The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Please release me: Borderlands and Bomberlandss, Hook Champs and Earth Dragons
- Wee English church rebuilt on 22nd floor of Osaka tower
- Police veteran critiques TSA procedure
- Mickey Mouse comics drawn by concentration camp prisoner
- My Times editorial on British plan to cut relatives of accused infringers off from the net
- World of Warcraft and Philsophy
- Robbers wearing markered disguises
- Hiding Your Sexual Orientation From Your Parents 101 (teen-made video)
- Identical tract houses after 50 years of personalization
- Petition to Obama government to disclose secret copyright treaty
- Clive Barker and Ray Zone 3D comics event at Meltdown in Los Angeles, Thursday, Oct. 29
- Electric chair haunted house prop
- D&D on multi-touch table
- La-Z-Boy in drunk driving debacle headed for eBay, "Hell Yeah It's Fast" sticker included
- The story behind the "Do chimps grieve?" National Geo photo
- NSFW Science: Fruit Bat Fellatio
- DARPA challenge -- find 10 red balloons, win $40,000
- "I have a figurine..."
- Kiwis training their young to ZORB
- Haute death couture knuckle duster
- Canadian folk singer dies after coyote attack
- The jack-o-lanterns in Nebraska sure know how to get down
- Homemade radio creates spooky sounds
- Halloween office art: Balloon Boy pumpkin
- Charles Burchfield exhibit at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles
- Star Wars Yoga
- Artist says, "We will rebuild the economy -- with antimatter!"
- Seventh foot washes ashore in British Columbia
- Bike outfited with one-cylinder engine
- Timeline: The Secret History of Swine Flu
| Please release me: Borderlands and Bomberlandss, Hook Champs and Earth Dragons Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:53 PM PDT Were it any other week I might be lamenting the lack of high profile retail releases, but as it happens, both the release of a demo for Valve's upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 and one other game have been eating up nearly all my spare time (and a good deal of non-spare-time as well), that game being: Borderlands [Gearbox, Xbox 360/PS3/PC] Gearbox's promise to deliver the first person, dungeon crawling shooter that Hellgate: London was panned for falling short of appears to have gone without a hitch -- the result is one of the most compulsive plays I've accidentally fallen into since I first thought I'd see what this whole 'Fallout 3' deal was. Take that game and add in a dash of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (for its less overtly emphasized narrative structure, though its own barren post-apocalyptic world is more Mad Max wildstyle to the former's dreary Chernobyl hot zone) and you've got a game that's split into a series of "one more go" pursuits, as you push yourself past that next hill and then the next, hoping to stumble across that next, procedurally generated, best-gun-ever, which in turn leads you to pushing on to just see what that one is capable of. Its best conceit so far, though? The one-two punch of its dynamic music that kicks in a tribal hum when you've clearly got yourself in over your head -- the perfect soundtrack to a hasty retreat to safer ground -- and Second Wind, a mechanic that gives you some 10-15 'posthumous' seconds to take down the enemy that 'killed' you, resulting in a quick boost of health and the chance to truly rescue yourself. The generated drama is as visceral as any I've played this year -- don't miss your chance to take it on for yourself. Hook Champ [Rocketcat Games, iPhone] Apart from spending time in Borderlands wilds, the other game burning up most of my time is Rocketcat's debut iPhone game Hook Champ">Hook Champ. The easy and lazy description reads: Spelunky meets Bionic Commando, and for once maybe lazy says it best. Your only goal is to travel from one side of a cave to the other, snapping up coins along littered throughout its branched paths, with two hitches: 1.) your walking speed is fractional compared to your clip when you get a steady swing working, and 2.) that wouldn't be as much of an issue if you didn't have a razor-toothed demon slowly pursuing you from start to finish. Retro styled and far more complex than it first appears -- particularly when you start to spend your winnings upgrading and unlocking new items and powerups -- Hook Champ's a perfect example of the App Store's overlooked gems. Alice in Bomberland [Sonic Boom, iPhone] Alice in Bomberland is the first iPhone game to come from an indie dream team consisting of programmer and designer Chris DeLeon (creator of ngmoco's Topple gone indie post-Electronic Arts) and David Hellman (artist on Xbox 360 cult hit platformer Braid), and is quite what the name would lead you to believe: an explosive dodge-em-up set in Lewis Carroll's fantasy world. Why? It's not exactly clear, nor does it seem to matter: the Looking Glass world is rife with artifacts that translate perfectly into gameplay (think: eat me/drink me cakes and potions, and a cup of the Mad Hatters tea to crank up the speed), and DeLeon's provided a fantastic amount of variety across its nearly 50 levels. Get past the essential loneliness of a score-based game without any of the now seemingly ubiquitous social elements and you'll find one of the best App Store surprises