Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Video from 1956 of Eames Lounge chair introduction

Posted: 22 May 2009 10:30 PM PDT




Growing up, my best friend's parents had an Eames Lounge in their family room and I always loved it. Unlike most iconic modern furniture, it's actually super-comfortable. I was checking our their pricing online (too rich for my blood, sadly) and came across this terrific 1956 video of Charles and Ray Eames first introducing the chair on the Arlene Francis "Home" Show. From Wikipedia:
Wikipedia Commons E E3 Eameslounch The backrest and headrest are screwed together by a pair of aluminum supports. This unit is suspended on the seat via two connection points in the armrests. The armrests are screwed to shock mounts on the interior of the backrest shell, allowing the backrest and headrest to flex when the chair is in use. This is part of the chair's unusual design, as well as one of its biggest flaws. The rubber washers are solidly glued to the plywood shells, but have been known to tear free when excessive weight is applied, or when the rubber becomes old and brittle.

Other creative uses of materials include the seat cushions - which eschew standard stapled or nailed upholstery. Instead the cushions are sewn with a zipper around the outer edge that connects them to a stiff plastic backing. The backing affixes to the plywood shells with a series of hidden clips and rings. This design, along with the hidden shock mounts in the armrest allow the outside veneer of the chair to be unmarred by screws or bolts. The chair has a low seat which is permanently fixed at a recline. The seat of the chair swivels on a cast aluminum base, with glides that are threaded so that the chair may remain level.

...When it was first made Ray Eames remarked in a letter to Charles that the chair looked "comfortable and un-designy" (sic). Charles's vision was for a chair with "the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt.

Previously:


LA cop union buys stake in newspaper, demands critical writers be fired

Posted: 22 May 2009 10:20 PM PDT

Doran sez, "The San Diego Union Tribune was recently purchased by Platinum Equity, which in turn has a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles cops and firefighters, along with other public employee pension funds. Now the President of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union which represents L.A. cops, wants the editorial board of the paper to be fired because they don't like what has been written about them."
"Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

Weber, in an interview, emphasized that the League is not demanding changes in the paper's news coverage of the issue or in its staff of reporters. "It's just these people on the opinion side. There is not even an attempt to be even-handed. They're one step away from saying, 'these public employees are parasites,' " Weber said.

L.A. police union wants San Diego newspaper writers fired (Thanks, Doran!)

UK towns move to extend abusive license plate surveillance grid

Posted: 22 May 2009 10:18 PM PDT

Taras sez, "British local authorities are queuing up to connect their CCTV cameras to a national system which tracks cars by their registration plates. Any camera, if high enough resolution, can be adapted to work with the software. The Information Commissioner is concerned, as ever, but under-resourced and basically powerless. People who have taken part in anti-war rallies are already having their cars stopped by Anti-Terror Units for no good reason and being questioned under threat of arrest."
John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a "marker" on his car. That meant he was added to a "hotlist".

This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

"I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?"

Camera grid to log number plates (Thanks, Taras!)

Nitrous oxide espresso maker -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 22 May 2009 11:31 PM PDT

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Steven reviews the MyPressi TWIST, a portable espresso maker powered by nitrous oxide cannisters.

A typical regulator might be two inches in diameter. Much too large for the TWIST. The task of shrinking the apparatus down without losing efficiency and safety went to Gecko, a firm that collaborated on the Herman Miller Leaf Lamp and has built pneumatic devices on cruise control missiles for defense industry contractors (really).

Their creation: a regulator that's about the size of half a grown man's pinky nail. Once the pod develops its own pressure, the regulator in the handle shuts off the pressure. And there's also a secondary safety valve, in case you put in too much coffee. In time, too, their small, main regulator could be applied or licensed out to other hardware.

For now, O'Brien is focused on the TWIST. And as we continue to chat, all I'm focused on is the taste. He takes a preloaded cup, gets some hot water from the cafe, puts in 3.5 oz., pulls the trigger to release the gas (it's cold, but expands rapidly from the hot water), and begins the pour...

