Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Little Brother, the play, on in Chicago until July 18

Posted: 17 Jun 2009 01:56 AM PDT


Chicago's Griffin Theatre has mounted a live production of my young adult novel Little Brother, adapted by William Massolia. This is incredibly exciting; Time Out Chicago gave it four stars, saying, "Doctorow raises many worthy points about the relationship between our safeties and our freedoms, and in Milne's bracing production, newcomer Mike Harvey as Marcus makes a confident tour guide." Bill Shunn, writing in Sci-Fi Wire, said, "Little Brother is an exciting and thought-provoking production, imaginatively staged on a bare-bones set with some multimedia elements stirred in."

I've managed to wrangle a trip to Chicago to see the play on July 9 -- I hope to see you there! And if July 9 doesn't work for you, I hope you can catch it on another night.

LITTLE BROTHER: Griffin Theatre, Chicago

Time Out: Little Brother

Sci Fi Wire: Review: Cory Doctorow's revolutionary novel Little Brother comes to the stage

Production photos


Kids lose their summer break due to impenetrable bureaucratic mess

Posted: 17 Jun 2009 02:56 AM PDT

A bureaucratic boondoggle in the western San Bernardino County, California school district will cost the students their summer breaks -- the schools inadvertently introduced a school-time shortfall amounting to two school days' worth of instruction time over the entire school year. Due to a quirk of regulation, they have to keep the schools in session for an extra thirty four days or lose $7 million in funding.

"We made an error on the minimum days of about five minutes," said Dickson Principal Sue Pederson. "Realistically, that's our accounting mistake as adults. We're unfortunately making the children pay for it by making them give up their summer."

Students at each school exceeded the state's requirement of at least 54,000 minutes of annual classroom time, but the problem arose in the district's minimum days. Schools typically have one shortened day per week, allowing teachers to use the remaining time for planning and parent conferences. Under state law, these days must be at least 180 minutes, and the daily average classroom time over 10 consecutive days must be 240 minutes.

An internal audit in early May discovered that 34 minimum days had been 175 minutes at Dickson and 170 at Rolling Ridge, said district spokeswoman Julie Gobin. That adds up to a shortage of 170 and 340 minutes, respectively, which could be made up in one or two school days. But under state law, these too-short days do not count at all, meaning that all 34 must be made up to avoid a state penalty of more than $7 million.

"The penalties for not meeting the instructional time requirements are high, much higher than just making up of the time," said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. "It was the intent of the Legislature to make the penalties so stiff [in order] to discourage districts from shaving off minutes here and there."

Chino district's error delays summer break by 34 school days for some students (via Neatorama)

Amazon releases some Kindle source-code

Posted: 17 Jun 2009 01:36 AM PDT

Amazon has released (some of?) the source-code for the Kindle -- presumably, this contains the modifications to the GPLed code they incorporated into its firmware, and possibly more material (there's no accompanying documentation in the tarballs or on the webpage).

I really want to like the Kindle, but I'm having a hard time feeling good about the device for so long as Amazon refuses to answer these three basic questions:

1. Is there anything in the Kindle EULA that prohibits moving your purchased DRM-free Kindle files to a competing device?

2. Is there anything in the Kindle file-format (such as a patent or trade-secret) that would make it illegal to produce a Kindle format-reader or converter for a competing device?

3. What flags are in the DRM-free Kindle format, and can a DRM-free Kindle file have its features revoked after you purchase it?

No one at Amazon will answer these questions. I've asked them of my contact there, a manager who wrote me to tell me about the existence of Amazon's DRM-free option for Kindles, and he hasn't replied to my questions over a period of several months and several re-asks. Then, an O'Reilly exec asked Amazon to clarify this, as O'Reilly is releasing all its books as DRM-free editions for the Kindle, and he, too, has been stonewalled. Then I wrote to their press office, on behalf of the Guardian newspaper, and they didn't even deign to reply with a simple "no comment." Just radio silence.