of the month. Earth Dragon [Chaim Gingold, iPhone] In another former-EA-turned-indie move, Earth Dragon is the first full game from Chaim Gingold, former Maxis dev best known as the original prototyper and designer of what would become Spore's Creature Creator. A slender game that encourages break-time repeat play, the game makes full use of the iPhone's accelerometer to help fly (by 'flapping' the device itself) and tilt-guide your dragon through various challenges from coin- and princess-collecting to laying waste to the kingdom's strongholds. Built out of simple but tremendously expressive shapes, Gingold manages to capture the spirit of earth-shaking devastation with perfect-pitch in every frantic thumb-press. Arkedo Series - 01 JUMP [Arkedo, Xbox 360] Fresh off from creating one of the DS's most wildly original and stylized shooters (2008's Big Bang Mini, a neon- and flourescent-lit game of firework-flinging), France's Arkedo have set about to bring that hyper-style to the Xbox 360's Indies channel with a series of quickly produced downloadables based around one core theme. The first, JUMP is still the best (and shares some basic Pitfall-type influence with Hook Champ above) -- a simple but gorgeously neo-retro bomb-defusing and coin-collecting platformer. They've followed that up with tile-matching puzzle game SWAP, and promise six more in the near future -- more if the audience demands it, which they very well should. |
| Wee English church rebuilt on 22nd floor of Osaka tower Posted: 30 Oct 2009 03:46 AM PDT A Japanese property developer has rebuilt a 100-year-old English country church at 3/4 scale on the 22nd floor of a tower in central Osaka. The developer hopes to capitalise on the Japanese vogue for being married in traditional English churches, offering a low-cost, local alternative to flying to England. English church rebuilt in Japan (Image: BBC) |
| Police veteran critiques TSA procedure Posted: 30 Oct 2009 12:54 AM PDT Deirdre Walker, a 24-year police veteran who retired after serving as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police writes up a recent interaction with the TSA in the Albany airport, subjecting it to critical policing analysis and finding it sorely, sorely wanting. This is a very good critical piece on conducting good security and curbing excess, and if there were any justice in this world, this woman would be put in charge of the TSA tomorrow. Finally, I am most concerned about the "random" nature of my repeated selection for secondary screening. If there is no discrimination at work, and my selection is entirely random, then we have yet another, and probably more significant problem.* "Do I have the right to refuse this search?" Previously:
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| Mickey Mouse comics drawn by concentration camp prisoner Posted: 30 Oct 2009 12:43 AM PDT  Avi sez, "'Mickey Mouse in Gurs' is a tragic 'comic' book made by Horst Rosenthal in 1942 while incarcerated at the Gurs internment camp in France. Rosenthal uses Mickey Mouse as a kind of subversive Virgil to guide us through the hellish experiences of the concentration camp. Horst Rosenthal was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942." Horst Rosenthal: Mickey Mouse in Gurs (Thanks, Avi!) Previously: |
| My Times editorial on British plan to cut relatives of accused infringers off from the net Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:46 PM PDT I have an op-ed in today's Times about the British plan to disconnect people from the internet if someone in their home is accused -- without proof -- of infringing copyright, and how utterly unjust this is. Even more radical is the Mandelson proposal to disconnect entire families from the internet if a single member -- or a neighbour who uses their internet connection -- is accused, without proof, of violating copyright. Leave aside the fundamental injustice of collective punishment, a practice so abhorrent that it is outlawed in the Geneva Convention; think instead of the utter disproportionality of this.Denying physics won't save the video stars Previously:
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| World of Warcraft and Philsophy Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:52 PM PDT  Kevin Haw writes in to tell us about World of Warcraft and Philosophy, a new collection of essays and stories: Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Adam Smith... Sure, they were all great thinkers, but how long would they have lasted in Ulduar?World of Warcraft and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy) (Thanks, Kevin!) Previously:
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| Robbers wearing markered disguises Posted: 29 Oct 2009 08:18 PM PDT  These gentlemen attempted to rob a Carroll, Iowa home while disguised with, er, Sharpie marker. Police responded to a call and spotted the getaway car driven by Matthew Allan McNelly, 23, and Joey Lee Miller, 20. The guy on the right has the Clockwork Orange eye happening and, as Rob says, the man on the left looks vaguely like Catwoman. Or is it Gene Simmons? From CNN: "We're very skilled investigators and the black faces gave them right away," (police chief Jeff) Cayler said jokingly. "I have to assume the officers were kind of laughing at the time. I've never heard of coloring your face with a permanent marker..." "They make their mark in mug shot history" Previously: |
