Friday, July 3, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Anti-paparazzi handbag

Posted: 03 Jul 2009 01:56 AM PDT


This prototype handbag detects camera flashes and emits a powerful, obscuring strobe that is meant to confound paparazzi. Of course, if there were four paps shooting at once (as there usually seem to be!), it would just ruin one of the four shots.

Last year on July 4, we were walking down the beach in Santa Monica and we saw a pap stop his car in traffic, jump out, run up to the passenger window of a car and start shooting. It turned out Courtney Love and a friend were in the car, enjoying a drive.

We chased the pap back to his car and paced him in the snail-traffic with our cameras, snapping pictures of him as he crawled to the next traffic light.

Anti-Paparazzi Clutch Bag

India decriminalizes same-gender sex

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:07 PM PDT


The Times of India is calling it "India's Gay Day." A ruling on Thursday overturned a colonial law nearly 150 years old that describes sex acts between two persons of the same gender as an "unnatural offense."

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence. Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.
India media hails gay sex ruling (BBC). See also: Mumbai gays' long fight for recognition (BBC). Below: image from WAtoday: "A eunuch kisses another member of the transgender, gay and lesbian communities as they celebrate the Indian court decision." (thanks, Antinous!)

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Scientists tour the Creationism Museum

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:37 PM PDT

Tony sez, "Recently, a group of paleontologists were in town for the North American Paleontological Convention at the University of Cincinnati, and decided to take a field trip to the Creation Museum just across the river, in Kentucky. My aunt went to cover it for AFP, and I had the doubly good fortune of living just a stone's throw away, so I tagged along to see what these guys were up to. It was an eyeful, to say the least. Gorgeous facilities with amazingly engaging displays and animatronics, and at least a few hundred cubic cubits of bad science and misinformation. One young lady stood, furious, and grumbled, 'It's bullshit. Bullshit pretending to be science.' Anyone who finds themselves in the Cincinnati area with a few bucks, hours, and brain cells to burn should check it out, and see what the scientific community is up against in terms of informing the public."
Arnie Miller, a palentologist at the University of Cincinnati who was chairman of the convention, said he hoped the tour would introduce the scientists to "the lay of the land" and show them firsthand what's being put forth in a place that has elicited vehement criticism from the scientific community...

"And there was a feeling of unhappiness, too, about the extent to which mainstream scientists and evolutionists are demonized -- that if you don't accept the Answers in Genesis vision of the history of Earth and life, you're contributing to the ills of society and of the church."

Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour. "This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

(Thanks, Tony!)

(Image: (AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)

Previously:


German cemetery nixes sexualized tombstone for sex-worker/advocate's grave

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:33 PM PDT

A tombstone for the famed German sex-worker and advocate Domenica Niehoff has been turned down as too sexual by the cemetery where she was buried.

The 77-year-old artist Tomi Ungerer's parting gift to his friend Domenica Niehoff was to be a gravestone featuring two ample pink marble boulders in homage to her famously top-heavy figure. But those responsible for the Garden of Women cemetery, resting place of Hamburg's most famous women, turned his design down, the paper reported...

Ungerer and Niehoff were friends for decades, and even shared a flat for a while in 1984. He published drawings of Niehoff and her colleagues in a book entitled "Guardian Angels of Hell" at the time...

Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009.

Famous prostitute's gravestone deemed too 'slutty' (Thanks, Rosa!)

Logo for "Silence of the Chips" program to give off-switches to RFIDs

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:29 PM PDT

Inspired by this European Digital Rights Initiative article on "The Silence of the Chips" (a proposal to redesign your radio-enabled ID cards so that you can control when they work and when they're switched off), Oneillkza created this CC-BY logo for the idea, and made a CafePress tee in case you wanted to add it to your sartorial repertoire.

One of the most important action point is the launch of "a debate on the technical and legal aspects of the 'right to silence of the chips', which has been referred to under different names by different authors and expresses the idea that individuals should be able to disconnect from their networked environment at any time."

This is one of the main actions of the plan in order to allow the usage of the RFID while respecting privacy and the protection of personal data, two fundamental rights of the EU.

Silence of the Chips (Flickr)

Silence of the Chips (CafePress)

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Statue of Liberty photoshopping contest

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:25 PM PDT


The photoshoppers at Worth1000 have found some remarkably fertile territory in today's contest, to remix the Statue of Liberty -- see, for example, Lady Liberty on the Launching Pad, BFF with Jesus of Rio, Yee-HAW!, Window Washer and Evil Monster.

