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On behalf of all my Boing Boing and Boing Boing tv colleagues, I'm excited and proud to announce the debut of a new series within our daily video program: BBtv World. This ongoing series will feature first-person glimpses of life around the world, told through the lenses and voices of Boing Boing editors, guest collaborators -- and through the people in these places, their own stories, their own way. When we can, we want to place the camera directly in the hands -- literally -- of the people whose lives, cultures, and lands we're visiting.

We're kicking this off with an episode I shot during a recent visit in a K'iche Maya village in the highlands of Guatemala. I go there a few times a year to work on sustainable development projects with an international nonprofit managed with local indigenous leaders.

"El Molinero," the title of this debut piece, refers to the corn mill where young girls go every day to grind soaked, hulled corn ("nixtamal") into soft dough for tortillas or tamales (in K'iche, the dough is "k'osh").

The old machine -- hacked together by local craftsman from various components -- is extremely loud, spews smelly fuel exhaust, and like many aspects of daily life and work here, is not neccesarily safe.

The K'iche girls you see in this episode helped me shoot some of what you see. In future episodes, they'll tell their stories themselves, and we'll visit other places -- Tibet, Africa, Mexico, China, India, and Japan, to name a few of the destinations planned.

Tech note: some of the footage used in this episode was shot on micro-mini digital camcorders donated for review purposes by Pure Digital Inc. (the Flip camcorder) and RCA (RCA Small Wonder). I'll post more about the tests on those devices, and how the people here are using each of them in experimental "distributed documentary" projects.

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SPONSOR SHOUT-OUT: The BBtv crew wishes to thank Microsoft for underwriting this episode, and generously supporting the launch of the "BBtv World" series. In this ongoing video series, we will be looking at the intersection of social causes & technology around the world from a number of perspectives. Through their new "i’m Initiative," Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world’s most important social causes when users email or IM with tools such as Windows Live™ Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail®. For more information, visit imtalkathon.com or im.live.com.

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Related posts from the Boing Boing archives:

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: digital archives may help find "disappeared."

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future. "A Database for the Dead."

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: "Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed"

NPR Xeni Tech - Reporter's notebook: Guatemala

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: Project Builds Grassroots Tech

NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future (and new podcast)

Our John Brownlee, over at Boing Boing Gadgets, tells the mothership about a project close to his heart:

There's an organization called the Fresh Air Fund, which has been around since 1877.

Their charter is basically to arrange to send low-income New York City kids out of the city for the summer to get a breath of fresh air and experience the country: free summer vacations for kids who might never have left the city in their lives.

They need to place 200 kids with host families by the end of July or these kids can't have summer vacations.

There's a website detailing their organization and what they need from host families here: freshair.smnr.us.

Image: "Fresh Air campers visit the model farm, one of the highlights of Sharpe Reservation in Fishkill, NY where The Fresh Air Fund has five camps."

Amy Critchett and the Survival Research Laboratories crew (a legendary group of machine artists) tell Boing Boing:

SRL crew member Todd Blair [above, in earlier times] suffered a severe brain injury while striking the set of a Survival Research Laboratories show last September in Amsterdam. While liability insurance is being disputed we are doing all we can can to support Todd and his wife through his recovery.

WHAT: 25 gears, each sponsored by an artist or an organization, each made into its own unique piece of art, will be assembled to create a kinetic sculpture at The Wall: Unveiled

Gear Makers include: Mark Pauline/SRL, Kal Spelletich, The Flaming Lotus Girls, Laurel True/True Mosiacs, The Shipyard, ZeroOne Festival, Jon Sarriguarte/Form and Reform, RE:Search Publications, Fringe Exhibitions and more

The Wall: Unveiled will include art, performance, food, family crafts and fun. $5 to $500 minimum donation at the door. All donations are tax deductable. All ages welcome.

The Wall: Unveiled, Sunday, July 20, 2008, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave Alameda, CA 94501.

