Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Arizona Republic quotes psychics as experts on the future

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 10:36 PM PDT

The Arizona Republic is plumbing new lows, quoting "psychics" as though they were experts on the future:
Consider the way the story starts. The word "apparently" is a tip-off that the piece is based on no actual data. Who's the source for this alleged mini-flood of new customers? Why, the people selling the product. Makes sense to me: In I-can-see-into-the-future territory, we can just take their word for it.

Not a single customer is quoted. We hear only from the people who are claiming to be getting this influx of new customers. Can't the newspaper find even one client?

Look. Newspapers run astrology columns -- something I'd ban if I ran a paper, period -- with no disclaimers that there is no scientific basis for what these planet- and star-gazers tell us. But the astrology columns run, typically, near the comics, which is the fiction section of the daily paper.

No newspaper, as far as I know, gives its pages over to self-described psychics. Yet the Republic's story quotes several, along with the astrologers, with a straight face.

Quoting 'Psychics' Like Experts: How Low Can News Judgement Go? (Thanks, Dan!)

Big Ideas panel in Brighton next Saturday: "The future of collaboration"

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 12:21 AM PDT

I'll be in Brighton, England next Saturday, Oct 17 for a Battle of Ideas event entitled "The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age." I'll be on a panel with Michael Bull from the University of Sussex and Nico Macdonald, chaired by Robert Clowes of Brighton Salon. It's at 8PM in the Jubilee Library and tickets are £7.50 (£5 concessions). Hope to see you there! (I'll also be doing a London Battle of Ideas event on Oct 31, "Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing")
The 21st century looks set to be age of online collaboration. While old forms of community and solidarity have waned, leaving us apparently more fragmented and individualised, the social web enables many of us to work, play and organise with others in ways previously unimaginable. Technologies like Flickr, Delicious and Wikipedia evidence new means of sharing information and working together. Many suggest these technologies will have far-reaching social implications, and even presage a new form of production and work outside the market system. While traditional free market capitalism is compromised by the worldwide recession, the world wide web is said to promise an exciting alternative. Wired's Kevin Kelly suggests we are entering a new collectivist epoch, a 'New Socialism'. Technology guru Howard Rheingold sees these developments as disruptive, and will change the way people 'meet, mate, work, fight, buy, sell'. Charles Leadbeater, author of We-Think, sees the new means of networked collaboration as presaging a new production model: 'Mass Innovation rather than Mass Production'.

The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age

Type design experts, browser makers, take another crack at webfonts

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 10:03 PM PDT

Type design legend John Berry writes in about his upcoming panel on Web font embedding: "It's all about getting new fonts onto a web page, so the content doesn't all end up in default Times or Arial. After a wide-ranging but inconclusive panel on web fonts at TypeCon in July, this time around some of the browser makers will be represented -- and the focus will widen to include *how* fonts are used on the web. "

I hope the put this on the web afterward!

Where: Typ09, the 2009 ATypI conference, Mexico City
When: 26-30 October (web-fonts program on Thursday, 29 October, at Anáhuac University campus)

Web fonts: the talk of Typ09 (Thanks, John!)

The Chipmunks: From Rags to Riches

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 01:08 PM PDT

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Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive says:
Down on his luck, Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (aka "David Seville") bought a tape recorder capable of speeding up voices with his last $200. He quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records. The label was close to bankruptcy, but Bagdasarian convinced them that they might as well press Chipmunk singles with the leftover vinyl pucks and labels in their warehouse rather than just turn the unused stock over to the bank when the business went under. Production commenced and in just a few months leading up to Christmas of 1958, the record shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of the best selling singles of all time. Bagdasarian won two Grammy Awards, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy, and the Chipmunks became a household name with children all over the world.
The History of the Chipmunks

Great stuff you might have missed

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 03:14 PM PDT

Game research, ghost stories, Alan Moore, and academia: The far reaches of edutainment.
Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun argues that games don't necessarily have to be fun to be engaging: "Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on?"

How'd They Do That? Poison Ivy and Carbon Dioxide Studies
Maggie Koerth-Baker discovers how scientists figured out that CO2 makes ivy grow incredibly fast ... and problematically poisonous.

The ecologist who found his wedding ring
Lisa Katayama writes: "When Aleki Taumoepeau, a 42-year old ecologist, dropped his wedding ring in the murky waters of a New Zealand ... he was determined to find it at all costs"

BBVideo: SYNESTHESIA, a film by Jonathan Fowler.
Boing Boing Video presents a remix of "Synesthesia," a documentary directed by Jonathan Fowler, about people whose senses blend, or mix. For instance: a synesthete might see colors when listening to music, or taste flavors when hearing a spoken word.

Why Halo makes me want to lay down and die
Margaret Robertson on Halo's oneiric call to adventure: "Halo is a place where I feel peaceful. It's partly, I grant you, the pistol in my hand and the rocket-launcher on my back, both of which take the stress out of day-to-day life."

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: The Gummi Bear Gets It

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 11:52 AM PDT

Grab your favorite sugary cereal and pull up a seat. It's time for Saturday Morning Science Experiment! This week, we're finding out what happens to a gummi bear (i.e., sucrose) when it's dropped into molten potassium chlorate.

Got a video you want to see on Saturday Morning Science Experiment? Drop me an email, I'm taking suggestions.

Gummi bear thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user Furryscaly, via CC.

First-ever CC-licensed film in Sweden, available from Pirate Bay

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 07:04 AM PDT

Mathias sez, "Nasty Old People is the first feature film in Swedish history to be released under a Creative Commons license."

Mette is a member of a neo-Nazi gang, her day job is to take care of four crazy old people that all are just waiting to die. Her life becomes a journey into a burlesque fairytale, where the rules of the game are created by Mette herself. Mette is indifferent about her way of life, until she one night assaults a man, kicking him senseless. Waking up the day after, she realizes that something is wrong, and in company with the her crazy oldies she longs for respect and love. She can tell that the old folks are marginalized by the modern society, but together they create a world and a voice of their own.

Nasty Old People

Download legally from the Pirate Bay

(Thanks, Mathias!)

British tabloids endanger lives with bad reporting on cervical cancer vaccine

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 06:39 AM PDT

When a British girl -- who had an undiagnosed tumor -- died shortly after receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine, the British tabloids jumped on the story as proof that vaccines are evil and pad and deadly and dangerous. They even quoted respected scientists who agreed with them. Except they misrepreented those scientists' views, got the science completely wrong, scared people away from potentially life-saving treatment, and failed to adequately own up to their mistakes. Ben Goldacre, the "bad science" columnist for the Guardian, has written a scathing indictment of the way the press handled the story.
The story seemed unlikely for three reasons. Firstly, Professor Harper is not a known member of the antivaccination community, which is vanishingly small. Secondly, it was on the front page of the Sunday Express, which is indeed cause for concern. Lastly, it was by specialist health journalist Lucy Johnston, whose previous work includes "Doctor's MMR fears", "Exclusive: Experts Cast Doubt On Claim For 'Wonder' Cancer Jabs", "Children 'Used As Guinea Pigs For Vaccines'", "Dangers Of Mmr Jab 'Covered Up'", "Teenage Girls Sue Over Cancer Jab", "Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme", and so many more, including a rather memorable bad science story, the front page: " Suicides 'Linked To Phone Masts".

So I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper's position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

"I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a 'controversial drug'. I did not 'hit out' - I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview."

Jabs "as bad as the cancer" (Thanks, Evidence Matters!)
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