Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

UK govt proposes idiotic two-strikes-and-you're-out Internet copyright rule

Posted: 25 Aug 2009 05:15 AM PDT

Glyn sez, "People accused of breaking copyright over the internet will have their internet connections cut off under tough new laws to be proposed by the UK government today. The decision is noteworthy since it was ruled out by the government's own Digital Britain report in June as going too far. The Open Rights Group believes the government is breaking its own consultation guidelines by bring in the proposals in the way they have and asks people to write to their MPs."
Yet again, we see knee-jerk reactions and policy swerves, this time in direct contravention of the government's own consultation guidelines. Those guidelines are there for a reason: to make sure government policy is balanced and considered. We will be making a formal complaint.

The result of these proposals is likely to be protest, challenges and public arguments in the run-up to the General election. Popular movements in France, Sweden and elsewhere have kick-started over similar measures.

That will do nobody any good, neither politicians nor rights-holding industries, as copyright's reputation suffers further damage.

Copyright is under threat: from heavy handed business lobbying and simplistic enforcement proposals.

New fast-track P2P clampdown proposals announced today (Thanks, Glyn!)
Previously:


Fresh Greens: A surprising twist for an ex-Enron-er, building houses for under $3k, presto-change-o chocolates, and goats

Posted: 25 Aug 2009 04:14 AM PDT

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Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Ex-Enron-er Goes On The Road
Ex-Enron speech writer starts a cross-country tour with a surprisingly heated message about how the world is not hot.

Cob House Built For Less Than $3,000
And you thought there was no way out of the housing market crash... You can build your own charming house for next to nothing.

Vanishing Creatures Chocolates Feature Packaging with a Bonus Surprise
Waste not, want not. This zero waste packaging is an extra transformer treat to go with your sweet.

Goat Patrol Revisited: The Transportation Question Answered
The idea of using goats for landscaping maintenance always begs one question: What's the carbon footprint of getting them to your garden? Mystery solved...

Climate Camp to London cops: We won't tell you where the next camp is because you keep beating the crap out of us

Posted: 25 Aug 2009 01:41 AM PDT

GyroMagician sez, "After Kingsnorth and the G20 climate change protests in the UK (and subsequent police violence), the police are trying to present a new, kinder, fluffier image. A protest is due in London this week, and the police would like to know where it will be. Climate Camp reply, and I don't think they're buying it. Result is hilarious. Linking to Guardian because they have been big supporter of activists, publicising police abuse."

Context: Climate Camp is a lawful, peaceful gathering of people (old, young, men and women) to talk about alternatives to environmentally devastating ways of producing and consuming. Earlier Climate Camps have been met by unprovoked and savage police assaults and harassment.

Climate Camp's YouTube letter shows the police's charm offensive has failed (Thanks, GyroMagician!)

Previously:


Breast implant serial numbers used to identify murder victim

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:57 PM PDT

The body of a mutilated murder-victim was positively identified by matching the serial numbers on her breast-implants:
Fiore's body was found last Saturday in a Dumpster behind an apartment complex in Buena Park, just outside Anaheim, California. Her teeth had been extracted and fingers removed in what police said was an apparent attempt to conceal her identity.

Law enforcement sources have told CNN that Fiore was identified through the serial numbers on her breast implants.

Suspect in model's murder found dead in Canada (via Freakonomics)

Highlights of the Inspector General's torture report

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:55 PM PDT

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been through the Inspector General's report on US torture on terrorism suspects and pulled the highlights. These are the atrocities whose architects and perpetrators Obama has refused to prosecute: threatening to murder a suspect's wife and children, threatening to rape a detainee's female relatives in front of him, beating prisoners, simulated execution, threats of execution, hanging suspects by their arms until interrogators believed their shoulders had dislocated, stepping on ankle-shackles to cause severe pain and injury. The IG reports that these detainees came into custody on the basis of "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" (e.g., random accusations from untrustworthy sources, such as grudge-bearing neighbors who turned them in for cash bounties), and the Obama administration has announced that it will continue the CIA's program of "extraordinary rendition" (kidnapping suspects and sending abroad to be tortured in other countries).


