Thursday, September 17, 2009

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Teacher asks YA author if virtual visit can take place "with us being able to see you, but you not being able to see us"

Posted: 17 Sep 2009 04:18 AM PDT

From the Free Range Kids blog, a remarkable story from a YA author who was invited to address a fourth grade class:
I was setting up a phone call with a 4th-grade teacher and her class -- they live a good thousand miles across the country from me. I let her know that I have Skype, so nobody needs incur any long-distance charges. Her response via e-mail just now: "Is there a way to Skype with us being able to see you, but you not being able to see us? Due to confidentiality and other school district guidelines, I am hoping this is a possibility."

Truly, I am speechless. I'm just glad this won't be an in-person school visit, because it would be really awkward wearing a blindfold all day, lest I actually lay eyes on these kids.

Can You Please Come Talk to My Class...But Not Look at Anyone?

Britain's postal-code database online at Wikileaks: produced at public expense, not owned by the public

Posted: 17 Sep 2009 04:15 AM PDT

Wikileaks is hosting a copy of the "all 1,841,177 post codes together with precise geographic coordinates and other information" for the UK.

One odd thing about Britain is that databases produced at public expense -- maps of the country, lists of postal codes, transcripts of Parliamentary debate and so on -- do not belong to the public. In order to use this data, you have to pay gigantic licensing fees to the government, who accordingly threatens to sue people who use them without permission.

It's a pretty bizarre idea. After all, none of these programmes are remotely self-sustaining -- the license fees cover just a tiny fraction of the overall money used to pay for their ongoing upkeep. Imagine if this was how private enterprise worked: an entrepreneur (the government) decides to map all of Britain, so she approaches an investor (the public) for £50,000,000 to cover the expenses. Having spent all 50 mil, she then approaches a second investor (license fee payers) for an extra £5,000,000 for additional operating capital. In the real world, the investors would likely end up split like this:

Initial investor: 60%
Entrepreneur: 35%
Second round investor: 5%

And why not? The initial investor assumed all the risk, while the second round investors merely threw a little money into a proven business.

But in the British scenario, the split looks like this:

Entrepreneur: 51%
Second round investor: 49%
Initial investor: 0%

That is, the entrepreneur (the government) gets total control over the product (maps of Britain, post-code databases, etc). The second round investor (a licensee) gets to commercially exploit the product, subject to oversight from the government.

But the initial investor (the public), gets nothing. If they want, they can become second-round investors and buy licenses from the government. Or they can buy or use products made by the second round investors (the licensees).

This isn't capitalism, nor is it socialism. It's a kind of corporatism in which the risk -- the money spent speculatively mapping Britain, arguing in Parliament, drawing up postal code boundaries -- is entirely assumed by the public, but the reward -- access and profit-taking -- are entirely given to the private sector.

(Many thanks to Paula LeDieu from the British Film Institute for this analysis)

So now we've got the postal code database online and that means that any second, someone from government is going to start threatening lawsuits, telling the people who paid to create it that they don't have the right to own it, build on it and improve it.

UK government database of all 1,841,177 post codes together with precise geographic coordinates and other information, 8 Jul 2009

Chocolate steampunk music-hall in London, Oct 15-17

Posted: 17 Sep 2009 04:02 AM PDT


Toby Slater, impresario for London's fabulous White Mischief steampunk nights, sez, "Dressed in neo-Victorian finery and draped in accessories handmade from watch parts, the Clockwork Quartet is formed around instruments such as a Steamdrone, Stroh violin and bass banjo and staffed by musicians who by day work as everything from two luthiers, a jeweller and a sculptor to a doctor of zoology.

"The collective will be transforming London's Horse Hospital into a Victorian music hall between 15th and 17th October. Their music - each song of which tells a different story painting a portrait of a troubled character - is free to download but fans will be able to purchase an extravagant illustrated book as well, of course, as delights from the band's official in-house chocolatier."

We recommend: The Clockwork Quartet (Thanks, Toby!)

Vintage tech commercials

Posted: 17 Sep 2009 03:59 AM PDT

Kim sez, "I recently came across a videotape of several hours of TV footage from 1996. I scanned some of the more interesting commercials, including a bizarre dystopian ad for Packard Bell computers, Sony Mini Disc Walkman, Internet World Magazine, AOL and networkMCI. It's interesting how most of those products and services are no longer with us."

