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In 2004 Dmitriy Plaks and several of his fellow students at the University of West Georgia tested whether sound waves can douse fires in hopes of using sound to extinguish flames in a spacecraft. They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback's "How you remind me" was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out, according to results published in 2005 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.Link
Link and LinkThe LEGO history began in 1932 in Denmark, when Ole Kirk Christansen founded a small factory for wooden toys in the unknown town of Billund in the south of the country. To find a name for his company he organized a competition among his employees. As fate would have it however, he himself came up with the best name: LEGO – a fusion of the Danish words “LEg” and “GOdt” (“play well”).
“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider from 42nd St. to the Battery. “You pull the car four or five blocks to the west or east and the car starts right up...."Link
Automotive experts and engineers believe the problem stems from radio frequency interference that’s “jamming” the remote keyless entry systems of cars.
The remote keyless entry systems operate on specific wavelengths assigned by the Federal Communications Commission, which governs the bands and bandwidths of TV, radio, telephone and other transmissions.
The FCC said it has not received any complaints regarding interference affecting autos in midtown, and Empire State Building officials don’t believe the claims.
Rice said some people have expressed an interest in the cat, but no one has applied to adopt her.Link to AP Article, Link to LocalNews8 video
"We've had a few calls come in, but everyone's just kind of asking how's she doing, when's the surgery," (kennel associate Chrystin) Rice said.
The lawsuit alleges the Blue Man actors circled [James Sroden], held his neck and arms and "forced his head back" to insert the camera."He was an unknowing and unwilling participant of a stunt that went bad," said Sroden's attorney, Anthony Romanucci.
"When I started struggling, it seemed like this fellow, he tried to be more aggressive with this device and shoved it way down my throat," Sroden said. "In the days after that, the nightmares continued. A few days later, I really panicked because I had blood coming from my nose."
Sroden said his throat was sore for days; he had a foul taste in his mouth and eventually lost a few filings.
The general manage for the Blue Man Group in Chicago says the act does not use an esophagus camera. It's just a trick:
"Essentially, we have a piece in the show where an actor holds a camera to an audience member's mouth, doesn't enter their mouth, and then we play a video," Kori Prior said. "We have been performing this show in this theater for 10 years and have never had this issue before."Link (Via Museum of Hoaxes)
Link to interview, Link to Maybe Logic AcademyYour course covers Pranksters and Tricksters. Is there a difference between them?
RU Sirius: There’s a lot of crossover, but yeah, they’re different. For starters, obviously the trickster is a mythological concept — or a series of mythological figures — and a prankster is a real flesh and blood mortal. Trickster activities generally take place among the gods. Tricksters prank powerful, otherworldly beings while pranksters prank schmucks who think they’re in control.
Also the figure of the trickster, as it’s been characterized by Lewis Hyde (author of the seminal book, Trickster Makes The World), might be described as amoral or even immoral. Tricksters tend to appear in cultures and mythological systems where the boundaries and values and taboos are very well defined. And in these legends, you have your morally straight characters and you have your basic grim and serious “bad guys.” And then you have these tricksters who are playful and unpredictable criminals… thiefs mostly — and they’re generally imaginative and sneaky and able to play with ambiguity in otherwise rather diagrammatic narratives. And while they might commit theft or even murder, they also might unexpectedly leave behind gifts, or do things that confound or illuminate their victims, but there’s always some strategy, some sort of selfish motivation. Also, while the Trickster is clever, he (almost all are male) is also a fuck-up. Tricksters tend to get snared in their own tricks.
A Sullivan nod is executed by nodding slightly, by approximately 10–15 degrees, when the item it is hoped the customer will choose is reached. The key is to make the nod perceptible, yet subtle, so as to not distract. The nod is best done with lists less than 5 items in length. Studies have concluded that 60–70% of the time, a Sullivan nod will result in the customer choosing the 'recommended' item.
The Sullivan nod has been used for years, but I just heard about it. Consultant Jim Sullivan, the creator of this technique, claims it "even works over the phone for room service orders." Link
Spike Priggen of Bedazzled found this funny old ad that shows how an uptight dad stopped beating his child after switching to decaffeinated Sanka. Link
The SFWA European Hall of Fame is a ground-breaking anthology from James and Kathryn Morrow -- a collection of sixteen translated sf stories written by European authors. A down-side of being an English-speaker is that there's so much English-language material around that very little gets translated into your language, leaving you in a kind of bubble of literature written by people who speak the same language you do.
This is far less true for speakers of other European languages, who enjoy the pleasure of reading translations from many, many languages (including, of course, English), and are thus able to mix, match and remix the sensibilities, ideas and styles of writers from around the world.
It shows. The stories in The SFWA European Hall of Fame are not quite like any sf I've read before. Like much of the best sf, these stories tend to be allegorical, often absurdist, existential, and just plain weird. But there's a certain... stilted character to them that I came to realize was the emergent property of all those swirling styles and ideas, cross-pollinating and recombining outside of the Anglo Bubble.
I especially enjoyed the entries from the Greek author Panagiotis Koustas, "Athose Emfovos in the Temple of Sound;" the comic Romanian entry by Cezar Ionescu, "Some Earthlings' Adventures in Outrerria;" the Twilight Zonish and characteristically Russian fatalistic "Destiny Inc" by Sergei Lukyavenko; and especially the gorgeous conceit lurking in one of the Spanish entries, Jose Antonio Cotrina's "Between the Lines."
You would be hard pressed to find another anthology whose works were more different from one another -- and from the stories you're accustomed to -- than this one. It's a mind-opening journey: not always pleasant but absolutely rewarding.
Link
Wired's running a gallery of photos of the work of Christopher Conte, an artist who is also "an artificial limb designer and hobbyist robotics engineer." He builds lovely cyberpunky fantasies that we've featured here before, and Wired's photographer did a great job capturing them.
Link
There really should be a standard of some sort that blog CMS companies can agree on for export and import. Users of blog engines shouldn’t be hostages to their applications. Data exit and entry is problematic in everything I’ve used and it’s a shame. Blogging is supposed to be fun and I prefer to be agnostic about what tools I’m using, so it’d be nice if I could change blog engines every three months without too much friction. I won’t even go into how every engine has its own URL scheme — it’d be nice if I could keep my permalinks forever, even as I change blogging apps.Link
Link (via /.)The number of backdoors we saw was staggering. The servers serving the phishing sites had backdoors, the code used in the phishing kits had backdoors, the tools used by phishers had backdoors. Phishers aren't afraid to steal from regulars people and they are also not afraid to steal from other phishers. Some of the backdoors were meant to keep control over a compromised server, while other simply stole information that had been stolen by other phishers! We came across several forums where phishers, scammers, and carders basically identified other phishers, scammers, and carders that had scammed them. These shady characters may work with each other but they sure don't trust each other, that's for sure.
(Image: The scam truck, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from Jepoirrier's Flickr stream)
The Secret Headquarters comic book emporium in Los Angeles is having an art show by Ryan Heshka titled Radio Science Funnies, Inc. It opens Friday February 1st, 2008.
New comic book inspired paintings by modern master Ryan Heshka feel familiar in an old timey and eerie way. The illustrations of monsters, pin-up girls, robots and dated comic books feel almost discarded or better yet, found among the dusty items of an estate sale. It is clear that Heshka has been inspired by pulp magazines, science images and old advertisements but he manages to go beyond these influences to deliver us to a striking new world of delicately distorted and painted dreams.LinkHeshka has painted for BLAB!, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Popular Science, Dreamworks SKG, Fast Company, PC World, Smart Money, Esquire, Harper Collins, and Newsweek.
The artist will attend the opening from 8pm to 10pm.Paintings will be available for sale / viewing online starting Thursday the 31st of January.
Secret Headquarters will feature Heshka's one-of-a kind original works of art through March 5th, 2008.
When my four-year-old daughter saw my new cork-lined Elan Form from Griffin Technology, she said, "You got new clothes for your iPhone!"
And a dandy duds they are. The poly carbonate case, lined with cork, snaps on tight, and during the week or so I've used it, it's yet to pop open accidentally and reveal its nether parts to the public. It lists for $29.99. Link
On today's episode of Boing Boing tv:
Firefighters, models in flaming pasties and blowtorch antlers, hot contortionists, and geisha stiltwalkers all gathered for a fire-themed fashion show at The Crucible in Oakland. Xeni was there, and brings back this report.Link to video and discussion at Boing Boing tv.
The Secret Headquarters comic book emporium in Los Angeles is having an art show by Ryan Heshka titled Radio Science Funnies, Inc. It opens Friday February 1st, 2008.
New comic book inspired paintings by modern master Ryan Heshka feel familiar in an old timey and eerie way. The illustrations of monsters, pin-up girls, robots and dated comic books feel almost discarded or better yet, found among the dusty items of an estate sale. It is clear that Heshka has been inspired by pulp magazines, science images and old advertisements but he manages to go beyond these influences to deliver us to a striking new world of delicately distorted and painted dreams.LinkHeshka has painted for BLAB!, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Popular Science, Dreamworks SKG, Fast Company, PC World, Smart Money, Esquire, Harper Collins, and Newsweek.
The artist will attend the opening from 8pm to 10pm.Paintings will be available for sale / viewing online starting Thursday the 31st of January.
Secret Headquarters will feature Heshka's one-of-a kind original works of art through March 5th, 2008.
From "CONFIDENTIAL," a series by photographer Alison Jackson. From the intro:
Alison Jackson creates films, photographic images and sculptures about our fixation with fame and celebrity culture. These Mimeses use look-a-likes of celebrities and public figures to create a photographic or filmic image, which challenges the observers' perception of reality by creating a false reality.Link. (via Warren Ellis)
In "God's Eye View," Sydney-based art collective The Glue Society portrays four major Biblical events as if captured by Google Earth: "Cross, Moses, Ark, Eden."
Creative Review blog says the group "is aiming to produce further works using the same satellite imagery next year but this time relating to mythological occurrences and major historical events." Link.
Above: Moses parting the Red Sea. (thanks, Clayton James Cubitt!)
Link, Video link
On one side, in shirts, was the striking Writers Guild of America, played by "Daily Show" writers Rob Kutner, Tim Carvell and Jason Ross. On the other side, in suits, was the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, played by "The Colbert Report" writers Michael Brumm, Peter Grosz and Tom Purcell.Crashing out of the starting gates, the shirts argued it would cost the suits less than 1% of their total revenue to give the writers everything they wanted. For Paramount Pictures, that comes to $4.6 million, or "half the amount it takes to get Reese Witherspoon into a movie."
"I ask you," one writer noted, "which is more important to a movie -- a script, or half of Reese Witherspoon?"
The studio suits thought for a second.
"Which half?"
The Surrealist's London Evening Standard Headline Generator randomly assembles sensationalist newspaper headlines out of photos of newsagents' signs -- they're all-too-plausible, too!
Link
(Thanks, Stevew!)
See also: Sensationalist London newspaper headline
Last August, a blogger in Cincinnati going by the name CincyBlurg reported that a black friend from the southeastern U.S. had recently discovered that she was being called a Canadian. "She told me a story of when she was working in a shop in the South and she overheard some of her customers complaining that they were always waited on by a Canadian at that place. She didn't understand what they were talking about and assumed they must be talking about someone else," the blogger wrote.Link"After this happened several times with different patrons, she mentioned it to one of her co-workers. He told her that ‘Canadian' was the new derogatory term that racist Southerners were using to describe persons they would have previously referred to [with the N-word.]"
A similar case in Kansas City was reported last year on a Listserv, or electronic mailing list, used by linguistics experts. A University of Kansas linguist said that a waitress friend reported that "fellow workers used to use a name for inner-city families that were known to not leave a tip: Canadians. ‘Hey, we have a table of Canadians.... They're all yours.' "
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store where every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including the PC, Mac(R), iPod(R), Zune(R), Zen(R), iPhone(TM), RAZR(TM), and BlackBerry(R). Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as over 33,000 independent labels.Link
Link (Thanks, Andrew!)His Final Affairs
The tram clanks and rattles its way uphill towards the Olšanský cemetery.
