The Latest from Boing Boing

Chinese grifters posing as brides work the countryside
Odd photo of the week
Licensed to Drink
To do in LA tonight: "Computers in Popular Music," Johannes/monochrom at Machine Project
How to Defend Yourself if you are Carrying Only a Small Switch in your Hand are Threatened by a Man with a Very Strong Stick
Health insurers invest billions in tobacco stocks
Awesome, infringing music video made from 80s brat pack flicks is band's "best video"
Bullshit about newspapers' future, dissected
Bad Science versus the piracy scare story

Chinese grifters posing as brides work the countryside

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 11:21 PM PDT

Marilyn sez, "The Wall Street Journal reports on the overabundance of Chinese men of marriageable age (currently 32 million more men than women, roughly the population of Canada). Consequently women are charging much higher bride prices (equivalent of 5 or even 10 years' farming wages) and there are scams in which women show up in rural towns with particularly unequal male-female ratio, and pose as relatives of a town resident. They negotiate a high bride price and then take money and run."

"She called me soon after she left," says Mr. Zhou, a slight man with a tentative smile. He says she asked how he was doing, and apologized for the hardship she had caused. "I told her, 'I will see you again one day....'"
Last December a family friend told his mother that her nephew recently married a girl from neighboring Sichuan province. The bride had three female friends visiting her, who might be interested in marrying local men, said this friend.
Encouraged, Mr. Zhou and his mother met the three girls the next day. After an hour's chat with the trio, who claimed to be ages 23, 25 and 27, Mr. Zhou found himself drawn to the prettiest and youngest, Ms. Cai, who had angular features and an ivory complexion.
He proposed marriage. She agreed, with one proviso: cai li of 38,000 yuan, or roughly five years' worth of farm income. The Zhous agreed, but took the precaution of running a quick background check. Tang Yunshou, Xin'an's Communist Party secretary, said Ms. Cai's identity and residential papers checked...
Meanwhile, Mr. Zhou is still lovelorn. "I feel I can't hate her," says the deserted husband, who is now so depressed his parents have forbidden him to leave the village, as he longs to. "She must have her own troubles."

It's Cold Cash, Not Cold Feet, Motivating Runaway Brides in China (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: Mei Fong/The Wall Street Journal)

Odd photo of the week

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 04:56 PM PDT

As Radley Blako says, there's got to be great story behind this photo.

UPDATE: Steven Leckart says It's a sculpture called "Ancient Echo"!

Man comforts young, semi-clothed, vomiting orangutan

Licensed to Drink

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 03:55 PM PDT

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently-published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Follow him on Twitter: @wmgurst.)

From Drinking Learner Permits for Under Age Persons:

In more than 30 states, drivers aged 16 and 17 gain driving experience while holding special licenses that restrict when and how they may drive (for example, no late-night cruising). This permits a slow introduction to an adult privilege. The same concept should apply to drinking.

What could be the elements of a provisional drinking license? There could be time and place restrictions. The license holder could drink, for example, only in an establishment where at least 75% of sales receipts were for food (no bars, no liquor-store purchases). No service after 11:00 pm. Moreover, a 19- or 20-year-old could have to undergo formal instruction about alcohol and pass a licensing exam.

I'm fully aware that this may seem ironic given that I've already posted stories on absinthe and the 1974 Cleveland Indians 10-cent beer night debacle. But I see too many people drinking too much booze way too often. Recently, I came up (over beer with friends, another irony) with an idea for a drinking license. Turns out, several others have had the same idea.

While it may sound counterintuitive, would it not make sense to lower the drinking age from 21 to 20 or even less, provided the less-than-21-year-old imbiber obtains a separate license for drinking. And in order to get the license, there is a "drinking skills" program to pass. Not how to drink more, but how and why to drink like a mature grown up.

I think a lot of people (I could drink at 18, so this didn't really apply to me) go kinda nuts on reaching their 21st birthday. And because they're young, inexperienced, and uneducated in drinking, they do dumb things. People could be educated to be "better" drinkers.

To do in LA tonight: "Computers in Popular Music," Johannes/monochrom at Machine Project

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 09:48 AM PDT

If you happen to be in Los Angeles tonight, and you are reading Boing Boing, you really should be at Johannes (of monochrom)'s talk over at Machine Project gallery about the image of computers in popular music. "I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love..." Link to event description, starts around 8pm.

And if you can't make it, here is archived media of an earlier version of the talk presented in 2007.

Video Above: Computer No. 3, a weird song from 1968 by France Gall which Johannes will no doubt reference in his talk. You gotta watch this. Someone took the original performance recording from 1968 and remixed/dolled it up.

How to Defend Yourself if you are Carrying Only a Small Switch in your Hand are Threatened by a Man with a Very Strong Stick

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 03:56 PM PDT

[08-026] bartitsu.jpg

[Moriarity and I] tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of Bartitsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went.
-- Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Empty House

Britain's most popular literary character of the late 19th century, Sherlock Holmes was well known for his towering intellect and need for constant mental stimulation. To satisfy his intellectual needs, he engaged in a number of trans-Golden Third activities including sword fighting, boxing, and stick fighting, as well as frequent recreational narcotic use.

Although better known for his reasoning ability than for his fighting skills, he was quite capable of defending himself when the chips were down. As the above quote suggests, the detective mastered a now little known but very effective fusion of British boxing techniques and Japanese martial arts called Bartitsu,. Bartitsu is a little known but ingenious self defense skill which I cover in my current book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers.

Bartitsu was invented by a British engineer named Edward Barton-Wright, who combined the martial arts skills he learned while building railways in Japan with the stick-and-sword fighting skills he mastered in Europe. Bartitsu drew heavily from French stick fighting techniques, English boxing, and Japanese jujitsu.) Upon his return to London from Japan in 1899, Barton-Wright set up a martial arts school to teach Bartitsu to Englishmen. Presumably that's how a Londoner such as Sherlock Holmes would have learned the technique. (FYI: There's a well done compilation of 1890s vintage Bartitsu instructions available on Amazon.)