Before saying anything about the implications of this Report, I want to post some excerpts of what CIA interrogators did. Every American should be forced to read and learn this in order to know what was done in their names.
What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report
Previously:


Craigslist is great the way it is

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:47 PM PDT

Gary Wolf's feature on the idiosyncrasies of craigslist, its founder Craig Newmark, and its CEO Jim Buckmaster perfectly captures the thing that makes the site so wonderful: the quirky, zen character of its executives who love the heroically ugly, creaking beast and refuse to change it.
But if you really want to see a mess, go visit the nation's greatest apartment-hunting site, the first likely choice of anybody searching for a rental or a roommate. On this site, contrary to every principle of usability and common sense, you can't easily browse pictures of the apartments for rent. Customer support? Visit the help desk if you enjoy being insulted. How much market share does this housing site have? In many cities, a huge percentage. It isn't worth trying to compare its traffic to competitors', because at this scale there are no competitors.

Each of these sites, of course, is merely one of the many sections of craigslist, which dominates the market in facilitating face-to-face transactions, whether people are connecting to buy and sell, give something away, rent an apartment, or have some sex. With more than 47 million unique users every month in the US alone--nearly a fifth of the nation's adult population--it is the most important community site going and yet the most underdeveloped. Think of any Web feature that has become popular in the past 10 years: Chances are craigslist has considered it and rejected it. If you try to build a third-party application designed to make craigslist work better, the management will almost certainly throw up technical roadblocks to shut you down.

Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess
Previously:


Clock that knocks the time out on a water-filled vase

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:43 PM PDT

From Make:

The Sèvres Vase Clock, a design by Georgios Maridakis at the Royal College of Art, taps a vase you already have, every hour, and its tone can be adjusted by varying the amount of water inside.
Knocking clock

Kids' Doctor Who fan video from 1983

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:42 PM PDT

Jessy sez, "In 1983 my friends and I made a Doctor Who movie using somebody's dad's video camera. We've put pieces of it up on YouTube. The URL above is for the "Mind Battle" (pronounced "mind bottle") sequence. Another, earlier piece is here (starts with the exterior of our TARDIS, made from a refrigerator box) and here (starts with the TARDIS interior, with working machinery -- I believe one of us hid inside the mechanism to make it go).

Mind Bottle Sequence from Inner Earth take 2

Previously:


Placebo effect is getting stronger

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:40 PM PDT

Wired's Steve Silberman explores the fascinating and increasingly important placebo effect, which appears to be getting stronger:
The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn's disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an "unusually high" response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response...

Part of the problem was that response to placebo was considered a psychological trait related to neurosis and gullibility rather than a physiological phenomenon that could be scrutinized in the lab and manipulated for therapeutic benefit. But then Benedetti came across a study, done years earlier, that suggested the placebo effect had a neurological foundation. US scientists had found that a drug called naloxone blocks the pain-relieving power of placebo treatments. The brain produces its own analgesic compounds called opioids, released under conditions of stress, and naloxone blocks the action of these natural painkillers and their synthetic analogs. The study gave Benedetti the lead he needed to pursue his own research while running small clinical trials for drug companies.

Now, after 15 years of experimentation, he has succeeded in mapping many of the biochemical reactions responsible for the placebo effect, uncovering a broad repertoire of self-healing responses. Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol.

In one study, Benedetti found that Alzheimer's patients with impaired cognitive function get less pain relief from analgesic drugs than normal volunteers do. Using advanced methods of EEG analysis, he discovered that the connections between the patients' prefrontal lobes and their opioid systems had been damaged. Healthy volunteers feel the benefit of medication plus a placebo boost. Patients who are unable to formulate ideas about the future because of cortical deficits, however, feel only the effect of the drug itself. The experiment suggests that because Alzheimer's patients don't get the benefits of anticipating the treatment, they require higher doses of painkillers to experience normal levels of relief.