| Hiding Your Sexual Orientation From Your Parents 101 (teen-made video) Posted: 29 Oct 2009 04:32 PM PDT Vincent Pearase, of Oak Park High School in Winnipeg Canada, writes: One of our talented Oak Park students, Andrew Vineberg, helped make this hilarious short, Hiding Your Sexual Orientation From Your Parents 101. The kid is a vlogger, too. He does an amazingly erudite, funny vlog under the moniker Volatile Chemical. Check it out! Andrew has asked to show this at our next school assembly. |
| Identical tract houses after 50 years of personalization Posted: 29 Oct 2009 03:26 PM PDT  Photographer Julia Baum spent four years photographing suburban tract comes in Sta Clara, CA. The houses were all built in the 1950s to look identical, but over the years, their owners have modified them in a very pleasing, very vernacular way to personalize them. As I take a second look at these neighborhoods, I've found vast differences in what was once a uniform typology. Over the past 50 years these Houses have transformed from modest white cubes into a vibrant display of personality and present a rebellion against conformity. My work asserts that human individuality cannot be contained. Inevitably it shines through even the most average facade.Houses (via Kottke) |
| Petition to Obama government to disclose secret copyright treaty Posted: 29 Oct 2009 03:22 PM PDT Rishab sez, "Knowledge Ecology International is organising a petition to President Obama to make the US position in negotiations on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement transparent to the public. Boing Boing readers may remember previous posts on ACTA, the 'throw people in jail for sharing' agreement being developed in secret by rich countries who find the semi-public consultations in forums like WIPO tiresome." Obama's administration has refused to disclose the drafts of ACTA on the grounds of "national security" (yes, really!), but we know from leaks and memos that it includes universal surveillance of the net; mandatory loss of Internet connections without trial for households where one member is accused of violating copyright; and a duty to search your laptop and personal devices at the border for infringing material. Petition to President Obama, regarding transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Thanks, Rishab!) Previously:
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| Clive Barker and Ray Zone 3D comics event at Meltdown in Los Angeles, Thursday, Oct. 29 Posted: 29 Oct 2009 02:14 PM PDT Gaston Dominguez-Letelier says:
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| Electric chair haunted house prop Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:47 PM PDT Ken Pilot's "Sparky" is a haunted house prop of a guy getting fried in an electric chair. It would scare the wits out of my kids. |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:53 PM PDT Students at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) developed a Dungeons & Dragons experience for the Microsoft Surface multi-touch table. From ETC: The objective of the SurfaceScapes project is to create a proof-of-concept for playing tabletop role-playing games on the Microsoft Surface Table. We will be using Dungeons and Dragons as a basis for our prototype, with the option for future expansion to other role-playing games. SurfaceScapes will provide Game Masters and players with a set of features to enhance the combat and role-playing aspects of tabletop games. This will include the ability to interact with the digital environment using real objects such as miniatures and provide automated calculations and visual and audio feedback for actions performed by the player and non-player characters. We are taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures.SurfaceScapes... what lies beneath. |
| La-Z-Boy in drunk driving debacle headed for eBay, "Hell Yeah It's Fast" sticker included Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:50 PM PDT  Remember the La-Z-Boy DWI story Pesco blogged earlier this week? A local paper reports that the lounger is headed for eBay. See also this update at Smoking Gun on the case of Dennis LeRoy Anderson, who drank "eight or nine beers" before driving the motorized lounger into the street and smashing it into a parked car. Snip: Anderson's customized vehicle, seen in the police evidence photos on the following pages, is powered by an eight horsepower Kohler lawnmower engine, and has a stereo, headlights, a built-in cup holder, and a "Hell Yeah It's Fast" bumper sticker. The ride, however, does not have a seat belt.Proctor Police Chief Walter Wobig described Anderson as a "super-nice guy." The cops say they'll soon put the man's cherished chair up for sale on eBay, under state forfeiture laws (auctioning it off was one option, the other was using it for official police business, LOL). If anyone can find the eBay listing once it goes live, I'd sure love to see it -- and, hey, maybe bid on it. Related articles: Proctor Journal, BBC, Duluth News Tribune, Wired. |