Just as with Audible, Amazon's DRM-locked audiobook division (which has the monopoly on providing audiobooks through iTunes as well), I want to like this stuff. Audible's got a great catalog and reasonable prices. The Kindle, too, seems like a perfectly pleasant little device. But Audible requires mandatory DRM on all its files (my Amazon contact said that this has changed, but refused to answer any followup questions on the subject), and Amazon won't tell you what the rules of the road are for your "DRM-free" Kindle books. Given how crummy the license terms are on the "DRM-free" MP3s Amazon sells, I'm very cautious about this.

Please, Amazon, open up. Tell your customers what they're buying.

Amazon is pleased to make available to you for download an archive file of the machine readable source code ("Source Code") corresponding to modified software packages used in the Kindle device. By downloading the Source Code, you agree to the following:

AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES PROVIDE THE SOURCE CODE TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" BASIS WITHOUT REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SOURCE CODE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE USE OF THE SOURCE CODE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, AND CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.

Source Code Notice (via Engadget)
Previously:


Shockingly violent coffee commercials starring Muppets

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 11:06 PM PDT

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Russell Bates says: "Check out these late-50s commercials for a Washington DC coffee company, starring early iterations of the Muppets doing violent things to each other"

From 1957 to 1961, Henson made 179 commercials for Wilkins Coffee and other Wilkins products, including Community Coffee and Wilkins Tea. The ads were so successful and well-liked that they sparked a series of remakes for companies in other local markets throughout the 1960s. The ads starred the cheerful Wilkins, who liked Wilkins Coffee, and the grumpy Wontkins, who hated it. Wilkins would often do serious harm to Wontkins in the ads -- blowing him up, stabbing him with a knife, and smashing him with a club, among many other violent acts.
Shockingly violent coffee commercials starring Muppets

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

Posted: 17 Jun 2009 04:14 AM PDT


(Download / YouTube)

Boing Boing Video guest correspondent Miles O'Brien checks in with us for an update on the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle, and on new information about what may have led to the recent Air France crash, and finally, on the confirmation that geese -- yes, geese -- were responsible for the emergency conditions that led to the "miracle on the Hudson" emergency landing.

Follow Miles' coverage of Endeavor's scheduled launch at spaceflightnow.com, or follow him on Twitter: @milesobrien.

Update, 11:15pm PT: From Miles' live-tweeting at the launch site: the space shuttle Endeavour launch has just been postponed because of another leak in the gaseous hydrogen venting system between the launch pad and external fuel tank.

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Previously:


Mario retirement tee -- Offworld

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 10:10 PM PDT


Over on Offworld, our Brandon's spotted this splendid "Mushroom Kingdom Retirement Village" tee.

T-shirt: the Mushroom Kingdom Retirement Village

Discuss this on Offworld

EFF kills another stupid internet patent

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 10:06 PM PDT

EFF's patent-busting project has put another notch in its belt: today they killed a truly outrageous patent on the use of subdomains for navigation and content management, as with jwz.livejournal.com. Can you believe that the patent office granted that patent in 2004, based on a 1999 application? Can you believe that the people who filed the patent claimed (with a straight face) that they didn't know of any other prior art that made this invalid?

It's hard to know whether to be happy for and grateful to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for killing this abomination, or pissed off with the patent office for creating it.

In the original reexamination request, EFF and Rick Mc Leod of Klarquist Sparkman, LLP, showed that the method Ideaflood claimed to have invented was well known before the patent was issued. In fact, website developers were having public discussions about how to create these virtual subdomains on an Apache developer mailing list and on Usenet more than a year before Ideaflood filed its patent application. The open source community's public record of the technology development provided the linchpin to EFF's patent challenge.

"In the reexam, the Patent Office systematically rejected each of Hoshiko's arguments as well as the patent claims. We were fortunate to have the Internet Archive and Usenet Archive as proof of the prior work by the open source community," said Rick Mc Leod, who drafted the EFF petition.

"This patent was particularly troubling because the company tried to remove the work of open source developers from the public domain and use it to threaten others," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Ironically, the transparent open source development process gave us the tools to bust the patent!"

EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent
Previously:


Syncronized Smokey Mountain Fireflies

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 11:01 PM PDT

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

So to contrast with the giant industrial holes and moon poop Josh and I have been posting about, I am going to highlight one of my favorite bioluminescent wonders in the world.

Happening right now, and for the next few days the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee will light up as P. Carolinus fireflies begin to blink in beautiful, astonishing unison. The fireflies, who can sense when their neighbor fireflies are flashing and attempt to flash before them, send waves of light to cascading down the Tennessee hillsides. One of the best spots to see them is in one small area, near the Little River Trailhead in Elkmont, TN.

Long thought to be an exclusively Southeast Asian phenomenon, the dazzling behavior was only discovered in an American firefly species (P. Carolinus) in 1992. The American fireflies were first brought to the attention of scientists by a reader of Science News, who thought it odd that an article on Asian firefly synchronicity mentioned nothing about the bugs near her own home. She wrote a letter to a Steven Strogratz, a Cornell mathematician who studies synchronization:

"I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case, there is a type of group synchrony lightning bug inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee. These bugs "start up" in mid June at 10 pm nightly. They exhibit 6 seconds of total darkness; then in perfect synchrony, thousands light up 6 rapid times in a 3 second period before all going dark for 6 more seconds.

"We have a cabin in Elkmont... and as far as we know, it is only in this small area that this particular type of group synchronized lightning bug exists. It is beautiful."

In 1995, scientists confirmed the existence of the Great Smoky Mountain synchronized fireflies, and have subsequently discovered other populations in the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina and other high altitude locations in the Appalachian mountains. As this curious phenomenon remained undiscovered for years, it is quite possible that there are other varieties of fireflies blinking in unison throughout the United States, perhaps even in your own backyard.

More info on the Smokey Mountain fireflies here and here more info on bioluminescent spots around the world on the Atlas bioluminescent spots page.

Charity auction for toon that remixes Star Wars, Muppets and health care

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 10:01 PM PDT

Barry sez,

This cartoon appeared in the April 2009 Dollars and Sense magazine (an actual economics magazine), written and penciled by Charles M. Schulz Award winning political cartoonist Barry Deutsch (that's me), and inked by illustrator and cartoonist Bill Mudron. The cartoon features characters from Star Wars (Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and the Emperor), drawn as muppets, arguing about how to pay for Luke's prosthetic hand. One panel also includes a tiny caricature of Christopher Eccleston as Dr. Who.

Since this cartoon is about paying for health care, I thought it would be neat to use it to help pay for someone's health care. Internet searching connected me with Connie Parrott, who is trying to raise money to pay for her type I diabetes equipment by asking people on the internet. After getting Connie's permission, I eventually drew the strip, with help from the awesome Bill Mudron, who unlike me can draw that goddamn weird-ass helmet Darth Vader wears.

Star Wars Muppet Health Care Mashup + Original Art Auction! (Thanks, Barry!)

Wicked Klingon-style blades for kids' furniture and toys

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:58 PM PDT


Artist Shi Jinsong's 2006 show, "Ne Zha - A Child's Boutique," featured Klingon Death Metal bladed baby toys and furniture that would fit in just great in any kids' bedroom:
As described by Shi Jinsong, Ne Zha is "a supernatural youthful hero who always recovers and refuses to grow up. He has three heads, nine eyes and eight arms, with blue clouds coming from his mouth, flamed wheels under his feet, and all kinds of powerful weapons in his hands. He needs only to shout for clouds to turn into rain. He cuts his own flesh and commits suicide to save his father, fights the dragon king, and overturns the universe."

In the two years that have elapsed since the baby boutique offered a walker, cradle, pacifiers etc. suitable for the new-born infant, Ne Zha has grown up and the articles now available are appropriate for the young, all-powerful mini-warrior - a suit of armor, rocking horse, etc. In addition there is a naked effigy of the eight-armed youthful hero.

Shi Jinsong (Thanks, Will Flameboy!)

