Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Speaking on privacy at Battle of Ideas London this Sat

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 03:10 AM PDT

I'm speaking at London's Battle of Ideas this Saturday, Oct 31, on a panel called "Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing." The event goes 1:30-3:30 and there are still a few tickets left!
The increasing reach of information technology into all areas of life, from social networking websites to data sharing in public services, has thrown up a number of questions about privacy. Information about our medical records, financial circumstances and shopping habits is increasingly likely to be stored in electronic media that are out of our control. Some critics worry more about Tesco's data-gathering than any 'surveillance state'. The controversy about Google Maps' Street View function, which captured thousands of unwitting people walking or standing on the streets, is a reminder that new technology constantly raises new questions about our privacy. So how worried should we be? Does the convenience of easily accessed information outweigh the danger of abuse? How are our conceptions of privacy changing? And following the success of the Pirate Party in Sweden, can we expect privacy to move up the political agenda in the UK too.
Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing

Sega Zippos

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:09 PM PDT

Torture makes you seem guilty

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:06 PM PDT

A Harvard psych study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology shows that when people are present during torture, they gradually come to believe the torture victim is guilty as a way of assuaging their consciences for their complicity in torture:
Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money. The woman was then "tortured" by having her hand immersed in ice water while study participants listened to the session over an intercom. She never confessed to anything, but the more she suffered during the torture, the guiltier she was perceived to be...

"Our research suggests that torture may not uncover guilt so much as lead to its perception," says Gray. "It is as though people who know of the victim's pain must somehow convince themselves that it was a good idea -- and so come to believe that the person who was tortured deserved it."

Not all torture victims appear guilty, however. When participants in the study only listened to a recording of a previous torture session -- rather than taking part as witnesses of ongoing torture -- they saw the victim who expressed more pain as less guilty. Gray explains the different results as arising from different levels of complicity.

"Those who feel complicit with the torture have a need to justify the torture, and so link the victim's pain to blame," says Gray. "On the other hand, those distant from torture have no need to justify it and so can sympathize with the suffering of the victim, linking pain to innocence."

Pain Of Torture Can Make Innocent Seem Guilty
Previously:


Afghanistan: Karzai's drug-dealing bro has been on CIA payroll for 8 years, says NYT

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:20 PM PDT

karzai.jpg Thug life, Kabul-style, courtesy of American tax dollars. The New York Times reports that "Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

A related story out in tomorrow's paper covers the push for more US troops in Afghanistan's cities and agricultural areas, where the poppies that support the Taliban are cash crop numero uno.

Boing Boing readers: wonder what kind of cellphone he's using in the photo above? Better yet: your caption, please! A brick of CIA-funded heroin to the winner, but you'll have to fly to Bagram to pick it up. [ via Wired Danger Room on Twitter. ]

US Chamber of Commerce suing the Yes Men

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:32 PM PDT

Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic writes in with this update on the "Yes Men pwn the US Chamber of Commerce" story I blogged about last week, which Cory further updated here. Michael says,
yes-men3000.300wide.200high.jpg Kate Sheppard [of Mother Jones] was at the fake US Chamber of Commerce press conference in DC where a Yes Man, posing as a Chamber rep, claimed the Chamber was reversing its draconian position on climate change, which has caused lots of big Chamber members -- Apple, Nike, Exelon, and others -- to quit the national business group. But then a REAL Chamber PR man arrived at the meeting to declare it a fraud. (And Sheppard ended up on Maddow that night).

Today, Sheppard reports that the Chamber is suing its impersonators: "The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment," the Chamber said in a press release issued with the suit. "Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise."

Mother Jones stories on the US Chamber (here's an index):
* Chamber Sues Yes Men
* Chamber Uses Yes Men 'Attack' to Fundraise

Here's a related item in the New Yorker.

Image: by Wikimedia Commons user Tavis used under a CC License

Do chimps grieve?

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 08:39 PM PDT

chimp.jpg

Look at this photograph and just try to tell me the answer is no.

This incredible image was shot for National Geographic by Monica Szczupider, and shows chimpanzees at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon. They're observing as the body of an elder troop member named Dorothy is taken to burial. She died at 40 years of age, which is pretty old for a chimpanzee.

The photo appears in the November issue of National Geographic Magazine, in the "Visions of Earth" section. [ Thanks, Marilyn Terrell ]

The Hazards of Lab Work

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:55 PM PDT

Harvard Medical School is beefing up lab security after six researchers got sick off poisoned coffee back in August. The toxicology reports came in recently, according to Bloomberg, and the chemical culprit was sodium azide, which turns into a toxic gas when it's mixed into water. The good news is that none of the six died. The bad news: Nobody seems to know how this stuff got into the communal coffee pot to begin with.

