The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Corporate law firm targets whistle-blowers and anonymous commenters
• Cats with fraudulent diplomas
• Vampire/otherkin/energy worker Meetup in San Francisco
• DMCA takedown shirt
• Teen sex belongs in teen lit
• Tim Biskup's Darth Vader and Astroboy
• Cheeseburger parts coaster set
• Twitter o'clock
• The OpenOffice Mouse
• Courage (and training) defined.
• Stealthy anti-whaling powerboat
• The Great Grave Robberies
• Hoax!
• John McCain vs. Baby Sea Turtles vs. Rachel Maddow
• MacHeist
• Fort Hood Shooter bought "cop killer" at "Guns Galore"
• Octopus pretending to be seaweed
• World record for grape-o-lantern carving
• Documentary about paper folding
• UK stamps to feature famous album covers
• Face painting art
• Woman escapes handcuffs multiple times
• Tattooed Under Fire: the tattoos and lives of soldiers at Fort Hood
• Car thief steals car to drive to court
• Glottal Opera: vocal chords on video
• Doc Marten's with glow-in-the-dark skeletal feet
• Leaked text of secret copyright treaty vs. bland bureaucratic press-release describing same
• Freemasonry, Dan Brown, and the New New Age
• Nouveau Oldtime Jam: Blind Boy Paxton, Dom Flemons (of Carolina Chocolate Drops), and Frank Fairfield
• An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy

Corporate law firm targets whistle-blowers and anonymous commenters Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:34 PM PST A British corporate law firm has created a new unit that will help easily offended corporate giants track down and sue anonymous Internet forum posters. They will also target whistle-blowers. They specialize in figuring out how to get ISPs to turn over their subscribers' personal information. A spokeswoman for Wragge said: "Courts can compel Internet Service Providers or telephone service providers to make information available regarding registered names, email addresses and other key account holder information. One growth area is identifying individuals involved in leaking confidential information, such as client or financial details, to competitor companies. With the help of employment law specialists, the team can assist both in finding the source of such leaks and advising on any subsequent employment aspects." Birmingham Wragge team to focus on online comment defamation (via Futurismic)

Cats with fraudulent diplomas Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:28 PM PST Skeptics who believe that a university is actually a diploma mill often prove their point by enrolling their cats in the university's program and seeing whether the cat can get a degree. Some enterprising Wikipedians have assembled a list of several such cats. Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.[1]... Ben Goldacre, a UK-based science journalist, obtained a diploma in nutrition from the American Association of Nutritional Consultants for his dead cat, Henrietta, while investigating allegations about fake qualifications.[5] List of cats with fraudulent diplomas (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) (Image: Count the cats!, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Eva 101's Flickr stream)

Vampire/otherkin/energy worker Meetup in San Francisco Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:23 PM PST If you're a self-identified vampire, "otherkin" or "energy worker," there's a Meetup for you in the Bay Area. The Vampirism, Energy-work and Otherkin Society (VEOS) is a loosely-organized San Francisco based group. This group is open those identifying as vampire (sang or psy), donor, otherkin, and to those who wish to learn more about such topics. Other energy-workers are also welcome, so long as you have no problem with the vampiric side of energy work. This group is NOT open to role-players, recruiters of any type, or those seeking to promote any form of religion (discussion about religion is OK, preaching is not). You know, I bet it's actually a pretty nice night out. As one member says, "we are all nice people and we have a good time when we get together." Welcome to Bay VEOS (via JWZ) Previously: Otherkin: Elves trapped in men's bodies - Boing Boing

DMCA takedown shirt Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:19 PM PST We'll never know what was originally intended for this Techdirt tee, but we can see the aftermath of the takedown notice it attracted! DMCA Takedown T-shirt (Thanks, Dennis!)

