The vice presidential candidate of a major political party in America apparently believes dinosaurs and men once walked the earth at the same time:

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy (Los Angeles Times)

The Adventurer's Club at Walt Disney World -- a cabaret show/bar augmented with puppeteered robotic masks, stone idols, and random junque -- has shut its doors, as part of the shuttering of Pleasure Island (an otherwise lacklustre adult entertainment area with crummy discos and clubs). This was my second-favorite Disney artifact of all time (after the Haunted Mansion ride), and my favorite club in the world. I'm so bummed to hear they shut it down -- I hope it re-opens somewhere else soon!

Three UCF students showed up dressed as Pamelia Perkins, Hathaway Browne, and the Colonel. “It’s the final night,” said Pamelia look-alike Beth Phillips. “We had to do something big.” Nathan Kohlun said choosing to dress like Hathaway was easy. “Everyone loves this character, especially the women. It’s just all really fun.”

About an hour before the doors opened, many of the actors came out in their street clothes to loud cheers. They posed for photos, answered questions, received gifts, and thanked as many fans as they could for their support over the years.

Cassie Cameron, who wore a hand-made Hathaway shirt, brought a snapshot to give to the cast showing her at age 9 in the Mask Room. The now 24-year-old said she’s just sad she won’t get the chance to bring her own daughter to the Club. “She’s three and can already sing the Adventurer’s Song and even Toast! I had really hoped to share this with her some day.”

Huge Crowd Gives Heartfelt Send-off to Adventurer’s Club (Thanks, Heath!)

Ever wanted to own a full-scale Roman siege engine? Now you can!

The ballista was successfully built and managed to fire a very heavy stone ball some 127 yards. (Remember, these things used to successfully lay siege to entire cities.)

The ballista, dissembled, has been in our Scotland timber yard since then, so we have decided to make some room (quite a bit of room, actually) and sell it on eBay.

The ballista has aged gracefully and needs a little restoration work to get it back into shape again – though as a demonstration piece rather than as a fireable weapon. We’ve decided to sell the ballista ‘as seen’ for those who fancy constructing it themselves – though we are very happy to provide construction as an additional service. (To be fair, we recommend it – it will take people with timber expertise to do the required work.)

Our full-size Roman siege catapult for sale on eBay (Thanks, Uncle Wilco!)

The MPAA is suing RealNetworks for making a product that will rip a DVD, crap it up with DRM, and store it on your hard-drive. The MPAA says that only their stupid DRM, and not RealNetworks' stupid DRM, can be used to cripple DVDs. My take? A pox on both their houses.

Except this:

Lawyers for the MPAA, in a teleconference with reporters, said Kaleidesape and RealDVD are circumventing "technology designed to prevent copying."

The lawyers, who asked that their names not be published, said they were concerned "Consumers will think this is a legal product...when in fact it is totally illegal."

Wait wait wait wait: what? These unnamed lawyers are on a press-call with the media, as spokespeople for their company, and they "asked that their names not be published?" And journalists complied?

Truly, this is a new low in chickenshittery that has me scraping my jaw off my chest. These lawyers aren't deep-throat whistle-blowers sneaking information out of their employers' filing cabinets: they're the official spokespeople for the firm. And they get anonymity?

So what happens in the future -- after the MPAA gets its ass handed to it by the court -- if we want to argue that the MPAA's lawyers have a long history of going around saying that software is "totally illegal"? Do the MPAA get to deny it, because no one can name the spokesperson who said it?

And why on earth would the journalists honor such a request? "Unnamed MPAA lawyer says stupid thing" fails one of the important Ws of reporting: Who said it? MPAA, RealNetworks Wage Court Battle Over DVD-Copying Software

This month's IEEE Spectrum magazine has a lush photo-spread aimed at explaining to engineers the appeal of steampunk:

STEAMY STEPS: California artist and animator I-Wei Huang, known as Crab Fu, has built a legion of remote-controlled steaming creatures out of scale-model tanks and boats, electronics kits, and “a bunch of junk parts I’ve collected.” The Steam Walker, one of his favorite creations, uses a Wilesco D14 miniature steam engine and a system of sprockets and chains to move its feet.

Slideshow: Steampunk Sensation

(Image: Jonathan Sprague/Redux)

Facebook's recently-beefed-up management team includes former White House lawyer Ted Ullyot, who...

... helped coordinate the response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and serv[ed] as chief of staff to former U.S. Atty. General Alberto Gonzales. [He] will join Facebook as its vice president and general counsel next month. Ullyot, who also has had major private sector stints including as a top lawyer for AOL Time Warner Europe, is leaving a partnership with law firm Kirkland & Ellis and will relocate to the Bay Area, he said in an interview Friday.

Facebook hires general counsel as it continues to grow (LA Times, thanks @jameshome)

Video remix artists Eclectic Method cut and paste music videos, movies, current events, and video games into a danceable stream of sound and heady stretch of images. It's fun to watch them "scratch" DVD's live, and their recorded work makes for great YouTube fare.

Here's my favorite examples of their video mashup:
BOB MARLEY - (an official video mix for the Marley Family)
OBAMA VS. CLINTON: MEDIA HYPE OVERLOAD
ENTOURAGE HBO: Ari Gold says F*%K
ZEITGHOST #2 - Eclectic Method's Signature Music Video Remixtape
TONY SOPRANO's Video Remix
KILL BILL - Movie Fight Remix

But it's even more fun to play with this stuff oneself. In true DIY fashion, they've created a super-easy video remixer that lets the least experienced or most stoned computer users to play mash-up with images from their last video.

