The Latest from Boing Boing

---

• Canadian gov't: you have no expectation of privacy on the Internet
• Half-billion-dollar expansion for Hong Kong Disneyland
• Pirate Bay to sell to private company, go legit (?) (!)
• Michael Jackson -- unrecognizable motivations and constant ruination
• New Space Opera 2: sf stories with sweep
• LA's vegan restaurants are full of egg
• Run a TOR node, help Iranians and others keep their privacy
• Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets
• Gold farming, real money trades banned in China
• Lord of the Rings considered as a D&D game -- webcomic
• Classic arcade game animations in Lego
• Video: vintage Dungeons & Dragons commercial
• Honduras: Photos of Coup
• Colorado passes law to allow rainwater harvesting
• R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions
• Bats the size of your thumb
• Video: Michael Jackson's moonwalking inspirations
• Guardians of Russian Art Museums
• Mexico's Isla De Las Muñecas
• Video drama about CIA's real project to drug unwitting US citizens with LSD
• Yuki 7 giveaway
• New picture window for the space station
• Little Brother wins the Campbell Award -- see you in Lawrence, KS on July 11/12!
• Mexican jumping bean video
• Interview with space suit designer
• Fertility interprets regulation as damage and routes around it
• 13 year old kid reviews a 30 year old Sony Walkman
• Chess set made from vacuum tubes
• Recently on Offworld: Everything is Pixelated
• Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

Canadian gov't: you have no expectation of privacy on the Internet Posted: 30 Jun 2009 03:44 AM PDT In the latest episode of the Canadian tech podcast Search Engine, Peter Van Loan, the new Public Safety minister, attempts to explain the Conservative government's approach to privacy on the internet. It's a remarkable piece of audio. It goes a little like this: Search Engine: Here's some audio of your predecessor promising, on behalf of your party and your government, never to ever allow the police to wiretap the Internet without a warrant. Minister (as though he had been off on another planet): We never promised not to do that. Search Engine: What about all the personal information that you guys are now proposing to give to the cops without a warrant? Minister (tragically unclear on the subject): We're not requiring ISPs to give out any personal information without a warrant, just your real name, your home address, your IP address, your home and cell number... Search Engine: Huh. Well there's this really critical, high profile court ruling that calls all that stuff private information? Minister (pretending he didn't hear): The courts have ruled that this isn't private information. Canadians have no legitimate expectation of privacy when they use the Internet, not when it comes to your name, address, cell phone number, etc Search Engine: Do the cops really need to get this information without a warrant? Minister: Oh yes. There are MONSTROUS BABY-EATING CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS WHO ADVERTISE THAT THEY ARE ABOUT TO SEXUALLY ASSAULT A LIVE CHILD IN TEN MINUTES and we need to be able to run down their IPs without talking to a judge first. Search Engine: But when a child is endangered, the law already allows you to get this information without a warrant, right? Minister: Why are you still asking questions? Didn't you hear me? BABY-EATING CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS! Surely that settles the matter. Search Engine: Uh, I guess. Thanks anyway. Search Engine: "No Expectation of Privacy" MP3 link Podcast feed Previously: Search Engine podcast is back on TVO -- update your podcatchers ... Search Engine podcast cancelled, picked up by rival public ... Canada's DMCA: CBC radio's Search Engine on the demonstrations and ... CBC's Search Engine back in podcast form - Boing Boing Canada's DMCA won't get any consumer rights added to it for a ... Canadian Industry Minister refuses to defend Canadian DMCA in ... What question do you want to ask Canada's Industry Minister about ... Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA on ... Canadian cops want to wiretap the net - Boing Boing

