The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Taste Test: Persimmon
- Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco archival film night, Dec 4
- Succeedblog: awesome stuff captioned with SUCCEED
- Sofa modelled on brainwaves
- Transgender papaya
- HBO's "Terror in Mumbai"
- Large Hadron Collider: Now This Is Just Getting Ridiculous
- Netted: one Web tip emailed daily
- Age of the Informavore
- The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
- Insta-Beard
- Does the Baby Bust = a Sustainability Boom?
- Brian McCarty's photo of Hello Kitty
- Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay
- George McKelvey "My Teenage Fallout Queen" 1964
- Sex, then amnesia
- Bicycle defense kit fits in Altoids tin
- Fractal weather
- Photos of a furless bear
- The Linder Gallery Interior painting: science, art, and mystery
- EU kills 3-strikes proposal (yay!) but all is not well (eek!)
- Mash-up video culled from 99 classic albums
- The lobster abomination
- 1962 fallout shelter design booklet
- Goldwag: Hoaxes, celebrity, and death on the Net
- Video about Guantánamo detainees released without charge
- Shoes made out of bread
- Inflatable rear seat belts
- iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers
- Wu-Tang album covers redesigned as Blue Note album covers
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:41 PM PST  Image via Sandy Austin's Flickr People always ask me what I like to do in Tokyo. What's fun? What's cool. Well here's my dirty secret. Most nights, I sit in my parents' living room and watch silly game shows while drinking green tea and eating persimmon. Sujeonggwa Peel and thinly slice 2 inches of fresh ginger root. Bring the ginger, 6 cups of water, and 2 cinnamon sticks to a boil in a large saucepan. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Add 1/2c sugar and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and strain. Add 4 dried seedless persimmons to the cinnamon-ginger water and allow to stand for 3 hours to soften. Ladle liquid into individual serving bowls, placing one persimmon in each bowl. Sprinkle pine nuts on top before serving. Source: Korean Cooking Made Easy by Soon Young Chung Persimmon is called kaki in Japanese, and it has been constantly battling against mangoes for first place on my list of favorite fruits. Kaki is a prominent part of everyday life in Japan — there's even an adjective almost exclusively used to describe the taste of a bitter persimmon, shibui. (The only other time it's used is to describe older men with graying hair who are nonetheless hot, like George Clooney.) China, Japan, and Korea are the top three producers of persimmon in the world. The Chinese believe that the fruit helps to regulate energy flow. It's also known to cure digestive problems, and it's a great source of B and C vitamins. In Korea, some people use dried persimmons to make a traditional fruit punch-like drink called Sujeonggwa. It's supposedly great with soju, too! In the US, I see a lot of restaurants use cooked fuyu persimmon around this time of the year to supplement salads and meats, but I prefer to eat it raw once its blood orange skin has turned ever slightly soft. Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item. |
| Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco archival film night, Dec 4 Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:56 AM PST Jeff sez, "'Guerrilla archivist' Rick Prelinger is once again joining forces with the Long Now Foundation for the 4th in his series of screenings titled, 'Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.' In the first talk of this series, Rick unveiled a jaw-dropping, now-famous restoration of a first-person perspective streetcar ride up Market Street, circa 1905." Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 « Spots Unknown San Francisco (Thanks, Jeff!) |
| Succeedblog: awesome stuff captioned with SUCCEED Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:52 AM PST  The Succeedblog is a lovely, optimistic, "wonderful things" approach to the web -- rather than amusing its readers with pictures of bad things, captioned with "FAIL," it focuses on pictures of great things, captioned with "SUCCEED". Lovely. Succeedblog (via Make) |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:50 AM PST  The Brainwave Sofa is a sofa modelled on your very own brainwaves. Stop thinking spiky thoughts. Try to think, you know, cushy. Soft. Inviting. That's it. Right there. Hold it now. Print! Dutch industrial designer Lucas Maassen, co-designer of the Brainwave Sofa with Belgian designer Dries Verbruggen (of Unfold), had his brain activity measured at the EPI (Eindhoven Psychology Institute) while he closed his eyes for 3 seconds. The moment a person closes his eyes, during this measurement, the Alpha-activity becomes 8 to 12 Hertz larger. This Alpha-activity prepares the brain for multiplication of the visual stimuli when the eyes are opened again. Such a measurement creates a 3D Landscape of (brain)waves, which looks different with every measurement. This three dimensional form, in other words is a unique display.Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen (via Medgadget) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:25 PM PST Transgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via oxbloodruffin) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:00 PM PST "Terror in Mumbai," an HBO film premiering Nov. 19, explores the planning of the Mumbai terror attacks with extensive cellphone audio of terrorists coordinating attacks and preparing to die. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin) |
| Large Hadron Collider: Now This Is Just Getting Ridiculous Posted: 05 Nov 2009 03:52 PM PST Popular Science is reporting that a piece of bread, dropped by a passing bird, has managed to damage the Large Hadron Collider.