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. (Thanks, Steve!)
Previously:


1,000 surveillance cameras = 1 solved crime in the UK

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:23 PM PDT

What happens when the government blankets London with surveillance cameras at a cost of £500m?
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.
1,000 cameras 'solve one crime'

Jayson Blair, life coach

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:00 PM PDT

Jayson Blair, the disgraced former NY Times reporter who got caught fabricating stories, is now a "certified life coach" in Ashburn, Virginia. Bradley Novicoff of Dangerous Minds writes:
Blair, if you recall, wrote in his four years at the Times nearly 600 articles about the war in Iraq, many of them factually suspect or, worse, distorted by design.  Well, who better to handle your "career crisis" than someone like that?!   Oh, and Blair's also able to guide you through the choppy waters of substance abuse and bipolar disorder!  Blair's website makes no mention of his past misdeeds, but there's no mistaking his still-evident talents as a writer:

"I firmly believe in harnesses the beautiful things about mental illness—whether its creativity and depth, or energy and daydreaming—so that the client can live a safe and healthy life without giving up the things that make them unique."

Jayson Blair: From Liar To Life Coach

Notes from the San Francisco Zine Fest: Sean Logic and The Great MySpace Swindle

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 03:28 PM PDT

Img 0143 Carla and I went to the 2009 San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday. I was surprised to discover that the world of print zines is as vibrant and fun as it was back when bOING bOING was being published in the 80s and 90s.

I took photos of quite a few zine publishers who were in attendance, which I'll share with you over the next several days.

First up is Sean Logic, shown above. When I asked to take his photo, Sean covered his face with a copy of his one-shot zine, The Great MySpace Swindle, which is a griefer-lite account of how he set up a MySpace account pretending to be "Amber, a busty beautiful brunette who loved nothing more than to party and throw gang signs at the camera." The zine compiled all the responses to "Amber." Kind of a mean trick, but at least he didn't reveal the true names and accounts of the men who sent messages!

If you're interested in ordering a copy of The Great MySpace Swindle, send an email to myspace_swindle@yahoo.com. I think it cost $2, but I can't remember for sure.

Doctor Who Exit Interview: David Tennant + Russell T. Davies, with Richard Metzger (BB Video)

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:34 PM PDT

(Download / Watch on YouTube, video duration: 20 min.)

Today in Boing Boing Video: David Tennant and Russell T. Davies of Doctor Who, interviewed by BB guest host Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds. Richard is a *very* knowledgeable Doctor Who trufan, so the resulting conversation -- which we're presenting here in extended 20-minute form -- is deep and comprehensive, with lots for hardcore Doctor Who junkies to love. Recently, both Russell and David left the show, and this amounts to the definitive "exit interview." Let the fangasms commence.

Metzger says,

I'm one of those guys who downloads Doctor Who and Torchwood within seconds of them hitting the torrent trackers. Just a few hours after they air in the UK, I'm watching them in Los Angeles. My wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year and I said "A new Doctor Who episode, but I'm getting that already." That's how much I love the show (She's a fan too, but drew the line at me using the TARDIS landing for my ring tone).

So it was great fun for me to meet Russell and David. A real treat. They're both friendly, charismatic guys who who were really easy to interview. They clearly enjoy each others company and there was a nice, loose banter between them that I think will be fun for the fans to watch here. They've got their double act down pat, let's just say.

This interview took place at an interesting moment in time for both men as they've only just left behind their respective starring roles in one of the biggest television successes in the world today. As difficult as that may sound, you can only imagine how much pressure is off them after four years of practically non-stop work. I think it shows in this interview, as they're both very relaxed and jovial. David had just come from Comic Con where he was treated with fan adulation bordering on Beatlemania and Russell is starting a new phase of his life here in Los Angeles.

