Friday, May 22, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Steampunk casemod in honor of new game Damnation

Posted: 22 May 2009 04:04 AM PDT


Jake von Slatt sez, "Holy Mother of Zod! My arch nemesis Jake-of-All-Trades Hildebrandt has created what has to be the most definitively Steampunk casemod EVAH! Behold the Telecalculograph, Mk. II!"

It's a promo for the forthcoming game Damnation, and you can win it! Be sure to check out the "making of" video for lots of sweet little notes, like the spring-loaded tug-knob that works like a pinball launcher, which turns on the machine and spins up a flywheel, making the whole thing feel mechanical rather than electric.

Damnation Hildebrandt!

Making Of video

Beatboxing flautist performs Super Mario theme

Posted: 22 May 2009 04:06 AM PDT

Eric Stephenson Greg Pattillo is a beatboxing flautist (if you got it, flaut it), shown here performing a stirring rendition of the Super Mario theme.

beatboxing flute super mario brothers theme

Previously:


Apple says no Project Gutenberg for iPhone because some old books are dirty

Posted: 22 May 2009 02:14 AM PDT

Apple has rejected Eucalyptus, an ebook reader that facilitates downloading public domain books from Project Gutenberg, because some Victorian books mention sex (many of these same books can be bought as ebooks through the iPhone Kindle reader or purchased as audiobooks from the iTunes store). It's amazing to think that in 2009 a phone manufacturer wants to dictate which literature its customers should be allowed to download and read on their devices.
Thank you for submitting Eucalyptus -- classic books, to go. to the App Store. We've reviewed Eucalyptus -- classic books, to go. and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

Please view the attached screenshot for further information.

Remember, Apple is also petitioning the government to make it illegal to install any application on your phone that they haven't approved.

Whither Eucalyptus?

Previously:


T-Minus: graphic novel tells the history of the space race

Posted: 22 May 2009 01:43 AM PDT

Jim Ottaviani's new science history graphic novel, T-Minus: The Race to the Moon, is a fast-paced, informative recounting of the events beginning with the launch of Sputnik, the first human-made satellite on Oct 4, 1957, to the first human landing on the moon on July 20, 1969.

I know Ottaviani's work through his much older book Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists, which is one of my favorite comic history books, a vivid retelling of the lives of some of science's most inspiring women.

With T-Minus Ottaviani once again brings the human side of science to life, conveying the passion, the wonder, and the frustrations of the scientists and engineers who "fought" the space race on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Superbly researched, T-Minus never lets go of the story, but still finds many sneaky ways of inserting the hard data about the rockets, their capabilities, and the scientists who worked on them into the book.

Intended for young adults, this title was incredibly satisfying to me, an adult-adult (which is as it should be). I could also appreciate how a younger me would have revelled in the frequent sidebars giving diagrams and statistics for each rocket launched in the race, and both of us appreciated the lovely attention to the human details in the lives of the people in the story, like the cosmonaut whose father thinks "sitting on a rocket is no work for a grown man," the sheer wonder conveyed in the real-life words of the first people to do spacewalks, the Gulag-haunted Russian scientist Sergei Pavlovich's chronic (and eventually fatal) injuries from his prison term, and many other gracenotes.

As a history book or a diverting and inspiring story, T-Minus gets the job done.

T-Minus: The Race to the Moon

Previously:


Bletchley Park snubbed by Brit govt, no love for birthplace of computing

Posted: 22 May 2009 01:04 AM PDT

The wonderful, historical, underfunded Bletchley Park site shows no sign of being funded as a public museum by the British Government. Bletchley was the site of the effort to crack Axis codes during WWII and is the birthplace of modern computing and cryptography. It is the nerd equivalent of the pyramids at Giza or Stonehenge, and it's falling apart.

"We have no plans at present to associate it with the Imperial War Museum," Lord Davies said. "The House is all too well aware of the significance of designating any area in association with a museum of that rank, but I want to give an assurance that Bletchley Park will continue to develop under the resources made available to it."

Bletchley Park, home to UK code-breakers such as Alan Turing is being preserved as a museum, but has been facing a funding crises of late. It was recently awarded around £600,000 by Milton Keynes Council and English Heritage, as well as a further £100,000 by IBM and PGP...