Details at www.toddnow.org.

Image above, Todd at the SRL Robodock show in Amsterdam, before the accident. Below, the gear created by artist Jon Sarriugarte for the Todd Blair benefit Gear Wall. Images via SRL and Mr. Blair's support website. Previously on Boing Boing:

SRL crew member injured in post-show accident

SRL: update on injured crew member

San Francisco: benefit for SRL's Todd Blair on Saturday

Wednesday: Dorkbot-San Francisco Todd Blair benefit

( Update: Amnesty International's home page now includes a disclaimer regarding these images:

Amnesty International would like to make clear that it was not involved in the dissemination of a series of images that have been circulating on the web in relation to the Beijing Olympics. Amnesty International's global website address is www.amnesty.org

We were told by a frequent sharer-of-tips that these ads came from Amnesty International, but BB readers point out that the ads lists the URL "amnesty.com," while the advocacy group's domain is in fact .org. BB commenter ulor points us to this url, with other ads from the campaign, credited to TBWA, Paris; BB commenter Leslie points us to others here, attributed to same. Perhaps they were concept pieces not approved by the client for publication, I'm not sure yet. I've asked AI to confirm or deny, I'll update the post when I receive a reply. --XJ )

Above, one of a number of elements in a new campaign said to be from Amnesty International to draw awareness to human rights abuses in China and Tibet. Each one is designed around the theme of a specific Olympic competition category. Above, swimming. In the lower right, the ad reads, "After the Olympic Games, The Fight Must Go On." Cropped image above, Click for complete image, larger size.
[ thanks Oxblood Ruffin ]

Here are the top 10 most-viewed TED Talk videos from June 2006 to May 2008)

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

Jeff Han's touchscreen foreshadows the iPhone and more

David Gallo shows underwater astonishments

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth

Arthur Benjamin does "mathemagic"

Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen

Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do

Al Gore on averting a climate crisis

Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

You can also watch the Top 10 TED talks highlights video.

Some great photos of guerilla gardening in Tokyo from Kirainet.com.

Look at the girl in the picture, she is planting some tomatoes in little corner between two roads in the middle of Tokyo. Isn’t it amazing? She cares about that little place of land lost in Tokyo’s immensity, and what is more amazing is that she doesn’t seem worried about people or dogs destroying her tomatoes and her lavender.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Guerilla gardening in London
• LA Times on guerrilla gardeners

Today on Boing Boing tv -- a sneak preview of Heavy Load: A Film About Happiness, a new documentary about a UK punk band whose members include people who have developmental disabilities.

'70s punk star Wreckless Eric describes them as "a triumph of dysfunctionalness," and even Kylie Minogue (they've covered a hit song of hers) has become a fan.

The band says their mission is...

...to demonstrate that disability rocks. There are few genres left in music that have yet to be defined. Heavy Load have unwittingly created a brand new one.

The band is also behind a campaign called "Stay Up Late" which advocates for the right of cognitively disabled people to be allowed to go out, supervised, to live music shows and -- well, stay out late enough to actually see and hear the show. Again, from the band:

We play gigs all over the country and we have noticed that something strange happens at 9.00pm – people start to go home. Heavy Load are fed up with people with learning disabilities leaving club nights and gigs early because their staff finish their shifts at 10pm. This means they are missing out.

If this happens to you: You need to talk about this with your friends, support workers, family and advocates. Our ‘Stay Up Late’ campaign is to make managers and staff know that we want them to plan ahead and talk to us about what we want to do...

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion, downloadable video, and BBtv podcast subscription info.

The full-length documentary premieres on the US cable network IFC on June 23rd, 9PM ET/10PM PT, and again on 24th June. (Special thanks to BB's Mark Frauenfelder, and to the film's director, Jerry Rothwell)

Here at TED, I met a man named Steve Varon. He's a warm and gregarious man who runs a successful children's underwear company on the East Coast. For the last year or so, he's been working very hard to make his dream possible: to see the Dalai Lama carry the torch in the Chinese Olympics. He made a short video about it, which he submitted to Pangea Day, but you can see it now on YouTube. I wish him luck in his quest.