Hands-On With A Whippit-Powered Travel Espresso Maker

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

BA getting rid of first class in new planes

Posted: 22 May 2009 10:12 PM PDT

British Airways is eliminating the First Class cabin on its new plane. I'm not surprised. First Class costs thousands out pounds more than business class, and the only substantial difference between the two services is that First comes with a free pair of cheap pyjamas and a lobster salad. You can buy the same jammies at Heathrow and pick up a lobster salad at Pret on your way onto the plane and save a mint.
"The long-haul aircraft that we take delivery of this year will not have any first class cabins in them," said Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive. He insisted there was no direct link to the recession, but he added: "Longer term we will review the configuration of [all] new aircraft." BA is also launching a service this year from Heathrow to Las Vegas, a prime destination for high-rollers, with no first class option.

First class is the last remnant of the more romantic days of air travel when BA's predecessor, British Overseas Airways Corporation, offered first class tickets alongside the more down-at-heel tourist or economy cabins. Its upmarket reputation has become even more rarefied over the years following the introduction of slightly less luxurious business class seats in the late 1970s, and cut-throat competition on the transatlantic market.

British Airways ditch first class in new planes as age of austerity bites

My Martha Stewart appearance is online

Posted: 22 May 2009 05:03 PM PDT

Markandmartha-1

My appearance on the Martha Stewart show on Monday is now online at MarthaStewart.com. To see my segments click on Inventions, 1 and Inventions, 2 on the page.

Previously:


Friday Evening NOFX

Posted: 20 May 2009 09:36 PM PDT

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

Guestblog brings you a special Friday evening music treat!

boingspeaker.jpg

A playlist of NOFX videos! Yaaaar.

Best album of late? Easy. It's NOFX and Rancid, BYO Split Series Vol III. My two favorite punk bands playing each other's songs!

Man who drove into City Hall gets 10-year sentence

Posted: 22 May 2009 04:21 PM PDT

City-Hall-Car

This video of a man driving a car through Wichita's City Hall would be funny if not for the fact that he may have hurt someone.

Authorities said Johnson became angered when a police officer told him to turn down the music in his car while he was parked at a south Wichita convenience store early on the morning of Jan. 7, 2008.

Johnson drove downtown, turned onto Main and then drove up a ramp into City Hall at an estimated 45 miles an hour.

OK, it is funny.

Man who drove into City Hall gets 10-year sentence

Milk: The Gateway Drug

Posted: 22 May 2009 04:14 PM PDT


Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen is revealed to have an enlightened attitude about marijuana in this exchange with drug war dinosaur Robert Mueller. The tired-looking FBI director seems to be reciting his false arguments like a pull-string puppet. (Via The Agitator)

"We did not know that child abuse was a crime," says retired Catholic archbishop

Posted: 22 May 2009 03:59 PM PDT

200905221552

Retired Catholic Archbishop Rembert G Weakland, who has been accused of covering up widespread child rape by priests in Milwaukee, has a forthcoming memoir in which he wrote the following bits of wisdom:

"We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature."

Weakland, who retired in 2002 after it became known that he paid $450,000 in 1998 to a man who had accused him of date rape years earlier, said he initially "accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’."

"We did not know that child abuse was a crime," says retired Catholic archbishop

"Mighty Uke" trailer

Posted: 22 May 2009 03:51 PM PDT


"Mighty Uke is a feature documentary that travels the world to discover why so many people of different nations, cultures, ages and musical tastes are turning to the ukulele to express themselves, connect with the past, and with each other. From the Redwoods of California through the gritty streets of New York, from swinging London through Tokyos highrise canyons to Hawaii, ukers tell the story of the peoples instrument: The Mighty Uke."

4,032 page Agatha Christie book is over one-foot-thick

Posted: 22 May 2009 03:47 PM PDT

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All 12 of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novels and 20 short stories are included in a single bound volume. Price is £1000.

With 252, 16-page hand-sewn sections, the production values of this limited edition are amazing and the attention to detail is remarkable. Bound by Cedric & Chivers Period Bookbinding, cased in Winters Wintan leather, blocked in gold on the front and spine, with head and tail bands, four silk ribbon markers to keep your place, and with only 500 made, this special limited edition is for fans and collectors alike.
4,032 page Agatha Christie book is over one-foot-thick (Via Orange Crate Art)

Milton Bradley Bump Ball, circa 1969

Posted: 22 May 2009 04:01 PM PDT

200905221532

Over at Dinosaurs and Robots, Todd Lappin writes about finding "a mysterious time capsule sitting curbside on a street in San Francisco: One (1) Milton Bradley Bump Ball, circa 1969, complete in original box."