The week we shot this he was just coming off the double whammy career high of Torchwood practically *taking over* British television for an entire week with his brilliant Torchwood: Children of Earth mini-series (read my review here) and then seeing it launch BBC America's new HD service with a resounding success right afterward here.

How lucky Hollywood is to have Britain's answer to Rod Serling in such close proximity these days and I'm sure it won't be long before we're reading in Variety what David Tennant will do next. He's an interesting actor and a lot of big people will want to work with him, so expect that it will be something worth watching!

Like I say, I think it's an interesting glimpse into a transitional time for both David and Russell and these were the questions that I wanted to ask them, not as a journalist on assignment, but as a big Doctor Who fan ("David, isn't leaving Doctor Who like Sean Connery quitting James Bond?").

I hope other Who fans around the world will enjoy this as much as I did."

(Special thanks to Mark Kleiman and Stefanie Fletcher for their generous support of Boing Boing Video.)

Previously:



Astronaut Alan Bean's paintings

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 12:33 PM PDT

Webimages 640 Web11161-2009 640

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth man on the Moon. In 1981, he retired from the space agency to put his otherworldly experiences on canvas. Seen above, "Tiptoeing on the Ocean of Storms" (acrylic on masonite). Bean's magnificent paintings are currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. From the Smithsonian:
Bean remembers running next to this crater and feeling like he could run forever without his legs getting tired. The reason he felt "super strong" was because he weighed so little. The Moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, making his total body and equipment weight of about 136 kilograms (300 pounds) on Earth only 23 kilograms (50 pounds) on the Moon.  

Although carrying weight required little effort, the spacesuits were stiff and hard to move at the knee and hip joints. Astronauts learned to move mostly by ankle motion, which Bean says "feels and looks as if you are dancing on tiptoe."
"Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World"

Why we walk in circles without directional cues

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:53 AM PDT

When people don't have signs or other external cues for direction, we will probably end up walking in circles. That's according to a new psychological study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. For example, someone trying to walk straight through a dense forest on a day where the sun is blocked by clouds will likely start drifting into more of a circular path after just 100 meters or less. From Science News:
Circular walking occurs when people have to rely solely on bodily cues, such as rotational shifts and joint movements, to estimate the location of "straight ahead," (researcher Jan) Souman hypothesizes. As random errors in bodily feedback accumulate, a person eventually drifts to one side or the other. A walker dependent on bodily cues may first make a circle to the right, drift back to a straight-ahead direction, start to zigzag and then make a circle to the left.

"You may think that you're walking in a straight line, but in fact the direction you're walking in is drifting more and more away from straight ahead, making you walk in circles," Souman says...

Psychologist John Rieser of Vanderbilt University in Nashville calls the new findings exciting. He and his colleagues have found that blindfolded people veer off course but don't circle when walking up to 100 meters across a grassy field. But cues from the ground, such as variations in grass length in an otherwise predictable environment, may have reduced veering from a straight line, Rieser says. "I suspect that one's subjective sense of straight ahead, and up-down too, are easily changed by environmental conditions," he remarks.
"How to walk in circles without really trying"

Venezuela's "continuous" lightning storm

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 11:17 AM PDT



The folks in the video above aren't watching a fireworks show but rather the near-constant lightning strikes that occur over Vaenezuela's Catatumbo River almost half of the year. Apparently, sailors have dubbed the lightning "Maracaibo Beacon" because it can be used as a navigational aid. According to the excellent Atlas Obscura, there might be as many as 280 strikes per hour during 10 hour stretches. From Atlas Obscura (photo below from Wikipedia):
Files Place Images Relampago-Del-Catatumbo (The phenomenon) was first written about in the 1597 poem "The Dragontea" by Lope de Vega. De Vega tells of Sir Francis Drake's 1595 attempt to take the city of Maracaibo by night, only to have his plans foiled when the lightning storm's flashes gave away his position to the city's defenders.