Cliche Hell 18 - Statue of Liberty

Raul Gutierrez: new limited-edition photo print set released

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 04:17 PM PDT

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Raul Gutierrez is one of my favorite photographers. I particularly love his images of Tibetan life, like the Kham logging camp above. I've traveled to some of the same places, and Raul's work captures these scenes in a different way than my eyes remember. He says:
For the past fifteen years, I have been making pilgrimages to the deserts and mountains of China's western borders, focusing on Tibetan and Uyghur communities. These remote frontier regions are laced with contested geographies where religious and cultural legacies confront powerful economic and political transformations.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

20x200 just released a collection of four 11x14 prints from his "Travels Without Maps" project. You can buy them as a set, or individually. Truly beautiful work. (thanks, Sara Distin)

Previously:


Larry King "interviews" Paul Krassner

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 02:41 PM PDT


Ever the happy prankster, Paul Krassner "met" with Larry King for an interview.

This video was made to promote Paul's new book: Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today.

A mock interview between Paul Krassner and Larry King by Andy Thomas. (Thanks, Doug Rushkoff!)

RoboGeisha trailer is awesome, includes weaponized tempura shrimp

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:15 PM PDT

Direct link to video. There is no part of this trailer that is not made of awesome. A robot geisha transforms into a tank. Two robot geishas (I guess) spew poison milk (don't ask) out of their titties at an opponent. A girl gets stabbed to death in the butt with a giant sword. Robot girls make giant swords pop out of their butts, presumably with which to stab other people in their butts. "Bust Machine Gun." And a dude is blinded with tempura shrimp.

robo.jpg

All this and more in the trailer for Noboru Iguchi's new film RoboGeisha - you may recall his work on similarly-themed films Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police. According to the website, the film will be "in theatre fall 2009." (thanks, bobby ciraldo, via geektyrant)

robogeisha.png

Books as planters

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 01:38 PM PDT

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BB pal Tara McGinley spotted these delightful planter kits, called Honbachi, from Japan, containing the plant, soil, and a hollowed-out book. Looks like it would be fun and easy to DIY too! Book planters

Boing Boing Video review: Joel tries the Sigma DP2 camera

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 02:10 PM PDT

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube / View large at boingboingvideo.com)

Joel Johnson writes over at Boing Boing Gadgets,

Should you buy the Sigma DP2? Only if you're in love with the sensor. While it's definitely a better choice than its predecessor and is not without its manual charms, its high price puts it in range of DSLRs and other cameras that come without as many limitations.

Looking through a glass viewfinder is such a treat, though—too bad it doesn't seem to actually line up very well with the actual pictures.

Join the discussion on this video over at Boing Boing Gadgets, where Joel has also uploaded a slideshow of unretouched images from the DP2!

@BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 01:07 PM PDT


(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

Laurie Anderson's Language Is A Virus video

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:23 PM PDT



Cory's post about the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, one of my fave concert films too, reminded me of Laurie Anderson's fantastic Home Of The Brave movie. I distinctly remember seeing it for the first time when I was 14 at a midnight showing in my town's art house cinema and feeling very... avant garde. That was my first exposure to William S. Burroughs, whose quote "Languags is a virus from outer space" inspired the song performed in the clip above. Unfortunately, Home of the Brave never saw an official DVD release, just VHS and laserdisc. But according to Anderson's site, a DVD film/video box set collection of her work is on the horizon.

Home of the Brave (MP3 soundtrack)
Home of the Brave (VHS)
Previously:


Alan Watts on enjoying the spectacle of self-importance

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:45 PM PDT

Christopher Ryan wrote a short profile of Alan Watts for Psychology Today. He included this quote from Watts' about the self-importance of humans:
200907021244 "The point is that rapport with the marvelously purposeless world of nature gives us new eyes for ourselves – eyes in which our very self-importance is not condemned, but seen as something quite other than what it imagines itself to be. In this light, all the weirdly abstract and pompous pursuits of men are suddenly transformed into natural marvels of the same order as the immense beaks of the toucans and hornbills, the fabulous tails of the birds of paradise, the towering necks of the giraffes, and the vividly polychromed posteriors of the baboons… Seen thus, the self-importance of man dissolves in laughter."
Alan Watts: priest, scholar, monk, author, trickster guru