Half-billion-dollar expansion for Hong Kong Disneyland Posted: 30 Jun 2009 01:54 AM PDT Disney's paying Hong Kong US$465M to expand the operations of the failing Hong Kong Disneyland, adding three new areas and 30 attractions (let's hope they finally add a Haunted Mansion!). I imagine the expansion will be on more "reclaimed" (e.g. landfill) territory. As part of the deal announced Tuesday, the government plans to convert a substantial amount of existing loans to the park into equity, but won't invest any new capital. Its stake in the park will fall to 52%... The physical size of the theme park, will increase by 23%, Lau said, with the new attractions aimed at broadening Disneyland's appeal to young adults... In its first year of operations, visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland fell 400,000 short of the park's 5.6 million target. In its second year, attendance fell to just over 4 million visitors. The park has also drawn criticism for lack of appeal to mainland Chinese tourists, who account for the bulk of its visitors, given their unfamiliarity with Disney stories and characters. Disney said Tuesday the expansion will focus on "universally understood" stories, adding that many of the new attractions will be unique to the Hong Kong park. Disney, Hong Kong Government Reach Deal To Expand Hong Kong Theme Park (Image: 27601 - Hong Kong - Disneyland, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Xiquinhosilva's Flickr stream) Previously: Hong Kong Disneyland Feng Shuied - Boing Boing Near riot at sold out Hong Kong Disneyland - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Hong Kong Disneyland's awesome trains Hong Kong Disney will feature shark fin soup despite environmental ... Ground broken on Hong Kong Disneyland - Boing Boing

Pirate Bay to sell to private company, go legit (?) (!) Posted: 30 Jun 2009 02:08 AM PDT Kullin sez, "The publicly traded gaming company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has issued a press statement this morning that they will purchase the website the Pirate Bay and the company Peeralism that 'develops peerialistic solutions to transport and store data on the Internet'. According to Svenska Dagbladet, GGF will purchase the Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK [Ed: about US$7.8 million] [Ed: E.g., peanuts], out of at least half in cash, and Peeralism for 100 MSEK, out of which at least half in cash." OK, that's weird. Following the completion of the acquisitions, GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009. "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site" said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF. "The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers' need faster downloads and better quality" continues Hans Pandeya. OK, that's kind of ominous and interesting. Sounds more or less what the VCs who backed the original Napster were hoping for: buy the music industry's most hated, most successful enemy, then shop around to the industry and see if they'll give it a license and help it go legit. Ten years ago, the industry figured it would get a better deal by suing Napster into oblivion (they even tried to sue for the assets of the pension funds that backed the VCs that backed Napster!) and then buy it at firesale prices and run it themselves (except they ended up running it into obscurity by larding it with a bunch of junk that reflected wishful thinking about what the market would bear; meanwhile, competing rogue services took off and filled and expanded the niche Napster had occupied). So here's the question: will Big Content learn from the Great Stupidity of 1999, or are they so emboldened by their domination of the legislative and judicial arms of the world's governments that they'll once again kill the most successful rogue operation and leave yet another niche for yet another group of even-less-cooperative rogues to fill? Update:: Here's The Pirate Bay's Brokep on the subject: TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be the interesting part. It's not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site. As all of you know, there's not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It's the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen. We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen! If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us. Listed company buys The Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK (Thanks, Kullin!) Previously: Pirate Bay retrial over judge bias denied - Boing Boing Pirate Bay founders launch beta of "The Video Bay" - Boing Boing Pirate Bay founder proposes to pay his fine with tiny, expensive ... Swedish Pirate Party membership surges after Pirate Bay verdict ... Pirate Bay judge had conflict of interest: mistrial? - Boing Boing Pirate Bay anthem for your remixing pleasure - Boing Boing Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm: Day 1 - Boing Boing Brit mobile operators blocking Pirate Bay - Boing Boing

