Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Myths about Canadian healthcare

Posted: 27 Jun 2009 01:08 AM PDT

Rhonda Hackett, a Canadian expat clinical psychologist living in the US, has an editorial in the Denver Post with a good round-up of myths and truths about Canadian health care. I've lived under the Canadian, US, British and Costa Rican health care systems and of the four, I believe that the Canadian one functions best (I'd rank them Canadian, British, Costa Rican and US). My experience with all four includes routine and urgent care. I've had firsthand experience of pre-and post-natal care in Canada, the US and the UK; I've also seen the Canadian, US and UK palliative care system in action.

On the other hand, I believe that the UK system of caring for elderly people is better than the others; Costa Ricans have better services for rural people; and the US has a better culture of retail service (outside of healthcare) than anywhere else I've lived.

Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

Debunking Canadian health care myths (via Digg)

Fake receipt printing service

Posted: 27 Jun 2009 12:26 AM PDT

FalseExpense will mail you an envelope full of fake receipts, suitable for submitting for reimbursement or deducting from your taxes, "FOR NOVELTY USE ONLY". Bruce Schneier notes, "I've heard of sites where you give them a range of dates and a city, and they give you a full set of receipts for a trip to that city: airfare, hotel, meals, everything -- but I can't find a website."
The process is simple:
You pay us a small fee- using your credit card
Email us the answers to a short questionnaire about the false receipt you want designed and printed (see below)
Within 24 hours, we will send you a draft scan by email of the fake store receipt.
You give us feedback/changes you may require
We print the fake register receipt with a real Point of Sale (POS) Thermal Printer and post 2 copies of the real receipt to your address.
You use them for whatever purpose you choose, we don't ask questions
fake receipts, free templates for store receipts, print fake receipts (via Schneier)

Abstinence doesn't work for IT or for teens

Posted: 27 Jun 2009 12:47 AM PDT

I wrote my latest Guardian column after hearing security experts lament, for the nth time, that sensitive systems like MRI machines, defense-contractor computers, and so on should never be connected to the Internet, and when these are compromised by spies, malware or worms, it's the fault of bad network policy.

I realized that this lament was like the one you hear from people who bemoan kids having sex and getting pregnant or catching diseases, "If they'd just abstain..."

Abstinence programs don't work -- not in IT, and not for teens' sex:

Every time a state secret disappears from an internet-connected PC, every time a hospital computer reboots itself in the middle of a surgical procedure because it has just downloaded the latest patch, every time an MRI machine gets infected with an internet worm, I hear security experts declaiming, "Those computers should never be connected to the internet!" and shaking their heads at the foolish users and the foolish IT department that gave rise to a situation where sensitive functions were being executed on a computer connected to the seething, malware-haunted public internet.

But no amount of head-shaking is going to change the fact that computers, by and large, get connected. It's what they're designed to do. You might connect to the internet without even meaning to (for example, if your computer knows that it's allowed to connect to a BT Wi-Fi access point, it will connect and disconnect from hundreds of them if you carry it with you through the streets of London).

Operating systems are getting more promiscuous about net connections, not less: expect operating systems to start seeking out Bluetooth-enabled 3G phones and using them to reach out to the net when nothing else is available.

All evidence suggests that keeping computers off the internet is a losing battle. And even if you think you can discipline your workers into staying offline, wouldn't it be lovely if you had a security solution that worked even if someone broke the rules? "You shouldn't be having net at your age, but if you do, you should at least practice safe hex."

Like teenagers, computers are built to hook up

Michael Jackson by Drew Friedman

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 05:13 PM PDT

The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 04:11 PM PDT

200906261557 I'm not a fan of vampire fiction, but The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is more along the lines of a vampire-zombie-epidemic-in-New York-City, and wow is it terrific.

The first chapter (after the short prologue, which didn't interest me and almost made me abandon the book) is about an airplane that lands at JFK from Germany and goes completely dark on the runway. It's so creepy that when I told my wife and daughter about it *they* got creeped out just from my description.