(All you do is click on the image, and then use your number keys to jam.)

It may not be the most deeply creative computer experience available, but it is kinda fun - and accessible to all. Even my 3-year-old.

Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.

Because of current events, Arthur magazine just posted the column I wrote for their upcoming issue, written a month or so ago, about what's happening right now. I figured I'd share it with you here:

I poked my head up from writing my book a couple of months ago to engage with Arthur readers about the subject I was working on: the credit crunch and what to do about it [see “Riding Out the Credit Crisis” in Arthur No. 29/May 2008]. I got more email about that piece than anything I have written since a column threatening to defect from the Mac community back in the Quadra days.

Many readers thought I was hinting at something under the surface—a conspiracy, of sorts, to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. It sounded to many like I was describing an economic system actually designed—planned—to redistribute income in the worst possible ways.

I guess I’d have to agree with that premise. Only it’s not a secret conspiracy. It’s an overt one, and playing out in full view of anyone who has time (time is money, after all) to observe it.

The mortgage and credit crisis wasn’t merely predictable; it was predicted. And not by a market bear or conspiracy theorist, but by the people and institutions responsible. The record number of foreclosures, credit defaults, and, now, institutional collapses is not the result of the churn of random market forces, but rather a series of highly lobbied changes to law, highly promoted ideologies of wealth and home ownership, and monetary policies highly biased toward corporate greed.

It all started to make sense to me when I attended Learning Annex’s Wealth Expo earlier this year—a seminar where teachers of The Secret, the hosts of Flip This House, George Foreman, Tony Robbins and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan [pictured above in banner from Learning Annex website] purportedly taught the thousands in attendance how to take advantage of the current foreclosure boom....

read more...
or if that's overwhelmed
here

Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.

Artist Stefan Gross says: "Love Hate Punch is a punching bag that gives light if you hit it and if you do your best it changes color from dark red to bright red to yellow to white." Love Hate Punch

Radley Balko, senior editor of Reason magazine, says: "Federal agents looked the other way while one of their drug informants [Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, also known as "Lalo"] participated in a series of gruesome murders. They knew about the murders, but refused to call off the drug investigation. When an outraged DEA agent [Sandy Gonzalez] blew the whistle, the DEA, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and DOJ forced him into early retirement. The government is now trying to deport the informant they've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to over the years. They want to send him to Mexico, where he'll almost certainly be killed."

Reason: The DEA administrator at the time, Karen Tandy, has admitted in court testimony that she gave you the only poor performance review of your career because of your letter calling for an investigation into the murders. That led to your retirement. Have any of the ICE officers who handled the Lalo case been held accountable --criminally, professionally, or otherwise?

Gonzalez: Not to my knowledge. I doubt it. I would have heard about it.

Reason: Have you had any indication that Congress might step in? Have you talked to anyone on Capitol Hill?

Gonzalez: Back in 2005 I went and briefed the senior staff of two senators.

Reason: Which ones?

Gonzalez: [Iowa Sen. Charles] Grassley and [Vermont Sen. Patrick] Leahy. I think what happened is one of the members of Leahy’s staff was a Justice Department officer who was on loan on a detail to the senator’s staff. I think she knew [U.S. Attorney] Johnny Sutton. She worked out of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. She knew Sutton personally and throughout the whole interview she was antagonistic. My guess is that she railroaded the whole thing.

An Interview with DEA Whistleblower Sandy Gonzalez

32-year-old Michele Allen received a one-month sentence for disorderly conduct after police received complaints that she was dressed in a cow costume and chasing children, blocking traffic, and urinating on a neighbor's porch.

She wore the costume again when she appeared for sentencing. One Month in Corral for Disorderly Woman

New Orleans is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to the guys in the band Galactic, it's the motherland of funk. In today's Boing Boing tv episode, Xeni and Russell catch Galactic's Crescent City Soul Crewe live at the Outside Lands festival, and speak to them about the band's homage to this birthplace of jazz and its ancestral influence on many other forms of modern music. The band's newest release, From the Corner to the Block, is potent stuff, and pulling in rave reviews all over.

( Sponsor note: Crowdfire is sponsoring this series of music features on BBtv, and you can find crowdsourced snapshots, audio, and video about this band at crowdfire.net. )

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Link to BBtv blog post with downloadable video and instructions on how to subscribe to the daily BBtv video podcast.

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Espen sez, "In a move leading me to suspect they have hired laid-off lawyers from RIAA, Endnote (owned by Reuters) has sued GMU and Dan Cohen for the latest version of Zotero (a Firefox plugin that lets you save, annotate and academically reference articles you find online). This is an amazingly stupid market move: Suing an academic for making software for other academics because the software allows you to convert styles (which in turn were freely contributed by other academics) - when your main market is academics."

For my part, I’m going to refuse to use Reuters’ software in future, strongly discourage graduate students from buying EndNote, and try to get this message out to my colleagues too (at least those of them who aren’t using Zotero or some BibTex client already). If I taught any classes where Thomson printed relevant textbooks, I would be strongly inclined not to use these texts either. I encourage you to do the same (and, if you’re so minded, to suggest other possible ways of making it clear to Reuters that this kind of behaviour is intolerable in the comments). People have argued that the music industry has screwed up badly by suing its customers – whether that’s true or not, makers of academic bibliography software should be told that suing universities for what appear to be entirely legitimate actions is not likely to do their reputations any good.

GMU sued for Zotero (Thanks, Espen!)

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Here's an easy way to help Obama and progressive Judaism at the same time! The Great Schlep, brainchild of my good friend Ari Wallach, "aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. Don’t have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schlepper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama."

