The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Comic on the joy of online reading
- On the power of "bhaiya" (Hindi for "big brother")
- Jim Muir benefit poster by Shepard Fairey and Glen E. Friedman
- Portrait of the blogger as a young D&D addict
- Live-action version of Smurfs in the works?
- USB grenade flash drive
- Interrogation tapes of 3 Army sergeants accused with murdering 3 Iraqi detainees
- Visualizing the decline of empires
- The 100 greatest quotes from The Wire
- Homophobic murder in Puerto Rico. Cop: "he deserved it" for his lifestyle
- Couch upholstered in "pixelated" fabric
- Sculptures inspired by quantum physics
- Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience
- Infographic: Projected pot tax revenues
- Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
- Age of sharper swords dawns, according to shieldmakers' report
- Guest blogger - Saul Griffith's "Energy Literacy Series"
- Placenta fluid massage to treat soccer player's injury
- Cannibals reportedly sold body parts to kebab vendor
- Was Demi Moore Ralph-Laurenized on "W" mag cover, with missing hip-flesh?
- All-in-one ectoplasm measurement device
- The Lung Flute: A Sort of Gross (But Important) Medical Innovation
- Under the spreading cellphone tower, I bought you and you sold me
- MAKERS signing 7PM tonight in NYC at Columbus Circle Borders
- Hiney Virus Update
- How to destroy the market for used gadgets
- Pirate Bay logo trademarked
| Comic on the joy of online reading Posted: 18 Nov 2009 02:35 AM PST  Lucy Knisley's comic "Downloading Optimism: Pessimism Detected" is a thoughtful response to a panel where great indie comix creators (Linda Barry, Jules Feiffer, Matt Groening, Chris Ware) decried online comics and online reading. Click through for the whole thing. Downloading Optimism (Thanks, Ape Lad!) |
| On the power of "bhaiya" (Hindi for "big brother") Posted: 18 Nov 2009 02:30 AM PST "Bhaiya," a Hindi word meaning "big brother," has remarkable nuance, depending on how it is spoken and to whom. Dave Prager catalogs some of these inflections in a recent article on his life-in-India blog, "Our Delhi Struggle." Jenny tasted the power of bhaiya while watching friends negotiate with autos, seeing housewives beat down stubborn vegetable wallas, observing clever coworkers convincing recalcitrant art directors to meet impossible deadlines. A woman takes a simple bhaiya--"buy-yaa", to transliterate--and bends the word around the fulcrum of the "y", modulating the final syllable to do her dastardly bidding.on Hindi: the power of "bhaiya" (Thanks, Dave!) |
| Jim Muir benefit poster by Shepard Fairey and Glen E. Friedman Posted: 17 Nov 2009 08:02 PM PST  Artist Shepard Fairey and photographer Glen E. Friedman collaborated on the image above, adapted from a photograph Friedman took of legendary skateboarder Jim Muir. The poster goes on sale for $80 on November 19, in a limited edition of 450, signed and numbered by the artists and by Muir. A portion of proceeds will be used to pay Muir's medical bills -- he was badly injured in a surfing accident earlier this year. Jim Muir Print (Obey Giant)
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| Portrait of the blogger as a young D&D addict Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:11 PM PST Here's a mid-1980s CBC News scare-story about Dungeons and Dragons driving kids to suicide featuring (at 2:49 onwards) me and my classmates (the video is dated 1985, but I'm pretty sure this couldn't have been later than my graduation from Junior High in 1984). Ignoring the crazy-ass fearmongering, it's incredibly nostalgic to see all those kids I grew up with, playing with their minis and rolling their dice. Dungeons & Dragons D&D Canadian Doc 1985 Part #2 (Thanks, Tim!) |
| Live-action version of Smurfs in the works? Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:00 PM PST Someone's developing a live-action motion picture adaptation of the Smurfs. It gets weirder: John Lithgow is rumored to be cast as Papa Smurf. First the Chipmunks, now this atrocity? (via Steven Leckart) |
| Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:50 PM PST  Do you think the TSA would let you past security with this USB memory stick in the shape of an itsy-bitsy grenade? |
| Interrogation tapes of 3 Army sergeants accused with murdering 3 Iraqi detainees Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:46 PM PST "Frat boys get abused worse during pledge week in college than that crap [at Abu Ghraib]. But it's what the media made of it. What the hell do you think they're gonna make of this?" Interrogation tapes for 3 decorated Army sergeants charged with the murder of 4 Iraqi detainees. |
| Visualizing the decline of empires Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:33 PM PST Visualizing empires decline by Pedro M Cruz, who explains: "The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. The visual emphasis is on their decline." Here's more on the data and methodology. (via @visualthinkmap) |
| The 100 greatest quotes from The Wire Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:27 PM PST A YouTube compilation of "100 greatest quotes" from the HBO series The Wire. As Aaron Stewart-Ahn on Twitter said, "Perhaps the closest US TV has ever come to a landmark novel." |
