The Latest from Boing Boing

---

• Toy truck craps out domino runs
• Trompe l'oeil back-garden sink-hole
• Ballad of the Monster Manual
• Competition and Google Book Search
• Origami hats for the faces on the money
• Hamster Hotel lets you live like a rodent
• Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
• Two curious antique Oddfellows items
• First photo of baby coelacanth
• Meow Mix
• Outrage grows over India's massive ID plan
• DRM-free top-flight horror novels
• Cats for Gold: turn your glitter to litter!
• Free legal assistance for bloggers and online media creators
• Cataloging the lies in Palin's "Going Rouge"
• How do iPhone's location sensors work together to determine orientation?
• Unicornfish chaser
• College students arrested for not tipping
• Mac|Life imagines Apple products of the future
• Animated video for Flairs' "Trucker's Delight" (NSFW)
• Invasive Slugs Run Amok in Canada (Relatively Speaking)
• Millions of dollars worth of Chinese Christmas bongs seized at LA harbor
• A blog about horrible fake tan jobs
• YouTube's new 3D showcase
• Guy mounts coffee cup on car roof, tweets about peoples' reactions
• Chumby Guts for sale at Maker Shed
• Army Corps responsible for Katrina flood damage, judge rules
• Raymond Loewy, a Life slideshow
• Hit the Bitch
• Video: How Kimchi is Made (Granny Choe's Ninja Peppers)

Toy truck craps out domino runs Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:53 AM PST Brando's Auto Domino Building Truck is a battery-powered toy truck that shits bricks -- that is, it poops out dominos standing on end at the correct intervals to make a domino run. Or so the manufacturer says -- I haven't tried it yet. But I have a vision of setting this thing down at one end of an airport concourse and creating a mile-long run. I love that the dominos load in via a magazine that sticks out of the top like a banana-clip on an automatic rifle. The Auto Domino Building Truck (via Red Ferret)

Trompe l'oeil back-garden sink-hole Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:48 AM PST This trompe l'oeil back-garden uses painted lines to make it appear that the tree is disappearing into a sink-hole: Deformscape is an outdoor extension to a private dwelling in San Francisco. Situated in a tightly packed urban neighborhood, this limited space outdoor sculpture garden inherits a large tree, and uses this sole arboreal presence to establish a gravitational pattern of grooves that are focused towards the tree's centroid. This asserts the valued presence of the carbon-absorbing tree and its green canopy overhead, while allowing for a maximum of usable surface area below free of other vegetation. To generate the resultant pattern, a 3-dimensional bulge is formed around the tree, and its distorted wire-grid projected onto a 2-dimensional surface. Taking into account appearance effects created by perspective views from inside, the resultant planar surface appears sink around the tree. DEFORMSCAPE (via JWZ) Previously: Trompe l'oeil ski-toilet mural - Boing Boing Trompe-l'œil video projection on building facade - Boing Boing Funny trompe l'oeil costumes - Boing Boing Porn trompe l'oeil - Boing Boing In trompe l'oeil stripper ads, lampposts are strip poles - Boing Boing Rooms painted to create 3D trompe l'oeil effects - Boing Boing

Ballad of the Monster Manual Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:43 AM PST

Competition and Google Book Search Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:39 AM PST Fred von Lohmann, the chief copyright counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been doing an amazing job of analyzing the latest draft of the Google Book Search settlement, really making the legalese clear for the rest of us. In the latest installment, Fred looks at the competition implications of the settlement, and talks about how the settlement could be structured to make the marketplace as competitive as possible. Nobody likes this "only-for-Google" aspect of the settlement--in fact, Google has said that it would support orphan works legislation that would empower the Registry to make the same deal (or even a better deal) with others who want to use these unclaimed works. (Where the claimed books are concerned, in contrast, the Registry will likely ask the rightsholders to appoint it to license companies other than Google. But that still leaves all the unclaimed books out.) The settlement agreement even has a provision that makes it clear that the UWF can license others "to the extent permitted by applicable law"--what amounts to an "insert orphan works legislation here" invitation. But absent some legislative supplement to the revised Settlement 2.0, it still seems that any other company would have to scan these books, get sued, and hope for a class action settlement. That, of course, is the kind of barrier to entry that any monopolist would envy. ...But we shouldn't be satisfied with antitrust law here. This is not just a simple market transaction between commercial entities. Google is building an enormously important public resource, a task it can only undertake with the blessing of a federal court. The public deserves a solution that is not "barely legal," but that instead encourages real, robust competition. As written, without some modification or legislative adjunct, Settlement 2.0 does not do that. Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating Competition Previously: Google Book Search and privacy for students - Boing Boing Magical short story podcast about Google Book Search, data ... Google Book Search sells books - Boing Boing UMichigan Prez to American Publishers: Save Google Book Search ... Boing Boing: Sloan Fndtn. funds "open" alternative to Google Book ... Scans of Google Books with fingers in them - Boing Boing George Dyson on Google book scanning: "The Universal Library ...