Michael Jackson -- unrecognizable motivations and constant ruination Posted: 29 Jun 2009 11:50 PM PDT My friend Bob Rossney has a wonderful piece about Michael Jackson's death, one that made me consider MJ's career in a new light. The saddest thing about Jackson was not just that his fame ruined him, it's that it continued ruining him even after he was essentially finished as an artist. In the last decade of his life he was no longer a great singer or a talented composer or a brilliant choreographer; he was someone who had once been all those things and was now Michael Jackson. Here was a guy whose entire existence from early childhood had been wrapped up with what happened when he did things that made other people happy and excited. And that was unavailable to him. He still could make people happy and excited by showing up and having his picture taken, but that's all he had left. Someone on the WELL used a word about Jackson's probable history as a child molester that made me stop and think: "unforgiveable." It strikes me that it never even occurred to me whether or not to forgive Michael Jackson. In my mind, he was so far away from normative that the question of forgiveness seems totally irrelevant. Not that his no longer really being human in any meaningful sense justified his actions, or mitigated the harm he did, but that it makes no more sense to judge the morality of his actions than it would to judge Henry Darger's. Their creepiness, sure. But this was a man (it's a mark of how profoundly damaged Michael Jackson was that it feels strange to call him "a man", just as it feels strange to recognize that when he died he was older than the President of the United States) who spent every day of his life embedded in a matrix of perverse incentives. The terrain of his personal landscape was unrecognizable. I can understand the choices that my cat makes more deeply than I could understand the ones Jackson made. Some thoughts on Michael Jackson (via Making Light)

New Space Opera 2: sf stories with sweep Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:47 PM PDT Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan's new anthology The New Space Opera 2 came out today, featuring all original stories by me, John Scalzi, Robert Charles Wilson, Jay Lake, Garth Nix, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Moon, Justina Robson and many others. My story, "To Go Boldly," is a look at the LARPing ethic that lurks under the skin of any space navy. The New Space Opera 2: All-new stories of science fiction adventure (via Scalzi)

LA's vegan restaurants are full of egg Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:43 PM PDT QuarryGirl.com sent undercover agents to many of LA's vegan restaurants and ordered take-out food, spiriting it away on ice in sealed bags, then they conducted their own tests for trace amounts of animal products. Turns out that a lot of Thai vegan meat-substitutes are made with egg and other animal products (but seitan and tofu aren't). This kind of elaborate, science-based, complicated investigations into factual questions that matter intensely to small groups of people is one of the things that we mean when we say "citizen journalism." Posing as owners of a new LA area vegetarian restaurant, we arrived at Bodhi and asked to speak with a customer service manager. We were quickly introduced to a helpful lady who was ready to advise us on what products to buy. She was either the manager or the owner, and most definitely the senior person on-premise at that time. She showed us to a freezer of "veggie chicken", and we checked the ingredients on the label (all vegan). We asked her why some products have a better mouth texture than others, even though they have no eggs listed as ingredients, and after a long conversation and questions, she said the following: "We buy most of this veggie meat from a manufacturer in Taiwan. It's produced for the Taiwanese and Chinese vegetarian market then re-labeled for export, often to the USA. I do know of times when things have been labelled incorrectly, but I do my best to make sure that what they send me is what they say it is." Upon further questioning, she kindly gave us the email address of her contact in Taiwan. She specifically asked that we didn't mention Bodhi Vegetarian Supply when we contacted them, and so we're not disclosing the name of the manufacturer here. laboratory tests of vegan restaurants in la (via Waxy)