If this really is the work of time-traveling Higgs boson particles, however, they're demonstrating a lot of creativity, but not a lot of competence. The Bird Incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility, which is still scheduled for later this month. Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down the Large Hadron Collider (Really), Popular Science. You should follow the link just to see their illustration "according to eyewitness accounts". Via stevesilberman. |
| Netted: one Web tip emailed daily Posted: 05 Nov 2009 03:22 PM PST Our pals at the Webbys just beta-launched Netted, an email list that provides one useful Web tip per day. Reminds me of Mark F's book Rule The Web. In the Netted alpha test: a service that sends snail mail postcards with any photo you upload, a guide to the best rooms in various hotels, and visual maps of automated phone menus for 500 US companies. All neat, and all new to me. Sign up here. |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 04:45 PM PST We make technology, but our technology also makes us. At the online science/culture journal Edge, BB pal John Brockman went deep -- very deep -- into this concept. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national German newspaper FAZ and a very, very big thinker. Schirrmacher has raised public awareness and discussion about some of the most controversial topics in science research today, from genetic engineering to the aging population to the impacts of neuroscience. At Edge, Schirrmacher riffs on the notion of the "informavore," an organism that devours information like it's food. After posting Schirrmacher's thoughts, Brockman invited other bright folks to respond, including the likes of George Dyson, Steven Pinker, John Perry Barlow, Doug Rushkoff, and Nick Bilton. Here's a taste of Schirrmacher, from "The Age of the Infomavore": We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.The Age of the Informavore |
| The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe Posted: 05 Nov 2009 02:10 PM PST  We've covered Theodore Gray on Boing Boing a lot, and for good reason -- he's amazing. His Mad Science book was filled with spectacularly fun science experiments, he built a Periodic Table table with little compartments to hold samples of elements, and now he has a new coffee table photo book called The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe. Each element is treated to a gorgeous two page spread, with photos and a fascinating short history. Did you know: ... if you keep your household smoke detector around for a couple of thousand years, most of the americium will have decayed into neptunium (wait another 30 million years or so and it will become thallium, which the CIA can use to make Castro's beard fall out, if he's still alive)
... if you touch tellurium you will smell like rotten garlic for a few weeks? ... arsenic is commonly added to chicken feed (to promote their growth)? ... a chunk of gallium will melt in your hand (you can buy a sample here)? ... a speck of scandium ("the first of the elements you've never heard of") added to aluminum creates a very strong alloy (like the kind used in the Louisville Slugger that was involved in a recent $850,000 lawsuit)? Books that reveal how truly weird our world is are always welcome in my home. This one's a gem. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 01:48 PM PST  Absolutely, positively need a beard now? Simply enjoy looking at photos of cute girls sporting fake beards? Yeah. There's an Etsy for that. imadeyouabeard store on Etsy. Thanks, Christina! And, yes, I am getting a little obsessed with the whacked-out wonder of Etsy. Why do you ask? |
| Does the Baby Bust = a Sustainability Boom? Posted: 05 Nov 2009 01:01 PM PST I knew that more economic development tends to mean smaller families, and I knew that people were having fewer children in many developing countries. But I hadn't grasped how quickly that shift was happening until I read this comparison from last Thursday's issue of The Economist:
But, while it's easy to assume that slowing population growth means a more sustainable future, it's not really as cut and dry as all that. Like The Economist points out: With development, you also get more people living the fossil-fuel heavy American lifestyle. Their argument: The problem of creating a sustainable future isn't really tied to birth rate. That's taking care of itself and couldn't go much faster without China-like impositions on personal freedom. Instead, the focus needs to be on the technology and policies that will help those children grow up in sustainable, energy efficient societies. The Economist--"Demography, Growth and the Environment", via Follow the Energy blog. |
| Brian McCarty's photo of Hello Kitty Posted: 05 Nov 2009 01:01 PM PST  Designer toy photographer Brian McCarty shot this lovely portrait of Hello Kitty. The piece is titled "Three Apples," which according to Ms. Kitty's bio is her weight. Brian writes: Truly an icon for the time, (Hello Kitty) is a totem and emblem of kinship for devotees of cute. With this realization, it was easy to take another step and cast Hello Kitty not just as a revered symbol, but also as a god.Hello Kitty "Three Apples" Previously:
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| Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:58 PM PST  Guido Núñez-Mujica, a 26-year-old Boing Boing reader in Venezuela who is an avid gamer, writes in with this extensive personal observation piece about a new law that widely criminalizes video games in the South American country. As you read the piece, please also bear in mind that publishing this sort of thing under one's full name is not done without personal risk.
