The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
| Ranting lemonade label from embittered screenwriter Posted: 22 Apr 2009 01:14 AM PDT Aaron sez, "My girlfriend knows that I like strange stuff, so she picked up two bottles of lemonade from this guy who sells them at a farm in Malibu. Here is what you could find on the labels:" THANK YOU FOR INVESTING IN MY MOVIE!This guy is the embittered Dr Bronner of the west coast soft-drink trade. ALL ONE ALL ONE ALL ONE! We should introduce him to Mr Time-Cube. THANK YOU FOR INVESTING IN MY MOVIE! (Thanks, Aaron!) |
| 747 converted to a restaurant, then abandoned Posted: 21 Apr 2009 10:38 PM PDT  Marilyn sez, "An old 747 was converted into a restaurant in the city of Mokpo, South Korea, and then abandoned. Sad looking on the outside, but still cool looking inside." Abandoned Boeing 747 Restaurant (and Other Plane Conversions) (Thanks, Marilyn!) |
| JG Ballard eulogized by John Clute Posted: 21 Apr 2009 10:35 PM PDT Writing in The Independent, John Clute, an eminent scholar and historian of science fiction, eulogizes JG Ballard. I ran into Clute over the Easter weekend and he mentioned that as the designated writer of science fiction obits for The Independent, he keeps a file of pre-written -- and oft-updated -- obits for older writers and writers in poor health. I was shocked at this -- it seemed a little gruesome -- but John said, "The last thing I want is for a good friend to pass while I'm travelling or busy and for me not to be able to write them the good, full and complete obituary they deserve." Here's the results -- an obit every bit as good as a titan like Ballard deserved. The most complete unfolding of his later sense of things can probably be found in a quite astonishing book-length interview published by the magazine Research as the self-standing Research No 8/9 (1984) but he remained unfailingly eloquent until the end of his life, as the interviews assembled in Conversations (2005) attest. "At times", he said in 2004, "I look around the executive housing estates of the Thames Valley and feel that [a vicious and genuinely mindless neo-fascism] is already here, quietly waiting its day, and largely unknown to itself ... What is so disturbing about the 9/11 hijackers is that they had not spent the previous years squatting in the dust on some Afghan hillside ... These were highly educated engineers and architects who had spent years sitting around in shopping malls in Hamburg and London, drinking coffee and listening to the muzak."J.G. Ballard: Writer whose dystopian visions helped shape our view of the modern world (via Making Light) Previously:
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| Posted: 21 Apr 2009 02:20 PM PDT  Jaydiohead is a mash-up album of Jay-Z an Radiohead. Git yerself some while the gittin's good. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!) |
| Nifty gaming gadget administers nitrous oxide to kids Posted: 21 Apr 2009 03:25 PM PDT  I imagine a lot of grown ups will want this, too. PediSedate is a medical device consisting of a colorful, toy-like headset that connects to a game component such as the Nintendo Game Boy system or a portable CD player. Once the child places it on his or her head and swings the snorkel down from its resting place atop the head, PediSedate transparently monitors respiratory function and distributes nitrous oxide, an anesthetic gas. The child comfortably becomes sedated while playing with a Nintendo Game Boy system or listening to music. This dramatically improves the hospital or dental experience for the child, parents and healthcare providers.PediSedate (via MedGadget) |
| Offworld gets an exclusive peek at Henry Hatsworth concept art Posted: 21 Apr 2009 12:51 PM PDT  Brandon has scored a major coup: Electronic Arts has presented Offworld with access to the concept art for Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, one of the most interesting games to come out this year, both in play and in art direction. Brandon's put together a galley showing the environments, characters, and enemies. It's an awesome peek into the creative act that happens before pixel is ever put to sprite. We hope this will just be the first of many "Concept Albums" on Offworld. |
| freaky food fun: Insert dried spaghetti into hot dogs, then boil Posted: 21 Apr 2009 12:48 PM PDT  DrO says: "I wanted to point out to you that some people on LiveJournal came up with an idea of inserting dry spaghetti into hot dogs, then boiling it, and coming out with amusing culinary constructs that kids seem to love." |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2009 12:41 PM PDT  Legofesto says: For a few years now I've been recreating actual events from the War on Terror in LEGO. The notorious Abu Ghraib torture photographs, Guantanamo Bay, Israeli war crimes and the rape in Mahmudiya by US troops have all been recreated.Waterboarding recreated in LEGO |
| Court turns down challenge to jury's use of Bible Posted: 21 Apr 2009 11:25 AM PDT A Texas man killed his victim by shooting him and beating him with the barrel of a gun. During deliberations, the jury consulted the Bible and found this passage: 35:16 And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.The murderer said his Constitutional rights were challenged, and took it to the Supreme Court, which turned away the challenge. Does this mean that you can be executed for working on Sunday? Exodus 35:2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.Court Turns Down Challenge To Jury's Use Of Bible |