Run a TOR node, help Iranians and others keep their privacy Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:34 PM PDT Want to do something more meaningful for Iran's dissidents than turning your Twitter avatar green? EFF would like you to run a TOR bridge or relay, which will allow Iranians, and others around the world, to communicate with enhanced privacy and secrecy. More sophisticated users can skip this paragraph, but for the rest, here's the basic outline. Tor (an acronym of "The Onion Router") is free and open source software that helps users remain anonymous on the Internet. Normally, when accessing websites, your computer asks for and receives a webpage out in the open, a process that exposes your IP address, the URL of the website, and the contents of the site, among other information to third parties. When accessing websites while using Tor, your computer essentially whispers its requests for a website, to another computer, which passes the request on to another computer, which passes it on to another computer, which passes it onto the computer where the website is hosted; the reply returns in the same, chain-message manner. The whispers are encrypted, so that neither outside authorities, nor the computers in the middle of the chain, can tell what is being said, and to whom. And the website itself does not have your IP address either. Internet users in Iran are using Tor to both (a) circumvent censorship systems and (b) remain anonymous while reading and writing on the Internet. Both are critically important to the safety of protesters, many of whom fear retaliation from the government. Preliminary reports indicate that use of the Tor client in Iran has increased in the days after the contested election. Whatever you think of Mousavi, I suspect that we all agree that Iranian citizens should be allowed to communicate without being spied upon by their governments (if only Americans enjoyed this right!). Help Protesters in Iran: Run a Tor Bridge or a Tor Relay Previously: Iran Election Crisis: 10 Significant Web Videos - Boing Boing Social media in times of political crisis: six "lessons learned ... Iran: Tim Shey on Observing Social Unrest Online at 32000 feet ... Iran: Neda (warning: graphic video) - Boing Boing Lazyweb: turn the new version of Opera into an unstoppable grid of ... Iran SMS networks "mysteriously" fail right before elections ... Iran: What went wrong in the elections - Boing Boing Persepolis 2.0: fan-art story about Iran elections - Boing Boing Super-filtered #IranElection info for the easily overwhelmed ...

Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:29 PM PDT Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted "Tourist Remover," a service that takes the stray tourists out of your shots of famous landmarks. "Tourist Removed" is a web app that will remove other tourists from the photos you took of landmarks while on vacation as a tourist. All you have to do is take multiple shots of the same location, and Tourist Remover will only keep the bits that stay the same. It's like diff for photos! "Tourist Remover" cleans up your vacation photos Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Gold farming, real money trades banned in China Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:27 PM PDT The Chinese government has banned all forms of exchange between game economies and cash economies, including the extremely popular Chinese online games that involve buying and selling virtual goods with cash, as well as the infamous practice of gold farming (creating in-game wealth that is sold on to rich foreign players), a practice that is said to employ 400,000 people in China. I've spoken to gold farm researchers in China, the UK and the US, and many believe that the gold farming industry is controlled by Chinese cartels that use language barriers to exclude others from the internal exchanges where gold from one server of a given game is exchanged for gold on another server. Of course, many people who speak Chinese live outside of the Great Firewall, but still, this might the chance that Indonesia and Vietnam (already outsource destinations for Chinese gold farming operations) as well as Eastern Europe to launch their own competing gold farming sector. The ruling is likely to affect many of the more than 300 million Internet users in China, as well as those in other countries involved in virtual currency trading. In the context of online role playing games like World of Warcraft, virtual currency trading is often called gold farming. The most popular form of virtual currency in China is called "QQ coins," a form of virtual credit issued by Tencent.com. Tencent.com, which has about 220 million registered users -- about as many as Facebook -- is quoted in the Chinese government news release as "resolutely" supporting the new rule. The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities. The extent to which the Chinese government will apply its virtual currency rule to online role playing games remains unclear. A report in the English-language China Daily says that in-game gear is not considered virtual currency, so selling virtual items may be allowed to continue. The trading of virtual currency for real cash employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester. China Bans Gold Farming Previously: Real-Money Trades: turning gold-farming into a game company profit ... World of Developmentcraft: academic paper on gold farming as a ... Gold farming makes the NYT - Boing Boing Radio show about gaming in China: propaganda, paranoia and gold ... Gold-farming empire linked to dot-com child abuse scandal - Boing ... In-game cash marketplaces and Napster -- the arbitrage of time ...

Lord of the Rings considered as a D&D game -- webcomic Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:21 PM PDT The DM of the Rings is a webcomic that retells The Lord of the Rings as a D&D campaign played by a group of impatient, juvenile (and hilarious) gamers. The DM of the Rings (via Neatorama)

Classic arcade game animations in Lego Posted: 29 Jun 2009 07:07 PM PDT Michael Hickox's Lego Arcade stop motion animations are fantastic. Check the video at Boing Boing Offworld. "Video: 8-bit arcade classics are back, in Lego form"

Video: vintage Dungeons & Dragons commercial Posted: 29 Jun 2009 07:01 PM PDT Spotted over at Laughing Squid, this early 1980s D&D commercial featuring Jamie "Square Pegs" Gertz and Alan "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" Ruck.

