The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps
- What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you?
- TSA can't redact documents properly, releases s00per s33kr1t operations manual
- Study: people who buy counterfeit bags likely to buy real ones later
- Motorola Droid ad gets nasty
- Altamont, 40 years later
- Jasmina Tešanović: Report from anti-Berlusconi demonstration in Rome
- Impotent futurism: the design of Allende's cyber-utopian boondoggle
- Just look at this awesome banana slicer.
- Photographers win British war on photography?
| Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:05 AM PST Steve sends us "The premiere episode of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine, a visual history of pulp science fiction magazines. The premiere episode covers the inaugural issue of Startling Stories from January, 1939. Features Stanley G. Weinbaum's novel The Black Plague, a short story by Eando Binder, the first ever SF story to be inducted into the Scientifiction Hall of Fame (D D Sharp's The Eternal Man), an editorial by Otis Adelbert Kline and a letter column featuring Isaac Asimov." Startling Stories on the Premiere of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine! (Thanks, Steve!) Previously:
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| What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you? Posted: 06 Dec 2009 10:31 PM PST Cryptome is hosting several ISPs' pricelists and guidelines for "lawful spying" activities on behalf of law enforcement. Included is Yahoo's price-guide (hilariously, Yahoo tried to send them a copyright takedown notice to make this go away). One of the more remarkable elements of Yahoo's document is the sheer quantity of material that Yahoo retains for very, very long periods. From /.: "IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies." Yahoo Lawful Spying Guide (via /.) Previously:
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| TSA can't redact documents properly, releases s00per s33kr1t operations manual Posted: 06 Dec 2009 10:32 PM PST  The TSA has published a "redacted" version of their s00per s33kr1t screening procedure guidelines (Want to know whether to frisk a CIA operative at the checkpoint? Now you can!). Unfortunately, the security geniuses at the DHS don't know that drawing black blocks over the words you want to eliminate from your PDF doesn't actually make the words go away, and can be defeated by nefarious al Qaeda operatives through a complex technique known as ctrl-a/ctrl-c/ctrl-v. Thankfully, only the most elite terrorists would be capable of matching wits with the technology brilliance on display at the agency charged with defending our nation's skies by ensuring that imaginary hair-gel bombs are kept off of airplanes. The TSA makes another stupid move Mirror of TSA screening doc (redactions removed) Previously:
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| Study: people who buy counterfeit bags likely to buy real ones later Posted: 06 Dec 2009 10:28 PM PST MIT business professor Renee Richardson Gosline has conducted research suggesting that people who buy counterfeit bags are highly likely to purchase non-counterfeit versions of their treasures at a later date (even though the two bags can't be distinguished from one another by casual observers). Gresham's Law repealed for status goods? The real thing? (Thanks, Laura!) Previously: |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2009 08:28 PM PST |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2009 08:24 PM PST "Something of this magnitude is like a song that hasn't been sung. You know in your heart it's out there, but you can't retrieve it. Everything, all the children that could have been born, everything just stopped. Time does not heal wounds; it softens them." — thoughts from the older sister of the black man who was beaten to death by Hell's Angels at the Altamont concert 40 years ago. |
| Jasmina Tešanović: Report from anti-Berlusconi demonstration in Rome Posted: 06 Dec 2009 09:45 PM PST  (Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanović, photos by protest participants.) Italian people are at their best in a piazza. Yesterday, the international "No B day" was held all over the world, in public squares. The largest event happened in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. For those few who don't understand, "No B" means No Berlusconi, the right-wing Italian president who has been ruling Italy for the past two decades, undermining its brightest democratic traditions with his private and public scandals. Only a couple of days ago, a protected mafia witness testified that Berlusconi was involved in mafia crimes. This latest allegation among many triggered many protestors to carry the banners: "no mafia in the state." However, the real hero of this manifestation was Berlusconi's ex wife, who a year or so ago denounced him as womanizer and a corruptor. The organizers claim that they were one million participants in the Rome march, which ended in a big piazza where non politicians addressed the crowds. This country has too many parties without people and too many people without a party, said one of the participants. "No Berlusconi" day was organized via internet, without political parties or partisan movements. The people on the streets were dressed in purple as a sign of protest, with many masks and disguises. The king of commedia dell arte, Dario Fo (with his partner Franca Rame), the Nobel prize winner for literature, spoke from the stage to the people: witty and poignant as usual. This author won the Nobel for his political improvised tragic comedies on the mafia state, which has a long bloody history in democratic Italy.
Riot police were all over the streets in Torino because of the soccer derby between Milan and Turin team and the voyage of its problematic president.
But yesterday, nobody dead, nobody hurt, just a great carnival of political alternative: a good start.
Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here. Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:
• On Marina Abramovic, a "grandmother of performance art" |
| Impotent futurism: the design of Allende's cyber-utopian boondoggle Posted: 06 Dec 2009 12:19 PM PST Greg Borenstein sez, "This is a video version of a paper I delivered with Jem Axelrod at the 2009 PAMLA Conference about Project Cybersyn, an early 70s socialist pseudo-internet built by British cyberneticist Stafford Beer in Chile. The video explores how Beer's writing, infographics, and industrial design worked together to create a science fictional narrative of omniscience and ominpotence for Salvador Allende's socialist government." Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions (Thanks, Greg!) |
| Just look at this awesome banana slicer. Posted: 05 Dec 2009 10:38 AM PST  Just look at it. Previously:
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| Photographers win British war on photography? Posted: 06 Dec 2009 06:20 AM PST Is Britain's war on photography coming to an end? After the Independent newspaper got senior officials to admit that anti-terror legislation was being "widely abused...to question and search innocent photographers," the Association of Chief Police Officers has sent out a strongly worded memo to all officers ordering them to cease the practice. The harrassment of photographers by police officers is said to have senior officers "exasperated, depressed and embarrassed," and they characterize officers' belief that anti-terror laws prohibit photography as an "internal urban myth." Chief Constable Andy Trotter, chairman of Acpo's media advisory group, took the decision to send the warning after growing criticism of the police's treatment of photographers.Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws (Thanks, Mutant Rob!) Previously:
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Gosline's future work will explore the persistence of brand cachet among middle-class consumers. For instance, in another working paper she just finished this fall, "The Real Value of Fakes," Gosline interviewed hundreds of consumers who knowingly bought fake luxury apparel, many at "purse parties" where such goods are sold. Gosline found that within two years, 46 percent of these buyers subsequently purchased the authentic version of the same product -- even though other people could not necessarily tell the difference. Such behavior is another twist on Veblen's thesis: For some status-seeking people, at least, the social power of luxury goods means that consumption must not just be conspicuous, but real. 
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