Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

New science fiction convention in downtown Toronto: SFContario

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 05:15 AM PST

Diane sez,
We are starting up a shiny new SF convention in downtown Toronto, called SFContario. The inaugural convention will take place November 19-21st 2010 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in downtown Toronto. It's a lovely hotel that overlooks Allan Gardens and is a stone's throw away from all the restaurants and attractions downtown Toronto has to offer. Our confirmed guests of honour are:

Michael Swanwick Author GOH
Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden Editor GOH's
Geri Sullivan Fan GOH
Karen Linsley Filk GOH

We're going to have a great con! Anyone wishing to register can do so online. Current registration rate is $35 and will be increasing to $45 on December 9th.

SFContario (Thanks, Diane!)

Some half-formed thoughts on one future for bookselling

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 05:06 AM PST

Clay Shirky's essay on the past and future of bookselling is provocative. I think he really nails something with his taxonomy of the reasons that people worry about bookstores, but I'm not sure I buy his conclusion -- that bookselling might be best served on an NPR/nonprofit model.
In my experience, people make this argument for one of three reasons.

This first is that some people simply dislike change. For this group, the conviction that the world is getting worse merely attaches to whatever seems to be changing. These people will be complaining about kids today and their baggy pants and their online bookstores 'til the day they die.

A second group genuinely believes it's still the 1990s somewhere. They imagine that the only outlets for books between Midtown and the Mission are Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble, that few people in Nebraska have ever heard of Amazon, that countless avid readers have money for books but don't own a computer. This group believes, in other words, that book buying is a widespread activity while internet access is for elites, the opposite of the actual case.

A third group, though, is making the 'access to literature' argument without much real commitment to its truth or falsehood, because they aren't actually worried about access to literature, they are worried about bookstores in and of themselves. This is a form of Burkean conservatism, in which the value built up over centuries in the existence of bookstores should be preserved, even though their previous function as the principal link between writers and readers is being displaced.


I have been a bookseller for most of my life, off and on (I directly sell over 25,000 books a year through reviews on this site, which makes me a fairly large independent bookstore all on my own). I've worked in big, small, chain and specialist stores. I also obsessively check out bookstores, dragging my family into them wherever I go.


I think that Clay's probably right that the most traditionally profitable sector of bookselling -- mass-produced bestsellers -- is going to keep on migrating onto the web (that's where I get most of my mass-produced bestsellers, certainly). But I also think that there's something to be said for physical street-level stores de-emphasizing those products in favor of the simultaneous pursuit of the top- and bottom-end of the markets.


On the bottom-end of the market, there's the Espresso book printer, as currently in operation in the wonderful Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. This thing will print any public domain book that Google has scanned, in about 4 minutes, for $8. The margins are usually pretty good (they're lower on longer books, and a fat-enough book could be a money-loser, of course). And there are no warehousing, ordering, shelving or other expenses associated with them. Also, it's unlikely that we'll have them in our houses anytime soon (though we may get them at the library and community center).


At the Harvard Bookstore, they have someone who spends the day mousing around on Google Book Search, looking for weird and cool titles in the public domain to print and shelve around the store, as suggestions for the sort of thing you might have printed for yourself. This is a purely curatorial role, the classic thing that a great retailer does, and it's one of the most exciting bookstore sections I've browsed in years. And even so, there's lots of room for improvement: Google Books produces the blandest, most boring covers for its PD books, and there's plenty of room for stores to add value with their own covers, with customer-supplied covers (the gift possibilities are bottomless), and so on. I can even imagine the profs across the street producing annotated versions -- say, a treatise on Alice in Wonderland with reproductions of ten different editions' illustrations and selling them through the store's printer and shelf-space, restoring the ancient bookseller/book-publisher role.


Of course, most of the mass-produced catalog will probably end up in the print-on-demand catalog some day, and stores will be able to fill those orders, too. But if you already know what book you want, why bother going to a store? (Unless you're in too much of a hurry to wait for the mail).


On the other hand, there's plenty of ways that a physical store could offer added value on mass-market titles: localized covers, signed books, high production-value gift editions, a point-of-sale "donate to our neighborhood schools" kiosk that lets you print a book on the spot for a classroom that's requested it...