Someone said The Strain is a combination of The Stand, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I am Legend, which I'd say is a pretty fair way of describing it.

I was sent a review copy by the publisher, but I wanted to read it past our usual bedtime so I bought the Kindle version and read it in the dark on my iPhone so as not to keep Carla up with a reading light on. I recommend reading all scary books in the dark this way.

The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Michael Jackson's patented dancing shoes

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 03:36 PM PDT

Gimages Smoothcriminalshoes
Above is the patent for the shoes that enabled Michael Jackson to lean at a full 45-degree angle when doing the Smooth Criminal dance. Over at BB Gadgets, Joel has the details and a video of the late King of Pop rocking his dancing shoes. "Michael Jackson's patented "Smooth Criminal" leaning shoes"

Sleepwalker stabbed

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 03:25 PM PDT

A sleepwalking and/or drunk man in Kansas City was taking a leak in his closet when his girlfriend accidentally stabbed him. From the Kansas City Star:
She tried to wake him up (when she woke to find him urinating in the closet), but she said he pushed her out of his way. Scared he might hit her, she said, she grabbed a knife and held it up as he approached, cutting him. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening.
"Man stabbed while sleepwalking"

Previously:


World's largest collection of bottle ships

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:54 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.

boatbottle.jpg

User curiosity_nl recently added the Bottle-Ship Museum in Enkhuizen, Holland to the Atlas Obscura. It sounds like a place I'd like to visit:

This tiny museum is said to hold the world's largest collection of bottle ships--over 750 of them. An incredible variety of miniature boats--rescue boats, whaling ships, steamships, and modern dredgers--have been stuffed into every variety of bottle, from the tiniest light bulb to a 30-liter wine jug. Magnifying glasses are available where needed. On occasion, there are demonstrations of how to build bottle ships.

Shown above is a model of the Half Moon, the ship Henry Hudson was sailing when he discovered Hudson Bay and the Hudson River. It's builder, Ralph Preston, estimates that it took about 500 hours to assemble.

Hot chili grenades

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:14 PM PDT

India defense scientists are designing "non-lethal" hand grenades laced with hot chili powder. From the BBC:
Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.

The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.

Scientists at India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are quoted as saying the potent chilli will be used as a food additive for troops operating in cold conditions.
India plans hot chilli grenades (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

The genius of Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:11 PM PDT

200906261352 200906261354

Rolly Crump, the Disney Imagineer who Kevin Kidney wrote about on Dinosaurs and Robots, drew these incredible beatnik posters in 1960. Here's one, here's another. (I like the sound of the Weed Quartet: "Lou blows Kazoo," "Turk on the Twig," "Betty bangs Tambourine," and "Booboo on the Bottle.")

Here's Rolly Crump's Tower Of The Four Winds, a 120 foot tall kinetic sculpture unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair

And just look at the Disneyland ticket booth for Tomorrowland that Crump designed in 1967.

Jason Groh has some more outstanding 1960s work by Crump. Says Groh, "Rolly was Tim Burton before there was a Tim Burton!"

Here's Rolly Crump's website. He's still creating wonderful art!

The Last Handwoven Bridge, Rebuilt by MIT

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:21 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.

keshwa-2.jpg

When conquistadors arrived from Spain they were shocked. Spanning vast canyons, and longer than any existing European or Roman bridge was a type of bridge which they had never seen before: an Incan suspension bridge. Today only one example remains.

Made of woven grass, the bridge spans 118 feet, and hangs 220 feet above the canyon's rushing river. The Incan women braid small thin ropes which are then braided again by the men into large support cables, much like a modern steel suspension bridge. Handwoven bridges lasted as long as 500 years and were held in very high regard by the Inca. The punishment for tampering with one was death.

