The Latest from Boing Boing

Your Commuter Bikes, Hoarders as Artists, Pestivals, and More!
Spider and Jeanne Robinson need help
Copyright enforcement versus privacy
Steel velcro that supports 35 tons/square meter
Upgrade Complete: game whose objective is to upgrade the game
Samoan motorists switch to driving on the left
Converted Toyota amphibious van crosses NZ's Cook Strait
Gamer motto illustrated with stitch markers
Al Franken draws map of the US
@BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
Louis Rosen, physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb, dies.
Police Line: Do not cross.
Arcade in Congo
Child-safety software sells your kids' IM conversations to market-research companies
The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics
Recently on Offworld: Vectorpark on iPhone, PAX info influx, sex lives of Famicom programmers

Your Commuter Bikes, Hoarders as Artists, Pestivals, and More!

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 04:22 AM PDT

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

Cool and Crazy Commuter Bikes
We want to see your bad ass commuter bikes. Send us your photos of ultra sleek designs, hideous hacks, fabulous rebuilds, or whatever it is you use to pedal from place to place.

Hatchery Horrors: Readers React
Both TreeHugger and Boing Boing posted about the gag-inducing male chick massacre video. TreeHugger readers react and cover all angles of the debate. Who do you agree with?

Pestival: A Festival of Insects in Art
It's called " Pestival A Festival of Insects in Art" and if it sounds crazy, well that's because it is...but in a cool way.

Against the Odds, Eco-Cities Moving Forward
Sometimes the designs behind eco-cities are outlandish, but they're moving forward regardless.

American Apparel Bag-O-Scraps: Green, Gimmick or Both?
The Bag-O-Scraps is not a nuanced product: it's a bag of scraps of leftover fabric. Would you buy it?

Home Energy Monitors Reviewed: Which Device Works for You? (Video)
Have a gadget preference when it comes to monitoring energy use? Well, you might after watching this...

Carbon Neutral Cupcakes and US Open Eco-Art Installation at Brooklyn's Little Cupcake Bakeshop
Chocolate...lemon...carbon-neutral...How do you take your cupcake?

Toyota Prius Faces Ban Due to US Patent Suit
Paice has filed a patent infrigement case against Toyota (yet again) and should Paice win, it could spell the death of certain vehicle imports, possibly including the green icon Prius.

Hoarding As An Art Form: Song Dong's "Waste Not"
If you're in New York: Chinese artist Song Dong's "Waste Not," an installation at the Museum of Modern Art made up of most of the objects obsessively collected by the artist's mother over a half a century in her Beijing apartment.

Enlightened Mosques Switch to Energy-Saving Lights Mosques around the globe are going green with energy efficient bulbs and nearly a million have been installed in Turkey alone!

Spider and Jeanne Robinson need help

Posted: 08 Sep 2009 01:39 AM PDT

Beloved Hugo-award-winning writer, dancer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson (wife of Spider Robinson) has cancer, and it has taken a turn for the worse. Spider Robinson describes their financial situation as dire ("running on fumes") and so he's asking for cash to help them get through this. There's lots of ways to give, from bidding in a charity auction to attending a benefit concert to buying Spider's books. I've just sent them what I could spare -- Jeanne and Spider have given me so much pleasure and wisdom over the years, it was an honor. I hope that some of you who've been touched by them will do the same.

As some of you know, I've been dealing with a rare biliary cancer for many months. It has already taken my gall bladder, bile duct and most of my liver...and it's not done yet. It looks like in a matter of weeks I'll be facing chemotherapy, in an attempt to at least slow its progress...
There are many things I need as I prepare for my third act--supplements, prescription drugs, counseling, expensive alternative therapies, etc--and they all cost money...money I don't have. So, after all these months of being silent and private about my illness, I recently said yes to my close friend Michelle Meyrink when she asked if she could organize a benefit concert for me. http://www.spiderrobinson.com/images/Dream%20for%20jeanne.pdf
Others have since jumped in, including my Vancouver Buddhist sangha, Mountain Rain Zen Community, and a dear friend in Florida, Jan Schroeder, who has been auctioning donated items (such as rare Babylon 5 scripts and other SF memorabilia) on eBay for me. Goods or services can be donated for the auction by contacting Jan at dreamforjeanne@aol.com. Several other methods of helping out, including a straightforward PayPal donation account, can be found at http://wedreamforjeanne.blogspot.com/.
Another way to help would be to buy our books from Amazon by clicking-through from Spider's site, so we can get the affiliate commission. We've spent decades holding up visions of humankind's highest evolutionary potential while entertaining you enough to keep you turning pages.

