The Latest from Boing Boing

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• HOWTO make a Bioshock Big Daddy costume
• Innovative and inspiring new journalism from j-schools
• Internet dumbing-down hysteria compared against previous waves of anti-tech backlash
• 8-bit house numbers
• Rage
• An Hour with Kasper Hauser: A Sound of Young America Special
• Gadgets used in Garrido property investigation: "ground-penetrating radar," magnetometers
• Pop-up camper on a shopping cart
• "Insane killer" who was treated to a day at a county fair escapes
• 3D movies are doomed to gimmickhood
• Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off from the net if one member is accused of illegal downloads
• RIAA's in-school propaganda asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff
• Exclusive sneak peek at Ch. 19 from The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by R. Crumb
• βoyfriend: sweetly romantic singularity sf story podcast
• Creator of Bubble Project to speak at AIGA/NY, Sept. 24, 2009
• Dan Brown's latest book takes down freemasons.org
• Not-Rubik's Dodecahedron
• Internet "relief kit" brings sweet, sweet connectivity to disaster sites
• web zen: avast ye! this be pirate zen 2009
• Street vendor selling ID cards, Thailand: random road snapshot
• How to Sample Wine Without Looking like a Clown
• Hackerspace conference in Hamilton, ON, Oct 2-3
• 9/11 hoax fools all of Germany

HOWTO make a Bioshock Big Daddy costume Posted: 19 Sep 2009 12:02 AM PDT Here's build-notes from a stellar fan-costume for Big Daddy from the game Bioshock: Starting with the blueprints printed at full scale (HUGE) I made cross sections out of insulation foam and glued them into place. The empty areas between sections were filled with cardboard. This formed what I called the "skeleton" of the body. The empty cavities in the skeleton were then filled in with expanding foam. After drying, the foam was carved into the shape of the main body. After this was completed (and the foam given more drying time so it would retain its shape) the entire form was covered in stretch fabric. This smoothed out a lot of the lumpiness of the foam. Big Daddy (Bioshock) (via Wonderland)

Innovative and inspiring new journalism from j-schools Posted: 18 Sep 2009 11:55 PM PDT Dan Gillmor sez, "Students (including some of mine) from a bunch of US journalism schools have outdone themselves with their foundation-funded summer project. Their work combines all kinds of media and ideas around a theme of 'a changing America,' with smart use of modern tools and traditional techniques. The pros could learn something from this." The nation's leading journalism schools come together in this unique program to experiment with new forms of in-depth and investigative reporting. Students travel the country to report on critical issues facing our changing nation and then find innovative ways to tell those stories. News21 | Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education (Thanks, Dan!)

Internet dumbing-down hysteria compared against previous waves of anti-tech backlash Posted: 18 Sep 2009 11:25 PM PDT Salon has a refreshing take on the effect of the net on wider culture, courtesy of Dennis Baron, author of the new book A Better Pencil. Baron places hysteria about the net's supposed dumbing-down in context with other panics of years gone by. Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they're interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn't, they don't buy into it. I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony. We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything." Is the Internet melting our brains?

8-bit house numbers Posted: 18 Sep 2009 11:27 PM PDT What a lovely homey touch these 8-bit house-numbers add to a "Gamer geek house." Made by Austin Laser Art. Gamer geek house numbers (via Wonderland)

Rage Posted: 18 Sep 2009 08:11 PM PDT Above, Jude Law in fab drag. A still from the forthcoming feature Rage, directed by Sally Potter, in which Law plays a female model named "Minx." The short version: A young student uses his phonecam to shoot interviews with the staff of a New York fashion house, and posts them online without the interviewees' knowledge or consent. A runway accident turns into a murder investigation, then, "denial leads to devastation." Here's a New York Times piece about the film, by Guy Trebay. Zoolander it is not. Here's a Flickr set with more stills. You'll spot Steve Buscemi, Judi Dench, John Leguizamo, Dianne Wiest, and Eddie Izzard all in the trailer, which is embedded after the jump. (Thanks, Karol Martesko-Fenster)