These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.After the jump, Núñez-Mujica's essay in full.
The law scapegoats gamers for the obscene levels of violence in our country (see below), and goes to extraordinary lengths to criminalize gaming, to the point of holding out long jail terms to people who buy the wrong kinds of games. It's no joke. Last year, on a trip to the US, I was able to buy a Nintendo DS for my brother, and a puzzle game that deals with using weapons to defend the fish stock of penguins in Antarctica, Defendin' de Penguin. Early next year, when the law kicks in, bring such a game could land me in jail for 3 to 5 years, for importing forbidden violent games, as the penguins use snowball guns to ward off walruses, foxes (in Antarctica? OMG think of Biogeography!), polar bears and the Yeti. The law is just the latest nail in the coffin of Venezuelans' right of dissent and broader civil liberties. A pitiful attempt to blame video games and toys for the widespread lethal violence in our country, instead of a defective judicial structure, systemic corruption and governmental (purposeful?) ineptitude to deal with the problem. I am 26 years old. Ever since I can remember Venezuela has been a very dangerous place. Every year the body count seemed to climb higher than the previous year. Being on the streets after dark, especially in the big cities, became a little bit more dangerous with each passing year, no matter who was in power or how high prices for our oil rose.
I believed it was just a fact of life. Then, ten years ago, Hugo Chávez came to power promising change at every level, promising a new, less corrupt, wealthier, safer society. Most of my friends and family voted for him, to register their contempt for our traditional politicians, because they wanted justice and a decent country. Ten years later, we are indeed wealthier, thanks to a feverish oil boom, but the country's also falling deeper into debt, issuing bonds and getting loans even from the despised Capitalist tool that is the IMF, and printing money like there's no tomorrow, while our electric system collapses, many staples are hard to find on store shelves, our hospitals are rotting and corruption and crime are still getting worse. The official position is that crime is a byproduct of poverty and inequality. The official numbers say that poverty and inequality have decreased dramatically so, how is it possible that today we have one of the worst crime rates in the entire world? Our murder rates are among the top five in the world. Barinas, the rural State where Chávez is from and where his brother is governor, has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. (The governor's reply? People are kidnapping themselves to make the government look bad.) And if you live in Caracas today, you are at substantially higher risk of meeting a violent death than if you live in Iraq these days. One thing is clear: either crime is not caused merely by poverty and inequality, as the murder rates in Bangladesh seem to confirm, or the government has not reduced poverty and inequality as much as it claims (as a glance to the barrios of Caracas seems to confirm). Or perhaps both. Either way, the government has proven grossly incompetent at protecting its citizens. The pseudo-socialist clique that governs us plainly cares much more about protecting its own members. Recent press reports show that more cops in Caracas are devoted to protecting politicians and their families as body guards than to roaming the streets, and let's not even talk about crimes carried out by the police. Amid all this, the authorities seem to spend what limited resources are at the justice system's disposal on criminalizing dissent. Venezuelan chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega has repeatedly argued that having the wrong opinion (a.k.a. "publishing information that may destabilize the government" or "causing a perception of impunity through the press") should be made a crime punishable with 10 years in jail. After recent protests, she has put student protesters in our worse jails because they spray-painted walls, and detained dozens labor movement protestors without trial for months on end for what amount to political crimes. While Venezuela burns, our authorities are busy criminalizing those who protest, rather than those setting the fires. Let's put this in perspective. Last year, we had almost 14,000 deaths due to crime, out of a population of about 27 million people. Let's round it up to 28 million, and make some calculations: If Bangladesh had our murder rate, there would be 125,000 murder victims there every year, if the US had our murder rate, we would be talking about 150,000 deaths due to crime, if Japan had our problem, there would be 60000 Japanese dead due to crime every time our pretty planet goes around the sun. If China