The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Today at Boing Boing Gadgets
• The Whistling Island of La Gomera
• World's Rarest Insect found on Rocky Spire
• HOWTO learn electronics
• Hummingbirds' superspeed dive bombs
• Documentary about Jean-Jacques Perrey
• The incredible "ear stones" of fish
• Merlin Mann on Getting Creative Things Done
• Rosie Hardy (photography)
• Pixar Grants Dying Kid's Last Wish to See "Up"
• Recently on Offworld
• Open Video Conference, NYC Fri 19, Sat 20: BB discount!
• Videos of People In Trance States
• Video: "Civilization"

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 19 Jun 2009 07:00 PM PDT The iPhone 3G S launched this morning (w00t!). Did BBG wake up at 4:45 a.m. and head to Apple's flagship store in San Francisco to: a) shoot video, b) purchase said gadget, c) make fun of fanboys, d) spend 2 hours dealing with AT&T, or e) all of the above* ? • Video of an overeager fanboy charging the pearly gates and getting denied! • Our first impressions of the iPhone 3G S [verdict: click here to find out] • Will the new iPhone sell well? The line, frenzy at the SF Apple Store early this a.m. wasn't quite as large as previous launches. • Would you pay $55 to tether your iPhone, or any handset for that matter? • Should the 13" Mac Laptop be a "Pro"? • Timbaland is getting sued for chiptune plagiarism (uh oh). • An attractive, USB-powered laptop fan. • We ran a contest for a set of magnetic BuckyBalls. Contest is over (bummer), but feel free to share your favorite Buckminster Fuller quote, or check some reader favorites, in the comments. • Video of a homemade electric car that looks like a 1950s alien space ship. • Looking for a Nintendo Entertainment System that's fit for a pimp? • Popcorn Hour is launching a set-top box that supports Blu-ray... oh, and every video format. • Why play Wii Bowling with a remote shaped like a stick of butter, when you can use a faux-bowling ball? *The answer is d)

The Whistling Island of La Gomera Posted: 19 Jun 2009 05:05 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. To follow up on Dylan's post about Ball's Pyramid, we've got a whole category of "Anomalous Islands" in the Atlas Obscura that is waiting to be filled out. One of my favorites is La Gomera, a small island in the Canaries, where people communicate with each other from miles apart using one of the most unusual languages in the world: Known as Silbo, the whistling language of Gomera Island has a vocabulary of over 4,000 words, and is used by "Silbadors" to send messages across the island's high peaks and deep valleys. Though Silbo was on the verge of extinction in the 1990s, the Gomerans have made a concerted effort to revive their language by adding it to the public school curriculum. Today 3,000 schoolchildren are in the process of learning it. Here's a sampling of the language:

World's Rarest Insect found on Rocky Spire Posted: 19 Jun 2009 03:20 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.    Ball's Pyramid is fairly amazing at first glance. However it wasn't until 2001 on a much closer inspection of the island, that scientists realized just how amazing the island, and its inhabits, really were The remnants of a once massive volcano, Ball's Pyramid juts 1,843 feet out of the Pacific ocean. Discovered in 1788, the barren, rocky spire was thought to be devoid of life until 2001 when a group of scientists discovered what may be the world's rarest insect. The Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) had not been seen alive in over 70 years. Known as "land lobsters" or "walking sausages," the six inch long insects had once been common on the neighboring Lord Howe Island, but were assumed to have been eaten into extinction by black rats introduced when a supply ship ran aground in 1918. Yet in 2001 the scientists found a colony of the huge Lord Howe Island stick insects living under a single bush, a hundred feet up the otherwise entirely infertile rock. Somehow a few of the wingless insects escaped and managed--by means still unknown--to traverse 23 kilometers of open ocean, land on Ball's Pyramid, and survive there. Just 27 of the insects have been found on the rocky spire. They are currently being bred in captivity. Links to Ball's Pyramid on the Atlas and a link to the fact sheet on the Lord Howe Island stick insect.