Whether or not one supports Obama, it's probably a good idea to dispel the myths (one group I spoke with at an Upper East Side New York synagogue believed that Obama had already committed to placing Farrakhan in his cabinet), and at least make sure Floridians understand exactly who and what they're voting for.

Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.

We post often about synaesthesia, a strange neurological condition characterized by a link between two or more senses. (A particular musical note "sounds" red, etc.) New research suggests that many more people may have synaesthesia than realize it. In one experiment at McMaster University in Canada, self-described non-synaesthetes associated the smell of certain foods with certain colors and textures. From New Scientist:

When the researchers analysed the results, along with some obvious associations – lemon with yellow and peppermint with smooth, hard and sticky – they found some odd ones.

Significantly more people than chance, for instance, associated the smell of mushrooms with the colours blue or yellow. Lavender elicited the colour green and the texture of sticky liquid, while ginger was perceived as black and sharp.

"The influence of learning is there," (researcher Ferrinne) Spector told a meeting of the American Synesthesia Association in Hamilton on 27 September, "but it cannot explain all associations."

Do we all have some synaesthetic ability?

Previously on BB:
• Many more synaesthesia posts

Daphne Oram (1925-2003) was a pioneering electronic musician and sound engineer at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She established a workshop to develop experimental techniques for composing radio soundtracks. Oram is best known for her invention of Oramics, a system of converting drawings on 35mm film into sound textures. You can hear samples of her her music here. As part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's 50th anniversary, The Guardian recently profiled Oram and included a slide show of terrific vintage photographs. From The Guardian:

Oram was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, a pioneer of what became "musique concrete" – music made with sounds recorded on tape, the ancestor of today's electronic music. Her story makes for fascinating reading. She was born in 1925 when Britain was between two world wars. She was extremely bright, and studied music and electronics – unusual at the time not only because electronics was an exciting new industry, but also because it was a man's world.

She went on to join the BBC, and, while many of the corporation's male staff were away fighting in the second world war, she became a balancing engineer, mixing the sounds captured by microphones at classical music concerts. In those days, nearly all programmes went out live because recording was extremely cumbersome and expensive. Tape hadn't been invented, and cheap computers were half a century away.

Yet when tape did come along, in the early 1950s, Oram was quick to realise that it could be used not simply for recording existing sounds, but for composing a new kind of music. Not the music of instruments, notes and tunes, but the music of ordinary, everyday sound.

Daphne Oram profile, Daphne Oram slideshow (via Further: Strange Attractor and Beyond)

Canadian illustrator Graham Roumieu, who has chronicled the life of Bigfoot, writes

If you were looking for a little something disgustingly cute to get you through disgusting political and economic times, well here you go. This was for last weekend's Globe and Mail.

May all your melt downs be ice cream related, -- Graham

Andrew Lee, 33, apparently died after making and eating an intensely spicy chili. Lee was apparently in good health and toxicologists are running tests to figure out exactly what killed him. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The forklift driver from Edlington, West Yorkshire in England, made a tomato sauce with red chillies grown by his father, but after eating it suffered intense discomfort and itching.

Mr Lee went to bed and asked his girlfriend, Samantha Bailey, to scratch his back until he fell asleep.

When she woke in the morning he was dead, possibly after suffering a heart attack, The Guardian said.

Chef dies after eating 'super hot' chili

Now this is a handsome and useful redeployment of a gourd: a house for the little people!

I use inexpensive acrylic craft paint because it had great colors and covers very well. Also you can just squirt it right inside the gourd and spread it around.

Decorate your gourd with "curtains". I have used eyelet, fringe and pompoms for my curtains. All are cute. Hang with hot glue or other adhesive.

My rug is a felted sweater scrap, trimmed with scallop shears, and also glued in place. The fluffy rug helps mitigate the uneven floor of the gourd.

Gourd Dollhouse Tutorial (via Craft)

Beingblease's powered aluminum bedside lamp lets kids (and others) customize their lighting with modular, snap-together pieces.

A modular magnetic lamp that is customized through the building of different coloured and shaped pieces. Bedside lamp is universally enjoyed by all ages, is forever changing, playful, and made to stand the test of time.

Bedside lamp

Shawn Wolfe says:

This is what happens when an annoying asshole (Wall Street) loses everything in a casino (the stock market) and desperately begs the house (Congress) to "correct" their little mistake (massive bail out), and the house (Gary Marshall) ain't havin' it.

I think it is also instructive here that this scene takes place at 4am. Albert Brooks is in his bathrobe. His pants are basically down. The owner of the Desert Inn is granting him a sit-down and happens to be dressed in a suit and tie and oak desk.

"The Desert Inn has heart... The Desert Inn has heart... The Desert Inn has heart..."

"We're through talking."

Laura Galloway says:

The TED Prize, an initiative of the TED Conference granting recipients one world changing wish – is asking bloggers around the world to help in making photojournalist and 2007 Prize winner James Nachtwey's wish come true this Friday, October 3.

Nachtwey wished for help in breaking a news story in a way that demonstrates the power of news photography in the digital age. Nachtwey's work will be simultaneously revealed online, disseminated through numerous media channels, and projected on public buildings throughout the world. The TED Prize organizers have created a blogger page where bloggers can download a badge for their blogs in advance of Oct. 3, find event live event locations, or embed Nachtwey's wish video. On October 3, the site will redirect to reveal the story.

