The Latest from Boing Boing

Posted: 21 May 2009 05:25 AM PDT

Daniel Proulx married his love of Dungeons and Dragons with his steampunk jewelry making hobby and produced this handsome sculpture based around a taxidermy reptile eye:

Since I was I kid I've been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. The Beholder has always been one of the most feared monster... Here's my first Beholder-Steampunk-Robot . I plan to make bigger one, this one is only 4 cm large .
Right upper arm: You can imagine that arm shooting a disintegrating Newtonian beam.
Left upper arm: Triple saw made from vintage brass clock gear.
Top arm: Made from mysterious yellow amber.
Bottom arm: a single magnetic wheel for an alternative transport and stability.
Beholders floatshover above the ground. They are known to be obsessively tyrannical.

Steampunk Beholder Miniature robot sculpture (Thanks, Daniel!)

Fight terrorism by arresting terrorists, not by looking at our genitals at airports

Posted: 21 May 2009 12:10 AM PDT

I like this Bruce Schneier quote from a CNN article on the TSA's new whole body scanner, which lets TSA inspectors look at your genitals through your clothes:

Bruce Schneier, an internationally recognized security technologist, said whole-body imaging technology "works pretty well," privacy rights aside. But he thinks the financial investment was a mistake. In a post-9/11 world, he said, he knows his position isn't "politically tenable," but he believes money would be better spent on intelligence-gathering and investigations.
"It's stupid to spend money so terrorists can change plans," he said by phone from Poland, where he was speaking at a conference. If terrorists are swayed from going through airports, they'll just target other locations, such as a hotel in Mumbai, India, he said.
"We'd be much better off going after bad guys ... and back to pre-9/11 levels of airport security," he said. "There's a huge 'cover your ass' factor in politics, but unfortunately, it doesn't make us safer."

Damned right. It's amazing how many people mistake terrorism's sworn cause as eliminating air-travel. Al Quaeda are not anti-aviation activists. They want to create terror, not ground airplanes. You fight that by arresting them, not by sticking airports in safes and throwing away the keys.

Airport security bares all, or does it?

Organize a town-hall to talk about dealing with the screwed-up economy

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:52 PM PDT

Tiffiniy from A New Way Forward sez,

Thanks to readers on Boing Boing and many others, the movement for dealing with the economic crisis has grown to 40,000 people in two months! But, so many people want to actually learn about what's going on, learn about the insider groups that are preparing to fight. Now, during the week of June 8th, thousands of people will get together at economic crisis house parties across the country to watch an ANWF-exclusive video that lays out how we got into this mess and a live webcast of economic crisis town hall forums in San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC. These events allow us to talk about alternatives for getting out of the crisis and take back the conversation from the technocrats who think that regular people like us shouldn't have a say.
Brought to you by Alternet and A New Way Forward, Doug Rushkoff and Professor Dal Bo will be speaking at the San Francisco town hall, and in Washington DC, Simon Johnson, and Les Leopold in NYC. We're thinking of petitioning Naomi Klein to speak at our NYC event (we need women!)
ANWF is differerent, we're all volunteer and people have made this our fight to win. People need to register their house parties and help build the movement and spirit. You can register a public or private- we have tools and a guide for hosting your party.
So, it'll be exciting, we'll get to feel like we have town halls again! Get together with your friends, watch some video, share some drinks and snacks, and chat with other people about the economy. We need to start talking to each other in order to build the foundation for a people-powered bank reform movement.

National Economic Crisis Video Screenings & Forums (Thanks, Tiffiniy!)

Previously:

National day of protest for banking reform instead of bailouts ...

Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:54 PM PDT

Two years ago, fantasy novelist Mark Helprin published an op-ed in the New York Times arguing for perpetual copyright. The essay was so ham-fisted and odd that a lot of people assumed that it was a joke, but now that he's published a book on the subject, Digital Barbarism, we can be pretty sure he wasn't kidding.

In the Huffington Post, Larry Lessig has written an in-depth review of the book, and the picture he paints isn't pretty. Starting from the question, "Why isn't copyright perpetual," Helprin goes on to totally fail to research this question, failing to inspect any of the arguments that have preceded his asking. Instead, he raises a bunch of tired old saws about copyright as property, and, on the way, characterizes the Internet as a colossal failure (though, as Lessig points out, it seems like it was the only tool he used to research his book), populated by "blogger-ants" (that would be me, I guess), and led by crypto-Marxist "professors in glasses" (that would be Larry, a former Young Republican).

