The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Month of sf authors on SF Message Board
- Live EFF Web event: How to make technology safe for use by dissidents in authoritarian regimes?
- Annie Lennox gives her masters to mashup artist DJ Earworm
- British fraud cop quits job, buys huge databse of stolen identities, charges fees to people who want to know if their details are in the database
- University prof wants to put drinking on the curriculum
- High school student suing Amazon over book-deletions which rendered his study-notes useless
- (BB Video) Send Me a Link: The Art of Cassandra C. Jones
- Mandy Godiva, by Dean Yeagle
- Is this the first D-pad?
- Camille Rose Garcia print, with all money going to charity
- The Book vs. The Kindle: funny videos about the Kindle's user rights shortcomings.
- Six-potato gatling gun
- UFO Expo promises "compelling theories and evidence," also "Crab Cakes and Sliced Fruit Tray."
- James D. Griffioen's photos of Detroit, "the disappearing city"
- @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
- Skype's future unknown as intellectual property battle between founders and eBay continues.
- Kurt Andersen interviewed about his book, Reset
- Philadelphia needs an Eraserhead statue
- Giant jellyfish invade Japan
- The sad fate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster
- Coconut headphones -- BBG
- Strange Architectural Typeface Choice
- Ragtime covers of 80s tunes
- Jesus in caked-on cooking grease
- Sneakers as MIDI controllers
- "Adult toy" for dogs
- GPS jammer plugs into cigarette lighter
- Books by people who have raised apes in their homes
- Let Go, Let Brown
- Movie recommendation: People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe
| Month of sf authors on SF Message Board Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:37 PM PDT Dead-Air sez, "At the Science Fiction Message Board the results are in for our 2009 'Author August' post-a-thon extravaganza! The regular members, along with some visitors lured by news of the upcoming event, have nominated a wildly diverse range of authors. From SF's earliest days to the latest hot new talent, this 4th annual event has as wide-ranging a list of writers as anyone could wish to see. Every day during August a different author will be spotlighted in their own thread in our Author Central forum. We encourage all to visit on that day and post photographs, reminiscences, cover scans, links to appropriate sites, reviews, and other reactions. With 31 days and 31 authors there's a chance to share what you know as well as learn new things, so come and join in the fun!" 8/1 Alfred Bester; 8/2 William Tenn (Phillip Klass); 8/3 Gene Wolfe; 8/4 E.T.A. Hoffman; 8/5 Norman Spinrad; 8/6 Lucy Sussex; 8/7 Robert J. Sawyer; 8/8 Phillip Reeve; 8/9 Ian McDonald; 8/10 Ken MacLeod; 8/11 Dan Simmons; 8/12 S.M. Stirling; 8/13 Sean McMullen; 8/14 James Blish; 8/15 Kelley Eskridge; 8/16 Octavia Butler; 8/17 Charles Stross; 8/18 Colin Kapp; 8/19 Fritz Leiber; 8/20 Nicola Griffith; 8/21 Hal Clement; 8/22 J.G. Ballard; 8/23 Alison Sinclair; 8/24 E.C. Tubb; 8/25 Neal Asher; 8/26 Karl Schroeder; 8/27 Jack L. Chalker; 8/28 John Varley; 8/29 Alan Dean Foster; 8/30 David J. Williams; 8/31 Kurd LasswitzAuthor August 2009! (Thanks, Dead-Air!) |
| Live EFF Web event: How to make technology safe for use by dissidents in authoritarian regimes? Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:35 PM PDT  Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Iranians protesting the results of the recent election found an outlet and a means of organizing with the Internet, and showed that new digital media can help free speech and fight repression globally. But what happens now the headlines and the Twitter trends have died down? Join EFF for a panel discussion Monday Aug. 3 from 7pm - 9pm PDT. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can find details on attending in person here. If not, you will be able to watch the live stream here. Let's make technology useful and safe for netizens in authoritarian regimes!" BayFF on August 3: Iranian Protests and Digital Media (Thanks, Rebecca!) |
| Annie Lennox gives her masters to mashup artist DJ Earworm Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:32 PM PDT Sharna sez, "Already known for her stand against criminalizing music downloaders, now Lennox has given DJEarworm her multi-track masters to mash up. The resulting track 'Backwards/Forwards' is stunning and is featured on his site and hers and on both artists' youtube channels." Annie Lennox: Backwards/Forwards (Thanks, Sharna!) |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:29 PM PDT A former British fraud cop has assembled a database of 4,000,000 British identities, including credit card numbers and PINs, seemingly by buying data from hackers and phishers. Now he's selling access to the database to panicked members of the public who want to know if their identities have been stolen. Highly sensitive financial information, including credit card details, bank account numbers, telephone numbers and even PINs are available to the highest bidder...Four million British identities are up for sale on the internet (via Making Light) |