TED Prize for photojournalist James Nachtwey

Here's a fun video of a crab hitching a ride on a jellyfish. (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

A Washington DC train station was shut down for a couple hours recently as a bomb squad investigated this "hobo polo bear" standing near a trash can. Turns out, the stuffed animal was part of a collaboration between Greenpeace and prankster artist Mark Jenkins. From an email Mark sent me:

We made a series of human-like homeless polar bears and installed them around DC to get people to think about the issue (of melting arctic ice) with more empathy. it seemed people liked them a lot and took pictures of their kids in front of them, etc. but most were removed pretty quickly by the authorities. the last image is one that was met with ill-fate after being deemed a "suspicious package." so the whole thing ended up have a touch of irony to it when compared to the actual situation.

"'Hobo polar bear causes panic in US'" (National Nine News) Greenpeace project page (greenpeace.org), Mark Jenkins project page (xmarkjenkinsx.com)

Previously on BB:
• Mark Jenkins: Fake 'living statue' prank
• Mark Jenkins: cafeteria pranks
• Mark Jenkins: Traffic-Go-Round
• Mark Jenkins: Meter Pops
• Mark Jenkins casts a human head in packing tape
• Mark Jenkins: Tape Babies
• Mark Jenkins: Fake People

Pink Tentacle has photos and a video of the "Reversible Destiny Lofts" in Japan, designed to physically and mentally challenge people in order to keep them healthy.

To NY-based architect-poets and “reversible destiny” philosophers Arakawa & Gins, comfort deserves only a limited role in the home. In their vision, a home that keeps its inhabitants young and healthy should provide perpetual challenges. A tentative relationship with your environment, they argue, is key to “reversing the downhill course of human life.”

Designed to stimulate the senses and force inhabitants to use balance, physical strength and imagination, the lofts feature uneven floors, oddly positioned power switches and outlets, walls and surfaces painted a dizzying array of colors, a tiny exit to the balcony, a transparent shower room, irregularly shaped curtainless windows, and more.

For rent: Reversible Destiny Lofts (w/ video)

George Hart has a photos of the construction of a "sculptural barn raising" for his Comet! artwork at Albion College on Saturday September 13, 2008.

George Hart's Sculptural Barn Raising

What Mister Jalopy learned when he found a Stingray bike at a garage sale after looking for one for 20 years:

For all the years of garage saling, I have always wanted, but never found, a Schwinn Stingray. Previously, I have encountered only three. One was being wheeled away from a sale as I approached, another was a pile of parts that a fella was carrying to his car in a laundry basket and the third was a sand blasted frame which I purchased. So, this week, I found the assortment of parts shown in the top photograph. This is not a treasured Stingray rescued from the rafters of grandma's house, but rather a stalled project that somebody had put together over a couple evenings of drunken Ebaying.

Recently, I have figured out that we are in an odd secondary era for this stuff. During the 1970's and 1980s, garage sales were probably lousy with Schwinn Stingrays, but, those virgin bicycles have long been sold, garage saled, garbage dumped or reclaimed by the original owner. Now, when we find novelty bowling statuary, Apple IIs or strike front matchbooks, they are being sold by somebody that paid through the nose on eBay only to get tired of it for the second time.

Garage Sale Report - September 29, 2008

There seems to be some appetite on BoingBoing for a more comprehensive but quick-to-grok analysis of the credit crisis and what to do about it. While "I told you so's" are fun in a sick sort of way, I'm passing on this link to my last spring's Arthur Magazine columns(if Dreamhost is still unable to meet the demand for links on that page or here, then see the whole piece in the extended post, below). I'm sharing it as a way to review the steps that led to our current fiasco, explain it in the greater context of centralized currency, and help people not feel so very terrible about it all. (I also mean to introduce you to Arthur magazine, a free coffee-shop distribution I'm proud to write for alongside folks including Erik Davis, Thurston Moore, and Peter Lamborn Wilson - who all write for free, like me.)

...Bush’s tax cuts and other measures favoring the rich led to the biggest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in American history. The result was that the wealthy—the investment class—had more money to invest, or lend, than there were people and businesses looking to borrow.

The easiest way to bring more borrowers into the system—and to create more of a market for money—was to promote homeownership in America. This is precisely what the Bush administration did, touting home ownership as an American right. Of course, they weren’t talking about home ownership at all, but rather pushing people to borrow money tied to the value of a house. If people could be persuaded to take mortgages on homes, real estate values would go up for those already invested (like land trusts and real estate funds) and banks would have a market for the excess money they had accumulated.

In short, there was a surplus of credit in the system. Americans were encouraged to borrow in the form of mortgages, which created demand for the credit banks wanted to sell. In many cases the credit itself wasn’t even real, but leveraged off some other inflated commodity that the bank or investor may have owned.

Banks and mortgage companies invented some really shady and difficult-to-understand mortgage contracts, designed to get people to borrow more money than they could . Banks didn’t care so much about lending money to people who wouldn’t be able to pay it back, because that’s not how they were going to earn their money, anyway. They provided the money for mortgage companies to lend, and in return won the rights to underwrite the loans when they were packaged and sold to other people and institutions.

New research on Da Vinci's Last Supper suggests that the meal being consumed in this painting was not bread or lamb, as previously believed. "Instead, [John Varriano] writes in a new article in Gastronomica that the 1997 cleaning and restoration of the fresco revealed plates of grilled eel garnished with orange slices." Yeah, if someone fed me that, it'd be my last supper, too. {rimshot} I'll be here all week! Try the eels. Article: The Last Supper Menu: Revealed! (The Food Section / Josh Friedland)

Here's a program that'll generate realistic Palin-style answers for different questions.

Q: What is your foreign policy experience?