The Third Act

Previously:

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 10:50 PM PDT

In a Calgary Herald op-ed Kris Kotarski talks about the fundamental conflict between modern copyright enforcement and privacy, noting that in the pre-Internet days, "it was conceivable for copyright laws to be enforced in a manner that did not bring the state to anyone's doorstep." Whereas today, the entertainment industry has arrived at a consensus that copyright enforcement means universal network surveillance.

Given today's technological realities, this is no longer the case. If we look at legislation that either exists or is tabled across the Western world, sending a song to a friend by e-mail is a crime. Posting even a short clip of a copyrighted video on a message board for one's friends risks a fine whether the message board is public or not, and taping a television show and passing the tape to your mom or dad may be illegal as well.
No one likes stealing, but the problem lies in the fact that current copyright laws are completely unenforceable unless the government or industry groups start to read every e-mail and analyze every form of online communication done by citizens...
Such efforts aim to turn what citizens do in the privacy of their homes into criminal offences, and to compel enforcement, they aim to make Internet service providers (ISPs) liable for what users do with their Internet connections (just imagine your local grocer being held legally liable for selling a tomato that was thrown at a politician).

Steel velcro that supports 35 tons/square meter

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:37 PM PDT

Metaklett is a steel velcro-like substance created by Josef Mair and teammates at Technical University of Munich. One square meter of it supports up to 35 tons at temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius.

Conventional hook-and-loop fasteners are used for everything from bandages to cable boots in aircraft and securing prosthetic limbs. Mair thinks his spring-steel fastener is tough enough to be used for building facades or car assembly. "A car parked in direct sunlight can reach temperatures of 80 °C, and temperatures of several hundred °C can arise around the exhaust manifold," he says, but Metaklett should be able to shrug off such extremes.
The fastening is made from perforated steel strips 0.2 millimetres thick, one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and the other sporting jagged spikes.

Extreme steel 'Velcro' takes a 35-tonne load (via IDSA)

Upgrade Complete: game whose objective is to upgrade the game

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:32 PM PDT

Upgrade Complete is an hilarious Flash-game where the objective is to complete all the upgrades needed to play the game. I haven't had this much fun since I spent three days downloading a 50GB World of Warcraft "upgrade" that made the game stop running! Better even than spending a week patching Black and White! A wonderful homage to games like Achievement Unlocked.

Upgrade Complete (via Kottke)

Samoan motorists switch to driving on the left

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:26 PM PDT

Yesterday (Sept 7), Samoa's drivers switched from driving on the right to driving on the left. I've had Swedish friends recount the thrilling tale of .se's change, which involved midnight road-crews changing signs and repainting road-markers, and morning radio DJs exhorting all and sundry to remember to change over. The Samoans are changing over thanks to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi who believes that this will save motorists money by allowing them to import cars from (relatively) nearby Australia and New Zealand.

The government has run a months-long campaign to educate drivers, and designated a practice lot. Monday and Tuesday have also been declared public holidays to get drivers used to the change, Hunter said.
"But it's when everybody goes back to work on Wednesday, that's the worry," he added.
Samoa and its closest neighbor, American Samoa, have been driving on the right side of the road since German occupation between 1900-1914.

Outcry as Samoa motorists prepare to drive on left (via Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media)

Converted Toyota amphibious van crosses NZ's Cook Strait

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:21 PM PDT

A reader writes, "Aeronautic machinists Adam Turnbull and Dan Melling converted their Toyota van - called 'Roofliss' - into an amphibious vessel. Yesterday they drove it across Cook Strait (between the North and South Islands of New Zealand)"

Men drive van across Cook Strait

Gamer motto illustrated with stitch markers

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:20 PM PDT

This crafty little sweet from Etsy seller Proserpia illustrates my favorite gamer-slang motto "Less QQ [crying -- the Qs look like crying eyes], more pew pew [shooting]" -- in other words, "Stop whining and fight like an orc!"