| BB Video: IFTF, Sun, and Boing Boing Launch Digital Open Youth Innovation Expo Posted: 21 Apr 2009 11:16 AM PDT Download MP4 for this episode. RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. Boing Boing Video is teaming up with Institute for the Future and Sun Microsystems to launch The Digital Open, a global expo for youth innovation. Above, a video we produced with IFTF and teen 'web talent Charis Tobias, to invite young people around the world to join in. Here's a snip from the launch announcement: "What can you make with technology that will change the world, invent the future--or even just make life a little easier or more fun?"The top project in each of the eight Digital Open categories will be selected by a panel of approximately 20 judges, including David-Michel Davies (Webby Awards) Lawrence Lessig (Harvard/Creative Commons), David Pescovitz (Boing Boing!) and Dale Dougherty (Make). Winners receive a tech prize package including a PeeCee mini laptop running the OpenSolaris operating system, a video camera, a solar-powered flashlight, and other goodies. |
| The Frank Lloyd Wright Ax Murders Posted: 21 Apr 2009 02:26 PM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. "Taliesin is really a great example of the later Prairie style. It's where the architecture school is, during the summer session anyway, because Olgivanna, Frankie's third wife...or maybe his fourth, I can't remember, liked to have everybody down at Taliesin West in Arizona in the winter. The students build their own shelters out in the desert and everybody is supposed to learn how to play an instrument." "Uh, huh. That's neat." "He built Taliesin for his second wife, who he stole from a client. Of course, she ended up being killed by that ax murderer." "Wait. What?"
This is pretty much verbatim from a conversation I had with my husband (then boyfriend) on one of our early dates. Get into a relationship with a second-year architecture student, and it's pretty much expected that you'll end up hearing a LOT about Frank Lloyd Wright--his design philosophy, his work history, even some little gossipy snippets about his rather sketchy dating life. But the ax murder thing? That, I was not expecting. True story, though. The idyll ended in 1914. Wright was off at work and Borthwick was dining with her two children from her previous marriage and several of the Taliesin staff. As they ate, another staff member named Julian Carleton locked them in, poured kerosene around the house and lit a match. When the diners managed to bust their way out, Carleton hacked them to death with an ax. Of the nine who sat down to eat, only two survived. Borthwick and her children were killed. The whole thing turned into a media sensation. "Murderer of Seven: Sets Fire to Country Home of Frank Lloyd Wright Near Spring Green," declared one newspaper. The Wisconsin State Journal, on the other hand, went for something a bit more Rupert Murdoch-esque (and also inaccurate), with the headline "Insane Negro Kills Five in Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Love Bungalow'". To this day, no one has a clear idea of what drove Carleton to grisly murder. Wright had apparently threatened to fire him at some point before the murders, but there doesn't seem to have been any hints of what was to come. Even his wife, who also worked for the Wrights, had no idea of what he'd been planning. And Carleton himself wasn't talking. Although captured alive by authorities after the murders, Carleton had drunk acid and died a few days later in jail. Image courtesy viZZZual.com. |
| Yoga "Eco Mat" Review: PrAna Revolution (Attention-Conservation Verdict: I Dig.) Posted: 21 Apr 2009 10:15 AM PDT  I have practiced yoga on and off since I was a teenager, but in recent years, more off than on. Recently, when friends, colleagues, and family all seemed to be pointing out with greater frequency that I seemed particularly stressed (read: a total pain in the ass to be around), I made a commitment to switch that back to "on." It's been pretty great. I'm happier. The more I practice, the more centered I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally. And, the less of a total pain in the ass I am. Yoga isn't about the accessories, and I loathe the idea that you have to have just the right gear, just the right teacher, just the right whatever to practice. You don't. But a good mat can really help. So when I got back into the groove of regular practice, I checked out a bunch of different mats -- from the ultra-thick black ones, to the "towel" kind folks like to use with "hot yoga," to the thin cheap synthetic ones. I have a stack of 8 of them sitting in the corner in this room, as I type this review. But I've found my favorite now -- the just-released Revolution "eco" mat by PrAna. It's sticky enough to help grip your fingers, palms, soles, and toes when you're doing balance poses -- and, truly, every pose involves some element of balance. It's 30" wide, much wider than standard mats and better fit for taller yoga students like myself. It's lightweight enough that I can carry it comfortably on my back in the cool little carrying sack they sell. It's thick enough that I don't feel the need to add extra cushioning during practice on poses that can be hard on the bones. It's made of all-natural materials, so I'm not investing in future landfill cruft. The sticky part took a little getting used to in poses where I tend to drag the tops of my feet accross the mat in transition from one asana to the other, but now that I've been with it for a few weeks -- I don't know, it's like sleeping in a nice new bed, or moving into an awesome new home. It's familiar now, and just feels like an extension of my body.