I think if you ask that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the people of America are not fully satisfied with all the answers. It's going to be considered also. But again, it's got to put government and it's about putting government back on the verbiage that Senator McCain chose to use them. So we have opportunities for good in the war. You can't blink. You have to be allowed in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be provided the hope that all Americans have, instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are today with so much collapse on Wall Street, affecting Main Street.

Interview Sarah Palin

(Via Panopticist)

Above: Thumbnails from a fashion shoot featuring beer heiress (beirhess?) Daphne Guinness in the current issue of Vogue Italia. The spread, titled "The Honourable Daphne Guinness," was shot by Stephen Klein. IMAGES: Part one, Part two. I like the one where she sets the chick on fire. And the other one with the stormtrooper-alien-dudes with crystal laser guns. Here's an interview where she discusses the Surrealist origins of her "weird obsession with armour." (thanks Susannah Breslin!)

Terry Pratchett's latest novel is Nation and it's like nothing else he's ever written -- except that like many of his books, it is fantastic and brilliant.

Nation is the story of two children: Ermintrude may just be the Queen of England now that a plague has struck down most of the royal family. Mau is the last survivor of the Nation, a tribal people living on a south-seas island that has been destroyed by a tsunami. They are both lost and adrift in the wake of terrible tragedy, flung together on the island of Nation. They both are blessed with doubt about the theologies of their ancestors -- and denied its succour. Together, they discover science, and use it to weld together their people and save them from despair and evil external forces.

Nation is an absolutely sweet book, a story that is part Lord of the Flies and part Treasure Island, with strong and likable characters who are forced to their limits by circumstances. The action is well-paced, the philosophy and science are deftly handled, and there is humor and fear in equal measures.

This isn't a Discworld novel or a Truckers novel -- it's not Good Omens. It's a complete departure for Pratchett and yet is recognizably him, on every page, writing with the same grace and wit we know from his other work. Highly recommended (and would make brilliant bedtime reading, too). Nation (US), Nation (UK)

Ben Greenman of the New Yorker presents his list of the five scariest movies of all time. They are:

1. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Tobe Hooper (1974)

2. “The Silence of the Lambs,” Jonathan Demme (1991)

3. “The Body Snatcher,” Robert Wise (1945)

4. “Night of the Hunter,” Charles Laughton (1955)

5. “Mulholland Drive,” David Lynch (2001)

David Lynch is the master of the eerie, which has also been called the uncanny, and his strongest films successfully deliver shock-horror at the conclusion of scenes that are either comically mundane or traditionally suspenseful. Many filmgoers remember “Mulholland Drive” mainly for Robert Blake’s creepy performance or for the lesbian subplot with Laura Elena Harring and Naomi Watts, but the film’s signal moment comes in the Winkie’s scene, which uses a highly traditional location (a diner) and traditional suspense tricks (P.O.V. shots, menacing background music) as prelude to one horrible moment. One respondent to the in-office survey put it this way:

I have seen the movie many times, and every time my chest tightens up and it occurs to me that I might actually die.

He’s not alone. Retrocrush.com selected this scene as the scariest moment in the history of film.

Mulholland Drive is a great movie, but as far as I recall Robert Blake was in Lost Highway, not Mulholland Drive.

The 5 Scariest Movies Ever?

The International Olympic Committee has trademarked a line from the Canadian national anthem, "with glowing hearts," and is threatening to sue anyone who uses the line in Canada, as part of the Vancouver Games.

This is par for the course. The IOC is a corrupt, bullying, greedy, hypocritical organization that uses trademark laws to limit the free speech and commerce of people who have the misfortune to attend or live near the games -- for example, in Athens, they forced people to take off or cover up t-shirts that had logos for companies that hadn't paid to sponsor the Olympics; and in Washington, they attacked decades-old businesses named after nearby Mount Olympia.

The Olympics cloak themselves in the rhetoric of international cooperation and development, but everything they touch turns to garbage: totalitarian surveillance camps where corporate greed rules all. The Canadian IOC ought to be disbanded over this -- it's an affront to the entire nation.

Parliament should undo its special legislation that allowed the IOC to assert trademarks over words like "Winter" as well -- our language is not property, it is freely usable by all of us.

. VANOC would only challenge the commercial use of the mottoes if a business began using them to create a specific, unauthorized commercial association with the 2010 Winter Games, said the statement.

O Canada is over 100 years old and, according to the Department of Canadian Heritage, is in the public domain so may be used without permission from the government.

The committee is so serious about protecting the Olympic brand it managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons last year that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law.

The list includes the number 2010 and the word "winter," phrases that normally couldn't be trademarked because they are so general.

Olympic mottoes borrow lines from O Canada (Thanks, Dan!)

Twitter's Biz Stone blogs:

This graph illustrates tweet volume for specific terms mentioned during the course of last week's presidential debate. For example, how many updates per minute contained the word "Iran." Of the terms in this graph, the most twittered word in a one minute time span was "Iraq" at nearly 300 just after McCain's assertion that Obama did not visit the area for 900 days. We've annotated a few of the spikes with what the candidates were saying at the time.

The Debate: A Twitter Play-by-Play. Am I the only one who finds the words "iran iraq pork" presented together randomly in this manner to be funny? Probably. Sorry. (Twitter Blog, via @biz)

Thomas sez,

Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan just recently published through St. Martin's Griffin the print edition of their wonderful handbook for indie musicians, The Indie Band Survival Guide. They started the book as a CC-licensed PDF and quickly drew attention from the likes of Billboard magazine, the Associated Press and even Professor Lawrence Lessig (who blurbed the print edition). The dead tree version is considerably expanded and now has a wonderful companion site on which they guys work very hard to add new, free material and keep it up to date and relevant to their fellow indies.