At the other end of the scale, the high-end, there's the book-as-object phenomenon. Taschen and a few other art-book publishers have figured out how to make a market out of this, and what's more, they've aggressively pursued non-bookstore retail channels (Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, etc) where the margins are lower, but the foot-traffic is much, much higher.


So yes, there's something really beautiful, and commercially compelling about a shelf or table full of books that are themselves beautiful -- beautifully made, beautifully presented. But what if there were more to it? What about hand-made books? Limited runs? The kind of thing that you mostly see today on the web (because the audience is spread too thin for physical retail to make sense), where they show poorly and make a less compelling case. Books in crazy trim sizes -- huge books like the Little Nemo treasuries, or even the gargantuan Bhutan book.


These are very expensive to inventory, and that suggests that they should probably be consigned, rather than sold (indeed, booksellers could serve as fulfillers for direct orders taken over the Web, since they're apt to be closer to the customer).


Both of these ends of the market are ripe for heavy localization, curated to suit local tastes and aesthetics. They can feature local artists, local choices, in a million ways, and serve as creative hubs for their communities. And both these ends of the market have good, healthy margins and (with the right consignment model) are also cheap to stock.


In that world, booksellers become a lot more like bloggers who specialize in all things bookish -- wunderkammerers who stock exactly the right book for the right people in the right neighborhood.


Local Bookstores, Social Hubs, and Mutualization

Previously:


Soulful hymn to the "phantom phone"

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 04:23 AM PST

Gnat sez, "YouTube video of national treasure/musician Tim O'Brien, singing his song about the phantom phone call syndrome. In the words of the song:

You feel it vibrate, you reach for the cell
But no one's there, that's how you tell

Tim O'Brien: Phantom Phone (Thanks, Gnat!)

Sugru: polymer clay that fixes and sticks to pretty much everything

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 04:14 AM PST

Sugru is a soft modelling clay that dries in 30 minutes at room-temp to a waterproof, heat/cold-resistant, dishwasher safe, flexible semi-solid. It's self-adhesive and bonds with many metals, glass, ceramic, plastics, etc. It can be used to make or fix or remake things from shoes to spectacles to plumbing-pipe. I've just ordered some for home and office -- it comes in four colors and looks like it'd be hella useful, and at £7, I'm certainly willing to give it a try!

Sugru (via Core 77)

Previously:


Custom laser-etched patent drawings on copper sheets

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 03:56 AM PST


David and Hilary say, "Prior Art offers made-to-order engravings of patent illustrations in copper, aluminum, and brass. Thanks to the new Google Patents, the USPTO's database is now more accessible than ever. We're inviting customers to search that database for images that speak to them, then we take it from there. After considering a number of user-selected customizations, we engrave the image using our home-built CNC router into metal plate. Add a lovely frame and some matting, and you've got a top-notch conversation piece!"

Prior Art Engraving (Thanks, David and Hilary!)

Previously:


Win a $450 retro Ray watch

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 01:38 PM PST

M120BE_RAY_BRN_DTL2.jpgOur pals at Watchismo, purveyors of fine timepieces, have a competition for Boing Boing readers. "The Ray," a gorgeous retro wristwatch that costs $450, will be shipped to one entrant free of charge. All you have to do is give 'em an email address. And for everyone who doesn't win, there's a discount promo code in it just for signing up. Good luck! Enter the draw

Hand-cranked penny-dispenser allows anyone to work for minimum wage

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 12:40 AM PST

Blake Fall-Conroy's "Minimum Wage Machine" is a penny-dispensing Rube Goldberg machine that "allows anybody to work for minimum wage."
Custom electronics, change sorter, wood, plexiglas, motor, misc. hardware, pennies (approx. 15 x 19 x 72 inches)

The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.

Minimum Wage Machine (Work in Progress) (via Make)
Previously:


Virtuoso cocktail shaker does his thing

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:56 PM PST

Charity jewelry auction for Interstitial Arts Foundation

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:51 PM PST

Author Ellen Kushner writes in on behalf of the lovely Interstitial Arts Foundation, saying

To celebrate the release of Interfictions 2, their (our?) second original anthology of interstitial writing (edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak), the Interstitial Arts Foundation (promoting "art made in the interstices between genres and categories...disciplines, mediums, and cultures") invited artists & crafters to create original pieces based on stories in the book. (We did this months in advance, so all the artists got sneak peeks at the unpublished stories they chose.)