"My Lords, I declare an indirect interest in that my father was a beneficiary of the Ultra intelligence derived from the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, and others," the Viscount said. "To go a bit further than what other noble Lords have proposed, does the noble Lord not think that Bletchley Park should be turned into a full-scale national museum on the same terms as the Imperial War Museum or many of our other national museums?"

UK Snubs Support For Home of WWII Enigma (via /.)
Previously:


Starbucks Twitter campaign hijacked by documentary about Starbucks' union-busting

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:57 PM PDT

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald's documentary about sleazy unionbusting at Starbucks debuted the same day as Starbucks new Twitter campaign, so he hijacked the campaign to spread information about Starbucks' bad labor practices.
On a blog post published at the anti-Starbucks website Brave New Films created, people were encouraged to take pictures of themselves in front of Starbucks stores holding signs targeted at the company's "anti-labor practices." These users are then told to upload these photos onto Twitpic and tweet them out to their followers using the hashtags #top3percent and #starbucks. According to the post, these are the official hashtags that were designated by Starbucks itself for those who wanted to enter its contest. Within hours, several people had followed these guidelines and there were dozens of Twitpics in front of stores across the country.

As of this writing, the anti-Starbucks YouTube video has amassed over 30,000 views and was featured on the front page of social news site Digg. Greenwald said that Brave New Films is not done with its offensive against the coffee company, but he was hesitant to reveal his next steps.

Anti-Starbucks filmmakers hijack the coffee company's own Twitter marketing campaign (Thanks, Simon!)
Previously:


SF movies from bygone days were inflation-adjusted blockbusters

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:52 PM PDT

John Scalzi's run the inflation-adjusted box-office numbers for science fiction movies since 1931's Frankenstein and discovered that sf has always been in blockbuster territory:
On the Beach (1959)
One of earliest movies to use a science fiction premise (nuclear apolcalypse! Everybody dies!) without actually advertising itself as science fiction -- because Gregory Peck couldn't possibly be in a science fiction movie, you see. Be that as it may, not only was the picture lauded for its intelligent portrayal of people dealing with the end of life as we know it, it also brought in the equivalent of close to $140 million. It will be interesting to see if The Road, a similarly-themed post-apocalyptic flick also not advertising itself as science fiction, comes close to these numbers when it's released later this year.

Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Prior to Star Wars, this was science fiction's one-two punch at the box office, and it was a pretty hefty combination: Planet of the Apes, helped by the star power of Charlton Heston, brought in $32 million -- equivalent to $175 million today, and a sum no one would complain about. 2001, with its groundbreaking special effects and oh-so-serious weirdness, did even better: $56 million, or just over $300 million today, which would have put it at number four in last year's box office list, just below the latest Indiana Jones flick. The two movies in fact helped spur a series of largely dystopic, serious-minded science fiction flicks, such as Silent Running and Soylent Green (not to mention, in the case of Apes, a bunch of sequels).

John Scalzi - SciFi Movies Made Money Before Star Wars, Too

Tory MP says it was OK to bill taxpayer for his 500 tree forest, critics are "jealous" of his private forest

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:48 PM PDT

People outside of the UK might have missed the huge scandal over MPs' expenses -- basically, it turns out that Members of Parliament have been billing the public for all kinds of crazy things, including mortgages that they'd already paid off, maintenance on their moats (I shit you not) and pools, tampons (for male MPs), private security details, and so on. Most MPs have fallen over themselves to apologize for their unethical behavior.

Not Tory MP Anthony Steen.

Steen billed the taxpayer for maintenance of his 500-tree forest, upkeep of which was apparently necessary to the conducting of his duties at Parliament.

Steen says that constituents who resent their tax money going to pay for his forest are "just jealous."


After pondering the question of exactly why people were so angry over his claim for the treatment of 500 trees in the grounds of his house, he offered a succinct explanation today : "Jealousy".
Expenses row: MP who claimed for 500 trees accuses constituents of 'jealousy'

HOWTO plant a handlebar garden on your bike

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:42 PM PDT

Instructables user FriendOfHumanity has a little HOWTO for installing a windowbox planter on the handlebars of your bike. I dunno, I'd be worried about doing a faceplant (worse yet, if you planted chickpeas, you might falafel your bike) (I did that once and I falafel about it).