But Helprin has spent precious little time actually researching the supposed copyright abolition movement he's so up in arms about. He apparently watched a video in which Professor James Boyle appears, because he talks about Jamie's "desire to appear almost English, an embarrassing phase some insecure colonials enter never to exit" (Jamie is Scottish). But that's about it. He thinks that Creative Commons exists to promote "freeware" software. He thinks Lessig is anti-copyright. He thinks "monopoly" can only be applied to commodities (because he looked it up in the dictionary, and it says so there). As Lessig sez, "Too bad the lawyers at AT&T didn't read the OED when Reagan's Justice Department intervened to break up its monopoly in 'telephone service.' I can hear Attorney Helprin now: 'Your honor, excuse me, but the government has no case here. AT&T is not a monopoly, because AT&T sells no 'commodity.' A commodity is a 'thing,' your honor. All we sell is telephone service."

It's amazing that 232 pages of (let's not mince words) badly researched twaddle made it off the presses at HarperCollins -- but it's nice to be sure that Helprin wasn't kidding after all.

"Maybe," you say, charitable reader that you are, "he read the books, but just didn't cite them." And true enough: Helprin has this weird thing against citation. He quotes me criticizing him (on my blog): "Helprin barely cites anyone .... [He] doesn't bother with what others have written...." (164) but then defends his practice: "It's one thing to learn from others, but another to copy them." (164). True enough. But then it is a third thing to acknowledge a point you have drawn from another -- assuming, of course, pace solipsism, you believe that there are other people in the world, and they might possibly have something to say. At another part of the book, he mocks students who "support their assertions with crushing citations." (162) A sin, perhaps, but nothing as compared to an author who supports his assertions with no citations at all.
But if he actually read any of these books, he didn't take notes. The structure of his book is sprinkles of promises to make an argument, mixed with the most self-indulgent reflections upon his own life. And when Helprin actually gets around to argument, the arguments are a series of questions. (For example: "Where do they get the idea that copyright is a drag on artistic production? Are they suggesting that Pasternak could not write because Yeats had beaten him to the punch, that Tolstoy didn't write War and Peace because Moby Dick was copyrighted?" (140); or "What magic influence comes into play to convert a condition that does not hinder publication or however many years of commercial availability into a condition that then has the opposite effect?" (77); "Is the argument that books that go into print while copyrighted and stay in print for twenty years while copyrighted go out of print because they are copyrighted?" (77)) None of these questions are profound or new. None of them would be unanswered if the author had spent two weeks researching before he wrote. But Helprin apparently didn't have time to research. And who does these days? We're living in Internet time. It's work enough simply to keep up with the blogs!

The Solipsist and the Internet (a review of Helprin's Digital Barbarism)

Steampunk guitar amp

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:39 PM PDT

Jake von Slatt sez, "I just finished my latest project, a Steampunk style guitar amp that Nathan Johnstone (of Abney Park) will debut at our area the 'Carnivale Mechanique' at Maker Faire next week! If you're attending come by for a visit! There'll be music, dancers, and Steampunkalia galore courtesy of several Makers and the Etsy Steamteam!"

Nathan's New Amp (Thanks, Jake!)

Katamari Damacy multiplayer game coming to Korea -- Boing Boing Offworld

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:38 PM PDT

Over on Boing Boing Offworld, our Brandon brings world of the long-awaited multiplayer online version of Katamari Damacy -- Korean-only, alas.

Just when it'd almost fully receded from your memory (the last we heard of it was in January of 2007), andriasang notes a new article on the Korean-exclusive massively multiplayer Katamari Damacy Online.
Unfortunately, the update only goes so far as to profile two new playable cousin characters, and a vague storyline, as translated by andriasang, that concerns "a black hole that forms after the King decides to hold a picnic," which players will seal off with their rolled up katamari.
The game is apparently, though, due for release in Korea this year by local external developer Windysoft, with no word from anyone on when or how or if it might make it out of that country.

Two years later: new details on the long-dormant Katamari Damacy Online

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Previously:

Lego Shunter Mech -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:34 PM PDT

On Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's picked up this LEGO Shunter Mech by Adrian Florea, noting, "That is some serious anti-hobo technology."

LEGO Shunter Mech

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Too much cola causes muscular weakness

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:32 PM PDT

Greek researchers have published a paper in International Journal of Clinical Practice about a growing incidence of muscular problems brought on by too much cola consumption.

