The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Brit photographer who shot demolition of flyover arrested for terrorism
- NES controller business-card case
- Sliding/rotating tile-game based on CC-licensed art for MAKERS serial
- Amnesty wants you to join a chat TODAY with Shell over human rights violation in Niger Delta
- Camel's milk chocolate coming to the west
- Chair hand-woven from aluminium
- Syndicated cartoon strip headed for the Commons needs your uploading and tagging help!
- Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom window
- Mariachis covering unlikely songs
- A Few Questions
- Web Zen: Book Zen
- Ads as Soulcatchers
- Jasmina Tešanović: "The Murder of Natalya Estemirova."
- US military blows up piles of poppy seeds to win the “hearts of minds” of Afghan citizens
- Devices for storing your baby
- Aliens invading vintage postcard scenes
- Seeking John Dillinger's preserved privates
- Montreal World Science Fiction Convention program is live
- Brooklyn-based artist Gertrude Berg plays with trash
- Meet Baron Ambrosia, "The Ali G of Food."
- Todd Schorr print by Pressure Printing
- Freak with bullhorn stands on Verizon CEO's lawn berating him over the freak-with-bullhorn-related privacy implications of Verizon's crappy database security
- The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics
- @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
- Websites that sell services to deceive others
- Geodesic dome solar greenhouse for growing vegetables
- Torchwood, reviewed (Metzger likes it)
- 1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines
- Shotgun expert shows his stuff
- Death and Taxes, the 2010 edition
| Brit photographer who shot demolition of flyover arrested for terrorism Posted: 23 Jul 2009 05:12 AM PDT Alex took his camera out to photograph the demolition of a flyover (overpass) in Chatham, England. After refusing to give his identification to two plainclothes people who refused to identify themselves, he was arrested under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (he did explain to the police and the mystery plainclothes people why he was there and what he had photographed, which is more than I would have done). The police officer put him in cuffs and led him down his town's main road and locked him in a police van. Once in the van, he was questioned about his views on terrorism. Later, a policewoman who said that he had caught her in one of his shots felt "intimidated" by him because he was tall (implying, I suppose, that he wouldn't have been arrested if he was shorter -- terrorists take note). Alex has complained to the police Professional Standards Department: Section 44 in Chatham High Street. (Thanks, Mike!) |
| NES controller business-card case Posted: 23 Jul 2009 02:53 AM PDT  These old-school NES controller business card cases will ship in October; GeekStuff4You is taking pre-orders at ¥2,900.00 (about 42.2 Bosnia and Herzegovina Convertible Marka, 85 Samoan Tala or 0.912g of gold). NES Controller Type Card Case (via Akihabara News) Previously:
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| Sliding/rotating tile-game based on CC-licensed art for MAKERS serial Posted: 23 Jul 2009 02:57 AM PDT  As part of the ongoing serialization of Makers, my forthcoming book (late October 2009, from Tor USA and HarperCollins UK), Tor.com has commissioned a series of 81 interlocking, Creative Commons-licensed illustrations from Idiots' Books. Each illustration's four edges line up with any of the other illustrations' edges. Now Tor has released a Flash game that lets you arrange the tiles to form new illustrations, with new tiles being added three times a week, as each new installment comes online. Tile away! |
| Amnesty wants you to join a chat TODAY with Shell over human rights violation in Niger Delta Posted: 23 Jul 2009 02:22 AM PDT Ben from Amnesty sez, Challenge Shell in a live web chat (Thanks, Ben!) |
| Camel's milk chocolate coming to the west Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:41 PM PDT Al Nassma, a Dubai-based camel's milk chocolate company is planning to export its wares overseas to the US and UK. No word on whether any of the enslaved South Asian workers who make the stuff have fallen in the vats. World's first camel-milk chocolates going global (via Consumerist) (Photo: Camel, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Victoria Reay's Flickr stream) |
| Chair hand-woven from aluminium Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:33 PM PDT The Uvula chair is hand-woven from strips of alumnium -- sounds like a fun project for the kids on the weekend, providing you've got some decent hand- and eye-protection around: This Just Inbox: Scream, a hand woven aluminum chair (via IDSA Materials and Processes Section) |
| Syndicated cartoon strip headed for the Commons needs your uploading and tagging help! Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:26 PM PDT  Creative Commons artist and filmmaker Nina "Sita Sings the Blues" Paley sez, "Artist Nina Paley (that's me) and writer Stephen Hersh are freeing 'The Hots,' a daily+Sunday comic strip they produced for King Features Syndicate in 2002-2003. They are making all the strips free under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. But the project needs volunteers to upload the strips one at a time to Wikimedia Commons, where they can be read, shared, and enjoyed by everyone. They also need descriptions and dates; any other relevant information is welcome." The Hots return - and need your help (Thanks, Nina!)