Bicycle Window Box- For the transient gardener. (via Craft)


London Times on the Honda Insight: "Biblically terrible"

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:35 PM PDT

200905212135
Jeremy Clarkson's review of the Honda Insight for the London Times made me grin, which is as close as I ever get to LOLing at something I read to myself.
The biggest problem, and it's taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn't work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda's petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else's crying baby on an airliner. It's worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you'd have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid

Bob Graham's much-scoffed-at little notebooks are more reliable than the CIA's records

Posted: 21 May 2009 07:29 PM PDT

200905211923
Over at the Quantified Self blog, Gary Wolf wrote a fascinating post about ex-Senator Bob Graham's 30-year-plus-habit of writing every aspect of his day-to-day life in little spiral notebooks. The press likes to make fun of his obsessive note taking (he's filled almost 4,000 to date), but it comes in handy:
The CIA claimed that Pelosi had been briefed in detail about the torture, and didn't make any objection until long afterward. Therefore, if there is to be any kind of sanction for torture, it should hit the top Democrat who approved it as well as members of the Republican administration who ordered it. Pelosi, though, denies having been briefed about the torture.

Well, it turns out that Bob Graham was also supposed to have been briefed on these topics, and the CIA forwarded to him the dates of the meetings he supposedly attended. But the CIA records were inaccurate, according to his own personal records. Such was the respect for Graham's notebooks, that this line of attack was closed within 48 hours.

This is interesting for several reasons. First, it's worth noting that one man's spiral bound notebooks were able to accumulate enough credibility to defeat the records of an organization whose very reason for existence is to collect information, communicate it to trusted members of government, and keep records of these communications. Anybody who has been following some of the controversy about patient records can add this strange example to their list of favorite anecdotes. Personal data, kept by a dedicated and interested party, even using yesterday's technology, will trump large scale collection systems managed by bureaucrats.

For some reason, it comforts me to think of the CIA as a bunch of bumblers.

Politican as self-tracker - Bob Graham's notebooks

Marketing the Minimal

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:24 AM PDT

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

boingruboard.jpg

How do you market a toy that does almost nothing? Build a gnarly web ad!

We're talking about the Yo Baby, which is a skateboard with no wheels!

The presence of the turtle in the Yo Baby ad reminds me of Douglas Coupland's novel, JPod, which is about, among other things, the use of turtles in marketing, and which also has an intricate web page.

Do you make chiptunes? Help us score these retro-videos.

Posted: 21 May 2009 03:21 PM PDT

ataricamp12.jpg Here's the deal: Boing Boing has come into possession of some wicked footage of an anonymous Atari Computer Camp excursion that has everything you could ever want from grainy stock video: namely, yellowed and over-saturated money shots of retro-tech, and a bevy of over-eager and still-innocent pre-teens banging out BASIC to make crossword crosses out of the words Van Halen (no joke!) and gawping at the awesome limitless power and future of computers. Here's the catch: neither of the videos -- the first clocking in at about seven minutes, and the second coming in at seven and a half -- have any sound at all. And so: given Offworld/Boing Boing's sizable audience of chiptune/junk-tech musicians, we thought we'd throw the score open to you. If you're interested in submitting some of your music for the videos, which will be broadcast on BBtv at a later date, send an email to brandon@offworld.com with the subject line "Atari Computer Camp" and we'll dig through and select our favorites from there. Bonus points awarded for (but certainly not limited to) composing on actual 8-bit Atari tech. See the original post on Offworld for more inspirational shots of the kids at work (and play).

RunPee: when you should leave the movie and have a wee?

Posted: 21 May 2009 01:56 PM PDT

RunPee is a website that tells you when the best time to leave a movie and run to the bathroom to pee is. It also tells you what you missed while you were draining off a quart or two of lime kool-aid.

RunPee (via Kottke)

US corporations fighting to keep poor countries from getting patent-free access to green tech

Posted: 21 May 2009 01:53 PM PDT

The US chamber of commerce is leaning on trade representatives to make sure that poor countries have to pay to license patents on technologies that will reduce their carbon footprints and stave off global warming:
Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China have indicated that if - as expected in the next few years - they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so.