Honduras: Photos of Coup Posted: 29 Jun 2009 04:34 PM PDT Flickr user rbreve has a CC-licensed set of snapshots that document the military coup in Honduras that occurred over the weekend. (via Ethan Zuckerman) Previously: Honduran coup is the first military coup d'etat in the region ... Honduras bans all violent games and toys - Boing Boing

Colorado passes law to allow rainwater harvesting Posted: 29 Jun 2009 01:33 PM PDT In March I pointed to an LA Times story about people in Colorado who were breaking the law by collecting and saving rainwater from their roofs to water their gardens during dry spells. Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her husband maintain. But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways. But the NY Times reports that Colorado passed a couple of laws to make this practice legal. A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants. But the deeper questions about rain are what really gnawed at rain harvesters like Todd S. Anderson, a small-scale farmer just east of Durango. Mr. Anderson said catching rain was not just thrifty — he is so water conscious that he has not washed his truck in five years — but also morally correct because it used water that would otherwise be pumped from the ground. It's Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado

R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions Posted: 29 Jun 2009 01:21 PM PDT Even with the 20% discount Amazon has for R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions, I can't afford it. Retail price is $700. Randy Robert: Crumb's secret fantasies revealed They have little to do with the standard procreative urge, Mr. Crumb admits. He has also said he finds nothing more boring than someone else's sexual obsessions, and yet through his long career the world's most famous underground cartoonist has felt compelled to include his own sex fantasies in his art. He explains it as a compulsive catharsis, while fans call R. Crumb's erotic fantasies the Master at his best. Now Crumb has selected his most intimately revealing comic strips and single page drawings to create a 256 page encyclopedic trip through his sexual psyche. All images were created between 1980 and 2006, and all strips are colored for a lush vibrancy never seen in his comic books. In total the book features 14 complete stories, including My Troubles With Women II, If I Were a King, A Bitchin' Bod and How To Have Fun With a Strong Girl, as well as 62 single page drawings. This signed, slipcased, limited edition of 1,000 copies is a work of art in itself, with every part of the book--case, front and back covers, spine, introduction and pre-introduction pages--created for this project by Robert Crumb. Each book also comes with a print on mould-made age-resistant hahnemuehle paper pulled from an original watercolor by Robert Crumb. The artist admits it's a little scary to see his most fevered obsessions collected and to end like this, but fans will find R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions a fascinating peek inside an often tortured, always brilliantly talented mind, as well as an unparalleled collector's item. R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions

Bats the size of your thumb Posted: 29 Jun 2009 12:46 PM PDT The two bats above are, er, making love. More interestingly is that each is about the size of a moth and weighs less than 5 grams. Scientists recently discovered the small bat species, called an Aellen's long-fingered bat, in a lava tunnel on an island in Africa's Comoros chain. From National Geographic: DNA analysis... confirmed the bat as a unique species. Subsequent genetic tests revealed that the bat is also found on the west coast of the island of Madagascar, said study team member Manuel Ruedi, a curator at the Natural History Museum in Geneva, Switzerland. "Thumb-Size Bat Found in Lava Tunnel"

Video: Michael Jackson's moonwalking inspirations Posted: 29 Jun 2009 12:06 PM PDT Here is a video montage of some of the fantastic dancers that clearly inspired Michael Jackson. (Thanks, Gil Kaufman via Daily Swarm) Previously: Michael Jackson's patented dancing shoes - Boing Boing

