Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Video game wedding: a letter and photos from the bride and groom

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:29 PM PST

DSC_8206.jpg I received an e-mail from Sal9000, the man who married his video game girlfriend on Sunday. Here's a translation of the letter he sent me, along with some photos:
Dear Ms. Katayama, Thank you very much for watching our wedding ceremony online. Because of your blog post, we received some comments from what appeared to be international viewers, and we were very happy about that. I had heard before the groom is very busy during a Japanese wedding, but this was much more than I expected!

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Both the actual wedding space and the livecasting web site were full on the day of — I'm so happy so many people were able to witness this. There were over 3,000 connections and 7,000 comments made online, and the people who showed up in person at the ceremony also offered their congratulations. It was great.

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Now that the ceremony is over, I feel like I've been able to achieve a major milestone in my life. Some people have expressed doubts about my actions, but at the end of the day, this is really just about us as husband and wife. As long as the two of us can go on to create a happy household, I'm sure any misgivings about us will be resolved.

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As for what's next, we still haven't gone to see my parents, so we will be going home together on New Years to officially announce our marriage.

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The two of us hope to continue to let our love for each other grow as time goes on.

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Sincerely,

SAL9000 & Nene Anegasaki




Grim and delightful picture book, "There Was an Old Lady"

Posted: 25 Nov 2009 04:41 AM PST


Jeremy Holmes's There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is a delightful picture-book based on the beloved nursery rhyme. Holmes's illustrations are grim and Gorey-esque, sepia-toned with lots of little comedy moments, whimsical annotations and elaborations (leathery bat-wings on a cow are unexpectedly fitting!). The book is an odd, tall shape (like a CD long-box), and the top third is the old lady's face, with her eyes staring owlishly from behind round glasses. The grand finale of the book ("There was an old lady who swallowed a horse/She's dead of course") is celebrated with a cute mechanical effect: when you turn the last page, the lady's eyes close and the accompanying illustration shows her arms folded across her chest, holding fly-swatter like a lily.

This is one of my favorite rhymes, along with "There's a hole in the bucket," since it contains such an important lesson about life: some solutions are really just problems in disguise.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

National Gaming Day at libraries a massive success

Posted: 25 Nov 2009 12:06 AM PST

Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine and the American Library Association threw an astoundingly successful National Gaming Day in America's libraries. This is the second year for NGD, and the participation more than doubled. Patrons played all kinds of games -- tabletop, board games, video games -- and discovered their libraries and their communities.

* Number of libraries registered to participate: 1,365
* Number of libraries that submitted # of players for NGD activities: 549
* Total number of players for NGD activities: 31,296
* Number of libraries in the national Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament (simultaneous): 42
* Number of libraries in the national Rock Band High Score tournament (asynchronous): 14
* Number of non-US libraries that participated (that we know of): 2 (Canada, Japan), with interest expressed from Morocco for next year)

* "...I really witnessed a sense of community as potentially shy teens reached across the table and helped one another by whispering tips to each player during their SSB brawl matches. Additionally, without any prodding, those waiting to play or those who had "lost" their match, began forming groups to try out and play the board games sent to us from North Star Games and Hasbro. It was wonderful to see middle school aged contestants and high schoolers come together to teach and play against/with one another."

* "It is usually very difficult to get boys into the library, but National Gaming Day changed that. On November 14th, there were boys waiting outside for the library to open! The boys all came for the Wii bowling tournament. Although our group was small, we had more boys in the library at one time (for a non-summer reading program) than I have seen in my eleven years working here."

Double the Fun - Final NGD2009 Numbers « National Gaming Day @ your library: (via Resource Shelf)

(Image: Gaming Day-4066)

Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 11:22 PM PST

Two US Senators, Bernie Sanders (I-VI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have written to the US Trade Representative demanding that the text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement be made public. This is the treaty that allows for criminal sanctions against noncommercial file-sharers, demands border-searches of laptop hard-drives and personal media players and phones for pirated material, requires ISPs to spy on their users, and gives movie and record companies the right to take whole households off the Internet with unsubstantiated allegations of piracy.
We are surprised and unpersuaded by assertions that disclosures of basic information about the negotiation would present a risk to the national security of the United States, particularly as regards documents that are shared with all countries in the negotiations, and with dozens of representatives of large corporations. We are concerned that the secrecy of such information reflects a desire to avoid potential criticism of substantive provisions in ACTA by the public, the group who will be most affected by the agreement. Such secrecy has already undermined public confidence in the ACTA process, a point made recently by Dan Glickman, the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) - a group highly supportive of the ACTA negotiation, as well as by the members of the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue -- a group more critical of the negotiations.