And while a whodunnit poisoning mystery is not exactly what Wired had in mind when it listed "Grad Student" as #6 on its top 10 list of Best, Most Dangerous Science Jobs, this incident certainly does nothing to bump that job off the list. Not to mention the fact that, given the lab environment, you have to wonder whether the poisoning was even intentional at all...or whether somebody simply didn't wash their hands well enough before making a fresh pot.

From Wired:


Grad student

Even the most mundane job in science is hazardous if you don't know what you're doing. Grad students in labs around the world are in constant danger of, well, screwing up. In 2004, a Texas A&M student, for example, was cleaning up a laboratory when a jar of chemicals he was handling suddenly exploded, leaving him with severe lacerations and burns.

Flintstones in stop motion

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 04:44 PM PDT



Cartoon Brew points to Screen Novelties' well-executed Flintstones stop motion short.

Lost paper trail allows borrower to ignore $460,000 mortgage debt

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 02:04 PM PDT

A White Plains, NY federal court eliminated a woman's $460,000 mortgage debt because the paper trail was so messy that the mortgage lender couldn't prove that it actually owned the debt.
In March, PHH Mortgage filed a proof of claim to the debt noting that it was owed $461,263, which included more than $30,000 in past-due payments. The homeowner's lawyer sought to have the loan modified, but after the bank dragged its feet, as the lawyer described PHH's actions to the [New York] Times, the lawyer asked PHH to prove its claim.

Unable to do so to his satisfaction, Judge Drain ordered the debt expunged, concluding that PHH had failed to show it had been assigned the mortgage.

The case is being appealed by PHH, but even if the homeowner remains victorious, there remains a problem for her: Without a clear title, the homeowner will likely have difficulty selling her home if she chooses to do so.

Who owns your home? Lost paper trail allows borrower to keep her house

British couple who blogged sailing trip around the world feared captured by Somali pirates

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:38 PM PDT

chanlder.jpg

Update: Confirmed, the couple were captured. Their boat is believed to have been spotted.

A British couple in their mid-fifties who pretty much live their lives sailing around the world on their boat, "The Lynn Rival," are feared to have been captured by Somali pirates. Above, a screengrab from the blog Paul and Rachel Chandler maintained throughout their travels (blog.mailasail.com/lynnrival). The "thumbtack" icon shows the last spot they registered online before disappearing a few days ago while traveling waters off the coast of East Africa.

More on their story in the New York Times, and the UK Times.

Learning Music -- CC music sampler

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:13 PM PDT

John from CC-friendly record label Vosotros sez, "Learning Music is a band from Los Angeles - they release an album of CC music every month through a subscription series called Learning Music Monthly. That's a lot of music to keep up with, so we decided to put together a free anthology of songs from the last six albums. Download it for free and see what you've been missing!"

CASH Music: Learning Music (Thanks, John!)

Previously:


EFF launches Hall of Shame for copyright abusers

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:47 PM PDT

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Today, EFF is launching our new 'Takedown Hall of Shame' project, which collects the worst and most shameful examples of bogus DMCA takedowns. We've got everything from the recent Ralph Lauren takedown to Michael Savage's attempts to silence critics to a video NPR tried to remove just last week!"

"Free speech in the 21st century often depends on incorporating video clips and other content from various sources," explained EFF Senior Staff Attorney and Kahle Promise Fellow Corynne McSherry. "It's what The Daily Show with Jon Stewart does every night. This is 'fair use' of copyrighted or trademarked material and protected under U.S. law. But that hasn't stopped thin-skinned corporations and others from abusing the legal system to get these new works removed from the Internet. We wanted to document this censorship for all to see."

EFF's Takedown Hall of Shame at www.eff.org/takedowns focuses on the most egregious examples of takedown abuse, including an example of a YouTube video National Public Radio tried to remove just this week that criticizes same-sex marriage. Other Hall of Shame honorees include NBC for requesting removal of an Obama campaign video and CBS for targeting a McCain campaign video in the critical months before the 2008 election. The Hall of Shame will be updated regularly, as bad takedowns continue to squash free speech rights of artists, critics, and commentators big and small.

Takedown Hall of Shame

'Hall of Shame' Calls Out Bogus Internet Censorship (Thanks, Hugh!)