Guardians of Russian Art Museums Posted: 29 Jun 2009 11:58 AM PDT Andy Freeberg created a fantastic series of photographs of the female "Guardians of Russian Art Museums." From his artist statement: I found the guards as intriguing to observe as the pieces they watch over. In conversation they told me how much they like being among Russia's great art. A woman in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery Museum said she often returns there on her day off to sit in front of a painting that reminds her of her childhood home. Another guard travels three hours each way to work, since at home she would just sit on her porch and complain about her illnesses, "as old women do." Guardians of Russian Art Museums (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Mexico's Isla De Las Muñecas Posted: 29 Jun 2009 11:22 AM PDT Mexico's Isla De Las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls) near Mexico City looks to be a dark and curious place, filled with old doll parts placed there over 50 years by Don Julián Santana, a hermit who died in 2001. Above is a short video about the place. More from Bizarre: ...The Island Of The Dolls is a shrine to a dead girl who was said to haunt (Santan), and in whose honour he collected dolls, to calm her restless spirit. "There are many stories about why the dolls are here," says Don Julián's cousin, Anastasio, one of several family members who now curate the island, welcome visitors, and charge a token fee to take photos. "Some people claim Don Julián was mad, and that he'd fish dolls out of the canal believing they were real children, and that he could nurse them back to life. But the real story is that, soon after Don Julián arrived on the island, he came to believe this place was haunted by the spirit of a poor young girl who drowned in the canal. So when he saw a doll floating past he took it and put it on a tree, both to protect himself from evil and make the dead girl happy. But one doll wasn't enough; soon Don Julián had made the entire island into a shrine." For decades, Don Julián amassed a huge collection of dolls that had been rejected by their owners, either plucking them out of the canal as they bobbed past, or scavenging toys from rubbish heaps on rare excursions from his secluded home. In later years, locals began to trade old dolls with Don Julián in return for home-grown vegetables, and before his death the hermit's cadaverous collection covered every inch of the island – each unloved toy receiving a second lease of life as part of his surreal shrine. "Mexico's Island of the Dolls"

Video drama about CIA's real project to drug unwitting US citizens with LSD Posted: 29 Jun 2009 11:09 AM PDT Operation Midnight Climax is "a new fictional web series about the true story of the CIA using hookers to test LSD on American Citizens." The year is 1953 and the CIA has just been formed. We meet Jake Kowalski (Quinton Flynn) and his Army buddy Reed Spencer (Todd Cahoon) in an undisclosed location where Jake, now a CIA spook, tells Reed about the government's MKULTRA campaign and the covert plans to administor LSD to unsuspecting brothel patrons while they are "filmed for research purposes," behind two-way mirrors. Reluctantly, Reed follows orders and recruits four lovely lieutenants to help him run the government sponsored brothel: Millie (Meredith Salenger), June (Stephanie Lemelin), Ethel (Jessica Myerson) and Bea (Vernetra Gavin) all must decide if they are good patriots. Is everybody in? Episode 1 is above. Here's the trailer. Wikipedia article about Operation Midnight Climax here. Previously: World's Worst Excerpt -- The Maddest Mad Scientist: The CIA's Dr ... Secret history of psychedelic tests at Army Chemical Center ...

Yuki 7 giveaway Posted: 29 Jun 2009 10:54 AM PDT Artist Kevin Dart kicked off the summer with the trailer for A Kiss From Tokyo starring his sexy female superspy, Yuki 7. Now the much-anticipated book, Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7, will be launched this Friday at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA. The latest release from indie-art house Fleet Street Scandal chronicles the production of this imaginary 1960's spy film franchise. On display will be original Yuki 7 artwork from Kevin Dart, Chris Turnham, Scott Morse, Megan Brain, Don Shank, Elizabeth Ito, Bill Presing, and many more illustrious talents from the animation and fine art communities. The swinging soiree will include the authors, artists, and fans. To celebrate, Fleet Street Scandal has reserved some special treats for a few lucky Boing Boing readers. Enter to win by tweeting the title of your own dream movie and tagging it #yuki7. One grand prize winner will receive a Collector's Edition of the book from a limited run of just 100 copies, which includes a set of 4 exclusive mini prints and a custom slipcase. A second prize winner will receive a signed copy of the book, and a third prize winner will receive a Yuki 7 t-shirt. Contest ends July 4th. Order Fleet Street Scandal's Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7