"Look," a short little man says to a younger chap in a rabbit-fur coat, "Something's being built there; it will be a school or maybe a cinema. You know, I'm really glad I got to see him one last time. 'It's you,' he said. I don't think it really helped him much, but a man must show his friendship. 'I've come again,' I told him, 'but you'll be running off already,' I say, and meanwhile--"
The young chap in the fur coat nodded his head mournfully.
"I took the medal with me, so he would be happy," the little man continued, "and he said, 'My God, is it you?' You see, he recognized me. And I told him, 'Jozef, it will pass.' And he says: "Maňička, give me some of those giblets.' So she gave them to him, and he only took two bites, just pecked at them, but he didn't eat a thing. 'Maňička, give me some of those giblets," the man repeated, touched.
LinkREPORTED to have tremendous military possibilities, a successful death ray machine is said to have been invented, after lengthy experiments, by a Cleveland scientist.
A partial description of the machine’s construction and operating principles was recently offered at a session of the National Inventors’ Congress at Omaha, Nebraska.
Privileged witnesses to demonstrations of the machine declared that experiments were successful to a startling degree. Dogs, cats and rabbits were killed instantly, their blood turning to water as the ray was turned upon them. It is reported that the machine has been suppressed by the government until such time as it may be needed as a defensive weapon.
Link (via Futurismic)
Learn about writing and publishing. Meet other teens who share your interest in writing speculative fiction. Talk about short stories, novels, and films. Have your submission story critiqued. Brainstorm new story ideas, write a first draft, receive feedback, and rewrite. Attend readings by the authors. Do a public reading. Learn about submitting for publication, and send off your story at our manuscript mailing party.Finally, at the conclusion of the workshop, attend Confluence, Pittsburgh's annual, literature-based convention, where you will have the opportunity to attend panels and readings, and interact with other fans, authors, editors, musicians, artists, agents, and scientists.
2008 will be Alpha's seventh year. Previous attendees placed in the Dell Magazines Award and Writer's of the Future contests, and have sold stories to Boys’ Life, Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantastic Stories, Corpse Blossoms, Aberrant Dreams, and Fantastical Visions.
Link (via Neatorama)
Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town, complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings, was established in the barren sandy desert.But shortly after the drop in diamond sales after the First World War, the beginning of the end started. During the 1950's the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim what was always theirs.
The rules of RPM Challenge are simple: write and record 10 songs, or 35 minutes' worth of material, in the 29 days of February, using anything and anyone you can shanghai into your project. Last year, over 850 records emerged from the competition. The RPM site will connect you with other challengers and let you offer support to one another as you go.
Link (via /.)
This is the challenge: record an album in 29 days, just because you can.That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.
Don't wait for inspiration - taking action puts you in a position to get inspired. You'll stumble across ideas you would have never come up with otherwise, and maybe only because you were trying to meet a day’s quota of (song)writing. Show up and get something done, and invest in yourself and each other.
Anyone can come up with an excuse to say “no,” so don’t.
This is no ordinary reality show -- they've got enough cameras deployed to catch the merry mayhem from every conceivable angle. I love the school-group of little kids on one storey who are captured gasping and giggling as the WallWalker plummets past them. Link (Thanks, Sho!)
Link (via /.)
The offer dating September 4th 2007, replies an inquiry by Bavarian officials on the possibility of Skype interception, introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls.It continues to introduce the so-called Skype Capture Unit. In a nutshell: a malware installed on purpose on a target machine, intercepting Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception.
Another part of the offer is an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer this method is working for Internet Explorer and Firefox webbrowsers. Digitask also recommends using over-seas proxy servers to cover the tracks of all activities going on.
Mystery solved!: These come from the Brazilian artist Jose Geraldo Pfau Kings -- many thanks to Miss Cellania! Link (Thanks, John!)
Update: Here's more (unattributed) work from the same artist -- thanks, Perry!
LinkMORE punch than can be found in a box-glove is contained in a new electric glove invented by Cirilo Diaz of Cuba for use by police while handling rough characters or in quelling riots. Persons contacted by an officer wearing the glove receive a 1,500-volt shock, sufficient to remove all traces of fight. A half-pound battery worn on the belt supplies the power, all wiring being concealed beneath the coat.
Link (via Wonderland)But Gellar said that she hasn't given up on developing the game as a movie. "It's still my project, and I'm still working diligently. So to all those Alice fans, I'm not giving up. Because I believe there is such a beautiful, crazy, cool, twisted story to be told there."
Calling the movie "the frustration of my life," Gellar joked: "I'll do it if I have to get down and write it myself one of these days. I may have to."
You could probably substitute agave syrup for the corn syrup (blending it with something?) to get a super-low-GI version. Link (via Craft)6 cups puffed brown rice [any puffed rice will do, really]
1 cup peanut butter [I scored a few jars of White Chocolate Peanut Butter & Co for cheap, so I used up the rest of mine: creamy might be your best bet, no matter what]
1 cup brown sugar corn syrup [or brown rice syrup, organic light corn syrup…if you want maple syrup, I’d recommend going the half/half way by mixing it up with granulated sugar or rather fine other sugar]
1/2 t pure vanilla extract
1 t instant coffee crystals, crushed into a fine powder with the back of a spoon [up this a bit if you want a stronger coffee flavor, 2 t maximum to avoid overwhelming the other flavors]
1/3 cup carob powder [if you’re a hater, I’m sure cocoa powder would be a fine substitution here]
Link (Thanks, Grey!)When Polish forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him.
So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.
He saw action at Monte Cassino before being billeted - along with about 3,000 other Polish troops - at the army camp in the Scottish Borders.
The soldiers who were stationed with him say that he was easy to get along with.
"He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him," said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp.
(Image: Iranian.com)
Link
Crap Hound #7: Church & State, 96 pgs., 2 color cover, b/w interior, offset printed, suggested retail price of $12. This is the first all new issue of Crap Hound in 9 years! A pure but lucky coincidence makes this issue particularly apropos, as we're in an election year with a candidate declaring his intention to rewrite the constitution according to "God's standards"!
See also:
Crap Hound -- seminal clipart zine -- is back!
Crap Hound No. 6 - clip art magnificence
Link (Thanks, Ken)
When the Environmental Protection Agency promised that the air surrounding Ground Zero was safe, Vallone said, independent testers proved that such assurances were utterly false. Would these groups really have to get a permit before they started working? "It's a good question, and it has come up prior to this hearing," Falkenrath replied. "What I can assure you is that we will look extremely carefully at this issue of the independent groups, and get the opinion of the other city agencies on how to handle that, and craft an appropriate response." And if people use these detectors without a permit, Vallone asked, do we really have to put them in jail? Afraid so, Falkenrath answered.Councilman John Liu was considerably less impressed. Why, he asked, should a community group like Asthma-Free School Zones have to tell anyone, much less the police department, that they're testing for air pollution? "We have no interest in regulating air-quality sensors around schools," Falkenrath promised. "That's not what this is about."
(Image: PICT4460.JPG, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Gothick_matt's Flickr stream)
LinkA bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books — loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies’ magazines of the sixties. For casual reading — in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch — there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.
(Image: Community Bookstore, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from Phooky's Flickr stream)
A few days ago, I heard back from Ford, with a different side to the story. According to them, they hadn't said anything of the kind to CafePress -- rather, Ford had taken the opposite tack, releasing tons of pictures and bric-a-brac under generous Creative Commons license to encourage Ford fans to do cool stuff with their work.
So what happened? After a few rounds of correspondence with CafePress, here's where I've netted out:
* Ford had previously sent very stern letters to CafePress about similar projects, warning them in no uncertain terms that CafePress had better not produce projects similar to the Black Mustang Club Calendar
* CafePress contacted the Black Mustang Club and either said "Ford told us that you can't do your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" or CafePress contacted the Club and said "Ford told us that we can't can't do projects like your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" (I haven't been able to reach the Black Mustang Club people to confirm which it was, though they certainly wrote that it was the former)
* Ford has since contacted CafePress and The Black Mustang Club to say that this project and future fan-run projects (that don't imply an endorsement by Ford) are OK -- this is consistent with trademark law and a reasonable position for them to take
There's a couple of interesting lessons for Ford and CafePress to take away from this. For Ford (and companies like it), the lesson is surely to tighten the reins on your legal department. When they send stern letters to online service providers that threaten legal action, the natural outcome is that OSPs are going to get gun-shy -- and they'll tell your fans that they can't do anything and blame it all on you. The usual overkill approach from corporate counsel will come back and bite you on the ass.
For CafePress, the lesson is to take your customers' side when the law is with them. Even if Ford did tell CafePress to kill the BMC calendar, they'd have been wrong. The BMC calendar is legal -- even without Ford's blessing -- and when you protect yourself from legal liability by shutting it down, you incur PR liability by seeming like a bunch of candy-asses who can be bullied into submission by a memo from some white-shoe legal goon from a Fortune 100. Word gets around.
I don't know that we'll ever be able to find out whether CafePress told BMC that Ford was down on their specific calendar, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Ford's earlier letters on the subject clearly scared the hell out of CafePress, and CafePress's lawyers clearly need a refresher course in trademark and liability.
There's one very good piece of news to come out of this, though: Ford's program to let its fans do whatever they want with high-quality shots of the cars is a damned forward-looking and decent bit of strategy.
For the record, here's what Ford and CafePress had to say about this:
Whitney Drake, Ford Communications:
We have spoken to both CafePress and the Black Mustang Club and explained the situation about the Black Mustang Club’s calendar to everyone's satisfaction. Ford has no problem with Mustang or other car owners taking pictures of their vehicles for use in club materials like calendars, including the logos as they appear in the pictures of the vehicles. What we do have an issue with are individuals using Ford’s logo and other trademarks for products they intend to sell. Understandably, we have to take the protection of our brands and licensing very seriously.Sara Moufarrige-Doepke, PR Coordinator, CafePress:Ford did not send the Black Mustang Club a “cease and desist” letter telling them that they could not use images of their own cars in their calendar. The decision not to allow the calendars to be printed was made by CafePress because we had contacted them in the past about trademark infringements on products they sold.
CafePress and Ford will work together to clarify and resolve any future issues.
The Black Mustang Club and other Ford enthusiast clubs are encouraged to take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials as long as they don't use Ford trademarks in products that will be sold. Clubs or enthusiasts who have questions regarding this should contact Ford by emailing branduse@ford.com, we are happy to help.
In fact, Ford is contributing to these types of enthusiast programs in forums, blogs and other social media platforms through our Social Media Press Releases at ford.digitalsnippets.com
I think it is great that the Black Mustang Club, and any other enthusiast club, would take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials.
I’m looking forward to purchasing a copy to hang in the garage next to my Mustang (even if mine isn’t black).
1. We received a Cease and Desist from Ford several months ago. In this document Ford asked that we remove (and continue to remove) user created product images that feature Ford cars and logos. This included current products, and future products.Black Mustang Club:2. In compliance with this request we remove images as they come up, and then let the CafePress user (in this case BMC) know that they have been removed or pended, and why (in this case a general Cease and Desist from Ford).
3. Over the course of last week we spoke with Ford and reached an agreement - Ford has revised their initial position making the photos of individual's cars usable on CafePress merchandise.
To confirm, yes - we did receive a notification from Ford which covered current and future user-created CafePress products featuring Ford cars and logos. And no, this Cease and Desist was not directed specifically at the BMC - however the BMC content in question was prohibited in the general Cease and Desist we received several months ago.