Previously:


Origins of the Haunted Mansion tombstones

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:44 PM PDT

Ape Lad sez, "2719 Hyperion, a great blog about Disney parks and imagineering, has been posting a series of photos of gravestones from the Haunted Mansion grounds with an explanation of who each is named after."

One of Disney's legendary "Nine Old Men"of animation, Marc Davis also stands as one of the most influential and creative forces in the history of theme park design. His clever and highly detailed concepts were the basis for the audio-animatronic vignettes of both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, and his unrealized designs for Walt Disney World's Western River Expedition are among the great lost treasures of Disney Imagineering. He also contributed to other celebrated attractions including the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Jungle Cruise and It's a Small World.
13 Tombstones (Thanks, Ape Lad!)

Track where US gov bailout trillions went with augmented reality mobile app

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:44 PM PDT

recover.jpg

A new augmented reality app from Layar allows Android and iPhone 3GS users to view recovery.gov contract dollars at play work in the real world.

Image above: an example of what those happy blue bailout bubbles look like, bouncing about on the thoroughly bailed-out streets of Washington, DC. My only criticism so far (I haven't tried the apps): instead of blue circles as representational icons, the designers really should have chosen taxpayers' tears. Snip:

Layar is an application that overlays your view of the real world with waypoints representing your favorite coffee place, the movie theatre you're trying to find, or in this case, where some of that $787 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. If you have an iPhone 3GS or Android device you can install the Layar app for free and then search for "recovery" or "sunlight" within Layar to find this layer. The layer works best near large cities where you are most likely to find recovery contracts.

Recovery.gov Augmented Reality Mashup [Sunlight Labs, via Micah Sifry]

Layar Reality Browser [Layar]

Chris Ware animation of This American Life story

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:12 PM PDT


This is an outstanding cartoon (by Chris Ware) depicting a This American Life story about kids who started a fake TV camera craze at their elementary school. As Graham says, "It's so amazing. Why can't there be more of this? I could watch HOURS of this."

Halloween: good excuse for gratuitous "doggies in costumes" blog posts

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 12:05 PM PDT

nacholibre.jpg

Above: a contestant in a "Howl-o-ween" costume contest dressed as Nacho Libre, by Flickr user Gwen (shared under a CC license). More images like this on the Flickr blog today, and you'll want to nose around in the Dogs in Costumes Flickr Group Pool, too.

Related BB post: Kfetch

Chris Ware's New Yorker cover

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:00 PM PDT

200910271138
Chris Ware's incredible (and all-too-real) New Yorker cover. (Full size version). Make sure to read Ware's comic strip in the issue, too! (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

US Department of Defense adopts "open source guidelines"

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:32 AM PDT

John Scott's been working with the US Department of Defense to develop a set of guidelines for using free/open source software in the US military:
As a Marine friend says "Agility is the Capability" - open source software and methods is the enabler of this. The DoD CIO office (or ASD-NII) just has posted new open source software guidance for the whole Department of Defense! Only took about 18 months to get through, so worth it. Hopefully this puts the FUD to bed.

Definitively open source software can be used inside the US Dept. of Defense. This is great news and shows that DoD is heading in the right direction to change how information intensive technology acquisitions programs can move toward a more dynamic OODA loop like model.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE NEW GUIDANCE ON OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (Thanks, John!)

Newspaper circulation over last 20 years: the great swandive

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:33 AM PDT

swandive.jpgOver at The Awl, there's a total bummer infographic showing circulation data for major American newspapers going back to 1990. Spoiler: the lines look like steep cliffs. You can almost see the shuddering clusters of journalists at the edge being pushed over to a most splattery demise by the invisible hand of the market.

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades [The Awl]

Soviet war painting gallery

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:33 PM PDT

Image 008 Sovietpictures063
"The Knocked Down Ace," by Alexander Deineka

Here's a gallery of astounding Soviet WWII-era paintings.

Alllie says:

These are amazing paintings. I can't think of anything in the west in the same time period that is as moving, as emotionally evocative, except Norman Rockwell. It surprises me that more people don't like them.

There's a book called The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders. Part of it deals with the CIA's efforts to destroy social realism, to make acceptable only art devoid of political or emotional content. I thought they had just succeeded in keeping it out of corporate media, out of the museums, but that they couldn't change how people reacted to it. But it may be that they won and that most of us can't react to such art anymore.

These pictures, to me, represent where art should have gone after the impressionists and the post-impressionists, that they are the heirs to Gauguin and Cezanne and of Van Gogh's "Potato Eaters", to Goya's "The Third of May, 1808, or The Executions on Principe Pio Hill." Instead, what do we have today? Sometimes art is pretty. Sometimes it is clever, but it is usually without any deeper significance, without any emotional or political content.