| The story behind the "Do chimps grieve?" National Geo photo Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:12 PM PDT About the image I blogged earlier this week, shot by Monica Szczupider who was a volunteer at the chimp rescue center where the scene took place. If the story of "Dorothy," the deceased chimp in the photo, doesn't break your heart -- man, you don't have one. Szczupider recalls: The Story Behind Our Photo of Grieving Chimps (via Laughing Squid) |
| NSFW Science: Fruit Bat Fellatio Posted: 29 Oct 2009 04:22 PM PDT Yeah, I'm just going to put this whole NSFW thing behind the jump. Read on for an in-depth look at bat blow-jobs, and insights into the evolution of such work, in general. Figure 3. Copulation duration in Cynopterus sphinx according to whether the female licks the male's penis (Licking) or not (No licking). Means and standard errors are shown. Vignette shows a female performing fellatio, drawn by Mei Wang. (I assure you, I am not making any of this up.) So, why do you think blow jobs happen? This is not a trick question. Most of us would probably go for the, "Hey, that feels nice," theory of oral sex. But researchers Min Tan, Gareth Jones, Guangjian Zhu, et. al., think there may be more to it than simple pleasure. As part of their attempt to prove a practical function for oral sex, the team conducted a study of the fellatio habits of fruit bats. The paper was published October 28 in the journal PLoS ONE. You can read the whole thing online. The basic idea here is that there might be some benefit to blow jobs (beyond the obvious) and the fact that bats who engage in fellatio have longer sessions of sex than bats who don't could be evidence in favor of that theory. Why? Because it's showing that oral sex is correlated with a change in behavior and, the scientists theorize, there may be reasons why that behavioral change is beneficial to the animals. How beneficial? The team theorizes that oral sex could be doing everything from increasing the chances of sperm fertilizing egg, to killing bacteria on the penis and protecting both parties from sexually transmitted disease. Of course, the only thing proven is that oral sex means longer sex in fruit bats. The team concedes a need for further research...
I'm not sure I buy that a behavior that results in a, erm, pleasurable response, really needs any other reason for existing. Although, it is worth noting that this appears to be the first time that fellatio has been documented as a regular part of adult sex outside of humans. Also, the paper contains some truly EXCELLENT quotes that need to be shared. To wit...
There's also a video. Enjoy. Thanks to Chris Combs at National Geographic Newsfor alerting me to this study. Thumbnail photo: Allesok [Flickr] |
| DARPA challenge -- find 10 red balloons, win $40,000 Posted: 29 Oct 2009 12:52 PM PDT  DARPA is holding a competition to find ten large weather balloons. Winner gets $40,000! To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems. The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.I predict Pascal to be the winner. |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:41 PM PDT  In Wired this month, a story about Futurama television writer Patric M. Verrone's very geeky hobby: sculpting plastic figurines of American presidents, and selling them on eBay. After reading the article, I moseyed over to Mr. Verrone's website, and enjoyed this tiny likeness of Dr. Martin Luther King (Verrone sculpts other historic persons, too, not just presidents). Only $30! Sculptor in Chief: Futurama Writer Saves Line of Tiny Presidents [ Wired, via Chris Baker ] |
| Kiwis training their young to ZORB Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:01 PM PDT  Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night. A friend of mine snapped this photo in New Zealand a few weeks ago. It's exactly what it appears to be: children in giant hamster balls on a pool of water. It may not be full-on ZORBing, but it sure beats the ball pit Chuck E. Cheese. Previously: |
| Haute death couture knuckle duster Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:57 AM PDT  $550, silver and Swarovski crystal, by Alexander McQueen. (Spotted: @reversecowpie) |
| Canadian folk singer dies after coyote attack Posted: 29 Oct 2009 12:30 PM PDT  Toronto-based folk singer Taylor Mitchell died after coyotes pounced on her during a solo hike in Cape Breton national park on Monday. She was hospitalized with injuries from multiple bites, and died in critical care yesterday. Ms. Mitchell was 19 years old. More: LAT, BBC. Artist pages: Facebook, and MySpace. |
| The jack-o-lanterns in Nebraska sure know how to get down Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:41 AM PDT  The guys at Videogum found what may be the absolute most awesome "pumpkin dance" YouTube video of all time. This splendid little number, choreographed to "Ghostbusters," comes to the internets courtesy of a local news channel in Omaha, Nebraska. (via Gabe) |
| Homemade radio creates spooky sounds Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:26 AM PDT Mr Fixit Rick built a neat-looking "Spooky Tesla Spirit Radio" that could be used to provide background industrial noises for a Lynch movie. He shows you how to build your own at Instructables. |