Commercials from 1996 (Thanks, Kim)

Mary Travers, RIP

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:34 PM PDT

History Images Tr-05 Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary died today. She was 72.
Mary Travers NYT Obituary

Fashion: Rodarte Spring 2010, "Death Valley, Vultures, Goth Tribal Tats."

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 02:31 PM PDT

rodarte.jpg

Images from the Rodarte Spring 2010 collection. The models were literally "kept under wraps" during smoking breaks before the runway show. "Every model had her arms painted with makeup to appear like tribal tattoes, goth lips, and their hair wrapped in webbed wool." The official Rodarte site is here, but it's a slow-loading Flashblob. There's always Wikipedia. (via @reversecowpie)

Creeps tear down hundreds of handsome posters for African gay/lesbian film fest

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 04:29 PM PDT

2009_street_poster.jpg

Organizers of the "Out In Africa" gay and lesbian film festival in South Africa are seriously pissed: some homophobic jerks tore down all the posters for the fest, some 700 of 'em attached to poles and lamp-posts about town. There are two reasons this is upsetting: one, it is a clear message of intimidation and intolerance. Two: nobody should desecrate good graphic design, and these posters are really nice.

An outraged Out in Africa South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival director Nodi Murphy has lodged a complaint with police. "Some stupid twits with more time on their hands than brains trashed our gorgeous posters. And for what?"
Our gorgeous posters have been trashed (Out In Africa, via Kalaya'an Mendoza)

Raiders of the Lost Ark as a 1951 adventure movie

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 02:02 PM PDT

This trailer for a notional 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark has my head nigh-exploding with recursive delight: a retro movie that hearkens to 1950s adventure serials remade as a 1950s adventure serial!

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951) Trailer (via Neatorama)

Steampunk leather mask with porthole

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 02:00 PM PDT


Ukrainian steampunk maskmaking collective Bob Basset has just posted their latest: a sweet, fetishy little number with glass-and-brass portholes. I own two of their earlier efforts now, and they're among my most favorite objects.

Steampunk mask. Leather, cuprum, glass. Стимпанк маска. Кожа, медь, стекло.

Previously:


Working handcuff keys printed on a 3D printer

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:58 PM PDT

German hacker Ray has shown that he can print working Dutch police handcuff keys from plastic on his 3D printers, and has released the 3D files so you can print your own:

He used a 3D printer to print handcuff keys. And not just any ordinary handcuff key ... no, it's the official handcuff key from the Dutch police! At first the police officers at HAR were a little reluctant to event try out the plastic key he printed. But he found another way to verify the key he printed was the correct one. I guess these officers never thought about wearing keys concealed, especially when talking with Mr. Handcuff himself. Given the megapixel camera's on the market today it was not so difficult to verify the key he printed was the correct one.

At the end of the day he talked the officers into trying the key on their handcuffs and ... it did work! At least the Dutch Police now knows there is a plastic key on the market that will open their handcuffs. A plastic key undetectable by metal detectors....

Printing police handcuff keys ... (via Schneier)

Rich Seattle suburbs install ubiquitous surveillance cameras, cops follow all "suspicious" vehicles

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 05:11 PM PDT

Jennie sez, "Two Seattle suburbs (of the super affluent persuasion) are monitoring and recording every vehicle that enter their town limits. If you happen to have had a past criminal infraction, you will be followed by police. Creepy and overzealous! By the way, residents of these towns are so community oriented that they also refuse to pay property tax to support their local county library system. But don't worry, they're 'not elitist at all,' according to a local council member."
In Medina, a new sign bears this warning: "You Are Entering a 24 Hour Video Surveillance Area..."

Medina -- a city of 3,100 with an average household income of $222,000 -- had discussed the idea for years as a way to discourage crime, city officials said.

Last year, there were 11 burglaries, Chen said.

"Some people think [that number of burglaries] is tolerable," he said. "But even one crime is intolerable."

Medina City Councilmember Lucius Biglow said crime prevention "outweighs concern over privacy."

"Privacy is considerably less nowadays than it was, say, 50 years ago," he said. "I think most of us are pretty well-documented by the federal government ... simply because of the Internet and credit cards."

Cameras keep track of all cars entering Medina (Thanks, Jennie!)

