When I saw this magazine on the newsstand, I thought it was a gaming magazine with a photo of a character in a video game. But I think it's a photo of a real human being. (Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Emi Guner says: "Dear secret force of the universe, be it intelligent or just accident/chance or cause and effect, whatever you believe in, can we just agree that sometimes the best stuff in life is almost free, found in a veggie bag in your fridge.

"Unfortunately, my son castrated the poor thing with his teeth before I had a chance to make money off it." Link

Tombland perfectly captures the happy horror of clown faced pork luncheon meat in this photo. Click link for complete image. Link (via Vegan.com )

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid took a bunch of fantastic photos and videos of Maker Faire, which was held this past weekend in San Mateo CA. I had a wonderful time at the Faire, and it was fun meeting all the BB readers who kindly introduced themselves to me! Link

Instructables has just posted the latest installment in its ongoing series of HOWTOs inspired by my young adult novel Little Brother, which tells the story of a teen underground that uses technology to fight back against surveillance and control.

This week's HOWTO is "Avoiding Camera Noise Signatures" -- AKA, anonymizing your photos before you post them online:

If you take enough images with your digital camera, they can all be compared together and a unique signature can be determined. This means that even when you think that you are posting a photo anonymously to the internet, you are actually providing clues for the government to better tell who you are. The larger the sample size of images they have, the easier it is them to track down images coming from the same camera. Once they know all the images are coming from the same camera, all they then have to do is find that camera and take a picture to confirm it beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is important to remove this noise signature so that you cannot be tracked down. I cannot guarantee any of these methods will work beyond the shadow of a doubt because the woman doing research for the government on how to find the signature is very good. I can only promise that this will make their work more difficult.

Link, Link to feed of Little Brother Instructables

Bob Harris, author of an amazing book about his experiences on Jeopardy! called Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!, returned from Chile and emailed a bunch on interesting photos to his friends. He kindly gave me permission to post a few of them on Boing Boing. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement).

There are two species of pudu, Northern Pudu (pudu mephistopheles) and Southern Pudu (pudu pudu). These are pics of pudu pudu, perhaps the most fun to say of all species names.

Pudu are the smallest deer species on earth. (There are smaller critters that look deeroid, but they're not.)

It's the mascot of my own site, Bobharris.com, which has a Friday pudublogging section where most weeks I post a new pudu pic that I've either taken myself or received from readers.

A student at Purdue once tried to start a movement to change the school mascot from the boilermaker to the pudu, so they would be the Purdue Pudus. This did not succeed.

These pudus have been hit by cars or wrongly adopted as pets, so without Fernando, they probably wouldn't have survived. When people in these parts hear of such things, they bring the pudus to Fernando's hideaway, where they live out their days with space, safety, food, and comfort. Sometimes they even make babies.

Dibs -- your new way to eat ice cream.

You mean, all over that woman's face and neck, while she passively mimes pleasure as the ice cream pelts her at high velocity?

Yes, this would be new. Usually I just use a spoon.

And our Final Jeopardy clue today is:

These Mediterranean girls had the custom of going up nude on the roof so the influence of the moon would increase the size of their breasts.

Clearly, I have been playing Jeopardy! in the wrong country entirely. Unfortunately, none of the contestants gives the correct response.

I'm 95% sure on my translation, but I can't swear to it. My Spanish is not yet fluent.

Sam sez,

In March 2007, a free speech and free assembly rally was held in Union Square to protest a new NYPD rule of dubious constitutionality instituting a permit requirement for any assembly of 50+ people on foot or on bike in NYC.

While the restriction would apply to any assembly of 50 or more people, it was enacted as transparent attempt shut down, harass or frustrate the Critical Mass bicycle rides that have occured monthly in Manhattan for at least ten years.

After the rally proper, a Critical Mass ride (accompanied by citizen videographers from the Glass Bead Collective and other groups) set out north from Union Square, only to be subjected to outrageous and illegal treatment by NYPD officers in Times Square under the supervision and instigation of Sgt. Timothy Horhoe.

Despite the numerous video-verified complaints of unlawful arrest and the numerous provably false sworn statements in police reports documenting the incident, the Civilian Complaint Review Board said in March of this year that they cannot act to punish the officers involved for their willful perjury.

Link (Thanks, Sam!)