Teen sex belongs in teen lit Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:09 PM PST My latest Locus column, "Teen Sex," explains why I think young adult literature should have sex -- and other "mature" topics -- in it. There's really only one question: "Why have your characters done something that is likely to upset their parents, and why don't you punish them for doing this?" Now, the answer. First, because teenagers have sex and drink beer, and most of the time the worst thing that results from this is a few days of social awkwardness and a hangover, respectively. When I was a teenager, I drank sometimes. I had sex sometimes. I disobeyed authority figures sometimes. Mostly, it was OK. Sometimes it was bad. Sometimes it was wonderful. Once or twice, it was terrible. And it was thus for everyone I knew. Teenagers take risks, even stupid risks, at times. But the chance on any given night that sneaking a beer will destroy your life is damned slim. Art isn't exactly like life, and science fiction asks the reader to accept the impossible, but unless your book is about a universe in which disapproving parents have cooked the physics so that every act of disobedience leads swiftly to destruction, it won't be very credible. The pathos that parents would like to see here become bathos: mawkish and trivial, heavy-handed, and preachy. Cory Doctorow: Teen Sex

Tim Biskup's Darth Vader and Astroboy Posted: 06 Nov 2009 08:43 PM PST BB pal Tim Biskup has a show of paintings and sculptures opening at the Barracuda Shop in Los Angeles next Friday evening, November 13. The show, titled "I Hate Everyone But You," will also feature prints by designer Matt Goldman and runs until December 3. Dig Biskup's psychedelic Vader above? Check out his take on Astroboy after the jump.

Cheeseburger parts coaster set Posted: 06 Nov 2009 08:50 PM PST This "collectible" and curious coaster set from Wendy's is up for auction on eBay. The starting bid is $9.99. According the listing, "All pieces are in EXCELLENT condition except the corner of the cheese has a small chip but still very usable." "Collectible Wendy's Restaurant Hamburger Coaster Set" (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Twitter o'clock Posted: 06 Nov 2009 07:22 PM PST Big Ben strikes Twitter: BONG!. [Thanks, Brian!]

The OpenOffice Mouse Posted: 06 Nov 2009 04:03 PM PST It supports Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems, will retail for $74.99, and is not a joke. [OpenOfficeMouse]

Courage (and training) defined. Posted: 06 Nov 2009 03:31 PM PST What's courage? When the Fort Hood gunman turned and shot at her, she ran toward him. She ran toward the bullets, firing. NYT profiles firearms expert Kimberly Munley.

Stealthy anti-whaling powerboat Posted: 06 Nov 2009 03:50 PM PST That is not Batman's boat but rather Earthrace, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ultraslick bio-diesel-powered anti-whaling speedboat. It's 80-feet long and very stealthy. Next month, it will head out to the seas around Japan to, er, protest the country's whaling industry. Life magazine has photos of Earthrace currently docked in Auckland, New Zealand. (Click image to see full photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images.) "Superbad Anti-Whaling Stealth Boat"

The Great Grave Robberies Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:37 PM PST The dead don't just get up and walk off. No. They need felonious help for that. Mental_floss has a fun piece on five great grave robberies (some more successful than others)--with guest corpses ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Abe Lincoln.

Hoax! Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:22 PM PST An MSNBC headline twitter feed, hacked! But it's surely a clever hoax: known-legitimate accounts don't link to it.

John McCain vs. Baby Sea Turtles vs. Rachel Maddow Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:08 PM PST John McCain does not love baby sea turtles. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow does. I'm gonna side with the @maddows on this one.

MacHeist Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:18 PM PST MacHeist is giving away a set of Mac apps free of charge, including Writeroom and Twitteriffic.

Fort Hood Shooter bought "cop killer" at "Guns Galore" Posted: 06 Nov 2009 01:59 PM PST Alleged shooter in yesterday's Fort Hood massacre bought his "cop killer" pistol legally at Guns Galore, in Texas. The ammo can pierce bulletproof vests. (via Danger Room)

Octopus pretending to be seaweed Posted: 06 Nov 2009 01:02 PM PST BocasResearchStation sez, "This video shows an octopus cleverly trying to camouflage itself amongst seaweed in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Hiding is the primary defense mechanism for these creatures, and this little guy is making use of branches of algae to try to get by unseen." An Octopus Pretending to be Seaweed (Thanks, BocasResearchStation!) Previously: Angry bored octopus goes wilding - Boing Boing Octopus with 96 tentacles - Boing Boing Fishtank habitrail - Boing Boing Octopus jealously guards his Mr Potato Head toy - Boing Boing Octopus camouflage video - Boing Boing Octopus-related pulp mag cover gallery - Boing Boing