I got some more info from the folks at cafepress and according to them, a law firm representing Ford contacted them saying that our calendar pics (and our club's event logos - anything with one of our cars in it) infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles. Also, Ford claims that all the images, logos and designs OUR graphics team made for the BMC events using Danni are theirs as well. Funny, I thought Danni's title had my name on it ... and I thought you guys owned your cars ... and, well ... I'm not even going to get into how wrong and unfair I feel this whole thing is as I'd be typing for hours, but I wholeheartedly echo everything you guys have been saying all afternoon. I'm not letting this go un-addressed and I'll keep you guys posted as I get to work on this.
Link (Thanks, Cindy)
# Get out your digital cameras, phone cameras, and webcams.# Write your message on a piece of paper, and include your city and state.
# Take a photo of yourself holding your message. Be creative and make sure the message is readable.
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this feature on RoyalPingdom: "When data center cabling becomes art." My cabling tends to look more like an altar to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Link,
Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)
The Secret Headquarters (my favorite comic store in LA) is finally selling their hilarious "God Save Stan Lee" tees online. My GSSL shirt has been just about my favorite garment for the past six months -- and now you can get one from anywhere.
Link
Likely to replace Berman is Rep Rick Boucher, who once proposed the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), which would have reformed the DMCA to make it legal to break DRM in order to do lawful things. He's the closest thing to a copyfighter in Congress, and you can only imagine that putting him in charge of the House Committee that handles the Internet and copyright will certainly change the game.
God knows what Berman will do once he's running Foreign Affairs, though.
There's no guarantee yet that Boucher will get the job, and he and Berman still need to win their respective elections this fall, but even the prospect of a Boucher-controlled Internet and IP subcommittee in the House feels like an early Christmas present. As the Hollywood Reporter correctly notes, though, the full Committee is still chaired by John Conyers (D-MI), who comes from the Berman School of Thought on such issues.Link
Etsy seller Takeahalliday's "Human Anatomy Science Patchwork T-Shirt" uses "different colored and textured fabric used in patchwork to represent the different human organs and rib cage." Lovely!
Link
(via Craft)
See also: Detailed anatomical t-shirts
Link (via Wonderland)No level grind, but there is combat: juicy, 2d platforming combat with RPG-like mechanics! This wasn’t always the idea, though. I originally wanted the game to not have combat at all, but in the end I decided that combat is something that a lot of people want. And we aim to please! So, then I decided that if there must be combat, I will find a way to avoid level grinding. I’ll talk more about the combat systems in later posts. It’s very early in the development cycle to be giving out details.
Plant diagram There is a kind of crafting, and it’s a central part of the gameplay. All I can say for now is that you don’t craft items–you grow them. Yes, gardening. :) But in a surrealistic game world where plants are not just plants. But I must not give away too much! (It’s very hard for me not to spill the beans! Oh how I fight!)
It may be that the salt water has a simple mechanical effect of clearing mucus, or it could be that trace elements in the water play some more significant role, though the exact reason why such a solution works is not known, said Dr. Ivo Slapak and colleagues at the Teaching Hospital of Brno in the Czech Republic.Link (Via TDG)The study, published in the January issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology, was paid for by Goemar Laboratoires La Madeleine, Saint-Malo, France, which makes Physiomer, the seawater nasal spray used in the investigation.
Artist Amy Crehore designed the logo for the Tickler brand ukulele, and you can get it on a T-shirt. I think it's beautiful!
Very nice quality white, heavyweight, unisex t-shirts, 100% cotton, pre-shrunk. This 3-color silkscreen t-shirt was made from an original ink drawing by artist Amy Crehore. For ukulele lovers, cat lovers, girl lovers, little pierrot lovers, & polka-dot shoe lovers.Link
One TED2008 Main Hall Pass has just gone up for auction on ebay. It's the only remaining legal way that someone can get into the event. The auction is being done with the approval of TED, because all the proceeds will go towards the Open Architecture Network, which was created in response to TED Prize Winner Cameron Sinclair's inspiring wish.Here's the ebay listing: LinkThe pass, which guarantees coveted access to the main theater where speakers present, includes three special extras:
- a first-day meeting with TED super-connector Sunny Bates
- a coffee at TED with the brilliant founder of ebay Pierre Omidyar
- and a lunch with the charming, insightful and delightful Meg Ryan
TED2008 has been sold out for more than a year, so we suspect this is going to make someone very happy indeed. It won't be cheap, but the successful bidder will be making a philanthropic contribution to an organization that's empowering architects and designers to change the world.
TED2008 is Feb 27-March 1, in Monterey, California on the theme "The Big Questions."
Here's a T-shirt design I came up with based on my Lollipopland characters.
You can get the design printed on any kind of shirt you like at Zazzle. Link
Random Good Stuff has compiled a bunch of YouTube videos of people smoking a legal and powerful hallucinogenic plant called salvia divinorum.
Link
LinkCity crews discovered the clog earlier this month after responding to complaints of blocked sewer lines downtown. Jones said crews opened a manhole at the Bates Street intersection and saw the clog - an oozing, white blob that looks like uncooked dough.
"We've tried punching through it, but each time we do, it just oozes back over the hole," he said. "It really looks like dough."
The two sisters were made to shower in front of security staff and told to fill out a two-page form with questions including: "Have you ever been the victim of rape?" and "Do you have homicidal tendencies?"When the family returned home, the US Administration for Children and Families mailed her a letter to let her now that she is now "under investigation." Link (Thanks, PeaceLove!)One question asked "are you in a street gang?" to which Gemma replied: "I'm a member of Appledore library."
Their clothes, money and belongings were taken and they were issued with regulation white T-shirt and jeans. Katie said: "It was like being in a little cage. I tried to go to sleep, but every time I opened my eyes, someone was looking right at me."
Eventually Bray discharged herself, and -- still dressed in hospital pyjamas -- tracked down the girls.
Link (Via Tacky Fabulous)Merola said the McDonald's employees told her to wait there for her food.
Merola was handcuffed behind her back and put in the cruiser.
Another officer arrived and took her to the Pinellas County Jail.
Merola said she was searched, photographed and fingerprinted.
Last weekend I saw a haircut ugly and evil enough to impregnate a nun just so it could kick her down a set of steep stairs. I’ve seen some stupid haircuts in my day, rocked more than a few regrettable ‘dos my damn self. My own hair in high school was shaven on the sides and back and semi-sorta-not-really-at-all long on the top in a ‘do that would have looked like a brain handle had I been able to pull it into a ponytail. I used to wonder why girls didn’t take me seriously....
The guy’s head was bald, shiny bald all the way back just past the apex of his dome right to where the third hair on Homer Simpson’s head would lie. There then sprung, abruptly, a dense forest of ramrod-straight hair about four inches long, spiky on the top.
Then the whole enterprise gave way to a classic Kentucky Waterfall, a pool of long brown hair flapping impudently down the back of the head and slapping the shoulders like so many dust-clotted ostrich feathers. A pair of admittedly robust sideburns jutted out from the bowels of the ‘do, embracing the man’s face like Hugh Jackman’s ‘burns in the X-Men franchise. Or like a pair of giant hairy ant mandibles. Either metaphor works.
Here’s an artist’s rendition:
I tried calling the Jase Group to ask them about this, but the recorded message told me to contact them via the website. Link
It's a bold and brazen ponzi scheme. I did not register with JaseZone, nor invite anyone. The material was scraped from other sources. They have my age wrong. The picture is from the web, and out of date (I've had a beard for 8 years). It is a lie that I "last login on January 14, 2008" since I have never logged in. My "friends" listed on the page are vacuous, just place-holders to populate the place. What a scam.
I may have this whole thing wrong. If so, someone please correct me. I'd love to know what is really going on. The phone number of the company simply shunts you to their website.
But it raises an interesting question: who owns your friendships? Is the fact that you are friends with X -- particularly if you declare so on one networking site -- now public knowledge that can be used by anyone? Is the shape of your life as revealed publicly part of the commonwealth, and in the public domain?
I suspect that your relationships are in the public domain once you make them public on the web, and so reverse engineering your social network from this information is not illegal, although it may not be socially acceptable or a good business practice. It feels more like a chain-letter to me.
Amsterdam-based artist Thijs Verbeek created an alphabet using clothespins and skin.
Link (via Laughing Squid)Could this be the age of brewed coffee? “We’re right there at the threshold,” said George Howell of Terroir Coffee, a retailer of roasted and green beans. “Coffee has never been a noble beverage because the means to perfectly produce it haven’t existed,” said Mr. Howell, who is also a founder of the Cup of Excellence, an annual competition that seeks to identify the best beans in each coffee-producing nation.
But, he said, with recent advances in coffee-making technology, “now you can get perfect extraction.”
(Blue Bottle Cafe owner James) Freeman is not trying to end the era of espresso. He still starts his days with a cappuccino, and his cafe serves drinks mostly from espresso machines, including a lovingly refurbished San Marco from the 1980s. But he’s excited by the possibilities of brewed coffee.
“Siphon coffee is very delicate,” he said. “It’s sweeter and juicier, and the flavors change as the temperature changes. Sometimes it has a texture so light it’s almost moussey.”
Link (via Further)Old Man of the Mountains
Franconia Notch, N.H.
The State symbol located 1200 ft. above Profile Lake. A natural profile from the cliffs of Canon Mtn., 5 layers of rocks make up the profile, 40 ft. high and 25 ft. wide.
Link to Neurophilsophy blog, Link to my article on bOING bOING DigitalIn the earliest European trepanned skulls, the holes were made by scraping the bone away with sharp stones such as flint or obsidian; later, primitive drilling tools were used to drill small holes arranged in circles, after which the piece of bone inside the circle was removed. The late Medieval period saw the introduction of mechanical drilling and sawing instruments, whose sophistication would continue to increase for several hundred years.
There is a great deal of speculation about why ancient civilizations used trepanation, as it was - and still is - carried out in the absence of head trauma. However, it is almost certain that all those who used it did so because they somehow linked the brain with behaviour. Some anthropologists suggest that trepanation was performed as part of tribal or superstitious rituals. Other researchers believe that the procedure was used as a treatment for conditions such as headaches, epilepsy, hydrocephalus and mental disorders. These were presumably attributed to possession by evil demons, such that a hole in the skull would have provided the spirits a passage for escape. Although the reasons for trepanning and the instruments used for the procedure differ with time and from culture to culture, the result is always the same: a hole in the head, usually made when the individual was fully conscious and, often, unanaesthetized.
Xeni visits the Steampunk Tree House, a 40+-foot-tall interactive sculpture created by a group of artists in Oakland, CA, and assembled for the first time at Burning Man. More than 60 people helped to create it, and in today's episode, you'll hear from project participants Alan Rorie, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman.
Link full post with video, Discuss on tv.boingboing.net.
(Special thanks to Steampunk Tree House creator, project manager and creative director Sean Orlando. Thanks also to the team at Kinetic Steam Works. Still image shown here by Neil K of burningcam.com, thanks to VA for air travel, and Wayneco for accommodations).
Update: Scott Beale has been following this project for a while over at Laughing Squid blog: Link.
Jenny sez, "Despite a warning from his superiors, FBI Special Agent Bassem Youssef answered questions at a January 12 session of the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. In 2002, Youssef blew the whistle to the director of the FBI and Congress that discriminatory practices within the Bureau were undermining the effectiveness of America's counterterrorism efforts. In this video, Youssef and his attorney discuss the case, talk about the abuse of National Security Letters following the passage of the Patriot Act, and speak of Abu Ghraib as an example of the U.S. failure to understand Middle Eastern culture."
Link, Background info
(Thanks, Jenny!)
The Year In Pictures interviews Lilly McElroy, an artist who takes photographs of herself literally throwing herself at men. Apart from all the heavy gender-socio-dynamo analysis these images inspire, they're also just fun to look at. Whee!