Over time, however, the bridges decayed, or were removed, leaving this single testament to Incan bridge engineering. This previously sagging bridge is now repaired each year, and christened with a traditional Incan ceremonial bridge blessing. The bridge is in extremely good condition and is a perfect location for all of us wishing to indulge in long harbored Indiana Jones fantasies.

Though the Spanish tried many times to build stone arch bridges all were failures until steel and iron bridges were introduced to the mountainous Peruvian countryside. Today the rope suspension bridges are being studied, and even recreated by MIT students. The students made a 60-foot-long version of the Incan bridge which was stretched between two campus buildings.

More on the Atlas here, more on the story of the bridge here, and about the MIT recreation of the bridge here and slideshow here.

Adam Savage gets $11,000 AT&T bill for a "few hours of web surfing in Canada"

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:16 PM PDT

Adam Savage just twittered this: "Text messaging fees are stupid robbery? (they are), AT&T is attempting to charge me 11k for a few hours of web surfing in Canada."

That's why I took an inactive iPhone with me to Spain. I used WiFi and Skype on it and it cost me nothing.

Pigeons trained to recognize bad art

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 01:59 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.

In 1995, the Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe made a splash when he proved that pigeons could be trained to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. Now he has taught them to recognize the difference between good and bad art. New Scientist reports:

He trained four birds - on loan from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons - to appreciate children's art by linking correct assessments of paintings with food. Works deemed good (see image) had earned As in art class, while bad paintings (see image) garnered Cs or Ds. Watanabe also put the paintings to a jury of 10 adults, and pigeons viewed only works unanimously declared good or bad by the panel.

After a series of training sessions consisting of 22 paintings on average, Watanabe presented the birds with 10 paintings they hadn't seen before: 5 bad, 5 good.

The birds had been trained to peck at a button for good paintings and do nothing in response to bad works. With never-seen works, pigeons picked good paintings twice as often as bad paintings, a statistically significant difference.

Watanabe's paper, "Pigeons can discriminate 'good' and 'bad' paintings by children," is published in the latest issue of Animal Cognition.

Now, if only pigeons could be taught to pilot missiles.

"I'm Fat and Nobody Likes Me"

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 01:39 PM PDT


As Steve Lodefink says: "Awesome teen angst comedy mischief pop by Chair."

Scam artists con Apple into killing app that tells you when the bus is due in San Francisco

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 01:03 PM PDT

John sez, "NextBus Information Systems, (confusingly distinct from NextBus, Inc.) claims ownership of SF MUNI's arrival time data. The company persuaded Apple's App store to remove iPhone applications that told San Francisco users when their bus was coming. Muni spokesperson Judson True says the data is free to reuse and remix, but no word on when the application will reappear."

Yup, it's true, it's hard for Apple to adequately assess the conflicting claims about proprietary rights on the iTunes Store. Say, I've got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?

As for the sleazebags who shake down programmers by claiming to own the rights to Muni arrival times, someone needs to give them the "Hey, dipshits, facts aren't copyrightable," speech and a smack upside their collective heads.

Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times? (Thanks, John!)

Make your own tofu

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 12:53 PM PDT

The LA Times has an article about making tofu at home that is "exponentially better than any store-bought blocks of tofu" with soy milk and nigari brine.
This is [Sona restaurant chef de cuisine Kuniko Yagi's] recipe for making tofu from soy milk, and it's the one Yagi uses: Add a teaspoon of liquid nigari to 500 milliliters of cold soy milk and stir. Then pour it into heat-proof bowls and cook (in a water bath or steamer) until it sets like custard. That is it. There's no heating the soy milk to bring it to a certain temperature before adding the nigari. No separating liquids from solids. No straining once it's cooked.

Kariya had figured just the right amount of soy milk (which he makes -- so he knows that the brix, or percentage of dissolved solids, is 14%) to use with a certain amount of nigari (which he imports from Japan and has magnesium chloride and other trace minerals), so that his tofu recipe works consistently. He sells both the milk ($3.50 for a half-gallon) and the nigari, which isn't cheap but will make a lot of tofu and will last almost indefinitely ($25 for a pint).