The results include a bookmark sewn with little bits that "make alien things seem oddly familar" like Theodora Goss's story "The Child-Empress of Mars," a glass bottle containing fragments of Shira Lipkin's story "Valentines" recorded in multiple mediums, and a cocktail hat embellished with semi-precious stones, refrigerator magnets, sequins, and an origami frog, all caught in a net along with words, inspired by Camilla Bruce's "Berry Moon."

Bidding runs through December 8th, and stuff will be shipped in time for the holidays. All funds raised will go toward further interstitial art projects, including anthologies, exhibitions, and salons. The IAF is dedicated to supporting and inspiring art that crosses, falls between, or breaks apart borders -- such as the pieces in this year's auction! We were amazed at just how interstitial the actual works turned out to be - and many of the artists have thanked us for giving them space to experiment and stretch their usual boundaries.

Interstitial Arts Foundation Auctions (Thanks, Ellen!)
Previously:


Washington State to Microsoft: why aren't you paying your taxes?

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:47 PM PST

Jeff sez,

Last week, Microsoft told Seattle's KUOW: 'We pay all our tax obligations everywhere we are, properly.' Today, Microsoft Tax Dodge, a new website focused on the company's royalty tax dodge, challenged CEO Steve Ballmer today to live up to his spoken commitment to transparent business practices: 'At this point, I think it's reasonable to ask Microsoft to back up that claim with a public explanation of the company's licensing operations. In that spirit, will you tell the public how it is that Microsoft has avoided paying Washington State's B&O Royalty Tax for the past 12 years?' Washington State currently faces a projected $2.6 billion deficit. In addition to the ethical and public relations issues that crumbling bridges and overcrowded schools (Seattle recently considered making D a passing grade) present to the state's most profitable company, the compa ny also faces deeper scrutiny of the legality of its tax practice.
An Open Letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Quit Dodging Washington Taxes (Thanks, Jeff!)

(Image: WEB DEVELOPERS!, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Nick, Programmerman's photostream)

Previously:


Disused call-box turned into world's smallest lending library

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 12:42 AM PST

Steve sez, "A traditional red phone box has been recycled into one of the UK's smallest lending libraries - stocking 100 books, CDs, and DVDs. The phone booth was bought from British Telecom for £1, and it looks like something right out of a Doctor Who episode." [ed: technically, the Tardis is a police call box, which is green blue, not red] [/comicbookguy]

Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not...

"This facility has turned a piece of street furniture into a community service in constant use."

A resident dreamed up the idea when the village lost its phone box and mobile library in quick succession.

Phone box has new life as library (Thanks, Steve!)

(Image: Phone box and bus stop, Cheriton, Hampshire, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Mike Cattell's photostream)

Previously:


Juggling is good for you in lots of ways

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 12:06 AM PST

Here's Scot Nery's list of eight reasons why normal people should learn to juggle. My old roommate, Possum Man, was a hell of a juggler, and though he took it up as physiotherapy for an arm injury, it quickly built to an avocation. Flaming torch and machete juggling was always a favorite at our parties.
#2 Got The Hunchies?
The average person spends 312 hours per day at a computer. Your back and neck get outta whack, your wrists start hurting and your legs fall asleep. You can combat this crappy feeling by doing light exercise - juggling is perfect. To hone the art of juggling, you need to think about standing up straight, relaxing, and using your hands correctly.

#3 I can't de-stress you with my eyes
It's nice to learn something new, do something active and get away from what seems important in your life. You can lose your tension through tons of hobbies, but juggling is a great combination of physical activity, brain stimulation, joy of success, and visual stimulation. Here's another scientific study...

8 Reasons Normal People Should Juggle

(Photo: WJD2008 - 7 JUGGLING BEANBAGS, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from madaboutasia's photostream) (via Kottke)

Previously:


Change, alright -- at Little Green Footballs

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 08:21 PM PST

"An extraordinary moment in the political blogosphere," noted @Greatdismal on Twitter, and I agree. "Feels like some rare astronomical event, something we hear about but don't bother hoping to see," he added -- "somebody changing their mind." Why I Parted Ways With The Right, at Little Green Footballs (yeah, you read that correctly).