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 03:45 PM PDT

hoodie arduino.pngToday was Fashion theme day at Boing Boing Gadgets. We had a series of posts about technology and fashion, plus more: *Instructions on how to make a vibrating cell phone finger puppet; *The do's and don'ts of gadget accessorizing; *A tutorial on how to do cosplay the right way; *A night out with the Vivienne Tam digital clutch; *A Scottevest with an insane amount of gadget pockets; *A social networking shoe; *A review of the bluetooth headset that Heidi Klum wears; *A touch-sensitive hoodie that lights up and plays tunes; *A report on senators pondering the fairness of AT&T being the only carrier to sell the iPhone; *Homeless people with cell phones; and why it's stupid to try to guess what cell phones will look like in 10 years.

1978 Sex Pistols poster up for auction at Christie's is a fraud?

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 02:52 PM PDT

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Ultrasparky says this Sex Pistols poster that Christie's will auction on June 23rd with an estimated value of $2,000 - $3,000 is phony.

You know how you can tell? Typeface analysis. And the gratuitous use of Comic Sans isn't the only clue.

(Looks like they yanked it already.)

Sex Pistols Poster Poseurs (Thanks, Mister Jalopy!)

The Ancient Book of Sex and Science

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 02:15 PM PDT

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Scott Morse sent me a copy THE ANCIENT BOOK OF SEX AND SCI­ENCE, but I've been too busy scooping my brain off the floor for the last 45 minutes to write about it.

This collection of mid-century styled paintings and other works of art by four obscenely talented Pixar animation designers -- Nate Wragg, Scott Morse, Lou Romano, and Don Shank -- hearkens back to the days of the Golden science books (Like Biology, Mathematics, and Chemistry Experiments), and the How and Why Wonder Books, but the theme this time is sex and robots, sex and aliens, and sex and math. (It's not really explicit -- most of the images are G-rated, and a couple are PG-13.)

Their previous art book, THE ANCIENT BOOK OF MYTH AND WAR, is sold out, and I'm sure this one will sell out even more quickly.

THE ANCIENT BOOK OF SEX AND SCI­ENCE

Steampunk fetish mask with goggles

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 02:08 PM PDT

Poop on the moon, and how to protect it

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 12:26 PM PDT

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

salute.jpg

When Neil Armstrong first took that one small step onto the moon, he left behind more than just a footprint. Among the many items still sitting in the Bay of Tranquility are;

Neil Armstrong's boots, a gold replica of an olive branch, tongs, four armrests, urine collection assemblies, a hammer, an insulating blanket, and... four defecation collection devices. Yes, Neil Armstrong's poop is moldering on the moon.

While bags of frozen astronaut poop may sound unimportant, even a little gross, some "extreme heritage" conservationists are very concerned about their protection--as well as the other detritus left behind by humanity's first moonwalkers. For now, Tranquility Base is still tranquil (there is no wind or rain up there to damage things), but preservationists worry that private space enterprises will one day endanger the Apollo landing site, as well as other important landmarks on the moon. From the Lunar Legacy Site:

"Unfortunately, at the present time both NASA and the Federal Government are not willing to pursue preserving these properties on the moon...The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Site is not simply a significant site for Americans, it was a significant event for all of humanity. The steps on the moon were a step for mankind. Over 600 million people watched the moon landing. The site belongs to the world."


Full list of items left at the Apollo 11 landing sites, at the Lunar Legacy Site.
Great New Scientist piece on preserving Tranquility Base, Space Archeology Wiki, and LA Times Article on space heritage.

China backs off on mandatory spyware

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 11:18 AM PDT

China's changed its mind: PCs sold in China won't have vulnerability-riddled spyware pre-installed on them:
Caving to public pressure, China on Tuesday said that use of its controversial "Green Dam Youth Escort" software is not required, though all PCs sold on the mainland will come with it pre-installed.

China's turnaround comes as public outcry over the Green Dam Web filtering software struck a nerve both inside and outside China. Last week, the Chinese government mandated that as of July 1, all PCs sold in the country must have the Green Dam software to block pornographic and violent Web sites. The public fought back, claiming the software could also block users from viewing political content and censor other content. Some opponents also contend that the software can create security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers

China Caves, Says Green Dam Software Is Optional (via /.)