and India had our levels of violence, we would get rid of 1,100,000 people every year. The numbers of death due to violence do not seem so big in Venezuela due to our smallish population, but this a serious problem that is only getting worse after almost 11 years of Bolivarian rule. The number of people mugged, assaulted and robbed are much greater than that. Some relatives of mine have been shot and stabbed, most of my friends have been robbed at least once, and I had to jump from a bus in motion to avoid being robbed a month ago, in Mérida, where I live, a university town that not so long ago used to be relatively safe. In Valera, where my parents live, it is unwise to go out after 9 in the streets, and after 8:30, it gets really difficult to find public transportation. So, will the government correct its strategy, accept that we have a huge problem that has to be solved ASAP and will follow its rhetoric and work along the communities to tackle crime (Death penalty and traditional top-down approaches won't work)? No. Instead, it will blame the gamers for the problem. Yes, we are to blame, because we cannot tell fantasy from reality and because video games make us violent, morons who will throw people out of cars just like in Grand Theft Auto and kill them, because even though games come with ratings, just like movies, I, an adult citizen, cannot be trusted to use them wisely. This law makes selling video games to anybody actually worse than giving real guns or cigarettes to a minor, or even forcing him or her to work, as you get less jail time and lower fines if you do any of those things. I have to be protected from them, so I don't go into a killing spree. (If I were so impressionable, I would not be writing this, I would have swallowed completely the huge amount of propaganda they feed to us). Our Parliament, instead of addressing our real needs, behaves like the bunch of escapist, authoritarian demagogues they are, imposing their decrees on us, because they are know they are right, and those of us who dissent, surely are rich elitist bastards who hate the poor, traitors who hate Venezuela and work for sinister, evil and shady foreign powers (If you follow American politics, this attitude should ring some alarms to you). Surely a government that calls itself Socialist would have corrected a gross mistake by previous administrations: our marginal tax rate for the richest citizens is 34%, which is less than what the American marginal tax rate was when Bush gave tax cuts to Donald Trump and Warren Buffet. One would think that after ten years of Socialist government focused on the poor and against the evil rich, the fiercely egalitarian Venezuelan MPs would have found the time to increase the taxes of the hated rich to the same level of such boring, bland, flavorless, countries as Finland, New Zealand, Sweden or Canada. Instead, they have been too busy forbidding video games, porn (2 to 6 years in jail for filming porn, as it goes against "good customs" and family) and human genetic engineering (The law is written in such an imprecise language than creating Human Recombinant Insulin could lead me to jail), while our president befriends murderers, genocides, golpistas (coup makers, like Gambia's president Yahya Jammeh), and tyrants and replicas of the sword of Bolívar, The Liberator. Our president also claims that despite shutting down 34 opposition radio stations based on administrative technicalities, despite the constant harassment of dissident cable stations, and criminalizing of protests, this is the country with most Freedom of Speech in the whole world, the same thing that Silvio Scumbag Berlusconi said about Italy and pretty much what American jingoists, immune to facts love to say, "America is the Freest Country in The World", despite America's sickening incarceration rates and its aversion to cognitive liberty. Venezuelan authorities' record on cognitive freedom is also laughable, with our authorities making wild claims about super marijuana (provided by the evil Colombians) that causes Alzheimer, and banning Family Guy from the air because it promotes the evil liberal American attitudes to drugs. Most likely, not that many people will end up in jail due to the anti-gaming law. But it could easily be used to coerce, to extort and to pressure people who find themselves on the revolution's shit list, to make you feel powerless, like a criminal, to make you ashamed and scared. Laws here get enforced selectively, but when the government issues so many laws criminalizing so many behaviours, sooner or later you are going to break one, so you better be well behaved and, above all, you better not criticize the powerful. If you do, they'll go through your hobbies... and when they do, they're bound to use something they can use against you. Another possibilities is that they may be trying to target