ZOMGwereallgonnadrink!

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 07:06 PM PST

Good news! Climate change means better wine, with a higher alcohol content. From the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Chapter 1, "The consequences of warming are already detectable in wine quality, as shown by DuchĂȘne and Schneider (2005), with a gradual increase in the potential alcohol levels at harvest for Riesling in Alsace of nearly 2% volume in the last 30 years. On a worldwide scale, for 25 of the 30 analysed regions, increasing trends of vintage ratings (average rise of 13.3 points on a 100-point scale for every 1°C warmer during the growing season), with lower vintage-to-vintage variation, has been established (Jones, 2005)."



Sherrifs speak on "Pulp Fiction" screenwriter's jailhouse tweets

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 05:50 PM PST

"He really messed up. He could have done nine months out of a year sentence, and not even in lock up for killing someone. Now he is going to do the remainder of that time in county jail." Ventura County Sheriff's spokesman Ross Bonfiglio on the matter of Roger Avary's jailhouse tweets, previously blogged on BB first here and later here.

Racist driving book written by Balloon Boy dad

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 04:19 PM PST

1031_richard_heene_book_02.jpg Richard Alan Heene, best known for orchestrating the Balloon Boy hoax in October, once wrote a really bad supposed-to-be-funny book called The Official Offensive Driving Handbook. It includes racial stereotypes illustrated by exaggerated photos of buck-toothed "Orientals," turbaned "Towelheads," and "Bros" in Cadillacs. The book appears to be no longer in stock on Amazon. Balloon Boy's dad — not smart, not funny [TMZ]
Previously:


Energy Literacy 3: Energy, Power, Carbon.  The basic concepts of energy literacy.

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 03:35 PM PST

200911301528

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.

How do we measure energy and power?

If you would like to quantitatively understand the relationship between your lifestyle, global energy use, and climate change, you need to establish the language with which you can translate between these things. There are many different ways we use energy, many different ways we produce energy, and many different consequences environmentally. Power and energy are being measured around us all of the time. You get your electricity bill in kilowatt hours (kWh), your gas bill in Therms or British Thermal Units (BTUs), your car's performance is measured in horsepower, and your lightbulbs are rated in watts. To compare these things you need a common set of units, and we've already encountered 4 different units (kWh, BTU, Hp, W), and two different concepts - energy and power -- and we've only just started.

The first problem with comparing these things is that some of them (BTUs and kWh) are measures of energy consumed, and some of them (horsepower and watts) are measures of power. To add to this confusion, some of them are measures of primary energy (barrels of oil equivalent, or metric tons of coal), some are measures of net electrical power at your outlet (W), some are measures of thermal energy or heat, and some are measures of net mechanical power (Hp at the wheels of your car). To wade your way through all of this, you need an intuition for the difference between energy, and power. Energy can actually be an abstract concept, while people often have a more intuitive understanding of power-- "my car has 200 horsepower!˝

Energy is required to do work. Work is the exertion of a force over some distance. You perform work on an apple when you lift it from the ground to a table. It takes roughly 1 joule of energy to lift an apple from the ground to the table.  It takes 1 watt (1 joule / second) to lift that apple from the ground to the table in one second.  Energy is the measure of how much work can be done, whether it be moving apples, heating your house, or driving your car. You transform energy from one form to another when you do work.  For example, you convert the chemical energy contained within gasoline to mechanical energy of rotating the crankshaft when it is burnt in an internal combustion engine. The energy that doesn't make it to the crankshaft is converted to heat. That's why your engine gets hot.  

Power is the rate at which you consume energy or do work. Lifting the apple onto the table quickly requires more power than doing it slowly, but the same amount of work is performed.  A more powerful car engine can accelerate you to 65 mph faster than an engine with less power, but they both get you to 65mph.


If I were powering the laptop I was writing this on by lifting apples from the floor to the table, I'd have to be lifting a crate of 40 apples every second to do so. That's quite a lot of work. Energy is a quantity, whereas power is a rate.  