I started the project by placing an ad on Craigslist looking for men who would meet me at bars blind date style and let me literally throw myself at them. This worked fairly well, but limited the # of photos I could take. Now , I go to bars with a friend/photographer and approach men who are physically larger than I am.Link (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)
Link (via The Consumerist)
He gave me a tip: he said to take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks - don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not.At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing.
Why does this work? Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again. I’ll admit to noticing this working for me in the past with products like V-8 Fusion.
(Image: Chicken and Seafood Pages, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Ninjapoodles's Flickr stream)
Rich sez, "Senator Dodd is waging a magnificent fight against the destruction of the Constitution; but he could use support. The link gives the names and phone numbers of senators who have either (a) stood with him previously (b) expressed support for him or (c) opposed telco amnesty. It includes two candidates for president. We need to make it clear to all of them that this is their chance to 'uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Right here, right now."
Link (Thanks, Rich!)
* Barbara Boxer: (202) 224-3553
* Sherrod Brown: (202) 224-2315
* Russ Feingold: (202) 224-5323
* Ted Kennedy: (202) 224-4543
* Bill Nelson: (202) 224-5274
* Ron Wyden: (202) 224-5244
* Joe Biden: (202) 224-5042
* Hillary Clinton: (202) 224-4451
* John Kerry: (202) 224-2742
* Bob Menendez: (202) 224-2742
* Barack Obama: (202) 224-2854
* Ben Cardin: (202) 224-4524
* Norm Coleman: (202) 224-5641
* Dick Durbin: (202) 224-2152
Update: Fred sez, "I've quickly setup a list on CommitteeCaller.com to help you call those Senators supporting Dodd's FISA filibuster. Go to CommiteeCaller.com and click 'Senators for Senator Dodd's FISA Filibuster' under 'Special Lists' to be automatically connected to every senator, for free, who is supporting Dodd's important strategy to prevent the telecoms from getting retroactive immunity."
Holy crap, I wish I could go to this! LinkCome join with like-minded fiends at DoomBuggies' 10th Anniversary graveyard smash! While our original registration deadline is past, a few cancellations have left a small number of tickets available - so come join us! Attendees at our Swinging Wake will have a rare opportunity to hear stories directly from some of the famed imagineers who originally worked with Walt Disney and created the Haunted Mansion - in a personal setting with amazing food and wonderful people. This is truly a rare opportunity for fans of Disneyland and Disney history.
Matt sez, "Al Wynn, a cosponsor of last year's COPE Act which would have gutted net neutrality, released a fake news video to rebut charges of corruption. The funny thing is that he reiterates the charges in the video, something you don't do as a politician. I've also included a picture of a fundraiser invitation by various telecom PACs, including the Verizon Good Government Committee."
Link
(Thanks, Matt!)
Link (Thanks, Mario!)After the story is placed in the bottle, I sign and date the glass with a diamond-tipped pen. Then I cork the bottle and Marianne covers the top with sealing wax. After writing a letter of provenance, I destroy every copy, physical or electronic, other than the one inside the bottle. It is now, in the original, unspoiled sense of the word, unique.
Finally, I give it away. Usually to a charity auction or such, but sometimes to a friend. The owner of the bottle, whoever he or she is, can either read the story or else possess the object -- but cannot do both.
LinkI saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around "Central Park" on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as "the area formerly known as 'Central Park'", but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as "The Killing Fields", or "The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean", then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing).
Link (via Isen)
Pointing out that not all telecoms complied with the request from the Bush administration to listen in on private conversation of American citizens unless they were given a court order to do so, Dodd also questioned where such violations would end, and warned the notion of Americans giving up rights in order to be safe was a "false dichotomy that is dangerous."
Link. Illustration for SF Weekly by Aaron Piland.Eckersley's BitTorrent controller flickers for a second, showing that his computer is "seeding" our file to the Melbourne computer. Then everything stops. The transmission fails, and to an untrained eye, the problem appears to be with BitTorrent.
But Eckersley is running a Net monitor application called Wireshark, which works like an online customs officer checking the packets going out of the computer here and into the one in Melbourne. What Eckersley finds is damning. Someone or something has interceded in the transmission and told the computers to stop talking.
And that something, experts have concluded, is Comcast.
The experiment Eckersley and I ran replicates private and public versions that emerged last fall through an Associated Press story. That story confirmed what many in software circles knew for most of 2007: Comcast has been looking at its users' Web traffic and secretly blocking some of the Internet, namely BitTorrent uploads, to users outside Comcast's network. The Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges that Comcast blocks BitTorrent with a classic hacker technique called "spoofing," where the hacker poses as someone he isn't, in this case another user. Eckersley describes it as if he and I were having a phone conversation, and then halfway through Comcast interrupts us and in my voice tells him to hang up, and in his voice tells me the same thing.
Fantagraphics is hosting an art exhibition at its Seattle gallery to celebrate the release of its new book, LUST: Kinky Online Personal Ads From Seattle’s The Stranger, illustrated by Ellen Forney.
This festive event takes place on Saturday, February 9 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle’s lively Georgetown district.LinkLUST: Kinky Online Personal Ads From Seattle’s The Stranger takes a peek at the alluring deviance revealed in the alternative weekly’s “Lustlab” section. Each week for the past several years Forney has selected one ad to illustrate as a “Lustlab Ad of the Week” cartoon in both the print and online versions of the newspaper. LUST collects these images and includes fascinating interviews with several of the advertisers, with an introduction by former Stranger editor Dan Savage.
The exhibition, opening Saturday, February 9, will include more than two dozen seductive selections from the book. Creative custom LUST chocolate Valentine novelties will be dispensed by sensuous hostesses to an exotic mix of love songs by DJ David James. Forney will present a short multimedia performance based on the book’s contents.
LinkApparently the City of Seattle settled with amateur photographer Bogdan Mohora after the ACLU helped him file a claim over a false arrest when Seattle cops James Pitts and David Toner arrested Mohara for taking their photograph during the arrest. Bogdan was awarded $8,000 and the officers were disciplined.
Just another friendly reminder that photography is not a crime, even if the police tell you it is.
Stephen Worth says:
Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, we scanned and posted the very first Big Boy comic book from 1956, along with vintage TV commercial art and menus. The story of the creation of Big Boy is a fascinating one. Here's a snip from my article...Link"Years later, when Big Boy had become a familiar figure to the entire country, animator Benny Washam admitted to his fellow artists at Warner Bros that he was the cartoonist who had created the character. They laughed and teased him, saying, "Benny, you should have been heir to a hamburger fortune, but no! Your lot in life is to toil day and night making animated cartoons!" They were joking, but there's an element of truth in it. Never underestimate the power of a doodle. That Big Boy sketch that Washam traded away for a free meal sold millions of dollars worth of hamburgers."
Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)“Homey Airport” now appears as the official name for a certain air base near a certain dry lake bed in Nevada, according to reports in the Web site of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, as well as the Daily Aviator blog and others. New editions of flight planning software and civilian aviators’ GPS gear lists the name and the official designation “KXTA” — which online wags have speculated stands for “extraterrestrial airport.” (The “k” designation indicates only that the field is in the U.S., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.)
Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which sits 85 miles south of Homey Airport and is responsible for the airspace and any ground facilities, said that “we already know about the designation, but it doesn’t have any effect on operations at the base.”
Link to post with video.The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight.
Basically we have two chambers on either end of the rotating (pivoted) rod. The arrangement of the chambers is such that on either side of the rod, one chamber sits on top of the other (this is important). At the beginning of this operation, I fill the bottom chamber on each side with a yeast sugar solution. Each bottom chamber is always locked under pressure by special valves. Due to pressure the solution starts moving from a bottom chamber into its respective top chamber. Note that by moving upwards, the fluid’s center of gravity shifts, resulting in a mass imbalance which causes the wobbling.
Today on Boing Boing Gadgets I went off the reservation to talk about a rare "Marvel Comics #1" being auctioned next month, a crank- and solar-powered radio that should be inexpensive, that you have a few more days to enter the Greener Gadgets Design Competition, fancy-ass coffee machines too complex for me to understand or even discern from one another, a new guitar tuner that lives under your knob, a book that correlates consciousness with communications tech, a water bottle with a Camelbak bite spout, LP turntables made of stone, and that solar-powered MP4 player that can also play NES and GBA ROMs. And some deals (well, two) and Modern Mechanix's round-up of retro tech.
Here's some interesting news from Second Life -- this week marks the launch of The Mike Huckabee Center for the Liberation and Housing of Spermatazoan-Americans.
"I've been saving Spermatazoan-Americans from the Tubesock Holocaust for years," [Director GenJCChristian] Homewood continued, "by liberating them and providing them homes in mason jars I kept in my cellar until I ran out of room. This facility gives me the space I need to continue to give them their freedom.Link (via Warren Ellis).Homewood got the idea to name the Center after presidential candidate Mike Huckabee when he heard Huckabee state his support for the Georgia Personhood Amendment and the Human Life Amendment to the United States Constitution. "I thought if Gov. Huckabee supports granting civil rights to embryo-Americans and to the little 70 cell blastocyst-Americans, then surely he supports the rights of our tiniest citizens, the spermatazoan-Americans," Homewood recalled.
Let the archive mining begin -- post your best Atlantic archive gems to the comment thread. Link (via The Consumerist)Beginning today, TheAtlantic.com is dropping its subscriber registration requirement and making the site free to all visitors.
Now, in addition to such offerings as blogs, author dispatches, slideshows, interviews, and videos, readers can also browse issues going back to 1995, along with hundreds of articles dating as far back as 1857, the year The Atlantic was founded.
We're pleased to bring The Atlantic before a broader online audience. We hope that the quality of its writing, the trenchancy of its insights, and the depth and thoughtfulness of its reporting will inspire many of our online readers to join the Atlantic family by becoming print subscribers.
(Image: ellisparkerbutler.info)
We have to finish FISA this week. Everyone should be aware of that point. We have to finish it this week. I know there are important trips people want to take. We have the very important economic conference in Davos that Democrats and Republicans alike would like to go to.Link (Thanks, Clockwerks!)
Ian Macky says: "Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by 'Manhattan House' and sold by 'Metro Publications,' both of New York, its 'Five Volumes in One' was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form."
Three million cheers to Macky for not only scanning all 564 pages of this treasure of a book, but for cleaning up the images, transcribing the text, and adding thumbnail galleries and a copy of a 1942 magazine ad.
Cannibals. Fakirs. Equilibrists. Crime and punishment. Rituals. Slaves, cults and customs. Warriors and weapons. Musicians and mendicants. Dance, dress, undress and body modification. Structures, conveyances, beasts, and more breasts than you can shake a stick at! This is The Secret Museum of Mankind.LinkAdvertised as "World's Greatest Collection of Strange & Secret Photographs" and marketed mainly to overheated adolescents (see the 1942 ad in Keen, left), it consists of nothing but photos and captions with no further exposition. This was not a book published to educate (despite appearing on some public library's shelves), but to titillate (literally)-- it's emphasis was on the female form ("Female Beauty Round the World") and fashion, and it featured as many National-Geographic-style native breasts as possible. But anything lurid, weird, or just plain unusual is fair game. This was a book to gawk at by flashlight under the bedcovers.
Link to German story, Link to English story (via Cribcandy)It’s made of 454 slices, bound together in a book. Apparently it was quite a difficult process to put together, due to the complex constraints that were put upon the paper. From what I understand it was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
The folks that produced the book are a laser-cutting house that specializes in paper-cutting, called Visionen in Papier (Visions in Paper). I’m actually even more interested in what they are capable of doing, and the kinds of services they provide- check out some of their other examples of their work.
Link, MP3 Link (Thanks, So-Called Austin Mayor)Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program dedicated a full hour to the US's slide towards Orwellian "Total Surveillance."
Host Jerome McDonnell interviewed Lawrence Wright -- Author, The Looming Tower and Staff Writer for 'The New Yorker' -- about the Director of National Intelligence's proposal to expand government surveillance Americans' use of the internet.