| Homophobic murder in Puerto Rico. Cop: "he deserved it" for his lifestyle Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:24 PM PST A gay teenager was decapitated, dismembered, and burned to death in Puerto Rico. The police investigating his murder said he deserved it because of his 'lifestyle.' (via Calpernia) |
| Couch upholstered in "pixelated" fabric Posted: 17 Nov 2009 04:57 PM PST  I rather like the look of Ligne Roset's "Togo" couch, in "Shanghai" fabric by textile artist Cristian Zuzunaga. More images, and here's more on Zuzunaga's site -- there are matching dining chairs. |
| Sculptures inspired by quantum physics Posted: 17 Nov 2009 01:31 PM PST  "Father" from the series "Spin Family (Bosons and Fermions)" 2009, steel and silk, 7" x 6" x 6". We've posted previously about physicist, software designer, and artist Julian Voss-Andreae whose work lies at the intersection of science and sculpture. Last year, he created a massive metal protein sculpture linked to Leonardo's Vitruvian Man. Now, Julian has made 30 objects inspired by his former physics research area of quantum physics. The objects are currently on display at the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland. More images and background on the work after the jump. From Voss-Andreae's artist statement: The term "Quantum Object", although regularly used in physics, is really an oxymoron. An 'object' is something that lives completely in the paradigm of classical physics: It has an independent reality in itself, it behaves deterministically, and it has definite physical properties, such as occupying a well-defined spot in time and space. For the 'quantum' all those seemingly self-evident truths become false: Its reality is one that is relative to the observer, the principle of causality is violated, and other features of materiality such as clear boundaries in space and time, objective locatedness or even identity, do not pertain.
Above: "Prayer (Head sketch for Quantum Woman 2)", 2009, masonite, paper, and steel hardware
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| Viacom's top lawyer thinks lawsuits were "terrorism" - but he's learned nothing from the experience Posted: 17 Nov 2009 01:10 PM PST  Photo: Mag3737 Michael Fricklas, Viacom's General Counsel, gave a lecture to a Yale Law class in which he confessed that suing people for copyright infringement felt "like terrorism." He says that this was bad strategy on the entertainment industry's part, as was "bad" DRM. That's the good part -- an admission that suing customers is bad news. But lest you think that Fricklas has learned anything from this experience, consider the rest of his talk. First, like a lot of people who got bitten on the ass by the magic DRM beans he bought a decade ago, he's unable to resolve his cognitive dissonance around DRM. The problem isn't DRM, he reasons, the problem is that he used the wrong DRM. He argues that there are "business models" that are enabled by DRM, and you just need to get it right. I hear this all the time. It's truly the mark of a magic-bean-buyer: someone who has failed to absorb the first principle of DRM, namely, "DRM is technically impossible." There is no way that you can send someone a scrambled message, and the key to descramble the message, and then build a business on the foundational principle that no one will descramble the message except on the terms that you set. And what's more, the effort to preserve DRM involves laws that prohibit telling people about flaws in DRM (which doesn't mean that the flaws won't be discovered and shared and used to undermine DRM, of course -- just because you cover your eyes, it doesn't follow that the danger goes away). It involves laws that prohibit making products compatible with DRM without permission from the DRM maker, even if you're doing something otherwise legal (so your customers can't buy someone else's music player, which means that you're locked into that vendor who can dictate terms to you forever). This often gets lost in the DRM discussion: we get bogged down in what the DRM "allows" and "prohibits" and forget that DRM doesn't actually stop pirates from doing anydamnthing they want to do. And since most infringing users will "crack" the DRM by finding a copy that someone else took the DRM off of and uploaded, it doesn't deter "casual" pirates either. But if you've been buying magic beans for ten years, it's hard to stop believing in magic beans -- certainly harder than believing that you've just been buying the wrong beans. And Fricklas's wrongness doesn't end there. He also believes in a "three strikes" approach to copyright enforcement, because it is "more proportional to the harm." That is to say, he thinks that cutting an entire household off from the Internet (which supplies livelihood, civic engagement, publication, communications, education, and family) because one member stands accused (without conviction) of copyright infringement is less bad than merely bullying the family's teenager out of ten or fifteen thousand dollars. This really is the most telling part of the whole speech: to believe that issuing the digital death penalty for entire families' information lives will somehow be less of a PR disaster than suing kids. It is the mark of a man who is so monumentally out of touch with reality that it's easy to understand how he rose to a level of prominence and power in an industry that made history by suing 30,000 of its customers.