An Hour with Kasper Hauser: A Sound of Young America Special Posted: 18 Sep 2009 07:50 PM PDT Required weekend listening. Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America shares word that a special TSOYA feature episode on The Kasper Hauser Comedy Group is now up. [The] San Francisco-based sketch comedy group [have] been mainstays of The Sound of Young America, and have appeared on Comedy Central and on This American Life. They're the authors of three hilarious books: "SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From A Plane," "Obama's Blackberry," and "Weddings of the Times." They also wrote the website Wonderglen for former Onion editor and Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin. On this special hour-long Sound of Young America special, they talk about their careers, and we hear their comedy -- both sketches produced for The Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast and all-new pieces. Go have a listen here, or click the embed below.

Gadgets used in Garrido property investigation: "ground-penetrating radar," magnetometers Posted: 18 Sep 2009 07:41 PM PDT Authorities are using an assortment of technologies to analyze the contents of property belonging to Phillip Garrido, the accused rapist/kidnapper whose alleged abduction and abuse of Jaycee Dugard is the subject of previous Boing Boing posts. Bone fragments have been found on the patch of land in Antioch where he, his wife, and his victims lived. Along with cadaver dogs, authorities are using "ground-penetrating radar" and forensic archeology tools including magnetometers, in hopes of finding (or ruling out the possibility of) remains of other girls who disappeared around Dugard's age. Here's the website of Bill Silva, an archaeologist assisting in the case. He reported finding an "anomaly in the soil that will require further investigation." Does anyone know more about the specific devices used for this sort of operation? I am interested to know more about the technology involved. Contrary to CSI, none of this is particularly glamorous or fast-paced work. Previously: Rapist/kidnapper Garrido's creepy van in Google Maps: Xeni on ... The blog of Philip Garrido, serial rapist and kidnapper: "sound control" gadget hallucinations. Did Google Street View spot rapist/kidnapper Garrido? (PHOTO: Lance Iverson / SF Chronicle. Investigators pore through the back yard of the house next to Phillip Craig and Nancy Garrido.)

Pop-up camper on a shopping cart Posted: 18 Sep 2009 02:20 PM PDT Artist Kevin Cyr is building a pop-up camper atop a shopping cart. This is a follow-up to his Camper Bike, a 3-wheeler bicycle with a truck camper on the back. Cyr is looking for donations to help complete the Camper Kart. Cyr writes: It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making due with less. I have always been interested in bikes and vehicles and for many years they have been the subject of my paintings. My paintings document odd and derelict vehicles: old delivery trucks inundated with graffiti and rust, well-traveled RVs, Indian rickshaws and Asian bikes. Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object. Camper Kart (Kickstarter) "Kevin Cyr's Camper kart" (Hi-Fructose)

"Insane killer" who was treated to a day at a county fair escapes Posted: 18 Sep 2009 02:24 PM PDT What could be wrong with taking an insane killer to the country fair? Oh, yeah. Insane killer escapes on trip to county fair (Via Bits & Pieces)

3D movies are doomed to gimmickhood Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:46 PM PDT My latest Guardian column, "Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick," discusses the difficulty of making truly 3D movies (that is, movies that lose something crucial in 2D) in a world where movies need to find a home on 2D small-screens in order to recoup. Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services - none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn't be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project. What's more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who've shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don't want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don't want to do this when there's plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window. I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don't support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting "BANG!" and "CRASH!" in your ear. Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick

Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off from the net if one member is accused of illegal downloads Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:41 PM PDT The Open Rights Group is hosting a public forum in London on Oct 2 to discuss the new proposal to disconnect Brits from the Internet if anyone in their household is accused of violating copyright: Peter Mandelson is convinced that disconnecting filesharers will help the music and film industries. He's plain wrong. This extreme option would trample on the rights of internet users - and the rights of their families - without earning a penny for musicians and film-makers. It is clear that Mandelson does not understand the extent to which an internet is now a basic household service, as important as electricity or gas, without which people are handicapped in their ability to work, function, and participate in society. Open Rights Group, as part of our campaign against the policy of disconnection, is holding a debate on better approaches for public policy and the entertainment industry. Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist) will kick off with a presentation on the future of music, media and entertainment. Ben Goldacre (Guardian / Bad Science) will then join Gerd on a panel, chaired by our Executive Director, Jim Killock, to take questions from the audience. (Thanks, Jim!)