It's still unknown exactly why this area--and this area alone--should produce such regular lighting. One theory holds that ionized methane gas rising from the Catatumbo bogs is meeting with storm clouds coming down from the Andes, helping to create the perfect conditions for a lighting storm.
Relampago del Catatumbo

Previously:


Shawn Barber's tattoo paintings

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:22 AM PDT

Full Images Gal Artist 63 3915 Traditionalstillliefe
Shawn Barber has a new series of paintings up at San Francisco's Shooting Gallery. Continuing his documentation of tattoo culture, this collection features portraits of tattooed individuals and also scenes from a tattoo studio. The exhibition, titled "Tattooed Portraits: Snapshots," can also be viewed online. BB pal Jess Hemerly interviewed Barber for 7x7:
7x7: I have no tattoos but I admire beautiful ink, and there's something about your paintings that makes me want to cover myself in tattoos. What draws you to ink as a subject?

Shawn Barber: The medium saturates everything that I do. Tattooing gives so much more than it takes. It allows an individual to acknowledge life with permanent markers. Getting tattooed is a leap of faith that reminds you of that exact time and place for the rest of your life.
"Shawn Barber Makes Us Want To Cover Ourselves in Tattoos" (7x7)

Shawn Barber: Tattooed Portraits (Shooting Gallery)

Video of "upside-down" lightning

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:00 AM PDT

News Thegreatbeyond Giant-Jet News Thegreatbeyond Giant-Jet-Two News Thegreatbeyond Giant-Jet-Three
Researchers have caught rare "upside-down" lighting on video. Duke University scientists captured the gigantic jet shooting 40 miles up from the top of a thunderstorm.
Images of gigantic jets have only been recorded on five occasions since 2001. The Duke University team caught a one-second view and magnetic field measurements that are now giving scientists a much clearer understanding of these rare events.

"This confirmation of visible electric discharges extending from the top of a storm to the edge of the ionosphere provides an important new window on processes in Earth's global electrical circuit," said Brad Smull, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research.

"Our measurements show that gigantic jets are capable of transferring a substantial electrical charge to the lower ionosphere," (Duke professor Steven) Cummer said.
"They are essentially upward lightning from thunderclouds that deliver charge just like conventional cloud-to-ground lightning. What struck us was the size of this event."
"Lightning's Mirror Image ... Only Much Bigger"

Court orders Google to ID anon blogger who called model "skank"/"ho", blogger threatens Google with $15 mil suit

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 10:15 AM PDT

alg_rosemary_port.jpgI can't tell which NYDN headline is weirder: "Court forces Google to tell model Liskula Cohen identity of blogger that called her 'skank'," or "Outed blogger Rosemary Port blames model Liskula Cohen for 'skank' stink."

The grown-up version of the story boils down to this: a 27-year old fashion student maintained an anonymous blog in which she described a Vogue cover model as a "skank" and a "ho." The model, Liskula Cohen, took legal action. Under court order, Google revealed the blogger's identify. Apparently the two women were previously friends/social acquaintances.

Now, the formerly anonymous blogger, outed as one Rosemary Port of NYC (shown in the photo above) says she plans to sue Google for $15 million for revealing her identity. More online: SF Gate, ZDnet. A Wikipedia entry points to more info on Liskula Cohen's life and career (including a horrible slashing attack she survived in 2007 which maimed her face.)

Now, the source of the current legal conflict is pretty stupid. The behavior of the characters involved does not cause one to feel much empathy. But switch the parties around to, say, Iranian political dissidents, or torture witnesses, or fraud whistleblowers -- and you can see how the privacy issues involved (and liability issues for Google) are worth considering. First they came for the bitchy fashion students...