(Image: MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

After the big LA fires, terrain looks like a post-war moonscape: death, charred remains.

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 02:00 PM PDT

Video: "Angeles Crest Highway after the Station Fire," by Hal and Susan McAlister, who were joining staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

We were escorted by LA County Sheriff's deputies. We were stunned by what we saw, and inattentive to keeping the little Flip video camera stable and accurately pointed. The devastation speaks for itself.
(via YouTube user Lndacurtss)

Previously:


XKCD book is out

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:51 PM PDT

The first-ever XKCD book, "xkcd: volume 0" is now officially out and available. Part of the profits go build schools in Laos. XKCD is my favorite geeky webcomic of all time, and Randall Munroe, its creator, is a swell guy. I'm very glad about this indeed.
It's been fun putting it all together. It was neat to go back through various huge stacks of old drawings, some on the back of school assignments, and scan them at print resolution. I also had fun with the marginal notes. I'm really excited to finally have it in print, and I'm looking forward to seeing people and signing copies at the release events this weekend. I'm also excited about getting back to work on some other projects which have been on hold for a bit, at least one of which will involve lakes and a recently-acquired Arduino.
xkcd: volume 0 (Thanks, Arbitrary Aardvark!)
Previously:


Terrifying huge breakfast is free if you eat it in 20 minutes

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:48 PM PDT

Here's an unparalleled gluttony opportunity in the UK:

Mario's Cafe in Westhoughton do a big breakfast for £10! Eat it all in 20 mins without a drink to wash it down with and you get it free!

It's 10 eggs, 10 bacon, 10 sausage, 10 toast, 5 black puddings, tomatoes, beans and mushrooms.

The £10 Breakfast!!! (via Making Light)

Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:46 PM PDT

The in-game economy in EVE Online is teetering after the mismanaged, embezzlement-plagued player bank froze user-accounts, tying up much of the game's capital so that players can't buy stuff.
Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as "Ricdic") had embezzled --and then sold in the real world-- over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is.

At the moment, customer accounts will remain frozen until the bank manages to stabilize. According to McCormack, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%."

Virtual bank in EVE freezes accounts due to deficit
Previously:


What's the deal with all the collapsing water pipes in LA? Engineers: "We don't know."

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:44 PM PDT

Engineers in Los Angeles are baffled by the recent epidemic of failing underground water pipes throughout Los Angeles. Every time you turn on the local TV news around here, over the last few months -- there's new footage of a "major blowout." After examining "dozens of ruptures, some of which flooded streets, damaged vehicles and buildings and created a sinkhole so big that it almost swallowed a firetruck," officials and city engineers have agreed that something odd is going on, but they don't know exactly what, or why so many points of failure in such a compact window of time. Snip from Los Angeles Times:
6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a54f27a3970b-600wi.jpg

Los Angeles' water system was put in place by William Mulholland, who figured out how to tap water from the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley and designed an aqueduct system that let it flow to Los Angeles on the force of gravity alone. The influx allowed semi-arid Los Angeles to boom -- and subdivisions marched outward in the 1920s and the years just after World War II.

The system remains a marvel to many engineers and still sends water over the Santa Monica Mountains from Sylmar to San Pedro using gravity. But parts of it are now almost 100 years old, and many of the pipes are wearing out.

One note on which most agree: a bankrupt state and a city crippled by slashed budgets are ill-equipped to solve the problem.

Here's one LA Times story, and here's another from this morning after two more pipes burst. (Image: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Russia: Journalists' advocacy group digs into unsolved murders of 17 reporters.

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:23 PM PDT

Obama gets mixed grade on privacy issues in EPIC report

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:20 PM PDT

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.org) has released the Privacy Report Card for the Obama Administration. The new administration got "an "Incomplete" for Consumer Privacy, A- for Medical Privacy, C+ for Civil Liberties, and a B for Cyber Security. Participating organizations included US PIRG, Consumer Federation of America, the Liberty Coalition, Association of American Physicians and, Surgeons, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Read the full report here (PDF). Bottom line: according to EPIC, Obama is better than Bush so far, but if that's the yardstick we're using -- boy, are we in deep 5h1t. (EPIC via Privacy Revolt via @oxbloodruffin)

Possibly the best one-note internet joke to emerge from the Kanye VMA incident.