We firmly believe that the public has a right to know the contents of the proposals being considered under ACTA, just as they have the right to read the text of bills pending before Congress.

Go, Sanders and Brown! Americans, call your senators and get them on this bandwagon. Citizens of other countries, find out why your elected reps aren't asking their governments to publish ACTA!

Senators Sanders and Brown ask White House to make ACTA text public (via /.)

Previously:


Conscious "coma man"'s words seemingly delivered via discredited "facilitated communications" technique

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 10:20 PM PST

The newswires and blogs (and Boing Boing) have been burning up with the news that a man who's been believed to have been in a coma for 23 years was in fact conscious the whole time, something we've only discovered thanks to his newfound ability to communicate using special apparatus. But there's very little information about Rom Houben's communications, save for a few images. And these images appear to show Mr Houben and his aide speaking via "facilitated communication," wherein an aide helps a person with a disability or paralysis to painstakingly spell out words by lifting the disabled person's hand and responding to faint muscle signals.

And therein lies a problem, because facilitated communications has been widely discredited as a kind of Ouija board, in which the aide's unconscious movements guide the disabled person's hands around, without the aide even knowing that she's doing it.

Mr Houben's brain activity seems normal, and he can apparently communicate a little by moving one foot, but without more information, it's impossible to say whether the words attributed to him that we're reading are his, or a product of his facilitator's unconscious mind.

"If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be, then I don't trust it," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. "I'm not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly...."

"I believe that he is sentient. They've shown that with MRI scans," said James Randi, a prominent skeptic who during the 1990s investigated the use of facilitated communication for autistic children. But in the video, "You see this woman who's not only holding his hand, but what she's doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She's pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it."

According to Randi, facilitated communication could only be considered credible if the facilitator didn't look at the keyboard or screen while supporting Houben's hand, and helped him type messages in response to questions she had not heard, thus ensuring that Houben's responses are entirely his own.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a million-dollar prize to a valid demonstration of facilitated communication, and Randi invited Houben to participate. "Our prize is still there," he said.

Reborn Coma Man's Words May Be Bogus

New Disney princess movie sounds pretty good

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 10:04 PM PST

I wasn't going to both going to see the new Disney cartoon, "The Princess on the Frog," first because Disney's campaign to turn princesses into pure little-girl-crack is tiresome-verging-on-offensive, and second because it looked like a trite and opportunistic way to bring in African-American viewers.

But Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has me convinced. This sounds like a damned good movie. Maybe I'll take the kid to see it.

Tiana takes the princess role a step further -- she's not just Disney's first African-American to wear the crown, she's the first one with a regular job. (Unless you count Mulan's gig as a warrior.) She also, like "Ratatouille's" Remy, makes the case for great food as a social leveler and the cornerstone of a good life. Tiana knows that food "brings people together" with more reliable results than even voodoo.

But the strides here aren't just for princesses. Those Charming Guys of bygone days have traditionally been even less interesting than the ladies they rescue. Campos makes his Naveen such a cocky player that he doesn't stop seducing even when he's turned green and asks for just one kiss ... "unless you beg for more." He's a spoiled rich guy who needs to grow up, and the movie is just as much about his journey as it is about Tiana's.

And what a felicitous spot to take that journey. The Crescent City, in all her late 19th-century glory, shines like a jewel here: an enchanted, lively, multicultural town full of bright blossoms and infectious songs. As they say in the movie, "Dreams come true in New Orleans." Randy Newman [ed: ugh], who wrote the score, does a bang-up job of paying tribute to the city's rich musical heritage in a series of colorful, trippy numbers. There's a jazzy Armstrong-like song (featuring a crocodile named Louis), a gospel-tinged showstopper, a zydeco throwdown, and a boogie-woogie paean to the town sung by Dr. John [ed: that's more like it].
"The Princess and the Frog" is Disney royalty

Previously:


TV vs Web: consumption characteristics

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:57 PM PST

EFF sets sights on abusive EULAs

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:53 PM PST

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Terms Of (Ab)Use project tracks news, litigation and fights related to abusive terms of service, EULAs and other electronic flimflam. Now's a good time to mention once again my own EULA, which I put at the bottom of my emails:

"READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer."