Viacom's top lawyer: suing P2P users "felt like terrorism" (Thanks, Marilyn!) Previously:
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| Infographic: Projected pot tax revenues Posted: 17 Nov 2009 11:56 AM PST  Here's an infographic from Slosh Spot that shows how popular pot is, how many people are arrested for possessing it, how much tax revenue it could generate if it were legal, and how much is spent fighting drug use. If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax Revenues, by State (Via Dosenation) |
| Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth Posted: 17 Nov 2009 12:58 PM PST  When I found out that a graphic novel about the life of Bertrand Russell was in the works, I imagined it would be interesting, but I never thought it would be as spellbinding as it turned out to be. Logicomix, created by a team of Greek artists and writers is full color graphic novel about Bertrand Russell and his ardent quest for the logical foundation of mathematics. The creators of the graphic novel put themselves into the story, between chapters of Russell's life, to discuss their thoughts on key moments. It's a clever and useful way to add additional context to the story. The book is 352 pages long -- 10 pages less than what it took Russell and Whitehead to prove that 1+1 = 2 in their book Principia Mathematica, but I was tearing through it to find out what happened. Afterwards, I went back to admire the artwork, which is masterfully composed and filled with terrific architecture and other detials. All-in-all, this was a surprisingly terrific book. |
| Age of sharper swords dawns, according to shieldmakers' report Posted: 17 Nov 2009 11:53 AM PST An "Age of cyber warfare is dawning," according to a report. But a report by whom? A company selling computer security software, of course! |
| Guest blogger - Saul Griffith's "Energy Literacy Series" Posted: 17 Nov 2009 11:51 AM PST I'm very happy to introduce our new guest blogger, Saul Griffith. He's a friend and a long time contributor to MAKE, where his Making Trouble column and Howtoons comics are reader favorites. A visit to Saul's workshop is a mind-boggling treat -- home-made bikes, giant kites, modded dune buggies, cheap eyeglass making machines, hand-held human-powered generators, and other wondrous prototype devices are all over the place. He comes closer to being a real-life Professor from Gilligan's Island than anyone I know. Saul was named a McArthur Fellow in 2007. I'm looking forward to what Saul writes for Boing Boing over the next two weeks. I promise it will be very interesting. -- Mark I'm guest blogging at Boing Boing! I'm excited, not only because I've long been a fan, but also because you, as readers here, are out there at the edge thinking about the future and how to build it and participate in it. I'm failing at finishing a book (with my colleague Jim McBride who will hopefully join me in the postings) that we've been writing on climate and energy issues for what seems like forever. As we are approaching the Copenhagen UN Climate Change conference (http://en.cop15.dk/) on December 7th, I thought I may as well summarize the contents of my book in a 12(ish)-part series here at Boing Boing. Sadly it already appears the world has given up hope on reaching any sort of agreement on targets at Copenhagen, which is unfortunate, but lucky for me, because the entire book is about how you might choose such a target, and how you would plan appropriate responses, personally, locally, nationally, and globally. It also will help you call bull$#!