From a Houston Press page that has information about this nubby toy:

Apparently, the idea was to toss the ball in the air and keep it from hitting the ground by pressing it between you and the nearest hot chick while gyrating to the Bump Ball theme song. A 45 of the song was included with every ball. "It's time the boys got closer to the girls," the album cover continues. The concept had everything. Dancing. Sex. Balls. Rock n' roll. How could the Bump Ball fail?

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If anyone knows where a link to this song is, please post it in the comments.

Bump Ball

Twins wanted for Damien Hirst installation

Posted: 22 May 2009 02:02 PM PDT

Albums Ee255 Zichi Blogger2 Hirst-Lsd As part of the Tate Modern's forthcoming exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World, the London museum is recreating a 1992 performance/installation. Identical twins will sit for the entire exhibition, October 1, 2009 to January 17, 2010, below a pair of identical Hirst "spot" paintings. That's a long time, so the Tate Modern is seeking twins to sign up.
"Take Part In A Damien Hirst Performance"

Previously:


Toilet seats with hand-carved leather lids

Posted: 22 May 2009 01:29 PM PDT

Il 430Xn.40205949 Il 430Xn.52239003
Etsy user WINDY54M sells toilet seats decorated with hand-carved leather. From his listing:
This is real vegetable tanned leather.I carved it in my shop at my workbench.Once carved it is then dyed/stained then a top finish is applied to seal it. Then I use adhesive to attach it the Oak toilet seat.Then I use real HEMP rope to decrotate the edge.
Hand Carved Leather Toilet Seats (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Previously:


English schoolkids go on strike until CCTVs are removed from classes

Posted: 22 May 2009 11:10 AM PDT

Students at Davenant Foundation School in Loughton, Essex, UK walked out of classrooms that had been equipped with CCTV cameras and refused to attend classes for three weeks until their civil liberties were respected. Students from the school are hashing over the issues in the comment area for the local news report, in incredibly intelligent, reasonable fashion. These kids give me hope for the future. I wonder if I can send Poesy there once she's old enough.
It meant they missed three weeks of studies and led to the drafting of a petition signed by about 150 of their peers.

A father, whose son took part in the walk-out, said the school was wrong not to consult parents about the use of technology which "threatened our children's civil liberties"...

Epping Forest MP Eleanor Laing, who has written to the school on behalf of concerned parents, and is due to meet the Information Commissioner to discuss the case, said: "We need to find out if the pupils are happy to be filmed but there are two valid sides to this argument, and I am trying to get to the bottom of it."

LOUGHTON: Pupils walk out of lessons in protest against Big Brother cameras (Thanks, @davidgerard!)

Obamabot to be installed at Disney World, will robotically cover up torture, suspend habeas corpus

Posted: 22 May 2009 11:04 AM PDT

An incredibly lifelike advanced Obamabot is ready to be installed in the Walt Disney World Hall of Presidents. It's traditional for the current president's robot to give a little speech at the end of the show. Presumably, Obamabot will explain how the reasonable middle-ground demands suspending habeas corpus, covering up war crimes, and blocking the prosecution of participants in illegal wiretapping programs.
The Obama figure is the result of attention to minute details by Disney sculptors, animators, engineers and even anatomists who pored over presidential photographs and video of him and then drew on the latest advances in robotic technology.

Thus the audio-animatronic Obama purses its lips to pronounce its b's and p's in a way frighteningly evocative of the real one, and raises its hands, open-palmed, while shrugging its shoulders, in a way that can only be described as Obamaesque. Even the president's wedding ring, with its braided design, has been recreated.

Animatronic Obama Going to Disney World With High-Tech Style (Thanks, Eloisa!)

Obama promises to suspend Habeas Corpus

Posted: 22 May 2009 11:01 AM PDT

Rachel Maddow points out that in Obama's national security speech yesterday, he proposes to replace Guantanamo-style detention without trial with his own detention without trial, a system he calls "Indefinite Preventative Detention" through which people who are believed to be likely to commit a crime at some point in the future can be locked up forever without charge, trial, jury or appeal.

Change I don't believe in.

