The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Infographic: all US one-time expenditures vs the bailout
• City in Montana requires job applicants to hand over all social network logins and passwords for background checks
• GM's 'Tomorrow-Land' at the 1964 World's Fair
• Make a Frabjous
• Canadian cops want to wiretap the net
• Vancouver cops affirm your right to take pictures
• UK cop: 'War on terror means no pictures of police vans in disabled parking spots'
• Fine art with party hats photoshopping contest
• The Double Tree of Grana
• Gareth Branwyn: 3 Days of The Equinox
• Salty microbe may be world's oldest
• Nicholas Galanin's book sculpture
• Radio chip inspired by human ear
• Rosamond Purcell on Common Murre eggs
• Skateboarder trips, strips, and disturbs neighbors
• Faesthetic art show in Culver City
• Matrioshke phones -- Boing Boing Gadgets
• British cops stop and hassle thousands to "balance racial statistics"
• Dr Sketchy life drawing salon in LA on June 21
• Iran Elections Crisis: Online Reading List
• Mind Over Ship: David Marusek's hyperfuturistic, hyperimaginative soap-opera
• Recently on Offworld
• Homeless Sims are surprisingly depressing
• Ahmadinejad sucks at Photoshop
• Shared Worlds summer sf camp asks writers for their favorite cities
• Whatever Happened to the Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi?
• Searching for "purveyors of curiosities"

Infographic: all US one-time expenditures vs the bailout Posted: 18 Jun 2009 04:27 AM PDT Barry Ritholz sez, It is exceedingly difficult to convey exactly how much we are spending o bailouts. Start talking trillions (versus mere billions) and you get puzzled looks from people. Humans have a hard time conceptualizing any number that large. I wanted a graphic way to clearly show how astonishingly ginormous the amounts involved were. This Bailout Nation graphic shows the the total costs to the taxpayer of all the monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed. It is nothing short of astonishing. In one short year the bailouts managed to spend far in excess of nearly every major one-time expenditure of the USA, including WW2, the moon shot, the New Deal, Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars -- COMBINED. 206 years versus 12 months. Bailout Costs vs Big Historical Events (Thanks, Barry!)

City in Montana requires job applicants to hand over all social network logins and passwords for background checks Posted: 17 Jun 2009 11:35 PM PDT Cliff sez, "Bozeman City, Montana now asks all applicants for jobs to 'Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,' the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords." The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate. The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records." Bozeman City job requirement raises privacy concerns (Thanks, Cliff!)

GM's 'Tomorrow-Land' at the 1964 World's Fair Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:44 PM PDT This 1965 NatGeo ad for GM's "Tomorrow-Land" exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair makes me go all dribbly for a time-machine: "You can look over GM's exciting 'idea' cars -- Firebird IV with television, stereo, game table, refrigerator; GM-X with jet aircraft cockpit and controls--fascinating design and engineering innovations right out of tomorrow. You'll take a ride that is wrapped in wonders . . . through the metropolis of the future, over Antarctic wastes, into tropical jungles, along the ocean floor." TOMORROW-LAND (Apr, 1965)

Make a Frabjous Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:41 PM PDT George W. Hart's Frabjous is a 3D sculpture you can print and assemble yourself with some cardboard and glue and patience. It's named for a line from Jabberwocky, my favorite poem (it was what we had at our wedding, in lieu of a service). Frabjous (via Evil Mad Scientist Labs)

Canadian cops want to wiretap the net Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:37 PM PDT Alys sez, "A new bill is due to be introduced Thursday in the Canadian House of Commons that will give police the ability to eavesdrop on online communications. This legislation would apparently allow them to force ISPs to allow the police to tap into their systems to obtain information. Naturally, this comes about with the spectres of 'gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.'" They forgot pirates. The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse are gangsters, child pornographers, terrorists and pirates. As a Pirate-Canadian, I am deeply insulted. The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations... Privacy advocates and civil libertarians, however, have vocally opposed the prospect of giving police "lawful access" to the digital conversations of Canadians by being able to access such things as their text messages, e-mails, web surfing habits and Internet phone lines. Feds to give cops Internet-snooping powers (Thanks, Alys!)