| University prof wants to put drinking on the curriculum Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:24 PM PDT John McCardell (a president emeritus and a professor of history at Middlebury College) in the Atlantic argues that the US national drinking age of 21 is a failure -- it has failed to stop underage drinking, and has instead driven it underground and made it more dangerous. I grew up with Ontario's drinking age of 19, but I started drinking at parties and so on at about 14 or 15, often to bad result; ironically, once I was old enough to drink in bars, I drank a lot less, as the culture in bars was generally different from the parties I'd drunk at until then. The way our society addresses this problem has been about as effective as a parachute that opens on the second bounce. Clearly, state laws mandating a minimum drinking age of 21 haven't eliminated drinking by young adults--they've simply driven it underground, where life and health are at greater risk. Merely adjusting the legal age up or down doesn't work--we've tried that already and failed. But federal law has stifled the ability to conceive of more creative solutions in the only place where the Constitution says such debate should happen--in the state house--because any state that sets its drinking age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its federal highway funds. This is called an "incentive."Teach Drinking (via Kottke) |
| High school student suing Amazon over book-deletions which rendered his study-notes useless Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:21 PM PDT High school student Justin Gawronski is suing Amazon for deleting his Kindle copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, because in so doing, they messed the annotations he'd created to the text for class (the annotations say things like "remember this paragraph for class" but the paragraph in question has been deleted). The case is intended to become a class-action on behalf of other Kindle owners whose annotations were deleted by Amazon when it improperly deleted an infringing copy of the Orwell book from Kindles. Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit to me. PDF: UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE (via Engadget) Previously: |
| (BB Video) Send Me a Link: The Art of Cassandra C. Jones Posted: 30 Jul 2009 05:22 PM PDT (Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)
In this episode of Boing Boing Video, we visit the Ojai studio of artist Cassandra C. Jones, whose "Google-found" digital photo collages and video loops explore how we "create, communicate with, and consume photography in today's 'remix culture.'" San Francisco gallery Baer Ridgway is hosting a solo exhibition of her work, titled "Send Me A Link," August 1st - September 5th 2009. Some of the works included are constructed by compiling hundreds of professional and amateur snapshots of the same subject taken by different people. Ranging from full-color lightning bolts to old black and whites of horses jumping over a fence, she links them in ways that depict motion, line and non-linear narrative. Other pieces are made by deconstructing single photographs, removing their backgrounds and reducing them to isolated shapes. Jones then duplicates and arranges these forms to create compositions where singularity and multiplicity exist simultaneously. There is both an order and a chaos present in the body of work, which overall asks the question, what does it mean to organize and interpret imagery in the digital realm, where the archives of visual information are in a constant state of growth and evolution?More images after the jump, and you may also want to read this article about her work today in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 03:09 PM PDT   In addition to meeting comic book historian Craig Yoe last night, I was also lucky to meet artist Dean Yeagle, who was in attendance. Dean is an incredible illustrator with an impressive resume. I've long been a fan of his work and was thrilled when he gave me a copy of his new book, Mandy Godiva, which was a big hit at Comic Con last week. The images above are from Mandy Godiva (click images for full size), and are some of the only pages that wouldn't get a NSFW label. You can see more of Dean's work and buy his books at his website, Caged Beagle. |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 03:09 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 and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap. To a certain group of dedicated dorks, videogame controllers and their history is fiercely interesting, even to the point of having dedicated T-shirts. It's to those folks I present this discovery: this looks like it may be the first product (image from a 1977 ad) with a joypad-like device, used for user input (enlargement mine):  Ah, the CALCUPEN. Now, I know Gunpei Yokoi usually gets credit for those little 4-way rocker switches first used on the famous Game & Watch series, but it sure looks like our little Calcupen has five of the things running up its nerdy spine there. Granted, they're used for numerical input as opposed to direction control, but it's essentially the same device. I bet, if one was lucky enough to find one, a Calcupen could be wired to act as an old Nintendo controller! Maybe the Calcupen is really that missing link between nerd productivity culture and nerd time-wasting culture. I smell a dissertation. |