+ on people at dinner parties who espouse some fantastic new perpetual motion machine. If you want to just read it in a book you can wait for us to get our act together, squint at pieces at www.energyliteracy.com, or simply read David J.C. MacKay's wonderful "Sustainability without the hot air" instead, as he is more highly functional than myself, and already got his book covering similar material for the UK out there and published. Before the climate change deniers and skeptics run to their keyboards to write long-winded diatribes in the comments section, I'll try to ward you off by saying that you can just consider the posts as a thought experiment. "If this climate stuff were actually true in some parallel universe, what could we do to address the problem, and what might the resultant world look like?" Naturally a lot of that is going to be pretty serious stuff with lots of graphs and charts. I'll do my best to make the graphs and charts pretty (thanks to Kirk Von Rohr), but as that's not enough to compensate for the seriousness of the matter, I'll also be posting about the things I'm working on at otherlab.com, passionate about, or random things that are interesting to me right now. A lot of that will be energy generation technology stuff, bicycles, programmable matter and computational geometry, origami, cool ways to make things, and science education. I'm an enormous fan of the engineering methodology of figuring out your goal or target, then working backwards from there to figure out what you have to do to achieve that goal. That's the basic structure of the argument. I'm also a big believer in energy literacy and having more people really understanding what's up and what the options are. So briefly, here's an outline (and i reserve the right to change my mind about the order in coming days) of the Energy Literacy series here at Boing Boing. Hopefully it will give you a much deeper understanding of what's behind the scenes and headlines of the Copenhagen conference, and just how far the public conversation about energy is from the public's concept of climate targets. 1. Energy, Power, Carbon, population. (entropy, exergy, the whole 9 yards). A primer on all of the key definitions and buzzwords and players with an emphasis on giving an intuitive understanding of the problem to non number nerds. 2. Personal Energy Use. (or How to obsessively compulsively measure the level of your own energy use) 3. Global Energy Use demographics. (Or how to put your lifestyle into the larger global context, this is a global challenge after all) 4. The need for a global climate target. 5. Where can you get the power (energy) from that is not carbon based? 6. By now you should have an idea of how challenging this energy supply game is, and why, perhaps, it's unlikely that we should imagine an infinite energy future. How do you live "conscious" of this. What is a lifestyle that "adds up?" My New lifestyle: Living knowing what I know now. (Or how can i figure out how to live the way I'd like everyone to live) 7. Other ideas, Crazy ideas, Why efficiency is rarely what people call it, Get out of jail free cards and other optimistic hype. 8. Climate change can be seen as an aesthetic issue. We are designing the world we live in. How do we do that well? What could it look like? Oh yeah, there'll be data too. I love data.
And because we all love images I can't resist posting this drawing by the son of a friend of a friend's father, Marco Ahluwalia, who I think is 9 and lives in Jakarta (so much for fact checking). We'll need inventors like him, and the optimism and spirit inherent in his master plan.