"Evidence is increasing to suggest that excessive cola consumption can also lead to hypokalaemia, in which the blood potassium levels fall, causing an adverse effect on vital muscle functions."
A research review carried out by Dr Elisaf and his colleagues has shown that symptoms can range from mild weakness to profound paralysis. Luckily all the patients studied made a rapid and full recovery after they stopped drinking cola and took oral or intravenous potassium.
The case studies looked at patients whose consumption ranged from two to nine litres of cola a day.

Excessive Cola Consumption Can Lead To Super-sized Muscle Problems, Warn Doctors (via /.)

Got a cell-phone? FCC claims the right to search your house

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:58 PM PDT

The FCC claims that its powers to inspect radio equipment in order to catch pirate radio stations means that it can also enter and search any home that has a WiFi access point, a cordless phone, a baby monitor, or a cell phone.

"Anything using RF energy -- we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference," says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.
The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That's largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC's purview, making the commission's claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.
"It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure," says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. "When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna -- the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre."

FCC's Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts

USB ports for everything photoshopping contest

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:27 PM PDT

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: "USB Conquers The World" -- USB ports for everyday objects.

USB Conquers The World

Thursday evening: Youth Radio and Pesco at California Academy of Sciences

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:16 PM PDT

Tomorrow evening, Thursday May 20, I'll be at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco helping out my pals at Youth Radio for a special session of our Brains & Beakers sci-tech interview series. For those who don't know Youth Radio, it's a very cool Oakland-based organization that helps underserved young people learn how to make their own media. You may have heard some of their segments on National Public Radio. Together, we created Brains & Beakers, a series where I bring in a scientist or engineer to hang out at the Youth Radio studios for a couple hours doing demos, presenting, and answering questions. The students document the whole thing and produce audio and video pieces from the material. But tomorrow night, we're doing a special session "on location" at the California Academy of Sciences as part of the museum's hep "Nightlife" program.

To gear up for Maker Faire next weekend, our guests are two incredible musical instrument makers. TradeMark Gunderson, founder of mash-up band Evolution Control Committee, will demonstrate his Thimbletron and the VidiMasher 3000, hacked from Wii remotes (and previously featured on BB). And Tom Zimmerman, inventor of the DataGlove and researcher at IBM Almaden, will show off his PVC pipe electronic drums, 6-foot PVC bass, and other sound contraptions. A jam with Youth Radio's Quincy Mosby (aka Quinn 2.0) on the mic may ensue. Youth Radio's Julius Toledo will be the host of the extravaganza. Our interactive presentation is at 7pm. If you're in the area, and over 21 (bummer, I know), please stop by! California Academy of Sciences: Nightlife

Previously:

Gear of War photo gallery

Posted: 20 May 2009 03:08 PM PDT

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel put together a magnificent gallery of the "Gear of War." Above:

While being dragged, 225th Engineer Brigade Soldier Sgt. Kasandra Deutsch of Pineville, La., demonstrates the power of the Talon robot, April 15, during a training exercise with the 9th Iraqi Army Engineer Regiment. The Talon robot system is used to help clear improvised explosive devices."

Gallery: The Gear of War

Space Invaders, the carnival game

Posted: 20 May 2009 01:41 PM PDT

Here's Space Invaders, re-imagined as a carnival game where you throw real stuffed "missiles" at invaders on the screen. Brandon has video over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Space Invaders, the carnival game"

Crazy Rasberry Ants on the rampage

Posted: 20 May 2009 01:30 PM PDT

(Above: some ants I videotaped last year. They aren't really Crazy Rasberry Ants.)

Nothing's quite as fun as a Hellstrom Chronicle-style news story about marauding insects. This time, it's the delightfully-named Crazy Rasberry Ant, and it has its quivering antennae trained in the direction of San Antonio, Texas.

"Where you'll have 200,000 ants in a big fire ant mound, you'll have billions of crazy ants in one area, in that one group. They form a carpet of ants over acres that is several inches thick."
...
The crazy ants even kill fire ants, which many may think is good news, but they are more destructive to homes and businesses than fire ants. They pack into electrical equipment in such dense numbers that they short out computers, air conditioning units and car computers.