(I'm liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA)

Presenter: MIT Media Lab's Todd Machover, who talks about how music has a special power in our lives.

We all love music, but it's even more powerful if you don't just listen to it -- you must make it yourself. Mozart Effect (increasing IQ in babies by subjecting them to music) doesn't work, you can't just listen to music to become smarter, you have to make it.

He created Brain Opera, which is 100 instruments anyone can play using natural skills -- you don't need to know how to play a traditional instrument. The Brain Opera led to Guitar Hero, which also came out of MIT Media Lab.

Music can change your life and the way you communicate with others and change your mind. What's after Guitar Hero? We are making toys for little kids like squeezie instruments. Software to help kids make music, called Hyperscore, allows anyone to compose music.

Music is one of the only things that people with advanced Alheimer's can respond to. It's also good for people with schizophrenia and other metal illnesses. Music is accelerating treatment in hospitals.

Music shows you who you really are. He says he's more nervous talking on stage than playing music. He's working on an opera called Death and the Powers. It will premiere in Monaco in September 2009. It's about a rich guy who wants to live forever, so he downloads himself into the environment. The stage becomes a character. The stage is a giant stringed instrument. There's also an army of robots on stage, a Greek chorus that observes the action. They are cubes, but they have a lot of personality. Stage also has a library with robotic books, each of which have high packed LEDs on the spines.

Machover wants to make personal opera and personal instruments, that can be adapted to the way you personally behave. It's the future of interfaces. He invites a young man on stage. His name is Dan Ellsey and he's in a wheelchair. He has cerebral palsy. He was flown in from the hospital where he lives in a special jet. He hardly ever travels -- this is the second time he's been out of Massachusetts in his life. He's using a text-to-speech to talk the audience. He just said he loves musics, and is using this personal instrument to compose and perform music.

Dan says he is going to perform a song called, "My Eagle Song." They are showing his Hyperscore composition. Now the music is playing. I'm not sure if Dan is controlling the playing of the music or not: he has a headband with some LEDs on it, and an iSight camera trained on him, so I think he is controlling the playback of his composition in some way.

Here's an article about Dan with a link to his music. Link

(I'm liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA) Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, is a global leadership and public policy professor at Harvard. She's talking about American responses to mass atrocities and genocide.

Rwandan genocide in 1990s: 700,000 people died. The 1994, the NYT reported between 200k and 300k people had already been killed. Patricia Schroeder, US Rep from Colorado, told the paper that hundreds of US citizens were calling about ape and gorilla deaths in Rwanda, but nobody was calling about the people who were dying. "There wasn't an endangered people's movement."

Today, universities and high schools have started an endangered people's movement. Anti-genocide groups. These student driven groups have launched divestment campaigns, launched a 1-800-Genocide number. Type in your zip code and it will refer you to your representative. Genocide grades for members of congress. This movement has put bottom up pressure on Bush leadership to take action Rwanda, and it's working.

I don't know if Mike Brickley's engine is more efficient than others, but the animated rendering is pleasant.

The Brickley engine configuration is projected to improve fuel mileage 15-20%. CO2 emissions are cut as well by 15-20%. This accomplishment is made through reducing engine friction: turning energy normally lost in heat into useful work. With petroleum prices increasing and global warming on the rise, there is an urgent need for us to provide a more efficient, less polluting internal combustion engine.

The Configuration

By changing how the pistons connect to each other and how they connect to the crankshaft, a great deal of friction can be eliminated. The configuration employs a combination of pinned linkages to determine the paths of the pistons to within a few thousandths of an inch of linearity, and thus basically eliminates the need for piston skirts. It connects the pistons efficiently to each other and to the crankshaft at a fraction of the losses incurred in a typical configuration. The top end of the engine remains basically the same and uses the technology available in current engines.