After Mister Jalopy posted a link to mmk_kobayashi's "tasteless, frequently mean, sporadically NSFW, sometimes jaw dropping and generally hilarious" Flickr photostream my productivity ground to a halt. Link

"Anatomical Theatre is a photographic exhibition documenting artifacts collected by and exhibited in medical museums throughout Europe and the United States. The objects in these photos range from preserved human remains to models made from ivory, wax, and papier mâché. The artifacts span from the 16th Century to the 20th, and include examples from a wide range of countries, artists, and preparators."

Hunterian Museum : London, England The skull of a young boy with a second imperfect skull attached to its anterior fontanelle. Sent to John Hunter from Bengal, India in the late 1780s.

Link (Thanks, Gilbert!)

Gord says: Back again, for its (I believe) third run in Toronto, is the hilarious Evil Dead: The Musical. I recently saw these awesome street posters and wanted to share. Link

Bill sez "Curly, a blogger and photographer from South Shields (in NE England) was pursued by police after they received an emergency 999 call from someone who saw him taking photos in a funfair where children were present. He ended up showing his pics to a policeman in order to be allowed to leave."

“Is there something wrong with my car or my driving?”

“No, no sir, nothing like that at all, we are responding to an emergency call from someone in The Sundial who has reported you as taking pictures of children in the play park”

“Play park? I haven’t been near any play park! I’ve been on the beach and in the fairground, and I’ve never been anywhere near The Sundial either, surely you must have the wrong person?”

“Sorry sir, but we tracked you on the CCTV cameras, got your registration number and that’s why I need to talk to you, you are exactly as described”

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

I don't know about you, but this sign makes me awful hungry for rabbit meat. Link (via Vegan.com)

Matt sez, "Along the lines of the 'ghost' hotels in Egypt sitting incomplete, Disney World has had the Legendary Years section of Pop Century sitting incomplete for several years as well. " Link to YouTube video, Link to photo gallery (Thanks, Matt!)

Seasonal Chef's farmers' market reports from across the USA come lavishly illustrated with beautiful photos of mouth-watering organic produce -- it's raw food porn!

It's still a little too early for strawberries, in my opinion. It's got to get hotter for them to sweeten up -- and that'll happen in about six weeks. But the price is coming down, so I figure it's time to try my first strawberries of the season. Blood oranges won't be around much longer. Time to buy a bunch, juice them, and boil the juice down to reduce it by half or more to make syrup for salad dressings that I'll freeze and use for months to come. Fava beans have been in the markets for some weeks now, but at $3 a pound unshelled, they're a pricy delicacy. They'll get cheaper until they vanish in about month. Today, I got these for $2 a pound -- a fair price for a fleeting springtime treat. Here are nine fava bean recipes that I like. The Catalan stew is time-consuming, but well worth it, once a year.

Link (via Waxy)

The Sinai Hotels show features photos of half-built, abandoned luxury hotels in Egypt's Sinai peninsula:

With images by Sabine Haubitz and Stefanie Zoche of Haubitz+Zoche, the show looks at "the concrete skeletons of five-star hotel complexes" abandoned on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. They are resorts that never quite happened, then, with names like Sultan's Palace and the Magic Life Imperial. This makes them "monuments to failed investment."

Link (via Kottke)

Filmmaker John Downer turned a bunch o elephants into walking cameras and used them to capture scenes of the jungle:

He fixed webcams to four elephants. One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground.

Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp. Other log-cams were left on the forest floor.

The high-definition cameras were created by inventor Geoff Bell for a documentary in the remote Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh in the heart of India.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Mister Jalopy is the featured tool collector in the current issue of Factory Gear Magazine from Japan.

Not surprisingly, there is a Japanese mook (magazine/book) dedicated to obsessive tool collecting. Factory Gear Magazine dives into the toolboxes of World Rally Championship teams, Honda mechanics, F1 racing teams, German tool factories, stateside tool retailers and, much to my delight, Hooptyrides, Inc.

For 6 hours, the guys from Factory Gear cleaned, photographed, documented and considered hand tools that I forgot I even own. As the Factory Gear editor is also the owner of Deen Tools, it was not surprising that he and his crew were deeply knowledgeable about the engineering and manufacture of hand tools. They pointed out tiny details in construction that made one better than another -- details I had never noticed on tools that I use daily.