cybercafés and Internet services for those who lack net connection at home, as Counter Strike and other on-line games are a big source of revenues for cybercafés. In any case, even if individuals don't go to jail, stores won't sell games anymore. Whichever explanation you favor, what we have here is just another brick in the wall, another piece of a strategy to slowly but surely build a legal wall against political dissent, even as our society goes to the dogs. This situation is painful to behold. Even if I barely game at all these days, I am a gamer at neocortex. I spent countless hours solving puzzles, riddles and fighting monsters in dungeons. I rescued Toadstool many times, only to be told that thanks, but my Princess was in another castle, later I joined Link and rescued Zelda from Agahnim and Ganon, using the Master Sword and the Silver Arrows. I got the Zantetsu sword and cut metal, I summoned Ifrit, Odeen and Behemoth. From Dragoon, I became a Paladin. I sneaked on Big Boss' fortress in Zanzibar and stopped doomsday with Solid Snake. I fought along a Double Dragon trapped on a Final Fight, using my Killer Instinct in a Mortal Kombat in which only the greatest Street Fighter would come alive. I was Linked to the Past by a Chrono Trigger, my Soul Blazing, as I lived my Final Fantasies, Wandering from Ys, arriving to a Lagoon, to learn about the Secret of Mana, and finally understood that there is Ever More to life. These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games. Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted. Even if my parents could afford to buy a NES or a SNES when the times were good for us, we could not afford to buy games, so I played Mario a lot. I used to go to game parlors and play, made friends there, speaking not only about swords and crystals, combo breakers and special attacks, but also about AI, the future and technology, about that mysterious thing called the Internet (I met a girl who tried Compuserve!) and about nuclear war. Fifteen years later, my little brother lives in a world where the scarcity of games can be bypassed with the right tools, where mod chips and special cards allow him to emulate really old games on newer devices, where he needs to learn the basics about hacking if he wants to fully use his Nintendo DS. Yesterday I was explaining to my little brother how any computer could in theory, emulate another computer, and how that made it possible to play really old games (Older than him!) on his DS. I was explaining what a terminal window and a program were and how I converted videos to a format that his DS can understand. And he was thrilled, his eyes lit with pleasure, technology was a bridge that got us closer. If we blindly follow the copyright and video game forbidding laws, we won't be able to do this anymore, and he will stop learning as much as he could gaming and hacking, finding his way to talk to machines to get them to do what he needs. But I won't obey, I will be an outlaw gamer, and I vow to teach him as much as I can and as much as he is willing to learn, as early as possible. I refuse to give up my rights to a government that is commanded by Vuitton clad jerks asking sacrifices from us, I refuse to stop gaming because a bunch of control freaks tell me that I will become a killer and that the wonderful games that enriched my childhood are psycho factories. If I get fined for writing this (Article 13, promoting the use of violent videogames), so be it. If I go to jail because I carry rooms in my hard drive or in an R4 card for my brother, next time I return to the country, so be it. But I'd rather go to jail than betray the gamer culture, partially responsible for making me the person I am today. Enough is enough, and I am fed with this government of morons, pretending to be socialist while living a luxurious lifestyle, paying very little taxes and plundering our oil money. This is a travesty, a pacifist government who gets loans from Russia to buy rifles, tanks and missiles, whose official motto is "Fatherland, Socialism or Death", whose leader calls other people subhuman, and constantly speaks about war. A socialist system that offers lower taxes than Bush for the rich people, that gives no-bid contracts to Chevron Texaco, a progressive govt. spreading lies about marijuana and promoting a new law that requires education on breastfeeding for our girls, but no education on reproductive freedoms, a system that promotes sovereignty and dignity micromanaging my life and telling what I have to do, what I cannot do and stepping on my rights to mind my business as long as I do not harm anybody else. The only thing more puzzling to me than liberals being eager of supporting this, is that social conservatives hate him despite his strong family values, opposition against vice and low taxes for the rich. Now, that games have been outlawed, I am an outlaw, but there is hope. My brother is learning that sometimes being an outlaw is the right thing to do, that some laws are not fair and must be opposed and that breaking the law does not makes you a bad person. That is a hard thing to explain to a seven year old, but now he understands it really well. I do not know if he will ever become a hacker, but he is already a rebel and a happy mutant. More links about the situation in Venezuela: |