McDonnel also discussed Cyber-Privacy vs. Electronic Security with Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center
And McDonnel reviewed the New FISA Bill with Helen Fessenden, the editor for the beltway newspaper, 'The Hill,' and author of the article, 'DoJ, ACLU Cool to Specter's FISA Deal.'
It's a comprehensive overview of the state of Big Brother today.
(Image: Close up of surveillance, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Smith's Flickr stream)
The 6 planets and sun and moon are made of glazed porcelain... The gears are bronze. I cast the blanks first, cleaned them up in the lathe, and the little milling machine did the rest. The main shaft of the moon drive train rides on 4 sealed bearings. At present, I don't even use CAD software. All G-code was generated by my own C++ programs.Link to Sargent's page, Link to posts about the orrery by the people who commissioned it (via MAKE: Blog)
Shortly thereafter, a Boing Boing reader who worked on the Amazon MP3 program said, "we don't use 'proprietary' anything," and vowed to get to the bottom of it
Now the mystery is solved!
It turns out that the user had a file-permissions problem with his Amazon MP3s -- and that there's nothing proprietary on Amazon MP3s after all:
Thanks to some help from an Amazon employee in the Boing Boing comments, we figured the initial customer service rep who told me "it's proprietary" was misinformed. This led me back to poking around on my system, at which point I discovered the mp3 files only had read permissions for my user account, when I made them readable for other users, both mpd and mt-daapd were able to find them.This is totally awesome -- thanks to all the BB readers (and especially "AmazonMP3") for getting to the bottom of this!
The formula does break down in extreme cases, (Harvard's Scott) Kominers says, when the time interval between buses is longer than an hour, for example, and your destination is only a kilometre away.Link to New Scientist, Link to scientific paper abstract
If you do choose to walk, you should make your decision before you start waiting, he says. You will still reach your destination later than the bus you'd have caught, but it will be much less frustrating than waiting for a while and then watching the bus shoot by.
Matt sez, "The science fiction and software event Penguicon is converting its volunteer rewards system into Whuffie, the reputation economy from Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The attendance badges and currency will use a barcode system to track individual work throughout multiple years. It is described in this post to the Penguicon blog."
Stupendous! I had a completely rockin' time a Penguicon a couple years back -- it's the perfect mix of geek passions. Plus, Whuffie's about as stable a currency as you're likely to find these days as half a petabuck of toxic debt gets de-leveraged.
Link
(Thanks, Matt!)
LinkThe infomercial claims that these footpads are scientifically proven to help anyone detox, but scientists know that toxins are generally removed from our bodies by way of the liver and kidneys -- not our feet.
Even worse, they cite research in a bogus scientific journal.
Link to Zoological Society page, Link to EDGE program1) Chinese giant salamander, (salamander that can grow up to 1.8m in length and evolved independently from all other amphibians over one hundred million years before Tyrannosaurus rex) seen here, photo from International Cooperation Network for Giant Salamander Conservation
2) Sagalla caecilian (limbless amphibian with sensory tentacles on the sides of its head)
3) Purple frog (purple-pigmented frog that was only discovered in 2003 because it spends most of the year buried up to 4m underground)
4) Ghost frogs of South Africa (one species is found only in the traditional human burial grounds of Skeleton Gorge in Table Mountain, South Africa)
5) Olm (blind salamander with transparent skin that lives underground, hunts for its prey by smell and electrosensitivity and can survive without food for 10 years)
6) Lungless salamanders of Mexico (highly endangered salamanders that do not have lungs but instead breathe through their skin and mouth lining)
7) Malagasy rainbow frog (highly-decorated frog that inflates itself when under threat and can climb vertical rock surfaces)
8) Chile Darwin’s frog (a frog where fathers protect the young in their mouths, this species has not been officially seen since around 1980 and may now be extinct)
9) Betic midwife toad (toads that evolved from all others over 150million years ago – the males carry the fertilised eggs wrapped around their hind legs)
10) Gardiner’s Seychelles frog (perhaps the world’s smallest frog, with adults growing up to just 11mm in length – the size of a drawing pin)
Link (via Babygadget)Made from recycled and recyclable cardboard, she creates, together with a young graphic designer, beautiful, fun toys that can be customised by the child. These toys are not only very original, but are often interpretations of classic toys (doll’s house, puppet theatre), remade to today’s design tastes and above all, to Armelle’s taste; the design is simple, with contemporary and graceful lines and will please parents just as much as children!
Link Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets
This knock-off "MP4 Player" not only plays music and video, it can emulate the NES and Game Boy Color. But even better, it can be recharged with built-in solar panels. That's right: you can play Faxanadu until the sun explodes.It comes with 2GB of memory built in, which is plenty for NES and GB ROMs, although perhaps not music and movies, and can be expanded up to another 2GB with an SD card. Oh, and it's got a USB out to which other gadgets can be connected—not for data, but to be recharged from the solar panel.
LinkWhile it is able to feed - "both mouths can drink at the same time," noted a surprised Yang, who is feeding it on powdered milk - it is unable to stand properly.
Sharp eyed pareidoliacs spotted a Martian Yeti taking a stroll in this NASA photo. (left)
Could it be related to our gentle friend of Earth's forests? (right)
Boing Boing tv pal Matt West interviews Danny Scheible, an artist who makes elaborate, luminous, wearable art from masking tape. One of his better known works was an entire city constructed from masking tape and painter's tape, called "Tapigami."
Next, a sneak preview from U2 3D, a stereoscopic 3D movie opening this week in US theaters which showcases the band's use of technology to create immersive experiences for fans in concert. There's a blog for the film here.
Link to BBtv post, with video, Discuss.
Music in this episode: Beef Wellington, from Eighth Dimension Records (Special thanks, Michael Donaldson, Souris Hong-Porretta, and Thor!)
Link (Via Further: Strange Attractor & beyond)Last year, two research groups induced out-of-body experiences in healthy participants with virtual reality techniques. The experiments, described last August in studies by H. Henri Ehrsson and Olaf Blanke and colleagues in Science, demonstrate that out-of-body experiences, previously confined to the realms of psychiatry, fiction and the occult, occur when the normal processing of sensory information is disrupted. This research provides an important tool to understand how the feeling of self is generated by the brain.
The participants wore virtual reality goggles connected to video cameras that filmed the participants’ backs. Thus each participant saw his or her own body from the back ... To complete the illusion, the scientists used two plastic rods to stroke synchronously, for 1 or 2 minutes at a time, the participant’s back and the back of the virtual body. Next, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate their subjective perception of the illusion. Amazingly, they reported feeling as if they were being behind their physical bodies and looking at them from this location. The illusion failed when the stroking was asynchronous.
Link
NOT a boat, but a caterpillar-tractor car, is this public utility, located at an English seaside resort. As shown, it holds its passengers above the waves, while picking its way over the bottom. A 24-horsepower engine operates it.
Here's a giant statsdump from Metafilter -- all the metadata from all of the MeFi sites. Unbelievably cool -- can't wait to see what people make of it: post stats, comment stats, favorites stats, contact data, and userids.
Link
(via Overstated)
This week, I've got news of four more fan-translations of my Radar story Scroogled, which tries to paint a picture of what the world would be like on the day that Google turned evil. The story has been translated into sixteen languages now, including the latest additions:
Additionally, Pavol Hvizdos (who previously translated my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town and my story Truncat into Slovak) has also translated my story 0wnz0red into Slovak, where he's translated the title as 0v1adany.
Link (Thanks, Bill)
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.
(Image: NAM---Mk-5-Nuclear-Bomb, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from Marshall Astor - Food Pornographer's Flickr stream)
Link
The company serves a sonorous mix of inoffensive music, public service announcements (buckle up, kids!) and a few harmless advertisements (maybe McDonald's?) to over 1 million children in 23 states. Bus Radio is based in Needham, Massachusetts, but lost its contract with the Needham school district after uppity parents objected to the crass commercialization of something as innocent as a bus ride.
This low-cost attic staircase was built out of stacked pine boxes, filling a space too narrow for regular steps. Plenty steep but damned cool.
Link
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Greg sez, "I just came back from the Heathrow Terminal 5 trials. Aside from all the regular kind of snafus to be expected when running such a trial and all the regular kinds of annoyances of dealing with airports, one particular problem stood out.
"In a brand new terminal built in the 21st century, BAA has managed to build departure waiting areas with not a single passenger-accessible power outlet. Rows and rows of hard plastic benches with armrests which prevent you from lying down--kind of makes you feel like you're in a Greyhound bus terminal and not a single power outlet.
"The nearest outlet was in the far wall near some fire equipment. The only way a laptop user could use it would be if he or she sat in the hallway obstructing people walking by." Link (Thanks, Greg!)
See also:
Montreal airport denies electricity to laptop users
Power outlets in airports wiki
Pay-per-use electricity in Dallas/Fort-Worth airport
(Image: 2006-12-12_19-10-47.jpg, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Avinash Meetoo's Flickr stream)
Link (via /.)
Today, while skimming over various WoW sites, I noticed two forum posts about the same topic: Players have discovered that there's a cap on how much money you can carry in the game. Apparently that amount is 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper. After you reach that lofty sum, you'll no longer be able to receive money from any source in the game. While some responses to the original posts claim that this exact limit had previously been theorized to exist, there have been no reports of anyone in the game actually achieving this amount via legal means.Dorgabas on the official forums and meth on MMO-Champion's forums both reported the discovery today, each with a screenshot to provide veracity to their claims. You can check them out by clicking here. The shots are of two different players, one of whom is on a German-speaking server. In the shot you can read his conversation with a GM, which supposedly translates to him asking the GM about the limit and the GM scratching his head in response.
Link (Thanks, Larry!)
Three of the waterfalls will cascade into the East River and New York Harbor from free-standing scaffolding towers that Eliasson said were part of his artistic vision, mirroring the scaffolding towers that sprout up throughout New York. The falls will be in place from mid-July to mid-October.City officials are hoping to emulate the success of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's project, "The Gates," which drew around 1.5 million visitors to the city in February 2005 to view about 7,500 saffron panels draped through Central Park.
Link
Pickles, packaged in envelopes of a transparent rubber product, have been introduced by a leading American food packer. The water-tight container, which is protected by a cardboard box, holds neatly arranged sweet pickles which are packed in fluid just as when they are sold in glass bottles. Besides increasing the attractiveness of the commodity, the new method of packing is reported to eliminate bottle breakage and to reduce the weight of the containers.
Pena, a blind musician, was captivated by the sounds of Tuvan throat-singing, which he encountered for the first time on a late-night shortwave transmission. He taught himself to throat-sing, and met with and befriended Kongar-ol Ondar, forming the band Genghis Blues, which merged throat-singing with Delta blues in a marvellous and haunting way.
Pena died tragically after a misdiagnosis of pancreatic cancer led to his being addicted to -- and then brutally denied -- heavy painkillers, and subsequently died from pancreatitis and complications from diabetes. (Set sez, "He was never brutally denied painkillers -- after he found out that the first Dr. made a mistake in diagnosis, he finally found a competent and good Dr. who helped him manage his pain, quite compassionately, up until the end. ")
His music is a rich legacy, though. The combination of Tuvan throat-singing and the blues is not to be believed -- or missed. MP3 link to Spider's podcast (Pena segment starts about 5:20), Genghis Blues DVD, Genghis Blues CD
Information on Genghis Blues, Paul Pena homepage, Paul Pena on Wikipedia,
Link (via Making Light)
This is inside the building right next to the Michigan Central Station. Apparently at one time it was a post office, and then it was used by the Detroit Public schools to store textbooks and materials. The columns in here are particularly beautiful. I think I read somewhere that the building was designed by Albert Kahn, but I haven't been able to verify that.All those metal bars once supported pallets where all those papers and books were stored. This is the state I found it in.