NCBI ROFL: terrific blog about funny and odd scientific publications

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:59 PM PDT

My pal and IFTF colleague Alex Pang just turned me on to NCBI ROFL, a hilarious blog written by two molecular and cell biology grad students at UC Berkeley in which they point out funny, bizarre, and questionable biomedical research articles. NCBI stands for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a national research organization that also houses databases of published scientific papers. Alex says, "The case studies on accidental condom inhalation, the article on the dangers of beards in microbiology labs, and the study of canned cat food evaluation techniques are all must-reads. However, I think the article title 'Inappropriate use of a titanium penile ring: An interdisciplinary challenge for urologists, jewelers, and locksmiths' may be the best thing ever written." From a post today excerpting a paper on "the nature of navel fluff:"
Hard facts on a soft matter! ... The hypothesis presented herein says that abdominal hair is mainly responsible for the accumulation of navel lint, which, therefore, this is a typically male phenomenon. The abdominal hair collects fibers from cotton shirts and directs them into the navel where they are compacted to a felt-like matter. The most abundant individual mass of a piece of lint was found to be between 1.20 and 1.29 mg (n=503). However, due to several much larger pieces, the average mass was 1.82 mg in this three year study. When the abdominal hair is shaved, no more lint is collected. "

From the materials and methods: "The author first observed the accumulation of navel fluff in his early 20s. Despite thorough body hygiene including a daily morning shower, the navel filled with lint over the day. The author collected 503 pieces of navel fluff since approximately March 2005 with a total weight of almost 1 g... ...In order to investigate the role of the abdominal hair, the author also shaved his belly for this study."
NCBI ROFL

New Orleans jazz trumpet icon Kermit Ruffins on barbecuing

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 01:12 PM PDT

Wikipedia Commons E E3 Kermit Ruffins
Trumpet player Kermit Ruffins is an icon of New Orleans jazz. His sensational Rebirth Brass Band is a jazz/funk musical extravaganza that must be experienced live for full effect. Ruffins is also the founder of the jazz quintet Barbecue Swingers and is famous for firing up his grill at their shows in NOLA. In celebration of the July 4 tradition of grilling out, Putumayo World Music Blog interviewed Ruffins about his passion for the BBQ pit. Ruffins is featured on Putumayo's New Orleans compilation and also Putumayo Kids' New Orleans Playground CD, which I heartily recommend. From Putumayo (photo by dsb nola):
Where did the name "Barbecue Swingers" come from?
Kermit Ruffins: From tailgating. I started tailgating at Vaughn's during break-time so the guys could have something to eat. So one morning I woke up and said "Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Kings," but by the middle of the evening I had changed it to "Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers." I was having so much fun barbecuing during the show that it just hit me: "Barbecue Swingers".

So you originally were barbecuing to have some hot food at the shows, then the idea just caught on?
Kermit Ruffins: Yep, the tailgating started [it] all. I would cook hot sausage for the guys during break time, and whatever was left over, we would give it to the fans. Then I bought a big grill and started cooking for everyone, still up [to] today!

BK: Do you have any recipes or tips you would like to share with us?
Kermit Ruffins: I like to use a pan. I cook a lot of things in the pan - shrimp, fish, chicken, anything. Just a little olive oil, Tony Chanceries', granulated garlic, thyme, and a little beer. Wrap it tight for an hour and a half; it's like cooking in the oven. After, if you want, you can put them on the grill so they get that pecan wood taste.
"July 4th BBQ Essentials from New Orleans Legend Kermit Ruffins"

SEC boss told underling to stop investigating Madoff in 2004, then marries Madoff's niece

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:52 PM PDT

Funny coincidence: The SEC's Eric Swanson, who told his underling lawyer to stop looking into Bernie Madoff's questionable activities in 2004, married Bernie's niece Shana Madoff in 2007.