Do-it-yourself fresh tofu

Maglev toy train

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 12:44 PM PDT


Fun video of a toy train that floats about the track using a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor. (Via Evil Mad Scientists)

Design kick-ass multimedia, win a paid internship at CERN

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 12:18 PM PDT

Joao sez, "I work for the ATLAS experiment at CERN, the biggest and most complex of the devices within the Large Hadron Collider. We are organizing a multimedia contest for artsy-geeky people, offering the winner a paid internship at CERN, where she/he will have the opportunity to show off her/his science communication skills, documenting the experiment and producing more awesome multimedia. We'll spread it around with full credit to the author. Alternatively, if the winner prefers, we'll offer instead an Adobe Production Suite package."

CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, birthplace of the World Wide Web and home of the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a great opportunity for you. We are about to kick-start the most complex scientific project ever conceived by mankind, and would like you to witness and record its unveiling, and help us spread the news.

We want you to start by showing us your communication and creative skills by producing an original short film or multimedia piece, incorporating material about ATLAS, the biggest experiment on the LHC. The best submissions will be posted on the ATLAS website and YouTube page with full credit to the author, and enter a competition for a paid internship at CERN or alternatively win a Adobe Production Suite package. The winner will be offered a trip to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and given exclusive access to scientists working on the project as well as all the equipment and expertise in CERN's audiovisual lab.

What we want from you is your unbridled creativity. In return, we offer a chance to experience history in the making, and a global platform for your work as the world's eyes look towards CERN this fall. To apply, read the official rules and register below. What are you waiting for?

The deadline is July 31, so lights, Camera, Action!

ATLAS/CERN Multimedia Contest and Intern Program: (Thanks, Joao!)

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Cardinal Mezzofanti, and other eminent polyglots

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 09:34 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.

sirrichardfburton.jpgI've recently been enjoying Edward Rice's wonderful biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer, soldier, diplomat, linguist, translator, and self-described "amateur barbarian," who became one of the first non-Muslims to make the Hajj to Mecca.

Burton was a sponge for languages, and by the time of his death he was said to be fluent in 29 of them--plus at least a dozen dialects.

This got me wondering whether he might have been the most multilingual person in history.

Far from it, it seems.

Wikipedia has compiled a list of the world's most prodigious polyglots, including Sir John Bowring, who supposedly knew 200 languages (but only spoke 100), and the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak 38 tongues, despite having never left Italy.

I was led to Charles William Russel's 1863 biography of Mezzofanti, which excerpts an incredible run-in between the cardinal and Lord Byron, as described in Byron's memoirs:

I don't remember a man amongst them I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzofanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot, and more; --who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter. He is, indeed, a marvel--unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-houses, post, everything; and egad! he astounded me--even to my English.

mezzofantilinguist.jpgRussell then adds (with a note of skepticism) a postscript describing a comical swear-off between Mezzofanti and Byron:

When Byron had exhausted his vocabulary of English slang Mezzofanti quietly asked, "And is that all?"

"I can go no further," replied the noble poet, "unless I coin words for the purpose."

"Pardon me, my Lord," rejoined Mezzofanti; and proceeded to repeat for him a variety of the refinements of London slang, till then unknown to his visitor's rich vocabulary!"

What a great scene!

The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti by Charles William Russell [HTML book]

An Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern (preface to Russell's biography of Mezzofanti)

BB Video: "Web of Love," Prescient '60s Homage to Online Dating (Oddball Video)

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 02:44 PM PDT


(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

A spectacularly campy "Scopitone" music number featuring Joi Lansing from 1965 which appears to be a cautionary tale about the perils of online dating, or spiders, or both.

Scopitones were basically 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."