New picture window for the space station Posted: 29 Jun 2009 09:32 AM PDT The International Space Station will get a new picture window early next year. Called the "Cupola," the new observation platform will be a control point for the space station's robotic arm. It will also serve as the ultimate chill-out room. From NASA: "Crews tell us that Earth gazing is important to them," says Julie Robinson, the ISS Program Scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "The astronauts work hard up there and are away from their families for a long time. Observing the Earth and the stars helps relax and inspire them." Until now, space station astronauts have been confined to looking out small portholes or at best the 20-inch window in the US Destiny Laboratory. The Cupola will dramatically expand their view. "The Cupola's 80-cm diameter circular top window is the largest window ever built for space," says Robinson. "Rather than peering through a little porthole, the Cupola will allow a stunning look at the cosmos and unprecedented panoramic views of Earth. Astronauts will share these views with the world through photographs taken through the windows and posted online." Space Station Room With a View Previously: NASA astronauts answer questions from on board the Space Station ... Monster robot heads for space station - Boing Boing Space Station sightings - Boing Boing

Little Brother wins the Campbell Award -- see you in Lawrence, KS on July 11/12! Posted: 29 Jun 2009 09:29 AM PDT My novel Little Brother has won the Campbell Award for best sf novel of the year (sharing the award with Ian MacLeod's "Song of Time"). The award's given out over the July 9 weekend at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS, and includes free events that are open to the public. Also in attendance will be Ian MacLeod and James Allan Gardner, whose "The Ray Gun: A Love Story" won the Sturgeon award for best short story. (Funny thing: there's another Campbell award, given out with the Hugo Awards, for best new sf writer. I won it in 2000, and as near as anyone can work out, I'm the only writer to have won both!). Hope to see you in Lawrence on July 11/12! James Gunn, director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, has announced winners of the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for the best science fiction novel of the year and the 2009 Theodore Sturgeon Award for the best short science fiction of the year. The Campbell award is shared by Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" (Tor Books) and Ian MacLeod's "Song of Time" (PS Publishing). James Alan Gardner's "The Ray Gun: A Love Story" won the Sturgeon award. The authors will accept their awards July 10 at KU and will be featured at the Campbell Conference on Saturday, July 11, and Sunday, July 12. The Campbell Conference will discuss "What's Old, What's New: The New Space Opera, the New Hard SF, the New Weird." In the afternoon session the three winners will open a discussion on what's new in publishing and its effect on writing and reading. Science fiction writers earn awards for best novels, short story of the year

Mexican jumping bean video Posted: 29 Jun 2009 09:11 AM PDT I enjoyed this short, creative BBC video that tells the story of the Mexican jumping bean. (Via Bits and Pieces) Previously: "MEXICAN JUMPING BEANS ARE REAL!" - Boing Boing

Interview with space suit designer Posted: 29 Jun 2009 08:53 AM PDT Bill Elkins is a pioneer of space suit design. He first entered the field in 1957, making "restraint couches" for astronauts. (And no, those aren't BDSM devices.) Air & Space spoke with Elkins, who is now 80 and still involved in R&D. From Air & Space: Air & Space: How did the first astronaut restraint systems compare to jet pilot systems already in use? Elkins: A jet pilot restraint system has a hard backpan and seat. It mainly is trying to contain the pilot in the seat, in a sitting position. In an astronaut couch you're lying on your back. [In the late 1950s] they were planning a cast, form-fitting, backpan restraint couch for the astronauts. But in tests at high G it was causing substernal pain, where the sternum of the occupant would compress into the chest. I designed a sophisticated hammock supported by a tubular steel frame. It left your body in a more normal, natural form at high G. A&S: What's the biggest challenge in designing an effective space suit? Elkins: Well, a big one is mobility, specifically the joints. If you look at the Apollo [suit] joints, the farther you bent them, the more effort it took and the harder it was to hold that position. Those suits were spring loaded to come back to the neutral position. So it took a constant force to keep them out of neutral, and that was very fatiguing. But when you move a constant volume joint to a new position, no further force is needed. When I left Litton and went to AiResearch, I invented the toroidal joint. Toroids maintain constant volume so long as the centerline remains constant. At AiResearch I designed the EX-1A [suit], the first prototype suit to use toroidal joints, in 1967. It was an outstanding suit. "Space Suits Past and Future" Previously: Sleek new spacesuit design - Boing Boing Old space-suit recycled as experimental satellite - Boing Boing Craphound finds Gemini space suit - Boing Boing Spacesuit Fetish photos - Boing Boing