Big business is worried about this, because they prefer that patent rights have absolute supremacy. They want to make sure that climate change talks don't erode the power that they have gained through the World Trade Organisation.

The WTO is widely misunderstood and misrepresented as an organisation designed to promote free trade. In fact, some of its most economically important rules promote the opposite: the costliest forms of protectionism in the world.

Green technology should be shared (Thanks, Owlswan!)

Couple finds $10 mil in their bank account, take it and run

Posted: 21 May 2009 01:41 PM PDT

A couple in New Zealand found an extra NZ10,000,000 in their bank account, so they transferred it offshore and split:
The pair, named in media reports as Leo Gao and Cara Young, could hardly believe their luck when they checked their account at Westpac bank on 5 May, hoping to find their request for a NZ$10,900 (£4,000) overdraft had been accepted.

Instead, the bank had deposited 1,000 times that amount: NZ$10m, or around £4m. With so many borrowers around the world constantly being told "no" by their creditors, here, finally, was a bank that liked to say "yes".

Last night the accidental millionaires from Rotorua, a tourist city on the north island overlooking, appropriately enough, the Bay of Plenty, are on an Interpol wanted list after fleeing with the bulk of their windfall two weeks ago.

New Zealand couple flee after finding £4m in their bank account

Tiny Art Director: a 4-year-old critiques her father's art

Posted: 21 May 2009 11:47 AM PDT

Tiny Art Director is a site written by Bill Zeman, an artist whose daughter is four. The basic schtick is, she tells the Bill what to draw, he draws it, she critiques it (she's hard to please). It's hilarious and great -- and he's got a book-deal!.

The Brief: A dinosaur eating a R and an O and an S and a I and a E

The Critique: That's not what I want. That's a Brachiosaurus. I want a T Rex. He's supposed to have the other letters in his mouth too. See look! He's only eating that one. What letter is that?

Job Status: Rejected

Tiny Art Director (via Waxy!)

Coral Cross: ARG about pandemic flu

Posted: 21 May 2009 11:45 AM PDT

Stuart Candy of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies emailed me about their new alternate reality game, Coral Cross. Commissioned by the Hawaii Department of Health and bankrolled by the Center for Disease Control, the game is about... pandemic flu. Stuart says:
Uploaded Images Cc2009-769289 In late 02007, the Health Dept approached myself and Jake Dunagan (now my colleague at Institute for the Future -dp) after they noticed our independent FoundFutures exstallation in Chinatown, Honolulu, manifesting tangible scenario elements of a bird flu outbreak in the year 02016. A year later, by September 02008, they had won a federal grant to do a demonstration public engagement project about preparing for a possible flu pandemic scenario. Wearing our Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies hats, we pitched them on an Alternate Reality Game as a way of getting people into the mindset of what that could feel like. There had not been an actual pandemic in 40 years (Hong Kong flu, 01968) and enabling this type of engagement against a backdrop of indifference and invisibility would be our major challenge. The ARG idea came about because I was just gearing up to serve as Game Master on Superstruct at the time, so ARGs were in the air. Also, it seemed a way to scale up the narrative depth of the scenario, while building on the work of others in for example After Shock and World Without Oil, as well as on what we had learned from doing FoundFutures projects, futures artifacts etc.

Our design team worked intensively on the project in the early months of 02009, planning to launch in the last week of May to coincide with public meetings about pandemic preparedness that were being planned by the Health Dept. The narrative was set in Hawaii in 02012, and the vehicle for telling the story was a nonprofit, grassroots organisation called Coral Cross of Oahu, set up in September 02011 after a category 5 hurricane devastated the island. Each day of gameplay would represent one month of narrative, so in the space of two weeks, visitors to the in-world website would experience a calm leadup to the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Cyrus, followed by the sudden onset of a flu pandemic, and the tumultuous six-month wait for a vaccine to become available. In the context of this story, they would tell their own, discuss the implications of the sudden social, economic, and political changes wrought by the virus, and develop a better sense of how they and their communities could respond to pandemic conditions.

In late April, however, reality overtook our alternate reality scenario. We watched in disbelief as, over two or three days, the swine flu epidemic in Mexico took hold, panic about it possibly going global began to spread, and the WHO and CDC raised their official alert levels. It was surreal. One day, we were filming a mock press conference set in 02012 and announcing the outbreak as part of our narrative introduction, and literally a day later, we were watching a real one on TV.