By the way, in April Shana contacted Wall Street Prison Consultants, a firm that "gives advice to future inmates on how to survive prison time and win an early release." According the the firm's website, Shana can "learn the ropes of federal prison" including: "Prevent Being RAPED, Prison Living Conditions, The Daily Prison Grind, Your 1st Day What To Bring With, Inmate Personal Property, Inmate Etiquette & Politics, Dealing With Other Inmates, Avoiding and Spotting Informants, Dealing With Gang Members, Defusing A Confrontation, Prison Slang & Lingo,   Avoiding Bad Prison Jobs, Getting A Lower Bunk Pass, Getting A Soft Shoe Permit."

Staffer at SEC Had Warned Of Madoff

Deduct your Ponzi scheme losses

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:04 PM PDT

The IRS will let you deduct your losses from Ponzi scheme ripoffs. No word on whether losses due to the wire, the pigeon drop, advance payment or three card monte are allowable, but I'm gonna claim 'em anyway.
The IRS has announced it will allow favorable ordinary loss treatment for investment theft losses. Basically, such losses occur when your money is never actually used for the intended purpose of acquiring investment assets.

Instead, the money is hijacked by the perpetrator of a fraud. The classic example is the so-called Ponzi scheme where money collected from later "investors" is used to cover "income distributions" and "withdrawals" paid to earlier "investors" without any investments ever actually being made.

Taxpayer-friendly ordinary loss treatment takes some of the sting out of Ponzi scheme losses. Unfortunately, however, there are plenty of victims who can benefit from the IRS's enlightened attitude. Not only did Bernie Madoff lose some $65 billion of investors' money, but other similar frauds have since come to light. The sad truth is, Ponzi losses are more widespread than you might think.

Tax Breaks for Ponzi-Scheme Victims (via Consumerist)

Andy Paiko's wunderkammer of glass sculpture

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:41 AM PDT

Img Art Seismograph1 Img Art Bigsyringe


Andy Paiko's glass sculptures and machines are absolutely breathtaking. Top left, a functional glass seismograph. Top right, a 5.5 foot long syringe. Other favorites include a 24-carat gold-plated coyote skull encased in a glass vessel, an animal spine inside a glass tube sculpture, and the incredible kinetic sculpture seen in the video above. Andy Paiko Glass

Photos of famous people with their faces turned upside down

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 01:07 PM PDT

Busheadflip Page after page of this unsettling effect applied to well-known folks. (However, the photo of James Earl Jones looks about the same. And I guess you could argue that George W. Bush looks more distinguished). Celebrities upside down pictures

Heather McDougal on black widow spiders

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:04 AM PDT

Heather McDougal, who writes about curiosities and wonders of nature on her blog Cabinet of Wonders, has a good essay about black widow spiders, which have infested her new trailer.
200907021101Unlike brown recluse spiders, whose venom is cytotoxic, meaning it is meant to slow down the prey, partially digesting the tissues and making for failure of the prey's systems, the black widow spider's venom is based on a neurotoxin, which I would much prefer. In mammals, when they are bitten by a spider with cytotoxic venom, it means the tissue surrounding the bite turns necrotic (dies) and is often unable to heal afterwards. There are some truly horrific pictures on the Internet of brown recluse spider bites several months on, which I would rather not contemplate.

The venom of a black widow, being a neurotoxin, has a more widespread effect, entering the bloodstream and being deposited at the nerve endings where the endings insert into the muscles. This causes intense, painful cramping and muscle spasms, and is very painful. It lasts a few days and then disperses, leaving only a few minor symptoms - spasms, tingling, nervousness and weakness - to remember her by. For me - though I would not want to encounter a black widow bite - the biggest fear has been for my children, because the smaller the body mass, the more likely the venom is to cause shock to the system and death.

Heather McDougal on black widow spiders

Man who walked into Burning Man fire loses lawsuit

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:01 AM PDT

Anthony Beninati sued the organizers of Burning Man because he said they failed to restrain him from walking into a fire. He lost the lawsuit.
Beninati's complaint stated that when he approached the bonfire, the flames were still roughly 40 feet high.  He walked around the bonfire three times, each time "circl[ing] a little closer to the fire."  Eventually, he walked still closer, into what was variously described as an area of "embers," "low flames," "burning remnants," and "a spot where there was fire on either side of him."  Basically, he had walked inside a huge bonfire.  Then, as you might have expected, he tripped on something and fell into the actual fiery part of the bonfire, burning his hands.