Fertility interprets regulation as damage and routes around it Posted: 29 Jun 2009 08:46 AM PDT Here's the results from the first-ever survey of European fertility tourism: Hundreds of women over the age of 40 are travelling to fertility clinics in Europe to try to get pregnant because NHS clinics in the UK will not take them, the first-ever Europe-wide study of fertility tourism shows. The research shows considerable movement across Europe, with women seeking out procedures that are banned in their own country. Italian women are crossing the border in droves following tough legal restrictions on IVF imposed in 2004, while large numbers of gay French women bypass a ban by seeking treatment in Belgium. NHS restrictions prompt fertility tourism boom

13 year old kid reviews a 30 year old Sony Walkman Posted: 29 Jun 2009 07:56 AM PDT BBC Magazine gave 13-year-old Scott Campbell a gen-one Walkman in place of his MP3 player for a week, then gathered his impressions on the device: It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette. Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured. I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, "Walkmans eat tapes". So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day Giving up my iPod for a Walkman (Thanks, John!)

Chess set made from vacuum tubes Posted: 29 Jun 2009 05:51 AM PDT On Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob's found this vacuum tube chess-set made by Paul Fryer: "Beautiful! Made of wood, glass and choobs, only seven sets exist." Paul Fryer's Vacuum Tube chess board Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets Previously: Alice Chess Set -- chessmen vanish into opaque blocks when out of ... Chess-set made from nuts and bolts - Boing Boing Chess set made of wireless tech pieces-parts - Boing Boing Xkcd fans bring chess-sets on roller-coasters - Boing Boing Hello Kitty chess - Boing Boing

Recently on Offworld: Everything is Pixelated Posted: 29 Jun 2009 06:37 AM PDT Recently on Offworld neo-retro nostalgia has ruled the roost, with things like a box-art tribute to the 8-bit Lost game that never was, the zen-like recursiveness of 'Playered' (above) from the creator of the 8-bit Keyboard Cat, the latest look at the building blocks of Fez, and the low-bit d-pad block-tracer insanity of the WiiWare's latest Bit.Trip game. Even better, we got a patch that will replace the lead character in your standard Super Mario Bros game with American Elf comic artist James Kochalka, listened to the latest NES rom flyer for NYC's ongoing chiptune showcase Pulsewave, and, finally, stepped away into more polygonal territory to take a deeper look at how Hand Circus's upcoming iPhone platformer Rolando 2 is leading some of the smartest social gaming campaigns in the App Store.

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 29 Jun 2009 05:05 AM PDT • The new iPhone has been jailbroken. But not by you. • Should a steampunk lightsaber have cogs? Dark forces want to know. • Good Lord, they still make the Flowbee? • Joel spotted an animatronic Luxo Jr. • April Julian made a beautiful, delicious-looking iPod cake. Time-to-Portal-reference: 7 comments. • Moritz Wolpert's synthesizer is not like yours. • Behold! PSP Phone mockups. • Sony released the Signature Vaio Collection. Among the wonders is the world's first $2,000 netbook. We invent a Sony drinking game. • Palm's Pre takes a bite out of Apple in a new Sprint ad. • A kid in England switched his iPod for an ancient Walkman. • The Mac Mini, it rules. • Steorn, hawkers of perpetual motion, follow up with a $400 wand that measures fluctuations in the woo. • The Touch Book is a curious convertible netbook.

You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Inbox too full?
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610