Using a TOS, online service providers can dictate their legal relationship with users through private contracts, rather than rely on the law as written. In the unregulated and unpredictable world of the Internet, such arrangements often provide the necessary ground rules for how various online services should be used.

Yet TOS agreements also raise a number of concerns for the consumer, as they can be a vehicle for abuse by online service providers. For starters, TOS provisions are usually written by the service providers themselves. As a result, they tend to end up being one-sided in the service provider's favor, and are often designed to be beyond any judicial scrutiny. Even more importantly, most users never even bother to read, let alone understand, these agreements, filled as they are with confusing legalese.

The time has come to shed light on what these Terms of Service agreements actually say, and what it means to users. In conjunction with our TOSBack project, EFF is working to make the contents of these TOS more transparent for the average user.

Terms Of (Ab)Use
Previously:


Delicious sprinkles on everything photoshopping contest

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:47 PM PST


Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest, "Fudge and Sprinkles: Putting Delicious toppings on Everything!" Worth it for several of the images, but especially this delicious deep-sea banana split by "Mandrak."

Fudge and Sprinkles 5

NYC tenants' rights flashcards

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:44 PM PST

John sez, "Candy Chang teamed up with Tenants & Neighbors to create a boxed set of 30 flash cards on tenants' rights."

Many residents in New York are unfamiliar with their housing rights. What is my landlord required to repair? How does rent stabilization work? When can my landlord enter my apartment? Thanks to a generous grant from Sappi Ideas That Matter, Candy collaborated with non-profit group Tenants & Neighbors to develop and produce a boxed set of 30 flash cards on tenants' rights. The flash cards translate New York's official Tenants' Rights Guide into a fun and friendly format that covers everything from security deposits and subletting to privacy and eviction so residents can enjoy good times while becoming empowered residents. The flash cards are available for $10 in Tenants & Neighbors' online store and all profits go towards their good work. Buy one for yourself and all of your friends - a righteous gift for anyone in New York state!
Candy Chang - Design - Tenants' Rights Flash Cards (Thanks, John!)
Previously:


Bad-ass Mad Max campout weekend, complete with working gyrocopter!

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:43 PM PST


Erin sez, "This past weekend in the Mojave desert Mad Max fans got together for a 3-day, one time only 'Road Warrior Weekend' campout and built replicas of the Gyrocopter and Interceptors."

OK, so not only are these incredible vehicles and costumes -- but those are some damned stylish and attractive cosplayers. They should do a runway show.

Road Warrior Weekend (Thanks, Erin!)

Previously:


Stonehenge: virtual 3D animation

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:51 PM PST


The non-profit Wessex Archaeology organization created a virtual fly-over of Stonehenge and vicinity based on LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data collected from the air. From the project page:
During production of the animation, we turned the LIDAR data into a solid 3D model of whole landscape surrounding Stonehenge. Aerial tours of the most famous sites and monument groups were animated in HD (720i) resolution. What is exciting is that much of the upstanding archaeology, from well-preserved barrows to the subtle earthworks of prehistoric field systems, are clearly visible.

To do this, we had to work out how to use the data at 1:1 for our animations (for this kind of task it is often necessary to reduce the complexity of the data by half or quarter (1:2 or 1:4) due to enormous memory and processing requirements). This we achieved, and using lighting techniques we have been able to show the archaeology of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site as it has never been seen before.

The Stonehenge Landscape in 3D (via Daily Grail)

Previously:


Missing: Phil Agre, internet scholar

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:47 PM PST

Site Philipagre Home Philagre

(photo by Tom Ingvards)

 Phil Agre, a professor of information sciences best known since the 1990s for his seminal tech/society email lists Red Rock Eater News Service and The Network Observer, has gone missing. Apparently, Phil hasn't been seen in quite some time but his disappearance has only now been made public by a missing person notice issued by his former employer, UCLA. From the notice:
Philip Agre was reported missing by his sister who resides out of state. She indicated that she had not seen Agre since the Spring of 2008 and that she became concerned about him when she learned that he had abandoned his apartment and his job sometime between December 2008 and May 2009.

Philip Agre is described as a White Male, 49 years old, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He sometimes wears a full beard. He is 6'0" tall and 120 lbs. Agre suffers from manic/depression. Agre is a former UCLA Professor.