I find that very sad.

Soviet WWII-era paintings

Tasty meat hand

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:57 AM PDT

Images Other 2009Oct Meathand Red Topdown Images Other 2009Oct Meathand Ketchup Second Smoothedpotato

Who in their right mind could resist a meat dish prepared to resemble a human hand?

The complete recipe with lots of photos is available from Not Martha. (Thanks, Caroline!)

Machine Project Benefit at Mister Jalopy's personal 4000 square foot studio

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:28 PM PDT

I've written about Machine Project on Boing Boing many times before. It's a Los Angeles art/technology space that holds amazing events and workshops. (See the write ups of the Picklefest 2008 and Krautfest 2009 workshops I co-conducted there).

My friend Mister Jalopy is also an ardent supporter of Machine Project. On November 7th, he is hosting a lavish benefit for Machine Project at his awe-inspiring Silverlake studio, which is almost never open to the public.

From Dinosaurs and Robots:

200910271038 On November 7th, Mister Jalopy's personal 4000 square foot studio will be host to the first Machine Project benefit.

Proceeds from this once-a-year event will enable Machine Project to continue welcoming any and all to free Machine public events in 2010. Tickets start at $75 for members, or $100 for non-members, with a Benefactor level ticket available for $250, which includes entry to a special pre-event reception and more. 90% of the cost of all tickets is tax deductible.

Have you been curious about the Los Angeles heroes that call themselves Machine Project? With over 20 participating artists, technologists and musicians, the 2009 Benefit will pack a month's worth of events into a single intimate evening. What to expect? Opportunities to steal art from a laser-protected, action movie-style set, wager on microscopic slime mold races, try your hand at gold panning to prospect for real gold nuggets, stay late to huddle around the firepit to make 'smores, partake from the amply stocked wine and beer bar, have a wood-fired pizza from an on-site brick pizza oven, enjoy music from four different acts, replace your old Getty Museum fake ID, participate in head-to-head speed soldering contests and eat noodles supplied by Kwong Dynasty Noodle Cart.

A rare opportunity to enter the secret workshop of Mister Jalopy. This is a very uncommon event.

Tickets can be purchased at Machine Project, in person at Machine Project or Coco's Variety at 2427 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Alternatively, mail a check to Machine Project at 1200D North Alvarado, Los Angeles, CA 90026.


Machine Project Benefit! Colab with Mister Jalopy x Machine Project

My Parents Were Awesome

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:46 AM PDT

myparentswereawesome.jpg

"Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."

myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com [via Dangerous Minds, thanks Tara McGinley!]

Bruce Schneier/Open Rights Group benefit, London, 4 Dec

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:31 AM PDT

Michael from the Open Rights Group sez, "Open Rights Group has lined up Bruce Schneier for its next fundraiser event on Friday 4 December. The title is 'The Future of Privacy: Rethinking Security Trade-offs' and he'll be explaining why data is the pollution problem of the information age and how we should deal with it."
We live in a unique time in our technological history. The cameras are ubiquitous, but we can still see them. ID checks are everywhere, but we still know they're going on. Computers inherently generate personal data, and everyone leaves an audit trail everywhere they go.

Bruce Schneier, internationally-renowned cryptographer, technologist and author, will share his vision of current and future technologies' effects on privacy. Schneier rejects the traditional "security vs. privacy" dichotomy in favor of a more subtle and realistic one.

Data is the pollution problem of the information age and we need to start thinking about how to deal with it.

When? Doors open at 1830, Friday 4 December 2009

Where? St Albans Centre, 18 Brooke St, London, London EC1N 7RD (More info here)

Come see Bruce Schneier talk in London (Thanks, Michael!)
Previously:


Collecting Solar Power, the Black Hole Way

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:48 AM PDT

blackhole.jpg
Not pictured: A convenient terrestrial solar panel. Image from thebadastronomer Flickr stream, via CC.

Light can't escape a black hole. Some people look at this fact and get the shudders. Others think, "Hey, that would make a really effective solar panel!"

Or, rather, it might if not for that whole "massive, crushing force of gravity" problem. MIT's Technology Review has a neat piece about scientists trying get around that minor hiccup. They're working with light-distorting metamaterials, the stuff you frequently see written up in stories about the coming of futuristic cloaking devices, alongside references to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. But instead of bending light around the metamaterial, these researchers are focusing on a weirder--and, in my opinion, much cooler--goal.