Quantitative comparison of aspects of your life (or 7 billion peoples' collective lives) could be made in terms of energy or power (or even carbon). If you use energy, you are bound to ask questions about the time period: is it the amount of energy in a month? Or over a lifetime? It was those questions that convinced me to start thinking in terms of power rather than energy. The rate at which your lifestyle uses energy is a convenient measure that gives you a single number to think about your energy use, power consumption, and ultimately environmental impact. 

But having decided to talk about power, we still needed to decide upon the right units to talk in.  Should it be kilowatt hours per day? Horsepower? BTUs per month? Watts? Kilowatt hours per day measure the use of electricity well. Horsepower measures the use of mechanical power well. BTUs per month describe the use of heat well. Watts, however, are universal, and are in fact the scientific standard as defined by the SystĂšme Internationale, so we decided to use them to measure our lives. Even though I'm talking in Watts, you'll still need to think occasionally about energy, especially in the embodied energy of objects. It isn't easy, but it is necessary. At least we are down to only two units, and they are fundamental: Watts (Power - rate), and Joules (Energy - quantity). 

Trying to understand the global energy system requires understanding power use on many different scales. Billions of people each use thousands of watts of power, and the way they use that power and get that power varies enormously. It's very difficult to have an intuition or understanding of all these different units and numbers. We all have a rough understanding of the amount of power in a light bulb. We have a sense of the power of an automobile. We speak of powerful winds. Many people have stood at the side of Hoover Dam or Niagara Falls and have been awed by the raw power in front of them. 

Wikipedia nicely lays out the power consumption of various activities at different orders of magnitude.

Wikipedia provides examples of the energy required to do different things at different scales.

This Wikipedia page contains an excellent converter between various energy and power units.

Now, everyone else talks about "Carbon Footprint." Carbon dioxide is the problem, isn't it? If so, why am I talking about energy and power, joules and watts,  instead of CO2 and PPM?

The best answer to this is that calculating their "carbon footprint" merely makes people want to reduce their carbon footprint. Yes, the carbon is a problem, but let's imagine that it wasn't (perhaps even wish that it wasn't!). Calculating my lifestyle in 2007 on Wattzon, I needed 18kw of power. If 6.6 billion people used that much energy, the world would use more than 100TW. Global world energy production currently is 15-18TW.  It is extremely unlikely that we are going to be able to make more than 100TW of power, fossil-fuel-based, green, nuclear, or otherwise. On top of reducing carbon footprint, people are going to have to simply use less energy -- hopefully while improving their lives.

As I'll explain later, the production of non-carbon emitting energy, say by using solar panels, requires a very large area of land. By talking about power instead of carbon, we will help you understand the trade-offs of all the various methods of producing humanity's power -- even the renewable energy hopefuls aren't perfect. If there is a not so subtle subtext to my blog posts, it is that the energy challenge is a game of trade-offs and compromises. It's actually a design problem; the analogy I like to use is that we are designing the garden that is earth, and we are choosing where to put the rose beds, the organic veggies, the compost heap, and the irrigation system.  The choices we make in the design will effect the quality of the garden, and its variety.

There's another, less obvious reason why I talk about power instead of carbon. The carbon footprint thing leads to a shell game: "I drive a lot, so I have a large footprint. I buy an electric car so now I've reduced my footprint." Well, maybe ... it depends on where the energy came from and how big your electric car is. If you got the power from a coal power plant and it is an electric SUV, you are still using about the same amount of power and producing about the same amount of CO2. If you drive a 6000lb SUV at 75 mph, you're going to burn a lot of energy. (This is also ignoring the embodied energy required to build your shiny new electric car). The hope is that if you do your accounting in energy and power, then there's a better chance of being grounded in a number that's not process-based and so doesn't tempt you just to switch the process (eg. from gas in your tank to coal at a power station). We'd like to inspire people to solve this problem by making intelligent consumer choices, not trying to buy things to solve the problem that ultimately exacerbate it. The solution is as much about more efficient and lower-energy ways of doing things as it is about making carbon-free power.