Obama proposes Indefinite Preventive Detention without trial (Thanks, Zack!)

Panpsychism and Hylozoism

Posted: 22 May 2009 09:00 AM PDT

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

I was happy to see a lot of response to my BoingBoing post of a few days ago, "Everything is Alive." Let me throw a little more fuel on the fire.

boingvinesurge2.jpg
[A flowering plant eats a signpost!]

There's actually two different words we can play with here. "Hylozoism" is the doctrine that everything is alive, while "Panpsychism" is the belief that everything is conscious. These are close in meaning but not quite identical, although I'm comfortable with believing both.

Panpsychism is by no means a wacky new-age concept, it's been around since the dawn of philosophy. David Skrbina's fascinating study, Panpsychism in the West, (MIT Press, 2005) maps out the whole history. Here's a link to a page of Skrbina's book where he's discussing one of my favorite panpsychic philosophers, Gustav Theodor Fechner...more about him below.

boingskrbina.jpg

One funny line from Skrbina, quoting the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce: "what we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hide-bound with habits."

In discussing hylozoism and panpsychism, we're not talking about the notion that the universe as a whole is alive and conscious. We're concerned with viewing individual object, even atoms, as being alive and conscious---although there's nothing wrong with adding on the quite reasonable belief that the universe as whole is alive as well.

Here's a short essay of mine called "Mind is a Universally Distributed Quality" which I wrote for John Brockman's annual Big Question page at his Edge site. The Big Question was, "What is your dangerous idea?"

boingmadprof.jpg
[The Mad Professor cover art and design is by Georgia Rucker Design.]

A point discussed in Skrbina’s Panpsychism in the West is that if you’re not careful, advocating panpsychism becomes simply a matter of watering down your notion of "mind" to apply to objects. But, with Skrbina, I want to claim that it’s a real sensual mind that you’re talking about in that rock, that pen, that finger, that dust mote, that hair, that napkin torn in half (two minds now). A materialist might say, hah, there’s no content to such a claim, but I feel that I demonstrated how it really would feel to talk to objects in my science-fiction story, “Panpsychism Proved” which appeared in no less august a journal than Nature magazine. And to think they dared call me mad! Oh, by the way, my story also appears in my anthology, Mad Professor. Here's a free PDF of the story ---I put it online for you just now.

boinggoosie.jpg
[Goosie the finger-puppet is alive.]

The scientist-philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner was a fascinating guy. He liked to talk about the daylight view versus the nighttime view. In the daylight view of the world, everything is flooded with soul and life. In the nighttime view, the world is dead, dark, inhospitable, and we sentient and living beings are but tiny firefly sparks. Not too many of his books have been translated into English, but here's one of them that I found online, On Life After Death, from Google Books.

boingbigsurbentree.jpg
[This Big Sur tree is conscious.]

Finally, here's a quote from the philosopher William James's Pluralistic Universe online , describing Fechner's work:

For him the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious... The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, and nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a thin nest of abstractions.

Do not board the elevator with robot

Posted: 22 May 2009 09:58 AM PDT


Steve sez, "Warning sign du jour: 'Do Not Board the Elevator with the Robot.'"
After finishing my doctoral work, I returned to Stanford Medical School to finish up the MD part of my MD/PhD. During one of my last clinical rotations, I stopped to take an elevator up to a surgical unit. While waiting for the elevator, a large washing-machine-sized robot--a unit that had then been recently introduced at Stanford Hospital to pick up and deliver x-ray films--pulled up along side me. After waiting patiently together, we both entered the elevator. As the door closed, the robot began to whir and then quite rapidly spun around 180 degrees to re-orient itself for exiting.

The large spinning robot nearly knocked me down in the elevator. It was somewhat frightening to be trapped in an elevator with little clearance for a massive spinning robot.

I recall being somewhat concerned about what might happen if a fragile patient, walking along with an intravenous pump, or a medical team with a patient on a gurney, entered the elevator with the robot.

Please Do Not Board the Elevator with the Robot

(Thanks, Steve!)