In his deposition, Beninati admitted he knew "fire was dangerous and caused burns" before he walked into one.  He knew there was some possibility of falling into said fire.  He admitted no one affiliated with the defendants asked him to walk into the fire or told him it would be safe to do so.  But he testified that he did not think it would be dangerous to walk into the fire, although he knew it "was not 'absolutely safe, because there [was] a fire present.'"  And, as noted, fire is hot.

Court: Man Burned at Burning Man Assumed Risk of Being Burned by Burning Man

People getting stuck on freshly tarred street

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:04 AM PDT


Like flypaper for humans. (Via Arbroath)

Today on Offworld: war-driving for treasure, cloud gaming, Dylan in The Sims

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:01 AM PDT

treasureworld1.jpgToday on Offworld we took an extensive look at Treasure World (above), the just-released DS game that turns the ubiquitous cloud of Wi-Fi signals around you into collectible treasures -- it's easily one of the most magical game experiences we've had in a while, and expands into an equally amazing array of synced up social-site achievements, and, of all things, a mini-music tracker that lets you compose by arranging your scalped booty. Elsewhere we looked at the first live demo of cloud-gaming service Gaikai, which shows Spore, World of Warcraft and Mario Kart being played, in-browser, from a server 400 miles away, and Microsoft's just-launched Kodu, the 21st century LOGO-like Xbox 360 game that teaches principles of programming logic with simple sentence-structure syntax and lets you build and share up to 4-player minigames. We also stumbled across Crazy Planets, a new Worms-like Facebook game that makes a fighting unit out of you and your friends, and watched the first tech demo video of Robotology from N+ developers Metanet, which, eventually, will be a parkour/grappling hook mashup of Mario Galaxy, Shadow of the Colossus, and Umihara Kawase (!), and, finally saw Bob Dylan's hard-livin' invade The Sims.

Chocolate Waterboarding (food art)

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 09:19 AM PDT

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Artist Stephen J Shanabrook's "Waterboarding" tells the tale of a "peaceful song of a pair of choir boys turned into a silent scream," through "figuratively chocolate-waterboarded choir boy Christmas statues." More on eatmedaily. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Iran: SMS re-activated after 20-day blackout

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 09:21 AM PDT

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Above, confirmation via the Persian equivalent of Digg, Cyrus Farivar has more on the story.

Ian McDonald's brilliant Mars book, DESOLATION ROAD, finally back in print

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 09:11 AM PDT

Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is one of my most personally influential novels. It's an epic tale of the terraforming of Mars, whose sweep captures the birth and death of mythologies, economics, art, revolution, politics. Its publication preceded Kim Stanley Robinson's brilliant Red/Blue/Green Mars books by years, but the two are very good companions, in that McDonald captures almost everything Robinson got (in a third of the number of pages), and adds the poetry and spirituality of Mars in the bargain.

Desolation Road pays homage to David Byrne's Catherine Wheel, to Ray Bradbury's entire canon and to Jack Vance, blending all these disparate creators in a way that surprises, delights, then surprises and delights again. Spanning centuries, the book includes transcendent math, alternate realities, corporate dystopias, travelling carnivals, post-singularity godlike AIs, geoengineering, and mechanical hobos, each integral to the plot.

Pyr Books has done us all the service of bringing this remarkable volume back into print after too long a hiatus (the equally delightful sequel, Ares Express, is out of print and pricey). They sent me a copy that I picked up from the post-box an hour ago, and I've been flipping through it ever since, getting reacquainted with this old and dear friend.

Desolation Road

Previously:



Jamendo open music comes to Moovida open media center

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 08:55 AM PDT

Jutta sez,
Moovida Media Center now offers Jamendo's creative commons music library. Access over 20,000 albums straight from your living room TV!

Moovida, the free and open source media center for Windows and Linux, has integrated Jamendo in its new interface. With the aggregation of Jamendo to its content catalogue, Moovida brings a new dimension to the promotion of free culture: over 20,000 albums by 9500 artists can now easily be browsed on a TV screen, from your living room couch.

On a streamlined and easy-to use interface, the artists' creations are at the heart of Moovida: the artwork and songs are the center of attention and presented in a attractive layout. Also offering free content from other sources, Moovida is the cutting edge application when it comes to media convergence. From photos and videos to music, Moovida presents all types of local or online content in the same place. It transforms a Windows or Linux computer into a real theatre.

Moovida, the free media player - Jamendo (Thanks, Jutta!)
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