Recently on Boing Boing Video...

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 08:03 PM PDT


"A VOLTA" from NASA Project: Narco-Cholo Game Ultraviolence (Download / YouTube).

The debut of a new video from the NASA music project: "A Volta," featuring Sizzla, Amanda Blank & Love Foxxx. Video by Logan, with art by The Date Farmers. Extra videos: A "mockumentary making of" video and a musical montage of Date Farmers art at the blog post.


Maker Faire Selects - CandyFab, DIY Screen Printing, Electric Music. (Download / YouTube)

Mark Frauenfelder and Boing Boing Gadgets editor Lisa Katayama profile three cool things found at the recent Bay Area Maker Faire: The Yudu personal screen printer, an interactive, collaborative, musical Tesla Coil, and a candy-fabbing device from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.


Miles O'Brien on Technology Questions in The Air France Disaster (Download / YouTube).

The veteran space and science journalist joins BBV for a look at some of the possible technical factors in the recent air disaster.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

Monetizing Emma: a play that marries dumb securities with Jane Austen

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 11:01 AM PDT

Man, this play called "MONETIZING EMMA," just premiered in NYC's 440 Studios (440 Lafayette Street at Astor Place) sounds like some wicked, trenchant stuff:
The year is 2013 and boutique investment bank Thackeray Walsh is arranging the first-ever securitization of smart teenagers.

Nothing like the insanely convoluted securities that brought the global economy to its knees in 2008-2009, this bond is backed by something far more valuable than sub-prime mortgages or toxic assets.

It's backed by an A-list pool of adolescents pledging their future earnings. They get money now in return for a share of their subsequent income.

Emma Dorfman's one of the chosen elite. A shy 15-year-old who most days shuttles between bullies at school, a pushy mom and a fantasy life inspired by Jane Austen, she's not exactly sure she wants to be "monetized." But Thackeray Walsh has special plans for her and Emma may be forced to trade her split reality for something doubly scary...and far more adult.

MONETIZING EMMA Plays 6/17-26 As Part Of Plant Connections Theatre Festivity

Monetizing Emma (Thanks, Dot!)

Cats getting stoned on catnip

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 10:57 AM PDT


Cats tripping on kush-grade catnip. (Via Arbroath)

Photos of an abandoned sewing factory in San Francisco

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 03:29 PM PDT

IMG_8695.JPG Photos: Lisa Katayama

My friend Jenny's mom works at a sewing factory in the Mission district of San Francisco. Every day, she and a dozen or so Chinese ladies make stacks of dresses for Macy's that sell for hundreds of dollars each, on the second floor of a building right across from hipster bars and nightclubs. Their revenue: $2-3 per dress.

But this month, after nearly 30 years in operation, one of the businesses in her building is shutting down due to declining revenues. Most of the women who work there will be filing for unemployment soon--they don't speak any English, are uneducated, and only know how to sew.

Several hours after they vacated the factory a week ago today, I dropped by the building to take these photos with Jenny, who told me stories of a childhood filled with pretend train rides in giant clothing hampers and the time her mom sewed her some emergency clothes after she peed in her pants because she was scared of the dirty toilet.

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Just Another Giant Hole...

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:59 AM PDT

Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.

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Speaking of giant holes in the ground, let me pass along one more that happens to be one of today's featured places on the Atlas Obscura home page. The Mirny diamond mine in Siberia is the biggest man-made ditch in the world:

The largest man-made hole in the world is a diamond mine located on the outskirts of Mirny, a small town in eastern Siberia. Begun in 1955, the pit is now 525 meters deep and 1.25 kilometers across. The massive 20-foot tall rock-hauling trucks that service the mine travel along a road that spirals down from the lip of the hole to its basin. Round-trip travel time: two hours. Airspace above the mine is off-limits to helicopters, after "a few accidents when they were 'sucked in' by downward air flow..."