World record for grape-o-lantern carving Posted: 06 Nov 2009 01:02 PM PST Thessaly sez, "For those who wish Halloween wasn't over: Caitlin Roper holds the record for making the world's largest collection of jack-o-lantern grapes. She cut the lids of six grapes and hollowed them out before hand-carving faces into each one. They may also possibly be the world's SMALLEST jack-o-lanterns, but this is not verified." Largest Collection Of Jack-O-Lantern Grapes (Thanks, Thessaly!)

Documentary about paper folding Posted: 06 Nov 2009 01:03 PM PST The trailer above is for Between The Folds, a new feature documentary film presented by PBS's Independent Lens. You can view the whole film on PBS on December 8 or at one of Independent Television Service's free Community Cinema screenings upcoming around the country. From MAKE: The film documents "a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers and scoffed at their graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders." Featured in the film are MIT's youngest-ever tenured professor Dr. Erik Demaine; mathematician, sculptor, puzzle maker, and self-taught computer scientist Marty Demaine; master free-style folder Vincent Floderer; pioneering Israeli educator Miri Golan; mathematics professor Dr. Tom Hull; trained artist and instructor Paul Jackson; one of the most technically accomplished folders in the world, Eric Joisel; one of only a few handmade origami papermakers in the world, Michael LaFosse; origami "hyper-realist" and physicist Dr. Robert J. Lang (who was profiled in CRAFT Volume 05); material artist with a masterful understanding of patterns and geometry, Chris K. Palmer; and the father of modern origami, Akira Yoshizawa. More clips from the film after the jump! Between The Folds (Thanks, Chi Do!)

UK stamps to feature famous album covers Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:51 PM PST Next year, the UK's Royal Mail will sell 1st class stamps that feature images of 10 famous British album covers. The postal service collaborated with music mag editors and design writers to come up with the list — interestingly, no Beatles albums were chosen, but artists represented include Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones. I wish the USPS would do something like this instead of boring us with stamps decorated with bells and reindeers. Studio Dempsey via Creative Review

Face painting art Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:35 PM PST James Kuhn is a Michigan-based artist who likes to paint his own face in the most intricate, creative ways. I love the one where he puckers up to represent a dog's butt. I've always wondered what my mouth would look like as an anus. James Kuhn's Flickr via Web Urbanist

Woman escapes handcuffs multiple times Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:29 PM PST When Shannon McCarthy of Blue Ash, Ohio, was arrested last night -- after police saw her drunk and walking into oncoming traffic -- she escaped from her handcuffs. Not once. Not twice. But three times. So police tased her. (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

Tattooed Under Fire: the tattoos and lives of soldiers at Fort Hood Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:41 PM PST Marisa Kakoulas at the excellent tattoo blog Needles and Sins writes about Tattooed Under Fire, a documentary by Nancy Schiesari on the tattoos -- and lives -- of soldiers at Fort Hood. The film was created long before yesterday's mass shooting, and will air on public television stations around the country starting next week. Fort Hood -- the largest US military facility in the world -- is a major center for soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also houses the Army's Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, which helps soldiers deal with post-traumatic stress when they return. In both cases, deployment and return home, soldiers work out heavy issues, and many seek tattooing as a way to express them or even see the process as therapy. Tattooed Under Fire documents the young men and women at Fort Hood who seek solace at the tattoo studio, confessing fears, expressing anger, sharing secrets, and relaying personal war stories. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin) Related, on BB: An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy

Car thief steals car to drive to court Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:17 PM PST Samuel George Botchvaroff of Oakland, California didn't have a car to get to court for his auto theft case, so he stole one. (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Glottal Opera: vocal chords on video Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:31 PM PST This is the Glottal Opera, featuring the vocal chords of the band Kaya: Sally Stevens, Alexi Kaye, Emma Deans and Juleiaah Boehm. John Fink directed the video and Deborah Szapiro was producer. (Thanks, Dean Putney!) Previously: Mel Blanc's vocal cords - Boing Boing