RIAA's in-school propaganda asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:38 PM PDT The RIAA has updated its Music Rules! school program -- which contains blatant falsehoods about copyright. The new version asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff: "Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or video about your campaign." Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids. We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases. For instance, the RIAA tells kids, "Never copy someone else's creative work without permission from the copyright holder" -- omitting the important right to make creative fair use of existing content. It also coins a misleading term, "songlifting," (which the curriculum says is "just as bad as shoplifting") [Ed: if only! The penalties for shoplifting are so much lighter than they are for file-sharing!]. Perhaps most disturbing of all given that the curriculum is supposed to be adopted by schools, it teaches kids bad math as part of its lessons on peer to peer file-sharing. The updated curriculum goes a step further and asks kids to contact their local media and act as the RIAA's own unpaid public relations staff. (Thanks, Tim!)

Exclusive sneak peek at Ch. 19 from The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by R. Crumb Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:36 PM PDT The publisher of R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated kindly gave permission to share Chapter 19 with our readers. Click on the thumbnails for an enlargement. Enjoy! I understand the book will start shipping as soon as September 23rd. From Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Crumb Previously: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis coming in 2009 - Boing Boing Video of paging through R. Crumb's illustrated Book of Genesis ...

βoyfriend: sweetly romantic singularity sf story podcast Posted: 18 Sep 2009 01:22 PM PDT This week's Escape Pod podcast story is Madeline Ashby's βoyfriend, a marvellous, sweetly romantic science fiction story about teenagers who use clever artificial intelligences as "training wheels" on the way to their first real love, but who quickly find themselves substituting the warm companionship of their imaginary friends for the confusing and fraught people around them. It's got Ashby's sly humor, heart and it's got clever to spare. I bought Madeline's first published story for Tesseracts 11 and it's wonderful to see where she's gone since. EP216: βoyfriend Previously: Flurb #7 is out -- Rudy Rucker's awesomely weird and fantastic ... Tesseracts 11 Canadian sf anthology launch in Toronto this Sat ...

Creator of Bubble Project to speak at AIGA/NY, Sept. 24, 2009 Posted: 18 Sep 2009 12:55 PM PDT Doug says: Ji Lee is the founder of the reknowned 'Bubble Project', which started 6 years ago. Borne from frustration at corporate advertising agencies, Lee printed and applied 50,000 renegade speech bubbles to street advertisements in New York and other cities around the world. Passersby would then fill the bubbles with musings and Lee would photograph the results and post them on the Bubble Project website. Presently, working as a creative director at Google Creative Lab, Lee's job is to promote many Google products and Google brand to the world. Lee continues to work as an independent artist, designer, illustrator and teacher. Lee likes to maintain the delicate balance between professional and personal projects, which he believes compliment each other. Small Talk No. 1: Ji Lee Thursday 24 September 2009 6:30–8:00PM Bumble and Bumble, 3rd floor auditorium 415 West 13th Street, New York, NY.

Dan Brown's latest book takes down freemasons.org Posted: 18 Sep 2009 12:50 PM PDT I received this email message yesterday, regarding Dan Brown's new thriller, The Lost Symbol. It looks like the Illuminati have shut down freemasons.org, to prevent further secrets from being revealed.