| Halloween office art: Balloon Boy pumpkin Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:23 AM PDT  BB reader Felix Jung says, "My coworker Jane took this photo of a mini-pumpkin tribute to a little boy and a little balloon that had us glued to our TV and computer screens. It was entered in to a contest taking place at her husband's office, and I'm betting it wins, hands down." |
| Charles Burchfield exhibit at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles Posted: 29 Oct 2009 12:20 PM PDT  (Two Ravines. 1934. Watercolor on paper.) Doug Harvey of the LA Weekly writes about a Charles Burchfield exhibit at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles called Heat Waves in a Swamp. Between 1916 and 1918 he produced hundreds of watercolors -- half his lifelong output -- each one teeming with symbolic portent, decorative inventiveness and a dreamlike animism where the ominously anthropomorphic or blankly inert architecture of human civilization appears to be in a cosmic struggle with the wildly vibrating energies of the natural world. The Insect Chorus (1917), for example, affords only a background glimpse of the stylized gables of a house almost entirely engulfed in arabesque clouds of foliage, which, in turn, mutate indiscernibly into layered graphic patterns representing the songs of crickets, cicadas and katydids.American Dreaming: Charles Burchfield |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:11 AM PDT  LOL. The online yoga instruction site YogaToday.com is offering a Star Wars-themed yoga session this week. The video promises to illustrate the "galactic connection" between asanas and Star Wars. No costumes, alas, but I do believe those are Leia-buns on the head of yoga instructor "Princess Neesha Zollinger," at left. (thanks, Paul Sixta) |
| Artist says, "We will rebuild the economy -- with antimatter!" Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:54 AM PDT  In a new exhibit opening in just a few weeks, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats will propose an antimatter-based mirror economy designed to boom as the regular-ole economy continues to tank. "Economic equilibrium is upset by our unbalanced pursuit of material wealth," says the artist. "My plan is to offset materialism with modern science, by exploiting the economic potential of antimatter, which is the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets." More: The bank will serve as a hub for antimatter transactions worldwide, eventually financing the building of antimatter infrastructure and providing the public with a full range of investment opportunities. "But our first order of business will be printing money," says Mr. Keats. "Cash is the foundation of any economy, and an anti-economy is no exception."The First Bank of Antimatter show opens Nov. 12 at Modernism, Inc. gallery in San Francisco. Press release (PDF) Jonathon Keats (Wikipedia) (thanks, Mark Robinson!) |
| Seventh foot washes ashore in British Columbia Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:54 AM PDT  John Gallone says: "Wanted to keep you informed as to what's afoot in the British Columbia mysterious foot finds. A new appendage was found in Richmond, near Vancouver B.C.,Tuesday October 20, this brings to seven the number of 'Mystery Feet' found so far." The first severed foot, discovered in August 2007, was associated with a deceased man whose name police withheld at the request of his family.Foot found on Richmond beach is seventh foot found on B.C. coast Previously: |
| Bike outfited with one-cylinder engine Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:34 AM PDT  Writer Jeroen van Bergeijk lives in The Netherlands but is spending some time in Australia. He's posting his photos and observations on his blog. Today he came across a bike retrofitted with a small one-banger engine. Saw this awesome - or I should say grouse - looking bicycle today when I went to Port Adelaide to pick up my stuff coming in from Rotterdam. It's a Dunlop Bushranger mountain bike with a small, one cylinder engine fitted on to it. The great thing is that all the original bicycle gears still work. I suppose the owner starts the engine when going uphill or something.Looks like Mad Max's Bicycle |
| Timeline: The Secret History of Swine Flu Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:48 AM PDT It's new! It's different! Or is it? New Scientist has put together an outline tracing the origins of the H1N1 influenza virus. Surprise: The first date is 1889, the year that jockeying between H1 and H2 variants of flu set the stage for the 1918 influenza pandemic. The virus involved in that was an distant relative of today's H1N1.
The Timeline does a great job of explaining how viruses evolve, how the interaction of humans and viruses in the past influences their "relationship" today, and exactly why older people have an immunity to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu that younger people lack. Some other interesting bits:
Thanks to Steve Silberman for pointing me to this! |
Acclaimed novelist/filmmaker/painter Clive Barker is making his return to comic books in October with Clive Barker's Seduth, an especially horrific one-shot being presented with vivid 3-D effects. For Barker, who is joined on the one-shot by the Eisner-nominated art team of Gabriel Rodriguez and Jay Fotos (Locke & Key), along with co-writer Chris Monfette and 3-D art expert Ray Zone. 
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