To say that I wonder what the article says would be to greatly understate my intense curiosity.

Link

A quick-thinking police officer spotted a 49-year-old man taking photos of Christmas lights and busted him on the spot for not having a camera license. When the photographer failed to produce a license (which would have been a neat trick, since there's no such thing as a camera license in England or any other free nation) the officer kept the world safe from terror by making the man delete all the photos in the camera.

"People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top," he says.

"I wasn't very pleased because I was taken through the crowd and through the barriers at the front and people were probably thinking 'I wonder what he was doing.'

"To be pulled out of a crowd is very daunting and I wasn't aware of my rights.

"It's a sad state of affairs today if an amateur photographer can't stand in the street taking photographs."

Here are Flickr photos of the Christmas lights of Ipswich, every one taken by terrorists no doubt.

Link

How many things can you find wrong with this depressing old photo of a performing chimp at Jungle Land? Link

Mark Rayner's hosting a photoshopping contest wherein contestants are invited to shop science fiction products and services into vintage ads. A magical combination. Link

Jayel sez,

We have been trying to raise awareness about British MP Austin Mitchell's crusade to protect photographers' rights in the UK in FlickrCentral. And we are trying to help him out via a write-in campaign to other British MPs. It is a slow start, but we are doing everything we can including asking your readers for help.

We need information about:

1) Names and contact information of MPs
2) Civil liberties group that we can contact
3) Other ways we can raise awareness about this issue.

Link, Link to They Work For You (all MPs contact details and more) (Thanks, Jayel!)

See also: Brit MP calls for photographers' rights

Brad Emerson uses some python code to stitch together his time-lapse photos into animated impressionist paintings (he uses the free program Imagemagick to process the images). Link (Thanks, Brad!)

Please indulge me. How often does someone get to wish their grandmother a happy 107th birthday?

(Here's a photo of my grandfather, who passed away at age 75 or so).

I'm curious -- how many Boing Boing readers have relatives 107 or older?

Will Mann of LA Metblogs took this amazing photo of a passion flower being serviced by a carpenter bee.

There’s a bank of passion flowers blooms off the Ballona Creek Bikeway east of Sepulveda Boulevard that have been calling to me and my camera for about two weeks, but only on this morning were the timing and weather conditions right to find them soaking up the full illumination of the morning sun. As an added serendipitous bonus I was getting a macro shot of this blossom when the Biggest Fucking Loudest Bumble Carpenter Bee Ever that I named Maverick, buzzed the tower that is my head without proper authorization and came in for a landing to add to the already copious amount of pollen it was already packing on its back.

Link

The White House website hosts a photo of Dick Cheney "fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho," wearing a pair of reflective glasses. Eagle-eyed William Gibson noticed that there's something awfully weird reflected in them: mutant hybrid sex-slave? Tentacle creature? Elder god? Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Update: in this higher rez version, the Schwa has cleverly disguised itself as Dick's arm -- thanks, Evan!

Brent sez, "'Think Spring, Boing Boing Boing' is presently displayed on the Flying Pie Pizzaria marquee in Boise, Idaho. I do not believe this was in any way a reference to Boing Boing, but I thought you might enjoy it. I have no affiliation with them (though they are a great local chain and their pizza and beer selection is outstanding)." Link (Thanks, Brent!)

See also: Boing Boing restaurant (no relation)

From Yeuhd's Picasa gallery, an illustrated history of the Psi Chapter of Theta Chi Fraternity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Robert Koehring, David Flambeau, Edward Ziese, Robert B. Sullivan, and Genaro Florez were at the height of college fashion in their raccoon coats in front of the Theta Chi House, 1928-29. Link

Richard sez, "Boy of Blue's cameras are works of art, sort of like Roger Wood's clocks, but these contraptions are more dangerous (on more than one level), incorporating actual skulls, insects and HIV+ blood." These are squicky and amazing.

4"x5" camera made from Aluminium, Copper, Titanium, Acrylic and HIV positive blood. The blood pumps through the camera then in front of the pinhole and becomes my #25 red filter. Designed to shoot a geographic comparison of people suffering from HIV.

Link (Thanks, Richard!)

Photoshop Disasters is a blog that finds examples of image editing blunders in the media, like this one, which gives a celebrity three arms. Link