HOWTO learn electronics Posted: 19 Jun 2009 12:43 PM PDT Our pals at Sparkle Labs released a new kit designed to introduce you to the basics of hands-on electronics. The Discover Electronics Kit contains a slew of standard components like resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, potentiometers, LEDs, a timer integrated circuit, a breadboard to connect everything together, and of course an instruction manual with a variety of projects. It reminds me of those fun electronics kits with the onboard components and springy terminals that I played with as a kid! At $50, the Discovery Electronics Kit looks like a great gift for any aspiring hardware hacker. Discover Electronics Kit Previously: Sparkle Labs electronics kit video - Boing Boing

Hummingbirds' superspeed dive bombs Posted: 19 Jun 2009 12:29 PM PDT Diving hummingbirds experience g-forces in the range that could cause human stunt pilots to blackout. According to new UC Berkeley research, male Anna's hummingbirds fly 30 meters up and then dive down. As they pull up before smashing into the ground, they hit up to 9 Gs. The trick is all about impressing females. From Science news: For a short period at their peak speed, the birds folded their wings and drilled down through the air at speeds up to 27.3 meters per second (61 miles per hour)... Adjust for body length, and the world just got a new fastest bird, (integrative biology grad student Chris) Clark says. The hummingbirds' speed reached 385 body lengths per second, easily beating the peregrine falcon's recorded dives at 200 body lengths per second. (Though the falcon was diving at 70 meters per second.) A fighter jet with its afterburners on reaches 150 body lengths per second, and a space shuttle screaming down through the atmosphere hits 207 body lengths per second. "Hummingbird pulls Top Gun stunts" Previously: Hummingbird hawkmoth video - Boing Boing Photo of the hummingbird hawkmoth - Boing Boing Praying mantis catches and eats hummingbird - Boing Boing

Documentary about Jean-Jacques Perrey Posted: 19 Jun 2009 02:11 PM PDT Here's a trailer for Prélude au sommeil (Prelude to Sleep), a new documentary about pioneering electronic musician Jean-Jacques Perrey. The film features appearances from Gershon Kingsley, Angelo Badalamenti, Michel Gondry, Air, and other contemporaries of Perrey and artists influenced by him. The film's director, Gilles Weinzaepflen, points us to a VOD site where you can view the full film in French or with English subtitles. Prélude au sommeil Previously: Jean-Jacques Perrey's EVA video - Boing Boing San Francisco: Jean-Jacques Perrey in concert tomorrow - Boing Boing

The incredible "ear stones" of fish Posted: 19 Jun 2009 10:02 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. Graham Burnett wrote a fascinating essay in Cabinet recently about otolithic organs, the pair of sensors in the inner ear that help us stay balanced and maintain inertia. "Grossly speaking," writes Burnett, the otolithic organs consist of "a bunch of tiny pebbles (of the white rock known as calcium carbonate) embedded in a gooey wad that sits atop a carpet of delicate hairs." In humans, those "pebbles" are practically microscopic, but in fish, they can be as large as marbles: There are several thousand researchers around the world who spend their whole working day looking at fish otoliths. This has nothing to do with their physiological functions, however, and everything to do with their structure and the staggering amount of information they contain. In the first place, each species of fish has a unique otolith shape. Couple this with the fact that they are stone (and therefore comparatively resistant to decomposition), and their utility as a biological marker becomes clear. Interested in the food habits of bottlenose whales? Pump their stomachs and you will end up with relatively few bones but lots of otoliths. Find an otolith expert and he or she will be able to give you a menu... But the true wonder of these peculiar pearls lies within. Should you have occasion to tonsure a snapper or sea-bass, slicing off the top of its skull just above the eyes, you might take a moment to remove the two largest otoliths (there are, as a rule, six in all, three on each side) from their velvet seats to the right and left of the brain stem. With the heel of a knife you should be able to snap one of them in two, and then, holding it to the light, you will discern a set of concentric bands. These are growth rings—annuli—which, properly counted, will give the age of your fish in years.