Vancouver cops affirm your right to take pictures Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:33 PM PDT Vancouver, site of an upcoming Olympic games, has just announced a policy prohibiting cops from taking away your camera or making you erase your photos. It's always been policy but now it will be enforced. Vancouver police are not allowed to seize cameras or cell phones from anyone, unless they have consent, a warrant, or the person has been lawfully arrested. Constable Lindsay Houghton tells the Province newspaper the policy has always been there, but it's now in writing and updated in their official regulations manual. Vancouver police update camera/cell phone seizure policy

UK cop: 'War on terror means no pictures of police vans in disabled parking spots' Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:31 PM PDT Scott DeathBoy sez, "Blog post about a photographer's interaction with a police officer, who wrongly tried to have him delete the photo of their van in a disabled bay (referencing terrorism). The photographer held their ground and the policewoman backed down after checking her facts." As soon as I had taken a shot, PC Smith (40144) came out from the train station and asked to speak with me. She asked why I'd taken a photo of her van. I told her that it was parked in a disabled bay. She told me that she'd been called because a woman was self-harming on the station and that was the only place she could park... I asked her why she wanted the photo to be deleted, she told me that "in the current climate" the police had been asked to stop people from taking photos of sensitive buildings and of the police. That isn't true - and I told her so. She was told by her superior that she could take down a description of me. I told her that asking to delete photos was silly because they can be easily undeleted. I also thanked her for not escalating the situation. I left. As I left, I allowed my phone to post the photo I'd taken to twitpic. Police, Camera, Action... (Thanks, Scott Deathboy!)

Fine art with party hats photoshopping contest Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:27 PM PDT Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Ren Party, fine art with party hats. Ren Party 2

The Double Tree of Grana Posted: 17 Jun 2009 08:57 PM 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. I'm awed and wowed by the huge number of incredible places that people have been adding to the Atlas Obscura over the last couple days. It's especially neat to see folks contributing the sorts of local curiosities that are not only not listed in conventional travel guides, but are barely mentioned anywhere else on the web. Like this odd tree in Grana, Italy, submitted by a user named Alpha: A very unusual tree grows in the town of Grana, Italy--or rather, an unusual pair of trees. It consists of a fruit tree growing on top of a common willow tree, creating a kind of two-tiered, two-species hybrid duplex. While it's not uncommon for a small tree to grow on a larger one, it is rare to see two fully grown trees in such an unusual configuration. Nonetheless, the arrangement appears to be working well for both individuals, as the fruit tree on top bears lovely white flowers.