Set of 4 Less QQ More PewPew Stitch Markers (via Wonderland)

Al Franken draws map of the US

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:17 PM PDT

Here's Senator Al Franken drawing a surprisingly detailed map of the USA, live on stage at the Minnesota State Fair. One cynic of my acquaintance claims he's tracing. I dunno, looks freehand to me (even though I'll freely admit that it would be easy to create indented trace-lines by using a pen with no cartridge in advance. Still, wouldn't it be cool if this was part of every senatorial race?

Senator Al Franken draws map of USA (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Previously:

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

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 06:01 PM PDT

(Ed. Note: The Boing Boing Video site includes a guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. We'll post roundups here on the motherBoing.)

Sean Bonner: This might be the most important video you will ever watch in your life: Link
Xeni Jardin: Police And Thieves / in the street / fightin' the nation with the / guns and ammunition Link
Richard Metzger: Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune: An exhibition of a film of a book that never was Link
Andrea James: Would-be meal jumps up and headbutts lion half a dozen times: Link
Xeni Jardin: "Simulation of a typhoon, to be experienced individually on a chair in the centre of the storm." Link (via @EthanZ)
Richard Metzger: Funkadelic performing "I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody Got a Thing" on TV in 1970 Link
Andrea James: Carla U. Kelly's astonishing intaglio egg carving of Thumbelina: Link
Richard Metzger: Trippy NEW video of William Shatner doing Lucy in the Sky w Diamonds Link
Sean Bonner: Glenn Beck: 1964 - 2009 Link Goodnight sweet prince
Richard Metzger: Unheard 70s punk band, KONGRESS w/ video Trust me, it's WEIRD Link

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

Louis Rosen, physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb, dies.

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 05:51 PM PDT

The "Los Alamos lifer" died at age 91 at his home in New Mexico.

He was one of the last surviving links to the scientific giants who had created the atomic age -- men like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi as well as Dr. Teller. But more than that, he had also advanced the era.
Dr. Rosen was a lifer at Los Alamos. Where other scientists drifted away, he spent his career there, and built the most intense atom smasher in the world. He was also part ambassador, part lobbyist for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, promoting its continuing importance as a center not only of weapons development but also of basic research.
His atom smasher was his most spectacular project. "This monstrous gadget will give us new windows on the nucleus, a new set of probes," he said in an interview with The New York Times.

NYT obit.

Police Line: Do not cross.

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 05:51 PM PDT

A lovely, noirish tat by the talented skin-n-ink artist David Allen (via Chuck Anderson)

Arcade in Congo

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 11:33 AM PDT

Tomas on Flickr took this amazing shot of a video-arcade in Congo.

Arcade (via Wonderland)

Child-safety software sells your kids' IM conversations to market-research companies

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 10:15 AM PDT

You know that "child-safety" software that monitors your kids' every click and sends it to some spyware creep whose main profit-center is running national firewalls for totalitarian states who use the same service to figure out whom to hood, kidnap and torture?

Turns out that these same sleazeballs also monitor your kids' IM sessions and sell the info to market-research companies that want to fine-tune how they sell sugar and explosions to kids.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.
"This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology," said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. "You don't put children's personal information at risk..."
EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats (via /.)

The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:25 AM PDT

$The-Math-Book$

Mathematics, as presented by Clifford Pickover, is a palace filled with awe-inspiring curiosities. His Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics is a 500-page, full-color tour of mathematical highlights from 150 Million B.C. to 2007.

Each two-page spread has a fascinating story about a mathematical principle, discovery, puzzle, artifact, or person. It would make a great gift for people who dislike math because they "don't have a head for numbers."

Pickover does a excellent job of clearly explaining each topic, whether it's Aristotle's Wheel Paradox, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, the death of Hypatia (a mathematician "torn to shreds by a Christian mob" in 415 A.D., "partly because she did not adhere to strict Christian principles"), the Fibonacci series, the Goldbach Conjecture, Benford's Law, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Newcomb's Paradox, Tokarsky's Unilluminable Room, or any of other 250 topics in the book.

I have to get rid of most of the books that come in my door (I get several a day sent to me). This is one I plan to keep.

The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics