Thursday, December 17, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Great Firewall of Australia will nationally block sites appearing on a secret, unaccountable list

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:54 AM PST

Electronic Frontiers Australia have posted their authoritative condemnation of the Australian government's plan to impose mandatory, national filtering on the Australian Internet (like the filters used in Iran, Syria, China, and other repressive regimes). EFA points out that this national censorship plan will do little to curb child pornography and crime (because people who seek out that sort of thing can always get around filters), but it will give unaccountable government bureaucrats the power to secretly and arbitrarily hide information from Australians.
An announcement on Tuesday confirms it: next year, all Australian ISPs will be required to filter access to a government-supplied blacklist containing "refused classification" (RC) web content. That would include nasty stuff like child pornography, but also a broader range of content: fetishy sex, instruction in crime (such as euthanasia), any computer game not suitable for under 18s. The list will be partly generated by complaints from the public, and may include lists imported from overseas police departments.

While this is sold as a kid-friendly measure, to "improve safety of the internet for families", it's clearly nothing of the sort. A few thousand URLs hardly constitutes a national net nanny. The list would almost be laughable if it was not only mandatory but secret - unlike censorship decisions made in other media, blocked URLs will remain secret and expressly excluded from freedom of information requests. Just as worrying is the fact that once this list is in, a conga-line of special interests will be approaching the government to have their pet peeves added to the list. It's not much of a stretch to imagine AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) clamouring to have bittorrent trackers added, and several parliamentarians are on record calling for a ban on pro-anorexia sites and pornography in general.

Filtering coming to Australia in 2010 (Thanks, Gwen!)

(Image: The Worst Part of Censorship is ###### a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from kogakure's photostream)

Previously:


Free holiday sampler: PDF with chapters from a dozen new books

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:46 AM PST

JC Hutchins -- he of the boundless energy! -- has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday. In it are excerpts from recent books by some of my favorite authors, including Cherie Priest, Seth Godin, and Scott Sigler (as well as an excerpt from my latest novel, Makers.

In The Nick of Time holiday sampler (PDF)

JC's page on the project with full contents and links

(Thanks, JC!


Leaked secret EU-Canada copyright agreement - EU screws Canada

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:35 PM PST

Leaks have emerged from another secret copyright treaty, this one between the EU and Canada. The EU is really screwing Canada with this one, demanding longer copyright terms, more liability for ISPs (which means that it gets harder and more expensive to host anything from a message board to a video), laws against breaking copyright protection (even for a legal purpose, like getting your own files back), and a royalty on the sale of used copyrighted goods (so you'd have to track down and pay the rightsholder when you resold a painting or other copyrighted work).

And all this while Minister Tony Clement has been conducting a consultation with Canadians on what they think Canada's copyright laws should be -- at the same time, Canada's government has been sneakily negotiating two secret copyright treaties that would tie Parliament's hands and throw away Canadians' own Made-in-Canada copyright rules.

While the leaked document may only represent the European position, there is little doubt that there will enormous pressure on Canadian negotiators to cave on the IP provision in return for "gains" in other areas. The net result is that when combined with the ACTA requirements, Canadian copyright law reform may cease to become Canadian. Instead, the rules will be dictated by secretive agreements as the U.S. and Europe tag team to pressure Canada into dramatic changes far beyond those even proposed in Bills C-60 or C-61.
Beyond ACTA: Proposed EU - Canada Trade Agreement Intellectual Property Chapter Leaks
Previously:


Steampunk menorah

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:20 PM PST

Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action against anyone who uses it without permission

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:16 PM PST

Former South Dakota State Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt -- presently serving time for raping his two foster daughters -- is sending bizarre "copyright notices" from prison to news agencies and outlets that use his name in print or online, claiming a "common law copyright" on his name and demanding $500,000 for any unauthorized use.

Proving, at least, that knowing the law is no prerequisite for serving in high office.

A letter and an accompanying document labeled ''Common Law Copyright Notice'' said former state Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt is reserving a common-law copyright of a trade name or trademark for his name. It said no one can use his name without his consent, and anyone who does would owe him $500,000...

The letter and copyright notice Klaudt sent to The Associated Press carried a postmark of Dec. 11 from Mobridge, a city near his ranch. The notice was signed July 13, 2008, and notarized in Bon Homme County, the location of the Springfield prison. It also included a seal indicating it was filed with the register of deeds in Corson County, where the family ranch is located, on July 31, 2008.

The letter said anyone seeking to use Klaudt's name would have to file a written request 20 days in advance. It also said he would pursue charges and other legal action against anyone who violated the notice.

Ex-Lawmaker Convicted of Rape: Name Is Copyrighted (via /.)
Previously:


Hardcore hip-hop Xmas

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:09 PM PST

djBC writes, "As you probably know from the steady stream of Holiday mashup albums I've been compiling over the past 5 years, I dig Christmas music, and I keep remixing it. In this case I took the Big D and The Kids Table Christmas paean to Red Sox, victory, drinking, heavy Boston accents and holiday merriment in general, cut it into a hip-hop beat and enlisted rapper Black Element to bust rhymes. Anyway- I finally did it! I made a Christmas single! AND video! Woo! I hope people get a kick out of it and it ends up on some holiday mixes right next to 'White Christmas.' Or something. Directed by Craig Shannon of Imagavision Films.