| Camille Rose Garcia print, with all money going to charity Posted: 30 Jul 2009 09:13 PM PDT  BB pal Kirsten Anderson, proprietor of Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery, says: Roq la Rue Gallery has announced the release of a new print by Camille Rose Garcia, entitled " 'Lil Elorphant." Published by Roq la Rue, the entire proceeds of the sale of this print goes to charity, The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. I just got back from visiting the Trust in Kenya and was really amazed by the hard working staff and innovative community outreach programs they foster. A HUGE thank you to Camille for so generously creating a new work for this project! Please contact us to order one.Roq La Rue contact info Previously: |
| The Book vs. The Kindle: funny videos about the Kindle's user rights shortcomings. Posted: 30 Jul 2009 01:56 PM PDT Spotted over at the EFF Deep Links blog: a series of humorous web videos produced by the folks at Green Apple Books which extol the virtues of paper books over Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. Above, an episode which examines how the Kindle fares for folks who might want to resell their book after they're done reading it (this is what lawyers and people who know what the letters E-F-F stand for refer to as the "first sale doctrine"). The Book vs. The Kindle (Hugh D'Andrade, eff.org/deeplinks)
Previously:
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 01:42 PM PDT  Here's a video and how-to for making your own potato six shooter. Family fun at its finest! |
| UFO Expo promises "compelling theories and evidence," also "Crab Cakes and Sliced Fruit Tray." Posted: 30 Jul 2009 02:03 PM PDT  Can't believe I missed this on Coast To Coast. So, I don't know what your plans are for September 12 and 13, but you might want to change them. The 11th annual "Bay Area UFO Expo Celebration Event" takes place that weekend in Santa Clara, California. Snip: Just think about it.... Eleven years of bringing you the most compelling theories and evidence in support of the truth about UFO's, their mysterious occupants and Earth's hidden underground bases!That copy already had me pretty worked up, but then I read about the "Seasonal Vegetable, Sliced Fruit Tray, Assorted Breads, and Chef's Selection of Dessert" that come with the two-day pass. Sold! If you go, please tell me about it. I'll gladly re-blog any interesting photo/video/liveblogs submitted by BB fans who do attend. Also, how great is that poster? |
| James D. Griffioen's photos of Detroit, "the disappearing city" Posted: 30 Jul 2009 01:18 PM PDT  All of James D. Griffioen's Detroit photos are incredibly gorgeous. Some of my favorites are of the abandoned feral houses being consumed by vegetation. Previously: |
| @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com) Posted: 30 Jul 2009 01:18 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 |
| Skype's future unknown as intellectual property battle between founders and eBay continues. Posted: 30 Jul 2009 12:57 PM PDT ReadWriteWeb reports today that eBay is developing software that would replace the "guts" of Skype, but the company may lose a court battle with Skype's founders over rights to the core technology. Skype As We Know It May Not Exist Much Longer, eBay Says (via @rmack) |
| Kurt Andersen interviewed about his book, Reset Posted: 30 Jul 2009 04:52 PM PDT Bloggingheads.tv has a video interview with author Kurt Andersen about his new book, Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. The interview was conducted by Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute. Above is a clip titled, "Is a political reset really possible?" Here's another: Are we stuck In the '80s? Or is the Age of Reagan finally over? |
| Philadelphia needs an Eraserhead statue Posted: 30 Jul 2009 11:38 AM PDT Jeff says: "My friend Juliet gave me this great essay that is simultaneously a love letter to David Lynch and a kick in the pants to the city of Philadelphia." David Lynch Must Be Honored in Philadelphia with a Giant Monument to the Guy From Eraserhead. For Real. |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 11:23 AM PDT  National Geographic posted a selection of photos related to the massive Nomura's jellyfish that may inundate Japanese waters this summer. The magnificent photo above was taken off the cost of Japan in 2007 when the jellyfish wreaked havoc on fishing nets and spoiled catches with their toxins. From National Geographic: Scientists have since been racing to unlock the mysteries of this giant jellyfish species in an attempt to forecast invasions and prevent damages."GIANT JELLYFISH PICTURES: Japan's Nomura Invasion" Previously: |