Friends of Phil Agre

"Friends and Colleagues Mount a Search for a Missing Scholar, Philip Agre" (Chronicle of Higher Education)

"The Mysterious Disappearance Of Phil Agre" (NPR)

Wikileaks: "we will release over half a million 9/11 intercepts"

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:12 PM PST

Starting at 3AM Eastern time on Wednesday, Wikileaks plans to publish over half a million US national text pager intercepts related to 9/11. The messages are said to come from devices used by persons operating in an official capacity (including Pentagon and NYPD), and cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Fangst

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 04:46 PM PST

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The coinage "fangst," referring to Twilight's genre of emo teen-girl vampire stuff, turns out to already be the name of a delightful and diaphanous hanging storage unit from Ikea.

Washington post to close remaining domestic news bureaus

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 03:10 PM PST

"The Washington Post, in a significant retrenchment, is closing its remaining domestic bureaus around the country." The paper's six US news correspondents in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago will be offered reassignments in Washington. The Post's parent company lost $166.7 million in the first three quarters of 2009.

Anti-energy drinks

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 09:05 PM PST

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(CC-licensed photo by Francis Bourgouin)

As a gimmicky antidote to "energy drinks," several companies are selling calming beverages in a can. (No, not beer.) DailyFinance recently surveyed the choices:

Promising a "vacation in a bottle" or an "acupuncture session in every can," makers of anti-energy drinks, as they're known, say that after bailouts, foreclosures and Ponzi schemes, Americans nowadays would rather chill out than tweak out. To help us do so, they're spiking their new beverages with ingredients such as chamomile, melatonin, and valerian root -- all known for their supposed calming effects. Now in convenience-store display cases across America, drinks with names like Slow Cow, Ex Chill and Malava Relax are increasingly jockeying for space with their amped-up alter-egos like Jolt, Monster and Rockstar.

"It's my quest to relax the world," says Innovative Beverage Group Holdings (IBGH) CEO Peter Bianchi, who developed the anti-energy beverage Drank. "I saw America becoming more and more hurried. We are going to burn out after a while."

"Adios, Red Bull? Anti-energy drinks seek to soothe frazzled Americans" (via IFTF's Future Now)

Alligators in NYC sewers

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 02:23 PM PST

Are the alligators in New York City sewers just an urban legend? Not according to Salvatore Condoluci, 92, who in 1935 claimed to have caught and killed an 8-foot-long gator in a sewer on 123rd Street near the Harlem River. However, it wasn't until the publication of Robert Daly's 1959 book The World Beneath The City that the sewer alligator stories slithered into popular culture. In honor of the book's 50 year anniversary, the New York Times found and interviewed Conduluci. The article also quotes BB pal Loren Coleman who has studied this curious bit of urban folklore in great depth, covering it in his book Mysterious America. According to Daly's book, the former superintendent of city sewers, Teddy May, saw the reptiles firsthand. From the NYT:
Images 2009 11 18 Nyregion Headline-190 Mr. May decided to go down to sewers himself to determine whether there was anything other than an excess of whiskey behind his inspectors' reports of narrow escapes from alligators. That startling description of what he found, given by the man affectionately known as the King of the Sewers and recounted by a journalist, was immortalized in "The World Beneath the City":

Alligators serenely paddling around in his sewers. The beam of his own flashlight had spotlighted alligators whose length, on the average, was about two feet. Some may have been longer. Avoiding the swift current of the trunk lines under major avenues, the beasts had wormed up the smaller pipes under less important neighborhoods, and there Teddy had found them. The colony appeared to have settled contentedly under the very streets of the busiest city in the world...

"These tales had a journalistic background," said Loren Coleman, director and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Me., who has researched and written about the topic for decades. "Daley's book came along, and it was almost like independent confirmation."

"The Book Behind the Sewer-Alligator Legend" (NY Times)

More background at Cryptomundo

Reviews: Novation Launchpad, HTC Imagio, Dymo Cardscan, Moshi Voice Control Clock

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 02:14 PM PST

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Novation Launchpad - $200

With Ableton Lite bundled free of charge, this bizarre USB-powered light box is easy to set up and fun to use. An 8x8 grid of glowing pads surrounded by context-setting controls, it's a clever way to control playback of readied tracks--but not so fluid as a compositional tool. Though a gorgeous stage prop, it's not a toy, either: don't get it for folks who don't know a DAW from a doorstop.