I recently met PrAna creative David Kennedy, a friendly surfer who pops a mean Adho Mukha Svanasana. We practiced together (it was one of the most enjoyable BB review demos I can recall). I asked him to talk with us about some of the engineering considerations that went into the mat's design. His reply follows, after the jump.
Enough marketing engineerese. Here's my verdict: within a couple days of using the loaner mat I received for the review, I made plans to buy several for yoga-practicing friends. I really like it. Revolution Yoga Mat by prAna (amazon.com, thanks Griffin de Luce + DK!)
* The phrase "Attention-Conservation" was stolen from Bruce Sterling. |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2009 09:29 AM PDT  Ubunchu, a manga-style comic for kids about the joys of running the Ubuntu Linux operating system (this post is being composed on an Ubuntu laptop -- the only OS I've used for a couple years now*). It's a free, CC-licensed PDF, and it's been translated into a very large number of languages, and there are more editions to come. Ubunchu! The Ubuntu Manga is now in English (via Geekdad) *Yes, I know I haven't written up my notes on switching to Ubuntu yet. I will, someday. |
| Brit mobile operators blocking Pirate Bay Posted: 21 Apr 2009 09:16 AM PDT Glyn sez, "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay, as part of a "self-regulation" scheme. The warning page states the page has been blocked in 'compliance with a new UK voluntary code'. It may be some thing to do with the UK's P2P process. PC Pro is reporting that the block is in partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and that 'all five of the UK's major mobile operators have agreed to participate.'" Wait, what? The IWF is supposed to be in charge of blocking child porn -- now it's copyright too? Good grief. What next? "This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have 'over 18' status," the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, "criminal skills" and hacking.BT blocks off Pirate Bay (Thanks, Glyn!) |
| TV reporter forgets he is on live TV, says bad word, then blanches in horror Posted: 21 Apr 2009 03:47 PM PDT A TV reporter forgets he is live, not taped, and utters Deadwood's trademark expletive. The look on his face when he realizes what he has done, and the repercussions that will follow, is haunting. (Via Arbroath) |
| The New Yorker on the underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs. Posted: 21 Apr 2009 08:56 AM PDT  Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker wrote a piece about people who use old and new types of amphetamines to boost alertness and concentration. Cephalon, the Provigil manufacturer, has publicly downplayed the idea that the drug can be used as a smart pill. In 2007, the company's founder and C.E.O., Frank Baldino, Jr., told a reporter from the trade journal Pharmaceutical Executive, "I think if you're tired, Provigil will keep you awake. If you're not tired, it's not going to do anything." But Baldino may have been overly modest. Only a few studies have been done of Provigil's effects on healthy, non-sleep-deprived volunteers, but those studies suggest that Provigil does provide an edge, at least for some kinds of challenges. In 2002, researchers at Cambridge University gave sixty healthy young male volunteers a battery of standard cognitive tests. One group received modafinil; the other got a placebo. The modafinil group performed better on several tasks, such as the "digit span" test, in which subjects are asked to repeat increasingly longer strings of numbers forward, then backward. They also did better in recognizing repeated visual patterns and on a spatial-planning challenge known as the Tower of London task. (It's not nearly as fun as it sounds.) Writing in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study's authors said the results suggested that "modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer."Brain Gain: The underground world of "neuroenhancing" drugs |
| Baby delivers emotional sermon from church stage Posted: 21 Apr 2009 08:33 AM PDT |
| Fool All of the People, All of the Time Posted: 21 Apr 2009 08:39 AM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. They said it couldn't be done. "They" say a lot of things. And if the story of mediocre-painter turned master-art-forger Han van Meegeren teaches us anything, it's that the gate-keepers don't always know what they're talking about. If there's one thing sure to make me latch onto a bit of history like dried Jet glue on the fingers of architecture students, it's real-life stories that come out seemingly tailor-made for Greek theater. Naturally, you'll find a longer version of this tale in Be Amazing.