In his younger days, Mr. Brickley made this cool steam engine powered bicycle. Link

Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere:

Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers' hero -- a "citizen journalist" turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes.

Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but was dead on arrival.

Link to CNN report by Jaime FlorCruz, here's an item from the China Media Project, and here's a statement from Reporters Without Borders.

Megan says: "Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology researchers developed an exoskeleton to help aging farmers perform manual tasks." Link

Quick reminder: the Electronic Frontier Foundation's 17th Birthday Bash is tomorrow night, the 15th of January, at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Don't forget to RSVP!

The birthday bash will be on January 15, 7-11 PM, at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Headliners Adrian & the Mysterious D (A+D), the DJ duo that founded the seminal mashup party "Bootie," will be dropping a shameless, genre-smashing blend of tracks, backed up by DJ sets from Bay Area copyfighters Ripley, Kid Kameleon and EFF's own J Tones and Qubitsu.

The EFF party will also feature an exclusive chocolate sampling with TCHO, "a new chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts." Founded by Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto and legendary chocolatier Timothy Childs, himself a former technologist, TCHO will be bringing a "beta release" of its best dark chocolate to the party table. Attendees are invited to vote for their favorite TCHO beta chocolate flavors at the party -- feedback that will help define TCHO's next steps as they gear up for a national release.

January 15, 7-10 PM
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA

Link

The latest volume of the magazine Index on Censorship focuses on issues related to free speech online. I'm among the contributors. Here's a snip from the issue overview:

The Internet was supposed to spell the end of censorship – instead governments now have unprecedented possibilities for controlling what we do and what we read. But this is a revolution in free expression that can’t be stopped. Index examines the explosion in communication, the rise in new forms of censorship (and the ways to get round them) and the impact on social attitudes.

I wrote about what I've learned about internet filtering technology from my experience co-editing BoingBoing, which is routinely blocked by various censorware applications for all sorts of silly, inaccurate reasons. Nearly every day (certainly every week) we receive a perplexed message from a would-be reader asking "why is BoingBoing blocked from [library/airport/hotel/whatever place name] in [location name somewhere in the world]?"

Subscribe to the Index in print here. Longer list of other contributors to this issue, and their chosen topics, after the jump. This is a fine publication, and a fine bunch of writers from around the world sharing important ideas and testimonies -- what a shame the contents are not freely available online.

Amy sez,

The University of San Francisco School of Law, Intellectual Property Law Bulletin is sponsoring "The Toll Roads: The Legal and Political Debate Over Network Neutrality," a symposium to increase awareness about network neutrality, bringing together lawyers, academics, economists, and technologists for a balanced debate on the issue. Panelists include Timothy Wu, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Spiwak, and an attorney from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among many others. There's also a chance some surprise political figures may make an appearance...

When: January 26th, 2008 8 AM - 7 PM
Where: Fromm Institute on the University of San Francisco main campus
Web: http://www.netneutrality2008.org
Cost: Professionals (6.0 Units MCLE Credit): $100
Non-professionals: Free - $75 (see registration page for details)
Register: http://www.netneutrality2008.org/Registration.html

Link

Eva sez, "My husband and I figured out a way to make 8-bit style cookies with a Play-Doh extruder. We've uploaded a how-to, along with pictures of our Tetris cookies, question blocks,and so forth." Link (Thanks, Eva!)

Peter from the DefectiveByDesign campaign sez,

Yesterday, Viviane Reding, European Union commissioner for information society and media, issued a report sanctioning a "transparent" DRM framework for the EU. This irresponsible and senseless report comes just as Sony BMG have announced that they would join Warner Music Group, EMI, and Vivendi's Universal Music Group in selling DRM-free music downloads in the United States. That Reding would take this moment to propose that the European Union seek to impose DRM on European citizens is both senseless and irresponsible.