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HTC Imagio $200 w/2-year contract

You've seen HTC's Imagio--it's the one in those cheeky Verizon ads that mock AT&T's dismal 3G network. Consider your needs. It'sthe best WinMo iClone yet, but being the second best phone of 2007 still isn't good enough if you're a contract-free agent. HTC's concealment of Windows' obsolete clunker OS is an amazing feat--it swipes, it scrolls, it looks good--but at every turn there's another reminder, a performance or UI irritation that takes the shine off. Droid is better, and so is an iPhone--but don't count it out without a fiddle at the mall kiosk.

CardScan for Windows Mobile - $15, out soon.

Dymos's CardScan scans business cards with a WinMo 6.5 cellphone's camera, performs character recognition, then syncs up the data with your address books. It's as simple as that, but requires at least a 2-megapixel camera. The weirder the card's typography, the more cleanup work you'll have to do. That said, it's as good as dedicated business card scanners--Dymo's putting its own hardware on the critically endagered gadget list!

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Motorola Debut i856 - $100 with a 2-year Sprint contract, $150 contract-free with Boost.

This chunky slider-phone has push-to-talk, GPS and a 1.3MP camera. Perfectly serviceable, its old-school low res display and short feature list limit its appeal, but the real killer is price: even for $100, you can get something better.

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Moshi Voice Control Travel Alarm Clock - $25

There are two things you need to know about this. Firstly, it is incredibly small, small enough to fit in your pocket. Secondly, the voice recognition works perfectly. Okay, so there's a third thing: you have to press a button to get it to accept voice commands. The size makes it good for travelers or the cramped, but the voice thing is only really for those who hate figuring controls out.

Keni Lee Burgess: The Art of Cigar Box Guitar

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:52 PM PST


After posting his excellent series of instructional videos on YouTube for 3-string cigar box guitar, Keni Lee Burgess has started posting videos for the 4-string cigar box guitar.

Previously:


D20-studded soap

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:43 PM PST

The return of BBTV: Boing Boing's former video acronym taken over by bedbugs

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:50 PM PST

We used to call our original video episodes "BBTV," and we don't anymore. We call it Boing Boing Video now.

Well, ladies and germs, allow me to present to you the inheritor of that acronym: BBTV is now the name used by Bedbug TV, a guy who makes episodic web video content about how to deal with bedbugs. I think he runs a pest control company. His videos crack me up, particularly the first 15 seconds or so. The one above deals with how to cope with bedbug infestations in your home electronics products, like if your "electronics, books, paintings, pictures, dvd players, radios, alarm clocks, boxes and just clutter in general" is crawling with bedbugs.


I stumbled on them because back in 2007 when we started Boing Boing TV / BBTV, I created a Google News vanity search for "BBTV." We stopped using the acronym in 2009 and switched to "Boing Boing Video," but recently I'd begun receiving new hits on the "BBTV" vanity search -- all of them bedbug videos. B-B-T-V. Four immortal letters. Immortal and unkillable, just like bedbugs.


BBTV.

Disclaimer: I may also be lying to you, and all of this might be a postmodern viral marketing performance art campaign to promote Boing Boing's online video project.

Runaway Lets Subway Do the Running For Him

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:45 PM PST

A 13-year-old with Asperger's syndrome spent 11 days living on NYC subway trains last month. Francisco Hernandez Jr. says he never left the subway system that whole time, subsisting on newsstand snack food and bottled water. He'd run away to avoid punishment at home after getting in trouble at school, but lost his sense of time. "He was prepared, he said, to remain in the subway system forever."



Online matchmaking site analyzes attractiveness vs. message traffic

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:17 PM PST

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The online dating site OKCupid has a blog where they post analyses of the tons of data they collect, and it's really fascinating.

For instance the attractiveness of woman on OKCupid, as judged by the men on OKCupid, is a symmetrical bell curve. In other words, half the women are better-than-medium looking and half are worse-than-medium looking. But OKCupid's women rate 80% of OKCupid's guys as worse-than-medium looking! Even more interesting: while men are much more likely to send messages to the most attractive women, woman send are much more likely to send messages to men who are slightly less-than-average looking.

As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys' pursuing the all-but-unattainable. But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren't good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Your Looks and Your Inbox (Thanks, Vann!)

Weird, New Electricity Generator Takes Baby Step Into Real World

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 12:30 PM PST

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Yesterday, in Mark's post about new technology that could one day generate power from slow moving currents in rivers and oceans, commenter SamSam wondered whether "any weird and new generators ever get out of the lab and start providing meaningful amounts of power?" It's a fair question, and I think a lot more technologies are announced than do (or ever will) make it to market. Partly, that's just the nature of invention. Partly, it has to do with the fact that it takes a long time to develop this stuff and we're still kind of at the beginning of the alternative generation industry. But sometimes, the crazy ideas do work, at least well enough to move out of the lab and into beta-testing. For instance, today, Norway's state-owned utility opened a prototype generator that produces electricity via osmosis.