Coming soon: a Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and (hopefully) Russell Crowe as Moriarty. From what I've heard, bartitsu fighting is featured.

Health insurers invest billions in tobacco stocks

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 07:31 AM PDT

Health insurers around the world collectively hold $4.5 billion worth of tobacco industry stock, according to a new study. The Consumerist has great highlights on the story, including this killer quote from the study's co-author, David Himmelstein, "[It's] the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back." Also: Toronto's Sun Life financial lied and said it didn't have any tobacco stock -- it has over $1 billion.

Why is it a big deal? "If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don't want to see it go down," says Himmelstein, "You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in."...
But with $4.5 billion still invested in Big Tobacco, many insurers are reaping profits from a cancer-causing industry. As Himmelstein puts it, "Is this who we want running our healthcare system?"

Health insurers want you to keep smoking, Harvard doctors say (via Consumerist)

(Image: cigarette, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from SuperFantastic's Flickr stream)

Awesome, infringing music video made from 80s brat pack flicks is band's "best video"

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 07:17 AM PDT

Tavie sez, "My friend Sarah WINS at the internet. I've known her online (and eventually offline) for 15 years and her creativity never ceases to astound me. Now it's astounding Rolling Stone, who've picked up on the fact that her recent YouTube mashup of the band Phoenix's song "Lisztomania" meshes perfectly with clips from 80's brat pack movies. I'd never heard of this band before (I live under a rock), but this song makes me want to dance. Phoenix even added it to their official myspace page and have said it's their "best video yet". Her tribute is so good that it spawned a tribute-to-the-tribute. Dude. I'm so glad fans are still creating brilliant, beautiful things on the internet. Fandom rules."

Scenes from The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Footloose match up so perfectly with the Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix track, it's hard to believe the band didn't attempt to soundtrack John Hughes flicks in the studio a la Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. AvoidantConsumer did such a good job, the band even posted on their official MySpace page and, according to Swide, Phoenix have gone on record saying the unofficial Brat Pack version is "our best video."

Flashback: Phoenix's "Lisztomania" Makes Ringwald And Cryer Feel Like Dancing (Thanks, Tavie!)

Bullshit about newspapers' future, dissected

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 07:11 AM PDT

Xark's Dan Conover, evidently a newspaperman, writes in "The newspaper suicide pact" about the mountain of bullshit that has entered the discussion about the future of newspaper business-models. This is some of the clearest, most interesting, best-referenced criticism of the newspaper industry's thrash-and-FUD I've read:

Newspapers that are turning to paywall plans today are gambling on a risky revenue stream that even the experts aren't predicting will provide a replacement to their lost advertising revenues (their biggest financial problem is the rapid decline in advertising rates, not the slow decline in print circulation). It's a "well, we've got to do SOMETHING" solution, not a logical, do-the-math solution. And since since most media companies are owned by shareholders, the resulting loss of confidence could be catastrophic.
What will these media executives do when that reality hits them? When these debt-burdened chains, stripped of journalistic talent by a decade of profiteering, their web traffic reduced by 60 percent by their paid-content follies, their pockets emptied by the cost of the proprietary paywall systems offered by Journalism Online LLC and other opportunistic vendors, what will they do?...
They don't get it. They don't want to get it. And in many cases, they're literally paid not to get it.
America's journalism infrastructure - from corporate giants to non-profit foundations like the American Press Institute and the Newspaper Association of America - is funded by dying companies. So when you hear about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism), understand that answers that don't return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren't even considered answers. They're not even considered.
They'll do anything to survive... so long as it doesn't involve change.

The newspaper suicide pact (via John McDaid -- an award-winning science fiction writer who also manages to put out an all-volunteer, top-notch political zine covering town-hall politics in his small town, about a thousand times better than anything you'd get from the ink-stained set)

Previously:

Bad Science versus the piracy scare story

Posted: 06 Jun 2009 07:01 AM PDT

Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre tries to get to the bottom of the insane piracy numbers the British entertainment industry likes to throw around -- and concludes that they're bunkum (what's more, the spin doctors from the entertainment industry tried at the end of their unsuccessful call to declare the whole thing off the record!).

But what about all these other figures in the media coverage? Lots of it revolved around the figure of 4.73 billion items downloaded each year, worth £120 billion. This means each downloaded item, software, movie, mp3, ebook, is worth about £25. Now before we go anywhere, this already seems rather high. I am not an economist, and I don't know about their methods, but to me, for example, an appropriate comparator for someone who downloads a film to watch it once might be the rental value, not the sale value. And someone downloading a £1,000 professional 3D animation software package to fiddle about with at home may not use it more than three times. I'm just saying.
In any case, that's £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press? Plenty will have been schoolkids, or students, and even if not, that's still about a third of the average UK wage. Before tax. Oh but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473 million items and £12 billion (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist. I can find no public correction.
I asked what steps they took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of ten and were widely reported in news outlets around the world. SABIP refused to answer my questions in emails, insisted on a phone call (always a warning sign), told me that they had taken steps but wouldn't say what, explained something about how they couldn't be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after ten minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the whole call was actually off the record, that I wasn't allowed to use the information in my piece, but that they had answered my questions, and so they didn't need to answer on the record, but I wasn't allowed to use the answers, and I couldn't say they hadn't answered, I just couldn't say what the answers were. Then the PR man from SABIP demanded that I acknowledge, in our phone call, formally, for reasons I still don't fully understand, that he had been helpful.

Home taping didn't kill music (Thanks, Richard K!)

Previously: