolina!)

In this week's CBC Search Engine podcast, there's a hilarious interview with "Joey Chaos," a teenaged new-wave goth rocker who's upset that some roboticists in Texas "stole" his name and look for their robot. The Search Engine folks point out that there are plenty of other Joey Chaoses, even bringing one on the line. Link, MP3 Link

(Disclosure: I am a paid columnist for Search Engine)

Chase caught with hand in the cookie jar:

An internal memo, explaining how to beat the Mortgage Loan Computer System (Zippy) at JPM Chase was leaked to the Portland Oregonian.

The memo gives advice for fooling the system to get otherwise unqualified borrowers approved for mortgages:

3 "handy steps" for getting a questionable loan approved by JPM Chase's automatic system:

1. Lump all of an applicant's compensation as the applicant's base income, rather than breaking out commissions, bonuses and tips.

2. Do not disclose use of gifts for down payments.

3. If all else fails, simply inflate the applicant's income. "Inch it up $500 to see if you can get the findings you want. Do the same for assets.

Link, Link to leaked memo, Link to Barry's analysis (Thanks, Barry!)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: everyday objects underpinned with clockwork. Link

This dope-smuggling Bible from the November 1928 issue of Modern Mechanix illustrates the perpetual ingenuity of dope fiends:

Mechanical ingenuity of narcotic smugglers is constantly being tested in devising new methods of bringing their contraband goods safely into the country. The picture shows a Bible which has been hollowed out in the center to provide a hiding place for thousands of dollars worth of morphine and other opiates. The book was confiscated by Internal Revenue inspectors.

Link