For reference, here is a table of the amount of CO2 produced making 1 million joules (1 MJ) from different processes:

Natural Gas - 53 g/MJ
diesel - 69 g/MJ
gasoline (petrol) - 67 g/MJ
coal - 83 g/MJ

These emission ïŹgures are taken from DEFRA's Environmental Reporting Guidelines for Company Reporting on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

This Wikipedia page contains an excellent converter between various energy and power units.

To begin estimating your own power consumption, you can use Wattzon. 

Sophie Madeleine plays "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" on ukulele

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 03:01 PM PST

Latest Improv Everywhere perfomance: man gets "lost" at Knicks game

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 02:29 PM PST

Cute Apple parody from The Sun

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 01:01 PM PST

This seems a great illustration of why taking a positive, light-hearted tone makes the message. If there'd even been a hint of resentment or mean-spiritedness in this ad (for one of Murdoch's papers!), it would just invite ridicule.

Drew Friedman draws Frank Sinatra

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 12:32 PM PST

My favorite living portrait artist Drew Friedman offers his take on Frank Sinatra. The fine art prints, in an edition of just 35, are $165 each. From Drew's site:
Drewfriedman Images 7047575999-1 This portrait of Frank Sinatra by Drew Friedman captures the Chairman of the Board during the 1950s, when his persona defined sophisticated swinging. Frank knew how to hold a note, his liquor, and a dame. In button-down mainstream America, Sinatra oozed free 'n easy; on the opposite side of the cultural divide, Ol' Blue Eyes didn't have to behave like a beatnik to convey cool....

Sinatra performed with the Ă©lan of an artist who had no serious competitors. The nonchalant gestures never undercut the passion in The Voice, and his smooth delivery always hinted at power in reserve. Ten years after Frank's passing, his recordings continue to enchant old fans and seduce new ones. A personality larger than life, a legacy bigger than death. "Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant," he claimed. "When I sing, I believe. I'm honest."

Frank Sinatra by Drew Friedman

Mother Jones on mints for your vagina

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 12:19 PM PST

Jen Phillips at Mother Jones has an essay about Linger, an "internal feminine flavoring." 
Linger-Mints A little digging revealed that Linger is made/distributed by a company called Admints, which just happens to make trade show mints.  And the Linger samples just happen to have have the exact same shape, taste, and ingredients as Admint's sample mints. So how does Linger manage to pass off breath mints as vaginal Tic Tacs in $7.99 packs?  Despite the salacious creation story and testimonials on its site ("It gets a little warm as it starts to dissolve which took just under an hour. Then, it is SO good!!"), the mint is labeled "for novelty use only."  This is a common practice in the sex-products industry, explains Charlie Glickman, the education program manager at Good Vibrations.  It gives manufacturers some cover if something goes awry, he explains. "They could say, 'It's just a novelty toy. You weren't actually expecting to use this were you?'"  And if you actually do expect to use Linger to "flavor the woman in a manner that is safe and effective," be warned: its primary ingredient is sugar, which is not safe for the vagina.  It messes up the pH and can lead to a really painful yeast infection, a condition that definitely doesn't make someone want to "linger."
Vagina mints (Via Sociological Images)

Royal Society puts 60 seminal scientific papers online

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 12:34 PM PST

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (aka The Royal Society) is celebrating is 350th birthday next year. Spun out in part of the fantastically cool Invisible College, the Royal Society's members have included Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Charles Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee, Lise Meitner, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Francis Crick, and countless other smart folks. The organization kicks off its big anniversary year with Trailblazing, a new interactive timeline that includes 60 choice articles from the journal Philosophical Transactions. From the Royal Society's announcement :
Wikipedia Commons 9 9D Sprat Leading scientists and historians have chosen 60 articles from amongst the 60,000 published since the journal first began in 1665. Trailblazing will make the original manuscripts available online for the first time alongside fascinating insights from modern-day experts who are continuing the work of scientific giants such as Newton, Hooke, Faraday and Franklin and making vital new breakthroughs of their own in areas such as genetics, physics, climate change and medicine.