Doc Marten's with glow-in-the-dark skeletal feet Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:53 AM PST It's been a good 20 years since I had a real hankering to wear Doc Marten's around, but I have to say I'm tempted by these skeleton boots whose bones glow in the freaking dark! 1914 BONES 14 EYE BOOT BLACK LAMPER (via Street Anatomy)

Leaked text of secret copyright treaty vs. bland bureaucratic press-release describing same Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:52 AM PST Michael Geist sez, "The latest round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (the secret copyright treaty) talks have now wrapped up with the usual bland press release confirming that the talks focused on Internet and criminal enforcement, indicating that the next meeting will be in Mexico in January 2010, and pledging to complete the treaty as quickly as possible. More interesting is the unofficial release - the leaked document that provided the information on what the Internet enforcement chapter actually says." The Leaked ACTA Document (Thanks, Michael!) Previously: New ACTA copyright treaty dodges the UN, poor countries and ... Petition to Obama government to disclose secret copyright treaty ... Obama's transparency commitment makes secret copyright treaty ... More on secret copyright treaty: your kids could go to jail for ... Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. - Boing Boing Meet the former Time Warner exec the US govt has put in charge of ...

Freemasonry, Dan Brown, and the New New Age Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:07 AM PST Freemasonry and the New Age 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. On September 15, 2009, THE LOST SYMBOL came off press. Fans of THE DA VINCI CODE, with more than 80 million copies in print perhaps the bestselling novel of all time, were thrilled--they had been waiting for Dan Brown to write another book for six years. Random House, B&N, and Amazon were delighted; they moved more than a million copies in twenty four hours and another million copies by the end of the week; two months later, it still sits high atop the bestseller lists. The Masons breathed a sigh of relief, because, even if Brown had sensationalized their secret rites and made them look a little silly (drinking wine out of skulls and all that--which come to think of it, is a lot less demeaning than donning fezzes and driving miniature cars in parades, which members of the Masonic fraternity called the Ancient Arab Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, better known as the Shriners, do right out in public), he portrayed them as men of reason, and implied that their ranks are still as crowded with the powerful and the wealthy -- Cabinet secretaries, plutocrats, Senators, Museum directors -- as they were two centuries ago, when they could count Goethe, Mozart, George Washington, Lafayette and Paul Revere among their members. I was guardedly hopeful myself. With all those Masonic symbols on its cover, I figured that CULTS, CONSPIRACIES AND SECRET SOCIETIES stood a small chance of being captured by THE LOST SYMBOL's commercial gravity, much as a tiny planetesimal can get pulled into a gas giant's orbit. But happiest of all was Lynne McTaggart, the real-life author of THE FIELD and THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT, whose books and research in the field of Noetic Science are specifically cited in THE LOST SYMBOL's pages. No one has ever accused Dan Brown of being a literary stylist; he's too easy to parody. His narrators natter on like chatty tour guides, bludgeoning us with trivia and heavy-handed exposition. His hero Robert Langdon seems to suffer from a testosterone deficiency; his celibate bad guys, with their bulging muscles and self-mortified flesh, are creepily fetishized. But ANGELS AND DEMONS, THE DA VINCI CODE, and now THE LOST SYMBOL do more than merely lead their legions of readers on merry chases; they exhort them to reconsider their world view. Though the answers he provides may be trivial and sometimes historically inaccurate, the questions Brown asks us to consider are worth pondering. Does the church misrepresent Christianity? Is history filled with mysteries and intrigues that mainstream chronicles elide? Are science and religion converging? Brown earnestly wants us to expand our view of human potential, to open ourselves up to a whole new paradigm--one that is more capacious and filled with possibilities than either secular scientism or the traditional Judeo-Christian world view. In a very broad sense, that was the Masons' philosophical program as well. Stripped of all its pageantry and mumbo jumbo, Freemasonry (which, despite its claims of ancient provenance, can't be dated back any further than the early 18th century) celebrates the rational, non-dogmatic, individualistic values of the Enlightenment. God-the-Architect is a Deist idea. The Masonic openness to Rosicrucian arcana, alchemy, and Kabbalah is an attribute of the same unfettered, non-judgmental curiosity that led to the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the early industrial era--and for that matter to the rise of the bourgeois merchant class and the overthrow of entrenched Aristocracy. Masons did play the outsized role in the French Revolution that their enemies accused them of; Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati envisioned an age in which Kings and Catholicism would no longer hold sway. Augustin Barruel and John Robison's 1798 exposes of the Illuminati conspiracies sparked a transient panic in the United States that anticipated 1950s-style McCarthyism; a second wave of anti-Masonic paranoia swept the country in the late 1820s. It's ironic that the prospect of world revolution so frightened the post-colonial Americans, since they were revolutionaries themselves. Not only had they thrown off the shackles of king and church, they had thrived because they did so. Benjamin Franklin -- a reluctant but eventually an ardent revolutionist -- is the very type of the American Freemason. Inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, he was a mass of contradictions: a sententious moralizer and codifier of bourgeois virtues, he attended séances at the hedonistic Hellfire Club in England; homespun and self-educated, he was a familiar in the royal courts and