Rainbow created with 5000 Pantone color chips

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:34 AM PDT

pantone.jpg

pantone2.jpg A rainbow sculptured by hand from 5,000 Pantone color chips, glued onto wood boards. (via Chuck Anderson)

Recently on Offworld: meet the Metroid makers, the average gamer makeup, crawling DS dungeons

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:49 AM PDT

retrowelcomearea.jpg With Nintendo's Metroid Prime Trilogy -- all three Metroid Prime games collected on a single disc and updated with Wii controls -- just released this week, we spent the day with Austin-native developer Retro Studios to learn how the classic franchise fell into their laps, the process of re-interpreting it in first person, and how to read Nintendo's haiku-like approach to game development. Elsewhere on Offworld, we took an extended look at two of the best games released in recent weeks: the similarly classically Metroid-esque Xbox Live Arcade game Shadow Complex, and the fantastic downsizing of the Rock Band experience with Harmonix and Backbone's PSP game Rock Band: Unplugged. Finally, we took a straw poll to determine whether the average gamer really is 35, overweight and depressed, and then investigated whether Bejeweled could fight that depression, saw the bloodbath that is Diablo III's new monk class, and took a trip into The Dark Spire -- a ten-dollar DS dungeon-crawler that you might have missed.

Boing Boing in TIME's "Best Websites of 2009"

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:30 AM PDT

Picture 78.jpg

Picture 74.jpg Oh, this is a nice thing to start the week with. TIME very kindly named Boing Boing (and by extension, Boing Boing Gadgets, Offworld, and Boing Boing Video) #8 in their "50 Best Websites of 2009" list.

There's also an accompanying video (for which embedding is disabled, oddly), in which you are advised to "visit Boing Boing every single day." We concur! Thank you, TIME editors.

* Boing Boing: 50 Best Websites 2009
* View the complete list
* TIME video: 50 Best Websites: 5 You May Not Know

Goatse hoodie

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 09:07 AM PDT

Boop-Oop-A-Doin': modern recordings of Sammy Timberg, composer for the Max Fleischer toons

Posted: 22 Aug 2009 02:21 PM PDT

A couple weeks back, I blogged about how much my daughter and I were enjoying the old Betty Boop cartoons on Archive.org, which feature the likes of Cab Calloway and fantastic incidental and theme music by Sammy Timberg, who also wrote music fo Popeye, Superman, and other Max Fleischer cartoons.

A commenter mentioned that Timberg's daughter Pat Timberg had recorded and released a CD of Sammy Timberg's Max Fleischer classics called "Boop-Oop-a-Dooin'," and Pat was kind enough to send me a review copy. We've been playing it around the house for a couple weeks now and again, the kid and I have been totally rockin' out. I love hearing some of my favorite Popeye songs, like "Clean Shaven Man" as well as Flesicher classics like "An Elephant Never Forgets" and, of course, Betty Boop's flirty, silly little songs.

The vocals, provided by Timberg's granddaughter Shannon Cullem and Richard "Mr Tin Pan Alley" Halpern are spot-on versions of Popeye, Wimpy, Olive Oyl, Betty Boop and the other Fleischer favorites. The orchestration is lively and sprightly, and my daughter, who's just starting to sing and speak, loves the songs as much as I do.

BOOP-OOP-A-DOOIN'

Previously:


Coin-tosses aren't fair

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 06:02 AM PDT


Many statistics examples start with "assuming a fair coin-toss..." But it turns out that coin-tosses aren't fair; depending on your toss, there's a small-to-alarming bias in the result.
1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there's a 51% chance it will end as heads).

2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit "huge bias" (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).

3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.

4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play...

The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition? (via Schneier)

HOWTO make a cheap ECG with an old PC sound-card

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:59 AM PDT

Here's a HOWTO for building your own electrocardiograph -- many such plans exist, but this one lowers the cost and part-count by ingeniously repurposing the sound-card from a PC.

Digitization: Once amplified, the ECG signal along with a bunch of noise is in analog form. You could display the output with an oscilloscope, but to load it into your PC you need an analog-to-digital converter. Don't worry! If you've got a sound card with a microphone input, you've already got one! It's just that easy. We'll simply wire the output of our ECG circuit to the input of our sound card, record the output of the op-amp using standard sound recording software, remove the noise from the ECG digitally, and output gorgeous ECG traces ready for visualization and analysis!