Destructive ants marching on San Antonio

Cast iron bulldog bottle opener

Posted: 20 May 2009 12:57 PM PDT

Rejuvenation sells this handsome old timey cast iron bottle opener that mounts on a wall. It's $12.95.
. Cast Iron Bulldog Bottle Opener

Craig Yoe reading: "Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster"

Posted: 20 May 2009 12:55 PM PDT

Craig Yoe is reading from his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster. Here are the details:

Tomorrow night, Thursday May 21st at 8:00 pm, I'll be at an erotic reading, "In The Flesh," talking about Secret I.D. (6 other "erotic authors" will be reading from their books, too.) Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome Street, NYC.

Military attorney: Waterboarding is "tip of the iceberg"

Posted: 20 May 2009 12:14 PM PDT

The Raw Story reports that a military attorney who represented a suspected member of Al Qaeda (who was later freed) says her client received genital torture in a Moroccan CIA prison.

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, the lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, said "They started this monthly treatment where they would come in with a scalpel or a razor type of instrument and they would slash his genitals, just with small cuts."

Bradley told CNN that when she was first assigned to represent Mohamed, she did not question he was a hardened terrorist, because "my government was saying these were the worst of the worst." However, she now says, "There’s no reliable evidence that Mr. Mohamed was going to do anything to the United States."

Military attorney: Waterboarding is "tip of the iceberg"

1800s surgical kit unboxed

Posted: 20 May 2009 11:35 AM PDT

Medgadget unboxed a beautiful and horrifying 1800s surgical kit, owned by "Dr. Geo L. Shearer (an ancient relative of one of your editors), who practiced medicine in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania from 1825 to 1878."

The set contains the basic surgical tools which would have been needed to perform emergency surgery by way of amputation and this is not an uncommon configuration. The essential tools for this would usually comprise of a Liston knife or knives which had long straight razor sharp blades polished steel blades for cutting through the muscle. A capital saw (the large one) was for sawing through weight bearing bones. The forceps and smaller knives would have been used for trimming the muscle and skin in such a way as to produce flap. The needles were used to sew the flap of skin and muscle in place over the bone stump. There would also have been a tourniquet for applying pressure around the limb to temporarily cutting off the blood supply.
In addition to these surgical tools the set also contains two hand trephines and other instruments used for trepanation. These would often come separately in their own case and so this set represents a "compendium" if you like. Other examples of sets which combined instruments for different purposes were carried on board ships. These were grand compendia with comprehensive collections of tools to manage all eventualities, including general surgical, orthopaedic, urological, ophthalmological and dental instruments.

1800s Surgical Kit - Unboxing

Frank Lloyd Wright Lego -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 20 May 2009 10:49 AM PDT

Another great Boing Boing Gadgets find from Joel: Frank Lloyd Wright Lego!

Brickstructures has added two more models to their series of architectural LEGO microscale models, both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: The Guggenheim Museum and Falling Water. The Gugg is $55, shipped, within the U.S.; it doesn't actually appear that Falling Water is on sale yet. [via Prairie Mod]

Frank Lloyd Wright LEGO: The Guggenheim and Falling Water

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Video for Jonathan Coulton's "Future Soon" -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 20 May 2009 10:48 AM PDT

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's got the Jonathan Coulton video for The Future Soon, my fave JoCo song (I like it so much I used a line from it as a story title):

From that hairy cyborg bastard Jonathan Coulton's spanking new concert DVD, "Best. Concert. Ever." Just $20, every dollar of which goes towards bionic laser eye research.

Music Video: Jonathan Coulton "The Future Soon"

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Humbug original art on auction block

Posted: 20 May 2009 10:09 AM PDT

Joey Anuff is selling a bunch of beautiful original art from Harvey Kurtzman's Humbug humor magazine. (Kurtzman was the creator of Mad and he launched Humbug after leaving Mad. The high bid on this Jack Davis splash page is just $600. The auction ends Friday.

Jack Davis Humbug #7 Sputniks Splash Page 18 Original Art (Humbug, 1957). When Humbug hit the reader racks in August 1957, Harvey Kurtzman delivered his declaration of editorial principles in the first issue, "We won't write for morons. We won't do anything just to get laughs. We won't be dirty. We won't be grotesque. We won't be in bad taste. We won't sell magazines."
Jack Davis has violated nearly all of these principles with his stunning splash page for "Sputniks." For you "fact-niks," in his book The American Language, H. L. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning, not with beatnik or Sputnik, but earlier in the strips of Al Capp's Li'l Abner. Humbug!
This laugh riot has an image area of 10" x 15". There are pasted-on type and art elements, and a few small glue stains; otherwise, the art is in Excellent condition.