academies of Europe. He was our Leonardo Da Vinci, except he couldn't paint or sculpt. And like most of our founding fathers, he had a healthy skepticism of democracy. Just as we worry about what less advanced nations will do with nuclear technology today, the men of the Enlightenment worried about what the ignorant masses would do with the incredible powers -- philosophic, economic, political, technological and scientific -- that they were unlocking. Their fears were not misplaced... we are living with some of the consequences of their discoveries today. Much of our planet is poisoned; its climate is changing; we live under the shadow of weapons of mass destruction. Esoteric Masonry acknowledges -- as do all the mystery religions and philosophies, going back to Egyptian Hermeticism and Pythagoreanism--that some things are best kept within a select circle. That doesn't mean the Masons were secret aristocrats or magi; only that they knew how dangerous it could be when complex ideas were trivialized, debased, and distorted by people who didn't understand them. Back in the eighteenth century, the boundaries between science and magic were still porous; chemists were still trying to turn lead into gold; physicians were practicing medicine without the benefit of germ theory; physicists were only just beginning to move away from Aristotle's world view towards one that we would now call Newtonian (Newton himself -- a devout, mystically-inclined Christian and a practicing alchemist -- lived into the 1720s). The fact that the early Masons were as intrigued by ancient esoterica as they were doesn't mean that they were Gnostics or Zoroastrians or Rosicrucians, any more than their knowledge of Latin and Greek classics made them pagans. One legacy of the Enlightenment is our ability to unravel science and superstition, to draw distinctions between theology and natural science, and between ancient wisdom and ancient ignorance. Those boundaries are so clearly demarcated today that many people have come to believe that science and religion are mutually exclusive. Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL mixes them up again. In its telling, the Freemasons were the keepers of the embers that cutting edge Noetic scientists are fanning into flame--a philosophic technology that will bring us wonders like ESP and teleportation, and that one day might even conquer death. Noetic science takes some of the spookier discoveries of quantum physics--that particles can remain "entangled," even when they are separated by vast distances--and extends it to the "big, visible" world. There really is an Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Petaluma, California (Obama's much-reviled ex-Green Jobs czar Van Jones is a member of its board; other famous names are Desmond Tutu, Dean Ornish, and Deepak Chopra). And as I noted, there really is a Lynne McTaggart. "All matter in the universe exists in a web of connection and constant influence," she writes, "Which often overrides many of the laws of the universe that we used to believe held ultimate sovereignty....The significance of these findings extends far beyond a validation of extrasensory power or parapsychology. They threaten to demolish the entire edifice of present-day science." McTaggart's Intention Experiment is a web-based project that recruits volunteers to beam thought energy at objects and people and measure the results. Click here for the protocols of some of the early experiments. For all of her references to quantum physics and her nods to falsifiability and the scientific method, McTaggart mostly hearkens back to nineteenth century New Thought--Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's "mind cure" movement that inspired Christian Science, the Power of Positive Thinking, and the "Think and Grow Rich" philosophy of Napoleon Hill. In 1888, in a biographical sketch of his father that he published in the New England Magazine, Quimby's son George summarized the essential tenets of New Thought: "That 'mind' was spiritual matter and could be changed'; that we were made up of 'truth and error'; that 'disease was an error, or belief, and that the Truth was the cure.'" Rhonda Byrne's bestselling THE SECRET is infused with New Thought and Noetic Science; one of its "stars" is James Arthur Ray, whose self-improvement empire is teetering on the brink in the wake of the sweat lodge disaster that took three lives in Sedona, Arizona last month. The crown jewel of the experiments that the Noetic Scientist heroine of the THE LOST SYMBOL had secretly carried out was one in which she weighed a dying man immediately before and after his death, proving that his departed soul had physical mass. This same experiment was really carried out by a Dr. Duncan MacDougal in 1907 (he determined that it weighed 21 grams). MacDougal also killed a bunch of dogs and concluded, with equal scientific authority, that they didn't have souls. As it happens, I also believe that human beings have souls (dogs too), but I don't think they can be weighed and measured. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the soul is precisely that part of us that can't be dissected or quantified. Like Brown and his Masons, I agree that we have much to learn from the ancients: from esoterica like Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and the Kabbalah, from canonical authors like Plato and Aristotle, and mainstreatm religious scriptures like THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, the Bible, and THE UPANISHADS. Shamans and herbalists know things that scientists are only now acknowledging; we are only just beginning to appreciate Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. But I somehow doubt that the materialized spirituality of Noetic Science is the bridge to the future that Brown makes it out to be; one can be open-minded without embracing pseudoscience. Historically, the Masons have stood for the spirit of free inquiry and, their heartily reciprocated detestation of Roman Catholicism aside, religious tolerance. It's nice for a change to see them portrayed as idealistic good guys instead of sinister oligarchs presiding over a malign New World Order. But the Masons aren't New Agers. For all of Dan Brown's earnest talk of a new paradigm, I feel like he's urging us -- and them -- to take a giant step backwards.