DIY ECG Machine On The Cheap (via Make)

Notes on an attention economy

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:56 AM PDT

Michael Erard's "A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention" reiterates Herbert Simon's 1971 prediction of an attention shortage: "What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients," and asks what an attention economy would really look like. Apart from some extremely dubious Ronald Reagan worship, the article is a fascinating read.
I imagine attention festivals: week-long multimedia, cross-industry carnivals of readings, installations, and performances, where you go from a tent with 30-second films, guitar solos, 10-minute video games, and haiku to the tent with only Andy Warhol movies, to a myriad of venues with other media forms and activities requiring other attention lengths. In the Nano Tent, you can hear ringtones and read tweets. A festival organized not by the forms of the commodities themselves but of the experience of interacting with them. Not organized by time elapsed, but by cognitive investment: a pop song, which goes by quickly, can resonate for days; a poem, which can go by more quickly, sticks through a season. A festival in which you can see images of your brain on knitting and on Twitter.

I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.

A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention (via Futurismic)

Appreciation for a forgotten typewriter

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:52 AM PDT

Journalist and writer Rick Poynor confronts his old, abandoned typewriter and appreciates it:
Examining my Olympia again, I'm struck by how powerfully its form and image embody and express the idea of writing, as does almost any typewriter. Like the telephone at an earlier phase in its development when it still had a distinct earpiece and mouthpiece at either end of a handle, the fully evolved typewriter is a 20th-century industrial archetype. It feels inevitable, almost elemental, like one of those object types, such as a chair or a fork, that simply had to exist in this universe of forms. Even now (but for how much longer?) a typewriter is the icon to show if you want to convey the idea of a dedicated literary life. The title page of The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction -- just out -- shows a portable typewriter on a desk with other writing paraphernalia. Turn the page and the caption reads "The essential equipment of a cult author, as collected by William Burroughs." Burroughs receives the longest entry in the book. The ultimate cult author -- the ultimate writing machine.
In Memoriam: My Manual Typewriter (via Beyond the Beyond)

Crossed Genres cover art featuring MLK as Terminator, KKK as girl-ninjas, with lashings of go-go boots and jetpacks

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:50 AM PDT


Brianna Wu's latest art project is the cover art for the magazine "Crossed Genres." Frank Wu explains, "Brianna went to University of Mississippi, where a famous race riot took place - thus the building is the Lyceum, where you can still see the bullet holes in the columns. As one of the lone liberals on campus, Bri wanted to do her own comentary on it. So... we see Martin Luther King hit with a rocket, but it's ok - because he's a Terminator. And we also see KKK members, but they're all sexy ninja girls in skimpy white outfits, and now that MLK is free at last from his fleshy shell, he's going to kick their butts. Sixties girls in go-go boots and jetpacks fight alongside."

Crossed Genres cover art (Thanks, Frank!)

HOWTO induce gigantism in plants

Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:45 AM PDT

Evil Mad Scientist Labs outdoes itself with a project to induce gigantism in plant-life using Gibberellic acid, which induces "frankly absurd growth" in many plants.

For the control sample (marked Kontrol) we soaked one tablespoon of washed and sorted beans in water for twelve to eighteen hours. We then rinsed the beans and poured off the excess water twice a day. For the experimental sample (marked Kaos) we did the initial soak in our 100 ppm Gibberellic acid solution. Twice a day we rinsed, first in water which was drained off, then in the Gibberellic acid solution, pouring off the excess. Both jars were capped with cheesecloth and stored in a dark cabinet when not being rinsed or photographed...

On day five, the experimental sprouts are definitely trying to escape. Sprouts are normally eaten on the fourth or fifth day, but we don't recommend eating the sprouts treated with Gibberellic acid (see MSDS).

Mad Science 101: Inducing giantism in living organisms
Previously:


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