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| Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom window Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:21 PM PDT  At 5AM today -- about an hour ago -- just as my alarm went off, someone in the street below started shouting CALL POLICE! CALL POLICE! I grabbed my phone and went to the window, and saw a man in the street, shouting and looking up at the third-story roof of the office building across the street. Looked over just in time to see a man shinning down the side of the building, holding onto a cable -- probably the co-ax cable. The cable snapped, and the man -- a cat-burglar, apparently -- fell the rest of the way. My wife started calling police while I grabbed my camera. The police-shouter ran over to the fallen burglar and tried to block him, while the burglar screamed, "My leg is broken," and commenced crawling across the street, alternating cries of "My leg is broken" with "I didn't do nothin'." Halfway across, a dog-walker came by, spoke with the police-shouter, the burglar, and went back. When the burglar reached the opposite kerb, he took out his phone and called someone and started shouting "Please come get me, my ankle is broken, just come!" Meantime, a third man -- I think he worked in the office building -- came out and called the police. The burglar continued to insist on his innocence, shouting every time he moved and jarred his leg. Six or seven minutes later, six police cars arrived, and I went back inside. A strange way to start the day. Hope his leg is OK. |
| Mariachis covering unlikely songs Posted: 22 Jul 2009 07:59 PM PDT There's a roundup of YouTube vids over at urlesque, but none so funny as this cover of Sade's "Smooth Operator." (Thanks, Stephen Lenz) |
| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:09 PM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist, started a webcasting company, and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap. 1. You just got change, and you have a Canadian penny. What do you do? a. Demand a real penny, damn it, not one of these cheap knock-offs b. Check with those nearby to see if you really are in Canada, and if so, find out why c. Swallow it, quick, before they find you d. Unwrap it and eat the chocolate 2. You find an eclair in your sock drawer. You: |
| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 03:17 PM PDT  (Image above from Things to Do With Books Other Than Read Them). harry potter pitch
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!) |
| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 02:55 PM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap. So my wife Sally saw this ad on her Facebook page:  Now, this is confusing for many reasons. Most obviously, why does that gothed-out hotula want me to advertise my church so badly? I swear, she's looking right at me. When you click the ad, you end up here, which is a part of Truth Advertising, a direct-mail marketing company that specializes in churches. I'm sure the churches that use this have noble intentions, but there's just something profoundly creepy about it all. The strange meshing of religion and corporate-type business never sits well-- and this works both ways, both when religion is infused with corporate culture or when corporate culture becomes quasi-religious, like some of those Steven Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People weirdos I've met. Plus, and I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but there's some overdone quality about almost everything that tries to mesh religion and mainstream commercial culture that makes things look just a bit off. Maybe it's too many Photoshop filters. I bet, given a lineup of these ads with their copy blocked out, you could pick out the ones for a church and the ones for a godless business. Maybe I'll try praying at a Staples for a while and see how it goes. |
| Jasmina Tešanović: "The Murder of Natalya Estemirova." Posted: 22 Jul 2009 09:05 PM PDT  Image above: Natalya Estemirova, courtesy Human Rights Watch. The following guest essay was written by Jasmina Tešanović. Full text of essay continues after the jump, along with links to previous works by her shared on Boing Boing. See also this related New York Times piece, written by a journalist who knew Ms. Estemirova. On 15 July Natalya Estemirova, 50, was kidnapped and murdered by unknown assailants in the Chechen capital Grozny. The mother-of-one worked for the human rights organisation Memorial and was a close friend of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also murdered in 2006. A human rights activist is killed like a dog, executed, dumped and humiliated in front of the eyes of a million people, who know that what she was saying was true, right, honest