Nouveau Oldtime Jam: Blind Boy Paxton, Dom Flemons (of Carolina Chocolate Drops), and Frank Fairfield Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:29 AM PST (Watch video: YouTube, Dotsub, or download MP4.) A quick little goodie from Boing Boing Video. Last night, I sat in on a live recording session at Santa Monica's Village Studios with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, described as "African-American string band revivalists." They were amazing: I have never been so emotionally moved by someone playing a musical jug (and banjos, fiddles, cow bones, and kazoos). Their performance was witnessed by a handful of music biz folks and oldtime music enthusiasts, and made me feel deeply homesick for Appalachia (I'm also craving cornbread and butterbeans today - there's a song for that). The Chocolate Drops have a new record coming out in 2010, and Boing Boing will be all over it like gravy on grits. If you dig R. Crumb, Smithsonian Folkways recordings of pre-blues and pre-bluegrass banjo music, and love folks who bring new life to authentic American music, you will flip out. So, the video above: after the Drops' performance and recording session ended, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, seated in center in the video), Blind Boy Paxton (seated at left in the video), and Frank Fairfield (seated far right) sat down together and jammed pure, sweet magic for a spell. I wasn't prepared with a proper camera or crew, but I grabbed my iPhonetraption out of my pocket and got to shootin'. I hope you enjoy it as much as everyone in the room did. Pure magic, these guys. (Special thanks to Joe Henry; Jeff Greenberg of Village Studios; Tom Osborn, Warner Bros. Records; David Bither, Nonesuch Records, and to Boing Boing Video's tireless editor, Eric Mittleman.)