Origami hats for the faces on the money Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:35 AM PST Make blog doesn't know where these origami money-heads-in-hats come from, but they want to. So do I. This looks like the best currency mod I've seen in ages. Money hats Previously: Dollar bill origami animals - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Currency origami -- strange bodies and familiar faces Creative things to do with junkmail - Boing Boing

Hamster Hotel lets you live like a rodent Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:33 AM PST A hamster-themed hotel in Nantes, France, offers rooms and layouts inspired by hamster-cages. Rooms have hamster wheels, the food is all grains and seeds, the water comes out of hamster bottles, etc. At French hamster hotel, live like a rodent (via Making Light) Previously: Hamster on whether organic food tastes better - Boing Boing Woman lives like hamster - Boing Boing Boing Boing: BBC's hamster reporting Buzzball human hamster toy - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Giant hamster-ball for humans Hamster's Lunch now available online - Boing Boing Toy car powered by a hamster wheel - Boing Boing Grownup-sized inflatable hamster-ball - Boing Boing

Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse. Posted: 20 Nov 2009 04:29 AM PST The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?). So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000). But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power. What isn't in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy. Nothing about ensuring that broadband is cheap, fast and neutral. Nothing about getting Britain's poorest connected to the net. Nothing about ensuring that copyright rules get out of the way of entrepreneurship and the freedom to create new things. Nothing to ensure that schoolkids get the best tools in the world to create with, and can freely use the publicly funded media -- BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Arts Council grantees -- to make new media and so grow up to turn Britain into a powerhouse of tech-savvy creators. Lobby organisation The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans. "This plan won't stop copyright infringement and with a simple accusation could see you and your family disconnected from the internet - unable to engage in everyday activities like shopping and socialising," it said. The government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over. There is, however, little detail in the bill on how the government will stimulate broadband infrastructure. Government lays out digital plans (Thanks, Lee!) Previously: BREAKING: Leaked UK government plan to create "Pirate Finder General" with power to appoint militias, create laws Brits: send a message to Mandelson and fight "three strikes ... Brits: sign petitition to kill proposal to disconnect accused ... Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off ... Brit business secretary promises to punish accused file-sharers ... UK govt proposes idiotic two-strikes-and-you're-out Internet ...

Two curious antique Oddfellows items Posted: 19 Nov 2009 09:37 PM PST Michael-Anne Rauback spotted these two antique Oddfellows items on eBay and they're quite, er, odd. The first item up for bid is this wire mesh ceremonial mask with real hair. From the same seller come three pairs of "ceremonial goggles/blinders." The goggles/blinders "are made of leather, with metal over the eyes, which open and close."

First photo of baby coelacanth Posted: 19 Nov 2009 09:09 PM PST Above is the world's first photograph of a baby coelacanth, recently taken by Japanese researchers off Indonesia's Sulawesi Island. A cryptozoology favorite, coelacanths were thought to have been extinct for 65 million years until one was found alive in 1938. "First Baby Coelacanth Photos Taken" (Cryptomundo) "Aquarium snaps world's first photos of young coelacanth" (Japan Times) Previously: Plastic coelacanth figurine - Boing Boing Fossilized coelacanth fin reveals evolutionary secret - Boing Boing Coelacanth caught on video - Boing Boing Video: Indonesian coelacanth - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Fisherman catches coelacanth Boing Boing: Coelacanth in danger

Meow Mix Posted: 19 Nov 2009 07:38 PM PST No non-Euclidean kittens are harmed in this video. Just your sanity. [Cyriak's YouTube Channel]

Outrage grows over India's massive ID plan Posted: 19 Nov 2009 07:22 PM PST Last week, Wikileaks published what were previously secret documents on a plan to create a unique ID for every single citizen in India -- that's more than a billion IDs, and would be the largest such project in world history. Now, the government agency tasked with implementing that plan is facing widespread backlash.