Our design team turned on a dime, proposing right away that, rather than being cancelled due to the early arrival of the future, the project be reoriented around current events. The result is that we maintained the late May launch date but over the last few weeks have completely reimagined the project as an Emergent Reality Game, the first of its kind. Rather than telling a story about a pandemic in the future, Coral Cross is now an experiment in using gaming mechanisms to support real-life pandemic preparedness today, and to try to outpace the flu with information that may help mitigate its spread. Players also have the opportunity to discuss the potential life-and-death questions of who should be prioritised in a vaccine queue for this or a future strain of influenza.

So, can information catch up to the virus? Let's hope so. People can follow the progress of the spread of our message at coralcross.org and sign up for notification when the full game goes live early next week.
Coral Cross

Previously:


I'M HUGE ON TWITTER, the t-shirt

Posted: 21 May 2009 11:44 AM PDT


Buy 'em here. I'm traveling in Guatemala, so I'm a few days late blogging this, I hope there are some left!

(disclosure: I earned a few hundred bucks from this, which I plan to donate to a family-run nonprofit that does sustainable technology development work in indigenous communities here.)

MIT's futuristic, networked bus stop design

Posted: 21 May 2009 11:36 AM PDT

Mitbustoppp
MIT researchers are designing a futuristic bus stop called the EyeStop. A collaboration between architects and engineers in the SENSEable City Lab, the design calls for large multi-touch e-ink screens, ambient displays, and an array of environmental sensors. From MIT News:
Riders can plan a bus trip on an interactive map, surf the Web, monitor their real-time exposure to pollutants and use their mobile devices as an interface with the bus shelter. They can also post ads and community announcements to an electronic bulletin board at the bus stop, enhancing the EyeStop's functionality as a community gathering space.

"The EyeStop could change the whole experience of urban travel," said Carlo Ratti, Head of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. "At the touch of a finger, passengers can get the shortest bus route to their destination or the position of all the buses in the city. The EyeStop will also glow at different levels of intensity to signal the distance of an approaching bus."

In addition to displaying information, the bus stop also acts as an active environmental sensing node, powering itself through sunlight and collecting real-time information about the surrounding environment.

"EyeStop is like an 'info-tape' that snakes through the city," said project leader Giovanni de Niederhousern. "It senses information about the environment and distributes it in a form accessible to all citizens."
EyeStop

Space Invaders soap

Posted: 21 May 2009 11:30 AM PDT

Artists sell paintings of items to buy items the paintings depict

Posted: 21 May 2009 10:56 AM PDT

Fkyhomeeeee
Goldnixonnnn
For about a year, New York City artists Justin Gignac and Christine Santora make paintings of things that they want and price them at exactly what it would cost to buy that item. Once they sell the painting, and buy the item, they take a photo of the item or experience and post it in their Flickr stream beside the painting. Top, plane trip from New York City. Below that, Nixon watch. Wants For Sale (Thanks, Mathias Crawford!)

Shark-attack hat

Posted: 21 May 2009 10:53 AM PDT

Crafster user 3RaysOfSunshine made this wonderful shark-attack hat for her son. I wish I had one to wear to my next court-appearance!

I made this hat for my son - he wanted a mean shark. I saw the dead fish hat pattern and loved the idea - I just varied the pattern quite a lot to make different looking species. And felted it so it looks like it jumped out of the water and landed on his head... I basically cast 90 stitches onto a size 9 circular needle and winged it from there. I used Patons wool and it felted great.
Shark Attack Hat
Previously:


How digging up expense reports led a journalist to clobber British govt

Posted: 21 May 2009 10:36 AM PDT

GlennF sez,
I came across this interesting profile of Heather Brooke, the UK-based reporter who tried to get Parliament to release expense records by using UK disclosure laws, and whose efforts clearly led to the leak that the Daily Telegraph got.

Brooke started her journalism career in Seattle at the University of Washington, and learned via a newspaper internship from an old-school editor how to dig up public records--expense records, in particular.

The profile is fascinating because it shows one of the key functions of newspapers and similar periodicals that's been ignored as the quality of such publications has dropped: investigation, and management that supports investigation.