Bio: Saul Griffith is an inventor and entrepreneur. He did his PhD at MIT in programmable matter, exploring the relationship between bits and atoms, or information and materials. Since leaving MIT, he has co-founded a number of technology companies including www.optiopia.com, www.squid-labs.com, www.instructables.com, www.potenco.com, and www.makanipower.com. For the past 3-4 years he has focussed all of his efforts on energy issues relating to climate change, including working on high-altitude wind power at Makani Power, and starting www.wattzon.com, a website for understanding and quantifying personal energy use. Most recently, he has formed www.Otherlab.com with Jack Bachrach and Jim McBride to focus on energy solutions, working on new generation technologies, and the design and engineering of low-energy solutions to life's high-energy consumption products and services. For sanity, and to satisfy his passion for education in science, he works on www.howtoons.com with Nick and Ingrid Dragotta. Howtoons are comics with hands-on science and engineering projects embedded in illustrated adventures. Saul spends a portion of his time as an EIR at www.foundationcapital.com learning about the venture capital business and advising on their clean-tech portfolio. Saul blogs when prodded at www.energyliteracy.com. |
| Placenta fluid massage to treat soccer player's injury Posted: 17 Nov 2009 10:55 AM PST Dutch soccer player Robin van Persie who plays for the Arsenal and Netherlands teams is seeking an unusual medical treatment for partially-torn ankle ligaments that have sidelined him. He's headed to Serbia for a massage with placenta fluid. From The Guardian: Speaking to Dutch television programme Studio Voetbal, the Arsenal striker revealed: "I will fly to the Balkans to meet with a female doctor who helped [PSV Eindhoven midfielder] Danko Lazovic. She is vague about her methods but I know she massages you using fluid from a placenta. I am going to try. It cannot hurt and, if it helps, it helps. I have been in contact with Arsenal physiotherapists and they have let me do it.""Arsenal's Robin van Persie to soothe ankle pains with placenta massage" (Thanks, Carlo Longino!) |
| Cannibals reportedly sold body parts to kebab vendor Posted: 17 Nov 2009 10:49 AM PST Three homeless men in Russia were arrested for allegedly killing a man, eating some of him, and then selling hunks of his flesh to a kebab kiosk. From Reuters: "After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," the prosecutor's main investigative unit for the Perm region said."Body parts sold to kebab stand, police say" |
| Was Demi Moore Ralph-Laurenized on "W" mag cover, with missing hip-flesh? Posted: 17 Nov 2009 11:10 AM PST  Click here for higher-rez image. Anthony Citrano says,
I feel about this the same way I did about the Ralph Lauren model. I don't buy (in the high fashion context, anyway) that there's necessarily too much "Photoshopping", or too much of a drive toward uber-skinny (which really seems to be a complex thumbing-of-the-collective nose at western indulgence by the fashion industry - another conversation entirely) but simply that it's bad art (in the sense such mistakes clearly interfere with the photographers goal - let's call it "aesthetus interruptus"). Previously: |
| All-in-one ectoplasm measurement device Posted: 17 Nov 2009 09:36 AM PST "Designed exclusively for paranormal investigators, this incredible tool has everything you need to track and detect the presence of ghosts." |
| The Lung Flute: A Sort of Gross (But Important) Medical Innovation Posted: 17 Nov 2009 08:50 AM PST The Lung Flute is a simple device that uses sound waves to vibrate wads of mucus in your chest cavity until they rip apart and become more easily cough-up-able. (For better or for worse, the ultimate "results" of using the Flute are not shown in the above video.) Handy, certainly. But why, you may be wondering, would such a thing end up on Popular Science's list of The Best Innovations of 2009? Easy. It's because you and your common cold are not the primary audience for a Lung Flute concerto.
The Pied Piper of Mucus from Popular Science Previously: Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user JeffK, via CC. |
| Under the spreading cellphone tower, I bought you and you sold me Posted: 17 Nov 2009 10:20 AM PST Staff at a "major" cellular carrier in the U.K. sold millions of customer records to other companies, according to the BBC. Unfortunately, the British regulators are protecting the carrier's right to anonymity, so we don't know which one it is. Any guesses? Update: T-Mobile 'fessed. |
| MAKERS signing 7PM tonight in NYC at Columbus Circle Borders Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:41 AM PST |
| Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:23 AM PST Comparing actual, recorded H1N1 deaths to estimated annual seasonal flu deaths is like comparing "the number of flu deaths with the number of Subarus sold in Canada." (You gotta love mathematicians who give good quote.) The Canadian Press explains where the annual flu death estimates come from and why we probably won't really know how bad H1N1 was until 2011. Pro tip: CP Reporter Helen Branswell is one of the best medical journalists out there. If you want to understand what's going on with the Hiney Virus, read her work. Previously: |
| How to destroy the market for used gadgets Posted: 17 Nov 2009 06:44 AM PST Microsoft permanently banned about a million hacked Xbox 360s from its online gaming network. Amid uncertainty--you can still play offline--the price of a used 360 collapses. Ebay's warning people not to buy them at all. But so far, some sellers are being honest: is $40 not a great deal for an otherwise working Xbox 360 that can't go online? |
| Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:51 AM PST A Swedish company is trademarking something already placed in the public domain: The Pirate Bay's iconic logo. This company will sell thumbdrives. |
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