There is an interesting discussion brewing on the Open Government discussion list. It all started when Aaron Swartz posted information about a new Library of Congress initiative with Flickr called "The Commons." This initiative is important because (if it continues) will allow people to tag images on Flickr as public domain, something you can't do today.LinkAs a result of this discussion, Public.Resource.Org has put an unsolicited proposal into the Smithsonian Institution proposing they join the party by donating 2,000 public domain images to the pool. Yahoo! has not yet said if they would allow the Smithsonian to participate, but we figured they might let them in the door. To make the offer of a joint venture a serious one, we've put $50,000 on the table.
Needless to say, if we're successful in this venture, we'll also make tarballs available for FTP for those who just want to download instead of navigate.
Link to LJ group for the convention, Link to introductory post (Thanks, Alice!)But when it comes to the presence of kidlit authors at conventions? Our favorite conventions welcome writers of content for younger readers, but these writers are in the minority at the con. Often kidlit writers are treated by members of adult F&SF cons in a manner that is patronizing at best, snubbing or scornful at worst. In recent months this has been a growing burr under our saddles, until chance remarks after a recent con got us to talking about the place of YA and kids' F&SF in the literary world in general.
Ours is an outsider arena--not mainstream enough for the purely kidlit crowd, not adult enough for the F&SF purists. And yet, most F&SF readers were introduced to the genres as kids and still re-read their favorites, if they don't continue to read the new F&SF which is being published for younger readers! We run into as many adult readers of kidlit at cons as we do actual, real, well--you know--kids and teens!
Following a long and fruitless hunt for a kidlit con, we started talking about making our own. Think of it, folks. Your dream date: writers, editors, star booksellers, artists, critics, art, videos, anime, and a dealer's room filled with treats. Panel topics about the art you love, discussions on publishing books for children and teens, what works (what lasts) in movies for kids. A con for the well-read, regardless of age, featuring the writers who changed your life.
That's what we're doing here. A project of this size needs a lot of active participation in its planning and execution. In other words, we need help, in the form of volunteers, ideas, and funding. This is where we open the floor to you all for suggestions, recommendations, and all of the assistance we can get. Do you know anyone who might provide us with grant money? (Can you write grants?) Are you willing to work on a con committee, and in what capacity? Have you started a convention and are you willing to give advice on starting a convention? Who would you like to see, as guests and as the first Guests of Honor (writer and artist)? Your input is welcome!
Jonathan's posted a short instructional video demonstrating a simple way to make a handsome plastic snail out of a cocktail stirrer by melting it over a candle-flame. I'm sure the fumes are no fun, but you gotta suffer for your art.
Link
(Thanks, Jonathan!)
BB reader Hagrid says, "I just blogged this stunning 1943 colour photo, released by the Library of Congress on Flickr. It turns that WWII icon, 'Rosie the Riveter,' on her head, by presenting her as she really was: African-American. Love the nails and ring, incidentally."
(Editor's note: there were surely many shades of "Rosie," but that diversity is often overlooked.)
Previously: Library of Congress uses Flickr to crowdsource tagging and organizing its photo archive
Here's episode three of the delightfully demented video tutorial, You Suck at Photoshop.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• You Suck at Photoshop #2
• Funny tutorial: "You Sucjk at Photoshop"
Faunoiphilia (FAW-nay-FIL-ee-uh) - An abnormal desire to watch animals copulate.Link (Via sexoteric NSFW)Brassirothesauriast (bruh-zeer-oh-thuh-SAW-ree-ast) - A person who collects brassieres or pictures of women wearing them.
Eunoterpsia (YOO-noh-TURP-see-uh) - The doctrine that pursuing sexual pleasure is the goal of life.
Typhlobasia (TIF-luh-BAY-zee-uh) - Kissing with the eyes closed.
Amychesis (AM-i-KEE-sis) - The involuntary act of scratching or clawing your partner in the heat of passion.
Mammaquatia (MAM-uh-KWAY-shee-uh) - The bobbing or jiggling of a woman's breasts when she walks, dances, or exercises.
Ozoamblyrosis (OH-zoh-AM-bli-ROH-sis) - Loss of sexual apetite because your partner has wicked B.O.
Amomaxia (AM-uh-MAX-see-uh) - Love-making in a parked car.
Colpocoquette (KAHL-puh-koh-KET) - A woman who knows she has an attractive bosom, and who makes good use of its allure.
Melolagnia (MEL-uh-LAG-nee-uh) - Amorous feelings inspired by music.
Google invited me to create an example theme for its new iGoogle Themes API. The theme changes throughout the day to tell a little story.
I also worked on a gadget with RSS feeds for the different blogs, videos, and podcasts I contribute to. You can add the theme and gadget to your iGoogle page here.
The iGoogle Themes API allows you to personalize iGoogle by modifying the page's design. Your theme can modify the header and footer images, text colors, link colors, gadget frames, and more. Your theme can also update the page's design based on time of day. This makes it easy to create a story that unfolds throughout the day, landscapes that change as the sun rises and sets, and abstract images that become more complex. Creating a dynamic theme is as simple as specifying a time with a theme's visual attributes.You can see other example themes by Yves Behar/fuseproject, John Maeda, and Troy Lee here.
Noah Shachtman at Wired's DANGER ROOM blog says:
This is beyond ridiculous. The federal government is now going to track every farm animal across the country, from birth to death, because it wants to watch out for the extremely faint possibility of a bioterrorist attacking the food chain.Snip from LA Times article:
A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bioterrorist. Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, will eventually be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the vet and county fairs. But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.Link to DANGER ROOM post.
Image: "Three Pigs," from Xirzon's photostream.
This looks like an illustration, but it's a photo by Masato Ohta from the Japan HDR Flickr Photo Pool. Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Flickr group produces astonishing color pix with new plugin
• Introduction to HDR (high dynamic range) photography
• Stunning HDR shot of Tokyo skyline
The proprietor of the "I am Not Lying" blog took these photos of a smashed up Sharper Image karaoke Elvis-bot his friend found in Brooklyn.
It looks much better this way than it does out of the box, don't you think? Link
I drink your milkshake, even though I opposed drinking your milkshake four years ago. -- Mitt RomneyLinkI drink your milkshake, but only if the Bible says it's allowed. -- Mike Huckabee
I may drink your milkshake for another 100 years, if that's what it takes. -- John McCain
I drank a milkshake on 9/11. -- Rudy Giuliani
I drink your milkshake, but I'm paying for it with gold. -- Ron Paul
I will fight the corporations so that you can drink your own milkshake. -- John Edwards
I have 35 years of milkshake-drinking experience. *sob* -- Hillary Clinton
I peacefully drink your milkshake. -- Dennis Kucinich
I hope Brian makes this a regular feature of his excellent blog. Here's one of four Q&A's on his blog:
Dear Golden Age Wonder Woman -I’ve known my best friend since second grade, but things have been strained between us ever since I got married. Carol has remained single, and I can hardly speak to her anymore without hearing mean remarks about marriage or my husband! She seems jealous and resentful of my marriage, and angry that she’s still single. Recently, she told me that she saw my husband at a bar kissing another woman, and has demanded that I confront him about it. I don’t believe her, but she says that if I don’t talk to him about it, she’ll break off our friendship! What should I do?
-Conflicted in Cleveland
bart van de vel
pixelgirl presents
imaginary world
chickenhead
adult swim
maxalot
chaoskitty
k10k on display exhibit
desktop
Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)
Image: wallpapers at maxalot.com, this one is "MXL_Inka" by eBoy.
Eric Menhart may call himself a cyberlawyer, but we think he has a lot of learn about cyberlaw -- and common sense. Menhart is the author of a blog about cyberlaw issues called, logically if not innovatively, "Cyberlawg." (As he says in the top right corner, "Cyberlawg = Cyberlaw + blog.") And he is "principal attorney" in a firm called "CyberLaw P.C." OK, OK, we get it, he practices technology law. Based on this, he's applied for a trademark on the use of the term "cyberlaw" in connection with the practice of, um, cyberlaw. That's like a soda company claiming a trademark in the use of the word soda in connection with the sale of soda. Or an apple farmer claiming a trademark in the use of the term apple in connection with the sale of apples. Or ... well, you get the picture.Link (Thanks, Rebecca!)
Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become "vertical ecosystems" complete with birds, rodents and even plant life. One small animal might be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Swelled rivers, crumbling bridges and buildings, grizzly bears in California and herds of buffalo returning to the Great Western Plains: In a world without humans, these would be the visual hallmarks. Our cars would shrivel to piles of dust, our house pets would be overtaken by flourishing wildlife and most of the records of our human story -- books, photos, records -- would fade quickly, leaving little evidence that we ever existed.
Using feature film quality visual effects and top experts in the fields of engineering, botany, ecology, biology, geology, climatology and archeology, Life After People provides an amazing visual journey through the ultimately hypothetical.
The 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl and its aftermath provides a riveting and emotional case study of what can happen after humans have moved on. Life After People goes to remote islands off the coast of Maine to search for traces of abandoned towns, beneath the streets of New York to see how subway tunnels may become watery canals, to the Montana wilderness to divine the destiny of the bears and wolves.
Here's a 1994 video from Charile Rose of famed animator Chuck Jones drawing Wile E. Coyote.
It is not clear whether the embryos would have been viable if implanted into a womb. Stemagen did not test whether the embryos had the correct number of chromosomes. But Dr. Wood, who also is a fertility doctor, said, “We’ve seen reproductive blastocysts that look like this or worse and they implant.”Link
He said Stemagen, which he started with a wealthy friend in 2005, was not interested in creating cloned babies, something that is illegal in places and morally repugnant to many people. Rather it wants to make stem cell lines for research and medical treatments.
The design initiative called for a homemade primitive luxury commodity, "taking the rough out of roughing it." I reached out to my good friend Matt Penrose who works for Cereplast, a small company which distributes (yet to be properly termed) bio-degradeable plastic. We made a Dogtent for Louie, his boxer. One that can be rolled up and put into its own bag. Early design ideas were very ambitious but ultimately we were at the mercy of working with an unforgiving material that was only available to us in sheet form, rolled up. Loomstate was nice enough to donate some organic cotton for the tent lining.Link
Honey bees are dying in vast numbers and nobody knows exactly why. As honey bees are responsible for pollinating a third of the crop species in the US alone, this phenomena, called Colony Collapse Disorder, is potentially very bad news for everyone. "Vanishing of the Bees" is an independent documentary currently in production about this ecological nightmare and its potential impact. The trailer is beautiful, provocative, and deeply moving. I hope the filmmakers gather the funds to complete the full movie. Link (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)
Link
The "fire, control" machines, now used to plot the flight of shells from modern guns in moving ships, against moving targets, deal with practical conditions like this; and the machine pictured could answer a question of this nature, as well as a good many others less specialized. For instance, three or more heavenly bodies (like Earth, Sun, and Moon) are moving in their orbits at different rates of speed and varying distances, attracting each other. What will be the combined result of their forces, in changing the positions of each, in a given period? It is an enormously difficult proposition for the best mathematician in the world. With this machine, its ten "integrators" would be adjusted (by setting dials) to represent the varying factors of the problem, and then started turning. The friction discs and gears of the machine would operate on each other, each of them with an effect proportioned to the energy and speed it represented; and, on the final chart at the "answer table" of the machine (see illustration) a curve would be drawn by a metal pen, representing the formula desired (not necessarily a physical picture of the motion of one of the heavenly bodies, but a mathematical picture of it).
Link (Thanks, Mike!)
Any thing that creeps and squeaks is fair in a game of Crawly Combat. The premier set of the miniatures system Big Big Battles, Crawly Combat is an all ages miniatures game with rules so easy a child could comprehend and yet enough play value to keep even adults coming back for more.