DRM-free top-flight horror novels Posted: 19 Nov 2009 06:59 PM PST Brett from small-press horror publisher Chizine sez, "ChiZine Publications (CZP) is an independent publisher of weird, surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words. You've seen us mentioned recently here for books such as Lavie Tidhar & Nir Yaniv's The Tel Aviv Dossier, Robert Boyczuk's Horror Story and Other Horror Stories, David Nickle's Monstrous Affections, and Robert J. Wiersema's The World More Full of Weeping. Now those books, along with our whole catalogue, are available as low-cost DRM-free downloads, the full list of which includes: - Brent Hayward's Filaria (novel) - Robert Boyczuk's Horror Story and Other Horror Stories (collection) - Lavie Tidhar & Nir Yaniv's The Tel Aviv Dossier (novel) - Daniel A. Rabuzzi's The Choir Boats (novel) - Robert J. Wiersema's The World More Full of Weeping (novella) - Claude Lalumière's Objects of Worship (collection) - David Nickle's Monstrous Affections (collection - which recently garnered starred reviews in both Publisher's Weekly and Quill & Quire!)" ChiZine Publications - Publishers - Digital Editions - Horror Mall (Thanks, Brett!) Previously: ChiZine party at WorldCon Montreal next week - Boing Boing Small sf press rallies despite recession - Boing Boing Todd Schorr's art book: American Surreal - Boing Boing

Cats for Gold: turn your glitter to litter! Posted: 19 Nov 2009 07:31 PM PST catsforgold.com: Sell your old gold and jewels and get cats delivered right to your front door. An internet riff on the troubled online pawn shop Cash for Gold. (via Calpernia Addams)

Free legal assistance for bloggers and online media creators Posted: 19 Nov 2009 06:49 PM PST The Online Media Legal Network is a project from Harvard's cyberlaw center the Berkman Clinic that works with partners to hook up bloggers and other creates who are under legal threat with lawyers who can help them solve their problems. The Online Media Legal Network (OMLN) is a network of law firms, law school clinics, in-house counsel, and individual lawyers throughout the United States willing to provide pro bono legal assistance to qualifying online journalism ventures and other digital media creators. Online Media Legal Network (via JoHo)

Cataloging the lies in Palin's "Going Rouge" Posted: 19 Nov 2009 07:01 PM PST The Huffington Post is collecting blatant lies (and arguable mistruths) from Palin's new memoir, "Going Rouge." Here are a couple for feel: "Palin boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations and turned back large checks over conflicts of interest. In fact, she relied heavily on large donations and political action committees and took $1,000 each from a couple whose offices were raided by the FBI," and, "Palin says her team overseeing a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process. An AP investigation found they crafted terms that favored only a few companies and ultimately benefited one with ties to her administration." Send Us Your Palin Falsehoods! (via Memex 1.1) (Image: DIY Sarah Palin Mask, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Billypalooza's Flickr stream) Previously: Goldwag: The Sarah Palin Conspiracies - Boing Boing Sarah Palin's legal team doesn't understand DNS - Boing Boing Vlad and Boris: Love Song for Sarah Palin, our Alaskan Neighbor ... La Pequeña Sarah Palin (Thank you Jesus) - Boing Boing Computer-Generated Sarah Palin Interview - Boing Boing HOWTO Put a hidden radio-prompter on Sarah Palin during the debate ...

How do iPhone's location sensors work together to determine orientation? Posted: 19 Nov 2009 06:35 PM PST How do the iPhone's sensors work together to determine orientation? The answer is a little more complex than one might think. Here's a shorter answer over at O'Reilly Answers, here's the longer one at O'Reilly Radar. SPOILER: there are no secret "directional hamsters" inside. Well, not in the later models.

Unicornfish chaser Posted: 19 Nov 2009 09:48 PM PST If only incidentally; up close, they are truly amazing. [Video: Jon Rawlinson - Music: Barcelona]

College students arrested for not tipping Posted: 19 Nov 2009 05:29 PM PST A group of college students were unhappy with the poor service they received, so when the bill came, they didn't pay the tip. The restaurant called the cops and the students were arrested.

Mac|Life imagines Apple products of the future Posted: 19 Nov 2009 05:14 PM PST Mac|Life magazine recently approached me and several other people (Brian Lam, Veronica Belmont, Michael Brook, Mark McClusky) to envision a future product from Apple. Mac|Life rendered them beautifully, and the products the other people came up with are really cool. My product was a rapid-prototyping system called the iMake (above). iMake is a desktop manufacturing system based on the RepRap (reprap.org), an open-source 3D rapid prototyping technology. Apple led the way in the desktop publishing revolution, and now it's leading the way in the desktop manufacturing revolution. With iMake, you can make your own small products at home, such as Bluetooth headsets, iPods with unique form factors, wristwatches, eyeglasses, door knobs, and more. To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part. New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press

Animated video for Flairs' "Trucker's Delight" (NSFW) Posted: 19 Nov 2009 04:00 PM PST As Drawn! says: "Before you watch this insane music video by Jérémie Perin, note that is totally not safe for work. Its video-game inspired animation contains pixellated 8-bit depictions of both sex and pooping. The YouTube description reads "Think Spielberg's Duel + Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! and Marc Dorcel's wildest fantasies." Flairs' "Trucker's Delight" (Not safe for work! Not for kids!)