Gareth Branwyn: 3 Days of The Equinox Posted: 17 Jun 2009 04:13 PM PDT Boing Boing former guestblogger and bOING bOING editor Gareth Branwyn just returned from the Equinox Festival in London. He's kindly agreed to give us a taste of the magick in a series of posts. Gar writes: Well, I made it to London on the mangy tail end of a ten-hour flight from DC that was supposed to take six. Since there's been one light rain since I got here, apparently the rain gods got it all out of their system before I left the States. We were held on Dulles tarmac for close to four hours while the plane was repeatedly power-washed in an apocalyptic deluge that even the flight crew said they'd never seen. As detailed in a previous post, I've come to London to do some research on a novel and to trace some of the haunts of my beloved William Blake. My first stop was the Equinox Festival, a fascinating experimental music fest and occult spirituality conference put on by multimedia artist Raymond Salvatore Harmon (along with Simon Kane and Andrew Hartwell). The Festival was a rather hit and miss affair, with that awkward, fumblingly vibe so often accompanying first times. Ray, Simon, and Andy's hearts were definitely in the right place and that made up for some of the late starts, schedule changes (which caused me to miss at least one important talk I'd come for) and other shortcomings. I heard surprisingly little grumbling, and overall, people seemed to be happy to be there and pleased with what they were getting. Some of the highlights for me: The Equinox Festival catalog – Not your typical event booklet. This is a substantial 200-plus page book of essays by the speakers, beautiful artwork, pieces about the intent of the Festival from the organizers, background and interviews on the artists at the Festival, and more. There was great spirit at this event, such great intent, but things got lost in the newbie kerfuffle. This book is a wonderful take-away which supports what happened and will allow it to take root much more effectively for those who were there. I've read the essays of several presenters and the interview with the re-united band Comus after their performance and it really helped deepen my experience. They were selling extra copies of the catalog at the event. I hope they sell them online afterwards. If they do, it's definitely worth getting a copy. It stands well on its own as something of a snapshot/ad hoc manifesto of the current "occult revival" (if, in fact, such a thing is happening). The book was published by Strange Attractor and lists for GBP 11.99. The nighttime music programs - The Festival was set up so there were lectures and films by day, one ritual performance piece in the afternoon, and musical programs each of the three nights. Each night's music was my favorite part of the event. Some of the music was rather noodlely, "difficult" (it ain't called "experimental" for nothin') and I tended to gravitate more toward familiar soundscapes. Percussionist Z'ev, whom I hadn't heard in years, was powerful, and avant garde saxophonist John Zorn's performance was memorable -- they were the headliners for the "Opening Gala." The next night, I was pretty much onboard for the entire line-up, which included K11- Pietro Riparbelli, doing his "Voices from Thelema" piece (of short wave radio receivers set up inside the ruins of Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu), Clay Ruby's Burial Hex (whose gloomy graveyard droning beneath pounded piano I found extremely effective, psycho-active), and the surprise of the night for me, Comus. I was only passingly familiar with this band, in the context of '70s British prog/acid folk. I saw their sound check and it was pretty ragged (as sound checks have a right to be, but it still makes you wonder about the performance ahead). Their set was a revelation. Maybe because everything else had been so experimental, not easily accessible, their music was so beautiful, welcoming and familiar (at least in comparison), while dealing in those typical 70s progressive staples of fast tempos, odd time signatures, stops and starts, etc. I missed a bunch of the final night's music, but did manage to catch TAGC (The Anti-Group Company), Adi Newton's (Clock DVA) current project, Aethenor, and Peter Christopherson's Threshold House Boys Choir. TAGC performs multimedia pieces with hypnotically strobing, symbolic imagery and trancey music. The Threshold House Boys Choir is just Sleazy in a great bold-patterned robe (that he described as looking like something from 101 Dalmatians) speaking in a low, gentle voice while playing rather soothing soundscapes, all the while showing videos of such "alternative realities" as public ritual tattooing and amateur films of the Taiwanese sex-trade. By far, the most interesting performance I saw was by Arktau Eos, a two-person ritual performance art/musical group from Finland (here joined by a percussionist). They did this inexplicably weird ritual, with all three of them in black tunics and what looked like burlap bags over their heads (think: Scarecrow from Batman). Very effectively anonimizing and creepy. They chanted, bowed, made intricate hand gestures, moved somnambulistically from the stage to the floor of the hall, lighting incense, unfurling cryptic banners, spewing liquids into the air, while a droning soundscape filled the hall and a blurry video of a Blair Witch Project-like woodlands jittered behind them. If the art at this event was supposed to allow you to enter some other state, another green (or black) world, this was the piece that provided the gateway for me. The rest of the ritual performance pieces, while interesting, didn't speak to me beyond curiosity and maybe an intellectual twiddle or two. This piece did. My only criticism was that it stayed at a similar tone, a similar level, for the entire piece. There was no break, no dynamic. It would have been far more effective for me if it'd had more variation in it. As usual with events like this, the people I met and hung out with was the highlight for me. I spent a bunch of time with Erik Davis (Techgnosis, The Visionary State) and Aaron Gach (Center for Tactical Magic). They also gave talks that were among my favorites. I interviewed both of them and will have another piece about them. I also got to meet and spend some time with Peter Grey and Alkistis Dimech of Scarlet Imprint. Peter is the author of The Red Goddess, an amazing devotional history of the goddess Babalon (and her historical roots in Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte and the other holy whores and love/sex goddesses of Western religions on up through Crowley, Jack Parsons/the Babalon Working, and up to today). It was the most interesting book I read last year and I'm still poking my nose in it from time to time, drawing more out of it. I've bought all of the Scarlet Imprint titles at this point and each of them is a wonder. They take their "talismanic" publishing seriously, with each volume cast as a beautiful and thoughtful artifact that's worth every pound you pay. In the festival catalog, they proclaim this Equinox Festival the first of an annual event. I can definitely say that I would return next year, and would be willing to lend a hand, to help smooth out some of the rough edges. And that's probably the best review I could give. [Image from the Arktau Eos website]