Robots are used on battlefields to fight wars, but today on BBtv -- an infomercial for robotic revolution from the Institute for Applied Autonomy. Founded in 1988, the group describes themselves as:
... a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Our mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists.Those technologies include a grafitti-spraying robot to denounce The Man, a cute and seductive pamphleteer, and a txt app for your phone, so you can invite all your pals to come riot.
Next in today's episode: animated square-headed beings from the beautiful genius minds behind Peppermelon.tv.
Link to BBtv episode with video and comments.
Frankly, it was just a small giggle... it was inappropriate but not bad enough to cost her the job if it was happening on a common day. Unfortunately though, the headline of the day was a warehouse blast that killed 40 in Icheon; the public was critical of the laughing incident because of the circumstances.LinkMBC spokesperson has responded that they won’t be reinstating Moon Ji-ae in near future for the news anchor post. Her works on other shows are however not affected at the moment.
UNCOMMON COLDSLink
Generally speaking, officials at the World Health Organization and the Department of Health and Human Services try to avoid language that might spark a panic. So when experts from both agencies describe a devastating global pandemic as "overdue," it's probably time to pass the zinc supplements. Many scientists consider the most likely outbreak risk to be from H5N1, more commonly known as bird flu. It's not yet easily passed to humans, but 61 percent of those who've been affected have died. Virologists like Dr. Robert Webster, who heads a WHO bird flu research lab, estimate that if the virus mutates, the death toll could be in the billions. Maybe now's a good time to get that cough checked out?How to Survive: As there's no vaccine readily available, your best bet is to keep your eyes peeled for outbreaks and, like Dr. Webster, stow away three months' worth of food and water.
(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)
Mike Lorenz says
My wife recently acquired a box full of old TV Week supplements to the Philadelphia Inquirer, those small TV listing magazines for those who were too cheap to buy a TV Guide.I was browsing the issues when I came across this incredible full-page ad on the back cover of the January 23, 1972 issue.
There are just so many gems on this page, it seems like a joke, but it's really not. "The gun of 1000-and-1 uses", "Dial-a-flame Action", "Clear stairs (except wood)", "So easy even your wife can use it."
If I saw that gal outside her suburban home with a flame gun, I'm not sure whether I'd want to call the police or ask her to marry me.
This drumcomputer hits the market 1984 and was a long time the state of art in house and techno productions. Shift-Click the Step-buttons for accent triggers. Shift-Click-Move knobs for smoother resolution. Press Save to store a snapshot of the current settings to a flash cookie. Restore snapshot by pressing Load. Clear to delete all patterns and reset all knobs. Drag and drop a pattern button (invisible) to copy a pattern to a new location.
Link
The Handpresso marries a bicycle pump with an espresso machine. You pump it up to 16 bars, pop in an espresso pod (ick -- I hate those things), add hot water and hit the release and the water is driven through the ground to make an instant espresso at a picnic, on the road, or wherever (assuming you carry around a thermos full of hot water). Runs about €100, which is the cost of a mid-range home machine -- but I suspect you wouldn't want to replace the kitchen machine with this.
Link
(via Geekologie)
Link (Thanks, Aaron!)
The home was built from trees that were cleared from the forests that now are open fields of fertile farmlands. The underpinning of the home was and still is hand-hewn logs held together by 10" wooden pegs. The original structure consisted of four equally sized rooms and the kitchen was separated from the home in the back to save the home in case of a fire in the kitchen.In the late 1940's, the kitchen was joined to the rear of the home and three other rooms were added across the back of the house. The floors of this section were not joined evenly, and there is an approximate ten inch step down from the original section of the home to this rear section. The porch was also extended across the front and down the West side of the house. In 1957, my father, who was actually born in the home in 1916, remodeled the home, leaving the basic four rooms of the home but installing oak hardwood floors. He also left most of the original windows in rooms and by the front door, which were hand-blown glass with "wavy" imperfections and bubbles. The chimney on the East side of the house is also original which, according to family lore, has brick laid with "salt crete". It was covered with a thin layer of concrete years ago to protect it from weathering. Around 1965, dormers were added to the roof of the house and the attic was opened to house two bedrooms. And the final remodeling occurred around 1985 when the kitchen was remodeled and a carport was attached at the kitchen entrance.
Inspired by Philip K. Dick's alternate history novel The Man In The High Castle, Alejandro Zamudio and his cohorts made an "electroluminescent shirt" that displays hexagrams from the I Ching. To cast a hexagram, the wearer shakes his sleeve. Dave Gill's Total Dick-Head blog has more. (In related news, Gill will be speaking on a panel about "The Multiple Myths of Philip K. Dick" at Harvard's Vericon convention on Saturday, January 26.) Link
I wrote the first draft of Little Brother, the young adult novel I've got coming out in May, in eight weeks exactly, from the day I got the idea to the day I wrote the last word. I was pulling a minimum of 2,000 words a day and had a couple of 10,000 word days (the book is a little over 100,000 words long). It was weird -- the book just wanted to get out -- sometimes, it felt like I was passing a bowling ball. It was exhilarating, but I wouldn't want to write them all that way. I finished the book at 5AM in Rome, while on holiday for my anniversary, having snuck out of bed at 4AM to write. Again: wouldn't wanna write them all that way.
Note that some of this advice adds up to "Write some other novels first so you can do your two-month novel in a measured and confident manner."
(1) Make sure your initial synopsis is detailed enough that you can divide it into chapters when you start the actual writing, and, if possible, make sure at that point that you have a one- or two-line description of the action for a particular chapter or scene. Know going into the writing for a week exactly what each scene is supposed to do and why. If you know that, you will find it is still possible to be highly creative and surprise yourself in the individual scenes. If you don't know that, you will spend most of your creative energy just trying to figure out what should be happening. (UPDATE: Jay Lake notes that if he he knew "exactly what what each scene is supposed to do and why" it wouldn't work for him, so your mileage may vary. Perhaps I should clarify in that I just needed to know the action that would occur, more than anything else.)Link (Thanks, Jeff!)(2) Make sure you know what kind of novel you're writing. I know this sounds basic, but be able to say to yourself something along the lines of "I'm writing a relatively fast-paced action-adventure story with a subplot involving espionage and a tragic love relationship." More or less a mission statement. You may vary from it, but being able to on the macro level tell yourself what it is you're trying to do is very useful. You'll note my example did not read "I'm writing a multi-generational saga about a powerful crime family." There are some kinds of novels you cannot write in two months.
(3) Make sure you are using a relatively transparent style. I don't believe it's possible to write a good novel in this limited amount of time if you're using a more baroque, layered style (and by that, I mean styles like the ones I used in the stories in City of Saints). This doesn't mean that you can't have complexity of character and complexity of style, but it has to be a more invisible complexity. The layering process, otherwise, will take too much time. In this case, writing a Predator novel, this would've been my approach anyway.
LinkWHEELED SHIELD (below) for Detroit cops protects men in blue against rioters and gunmen. Police fire through the portholes.
FLATFOOT VERSION of 65-lb. armored plate protector has spotlight on top, leggings. Portholes are made of bulletproof glass.
Kiosk is the story of Borislav, a wounded veteran in Belgrade (or an anonymous city very much like Belgrade, anyway), who runs a little, sophisticated kiosk. He is a philosopher-merchant, his kiosk a window into the soul of the people's desires -- a soul that is bared once he installs a primitive "fabrikator" that can make short-lived tchotchkes from downloaded plans.
But Borislav's world tilts precipitously when he sells his kiosk to a condescending Eurocrat and shortly finds himself in possession of a much more advanced, carbon-nanotube-based fabber that precipitates a social revolution with Borislav at the middle of it.
Sterling says of this story, "I've been in an eight-year struggle to write 'a kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century.' With the possible exception of my forthcoming novel, this story is my best result from that effort." I think he's right -- about the story, anyway; I haven't seen the novel yet.
This is a genuinely 21st century piece of sf. It uses the slightly stilted, comic dialog form of great sf to unravel the social and technological implications of automated search, copying, governance and communications, with an enormous amount of compassion and heart. Sterling's way of thinking about technology has often struck me as kind of stern, but years of living in Serbia appear to have given him a bit of a melancholy Slavic outlook that creeps into the story in a hundred little ways that tell you how much affection he really has for our poor tired human race.
Keen-eyed, brilliantly incisive and humane: this is science fiction at its greatest. If this story doesn't win a Hugo award, then there is no justice in the world.
The fabrikator spoke to him as a veteran street merchant. Yes, it definitely meant something that those rowdy kids were so eager to buy toys that fell apart and turned to dirt. Any kiosk was all about high-volume repeat business. The stick of gum. The candy bar. The cheap, last-minute bottle-of-booze. The glittery souvenir keychain that tourists would never use for any purpose whatsoever. These objects were the very stuff of a kiosk's life.Link (via Beyond the Beyond)Those colored plastic cards with the 3-D models.… The cards had potential. The older kids were already collecting the cards: not the toys that the cards made, but the cards themselves.
And now, this very day, from where he sat in his usual street-cockpit behind his walls of angled glass, Borislav had taken the next logical step. He offered the kids ultra-glossy, overpriced, collector cards that could not and would not make toys. And of course — there was definitely logic here — the kids were going nuts for that business model. He had sold a hundred of them.
I'm not a big fan of surrealist fiction, but the incredibly visuals in this make it the most beautiful machinima I've seen to date. Link (Thanks, James!)
Larry Lessig's magnificent book The Future of Ideas is now available as a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licensed download. Future of Ideas is a grim and prescient look at the way that corporate interests have rigged the system so that they can own more and more of our thoughts, ideas and conversations -- from banning you from taking pictures of your car and distributing it to pulling down youtubes of toddlers dancing to copyrighted music. Seven years after its publication, Future of Ideas is still as relevant as it was the day it was printed.
This marks a milestone for Lessig as well: now that Future of Ideas is online, all of Larry's books are now free CC downloads.
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The audio for the interviews was then played back to another group of test subjects. Even without seeing the speakers, the listeners were able to hear the different types of smile the speaker made as he or she went through the wacky interview."A voice contains a variety of acoustical characteristics" said Drahota. "It's possible that we interpret these 'flavours' in someone's voice almost without noticing."
(Image: Another smile ..., a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Ferdinand Reus's Flickr stream)
Vienna-based art-pranksters monochrom teach us how to "hack the urban context" with campfires, wiener schnitzel, beer, and an elderly Austrian gentleman who speaks LOL. In the second segment of today's episode, someone constructs a campfire, complete with beer bottles and half-cooked schnitzel, right in the middle of the Vienna airport. American kids, don't try this at home unless you want a one-way to Camp X-Ray.
Link to BBtv post with video and comments.
Previously on Boing Boing tv:
Writer Susannah Breslin (of Reverse Cowgirl), whose work I've blogged many times here on Boing Boing, has launched two new projects: Letters from Working Girls, and Letters from Johns. As the titles suggest, the blogs consist of first-hand accounts from real sex workers, and from real clients of sex workers.
Here's a snip from "Working Girls":
I am 26. I'm a grad student in New York. Internet men pay to spank me. If I don't maintain certain grades, I lose my scholarship, and at the beginning of the semester I was flipping my shit about this one class, insisting I was going to fail and whatnot. I was wondering how I was going to pull three or six thousand dollars out of my ass, depending on how bad I did, and my friend said, "It's too bad you don't live upstate, because my friend Mary has a dude that pays her a fuckton of money to just spank her. No sex." So I had to figure that if Mary can find a dude like this upstate, there HAS to be people like this in NYC I can find. And I have a high tolerance for pain and a passing interest in spanking, so it was on.And here's a snip from "Johns."
I started seeing her once or twice a month and have kept on doing so even though I've been in relationships. I won't lie and say I don't think of it as cheating, it is. I finally stopped when I met a woman who, to be honest, shared a lot of similarities with B. I told B about this and she wished me nothing but happiness. We've spoken a few times since and seen each other socially. It's a bit like work friends after one person has moved to a different job.