Invasive Slugs Run Amok in Canada (Relatively Speaking) Posted: 19 Nov 2009 03:33 PM PST It's actually quite pretty (again, relatively speaking), but this slug is most likely an Arion rufus, a species that's native to Europe, but has been found in British Columbia and is apparently now also at large in Ontario. Hermaphroditic in nature, some slugs can even knock themselves up, so it only takes a single invader to build an army. Once the population is established, the slugs become (and I quote) the "slow moving lions of the vegetable world." So how do you get rid of them? The story offers two possibilities. First, you can leave out beer for the slugs. They're attracted to fermented yeast, but they're a little dumb and they can't swim, so they'll end up crawling in and drowning themselves. The other option: Collect the slugs when they come out at night and "immerse them in boiling water." The article, unfortunately, does not mention whether you can then eat Arion rufus in a nice butter sauce. 10 cm Etobicoke Slug a Big, Slimy Mystery in the Toronto Star (Thanks, Margaret Atwood. Yes, that Margaret Atwood.) Image taken by Etobicoke, Canada resident Lisa Bendall. Used under fair use.

Millions of dollars worth of Chinese Christmas bongs seized at LA harbor Posted: 19 Nov 2009 02:35 PM PST "They're very colorful and big. Some of them are like 2 feet tall." A US Customs and Border agent on the shipment of bongs seized at an LA seaport, sneakily labeled as "Christmas Ornaments" by their Chinese shipper, and worth nearly $3 million.

A blog about horrible fake tan jobs Posted: 19 Nov 2009 01:57 PM PST paleisthenewtan.com. A blog about the dangers of fake tanning. (via JDP)

YouTube's new 3D showcase Posted: 19 Nov 2009 01:56 PM PST I met with a bunch of YouTube folks in the Bay Area recently, and learned of new features and services they'll be launching. One of those is a new anaglyph 3D channel, where you can find lots of videos, amateur and pro, to view wearing those funny blue-and-red glasses. The blooming rose, above, looks kinda cool even without the glasses. YouTube: 3D Channel

Guy mounts coffee cup on car roof, tweets about peoples' reactions Posted: 19 Nov 2009 09:14 PM PST GitEmSteveDave made a magnetic Starbucks paper cup to attach to the roof of his car. He drives around and tweets peoples' reactions. Sample tweet: "13 honks, 3 points, 2 mimes, 3 StopLightTells, 1 flash, 1 wave, 2 laughs, 5 AlongSideRiders, 4 2xTakes, & 1 cute girl took my picture." He shares how he made the cup on Instructables. How to make a roof coffee cup.

Chumby Guts for sale at Maker Shed Posted: 19 Nov 2009 02:21 PM PST As Cory wrote earlier today, the Chumby is a hackable Internet device with a full-color display. You can buy a pre-built Chumby, or you can buy a Chumby Guts kit and incorporate it into your own DIY project. A second (and most likely final) batch of Chumby Guts are now for sale at the Maker Shed. Here's a testimonial from a happy Chumby Guts owner: It took me a half hour to assemble this and a short time to set up an account and configure it.  Everything worked perfectly the first time.  The device operates without a case if desired.  I'm completely satisfied.  Chumby is an amazing product! Chumby Guts

Army Corps responsible for Katrina flood damage, judge rules Posted: 19 Nov 2009 12:55 PM PST A federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers botched maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, and that this failure was directly responsible for flood damage of homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Damage claims against the government could total billions of dollars.

Raymond Loewy, a Life slideshow Posted: 19 Nov 2009 01:23 PM PST LIFE kindly invited me to guest edit a photo slideshow about the great industrial designer Raymond Loewy. I selected the photos from LIFE's archives and wrote the captions. Six years after opening his office in New York in 1927, Loewy created this pencil sharpener, which looks as if it might have been designed using a wind tunnel. The pointed shape nicely conveys the purpose of the machine, while still offering a bit of mystery, and even adventure, to anyone brave enough to introduce a pencil into its jet-black lacuna. The warm wooden crank, meanwhile, invites users to interact with a device that, in all other respects, appears to be alien technology. Raymond Loewy - The Man Who Designed America

Hit the Bitch Posted: 19 Nov 2009 12:30 PM PST This horribly conceived anti-domestic-violence web PSA from Denmark "allows you (or someone like you), in the guise of a meaty male hand, to beat the crap out of a woman. (...) to simulate the beating, you can use either your mouse or your webcam."

Video: How Kimchi is Made (Granny Choe's Ninja Peppers) Posted: 19 Nov 2009 12:14 PM PST Our former guest blogger and kimchimonger Connie Choe says: "Here's our magical new video about how kimchi is made. We used free software (AnimatorDV), a hand-me-down camcorder, a garage sale tripod, our home kitchen, and help from friends."

You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610