Join us in demanding that Reding retract her statement and issue a new report stating that the EU will neither endorse nor sponsor the creation of any DRM technology scheme.

Link (Thanks, Peter!)

The Galacticast netshow has produced a great little end-of-year short calling on Canadians to fight the Canadian DMCA in the coming year. This is the on-again/off-again US-inspired copyright act that Industry Minister Jim Prentice wrote without any input from Canadian interest groups, making it into a kind of wish-list for US-based entertainment giants.

The episode parodies many, many science fiction classics (and the host sports a nifty DMZ tee from The Secret Headquarters!) and does a good job of laying out the basic issues in funny, easy-to-understand ways.

It's a cinch that Minister Prentice will reintroduce the Canadian DMCA in 2008 -- and we're gonna kill it again! Link (via Michael Geist)

The folks behind Steal This Film, an amazing, funny, enraging and inspiring documentary series about copyright and the Internet have just released part II of the series. I taught part one (about the PirateBay crackdown in Sweden and the founding of The Pirate Party) in my class last year, and it was one of the liveliest classes we had.

Part II is even better than part one -- it covers the technological and enforcement end of the copyright wars, and on the way that using the internet makes you a copier, and how copying puts you in legal jeopardy. Starting with Mark Getty's (Chairman of Getty Images) infamous statement that "Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century," the filmmakers note that oil always leads to oil-wars, and that these are vicious, ill-conceived and never end well. This leads them to explore the war on copying -- which ultimately becomes a war on the Internet and those of us who use it.

This installment includes punchy interviews with a lot of the US's leading copyfighters -- EFFers like Seth Schoen and Fred von Lohmann, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Eben Moglen, Aaron Swartz, Yochai Benkler, Rick Prelinger, as well as folks in the UK, Sweden and Bangalore. Interspersed with this is are smart historical perspectives, and a brief interview with MPAA chief Dan Glickman, who all but twirls his mustache in glee at the thought of punishing copiers. There's also some interesting material here from new artists who embrace copying, but I'm guessing that that's going to be the main theme of a future installment.

Steal This Film II is available as a P2P download (natch) in several formats, including HD, and opens with a stern warning encouraging you to share it as widely as possible. Link (Thanks, Robbo and everyone else who suggested this!) See also: Steal This Movie: documentary on Swedish piracy movement

Today on in my series of photos from my travels: this action figure modder and some of his creations, following a panel at the San Diego Comic Book Convention last July. The action figure modders were amazing -- real scientist hackers, full of trivia about the best way to manage different kinds of plastics and so on. Plus, they made beautiful stuff (here's more shots from the panel). Link

Five years ago, Dave Winer made a "long bet" with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

Five years later, Rogers Cadenhead has done the math and concludes that blogs are edging out the Times (but that other mainstream media outlets are beating both of them -- thanks to the NYT having squandered the golden years of cheap googlejuice acquisition by erecting a registration and paywall on their content, causing them to fall behind less well-known, but more readily linked news-sources).

Most interesting of all is that Wikipedia (only a year old in 2002) is clobbering both of them -- more proof that the future is weirder than we can know. In 2002, it seemed like the two choices were "amateurs you trust" or "unbiased, accurate, and coherent" information from an "authoritative source." In reality, the third, unforeseen choice was "a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover."

Whenever someone asks you which of two futures you think is more likely, your best bet is always "none of the above." Link (via Kottke)

Last Saturday was Creative Commons's fifth birthday and all over the world, local CC organizations held celebrations where announcement after announcement got made about amazing new stuff in the world of Creative Commons. Larry Lessig has posted a roundup of all the announcements and it's heart-pounding stuff. Here's just a few examples:

# # Legal Commons (beta): Taking inspiration from the liberator and manumitter of government documents and legal cases, Carl Malamud, Creative Commons will enter into a joint venture with public.resource.org to collect and make available machine readable copies of government documents and law. Carl and I have committed to freeing all federal case law by the end of 2008. Importantly, this effort will not set up competing systems to the emerging ecology of great free law services (Cornell's LII, or Columbia's Altlaw.org). We instead will help gather and make available the resources those services use to provide their amazing service. So look for a tarball of all federal cases by the end of 2008, in parsable and usable plain text.