| George McKelvey "My Teenage Fallout Queen" 1964 Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:07 PM PST Michael Simmons of Fretboard Journal says: "Here's an interesting video from olden times [1964] featuring a song called 'Teenage Fallout Queen.' And there's this site devoted to Cold War pop music." (I love the lettering in the title at the beginning!) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:55 AM PST A woman named Alice, 59, had morning sex with her husband but immediately after, she was hit with amnesia. According to a CNN story, Alice experienced transient global amnesia, complete loss of short-term memory and some problems recalling older events too. Apparently, the curious condition can be triggered by a variety of vigorous exercise, sudden and drastic temperature change, or emotional trauma. Transient Global Amnesia can resolve itself quickly and usually doesn't leave any permanent damage. Alice's memory returned by the afternoon. CNN presented Alice's case and spoke with Harvard neurology professor Louis Caplan about the causes of transient global amnesia. From CNN: "(Sex) is actually a well-known precipitator. One of the things people have done to look at transient global amnesia is to look at frequency of various precipitants and sex always comes out as one of the most common," said Caplan, a leading stroke expert at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not associated with Alice's care. "It usually is after climax that it develops," he said about its onset..."Sex, then amnesia...and it's no soap opera" |
| Bicycle defense kit fits in Altoids tin Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:43 AM PST  Luke Iseman sells a Bicycle Defense Kit for $19.90. The Bicycle Defense Kit (BDK) offers options for dealing with aggressive motorists. Contained within an altoids tin, the 8 tools vary in detectability, potential to cause damage, and legality.Bicycle Defense Kit |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:46 PM PST New research suggests that the atmosphere can be modeled with fractal patterns and may not be as, er, complex as we thought. The benefit of the new knowledge? Perhaps more accurate forecasts and better climate models. From New Scientist: The results point to a new view of the atmosphere as a vast collection of cascade-like processes, with large structures the size of continents breaking down to feed ever-smaller ones, right down to zephyrs of air no bigger than a fly."Tomorrow's weather: Cloudy, with a chance of fractals" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:27 AM PST  Here are photos of a bear that has lost her fur, save a few tufts around her head. All the female bears at the Leipzig zoo suffer this humiliating affliction. (I think the CIA, which associates bears with communism, sprinkled thallium salts on their paws to cause their fur to fall out.) |
| The Linder Gallery Interior painting: science, art, and mystery Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:20 AM PST  At the intersection of art, science, and mystery lies the Linder Gallery Interior, a 17th century painting depicting a gallery filled with scientific instruments, mathematical and cosmic diagrams, a variety of Flemish, Dutch, and Italian paintings, and a curious collection of other objects. Apparently, it represents the controversial ideas that came to a head in Galileo's 1633 Inquisition Trial. Once owned by the Rothschilds and swiped by the Nazis, the painting is now in a private New York City collection. Fortunately for us, Michael John Gorman, curator of the Trinity College Dublin's Science Gallery, became obsessed with the artwork and created a Web site and book, titled "A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery." From the site: Who is the old man? What's his relationship with the woman, who holds paintbrushes and a palette? What is the significance of the paintings on the walls? Are we looking at a real or imaginary collection of objects? What about the very carefully painted scientific instruments? What is the significance of the books on the green table? Why is there a drawing of the different possible systems of the universe in the centre of the painting with the intriguing Latin phrase "ALY ET ALIA VIDENT" – "Others see it yet otherwise"?After the jump, a video of Gorman giving a 5 minute Ignite talk about about the Linder Gallery Interior and his quest to understand it.