Fantagraphics recently published a superb 2-volume Humbug anthology.

Humbug original art on auction block

Marina Gorbis on organizational change

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:56 AM PDT

BB pal Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future, wrote a provocative essay for the Capitol Hill magazine Roll Call suggesting how much of today's corporate organizational theory has no future. We've spent a century developing organizational processes that maximize shareholder profits, she writes, but a big change is gonna come. On the horizon are: the emergence of an ecological/epidemiological view of markets and behaviors, a workforce of amplified individuals, and the engagement economy. From Roll Call:

The corporate culture we created spread well beyond the business realm. In his forthcoming book "Life Inc.," media expert Douglas Rushkoff points out that corporatism has permeated our culture, language, philanthropic organizations, schools and media. It is how we've come to think about getting things done. We almost cannot conceive of a world without hierarchical organizational charts, mission statements, bounded departments, and clear sets of corporate rules and incentives.

All of this is about to change. You can think of the next decade as a decade of experimentation with new ways of organizing our society, including our economic and business activities. Beginnings of new organizational shapes already abound — from Wikipedia to volunteers taking over customer-support services for organizations. Turns out that being helpful to others can be its own reward.

"Organizational Change Is Coming Soon"

Hypercubes

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:53 AM PDT

(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

Mark Frauenfelder mentioned that the first time he saw me I was carrying a cardboard model of an "unfolded hypercube"---so I rooted around the house and, with my wife's help, found such a model, this one dates back to 1983.

I think it was the hyperdimensional mathematician Tom Banchoff who told me how to make this model. You cut out 28 cardboard squares and tape them, four at a time, to make seven partial cubes. These partial cubes have no tops or bottoms, they're like square tubes. And then you tape the seven partial cubes together as shown in the photos, making a very cool shape.

[You may notice that the shape is a bit like a hyperdimensional crucifix. Indeed, if I'm not mistaken, the artist Salvador Dali actually consulted with Banchoff when Dali did his well-known painting, Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).]

It's a universal joint, in that you can swivel the top part freely---which is a little surprising as its all made of straight hinges. To make this into a real hypercube, you'd fold the band of projecting cubes to match the top cube and then---this is the hard part---you "fold" the bottom cube so its faces stretch around the outsides of the other cubes. The Wikipedia Tesseract page has a little animation that helps you visualize how this might work.

The idea behind the coloring on my model is that you start with one corner of the hypercube gray, and you think of the four dimensions as adding the colors red, blue, yellow, and white, coloring the successive 15 corners accordingly. I got the coloring pattern on this model from the early mathematician and science-fictioneer Charles Howard Hinton. In 1980 I edited a book of Hinton's amazing writings, Speculations on the Fourth Dimension. You can find a lot of this book (minus my introduction) online for free.

The letters on my model have to do with the fact that this particular unfolded hypercube was a gift to my wife on our sixteenth wedding anniversery. Our family members are S, R, G, R', and I---so you can start with S and think of each of the four dimensions as adding an R, G, R', and/or I.

One way to study a cube is to slice it into 2D cross-sections, taking the slices at various angles. By the same token, you can study hypershapes by slicing them into 3D cross-sections. Mark Newbold has written a nice Java applet called "HyperSpace Polytope Slicer" that lets you look at 3D cross-sections of four-dimensional shapes (or polytopes) like the hypercube. To use this applet, go to the link and click on the Controls button to get some interactive controls you can play with. Click on View to switch from a double view to a single view. (And better not click on Detach---at least on my machine, that often freezes up the applet.)

If you crave still more hypercube fun, I have two Windows progams written by my Master's Degree students, available for free download...including a 4D "Hyperspace Invaders" game.

Boing Boing t-shirts

Posted: 20 May 2009 10:03 AM PDT

UPDATE: Just got word that Gama-Go is holding a 24-hour sale today starting at noon PST. Everything will be 15 percent off, making our shirts just $20.40 each!