Fool the Art World Fool Yourself Fool the Nazis, Fool the Allies and Almost Get Yourself Killed Photo of Han van Meegeren, painting his final "Vermeer" for the Allies, taken by George Rodger for Time & Life Pictures -- Getty Images and used under fair use. |
| Posted: 21 Apr 2009 07:33 AM PDT  Recently on Offworld we saw our first guest post by maker, writer, and 'shoddy Cammy' Tom Armitage of infovore.org, who takes a look at a recent post by BioShock 2 designer Steve Gaynor on 'architecting the unreal.' Elsewhere we saw that a new Fallout game is due for release next year (though not a sequel or an expansion), this time from some of the original series creators at Obsidian, and saw that indie favorites Introversion have a near-complete Nintendo DS version of their global thermonuclear wargame Defcon (above) that they're hoping to release by the end of the year. We also saw a huge slew of new Uniqlo games T-shirts now revealed, new third party hacks, tools and mods for 2D Boy's World of Goo, Donkey Kong playable on the open-source 8x8 LED handheld Meggy Jr. RGB, and retro computers coming together to sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Finally, we downloaded levels for Hand Circus's iPhone platformer Rolando and saw a new colonial theme for its upcoming sequel, watched the first footage of ngmoco's 3D spherical tower defense game, cleared off our calendar for an LA-based Poketo show featuring Her Space Holiday and Tokyo illustrator PCP, and watched newly uploaded and gorgeously shot video of Blip Fest 2007 featuring the 8-bit happy hardcore of Virt and Polytron musician 6955 doing a blissed-out shoegaze deconstruction of Fez's theme song. |
| The Whuffie Factor: applied Cluetrain Manifesto for the twenty-first century Posted: 06 Apr 2009 04:36 AM PDT  Tara Hunt's The Whuffie Factor is a quick, insightful update to books like The Cluetrain Manifesto, the seminal work that described the means by which conversations were conducted online and advised companies on how to join the conversation without seeming smarmy or patronizing. As Hunt points out, Cluetrain preceded the rise of blogging, not to mention Twitter, social networking services, and all the other key elements of modern online conversation. Hunt's book is a lot shorter on theory and manifesto than Cluetrain and a lot longer on practicalities, devoting a lot of space to explaining how all these tools work and citing examples of different commercial and charitable organizations that have used them to good effect (as well as citing cautionary examples of companies that bungled things badly, usually by being caught out in deceit of one kind or another). Because of this, Whuffie Factor is probably easier to put into effect as soon as you crack the cover, but it's also likely to go stale more quickly, as the specific technologies cited wane (Cluetrain may have pre-dated blogging, but it had enough theory-stuff that it's still worth reading today, ten years later). On the other hand, if Hunt's book does well, she'll have a nice side-line in producing annual updated editions. Hunt's central thesis is that participating in community and gaining social capital is the fastest, most reliable way to attain success for products, services, causes and movements than advertising and marketing are, and she sets out to re-educate executives and marketing people who haven't cottoned on to this. There's something of a holy mission in explaining the networked, twenty-first century reality to successful but out-dated people, if only so that execs get enough religion to give excited junior people rein to do experimental and exciting things online. Hunt's book only suffers slightly from having been written before the econopocalypse (writing business books just before a global economic catastrophe is a tricky business), having a very faint air of the commercial excess of the golden days of 2008. But in the final analysis, using conversation and community to succeed is ultimately more frugal and Depression-ready than buying a lot of big, loud, glitzy Superbowl ads. I've been tracking the progress of this book for a year or so, ever since I got wind of the title. "Whuffie," of course, is the social currency used by the characters in my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which was incidentally the first novel released under a Creative Commons license, a book that relied quite a lot on community and conversation for its success (I've lost track of how many printings the book's gone through now -- I think it's in its ninth edition). I was flattered to hear that Hunt wanted to use the word in her title, and now that I've read the book, I'm very pleased to have my little neologism attached to such a fine read. The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business |
| Free tribute to Michael Moorcock from Gaiman, Duncan, et al Posted: 21 Apr 2009 05:40 AM PDT  Jay from the free sf zine Heliotrope sez, "Neil Gaiman, Lou Anders, Bryan Talbot, Hal Duncan, Catherynne M. Valente, Chris Roberson, Paul S. Kemp and Rhys Hughes contributed fiction and articles that were part of an issue of Heliotrope that was an appreciation to the legendary writer, Michael Moorcock. This issue went live online today (and is obviously free)." Heliotrope Issue 5 (Thanks, Jay!) |
| Fon releases open meshing WiFi router Posted: 21 Apr 2009 05:06 AM PDT  Sal sez, "Three years after Cory's novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town,' somebody actually made a router that does what the fictional mesh-network routers from the book could do. The Fonera 2.0 made by FON, (the Spanish WiFi sharing people) is released today (barring the occasional retail glitch) for 45 euros. It comes complete with OLPC's mesh-networking system. You can plug it into Ethernet or a 3G dongle. Share your bandwidth with any other router in range that implements OLPC's mesh-networking standard. The Open WRT software is designed to run on just about any hardware so you do not actually have to buy a Fonera to join the fun. The software is based on Open WRT, which in turn is based on the Linksys WRTG54G firmware which the community forced Cisco to open-source (since it made use of Busybox + Linux Kernel). As a result of this we now have a router far more featured than the most expensive access point you can get in the shops, costing a fraction of the price and based on entirely free firmware. With a few of these we could all build community networks like the one from Cory's book." Fonera 2.0 (Thanks, Salim!) |
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