Not-Rubik's Dodecahedron Posted: 18 Sep 2009 12:29 PM PDT Spy toy gadget maker Brando has this "Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition" for $49.90. The FANTASTIC SIZE and COMPLEX IQ Cube!! The GIANT 12 surfaces IQ Pentagon! You may never face this complicated one! Your home cannot miss this one. You may not solve it, you can just disassemble it and try it again! This is the most perfect for your Left & Right Brain Training. Let's GRAB and CHALLENGE it! The Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition

Internet "relief kit" brings sweet, sweet connectivity to disaster sites Posted: 18 Sep 2009 12:19 PM PDT Mike Outmesguine -- wireless guru, author, and veteran -- is one of the most knowledgeable people out there with regard to post-disaster connectivity know-how. I am digging the instructional piece he has in the current issue of MAKE about "worst-case-internet" kits, with details on what to include, what each component costs, how to set it up, and why.

web zen: avast ye! this be pirate zen 2009 Posted: 18 Sep 2009 12:00 PM PDT 09.18.09 : avast ye! this be pirate zen 2009 talk like a pirate day british hq pirate cats pirate food pirates vs. parrots pirate vs. ninja the pirate comedy show pirate family wife swap pirates for jesus scurvy dog! 'tis pirate zen 2008 arrgh! tis pirate zen 2007 yo ho ho! pirate zen 2006 yar! this be pirate zen 2005 yar! 'tis pirate zen 2004 yar! this be pirate zen 2003 and for a limited time... david byrne's pirates (this will disappear on 09.25.09) Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!)

Street vendor selling ID cards, Thailand: random road snapshot Posted: 18 Sep 2009 10:25 AM PDT BB pal Sean Bonner is traveling in Thailand, and spotted this street hawker selling fake identification cards. "Check it," he emails, "For the low price of 3,000 baht I could have bought a California Drivers License!" I dig the assortment of press passes. Pick me up one, Sean, but make sure mine also has the bald white dude's photo on it, just like the one belonging to "Miss Heather Roberts," below (click to enlarge). Flickr image link.

How to Sample Wine Without Looking like a Clown Posted: 18 Sep 2009 09:06 AM PDT Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast. Here's some more unpretentious wine instruction from Kathryn Borel Jr. And here's a link to Borel's new memoir, Corked (link). Free sample chapter here (PDF).

Hackerspace conference in Hamilton, ON, Oct 2-3 Posted: 18 Sep 2009 08:50 AM PDT James sez, Four Hackerspaces in Ontario have joined forces (Hacklab.TO from Toronto, think|haus from Hamilton, diyode from Guelph, and Kwartzlab from Kitchener-Waterloo) to put on a mini hackerspace conference! On Friday evening October 2nd and all day Saturday October 3rd, think|haus will host talks, how to sessions, and a projects gallery at which anyone who is interested can give a 20 minute talk on something related to creating projects, show people how to build/take apart/modify something, or show off their cool projects. Some confirmed talks so far are: You Let Your Kid Do What? / A brief story about children and taking advantage of applied engineering skills in a positive way. * Intro to Kite Aerial Photography / Come learn about the kinds of kites you can use to fly your camera, what you need to build your own kite, and how to modify your camera to take pictures automatically. * RF Countersurveillance / A primer on monitoring police and security frequencies using a trunk-tracking scanner, and how it can assist in penetrating a targetMo< * OpenWRT Demo / Unboxing, flashing, and demonstrating OpenWRT on an Asus WL-520GU * Intro to Electronics Hardware Design By Someone Who Isn't an Expert / It's not nearly as hard as you think it might be, I'll show you the steps and tools you may want to take, and warn you of some of the potential issues you may face. Southern Ontario Hackerspaces / Makers Mini-Conference (Thanks, James!)

9/11 hoax fools all of Germany Posted: 18 Sep 2009 07:06 PM PDT Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast. Here's what DPA, Germany's national news wire reported this past September 11th 10th: A terrorist attack occurred in the city of Bluewater, California. The suicide bombers were German rappers, the "Berlin Boys". A half hour later DPA issued a correction: there had been no bombing. The "Berlin Boys" are not a rap group. The city of Bluewater does not exist. It was all an elaborate publicity stunt to promote the satirical German film Short Cut to Hollywood. Filmmaker Jan Henrik Stahlberg and his team fooled their entire nation by creating fake websites and videos: Here's the fake city of Bluewater (link). Here's the fake local Bluewater news station, KVPK (link). And here are the "Berlin Boys" with their club hit "Hass": Wired has a detailed report (link).

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