Thank you to all who have ordered the new Boing Boing t-shirts designed by us and made by Gama-Go! So far, the Jackhammer Jitters design (above left) is the top seller. The shirt are available in men's (S-XXL) and women's sizes (S-XL). The shirts are 100% cotton and manufactured and printed in the USA. They're $24/each and if you spend $25 or more on the site, shipping is free. Thanks for your support! Boing Boing t-shirts

Previously:

Boing Boing t-shirts, made by GAMA-GO! - Boing Boing

Country doctor uses household drill on patient's skull

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:28 AM PDT

Over at BB Gadgets, Rob posts the heartwarming tale of Rob Carlson, a country doctor in Maryborough, Australia, who saved a 12-year-old boy's life by drilling a hole in his skull using a Black And Decker drill. The young fellow, Nicholas Rossi, had fallen off his bike and had a brain hemorrhage. Needing to relieve the pressure on the boy's brain, Carlson grabbed a drill from the small hospital's maintenance closet and performed the trepanation. From The Age (fantastic photo from fox.out22's Flickr stream):

Over the telephone, Melbourne neurosurgeon David Wallace walked (Carlson) through the procedure...

''They stabilised Nicholas to start off with (and) they put him under anaesthetic and then Dr Carson came out and he said that he had 'one shot at this' and said what he wants to do is to drill into Nicholas' head to relieve pressure on the brain,'' (Nicholas Rossi's father) said.

Dr Carson drilled a hole just below the bruise mark, above Nicholas' ear, until a blood clot came out. He used forceps to increase the hole to about a centimetre in diameter, then inserted a drainage tube to keep the blood flowing out of the boy's skull...

Nicholas was airlifted to Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital an hour later and was released on Tuesday - his 13th birthday.

"Doctor Driller Saves Boy's Life"

Previously:

Infinite Typewriters: Goats webcomic collection is transcendantly silly without being forced

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:03 AM PDT

You know, people always talk about how wild comics seem to have been created by someone "on acid." In my experience, people on acid aren't that funny -- it's being on acid that's funny.

Jonathan Rosenberg's webcomic Goats (recently collected into a handsome volume called Goats: Infinite Typewriters) makes me feel like I'm on acid.

That's because every goddamned thing that happens it is incredibly weird -- two wise-asses meet God, trick him into turning into a porkchop, eat him, then their various pets get in the act, cybernetically enhancing themselves, communing with pansexual alien Greys with 13 bladders, animating decapitated bikers by riding their neck-stumps and tugging on their spinal cords, defeating the demons of the Mayan underworld, seeing action movies about Good Space Hitler versus Evil Earth Hitler and so on -- it is never just silly. It's always infrasilly, plumbing depths of silliness that skate on the edge of incomprehensible obscenity and weird-for-the-sake-over without ever slipping over.

That's a good trick. Author Jonathan Rosenberg never seems to be trying to hard to be the class clown. This all has the refreshing spontaneous unforced high weirdness of the weirder Monty Python sketches, and it will reset your freakiness thermometer to a higher threshold than you thought possible.

Goats: Infinite Typewriters

Buy direct from the author

Goats, the webcomic

Super Sonic Nausea device

Posted: 20 May 2009 08:46 AM PDT

Billed as a "revenge product," the Super Sonic Nausea device is the "government model" of the regular Sonic Nausea device that "generates a unique combination of ultra-high frequency soundwaves which soon leads most in its vicinity to queasiness." I think it basically makes a high-pitched, loud, and annoying squeal. It's $99 from law enforcement and military gear supplier Shomer-Tec. From the product page:

Speeches, demonstrations, crowd dynamics, etc. - this device has been used to "influence" more of these than you might expect. Deployed near the podium, you might just have a case of an increasingly un-impressive speaker with diminished sharpness and lacking concentration, or perhaps is even unable to complete his presentation. Or, loitering youths on your property might be enticed to move along with no confrontations necessary.

Super Sonic Nausea (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Previously:

Jesse Ventura on The View

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:05 AM PDT

Jesse Ventura debates Elizabeth Hasselbeck about waterboarding. Who do you think won the debate?

BB Video: This Week in Space, with Miles O'Brien

Posted: 20 May 2009 05:49 PM PDT

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, I catch up with our guest video contributor Miles O'Brien for an update on the space stories he's following this week.

The esteemed space, science, and aviation reporter brought us a story on an astronaut climbing Mt. Everest -- who just reached the summit! Then, Miles literally dove in to a floating "tool time" session with NASA astronauts tasked with repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Today, he brings us up to speed on these and other sci-tech stories he's following, and we hear what he'll be digging into next.

The former CNN anchor and reporter is exploring what independent online journalism is all about. In this episode, we learn what life is like for a 26-year broadcast veteran who has become a freewheeling freelancer. The short answer? Pretty good.

Catch his reports at True Slant, and follow him on Twitter: @milesobrien. Catch his space coverage at spaceflightnow.com.