More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:

* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: boingboingvideo.com. RSS feed for new episodes 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.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

Pirate Bay retrial over judge bias denied

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 08:59 AM PDT

An appeals court in Sweden ruled Thursday against the possibility of a retrial in the Pirate Bay case, despite accusations the trial judge was biased against the four founders of the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker.
"We have reached the conclusion that we do not agree with the conflict of interest claim," Sweden Court of Appeal Judge Anders Eka told Swedish media. In the appellate court's written opinion, the three-judge panel said that backing "the principles" of copyright law "cannot be considered bias."
Pirate Bay Retrial Denied (Wired / Threat Level)

Previously:


Terrific review of the execrable Transformers movie

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 08:51 AM PDT

200906260847

Thank goodness Michael Bay made the new Transformers movie, because if he hadn't Charlie Jane Anders wouldn't have written this stupendous review for io9.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.
Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie

Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 08:26 AM PDT

Corrupted-Files.com sells pre-corrupted files ($5.95, on sale for $3.95 until June 30) in a variety of formats. The target market is students who blew their assignment deadline and need an excuse.
Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper.

Step 2: Email the file to your professor along with your "here's my assignment" email.

Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is "unfortunately" corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!

Note: The only difference between each Word file is its file size, because it will look a bit odd if your 10 page term paper is only 1k in size! Yes, we thought of everything! We guarantee and stand by our product!

Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time (Via Orange Crate Art)

The King is Dead: Lefsetz on the passing of Michael Jackson

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 10:15 PM PDT


They're saying on BBC radio right now that when news of his death started to hit late Thursday, so many search queries for "Michael Jackson" were hitting Google and other search engines, the flood was perceived at first as a malicious automated attack.

Above: my own personal favorite.

Below, words from music industry writer Bob Lefsetz (Twitter, blog) on the passing today of one of the most important pop culture figures of our time.

He missed his childhood and now he's gonna miss his old age.

How fucked up is that?

Michael Jackson never had a chance. He had to succeed for his family, his parents' dreams were dependent upon him.

And a boy with that much pressure delivers. He works truly hard, so he will be loved. That's all Michael Jackson was looking for, love.

He wanted to be accepted. Wanted to be so good that he couldn't be denied. But you can't change family history, and the public no longer treats you as human, as an equal, once you break through. People want to rip you off or tear you down, or shower you in faux love that's more about their unfulfilled desires than yours. It gets so confusing that you retreat.

Read the entire post by Bob Lefsetz here.

Previously:


Recently on Offworld: Steve Jobs, Serious Heroes, gaming's longest beards

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 06:29 AM PDT

korgds10plus.jpgThere was no discernible reason why Japanese developer AQI should have to parody Steve Jobs to announce a new version of their portable Korg DS-10 synthesizer, which makes the fact that they did (above) -- and pulled it off with pitch-perfect style -- all the more fantastic, and sets a high bar as one of the cutest game announcements in recent memory. Elsewhere on Offworld, we saw more game/music crossovers, listening to the latest and most accessible chiptune/downtempo/glitch sampler for San Francisco's DUTYSTYLE III show, happening tonight at 8pm (check the post for full details), and finding Open Emu, a new modular Mac emulation system that's a boon for budding 8-bit VJs, as it lets you control both the visuals and the play of emulated games with audio and MIDI. We also saw that early-oughts cult classic shooter Serious Sam (which shipped with our favorite cheat-mode of all time, turning gibs and blood splatter into hamburgers, fruit, and bursts of blooming flowers) was being remade for Xbox Live Arcade, and that EA/DICE's similarly tongue in cheek free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes had quietly gone live, and will likely be taking up the majority of our weekend (as it should yours). And our 'one shot's of the day: the mathematical beauty of building pixel Invaders, the aching shoulder-slump of BioShock 2's original Big Daddy concept, the certifiably longest beard in gaming's history, and, of course, Michael Jackson, in memoriam.
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