Merlin Mann on Getting Creative Things Done Posted: 19 Jun 2009 08:30 AM PDT Audio embed, below: Merlin Mann, who participated in the recent MaxFunCon gathering, talks about "the process of doing creative work, and particularly how to abandon the quest for perfection, get off your butt and get started." more at maximumfun.org (thanks, Jesse Thorn). The Sound of Young America

Rosie Hardy (photography) Posted: 19 Jun 2009 08:25 AM PDT Photo: Rosie Hardy. About the image: I got the idea for this a few days ago. I was setting up my camera in a car park near a supermarket in my town, because it had a wall I wanted to use in a 365, away from all the cars. I'd been there literally two minutes and I heard a man shout "Dissemble your camera NOW" behind me. He turned out to be from security, and told me to delete any photos I had taken infront of him so he could make sure there were none on my card. I asked him why after I had done so, and he told me that it was because of possible terrorist attacks. (...) Everywhere has gone completely public safety mad. (Via Gordon Gould)

Pixar Grants Dying Kid's Last Wish to See "Up" Posted: 19 Jun 2009 06:34 PM PDT Pixar flew an employee with a DVD of the animated feature film "Up" (which is only in theaters right now) to the home of a terminally ill child for a private viewing. The girl passed away soon after fulfilling this last wish. Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing - a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film. After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue. Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up' (thanks Virgilio Colorado)

Recently on Offworld Posted: 19 Jun 2009 07:58 AM PDT Recently on Offworld, One More Go columnist Margaret Robertson claims Sega owe her £400 for all the money she's sunk in to Sega's maraca-based rhythm game Samba De Amigo over the years, only to get something always broken in return. But still, she says, the original 1998 Dreamcast version, for its motion control and party-based underpinning's, it's "the most prescient project in videogame history", and she keeps returning because it's one of the games that continually showers her in praise. Elsewhere we rounded up some of the most recent iPhone developments (and wondered if we were over- or under-covering the platform): Steph Thirion's boldly original and relentlessly lovely Eliss gets a free Lite version for all to try, Mobigames' trademark-disputed futurist Edge makes a sudden and unexplained return to the App Store, and we watched with wonder the first two minutes of Rolando 2. We also saw art/film schlock reimagined as 8-bit games, including Lars Von Trier's Dancer In The Dark, and then discovered that there really will be a Von Trier game, as his latest and most controversial film Antichrist gets adapted for the PC, and listened to Bit Shifter's March of the Nucleotides. Finally, our 'one shot's for the day: the littlest big billboards in Union Square, and French guerrilla artist Space Invader does neoclassical artist Ingres in pixels (above).

Open Video Conference, NYC Fri 19, Sat 20: BB discount! Posted: 19 Jun 2009 07:47 AM PDT The Open Video Conference kicks off today, and I'll be attending (and, tomorrow, speaking). There's a registration discount for Boing Boing readers. Details here, do come join us! Oh, they're livestreaming video of the proceedings, too. Check it out. Previously: Open Video Conference in NYC June 19-20: Discount for BB Readers ... Open Video Conference, NYC Jun 19-20 - Boing Boing

Videos of People In Trance States Posted: 19 Jun 2009 06:32 AM PDT A large collection of links to videos of people in trance states. Above, practitioners of the African-origin spiritual tradition of Candomblé, in Brazil.

Video: "Civilization" Posted: 19 Jun 2009 06:28 AM PDT Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo. Above: "Civilization," a video installation by artist/director Marco Brambilla for the elevators in the Standard Hotel in NYC. It's comprised of over 400 video clips and it takes elevator passengers on a trip from hell to heaven as they go up or from heaven to hell as they go down. Pictures of the installation and Q&A with Brambilla and Crush are posted here. (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

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