Highlights include:

• The gruesome account of an early blood transfusion (1666)

• Captain James Cook's explanation of how he protected his crew from scurvy aboard HMS Resolution (1776)

• Stephen Hawking's early writing on black holes (1970)

• Benjamin Franklin's account of flying a kite in a storm to identify the electrical nature of lightning - the Philadelphia Experiment (1752)

• Sir Isaac Newton's landmark paper on the nature of light and colour (1672)

• A scientific study of a young Mozart confirming him as a musical child genius (1770)

• The Yorkshire cave discovery of the fossilized remains of elephant, tiger, bear and hyena heralding the study of deep time (1822)

Royal Society's Trailblazing (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

Image: "Frontispeice to Thomas Sprat's A History of the Royal Society (1667)"

Arrington ends CrunchPad project

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 12:28 PM PST

Mike Arrington writes that the CrunchPad project has self-destructed over greed, jealously and miscommunication. Short version: the hardware partner tried to screw him and it is now lawsuit time. This is a real shame, because the low-end tablet had a great design, was open to hackers, and represented a valiant independent effort to break into a market dominated by enormous corporations.

Report: Sarah Palin "bus tour" a hoax, more like "private jet tour"

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:36 AM PST

Sarah Palin's "bus tour" to promote her new book simply isn't. Joe McGinniss reports she's in fact flying around America on a private jet, specifically a luxurious "Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour."

World's cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:34 AM PST

After reading about Michelin's famous guide and its undercover inspectors in a recent issue of The New Yorker, it was fun to learn about the cheapest restaurant that has been awarded a highly-coveted star, "a hole-in-the-wall canteen in Hong Kong that offers dishes for less than $1.50."

Gay-bashing woman humiliated for wearing hideous skirt

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 06:35 PM PST

200911301120

An angry loser (right) came to Syracuse University to make a fool of herself by spreading pathetic hatred and was treated to a happy mutant style stunt by this smiling student, named Chris Pesto (left).

I decided that because this woman thought it was okay to make me feel uncomfortable in my home, I would retaliate and make her feel just as uncomfortable, if not more.

This woman was wearing a ankle-length corduroy skirt, which, as we all know, is a fashion nono. So, in order to make her feel uncomfortable, I stood next to her and held a sign that said Corduroy skirts are a sin! I don't think I have ever drawn so much attention in my life. SO many people asked to take a picture with me, I got laughs, high fives and there were the few that even cursed off the woman standing behind me.

As I drew interest to what was going on with myself and the woman with the hateful sign, I started to draw a crowd that stood with me in support. Before I knew it I had 100+ people holding signs for gay rights asking people to honk their horns to support. I was interviewed by a news station, and more than 5 student organization papers, and the post standard of syracuse.

I never expected anybody to come stand by me and support and I appreciate it so much that everyone came! It meant so much and it proved to those ignorant people that we aren't afraid, and we will put up a fight.

I'm proud that Syracuse has such a homosexual friendly community.

Corduroy Skirts are a Sin

17 particularly peculiar Beach Boys songs

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:18 AM PST


Keith Phipps assembled a list of "17 particularly peculiar Beach Boys songs." They may be peculiar, but they're also a lot of fun to listen to.

(Via Michel Leddy, who asks "how could he have left out "I'm Bugged at My Old Man"?)

Collin Cunningham of MAKE builds an infrared heart monitor

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:10 AM PST


I love the electronics videos Collin Cunningham produces for Make: Online. Not only does he describe his projects in an entertaining way, he also scores the trippy music for them.

After checking out a few projects involving IR heart monitors, I decided to have a go at the interface myself. Seen above are the results of my first experimentation with pulse oximetry. Getting the setup up and running satisfactorily required a bit more time and tinkering than I'd expected - especially after reversing a premature mod to my emitter/detector pair. The next version I try will either use a higher output emitter (see Charles Martin's version) or some amplification hardware (as used in Meng Li's sensor).

Collin's Lab: Infrared heart sensor

The poster that convinced Switzerland to ban minarets

Posted: 30 Nov 2009 11:19 AM PST

stopp_poster.png Taken from RYTC's photo of a billboard. There are currently four minarets in all of Switzerland, each pointed threateningly at (from?) one quarter of the nation. The poster's minarets resemble those of the Hagia Sophia, a nice touch given the mindset at hand. The eyes, however, resemble those of David Bowie, emerging from some very serious moonlight. Previously.
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