# CC+: This protocol enables a simple click through ability to get rights or permissions beyond those provided by a CC license. So, e.g., a Flickr photo licensed under a BY-NC license could have a simple click through to some agent to provide commercial rights for that photo. We announced with a bunch of partners already. But really key was:

# Yahoo announced it was baking CC+ "into the system" of Yahoo, making it possible for any Yahoo service to offer content using the CC+ infrastructure.

Link

Johan from Neuros sez,

In response to the branded, proprietary DRM schemes like Microsoft's "plays for sure" and Apple's "FairPlay," Neuros has created an "Unlocked" Media trademark to promote the concept of open standard DRM-Free files that can be stored and played anywhere.

We hope that other organizations (community and for profit) will adopt this mark for products that generate such files (or stores that sell such files), and create a grass roots movement in support of unlocked files and put consumers back in control of their media.

Neuros are the manufacturers of the kick-ass OSD set-top box that lets you record to and play back from hard-drives, USB sticks, and memory cards. Link

See also:
Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner
Open PVR from Neuros: cash money to owners who hack it
Neuros open PVR gets YouTube support, courtesy of hackers

I think that these World Wildlife Campaign posters are incredibly effective -- they depict a giant, skyscraper-sized used paint-can as the mouth of a river (one in the countryside, the other in Sydney Tokyo), with the legend "A single tin of paint can pollute millions of litres of water." Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Hurrah! The Telecom Immunity Bill -- which will let the phone companies off the hook for helping the NSA to illegally spy on Americans -- is dying in Congress, thanks to your calls and letters.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien sez, "Harry Reid just announced that given the complexity and contentiousness of immunity (which he says he backs Dodd in opposing) the bill will be taken off the floor, and not return before the holidays. Your calls, your letters, and Dodds' filibustering did their work. Now we need to keep the pressure up, and keep telecom immunity off the table forever."

Here's the thing: EFF and others are suing the telecoms for participating in the wiretapping program. These lawsuits are the best chance we have of getting the details of the program into the public, so we can finally find out what the NSA have been doing to us all these years. The reason the government wants to grant the telecoms immunity is to keep the dirty laundry in the closet -- to keep us from finding out how they've been breaking the law.

If we stop telecom immunity, we'll probably get to call the NSA and the government to account, too. If the telecoms get immunized, the government could get a walk as well. Link

See also:
Senate set to forgive telcos for spying on Americans with the NSA: TAKE ACTION NOW!
EFF suing AT&T for helping NSA illegally spy on Americans
William Gibson on NSA wiretapping
StopTheSpying: Tell the Dems to keep AT&T on the hook for NSA wiretapping
Time's Joe Klein gets everything wrong in column about NSA domestic spying
Congress: don't cripple the suit against the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program
NSA domestic spying: reaction from a crypto mail-list moderator
NSA's domestic data-mining ops gathered vast troves of info
NSA spies on US: calls, emails intercepted without warrants
Data mining prompted fight over NSA domestic spying program
ACLU map of NSA's domestic phone, 'net surveillance
Liveblogging court hearings: NSA's spying, AT&T's alleged complicity
AT&T built warrantless wiretap rooms for the NSA
CALL CONGRESS NOW: NSA wiretapping to be legalized THIS WEEK!
Schneier op-ed on unchecked presidential power, NSA spying
Government appeals its loss in NSA/ATT domestic spying case
Act NOW to keep NSA cases in public court