Art show fracas in Russia

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:18 AM PDT

The Moscow art-group War (Voina) is known for stunts like taking over a police station (they titled the performance "Humiliation of Copper in His Own House") and letting loose feral cats into expensive Moscow restaurants. Recently they held a show at the Central Art House in Crimean Region that turned into a police raid.

Marina Galperina of Russia! magazine writes:

200906160911When famed Russian curator Andrei Erofeev invited Viona to take part in his "Lettrism" exhibition, he was already familiar with their antics and political provocations. Erofeyev granted the group's request for a whole room and complete freedom.

Erofeev, however, was not expecting a 115 square-foot banner photograph of group sex with the slogan "Fuck for Your Heir the Bear Cub!" (the bear cub - medvejonok - being Medvedev, naturally.)

This and other photographic and video transcripts of their x-rated February 2008 action at the Timiriazev Biological Museum comprised just a portion of Voina's incendiary exhibition. When the director of the Central Art House, Bichkov, arrived at the scene, he became hilariously infuriated (his last name does, after all, mean "little bull"). He raged ferociously at curator Erofeyev to dismantle Voina's display.

A series of compromises were attempted, like the paraphrasing of signage "I Fuck the Bear Cub" (for some reason "cock" is less offensive than "fuck" in Russian). Bichkov still called the cops, urging for Voina's arrest and permanent blacklisting. At first, Erofeev discouraged the cops by pretending to angrily scold the art group, but several Bichkov's threats later, a second, heavier-armed police wave arrived and the destruction of Voina's entire exhibit began.

Art show fracas in Russia (Photos NSFW)

Fresh leads in 3,000 year old murder

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:00 AM PDT

Ulrich sez, "My father blogged for the first time on my site, writing up a 3,000 year old murder case. In short, some archaeologist found some skulls surrounding a neolithic henge in southern Germany and found some good evidence that they children were murdered. The local museum has a new exhibit on the discovery as well as some speculation on why the Bronze age settlers might have killed the children."

The murder was brutal--and it took place over 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists first found the skulls in the 1920s when they excavated a Neolithic settlement called "Wasserburg". At the time, the Neolithic settlement was a relatively bustling place. The people kept horses that they used to pull wagons and sleds, and even had a metal workshop that was able to cast bronze artifacts.

The scientists found six skulls equally spaced on the outside of the palisade fence surrounding the settlement. Only the skulls of the victims were found. Five of the skulls were children three to sixteen years old. The sixth skull was from a 50 year old woman.

Using forensic tools, scientists have shown that the children died 900 years BC and some of them may have been related. The scientists have also reconstructed their skulls, speculating that the boy was killed with a blunt club. The girl was most likely killed with a sharp metallic instrument like a sword or a lance. Small copper particles were detected in her skull.

A 3,000-Year Old Cold Case: Who Killed The Children In Bad Buchau? (Thanks, Ulrich!)

Germany to build the Internet Berlin Wall

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 08:51 AM PDT

Ramon sez, "In Germany internet censorship will be introduced. The bill did not pass yet, but the ruling parties have agreed to do so. Over 130.000 people in Germany have signed a petition to protect the freedom of speech and information, but we have not been heard. Read details about the consequences, arguments and counter measures here."
The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government.

A strong and still growing network opposing these ideas quickly formed within the German internet community. The protest has not been limited to hackers and digital activist but rather a mainstreamed effort widely supported by bloggers and twitter-users. The HashTag used by the protesters is #zensursula - a German mesh up of the Ministers name and the word censorship equivalent to #censursula.

As part of the public's protest an official e-Petition directed at the German parliament was launched. Within three days 50,000 persons signed the petition - - the number required for the petition titled „No indexing and blocking of Internet sites" to be heard by the parliament. The running time of an e-Petition in Germany is 6 weeks - within this time over 130,000 people signed making this e-Petition the most signed and most successful ever.

The Dawning of Internet Censorship in Germany (Thanks, Ramon!)