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:05 PM PDT

kanyelicou.jpg

Above, BoingBoing.net after receiving the kanyelicio.us treatment. (Via @GreatDismal)

Related reading, on a more sober note: "It's Kanye's Fault," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic: "It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very existence springs from an act of immodesty."

When Guantánamo came to America: "Zeitoun."

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:43 PM PDT

Louisiana native Clayton Cubitt blogs about the story behind a new nonfiction book by Dave Eggers, Zeitoun:
zeitoun.jpgIn the days after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of American citizens were rounded up and imprisoned at a makeshift fenced-in holding area at the city's bus station. The prison was nicknamed "Camp Greyhound." Citizens were not allowed phone calls. They were not given lawyers. Their property was confiscated, and they were held without charge. Prisoners were sometimes beaten, pepper-sprayed, and forced to sleep in the open-roofed cages on the greasy pavement that was once bus parking spots. Some went on to serve months in Louisiana prisons, only to have all charges eventually dropped.

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

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 12:44 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.)

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com



The rise of the Flapper

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:20 AM PDT

200909161118

Miss Cellania of Mental Floss wrote a brief entry about flapper girls of the 1920s.

Being a flapper wasn't all about fashion. It was about rebellion. In this article from 1922, a would-be flapper (but still a "nice girl") explains her lifestyle choices to her parents. Flappers did what society did not expect from young women. They danced to Jazz Age music, they smoked, they wore makeup, they spoke their own language, and they lived for the moment. Flapper fashion followed the lifestyle. Skirts became shorter to make dancing easier. Corsets were discarded in favor of brassieres that bound their breasts, again to make dancing easier. The straight shapeless dresses were easy to make and blurred the line between the rich and everyone else. The look became fashionable because of the lifestyle. The short hair? That was pure rebellion against the older generation's veneration of long feminine locks.
The rise of the Flapper

iPhone app featuring Biskup, FriendsWithYou, and DEVILROBOTS

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:17 AM PDT

Polyghost - Helper - Iphone Screenshot 01
Polyghost is a simple and fun iPhone app that brings collectible vinyl toys into the virtual realm. In development for a year, it features the delightful artwork of BB pal Tim Biskup along with FriendsWithYou and DEVILROBOTS. Developed by Last Legion Games, the $3.99 app comes with Tim's infamous "Helper" character (top left) and you can buy others within the app itself. They range in price from $.99 to $9.99, depending on the value of their real vinyl counterparts. I don't think I'd pay $9.99 for a virtual vinyl character, but I bet some hardcore collectors would. Once you download a character, you can pose it, change the lighting to set a mood, and easily composite the critter into any image in the iPhone's photo album. PolyGhost also offers one-click sharing of your creations on Facebook and Twitter. Polyghost

Pocket-sized gadget for detecting autism in children

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:21 AM PDT

Lena-Gadget

LENA is a technology that analyzes speech patterns of young children to detect autism.

What is LENA? LENA is the only technology that automatically collects and analyzes information about a child's natural language environment and development. The LENA feedback reports help parents improve a child's cumulative language experience and accelerate that child's language and cognitive development, and preparedness for school.

Who is LENA for? Parents and caregivers of children ages 0 to 4.

Why is it important? Several hundred research studies over the last 50 years document the importance of talking to and interacting with your baby, especially during the first three years. Groundbreaking research by two renowned university researchers, Drs. Betty Hart, Ph.D., and Todd Risley, Ph.D., revealed that the quantity of talk a child experienced between birth and age 3 directly correlated with the child's IQ and vocabulary size. The LENA Foundation was founded based on the key elements of this study and our own normative study shows that saying 17,000 words per day, which is equal to the 85th percentile, will greatly enhance your child's potential.

Who developed it? A team of world-class scientists, including experts in linguistics, speech recognition technology, computer engineering, speech analysis, statistics, speech language pathology, language research and developmental pediatrics. Recognizing that achievement gaps already exist at kindergarten entry, LENA was developed to give parents useful information to help ensure they are providing the richest language environment possible to their children during the critical years between birth and age 4, before they enter school.

How does it work? Parents follow a simple three-step process, 2-3 times a month:

1. In the morning, slip the LENA Digital Language Processor (DLP) into the pocket of specially designed LENA clothing.

2. At the end of the day, plug the DLP into your PC. The audio data will transfer and software analysis begins.

3. View your reports to analyze your conversations, identify patterns of talk throughout the day and receive percentile rank information.