I've talked to Randy and Jason repeatedly on my podcast. They are true do-it-yourselfers and truly grok how giving away their music, and now their book, helps them reach new fans and get their music heard. They strongly embody the same spirit for which musicians like Jonathan Coulton and Brad Sucks are know (both of whom the interviewed extensively for the new book). They've effectively produced a take-along, dog-earable handbook so anyone can follow in these well tread footsteps.

Indie Band Survival Guide (Thanks, Thomas!)

Just in time for Banned Books Week, here's Philip "Golden Compass" Pullman on why book bans -- especially religiously inspired book bans -- are so futile and wrong:

Because they never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don't the censors realise this?...

In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones...

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn't true; I like plenty of things that aren't true. It's that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The censor's dark materials (via Futurismic)

Somali pirates who hijacked an Iranian shipping vessel said to be carrying either "minerals" or "small arms and chemical weapons" have, en masse, fallen ill with a mysterious disease. The head of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme has been threatened with a lawsuit by the Iranian government for issuing spooky statements to the press to the effect that there was some kind of evil "chemicals" on the ship.

He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.

“That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.”

The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked.

Osman’s delegation spoke to the ship’s captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.

Initially it was claimed the cargo contained “crude oil”; later it was said to be “minerals”.

And Mwangura has added: “Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals.”

But IRISL has denied that — and threatened legal action against Mwangura. The company has reportedly paid the pirates 200000 — the first of several “ransom instalments”, but that, too, has been denied.

Pirates die strangely after taking Iranian ship (Thanks, Bill!)

John's written a great omnibus post pointing to several worthy celebrations of Banned Books Week all around the net:

Banned Books Week is really about two different, but related, things. The first of these, the focus of sites like Amnesty’s and the “Books Suppressed or Censored by Legal Authorities” section of my exhibit, deals with attempts to restrict who is allowed to speak about what matters to them. And in a lot of the world, the right to speak out is severely and violently repressed. The other day I added to my online books collection a number of titles from Human Rights Watch, which has many books, press releases, and other publications about grave threats to freedom of the press and freedom to protest in places like Burma, Chile, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Turkey, Venezuela, various Middle Eastern and African countries, former Soviet republics, and many other places around the world.

Americans enjoy a country with a much freer press than the countries above (and indeed, a freer press than we had in my grandparents’ day). We’re not perfect; our legal system does sometimes suppress legitimate expression, for a time at least, in the name of security, copyright, or “the children”. (And sometimes the threat of criminal violence can suppress books when the law does not.) It is worth remembering the important books that can be published thanks to the free press, and not to take them for granted.

Why Banned Books Week matters (Thanks, John!)

Shava Nerad shares a new essay, below, about the current economic crisis:

Accounting methods really haven't been updated to keep up with the changes as service and information economy overlays have changed the game. We have no way to account for our greatest assets in the modern economy -- talent, staff loyalty, team productivity in innovation, effective communication of information through media and business channels, and so on. These are all without accounting value in our current systems.

Today, value is added by shifting assets through complex smoke-and-mirror complexities in the financial markets. Or, value is created by applying talent (our largest intangible) stabilized by loyalty and passion to task (our least quantified intangibles, and the root of real innovation and productivity) in the information economy.

Tangible industries -- heavy industries, retail,... -- have been transformed by supply chain innovations, but even globalized, are well enough understood.

But a huge amount of the wealth creation since the invention of the transistor is intangible, and since we have no way to quantify and account for innovation, creativity, excellent records of technical teams, and so on, the market has tried to find tricks to value them, mostly through the stocks of information economy firms.

Since so few people really understand tech, PR, marketing and flim-flam have become the greatest influence on the value of any technical or informationally complex company.

Iconoclasm: Wall Street -- the chickens come home to roost (gather.com)

Gabriela from the Sunlight Foundation sez,

Today, the Sunlight Foundation is calling on Congress to exercise restraint, and give lawmakers and the public time to read and respond to the proposed bailout legislation.

We believe all legislation should posted online for at 72 hours before a vote to give lawmakers and citizens sufficient time to review and debate it, and this bill is no exception.

That's why we just created a petition that urges Congress to wait until October 1, 2008 before voting on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. (That would be 72 hours since it was first posted online.)

This isn't a bill to rename a few courthouses; this bill is Congress's biggest intervention in the economy in decades. This important legislation deserves more time for public scrutiny. You can review and comment on the bill on PublicMarkup.org, too.

Congress: Read the Bill First! (Thanks, Gabriela!)

My pal and BB eBay oddity scout Michael-Anne Rauback crochets these strangely appealing hats. Mark says they remind him of something Dr. Seuss's Cindy Lou Who might wear. As Michael-Anne says, they are "not for the timid." She sells them for $30 to $40 on Etsy. Her awesome Starfleet Academy t-shirt is not included. Michael-Anne's Hats

Meghan Bachman wrote an obituary about our friend, René J. Cigler, who died in August. She will be missed.

PORTLAND, OR -- René J. Cigler, died August 4, 2008

Born December 16, 1966, Cleveland, OH. René's childhood sounded like a happy one, she was a tomboy and had a penchant for adventure and making things with her hands. In reading the notes posted to an online memorial page for her, there were a many from people who knew her as a child, all recalling memories of her artwork. After high school she went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. This led to a successful career in creating characters and art for companies like American Greetings, Mattel Toys, Hasbro/Oddzon, managing toy development for feature films and animation for Star Wars, Nickelodeon, Grinch, Godzilla, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter, and many more.

Since 1989 René exhibited her work at galleries and museums including at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art; Power House Gallery, Cleveland; Four Color Image Gallery, NYC; Dead Horse Gallery, Cleveland, to name a few. Her adornment sculptures were featured at fashion shows at the Limelight in NYC in 1991, The Metropolis Club, Cleveland in 1993, The Theater Artaud, San Francisco in 1993 and the Yerba Buena Center for Cultural Arts, San Francisco, in 1992. These new works, combining aluminum, metal, rubber, wire, washers, screws and found objects, were seen by tens of thousands when they were worn onstage by René's dancers as visual suport for the band Ministry during the Lollapalooza tour in 1992. In 1994 her wearable sculptures were worn by the lead actress as well as supporting actors in the MGM feature film, Tank Girl. Her work was also featured in the 1993 Warner Brothers feature film, Demolition Man. Her sculptures and wearable art were also featured in videos for Nine Inch Nails, The Melvins, Alice Cooper, Filter and the Eels.

Many first heard of René through a feature article written about her in 1992 in Heavy Metal magazine. The article was 6 pages long featuring sculptures and costumes that she made. Through the years René often met fans of her work who had held onto that issue of Heavy Metal for upwards of 16 years. Not only did her work speak to a common theme many were feeling in the early '90s – the attraction to industrial culture and dreams of a post-apacalytpic utopia – but it was inspirational in it's juxtaposition of beautiful things and decaying things, sharp metal dangerous looking things and soft plush pliable things. Her wearable art was also featured in a 6-page layout in Penthouse magazine. Her long list of media credits also include Cleveland Magazine, bOING bOING, Axcess Magazine, Quick Japan, Bonesaw, Net Chick and Gothic Beauty Magazine.

René started her own company Inkmonster in 2000 with partner Cameron Smith. Inkmonster is a design house that creates graphic brands and characters and licenses them to manufacturers to put them on products such as apparel, stationery, greeting cards etc. Character lines that René has generated are Sugar Hiccup, Lil She Creatures, Ultra Vixen, Miss Kitty, and Bone Kitty. Then in 2003 came the creation of Strange Monster, René and Cameron's apparel company. A definitive success, Strange Monster apparel and products are sold at hundreds of stores worldwide.

René's professional and artistic achievements are striking – she never sat still, always using her brain, making art, designing, running her business as well as making time to support local artists, bands and clubs. As a friend, she was ever-supportive and encouraging, pushing people around her to be better people, to excel and achieve. Naturally inquisitive, René took the time to know everything about a person, her excitement and enthusiasm were contagious. Sweet and gentle, lively and beautiful, just being near her, privy to her thoughts and ideas, was infusive and inspiring.

Life is short, and shortly it will end... René lived her life as if each day was new and exciting, she was still the tomboy of her childhood, looking out through the eyes of an inquisitive little girl with blond pigtails. Her sketches, sculptures and designs were like memento mori, reminding us all that death will come, but to have fun while still among the living.

Surviving are her long-time partner-in-crime and love, Cameron Smith ( and kitty Sashimi), her mother and father Evelyn and Robert Cigler and her sister Barbara Zivitch. René has left a considerable mark in the hearts of so many people – friends and family who loved her dearly, and all the people who were ever touched by her work, and who have yet to be.

Private services were held in Ohio August 11th. Memorial date in Portland TBA.

More of her artwork is up here.

My friend Charles Platt is one of the smartest people I know. Besides being a novelist, editor, and author of many non-fiction books, he's also a fine photographer, designer, and an astonishingly versatile maker of all manner of things. When he offered to write a monthly column for Boing Boing, I was overjoyed. His first piece is about a recent trip he took to Tokyo's Akihabara district.

Lost in Trancelation

Akihabara, the Week Before the Massacre

by Charles Platt

On a sunny Sunday, Tokyo’s Akihabara district hosts an unrehearsed, ad-hoc street festival for fashion rebels and role-playing fantasists. Conventionally dressed shoppers outnumber the costumed exhibitionists by a significant factor, but the misfits make up for their minority status with their flamboyance. If you ever harbored a secret yearning to be a Victorian schoolgirl, a male transvestite, a French maid, or maybe a Japanese Elvis impersonator . . . or if you simply like the idea of looking strange among a subculture which will not only tolerate it, but celebrate it . . . here is a nurturing sanctuary. It’s like a sunnier version of the Halloween festival in New York City, or a richer variant of London’s Portobello Road. On the main drag of Chuo-doori, anyone with a secret self-identity can unwrap it for public display.

I’m here with two women: Erico, my Japanese-born significant other, and her female friend who is our guide for the afternoon and prefers to be referred to as “Kay” in this account. Intensely intellectual yet slyly playful, Kay is a sociologist who specializes in popular culture. She seems to relish the opportunity to show us how naughty the Japanese can allow themselves to be. “Which would you like to see first?” she asks with a bright smile. “Consumer electronics or porno stores?”

Servicing the needs of erotic costume play, this store also sells rice cookers.

Porno, of course—although Kay confuses us by leading us into a place that looks more like a U. S. drug store. We walk past utilitarian items such as band-aids and electric shavers before we come to a big section entirely devoted to clothing for cosplay, meaning costume play. As if by accident, almost all the costumes seem to have sex-fetish connotations, and I’m not just talking about trashy bedroom lingerie of the type that you can buy from Frederick’s of Hollywood. It’s a one-stop source for every clicheed female role in a sex video, from schoolgirls to nurses to maids. In fact, I find more maid costumes than all other categories put together. The cheaper ones are boxed, while hand-made items are on hangers.