and proper. Because, you see, WE ALL DO KNOW THAT. Good and bad guys know Natalya was telling the truth, in Russia, in Chechnya, in US in Europe. And yet we all stay silent about her death. Most of us turn the head the other way, as if it is none of our business, as if it is inevitable, as if it were somebody else's world. Presidents sometimes say: a serious inquiry should be done in this case. Violence on journalists is not permitted. How could they say otherwise? Today when words count almost nothing compared to the escalating violence, to the human annihilation. Where are the movie stars, those celebrities who adopt poor children, sing songs in the deserts, catwalk all the politically correct arenas? Why don't the superstars for once raise their voice and protect ONE peaceful human rights activist -- who in her or his life has done more than the whole constellation of stars shining from their heaven on the global poor? Where is the solidarity, the everyday culture of us normal human beings, who know that the freedom to behave humanely, with all those habeus corpus human rights, is challenged every day in the streets, in the workplaces -- not only in wars, battlefields, mass graves? Why don't people of any city flock out to the squares as they did for the death of Michael Jackson, or some other mass media idol? Have we grown so stupid and blind to allow assassinations to be part of our daily life? Is this our present-day normality, and if so, what of our future? When I hear Natalya speaking, I have no cultural, racial or language misunderstandings to bridge. I know exactly what she is saying, and to whom she is appealing. She is telling us just like Anna Politkovskaya and many other humanist activists, to live in truth, band together and defend the common denominator of basic human rights. You don't need to be Russian or speak Russian to understand that we are all in the same boat. The abuse of civilians by an armed shadow state within the state is happening everywhere. Democratic regimes have abandoned state control over their military machines; the modern gunmen are privatized, offshored, clandestine and deniable. The best voices, the best actions come not from politicians but from relentless activists, journalists, lawyers. These are the Hypatias of 21 first century: the voices of reason and science. They are not gurus, they are not visionaries, they are not leaders, they are not stars. They bear witness with their lives and write what they know first hand. We must be clear and forthright about what it means to all of us, when assassins burn their books and bodies, as witches, as testimonies of uncomfortable truths.
Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here. Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing: - Less Than Human |
| US military blows up piles of poppy seeds to win the “hearts of minds” of Afghan citizens Posted: 22 Jul 2009 01:38 PM PDT  According to antiwar.com, the US military has "dropped several tons of explosives on a field in the Helmand Province, destroying mounds of poppy seeds which had been gathered there." State Department official Tony Wayne says the attacks are part of the campaign to win the "hearts of minds" of Afghanistan's civilian population. He claimed farmers were being "intimidated" into growing poppies instead of wheat, which the US has been attempting to subsidize as an alternative crop.US Bombs Poppy Seeds in Afghanistan 'Show of Force' |
| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 01:11 PM PDT Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. Too bad I don't live in the 1920s or I'd purchase one of these Boggin's Window Cribs, a 2' x 2' x 3' metal box that you could store your baby in at night (kind of like an air conditioner, but for babies). According to The Health-Care of the Baby by Louis Fisher (1920), window cribs were "admirably adapted for city apartments."  Twenty-plus years later, B.F. Skinner made a more sophisticated version, with temperature and humidity controls, clean modernist lines, and no danger of falling several stories down to the sidewalk. (Photo here.) |
| Aliens invading vintage postcard scenes Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:34 PM PDT  Image above: "Two Girls And a Space Crab: Simpatici alieni invadono le cartoline del nonno." From Invading the Vintage, a photoset of space alien invaders 'shopped onto old tourism postcards, uploaded by (posssibly created by?) a Mr. Franco Brambilla. From BeDifferent magazine N.5: MUTATIONS (Italy). (thanks, KodakCB) |