Over at DaddyTypes, Greg discusses dakigokochi, Japanese baby announcements in the form of a shippable bag of rice with the newborn's photo and stats printed on it. The bag is filled to match the baby's birth weight.
Hungarian rapper "Speak" covers a lot of territory in this supremely awful -- i mean awesome -- video. It's about people who make a war. It's about Tupak Shakur. Yee, comeon, thasright, check, peas. Link. (thanks, Matti Laakso)
Link (Thanks, Bill!)This machine combines the rugged "go anywhere" off-road capabilities of the MAN 6x6 with the comforts of living at home. Safe 2 years of design, construction and testing. Built to the exacting standards of the world-class UNICAT engineering team, this "Home on Wheels" is ready for your immediate occupancy. You do not need to be a experienced expedition traveller.
The zoo's animals generally come as exchanges from other zoos or through breeding loans or donations, so money doesn't often change hands, (zoo executive director Jerry) Borin said. But the zoo sometimes purchases animals, such as three kangaroos recently bought for a total of $15,000.Link
Clark is happy with Fluffy's outcome.
"I really love that snake; I think it's a special animal," he said. "It's so big and tame and wonderful. But I have to deal with the realities of life like everyone else. I like to have the money, and I know she's got a great place to live there."
Link (Thanks, Grey!)
Lyons and Dubai had already signed a "pact of cooperation and friendship" but al-Gandhi's idea adds a new twist to twinning: the new Lyons will cover an area of about 700 acres, roughly the size of the Latin Quarter of Paris, and will contain squares, restaurants, cafes and museums.Al-Gandhi could have picked a worse place. Famed as the home of gastronomy and the birthplace of cinema, Lyons sits between two of France's best-known wine-growing regions. Even so, Dubai is unlikely to want to copy the decrepit tower blocks that ring the real city, symbols of the urban violence that periodically plagues France. Nor is the country's recent smoking ban in public places expected to be exported.
The desert city will include a Paul Bocuse Institute, like the one in Lyons named after the hallowed chef, in which students will study hotel management and gastronomy.
(Image: Old Lyon, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Will Palmer's Flickr stream)
Link"Rather than presenting himself as the author, Vincent sought to use the printed page as a way of displaying the authorship of the natural world. Descriptions of his remarkable collection and copper-plate engravings intervened between odes to God and His Creation — and to Levinus Vincent and his — written by visitors to the Cabinet numbering amongst Vincent’s friends. [..]
The first, 'Wondertooneel der Nature' (Theatre of Nature’s Marvels), appeared in 1706. Most of the subsequent descriptions of his collection differed largely in the number of eulogizing poems or the length and detail of the description of specimens, and are not clearly identifiable as separate books. [..]
For Vincent and his circle, these publications served a mediating function in the interpretation of the cabinet. No-one, gazing upon the multiplicity of natural productions, could fail to worship God in His Creation. The readership was divided into 'Liefhebbers', or lovers of natural productions and of God, and atheists, who were alternately bidden to “come before the light, and learn ... in all these works to observe the actions of the Supreme Artist” or to keep quiet: “Every animal has a tongue, to find out your guilt against you.”
Last week, Michael Pollan (author of the acclaimed The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals) did an interview with NPR's Science Friday in order to discuss his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, whose contents can be summed up as, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Hidden in those seven words is an indictment of "Nutritionism," the philosophy that says that food must be approached as a scientific challenge, valued for its nutrients, which can be delivered in purer, industrialized (and highly profitable) forms in packaged, prepared dishes and ingredients.
Pollan makes a convincing case -- citing credible research -- that the science behind nutritionism is, at best, "promising" but not ready for primetime (he likens it to sixteenth century surgery: fascinating but not the kind of thing you want to be on the receiving end of). He explains how nutritionism has captured politics, so that the FDA isn't allowed to say, "Eat less red meat," but is backed into saying, "Make eating choices that are lower in saturated fats," prompting an industry to spring up around further industrialization of food to remove saturated fats. Nevermind that the science says, "Eat less red meat" -- by demonizing a nutrient, a blow to the cattle-ranchers is turned into an opportunity to create even greater markups on their product by charging a premium for engineered, "low in saturated fats" beef.
Pollan has a set of simple rules for eating that really resonate: "Shop the edges of the grocery store, not the middle," "Eat things your great grandmother might have eaten," "Eat nothing that bears a health or nutritional claim," and so on.
It's a delightful interview and it's led me to ordering the audiobook to listen to on my morning walks. Link, Link to In Defense of Food
Roel Verdult, an MSc. student from the Raboud University of Nijmegen, used an RFID tag emulator to perform a successful practical relay attack on the single-use OV Chipkaart (the Dutch RFID public transportation card), that uses MIFARE Ultralights (no crypto).PDF LinkThere's a video of the relay attack available. The video speaks for itself.
Roel used a homemade tag emulator that was modeled after Kfir and Wool's "ghost and leech", to perform a simple relay attack. However, anyone can perform the same attack using the RFID Guardian, whose HW/SW is freely available.
LinkIn 1993, to be closer to the topography he was most passionate about, he moved from New York City to San Francisco. From there he scoured the Western states, looking for bizarre patterns. He says locations tend to choose him, as when he first spotted the glittering pink bed of Owens Lake through a car window.
Maisel often hires a local pilot to take him up in a four-seater Cessna he likens to an old Volkswagen beetle with wings. Then, somewhere between 500 and 11,000 feet, the pilot banks the plane and the photographer props open a window and starts shooting with his hand-held, medium-format camera. "Although the subjects are always of concern to me, I do think that I want to lead the viewer into a space where they can do their own thinking," he says.
Jon Palmer built this fantastic geodesic demo from Lego and posted a HOWTO on his site. It reminds me of something out of Gerard K. O'Neill's The High Frontier!
Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.
“The ship wasn't really visible and was totally silent, but the lights spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide,” [pilot Steve] Allen said. “The lights went from corner to corner. It was directly above Highway 67 traveling towards Stephenville at a high rate of speed - about 3,000 miles per hour is what I would estimate.”Allen said the lights were not those of a normal aircraft. He said they were more like strobe lights, and while they were all watching, the lights reconfigured themselves from a single horizontal line into two sets of vertical lights.
They also said they saw two military jets ("possibly F16s") chasing after the ship. Link
He also links to Jon Henley's column in The Guardian:
Assuming your brain is still functioning like the well-oiled piece of precision engineering it is, your response would, I trust, be: "That's a wind-up if ever I heard one. Think about it for a minute - you mean these two meet by accident, discover not only that they were both adopted but were born on exactly the same day in exactly the same town, and still never pause to wonder whether they might be related? Pull the other one. What did it say on their birth certificates?"Link (Thanks, Emperor!)
Doylestown police Chief James Donnelly said the man was arrested because clerks who saw the shocking message on the mmo line were offended by the message.
"He was contrite enough to offer an apology, and I think that satisfies the people who were insulted by it," he said.Link (Thanks, Lauren!)
Update: Speaking of burning yourself horribly: the commenters in the Metacafe thread (and here) say it's a composited hoax and report burning themselves. Astonishingly, rolling a burning oily rag around in your hand isn't a good idea.
The pledge is simple:LinkI will not introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either directly or indirectly, undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s fair dealing provision.
Fair dealing, which the Supreme Court of Canada has described as a user right, covers uses such as research, private study, news reporting, and criticism. I have argued that the provision should be expanded. For the purposes of the pledge, I am only asking MPs to do no harm. Fair dealing is a critically important part of the copyright balance that plays a crucial role for education and free speech and it is widely accepted internationally (indeed the parallel provision in the U.S. is far broader). No Canadian MP or party should support or introduce legislation that would weaken it. If you are looking to send a follow-up to Industry Minister Jim Prentice or to your local MP, then consider asking them one straight forward question – will they take the copyright pledge?
Link (via Yanko Design)
• it's only one piece!
• easily bend it by hand!
• just two screws needed!
• comes as a flat sheet
• high load capacity
• works as a magnetboard
Piegato is a sheet steel rack with a surprisingly high load capacity. The laser cut and powder coated sheet steel is been delivered almost completely plain, which results in a simple and cost effective transportation. The customer then bends out the required amount of shelves from the plain and mounts the hole rack with just two screws in a few minutes. Due to the enviromental friendly production, the freight size and the recyclability Piegato also holds a brilliant ecological balance.
Today on Boing Boing tv, we revisit Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's great-grandpappy Aloysius P. Koford for a never-before-exposed expose of his illustrious Hollywood career -- complete with walrii, scantily clad Mary Pickford lookalikes, and movie studio copyright disputes of yesteryear that may just rival, in their fury, the pugnacious picket lines of today. Plus: the real history of the Wilhelm Scream.
Link to BBtv post with video and comments.
Previous BBtv episodes featuring the mighty Ape Lad and his kin:
Tesla_Downunder is a site for Australian Tesla coil builders. The photos are astounding. Link (Thanks, Luke!)
Illo is a gorgeous new magazine about contemporary illustrators. The interviews are lively and supplemented with lots and lots of color illustrations. The first issue (thumbnails) features Mitch O'Connell, Mark Schultz, Nathan Jurevicius, and Brian Taylor. The second issue (thumbnails) will feature Michael Cho, James Gurney, Zina Saunders, and Nancy Stahl. Link
This oral biography of Hunter S. Thompson, written by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour, consists of anecdotes culled from interviews with 120 of Thompson's acquaintances, beginning with his childhood in Kentucky and ending with his death in 2005 in Woody Creek, Colorado.
Some people -- most notably Thompson's second wife -- have complained that this oral biography paints an ugly picture of Thompson. I'm not in a position to say whether or not the material was skewed to present a misleading image of Thompson. I think Thompson was a tremendously talented writer (my favorite book of his is Hell's Angels, which was published in 1966) who lived a far out life, and what I learned from reading this book doesn't seem to be out of line with what I imagined he might be like as a person. He was fiercely loyal to his friends but could be also be abusive and cruel. His first wife, Sandy, was interviewed extensively for the book, and her description of Thompson as an exceedingly charismatic man who could be lovable and funny one moment and brutally inconsiderate the next seems to echo the opinions of most of the other people who offered their stories in the book.
It's interesting to note, however, that most of the people who were friends with Thompson remained friends with him for life. Despite his flaws, his generosity and love made up for his frequent bouts of bad behavior. Here's an example of Thompson's (reckless) bigheartedness:
Tim Ferris [former New York Bureau Chief for Rolling Stone]: Around that time, I was leaving New York to go on tour with David Bowie. [Rolling Stoneeditor] Jann [Wenner] was in New York, and we had a meeting. I had my bag with me because I was on my way to the airport, and Jann fired me -- which happened periodically during downturns. When I called Owl Farm, Sandy answered and said that she had just spoken to Hunter, who was in his room at the Watergate. I asked her how things were going, and she said, "Pretty well, but we're worried about money. That's what we were just talking about. We only have four hundred dollars left in the bank and we don't know where any more money is going to come from." We talked a bit more, and then I hung up and immediately called Hunter. He said, "How's it going?" I said, "I just got fired by Jann." And Hunter said, "Do you need any money? I can lend you four hundred dollars."
My gut feeling tells me this book comes as close as possible to being an accurate portra
Walking-Things's Walking Chair looks like a chair, but it walks -- and you can't sit on it. And it costs €15,000 (which is like ten million American pesos). But the action of its motion (as documented on the site's unfortunately teeny videos) is pure incredibly awesomeness.
Why are these men smiling? Because they are about to launch a bunch of Bert dolls into the sky. Enjoy this short video. 
Jordan sez, "Toronto's subway system is pretty hardcore. The indicator on this TTC turnstile could not be clearer: 'If you try to dodge the fare, you will be indecently assaulted by a Dalek.'
Either purchase tokens from the wall-mounted vending machines or travel by TARDIS."