Pocket-sized gadget for detecting autism in children

The US Government's bizarre obsession with Janet Jackson's nipple

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 10:50 AM PDT

This, in all sincerity, is what I expect in return for my taxes: a five-year-long absurdist theater performance about a magically, awesomely, mesmerizingly powerful nipple that was revealed for less than one second to millions of half-drunk spectators on a Sunday afternoon in 2004. The budget: Millions of dollars and rising. Starring: the FCC, the highest court in the United States, major media companies, and a cast of thousands of lawyers. Script: A 12-foot-high stack incomprehensible legal documents. I hope the show never ends. Bravo!
The commission also reasserted that the reveal was off limits for broadcast TV between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. "[The FCC] reasonably determined in this case that the graphic and shocking, albeit brief, exposure of Janet Jackson's bare right breast to a nationwide audience composed of millions of children and adults was indecent," the FCC said.

Back in June, the court asked for new briefs in the case after the Supreme Court's May 4 decision to vacate the Third Circuit's ruling that the Jackson fine was arbitrary and capricious.

The FCC relied  heavily on the Fox decision in its brief, saying that "as the Fox Courts interpretation of the pertinent regulatory history now makes clear, the  repetition requirement that exempted fleeting expletives from enforcement has  no logical application to images."

We have always been at war with the one-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple

Baby brain scanner photo

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 10:17 AM PDT

Photos Uncategorized 2007 11 15 Babybig
My pal and IFTF colleague Jake Dunagan spotted this amazing image in an older post on the excellent Cocktail Party Physics. The doll is wearing a diffuse optical tomography (DOT) rig, an emerging technology used to scan an infant's brain using light. From Cocktail Party Physics:
Light passes out of one fiber optic cable, diffuses through the tissue, and is received by another cable. Yes, light does diffuse through tissue, as anyone who has ever held a flashlight up to his hand can attest. According to Joseph Culver, an assistant professor of radiology at WUSTL, "The flashlight's white light becomes visibly reddened because there's a window in the near-IR region of the spectrum where human tissue absorbs relatively little of the light." Anyway, based on this diffusion data, the machine's computer creates a 3D tomographic image based on whether the hemoglobin in the blood is oxygenated or deoxygenated to determine brain activity.
"From the minds of babes"

Reading Kafka improves learning?

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:53 AM PDT

New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere. In the study by the University of British Columbia psychologists, subjects read The Country Doctor and then took a test where they had to identify patterns in strings of letters. They performed much better than the control group. From Science Daily (Wikimedia Commons image):
Wikipedia Commons Thumb 7 7D Kafka Portrait.Jpg 450Px-Kafka Portrait "People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Proulx. "But what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did."

In a second study, the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."
Reading Kafka Improves Learning, Suggests Psychology Study (ScienceDaily)

Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar (Psychological Science)

How to saber a bottle of champagne

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 12:08 PM PDT

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Here's notorious Toronto lubricator Kathryn Borel Jr. teaching us how to festively slice open a bottle of bubbly without swallowing a single shard of glass!

Borel's memoir Corked just came out. It's really funny and makes wine seem interesting and meaningful (even to an oenophobe like me). Check it out! (link)

The Burley Boys: feral children who want TV

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:17 AM PDT

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Here's a cartoon I made starring my adorable little cousins. The person they're beating up is me.

Student kills burglary suspect with Samurai sword

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 08:10 AM PDT

On Monday, someone had burglarized college student John Pontolillo's Baltimore house and nabbed two laptop computers and a videogame system. Late that night, Pontoilillo heard noises in his garage. So he grabbed his samurai sword and went to check it out. When the prowler lunged at him, Pontoilillo killed him with the sword. The state's attorney's office will consider whether to bring any charges against Pontoilillo. From the Washington Post:
The student "was backed up against a corner, and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force," said city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Pontolillo, who rents the off-campus home, nearly severed the man's left hand, inflicting what police called a "spear laceration."

Donald D. Rice of Baltimore, 49, a repeat offender who had been released from jail Saturday, died at the scene.
Hopkins Student With Samurai Sword Kills Theft Suspect (Thanks, Sean Ness!)
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