Salty microbe may be world's oldest Posted: 17 Jun 2009 02:49 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. The Kansas Underground Salt Museum would be a curious site all on its own. Sixty-five stories below the ground of Hutchinson, Kansas sits a massive salt mine with salt veins stretching from Kansas all the way to New Mexico, and comes complete with an underground salt museum and tram tour. There is, however, an even more unusual aspect to this site. What might be the world's oldest organism was reanimated from the salty walls of this mine. Deep in the mine, within a pocket of salt water trapped in a 250 million-year-old salt crystal, two biologists and a geologist discovered the 2-9-3 virgibacillus bacteria. This would be unremarkable save for the fact that this bacteria was 100 million years older than the dinosaurs... and it was still alive. Bacteria have the ability to go into a kind of semi-permanent hibernation, but survival for this long was unheard of. After lying dormant in the salt crystal for 250 million years, the scientists added fresh nutrients and a new salt solution, and the ancient bacteria "re-animated." Dr. Russell Vreeland, one of the biologists who found the bacteria, pointed out that bacteria can survive the forces acceleration via rubble thrown into space via a meteor impact. If it is possible for a bacteria to survive being off the planet and to stay alive within a salt chunk for 250 million years, then in a sort of "reverse-exogenesis" it may be possible that earth's own microbes are already out there. "When man goes to the stars, our microbes will be waiting for us," Vreeland said. Today the antiquity of the bacteria is still being tested. For a great roundup of the objections to and data backing up the bacteria try here at American Scientist. For more on the mine, which also stores the master prints of thousands of Hollywood films such as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, check the Atlas page here and more about the scientists on this excellent blog post at The Lope.

Nicholas Galanin's book sculpture Posted: 17 Jun 2009 04:00 PM PDT Artist Nicholas Galanin created this piece, titled "What Have We Become? Vol. 1," out of a 2,000 page book. What Have We Become? Previously: Haunting book-sculptures featuring Tlingit forms - Boing Boing

Radio chip inspired by human ear Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:34 AM PDT MIT researchers built a radio chip inspired by the inner ear. The "RF cochlea chip" could be a key component in a "cognitive radio," a device that can determine the appropriate frequency and power consumption required and adjust itself accordingly. Such a universal radio architecture could efficiently handle a wide range of signals, from cellular to WiFi to television. From MIT News: The RF cochlea mimics the structure and function of the biological cochlea, which uses fluid mechanics, piezoelectrics and neural signal processing to convert sound waves into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. As sound waves enter the cochlea, they create mechanical waves in the cochlear membrane and the fluid of the inner ear, activating hair cells (cells that cause electrical signals to be sent to the brain). The cochlea can perceive a 100-fold range of frequencies -- in humans, from 100 to 10,000 Hz. Sarpeshkar used the same design principles in the RF cochlea to create a device that can perceive signals at million-fold higher frequencies, which includes radio signals for most commercial wireless applications... The RF cochlea, embedded on a silicon chip measuring 1.5 mm by 3 mm, works as an analog spectrum analyzer, detecting the composition of any electromagnetic waves within its perception range. Electromagnetic waves travel through electronic inductors and capacitors (analogous to the biological cochlea's fluid and membrane). Electronic transistors play the role of the cochlea's hair cells. Drawing inspiration from nature to build a better radio

Rosamond Purcell on Common Murre eggs Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:21 AM PDT Rosamond Purcell, Wunderkammer-keeper and amazing photographer of curiosities and collections, contributed a short piece to McSweeney's that's tied to her latest book, Egg & Nest. The marvelous book couples Purcell's images celebrating the exquisite form and color of eggs with essays about egg collecting, ecology, conservation, and biology. In McSweeney's, Rosamond comments on the calligraphy-like markings on eggs of the Common Murre. From McSweeney's: The calligraphic effects so pronounced on blackbird eggs may appear over the entire surface of the shell on certain eggs of the Common Murre (above left), dancing and twisting in lines reminiscent of Japanese writing or Chinese brush painting, executed with flourish and grace. In the example below I photographed the circumference of this egg one section at a time. Then, my husband Dennis and I assembled the pieces into a "Mercator" projection (above right). The effect of stitching together these slices creates a large mural of acrobatic monkeys swinging from vines, a young chimp riding a unicycle, gibbons in free-fall. But then, looking again, a "vine" becomes the outline of the back of a bull, emerging now like an ancient creature from the walls of Lascaux. I begin to think about the connections between avian and human art. "Eggs And Bacon" essay at McSweeney's Buy Egg & Nest

Skateboarder trips, strips, and disturbs neighbors Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:00 AM PDT Earlier this month, pro skateboarder Jereme Rogers apologized to his Redondo Beach neighbors after he "ate some `mushrooms' and bugged out." In the early morning hours, Rogers apparently stripped naked, climbed onto the roof of his Redondo Beach home, and had "fragmented, interrupted conversations with people that weren't there," police said. From the Daily Breeze: "It obviously was not an everyday experience," the 24-year-old athlete said. "It was a very out-of-body experience. I've never had an experience like that..." "It was obviously something I shouldn't have done," Rogers said as he rolled a marijuana joint in his bedroom. "It was just something that happened." Skateboarder 'sorry' for naked rooftop incident (Thanks, Dave Gill!)

Faesthetic art show in Culver City Posted: 17 Jun 2009 09:50 AM PDT Dustin "UPSO" Hostetler, publisher of the eyeball-spanking art 'zine Faesthetic, is curating a Los Angeles area show of artists previously featured in the magazine. Titled "This Must Be The Place," the exhibition opens June 20 at the LA Gallery Space in Culver City. Dustin says, "This Must Be The Place is comprised of artwork centered around a theme of 'home,' and loosely limited to a 2 color palette, just like an issue of Faesthetic." Exhibiting artists include BB pal Jemma Hostetler, Gluekit, Matt Curry, Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch, Skullphone, Damien Correll, Dan Funderburgh, and Joel Speasmaker. Faesthetic art show Previously: Faesthetic #10 now available! - Boing Boing New issue of Faesthetic: UFOs! - Boing Boing New issue of Faesthetic, UPSO's art magazine - Boing Boing

Matrioshke phones -- Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 17 Jun 2009 08:43 AM PDT On Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob's spotted Karl Bean's matrioshke-style nesting phones of bygone eras. Telephones Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

British cops stop and hassle thousands to "balance racial statistics" Posted: 17 Jun 2009 08:40 AM PDT Glyn sez, The UK government's official anti-terror law watchdog says that the thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics. "I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice," he said. "But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches... Carlile uses his annual report to endorse complaints from professional and amateur photographers that counter-terror powers are being used to threaten prosecution if pictures are taken of officers on duty. He said the power was only intended to cover images likely to be of use to a terrorist: "It is inexcusable for police officers ever to use this provision to interfere with the rights of individuals to take photographs." The police had to come to terms with the increased scrutiny of their activities by the public, afforded by equipment such as video-enabled mobile phones. "Police officers who use force or threaten force in this context run the real risk of being prosecuted themselves for one or more of several possible criminal and disciplinary offences," he warned. Terror law used to stop thousands 'just to balance racial statistics' (Thanks, Glyn!)

Dr Sketchy life drawing salon in LA on June 21 Posted: 16 Jun 2009 11:11 PM PDT Bob Self says: Artists and art voyeurs take note: if you are attracted to the darker things in life, the ringleaders at Dr. Sketchy's Los Angeles are unleashing a visual thunderstorm at their June life drawing salon. The venue is an underworldly lair called Medusa Lounge. Models Julie Bolene and Lavendar La Rue will be posing in unsettling fashions by Louis Fleischauer of AMF Korsets. And tunes will be provided by artist Tim Biskup's alter ego, DJ Alphabeast. Expect an experience somewhere between Jim Henson's "Labyrinth" and Clive Barker's "Hellraiser." 21 and up. Dr Sketchy in LA: June 21 Previously: Dr. Sketchy art salon comes to LA - Boing Boing Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School - Boing Boing

Iran Elections Crisis: Online Reading List Posted: 17 Jun 2009 07:10 AM PDT I asked Cyrus Farivar, an Iranian-American journalist and the author of the forthcoming book "The Internet of Elsewhere," about the history and effects of the Internet in four countries around the world -- including Iran -- to send us some of his favorite English-language links on the topic of the turmoil in Iran. He kindly obliged. As Jon Stewart aptly lampooned on last night's Daily Show, cable news networks seem to be having a grand time pointing to random Facebook and MySpace status updates, for lack of better understanding of Iranian online culture. Do yourself a favor, try the list Cyrus compiled, instead. Previously: Cyberwar guide for Iran elections - Boing Boing Iran SMS networks "mysteriously" fail right before elections ... Iran: Activists Launch Hack Attacks on Tehran Regime - Boing Boing Iran: Tim Shey on Observing Social Unrest Online at 32000 feet ... Lazyweb: turn the new version of Opera into an unstoppable grid of ... Iran: You Suck At Photoshop (updated) - Boing Boing Iran: death penalty for "corrupt weblogs" - Boing Boing Twitter reschedules maintenance to avoid clobbering Iranian ... Iranian election uprising: Twitter tracks it real-time, Iranian ...

Mind Over Ship: David Marusek's hyperfuturistic, hyperimaginative soap-opera Posted: 17 Jun 2009 06:57 AM PDT David Marusek's Mind Over Ship is the long-awaited sequel to his groundbreaking 2005 debut novel Counting Heads, and it was worth the wait. Mind Over Ship returns to the awesomely weird and exciting Marusek future, where humanity trembles on the verge of transcendence, splintering into people, clones, avatars, AIs, temporary and permanent models (some made without the model-ee's consent) and a thousand other fragments. Each of these factions battles for the best deal it can get -- even as the individual members of each clade fight for their own personal best interests. Mind Over Ship is so complex, with so many storylines and so many incredibly inventive premises, that it trembles on the verge of breakdown, acrobatically walking on a tightrope over the pit of too-weird. It's a book that demands and rewards attention, as it explores a hundred important philosophical questions about free will, destiny, bioethics, intelligence, and duty. For example, there's the story of the betrayal of the cold-sleep deep-space ships, which are meant to be launching by the dozens to distant, unexplored stars (but which have been co-opted for use as space-condos in a hostile corporate takeover). This leaves their erstwhile owners -- semi-sovereign collectives of Jesus freaks, defective spare-organ clones of VIPs, fatalistic Ukrainian Chernorbyl survivors, and other disaffected groups yearning to breath the air of distant worlds -- out in the cold. Then there's the biowar flu, "the 24-hour nonspecific grief flu," which causes its victims to feel, well, nonspecific grief for 24 hours, before their immune systems fight the bugs off. Or do they? NASTIEs are nanoweapons, the scale of a dandelion seed, which take root and begin coopting nearby matter, sending out tree-like roots to seek out the raw materials to assemble themselves into "deadly weapons of mass destruction." The army that launched the NASTIEs disbanded sixty years ago, but the seeds still flutter on the wind, periodically dissolving whole housing complexes as cloned first-responders seek to disassemble them before they can realize their destiny. Clones are in trouble -- different kinds of clones, provided by different workforce vendors, are all going through massive, wrenching existential trauma. Do they have "clone fatigue" that causes them to run against type? And of course, every clone wonders if his creators imbued him with "musts" (secret, tailored cocktails of trace minerals whose absence will kill a clone in short order) and "candy" (like "musts," except that these cocktails evince extreme ecstatic responses, acting as a powerful Skinnerian conditioning agent). There's even weirder life in Mind Over Ship: a beheaded tycoon whose head is grafted onto a cloned baby's body; her mother, secretly alive, encoded in the modified brains of "panasonic" fish around the world. And then there's the lively media: nits and the nitwork, micro-, mezzo- and nano-scale spybots that form a ubiquitous surveillance grid around the planet, a grid that can only be avoided by taking powerful purgatives that destroy the artificial fauna populating your outer and inner self before passing through an airlock. Marusek's hyperfuturistic, hyperimaginative soap-opera is a tour-de-force of imagination, philosophy, dark humor and humanity. Let's hope he writes the next one quickly! Mind Over Ship Previously: Counting Heads: exciting, major new sf novel - Boing Boing Rewired: Post-Cyberpunk Anthology shows how sf has changed since ... Science fiction without the future - Boing Boing

Recently on Offworld Posted: 17 Jun 2009 08:44 AM PDT Recently on Offworld we inadvertently had a very Mario day: in addition to Jude Buffum and Doctor Octoroc's wonderful 8-bit Keyboard Cat playing off a very unlucky Mario, we saw Greig Stewart's hacked up theremin that can play Super Mario Bros, and Justin White imagining -- in T-shirt form -- the inevitable Mushroom Kingdom retirement village, with all aged Mario stars wishing for a new 1-up lease on life. White also brought us Busted Up Pokemon (above), which brings illustrated truth to the ultraviolent cockfighting course we have forced our beloved pets to walk over the past ten years, and we got two more updates from last weekend's J.otto Seibold art opening at Giant Robot: a look at the paintings Seibold created based on his indie game crossover with Kyle Pulver, and video of that self-same game, Jottobots, being projected and played on the outside wall of the gallery itself. Finally, we saw a nice guide for indie devs looking to market themselves and their games on zero budget, and saw 5th Cell's handheld indie darling Scribblenauts give back to the fans, with a wallpaper-sized illustrated tribute to 'Post 217' -- the forum post that kicked off a wave of viral acclaim when a player wrote about how he had just (his emphasis) "TRAVELED THROUGH TIME AND JUMPED ON A DINOSAUR AND USED IT TO KILL MOTHERFUCKING ROBOT ZOMBIES."

Homeless Sims are surprisingly depressing Posted: 17 Jun 2009 06:26 AM PDT Robin Burkinshaw, a British games design student, created a homeless father-daughter pair in The Sims 3, "moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes." The results are surprising heart-rending: This is Kev and his daughter Alice. They're living on a couple of park benches, surviving on free meals from work and school, and the occasional bucket of ice cream stolen from a neighbour's fridge. When you create a Sim in The Sims 3, you can give them personality traits that alter their behaviour. Kev is hot-headed, mean-spirited, and inappropriate. He also dislikes children, and he's insane. He's basically the worst Dad in the world. He is a horrible human being, but he's also amusing to watch... As her father dislikes children, he hates sleeping next to her. In the morning, he's always the first to wake, and he immediately throws a tantrum and wakes up Alice to tell her to leave the room. Alice understandably responds that they're not in a room, and she doesn't have anywhere to go. Then they argue, and Kev seems to blame Alice for every possible thing. Part 0: Hello! Part 1: Alice and Kev Part 2: No hugs and no sleep Part 3: Just trying to be alone (via Wonderland)

Ahmadinejad sucks at Photoshop Posted: 17 Jun 2009 10:03 AM PDT The crowd in this pro-Ahmadinejad rally appears to have been clone-tool enhanced. اضافه شدن طرفداران محمود احمدي نژاد با فوتوشاپ روزنامه كيهان Mirror (Thanks, Yishay!) Previously: Iran: You Suck At Photoshop (updated) - Boing Boing "Iranian missile photoshop" photoshoppery - Boing Boing Cyberwar guide for Iran elections - Boing Boing Iran SMS networks "mysteriously" fail right before elections ... Iran: Activists Launch Hack Attacks on Tehran Regime - Boing Boing Iranian election uprising: Twitter tracks it real-time, Iranian ... Twitter reschedules maintenance to avoid clobbering Iranian ... Iran: Tim Shey on Observing Social Unrest Online at 32000 feet ...