The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing electricity. The main issue is to improve the efficiency of the membrane from around 1 watt per square meter now to some 5 watts, which Statkraft says would make osmotic power costs comparable to those from other renewable sources.

The prototype is very small--it only produces about a coffee-pot's worth of electricity--but if the kinks with the membrane can be worked out at this small scale, the utility could have a full-scale plant powering 30,000 homes by 2015. Also, I have to give a shoutout to the Norwegians for not claiming that their osmosis-based generator will magically solve the world's energy problems--instead describing it as part of a mix of different technologies that, together, could make a difference.

Norway Opens World's First Osmotic Power Plant in Reuters

Image courtesy Flickr user neogabox, via CC

Biofeedback bracelet for stressed daytraders

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 02:25 PM PST

Newman Gfx News Hires Rationalizer Highres3
The Rationalizer is a concept design for a bracelet that provides feedback on the stress level of day traders. Developed by Philips Electronics and Dutch bank ABN AMRO, it's like a high-tech mood ring. The aim is to help traders avoid rash decisions. From Physorg:
The Rationalizer consists of an "EmoBracelet" and an "EmoBowl" and incorporates sensors and signal processors designed by Philips. The EmoBracelet's galvanic skin response sensor measures the level of emotional arousal in a similar way to a lie detector. The result is displayed on either the bracelet or the EmoBowl as a light display that intensifies and changes to reflect the wearer's intensifying emotional arousal. At the highest emotional stress level the display has a greater number of elements moving at higher speed, and the color changes to a warning red.
Concept video after the jump.





"'Rationalizer' bracelet tells traders when they're stressed" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)



Previously:

A song about pumpkin pie.

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 12:10 PM PST

Chairs made from crates that are better than the chairs shipped in the crates

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 11:49 AM PST

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In the 1930's Dutch furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld made a set of chairs out of crates. He said of his crate chairs:

"A piece of furniture made of high-grade wood and manufactured completely according to traditional production methods is transported in a crate to avoid damage...no one has ever ascertained that such a chest embodies an improvised, highly purposeful method of carpentry...there must therefore at long last be someone who chooses the crate rather than the piece of furniture."
Rietveld's grandchildren now sell "Crate Chair Juniors" for $415 each. I wonder what kind of container they are shipped in? Homegrown Evolution thinks it would be pretty easy to use pallet wood to make a crate chair for a lot less.

When the Crate's Better Than the Chair

Muppets singing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 12:16 PM PST

Epic, genius, perfect. Video in glorious 1080p (select HD button on embed above for full glory).

Music: the original's here. Video: the original's here. (via Tim Shey, and Happy Birthday Tim!).

Chickens terrified of dried sunflower head

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 11:30 AM PST

On her Green Frieda blog, Audrey writes that her chickens, which are not easily frightened (even by dogs and cats) are terrified by a dried sunflower head she placed in their pen. She thought the hens would enjoy picking the seeds out. Instead, they hid in their coop, refusing to come out until the fear-inducing object was removed.
200911241107When I entered the chicken run with the sunflower, Peggy immediately flipped out. She started squawking and flapping and jumping back and forth across the coop. Tina joined in, but with less gusto, as if she wasn't entirely sure what was happening, but trusted Peggy that it was serious. Eventually, both hens scrambled their way into the coop to hide. I was a bit confused about what the problem was, and, honestly, I was late for work. So, I figured I'd just put the sunflower head up as planned and the chickens would eventually calm down and come outside to have their treat. I had also scattered some carrot peels, which they love, in the run, so I figured they would venture out for those for sure.

The following morning, when I went down to let the chickens out for their morning free range, it was clear Peggy and Tina had not left the coop since I last saw them. The carrot peels were untouched, their feeder still had food in it and there they were, huddled together inside the coop. Now, my chickens are extremely food motivated and there is no food inside the coop (just water). They spent a whole day inside, not eating their feed, which they love, or the carrot peels, which they really love, because they didn't want to risk walking past the dreaded sunflower head. That is how afraid they are of this inanimate object.


Any idea why chickens would be so frightened of a sunflower head?

Terror in the Coop
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