An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy Posted: 06 Nov 2009 01:12 PM PST Yesterday, a shooter opened fire on America's largest Army base, killing 13 and injuring many more. As of this morning, 27 people were still in the hospital. The alleged shooter, Maj. Hasan Nidal Malik, was at first reported dead. Since then, it's been confirmed that he survived and is in custody. The media, obviously, has been all over this. But one reporter--and a journalism school buddy of mine--Amanda Kim Stairrett, knows Fort Hood and the impact this incident has had on the Base better than most. Amanda Kim is the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald. Her office is just down the road from the Fort's main entrance and she's been covering military news for more than four years, since before she graduated college. Fort Hood is her beat and this community is a central part of her life. I called Amanda Kim this morning to get her perspective on the shooting and its aftermath. In our interview, she talked about the confusion that followed the shooting, the history of violence at Fort Hood, the way media circus impacts soldiers' families, and why she won't do speculative reporting. I'm glad to hear you're alright after yesterday. What was your personal experience during the incident? Were you on base to cover the graduation ceremony where the shooting began? Amanda Kim Stairrett: We weren't actually on base when this happened. Our cops reporter was listening to the radio and heard some commotion, which included the term "mass casualty." Usually, when we hear that, it's in reference to training exercises. But there wasn't one planned, so he hopped in the car and drop to Post with a photog. They got there, and got inside the gate, just before it was closed down to the media. We were the only news agency with a reporter and photog on Post. I got there just after the gate was closed. At first, there were only three local media outlets at the main entrance. Less than an hour though and the swarm began. The last news conference was around 9:30 last night, but we reporters stayed there at the gate overnight. I was there, but this has very much been a group effort at our paper. Everything we cover--schools, business--it's all been touched by this. Do you know whether there was just the one shooter? Early reports were talking about three or four people involved. AKS: We have confirmed that he did act alone. In the chaos and confusion after shortly after the incident there were three other people apprehended. And it was chaotic. The cell phone towers got stuffed up pretty quick and there wasn't a lot of clear information on what was going on, even on base. Those other three people, we got a little word last night that they were around the scene, or running away from it, and may have drawn attention to themselves somehow. They've all been released now. I've heard that the alleged shooter was a therapist for other soldiers. Is that true? AKS: Yes, I confirmed that last night, going through army records, that he was a medical soldier. And we got confirmation that he was a psychiatrist this morning. That would mean he's somebody who went through medical school and then joined the Army. Typically, those people are commissioned as officers because they're doctors. I don't know who specifically he treated, but we know he treated soldiers with mental health issues, talking with them to help them mentally prepare for deployment, and helping them work through issues after they return. It's a rough job. I haven't gotten to talk to other Army therapists yet, though, so I don't know how the mental health community is reacting to this. What can you tell me about the recent history of violence at Fort Hood. There was a murder/suicide last fall and I've read some reporting on rising suicide rates at the Fort, as well. AKS: I covered the murder suicide. It's still under question what the motives there were. But maybe one common thread that leaders have talked about is the stress of multiple deployments. Since those things happened, they've done a lot to make programs available for stress reduction and preparing soldiers before things get out of hand. Is violence on Post even a reasonable thing for me to be asking about? Like, if this were a similarly sized town, would anyone think the rate of violence was high? Or try to connect these incidents to one another? AKS: It's an interesting issue. What officials do emphasize is that they have 50,000 soldiers on Post and 20,000 are currently deployed. It is a community, and it's a representation of society. The trends in violence are similar. In fact, with suicides, what really concerned everyone was that, for years, the Army suicide rate used to be below the suicide rate for the general population. The alarm was set off here because we started closing in on the national average suicide rate, not because we were so far above it. I know one of the hardest jobs for a beat reporter is having to go talk to families of recently deceased. Have you had to do that yet? How do you deal with that part of the job? AKS: They haven't released the names of victims in this incident yet. We do know that one was a civilian and the rest were soldiers. And we know they're about 90% done with casualty notification of families. Once they finish that, there will be a short wait and then they'll release names. I have had to talk to spouses who have lost a soldier in combat and it never gets easier. I sometimes feel that the media and the public are a little less cautious of a sensitive situation when it involves a soldier. Like soldiers are community property and it's OK to be a more forward. I've talked to a 27-year-old woman who lost her husband four years ago. They were from a very small town and it was huge news. She talked about things like being in her parents backyard, talking on the phone, and there would be photographers almost stalking her over the fence. Trying to go through that situation while being a mother was very hard on her. We've always had a policy that if a spouse loses a soldier in combat, our door is open for them. We don't hound them and go to their door. We just make it known that if they want to talk about their soldier they can talk to us. Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage? AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time. What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know? AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write. Image taken at Fort Hood last year, during a visit by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Image taken for U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Nicole Kojetin.

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