"A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery" (Amazon) |
| EU kills 3-strikes proposal (yay!) but all is not well (eek!) Posted: 05 Nov 2009 10:30 AM PST You might have seen that the EU's "Telecoms Package" squeaked through with some protection for users' rights intact -- specifically, the proposal to allow "3-strikes" rules (whereby everyone in your house would lose internet access if any member was accused, without trial, of copyright infringement) was killed. But it's not as good as it could be, nor as good as it was before the content industry's lobbyists got their chums to rewrite it. Jérémie Zimmemrmann writes, The European Parliament and the Council of the EU came to an agreement on the "Telecoms Package" negotiations. They laid down legal and procedural guarantees against restrictions of Internet access. The new provision gives[1] "effective judicial protection and due process", guarantees "the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy" and the respect of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.Europe only goes half-way in protecting Internet rights. Previously: |
| Mash-up video culled from 99 classic albums Posted: 05 Nov 2009 10:20 AM PST The jam band Phish came up with a list of 99 classic albums, one of which ("Exile on Main Street") they surprised an audience by covering in its entirety at a Halloween concert in Indio, California. As an intro for the Phish performance, London-based A/V remixers Eclectic Method took audio and video bits from each of those 99 albums and collaged them together into a superb cut-up. "Eclectic Method Goes Phish" (Thanks, Gabe "TuneUp" Adiv!) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 10:13 AM PST I suppose the people in Maine who voted against gay marriage will now organize to shut down the lobster industry, right? |
| 1962 fallout shelter design booklet Posted: 05 Nov 2009 10:00 AM PST  The Mt. Holly Mayor found a stockpile of civil defense documents at an an estate sale. He uploaded this DIY "Family Shelter Designs" booklet published in 1962 by the U.S. Dept. of Defense. As a bonus, he linked to the fun 1983 Donald Fagan video about a hot date in a fallout shelter. The New Frontier - Department of Defense Family Shelter Designs from 1962 |
| Goldwag: Hoaxes, celebrity, and death on the Net Posted: 05 Nov 2009 11:04 AM PST  Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books. Some of you might remember a story about a little boy and a runaway balloon that erupted in the news a few weeks back. Like Edgar Allan Poe's 1844 scoop about Monck Mason, an English balloonist who was blown off course en route to France and made landfall near Charleston, South Carolina (illustration above), the story turned out to be false in most of its particulars. There really was an aeronautist named Monck Mason, but he hadn't crossed the ocean. There really was a little boy and a UFO-shaped balloon, but... well, you know the rest. Are there wider lessons to be gleaned from any of this, besides not believing everything you read in the newspaper (or hear on the radio, watch on TV, or read on the Web)? Frank Rich editorialized about Balloon Boy's father in the New York Times, casting him as a desperate figure out of Nathanael West's Day of the Locust, a victim of our own Great Recession, hungrily grasping after the golden ring of wealth and fame. If West's people worshipped screen gods and goddesses, today's stage struck wannabes aspire to play themselves on TV, living out scripted versions of their own lives.
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| Video about Guantánamo detainees released without charge Posted: 05 Nov 2009 09:46 AM PST The ACLU produced this video about men who were held at Guantánamo for years without charge then, after being tasered, suffocated, raped, punched, blinded, and spat upon, were released without charge. (Via The Agitator) |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 09:35 AM PST  A Lithuanian designer team has made a series of edible, wearable bread shoes that can be purchased on their site. They seem like they'd be comfy house slippers. Bread Shoes via Dezeen |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2009 09:05 AM PST Here's a video showing Ford's new inflatable seat belts for rear seats. Ford Motor Company is bringing to market the worlds first automotive inflatable seat belts, combining attributes of traditional seat belts and air bags to provide an added level of crash safety protection for rear seat occupants.Inflatable rear seat belts |
| iPhone game dev accused of stealing players' phone numbers Posted: 05 Nov 2009 06:58 PM PST  Iphone game developer Storm8 exploited an "electronic backdoor" to learn the phone numbers of players, according to a class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco. Filed on behalf of Lynnwood, WA resident Michael Turner, the suit claims that the practice is not authorized by Apple and involves the execution of "malicious software code.""Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game," the suit alleges. " ... Storm8, though, has no reason whatsoever to access the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed." Storm8 makes popular multiplayer games such as iMobsters and Vampires Live, available in both free and paid versions for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Its titles allow players to spend money in-game to acquire better weapons and other competitive advantages. The number farming was not disclosed to players until an acknowledgement in August that described it as a "bug." The lawsuit claims that only "very specific and specialized software code" could do so, however, and seeks injunctive relief and damages. Update: Storm8 hasn't returned inquiries. Text of the lawsuit (PDF) |
| Wu-Tang album covers redesigned as Blue Note album covers Posted: 05 Nov 2009 08:31 AM PST  The Wu-Note Project, by Logan Walters. Photoshop rules everything around me. (thanks, PJ) |
A few days after Balloon Boy's non-event The Yes Men, professional hoaxers with a genuine political agenda, pulled off a coup when they | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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