| The sad fate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster Posted: 30 Jul 2009 12:36 PM PDT  Last night my friend Colin and I went to Meltdown Comics & Collectibles in Los Angeles to listen to comic book historian Craig Yoe's (center) presentation on the weird, sad life of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. Here's my glossed over summary of Yoe's fascinating presentation (which included lots of great slides that you can't see here but are in the pages of Yoe's fantastic book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster): Boyhood friends Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created the Superman character in the late 1930s. They sold a 13-page story about the superhero to DC comics, which bought the story and all rights to the character for $130, which Shuster and Siegel split. The story appeared in Action Comics #1 (1938). Superman immediately became a huge success. Issue #7 of Action Comics sold a half-million copies, and soon Action was selling a million copies a month. This irked Shuster and Siegel, but the publishers soothed their tempers by giving them the lion's share of the Superman newspaper strip syndication revenue. Thanks to this, the young men each made today's equivalent of $750,000 a year. This went on for about seven or eight years, with the boys riding high, but then they met a sleazy lawyer, Albert "Zuggy" Zugmsith, who told them he would sue DC to get them back the rights to Superman. The trial ended in 1948, and it was a devastating loss for Shuster and Siegel. DC stopped paying them, and they were blackballed from the entire comic book industry. Shuster had to scrape by sweeping floors and doing other odd jobs, but finally found work doing fetish illustrations for a cheaply produced sado-masochistic fetish magazine called Nights of Horror. Many of the characters in his fetish illustrations for these booklets bore a striking resemblance to Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Lex Luthor. This story might never had come to light if it weren't for Craig Yoe's ability to recognize cartoonists by looking at their work. In his book he writes that when he came across a copy of Nights of Horror by chance several years ago "in a dusty old cardboard box in a used bookseller's stall, these words leaped in a single bound to my mind: "Oh, my God, Joe Shuster!" That was the beginning of a multi-year-long research project that took Yoe all over the world, and led to the writing of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster. The full story in the book is even more bizarre, and there's even a movie deal in the works. After the presentation the Suicide Girls (above) acted out several of the scenes from illustrations in the book. I've uploaded photos to my Flickr account, but they should be viewed by adult intellectuals only. Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 11:04 AM PDT  Over on BBG, our Lisa has spotted these cracking coconut headphones. Gilligan's Island chic FTW! |
| Strange Architectural Typeface Choice Posted: 30 Jul 2009 11:07 AM 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 his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap. This is a building in downtown Los Angeles. It's a pretty straightforward classic-style building, what with doubled Ionic columns and all the usual classic Greek/Roman detailing one expects out of these sorts of buildings. But, at some point in the building's life, it was renovated, and whoever was in charge decided the best typeface to use on the pediment there would be something that made the building look like a backdrop in a bad 80s scifi movie. Like that really should say "Terran Space Senate Headquarters" or something. It's such a strange and jarring contrast, I'm surprised it got the go-ahead. But I think I like it.  |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:43 AM PDT Scott Bradlee plays a rousing Ragtime piano medley of 80s hits including Come On Eileen, Don't You Want Me Baby, Material Girl, Don't Stop Believin', and, er, this one. (Sorry.) |
| Jesus in caked-on cooking grease Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:27 AM PDT  OK, so this report came from The Sun. And I know about pareidolia. But I still get a kick out of this image of Jesus that appeared in a baking tray after Oliver Bellerby of Yorkshire, England cooked a burger."The Holy Roast" Previously:
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:09 AM PDT Tom Hobson made these fun BeatSneaks shoes with tap sensors and MIDI. Along with controlling music, they could trigger video or almost any other circuit. He's posted a HOWTO on his Hogbog Eclectronics site. BeatSneak HOWTO |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:00 AM PDT The DoggieLoverDoll is a sex toy for male dogs. It seems to be real, and it's also not the first of its kind. The DoggieLoverDoll faux female features a silicone vagina and an (ew) "easy to clean reservoir." From the product's manfuacturer: DoggieLoverDoll (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!) |
| GPS jammer plugs into cigarette lighter Posted: 30 Jul 2009 09:49 AM PDT  My favorite cheap spy-tech/weird cheap gadget seller, Brando, just announced a GPS jammer that plugs into a cigarette lighter. The description is sparse, but I am guessing it can be used to block navigation/tracking/logging systems that rental cars and company fleet vehicles sometimes use to keep track of drivers. It's $49 and I don't know if they are legal or not. Gobal Positioning System (GPS) Jammer |