Recently on Offworld

Posted: 22 May 2009 09:21 AM PDT

passage500.gifRecently on Offworld, One More Go columnist took a longer look at Jason Rohrer's famed five-minute memento mori art game Passage (above), to get "ammunition needed to convince yet another friendly, clever, skeptical non-gamer about the potential of the medium." We also saw the first stirring of an El Lissitzky-inspired grainy constructivist 2D platformer (!), found out that Left 4 Dead's Francis hates everything that everybody on Twitter hates, saw Street Fighter deconstructed, and spotted LucasArts vet/Double Fine founder Tim Schafer putting in another tour de force acting performance alongside Jack Black. Finally, we spotted Super Mario Bros 2 in horrible hyper-real life, watched a long preview of the upcoming labor struggles in Minotaur China Shop creators' next game, Crane Wars, and watched two brilliant short films made in 50x50 pixels, and saw the Famous Monsters of LittleBig-land.

Verizon to cops: we won't help you track down sick, possibly dying man unless you pay his $20 phone bill

Posted: 22 May 2009 07:48 AM PDT

A 62-year-old man had a mental breakdown and ran off iafter grabbing several bottles of pills from his house. The cops asked Verizon to help trace the man using his cellphone, but Verizon refused, saying that they couldn't turn on his phone because he had an unpaid $20 bill. After an 11-hour search (during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill), the man was found, unconscious.
Two K-9 units, several fire departments and 100 individuals on foot also were involved in the search for the man, who Sheriff Dale Williams said fled his residence on Kensington Rd. after a domestic disturbance call to deputies...

Williams said he attempted to use the man's cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff's department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment.

Unconscious Carroll man found after 11-hour search (via Consumerist)

Ikea's free tack-hammer assistant

Posted: 22 May 2009 06:58 AM PDT

On Cool Tools, Zarko Vujovic talks about Ikea's adjunct to a tack-hammer, a free gizmo that does the trick:
I am an engineer, so I admire the way Ikea consistently uses a small set of fastening systems, all suitable for untrained labor. Ikea has even invented this tiny plastic device to protect customers from smashing their fingers with tack hammers.

A pinch of the clever friction-grips opens a small crevice in this utensil, and it neatly grips any small nail. Place it against a wall, tap the nailhead, and the nail goes in quite straight. Remove it and you are ready to safely hang a picture. The ergonomics are brilliant, the understanding of process is good, the operative results are excellent, and many innocent fingers go unsmashed. A real triumph of Swedish design!

Ikea Nail-Driving Utensil

Crazy French copyright law translated to English

Posted: 22 May 2009 09:03 AM PDT

French copyfighter Jeremie Zimmermann sez,
Folks from La Quadrature du Net (big up to Peter K!) have translated the French HADOPI law [ed: the new French copyright law, rammed through by Sarko over howls of public protest], which includes the absurd "three strikes" scheme [ed: if you are accused of infringement three times, you lose your Internet access -- no proof needed, no trial, no judge, no jury], bound to fail and utterly dangerous.

Curious archeo-legalists will enjoy its exotic stupidity, so impractical that everybody in France laughs at it with shame, including the members of Sarkozy's locked-down majority party who didn't dare to vote against it.

Pay particular attention to article 5 - subsection 3 where the "riposte graduee" is described, along with article 11 (obligation of "securing" one's internet access against it being used for counterfeiting, a complete technical nonsense that is the cornerstone of the whole thing).

Article 10 is also an incredible model of the worst you shall not write into the law if you want to prove that you understand what Internet is about, and how its growth and innovation worked so far:

"Art. L. 336-2. In the presence of infringement of a right of authorship or a similar right within the contents of a public on line communication service, the Superior Court, decreeing as required on the form of the hearing, may order at the request of the owners of protected works and objects, of the holders of their rights, of societies for the management of rights set forth in article L. 321-1 or professional organizations set forth in article L. 331-1, all measures needed to prevent or halt such damage to a right of authorship or a similar right, against any entity able to help remedy it. "

Enjoy it while it lasts, as it may soon be completely invalidated or neutralized by the Constitutional Court, or later on by the European courts... Yet Sarkozy's will of controlling the Internet doesn't seem to be stopped by such tiny details as constitutionality or rationality.

(please note that the translation is a work in progress that probably contains translation errors, with no legal value, and that only the original in French, blahblah, insert proper disclaimer here.)

HADOPI full translation (Thanks, JZ!)
Previously:


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