Recently on Offworld

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 09:13 AM PDT

mariodeathcrop.jpgRecently on Offworld, we saw the latest best proof of concept mobile augmented reality game -- ARhrrrr -- (that's the name, not an interjection), a camera phone game from Savannah/Georgia Tech that lets you use green and orange Skittles as proximity mines to help fend off a zombie invasion. We also saw that French guerrilla artist Invader -- best known for his 8-bit tile mosaic space invaders tucked on buildings around nearly every major city -- will soon be invading New York City, and found another games-inspired gallery exhibit with Koshi Kawachi's reflections on the death of Mario (above). We also saw a Sesame Street Fighter T-shirt that's as great as it sounds, dug around the infamously lavish late 90s defunct digs of Dallas's Ion Storm, got a double dose of Bit.Trip with a behind the scenes look at the game and a franchise crossover with WiiWare's Super Meat Boy, and watched a video wrap of chiptune showcase DUTYCYCLE.

Lazyweb: turn the new version of Opera into an unstoppable grid of proxies for Iranians

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 07:42 AM PDT

Danny O'Brien's got a doozy of a lazyweb idea: "Here's a way to mash-up two of the most talked-about Internet issues today. Opera launched their web-server-in-a-browser, Opera Unite, today. Iranian protestors are looking for proxies to get around Iran's blocking. So why not write a Opera Unite service that acts as a simple, quick-and-dirty proxy for Iranians? Danny O'Brien lays down the challenge."
Instead of a real http proxy (like Psiphon), the best implementation would simply let you append a URL to your Unite URL and get a website back, like "http://foo.bar.operaunite.com/www.cnn.com/". That would get rid of handing over your cookies to an unknown third-party; it'd probably also discourage people using the service for private communications (no https, in Unite -- it'd be great if Opera fixed that!).

Maybe I'd also stick in a geoip check to make sure the incoming requests are coming from a known Iranian IP block, just so users could feel worthy that they're just catering to Iranians (you could pull them out of this free geolocation database). That way we wouldn't be creating a permanent global clunky, insecure proxy network -- or at least not until Iran recovers and starts its own phishing services.

I know I'm not a good enough JS programmer to pull this off, but the Unite JavaScript API certainly appears to permit cross-domain XMLHttp calls, and you can catch generic HTTP requests using opera.io.webserver.addEventListener('_request',somehandler,false);, so it is theoretically possible (and here I hand wave to the implementation Gods).

wanted: spartacus, an opera unite web proxy for iran (Thanks, Danny!)
Previously:


Book drive for Canadian aboriginal youth in remote communities

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 07:37 AM PDT

Science fiction writer Dave Laderoute sez,
If you live in Ontario, or want to (quickly!) send some books to a good cause, the Lieutenant Governor of the province is doing his annual drive for new books for kids living in remote First Nations communities. These are generally small, isolated communities located deep in the northern boreal wilderness. Most have a population under 1000 and are accessible only by aircraft. Kids in these communities often have access to only old books in bad condition, so our province's Lieutenant Governor launched this annual effort several years ago to refresh community libraries with up-to-date titles.

The deadline, June 21, is only a few days away, unfortunately. If someone from outside Ontario REALLY wants to help out, feel free to get hold of me directly at dglad@sff.net and you can make arrangements to send a book or two to me, and I'll get it into the donation stream. But for those of you who live in Ontario, or nearby (I'm lookin' at you, folks in northern New York, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.!) this is a great chance to get some new reading material into the hands of kids who really, really need it.

For Cory's benefit, I know where my brand-new hardcopy of "Little Brother" is going. I'm quite happy to live with my digital copy and get the dead-tree version into the hands of a young Aboriginal kid.

Book Drive for Aboriginal Youth (Thanks, Dave!)

Linnaeus invented the index card

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 07:35 AM PDT

We all know Carl Linnaeus as the father of taxonomy, but how did he keep all that taxonomic information organized? Turns out he invented index cards:
Speaking at the annual meeting of the British Society for the History of Science in Leicester, UK on Saturday 4 July, Mueller-Wille will reveal his preliminary findings of research on Linnaeus' manuscripts held June 16 at the Linnaean Society of London...