We've been lucky in Seattle that both local papers (one remains in print, the other online only) were long interested in funding very long-form, very long-running investigations. Who will fund this kind of reporting in the future? What editor will teach a future Heather Brooke to dig behind the public statements and facile information at hand?

This isn't a tirade in defense of dinosaurs. Rather, I legitimately wonder where the funding comes that allows reporters to devote the time. Hyperlocal news is great, and so is citizen journalism. But Brooke spent five years (and was scooped in the end) on digging out these expense reports.

Former UW student shakes up British government (Thanks, Glenn!)

Rubik's Cube as font generator

Posted: 21 May 2009 10:28 AM PDT

Old moonshiner and son busted for dope smuggling

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:50 AM PDT

The gentleman below at the far left is Paul Faulkner, 83, a former alcohol bootlegger who was recently busted along with members of his family for running a drug smuggling ring in north Georgia. His son Michael Smith, also below, ran the show. From CNN:
Cnn 2009 Crime 05 21 Drugs.Rural.America Art.Split.Gbi-1 Faulkner, who is suffering from cancer, was handed a 20-year sentence last month and is to head to prison in August. "Twenty years, that is a death sentence," said Giles Jones, Faulkner's attorney, adding that he has appealed the sentence.

He said Faulkner was a "full-time mountain shiner" who could talk moonshine until he was "blue in the face," but knew little about the Mexican marijuana operation. Jones said the old man's son "threw his ass under the bus" to save himself.

"It's a situation where I guess you're just looking out for yourself. It's every day as every day, man," said Jones.

Not so fast, said Cathy Alterman, the defense attorney for Smith, Faulkner's son.

"Michael didn't throw his father under the bus. His father threw Michael down the drain when he was 16 years old," Alterman said. "If the father got a longer sentence, it's because he's a lousy father. ... He was never there for his son, except to be a bad example."
"Moonshine to Mexican marijuana: Family gets busted"

Drew Friedman label for McSorley's beer

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:37 AM PDT

Drewfriedman Images 5082879637 My favorite portrait painter Drew Friedman created a label for McSorley's Irish Lager, produced by the oldest (or second oldest) bar in New York City. It's been on East 7th Street since 1854. Drew says, "For this job, I just asked to be paid in beer."


Video: Brief History of Weed

Posted: 21 May 2009 09:16 AM PDT



As a promo for their sitcom Weeds, Showtime created this concise history of cannabis.

Everything Is Alive

Posted: 21 May 2009 08:42 AM PDT

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

Over the years, I've come to think that everything is alive, even a rock. In academic philosophy, this doctrine is known as "hylozoism"---the word even appears in Wikipedia.

boingtwotonerock.jpg

As Stephen Wolfram and I have both pointed out, any gnarly, chaotic natural process embodies a classical universal computation. And at the quantum level, even dull-looking objects are seething with universal quantum computations. When I look at a stone, I think of ten octillion balls connected by springs. There’s a lot going on in a rock, enough to support universal computation, enough to run a mind.

How do I know a rock is alive? If I let go of it, it's smart enough to drop?

Or maybe, in the right frame of mind, I can feel an affinity to the rock---in a way, there's no telling where one thing starts and the other thing stops.

boingtrashcan.jpg

* The text and a video of my "Psipunk" talk about the notion that everything is alive.

* A slightly more academic paper by me, called "Everything is Alive."



Pirate history podcast from Tank Riot

Posted: 21 May 2009 08:28 AM PDT

Further to Mark's post about the history of self-organization among pirates, this week's Tank Riot podcast does a great job discussing the whole history of sea piracy, from the "Sea People" of 900 BCE to the present day.
Pirates! The team discusses the history of piracy and some of their favorite pirates including: Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Every, Thomas Tew, William Kidd, Emanuel Wynn, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham, Jean Lafitte and more. Also, a brief rant on modern (digital) piracy and modern copyright. Issues discussed range from the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA and the book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig. Music is provided by the talented Madison band The Pints.

In addition to real pirates, the Tank Crew reviews pirate movies including Treasure Island, The Black Swan, The Princess Bride, Cutthroat Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more. Viktor also reviews the films X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek.

Pirates!
Previously:


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