Shared Worlds summer sf camp asks writers for their favorite cities Posted: 17 Jun 2009 06:16 AM PDT Jeff Vandermeer writes in with more news about Shared Worlds, the summer science fiction and fantasy writing camp for kids: Shared Worlds asked Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, China Meville, Michael Moorcock and others: "What's your pick for the top real-life fantasy or science fiction city?" At Shared Worlds our students create fantasy and science fiction worlds to fuel their art and writing projects. But even the strangest made-up place can have some real-world spark, and some of the real world's cities can be stranger than anything found in fantasy and science fiction. With this in mind, we asked some of speculative fiction's brightest minds to tell us their own picks for real-life fantastic cities, and you can read their answers here. Now in its second year, Shared Worlds is a two-week unique summer camp for teens ages 13 to 18, held at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This year the camp runs from July 19 to August 2, with registration still open to the end of June. Creative and fun, Shared Worlds emphasizes writing fiction, game development, and creating art--all in a safe and structured environment with award-winning faculty. Participants in this "teen think tank" meet like-minded students and learn how to work together and be proactive on their own. The first week, the students form teams and create their own worlds; the second week, they create in them. Faculty for 2009 will include Holly Black, co-creator of the Spiderwick Chronicles, Hugo Nominee Tobias Buckell, White Wolf game developer Will Hindmarch, World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, Weird Tales fiction editor Ann VanderMeer, and more. Shared World's Top Five Real Fantasy/SF Cities (Thanks, Jeff!) Previously: Science fiction summer writing camp for teens: Shared Worlds ... Jeff Vandermeer talking to writing-camp students at Shared Worlds ...

Whatever Happened to the Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi? Posted: 17 Jun 2009 02:00 PM 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. A couple years ago, I came across the incredible story of the 19th-century Japanese sculptor Hananuma Masakichi in Umberto Eco's essay collection Travels in Hyperreality. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Masakichi decided that his last great project would be to carve a perfectly life-like portrait of himself out of wood, to leave behind for the woman he loved. The hair, fingernails, teeth, and toenails of the sculpture were all pulled directly from his own body. The above image is from an old postcard of the statue, which has the following caption: The statue is composed of over 2000 separate pieces being hollow with the exception of the feet. The head, thighs, calves, and every member of the anatomy was carved separately and the whole put together. The joints were perfectly made, dovetailed, and glued together -- no metal nails, only wooden pegs or pins beings used to fasten where necessary. After putting all the members together and finishing as far as the woodwork was concerned, he painted and lacquered the statue to give it the flesh and blood appearance; The hairs which adorn the figure belong to himself. He used clippings of his head and ears and each and every hair is bored for and put in one by one. The body hairs were actually pulled from his own body and put in exactly the same position as they occupied on himself. The eyes were also made by the artist and are the wonder of the oculist and optical precision. And just in case this story wasn't poetic enough already, Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, which owns the statue, holds that Masakichi "later regained his health but lost his lover." When I originally wrote about Masakichi in the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, the only information I could find about the sculpture's present whereabouts was a notice saying that it had once been on display in a Ripley's museum, but was put in storage after being badly damaged in an earthquake. I called up Ripley's the other day to find out about the fate of the sculpture, and was connected to their archivist, Ed Meyer. He informed me that it got banged up pretty badly in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. "It was on a rotating platform, and it spun right off the rotator," he said. It took four months for a professional restorer to get Hananuma back into shape, however, "the hair still looks a little funny." The self-portrait is now back on display in Ripley's Wisconsin Dells location. None of the Ripley's museums have yet been entered into the Atlas Obscura. But surely they all will be soon! UPDATE: I found this picture at Sideshow World. Man or Image?! I guess that's the real Masakichi on the right.

Searching for "purveyors of curiosities" Posted: 17 Jun 2009 05:31 PM 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. One of the areas of the Atlas Obscura that I hope will get filled out as people continue to contribute content to the site is our "Purveyors of Curiosities" category. Right now it's got a measly six places in it. We're looking to find all those cool stores around the world that share the "wunderkammer sensibility"--places like Deyrolle in Paris (shown above), Evolution and Obscura Antiques in New York City, and Paxton Gate in San Francisco, just to name a few of the more famous and fabulous ones. Whenever I travel, I always seek these sorts of shops out, but they can be awfully hard to find (there's no page in the phone book for "odd stores"). If we could put together a good list of the world's "purveyors of curiosities," I think it would go a long way to making the Atlas Obscura into a really useful resource for curious travelers. So, please tell us: what are the most "wondrous, curious, and esoteric" stores in the world? (And if you have a few minutes to spare, would you consider writing up a brief description and adding them to the Atlas?)

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