| Books by people who have raised apes in their homes Posted: 30 Jul 2009 10:15 AM 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. As mentioned earlier, I collect books by people who have raised apes or monkeys in their homes, so, as a service to Boing Boing readers, I thought I'd review them for you.Toto and I: A Gorilla in the Family, by A Maria Hoyt (1941) A charming memoir by an eccentric heiress who brought Toto home after her husband, working for the Museum of Natural History in New York, shot Toto's mother on the hunt for a specimen. Despite marrying a mommy killer, Hoyt goes to the wall to help young Toto, even moving to Cuba to accommodate her charge. There are lots of choice anecdotes in this book but my favorite involve sleep training the gorilla. Like many children, Toto insisted on sleeping with her parents. Caregiver Thomas and Toto slept in separate beds in Toto's room; each night over the course of month, Tomas moved his bed farther and farther away from Toto until he was actually out of her room. (Incidentally, this is essentially the same method recommended by the Sleep Lady.) Before Toto was weaned from cosleeping, however, she "punished" Tomas by locking him in her bedroom:
Lucy: Growing Up Human, A Chimpanzee Daughter in a Psychotherapist's Family, by Maurice K. Temerlin (1972) Touchy-feely account by a nut job (Maurice Temerlin, aka Maury) who goes to great lengths to maintain a relationship with his chimpanzee "daughter." Lucy is by all accounts an extremely precocious chimp; the stories here are lively and engaging but often for the wrong reasons. I could write at length about this book but instead I'll just share one telling anecdote. Maury, like many caretakers of primates, insists on calling Lucy his daughter. Most of such quasi-parents keep their charges in cages and use cattle prods or other devices to keep them in line. Not Maury. But he's got his own bizarre ideas of what it means to be a dad:
So Maury frequently has erections in the company of his "daughter" and observes her putting penises (not just his own!) in her mouth. And, wait, there's more: "I found this a very interesting observation as throughout the years of my deep affection for Lucy I never experienced sexual desire for her. " Interesting? Really? She's supposed to be your daughter? And a chimp! Maury ended up getting fired from his job as head of the psychology department at the University of Oklahoma. Lucy, however, triumphed: after nearly 18 years with crazy Maury and his wife (a record), she became one of the very rare chimps who was successfully re-introduced into the wild in Africa. Nim, by Herbert S. Terrace (1979) Terrace was a professor at Columbia University who acquired Nim Chimpsky (a pun on you know who) in order to conduct an experiment in teaching a chimp sign language. Nim is a clever little imp. After sneaking a bowl of cereal, he would hide the evidence (the dirty bowl). Unlike many chimps, he was able to be potty trained. In fact, when he wanted to get out of doing something unpleasant, he'd sign "dirty" to indicate that he had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, little Nim was treated more like a test subject than a family member. Every time he developed a bond with one of his teachers, the semester ended or the teacher would otherwise leave, stranding him with strangers. Chimps are extremely social creatures and, without being able to develop bonds with others, Nim suffered emotional problems. Consequently, Nim didn't learn nearly as well as was expected. After shipping Nim back to a research facility, Terrace closely studied video tapes of Nim and concluded that Nim couldn't communicate with language. In the book, Terrace acknowledged that Nim's social problems likely foiled the study, but over time he seems to have downplayed his own failings with the study and gone out whole hog on a mission to prove that apes are incapable of language. Pity. A followup book by Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, came out last year but I haven't read it yet. No He's Not a Monkey, He's an Ape and He's My Son, by Hester Mundis (1976) Two New York writers buy a chimp from an exotic pets store, seemingly as an excuse to write a book about it. This book is relatively dull, though I did appreciate reading about little Boris' habit of sneaking up on the family dog and swatting him in the balls. The writers gave Boris to a zoo a year after buying him. They published two books about him. Samba and the Monkey Mind, by Leonard Williams (1965) This was the first primate-related book I read and remains one of my favorites. It's written by a charming Australian man with a gift for prose and a habit of accepting rogue wooly monkeys that no one else wants to deal with. The book doesn't have much in the way of structure; it's just observations by Williams about his woolies. For example, Williams notices that female woolies make passes at the boys by peeing on them. (Williams gets peed on a lot.) The tititular Samba ("a little black wooly poltergeist") has a habit of sneaking in the liquor cabinet and taking a "nip" of sherry. She never remembers to put the bottle back, though: "Samba is, frankly, an