Cheap frills: Packaged costumes for less than $40 apiece. Since the contents are not pornographic per-se, there seems to be no lower age limit for the model on the box.

Snip from a blog post by Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi on the media phenomenon surrounding Republical vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

(...) The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters.

The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn't how unqualified she is - it's what her candidacy says about America (Smirking Chimp -- thanks, friends list)

Above, the infamous 2005 blessing of Palin by Thomas Muthee, a witch-hunting evangelical minister from Kenya. In this ceremony, he and others lay hands on Palin, while Muthee prays she will succeed in government, calling on believers to seek positions of influence in government, education and business, because...

If we have that in our schools we will not have kids being taught how to worship Buddha, how to worship (Prophet) Mohammed. We will not have in the curriculum, witchcraft and sorcery," Muthee said.

(thanks, Emeka Okafor)

As I write this, the DowJones is down 600 points, largely in reaction to the House defeating the federal bailout of the credit industry.

What should we think and do about this?

If you've got no money and no debt, then just go about your business normally. I think the smartest long-term positioning is to begin looking at the goods and services you can provide to other people in your community without involving long distance transport or complex supply chains involving multiple creditors and borrowers. In other words, try to make what you do as real as possible.

If you do have money, well, either sit tight through the "capitulation" or do some bottom feeding of favorite underpriced stocks in industries that provide real goods or services to real people, and that don't need to borrow lots of money to do it. If you've got more than 100k in a single bank account, you might spread it out.

The reality of the (failed) bailout plan is so very different from the way people are thinking about it, though, that I thought I might offer some clarity. (I'm sure some of you will interpret this as additional obscurity, so ymmv.)

The main point of the original plan was for the federal government to buy distressed assets - like mortgages - from banks and other institutions. "Distressed" doesn't necessarily mean these are bad assets, or that the mortgages won't be paid back. It simply means these are debts that are selling way way below their longterm value. No one wants to pick up anyone's mortgages because housing prices are going down, foreclosures are going up, and shareholders of banks don't want them on the books.

So a package of mortgages that might be worth a million bucks in the long term if they're all paid back is only getting, say, $200,000 on the market. That's what's shrinking the credit markets. So the Federal government wanted to buy all this credit at a higher rate, bail out the creditors, and take on the mortgages. In the best of worlds, the Treasury would have made money off all this. They'd be using what government has over business (time) to purchase depressed investments and wait out the decades it takes for them to earn out.

The deal almost went through until McCain made his highly publicized drop in to DC, accidentally highlighted the leftist underpinnings of any government intervention, and polarized the parties involved. He left, but the damage was done. (It may have failed without McCain's help, but I enjoy blaming him.) America now saw the bill as an anti-populist bail out of banks. Call it socialism if you like but it was really just business. Democrats compromised by turning the investments into loan guarantees, but conservatives saw the whole plan as much too much like the way FDR got America out of the Depression last time: namely, socialism.

The bigger fact, though, is that even with a short-term bailout, the underlying mega-economy is in the dumps. Government can help lubricate the gears of the economy by utilizing its capacity to engage in longterm investing, as with the failed bailout bill. But this entire effort was really just a balance sheet adjustment. Unless we are also investing our time, energy, and remaining money in productive industries, education, and renewable resources, we will not have changed the real economy at all.

In this JBooks.com video, The Daily Show writer John Oliver gives a quick survey of apocalypse literature, from the Old Testament's Book of Daniel to Cormac McCarthy's The Road to Rob Kutner's Apocalypse How.

John Oliver's Literature Rodeo: Apocalypse Edition (Thanks, Kenneth Gordon!)

Kevin Mack is a talented special effects artist (I profiled him years ago in Wired). Several of his pieces, along with other pieces of fine art by film industry artists, will be in the Visual Amalgam art gallery event on Sunday, October 5th, 5pm-9pm, at the James Gray Gallery, at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Art of Kevin Mack

We're kicking off the week at Boing Boing tv with a visit from our London-based music correspondent Russell Porter, who sits down with Rachel Unthank & The Winterset, a experimental folk-roots ensemble from Northumberland, UK.

Rachel and Becky Unthank are sisters, and Russell caught up with them at this year's Nationwide Mercury Prize, where they are up for high honors.

In his "best albums of 2007" review, Paul Morley of Observer Music Magazine described the band's work as "tough as it is gentle, as ancient as it is modern, and as coldly desolate as it is achingly intimate. They might not end up being the best-selling British all-girl group of all time, but they're well on their way to being the most charismatic and imaginative."

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable video and instructions on subscribing to the BBtv daily video podcast.

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The girls are currently on tour throughout the United States and Europe. Their 2007 album The Bairns is lovely, and you can pick it up at Amazon, iTunes, and elsewhere around the web.

I've posted before about extreme crafter and talented toy designer Amy Jenkins's robot plushies and the other fun handmade creations she sells at amybean.etsy.com. Bazaar Bizarre posted a terrific interview with Amy where she talks about her crafty roots, the way she works, and her ongoing fascination with robots, cryptids, and luchadors. From Bazaar Bizarre:

How did you get your start in toy design?
While on tour with Survival Research Laboratories in 1992, I met a defunkt French circus called Archaos. Some of the stragglers were hired as our assistants, and those people inspired me to create action figures based on real people. I studied up on circus archetypes, and messed around in my studio for a few years with designing a collection of “non-combat-oriented action figures”. The idea was for a time traveling circus with a human ringleader and runaway domestic robots as performers.

Interview With Amy From Cozy Rampage

Previously on BB:
• Robot superhero plushies
• Cryptid baby onesies