| Seeking John Dillinger's preserved privates Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:41 PM PDT  Celebrity bank robber John Dillinger died on this date, 75 years ago. In honor of the iconic American outlaw, Oxford University Press posted a blog entry about Dillinger's reportedly massive penis, rumored to be stored in formaldehyde at the Smithsonian. The post was penned by Brown University professor Elliott J. Gorn, author of Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One. From OUPblog: "Is It True What They Said About John Dillinger?" (Oxford University Press, thanks Megan Branch!) Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One by Elliott J. Gorn (Amazon) |
| Montreal World Science Fiction Convention program is live Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:56 PM PDT Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention (to be held in Montreal this year) is almost upon us, and the programming committee has put together a kick-ass program, and they've put it online. Here's my program items -- hope to see you there! Oh, and a note to Montrealers: the convention centre WiFi is CAD$395 a day!, so I'm hoping to rent someone's 3G modem, like the Fido Stick modem. I'll pay your whole month's data-tariff and I promise not to download porn or warez or anything else likely to get you in trouble with your ISP. I'll need it from Aug 6-10 (and ideally, I'd like to rent two, so my wife can have one.) If you're headed to the cottage for the weekend or similar, I'd really appreciate it. |
| Brooklyn-based artist Gertrude Berg plays with trash Posted: 22 Jul 2009 12:15 PM PDT Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. I do a "useless lectures" series in Brooklyn, Adult Education, and one of my favorite talks last year was by the delightfully peculiar artist Gertrude Berg. Here are a couple of short films of her doing her thing: In "Waste Carrier," she stores the trash that she uses during the day in a specially designed dress that she wears all over town. In "Pick Up Artist," well, you just have to watch...
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| Meet Baron Ambrosia, "The Ali G of Food." Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:59 AM PDT |
| Todd Schorr print by Pressure Printing Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:50 AM PDT  Timed with the phenomenal Todd Schorr "American Surreal" retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art, the fine artisans at Pressure Printing have issued this mind-blowing hand-stained intaglio print. Funnily enough, this particular artwork, titled "Wish Fulfillment From Another Planet," was like a magnet to me at the exhibition. It's small, powerful, and exquisitely painted. Even with Schorr's huge masterworks all around me at the museum, this is one I kept coming back to. The print (6.375" x 9.5"), in a limited edition of 100 and encased in a resin frame with curved glass, is $395.Todd Schorr's "Wish Fulfillment From Another Planet" by Pressure Printing |
| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:46 AM PDT Pissed off to discover that cell-phone companies leak personal information -- customer addresses, calling records and more -- to sleazy resellers, the Zug.com guy paid a couple bucks to discover the home address of Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. Then he went to Seidenberg cushy mansion and stood on his lawn with a bullhorn, broadcasting: "I'm here on behalf of Verizon customers. PLEASE DO A BETTER JOB PROTECTING YOUR CUSTOMERS' CELL PHONE RECORDS! Everyone has the right to privacy, including you Ivan! When we don't have privacy, then freaks with bullhorns start showing up on our front lawn." How Easy Is It To Get the Private Cell Phone Records and Address of Verizon's CEO? (via Consumerist) |
| The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:46 AM PDT  MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman's influence extended far beyond his famous comic book. He was also the discoverer, mentor, and inspiration to a large number of brilliant artists, filmmakers, comedians, and artists. Here's biographical snippet from the dust jacket of the new book The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics: Harvey Kurtzman discovered Robert Crumb and gave Gloria Steinem her first job in publishing when he hired her as his assistant. Terry Gilliam also started at his side, met an unknown John Cleese in the process, and the genesis of Monty Python was formed. Art Spiegelman has stated on record that he owes his career to him. And he's one of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner's favorite artists.The above is no exaggeration. if you want to know the roots of modern American comedy, you need to study Kurtzman. In addition to his comedic genius, Kurtzman was also a tremendously gifted visual artist as well. This book, written by comic books historians Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, showcases hundreds of examples of Kurtzman's work throughout his career, including many never-before-seen examples of his earlier comics and art school figure studies and landscapes. It's especially interesting to see his conceptual sketches for magazine covers and comic book stories, which show Kurtzman's powerful command of composition and art direction. This is a book worth consulting and treasuring for a lifetime. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics Previously:
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| @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com) Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:08 AM 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 |
| Websites that sell services to deceive others Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:34 AM PDT  I just wrote a piece for GOOD about shady online services that make it easy to lie and cheat. Alibi NetworkDeception, Inc. |
| Geodesic dome solar greenhouse for growing vegetables Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:30 AM PDT  Photo credit: Jim Dunn Treehugger has a slideshow about building a great-looking geodesic dome solar greenhouse for growing vegetables. What do you do when you want to grow your own food, but live here? That's the question my dad wanted to answer when he started this project about a year ago: Living at 7,750 feet above sea level, with a summer growing season of 80 days, at best, between killing freezes, how can you grow your own food? The answer, as it turns out, is pretty cool: A geodesic dome solar greenhouse.Build a Geodesic Dome Solar Greenhouse to Grow Your Own Food |
| Torchwood, reviewed (Metzger likes it) Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:13 AM PDT Richard Metzger has just posted a review of Torchwood: Children of Earth, which just began a five consecutive night run on BBC America and BBC America HD. Snip: Go read the entire review at Dangerous Minds.
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| 1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:01 AM PDT  Gwen of Sociological Images compares a chart used by judges in the 1950s to pick Miss Universe with the 4H market steer charts she used to to see when she was in 4H. First, some people like to suggest that men are programmed by evolution to find a particular body shape attractive. Clearly, if judging women's bodies requires this much instruction, either (1) nature has left us incompetent or (2) cultural norms defining beauty overwhelm any biological predisposition to be attracted to specific body types.1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines |
| Shotgun expert shows his stuff Posted: 22 Jul 2009 09:52 AM PDT This guy needs to hook up with the slingshot sharpshooter. (Via Bits & Pieces) |
| Death and Taxes, the 2010 edition Posted: 22 Jul 2009 11:20 AM PDT  Jess Bachman, creator of the "Death and Taxes" posters I've blogged about before, sends word that the 2010 version has just been released. The posters display an intricate visual representation of where your US tax dollars go. Jess says: I was excited to get this done because it is Obama's first budget and I wanted to see if budget each year was a 'more of the same' process, of if the administration in power really had their hands in its crafting. I can say that the changes from the Bush administration are many, and mostly positive (depending on who you talk to). Public radio no longer gets cut every year, Education, Energy and Health are all up, and get this, there is tons of cuts.... on the military side!More about this year's poster here. Jess is offering a discount to BoingBoing readers: enter 'boing' during checkout to get 50% off if you buy two or more posters.
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With 3,000 camels on its Dubai farm, the company sells chocolates through its farm-attached store as well as in luxury hotels and private airlines. It plans to launch an online shopping facility within a month, Van Almsick said. The farm is controlled by the Dubai government... 
The story of Dillinger's legendary proportions originated with a morgue photo that circulated just after he died. There he is on a gurney, officials from the Cook County Coroner's office gathered around, and the sheet covering him rising in a conspicuous tent at least a foot above his body, roughly around his loins, though truth be told, it looks more like where his naval should be. Probably his arm, rigid in rigor mortis, was under the sheet. No matter. It looked like he died with an enormous hard-on. Newspaper editors quickly realized how readers interpreted the photo, withdrew it, retouched it, then reprinted it in later wire-service editions, with the sheet nice and flat against the dead man's body. 
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