...a metamaterial that distorts space so severely that light entering it (in this case microwaves) cannot escape.Their black hole consists of 60 layers of printed circuit board arranged in concentric circles (see picture below). The printed circuit boards are coated in a thin layer of copper from which Qiang and Tie have etched two types of pattern that either resonate at microwave frequency or do not. They've measured microwaves at 18 GHz going in and none coming out. And the circular symmetry of their metamaterial means that the microwaves are absorbed in all directions at once.

There you have it: The light-capturing power of a black hole, without the teeny inconvenience of being smooshed. Incorporate the material in solar collectors, and you could end up with a much more efficient way of harnessing the sun for energy.

Book: Rules for my Unborn Son

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:08 AM PDT


Here's a video for a new book that I received from the publisher a couple of days ago called Rules for My Unborn Son, by Walker Lamond, based on his entertaining blog 1,001 Rules for my Unborn Son.

The Lamond's rules are good advice for sons, as well as anyone else, really. I wish my wife would remember the rule, "Never under any circumstances ask a woman if she is pregnant," which she has broken several times with embarrassing consequences.

More of Lamond's rules:

After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it.

Stand up to bullies. You'll only have to do it once.

If you trip in public, don't blame the sidewalk. Pick yourself up and pretend nothing happened.

Your best chance of being a rockstar is learning the bass.

Thank the bus driver

Don't gloat. A good friend will do it for you.

Don't spit

A few of the rules on his blog I don't recommend (e.g., "All drinking challenges must be accepted") but most of his rules offer specific tips for living a life of kindness, politeness, and preparedness.

Rules for My Unborn Son

The White House switch to open source: Tim O'Reilly's thoughts

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:02 AM PDT

Over the weekend, the White House new media team announced (via AP) that whitehouse.gov now runs on the open source content management system Drupal. Tim O'Reilly puts this news into context:
drupal.jpg This move is obviously a big win for open source. As John Scott of Open Source for America (a group advocating open source adoption by government, to which I am an advisor) noted in an email to me: "This is great news not only for the use of open source software, but the validation of the open source development model. The White House's adoption of community-based software provides a great example for the rest of the government to follow."

John is right. While open source is already widespread throughout the government, its adoption by the White House will almost certainly give permission for much wider uptake. Particularly telling are the reasons that the White House made the switch

Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal [radar.oreilly.com]

Off-course pilots were laptopping-while-flying

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:57 AM PDT

Two pilots on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Minneapolis, MN flew past the airport in error last week, and federal investigators now report that this was caused by laptop distraction in the cockpit. Northwest has just gone through a merger, and the pilots were apparently kvetching to one another about the confusing new scheduling system imposed post-merger.

"Each pilot accessed and used his personal laptop computer while they discussed the airline crew flight scheduling procedure," the NTSB report said. More from the New York Times.

The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.


Iggy Pop on the Dinah Shore show, 1977

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 11:43 AM PDT

If only the video and audio quality in this clip were better! Iggy Pop at the first peak of his greatness (I think he's still pretty great), talking about how the technology and industrial ambience of his hometown Detroit influenced the "raw power" that became his trademark sound.

He reveals to Dinah Shore that his mom worked at a military technology company that made bombs and missiles, and his dad ("Mister Pop") taught media communications at a local high school. At the time, brothers Tony and Hunt Sales, sons of the recently departed comedian Soupy Sales, were playing in the Stooges in Iggy's band. Iggy Pop on the Dinah Shore show.

The clip stops right as Iggy gets ready to launch into a performance, but I believe this is the stupendous performance that followed, with some guy named David Bowie on the keyboards! Looks like this was another performance from the same show.

[YouTube, thanks @EuclidAlone, via @bbsuggest]

Previously: Alice Cooper on the Soupy Sales show, 1979.

New Digital Media and Learning research hub

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 11:30 PM PDT

Mimi Ito sez, "We've just announced a new research hub and web site for the field of digital media and learning, funded by a $2.97 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation. This is a key component of a broader $85 million effort on the part of the foundation to mobilize digital media and online networks to transform learning. The web site will feature a database of resources relevant to the field, as well as a group blog. Contributors include danah boyd, Cathy Davidson, Liz Losh, Howard Rheingold, Raquel Recuero, and Connie Yowell."

Mimi is a highly regarded researcher on the sociology of digital networks, and the Digital Youth Project she led is a must-must read for anyone who cares about digital media and young people. I can't wait to see what she and her team do with this project.

Digital Media and Learning (Thanks, Mimi!)

Previously:


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