Towards the end of his career, in the mid-1760s, Linnaeus took this further, inventing a paper tool that has since become very common: index cards. While stored in some fixed, conventional order, often alphabetically, index cards could be retrieved and shuffled around at will to update and compare information at any time.

Carl Linnaeus Invented The Index Card

Iran: Tim Shey on Observing Social Unrest Online at 32,000 feet

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 06:42 AM PDT


I'm asking a number of BB friends to contribute guest posts here on the situation in Iran. Next New Networks founder Tim Shey was flying from NYC to LA yesterday, and had an interesting personal story -- he kindly obliged my request to write it up for BB. Tim says:

Like a lot of other Virgin America passengers lately I joined the Mile High WiFi club today, and spent the first hour or so of the flight being marginally productive -- staying in touch with the office via IM and email, catching up on some writing and planning, that sort of thing -- but pretty much ending every conversation or message I had with anyone with "and I'm doing this from A MILE IN THE AIR!" For someone who still remembers the earliest days of dialup, and hasn't completely mastered his animal terror at the sensation of flying at 500mph in a metal tube 32,000 feet above the ground, especially every time a patch of turbulence hits, the idea that we can get fast, stable, $15 Wifi to work on a jet plane seems like technology that's getting close to magic.

But as I starting scanning Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, again for the novelty of doing it in the air, I started seeing postings from friends about the Iranian protests that CNN had also been covering since Obama's AMA speech had ended. First, a Twitter post from Brett Bullington, reblogging a post from John Perry Barlow that you could search Twitter within 15 miles of Iran. I got glued to the stream of messages there, and then hit this vein of extraordinary photos posted on Twitpic by @Iranpishi, especially this one, which I immediately posted to my blog, again amazed that I could follow all this from a plane. Just a few years ago, we got onto a plane and shut the doors, and we could land on a different planet than the one we took off from, depending on what had happened in our world in those eight hours; and just eight months ago, I spent election night flying on a plane across country, feeling cut off from the web and the rest of the world as our plane watched Obama win the presidency and change the world on our little in-seat screens (Daisy Whitney also happened to be on the flight, and wrote this TV Week column about it). This time, though, plugged in and reblogging photos coming out of Tehran and seeing people on the ground then reblogging my posts, I felt like a participant.

As all this was happening, I looked a seat up ahead of me, and saw a young woman also tuned to the footage on CNN, and signing up on her laptop for a citizen journalist account on iReport. I then watched her tabbing through a number of Farsi-language news sites and her Facebook stream, where she was IM-ing and reposting news stories about the protests from her friends in English and Farsi. I leaned over, gave her a card with my email, and asked if she might be willing to forward anything to me so I could share the links. She looked at me and asked, "do you want the real stories of what's going on, or just what some of the news outlets are telling you?" I replied that I supposed I wanted the real story, not knowing what she'd share, and within a minute, we'd become friends on Facebook, and a stream of stories and links were filling my inbox.

The first was an open letter to the world from a group called Iranian Artists in Exile, and I'm posting the full text and video of here. It's a political letter, and should be read critically as such -- but I haven't seen this posted many places elsewhere besides The Washington Times, and that's what this day has been all about -- technology connecting people around the world, and getting us access to voices and perspectives to us we might not have heard otherwise.

Related: this Facebook link inciting people to DDOS pro-Ahmedinejad sites.

Previously:


Weird Al does Craigslist, Doors style

Posted: 16 Jun 2009 06:17 AM PDT

Kudos to Ray Manzarek for signing up to this!

Parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic poked fun at Segway riders three years ago with his rap song "White and Nerdy," and his latest single "Craigslist" skewers the people who can be found swapping wares and scoring dates on the classifieds ads site. (While there's a verse about the popular "missed connections" feature on Craigslist, there isn't otherwise mention of the current prostitution controversy that the site's been dealing with.)

The video and song are a professed homage to the Doors, and though it isn't a takeoff on a specific song, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek was enlisted to play on the track. "Craigslist" is available for sale as a single now and will appear on an album that comes out next year.

Weird Al takes on Craigslist, the Doors
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