unrepentant rogue." There are lots of pictures of Williams' troops, and they are, by all objective measures, utterly adorable. Fun summer reading. I was sad when it was over. The History of Noell's Ark Gorilla Show, by Mae Noell (1979) A fascinating memoir by one of the founders of a 1940s side show that featured chimps who would box men from the audience. For real. Granted, the name of the show is a misnomer. The average person at the time hadn't heard of chimps (or assumed them to be small monkeys) so for publicity's sake the Noell's called them gorillas. The show began by soliciting participants from the audience; the ones who came forward were a self-selected bunch of drunks and he-men with something to prove. The chimps ate them up. Sometimes literally. Noell writes that the chimps were natural showmen. Because they craved laughter and applause, they needed no training to perform. They would instinctively pull acts that they knew would get a reaction: somersaults and acrobatics, egging on the men, and tearing off opponents' clothes. Once, a chimp named Snookie rammed both thumbs up his opponents nostrils, Three Stooges-style, and stretched them apart until the sides tore. From that point all, all chimps were required to wear gloves and muzzles. Ultimately, of course, government killjoys stepped in and stopped the show. The Noells ended up founding a sanctuary in Palm Springs, Florida, called Chimp Farm. (That sanctuary has a pretty storied history.) Incidentally, one of their apes gave birth to baby Lucy, the chimp adopted by Maury Temerlin. The Ape in Our House, by Cathy Hayes (1951) Before primate psychologists were hip to sign language, Keith and Cathy Hayes attempted to raise a chimp as their daughter and teach her oral language. Keith and Cathy would manually try to shape baby Viki's mouth to get her to say "mama" and the like. Since chimps have little capacity for vocalizing, these lessons never amounted to much, and the Hayes eventually gave up. Viki picked up some o the Hayes' other habits, however. In the morning, she would run out to get the newspaper, sit on the couch and hold it as if scanning headlines, then turn pages one by one as if reading. After seeing "mom" Cathy trying to remove a clothing stain, she started dabbing a washcloth on some clothing herself. The book covers the day to day life of Viki up to year three; I don't know what happened after that. In fact, I didn't actually finish this one; I found it a bit dull. Eve and the Apes, by Emily Hahn (1988) This book is an outlier but since it's about woman who have raised apes (many at home) I wanted to briefly mention it. Hahn was a New Yorker writer fascinated with primates. Each chapter focuses on a different woman and her charge(s); one features Maria Hoyt and Toto, another Penny Patterson and Koko, zoo director Belle Benchley, etc. So many women have devoted their lives to apes that Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall don't merit a place here; their contributions are too well-known. Hahn had caught on to something about primatology: much of what we know about ape intelligence and behavior was discovered by women. In fact, women have been integral to primatology to an extent rare in other sciences. Robert Yerkes, often credited as the "father" of primatology, learned how to raise apes from a Cuban woman, Madame Abreu. Anyway, this book is particularly well-written and informative. OTHER BOOKS: I already wrote about W.N. Kellogg's The Ape and the Child in a previous post. Goma the Gorilla Baby, by Ernst M. Lang, has cute photos but isn't particularly enlightening. Ditto Christine the Baby Chimp, by Lilo Hess. I read half of Next of Kin by Roger Fouts a decade ago but need to revisit it. I also haven't read Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child by N. N. Ladygina-Kohts. Know of any others? Let me know! |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2009 08:15 AM 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 his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.  Are you one of those folks who loves God? I mean really loves God? As in enough to make the visual association between your Lord and a noted package delivery company? Because, friend, that's what it takes to wear this garment. If you're just one of those fly-by-night, loves-God-only-enough-to-associate-Him-with-a-soft-drink types, then keep walking. (Thanks, Galen!) |
| Movie recommendation: People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe Posted: 30 Jul 2009 08:02 AM 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.
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Philadelphia has a problem with its statuary: we build lavish monuments to to the wrong people while letting the right ones go unmarked. 
In 1954, the 
This doll comes in three sizes: small, medium and large, to satisfy all existing races. "I had the idea to make this doll when my Maltese started to grab everybody's legs. I did some research and couldn't find anything like it, anywhere in the world. I decided to make it!", reveals Marco Giroto, owner of the PetSmiling company, responsible for this worldwide novelty...
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