Wicked Hip-Hop Christmas

The original Big D and The Kids Table video for 'Wicked Hardcore Christmas' (2004)

(Thanks, djBC!)

Previously:


Fundraiser to help Jeanne and Spider Robinson beat cancer

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:05 PM PST

Tony from the StarShipSofa sf podcast sez, "In the spirit of 'paying it forward', StarShipSofa is rallying the SF/F community around Spider and Jeanne Robinson. Throughout the month of December, the online audio magazine will be releasing an original series written by Lawrence Santoro. While listeners can hear 'Lord Dickens' Declaration' for free on StarShipSofa, one can elect to purchase the ebook with art by Skeet Scienski. All proceeds will be donated to Spider and Jeanne in an effort to support her as she battles cancer. Diagnosed with a rare biliary cancer, the treatments have eaten away at the Robinson's finances as doctors aggressively fight the disease from spreading. This ebook will only be available for purchase through December 31st and is priced at 2.99 GBP, with an option to donate more (in increments of 10, 20, 50, & 100 GPB). Any fan of the Robinson's can attest to their strength, but we hope that through this time of strife, the SF/F community can help them survive through the worst. Thank you for standing with the Robinson's in their time of need."

Aural Delights No 113 Lawrence Santoro Pt 3 (Thanks, Tony!)

Previously:


Photos from Copenhagen protests

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:00 PM PST


Treehugger photographer Matt McDermott happened to be in the right place when the massive climate demonstrations in Copenhagen broke out, and the site has a great gallery of shots of the action.

Whose Summit? Our Summit! Bella Center Erupts in Protest

Previously:


Steorn's Orbo free energy system on display

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:38 PM PST


Steorn, developers of free-energy gadget called Orbo, have managed to survive for six years without having successfully demonstrated the technology in public. It must be some kind of record. But yesterday, an Orbo was installed at the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre, and you can see a live video stream of the Orbo chugging away.

According to Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy, the Orbo is able to "gain energy from magnets with no apparent source."

Here's more about it, from Steorn's "What is Orbo Technology" page:

Orbo is a technology that creates energy from magnetic interactions. Orbo provides free, clean and constant energy at the point of use.

Orbo is a platform technology that can be engineered to power anything from a phone, to a fridge to a car.

Orbo technology is controversial - science tells us that energy can not be created - yet Orbo does this. Orbo is an over unity technology - it provides more energy out than is put in.

Orbo is a result of many man years of technological development using a "Victorian Science" approach. It is a technology that has been derived phenomologically, through test, implementation and retest.

Three cheers for "Victorian Science," but I don't believe the Orbo can make more energy than it uses. It sure is fun following Steorn's attempts to achieve the impossible, though. If any Boing Boing readers in Dublin have witness the live demo, please share your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE: the blog called Steorn's Orbo has a good post about why this demo is useless:

Orbo 2009 is similar in its basic design, but the outer ring of magnets are now electromagnets rather than permanent magnets, and these electromagnets are fed by a battery. That battery, it is claimed, is constantly recharged by a small electrical generator attached to the spinning Orbo. The net result, says Sean McCarthy, is that the Orbo produces some three times the energy it uses. The energy that isn't cycled back to the battery is dissipated as heat. Sean's claim may be true — the Orbo may be generating three times the energy it is using, right in front of our eyes. Or, it may not be; there's no way to tell without being an experienced engineer and hooking the rig up to a lot of complex testing equipment. Because there's a battery in the loop, there's just no telling how much energy, if any, Orbo is actually generating. So Steorn may have what they claim. Or they may be lying about it as part of a scam. Or they may honestly believe they have it, but be wrong. There's still no way to tell.
In other words, this Orbo sounds like it's a plain old motor.

Previously:


Area rug inspired by the moon's surface

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:42 PM PST

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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing this year, designer Martin Mostböck made this area rug inspired by the moon's surface.

Artist's web site [via Dezeen]

What more do you need to know?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:27 PM PST

The Wall Street Journal goes square-dancing.

RIP, Roy E Disney

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:12 PM PST

RIP, Roy E Disney, nephew of Walt, son of Roy Sr, at 79, from cancer. Thanks for kicking out Eisner and bringing the company's emphasis back to the Parks.
The younger Disney, born in 1930, worked for the company as a writer and producer. But his most important influence was as a Disney shareholder who led two investor revolts.

In 1984 he led a successful campaign to oust Walt Disney's son-in-law from the company. Nearly 20 years later, he launched another successful shareholder revolt against Michael Eisner.

Roy E. Disney dies (Thanks to everyone who sent this in)

(Image: File:Roy_E._Disney.jpg, GNU FDL, Wikimedia Commons)

Previously:


The best unpopular books of the Aughts

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:11 PM PST

There are 172,000 books published every year in the US, and another 206,000 in the UK. Suffice to say, they do not all become best-sellers. But just because a book isn't popular, doesn't mean it didn't deserve your attention. The Guardian staff is trying to give unloved tomes a second chance by naming their favorite books of the past decade that no one but themselves read. It's a great concept, and a couple of these have caught my eye, including:

War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres, published in 2005, is one of the funniest books I have ever been involved with - it's about the author's hapless time as an embedded reporter with the US Marines in Iraq. I think the reason it did not take off as it should was to do with the gap between commissioning it in 2003 and it being written and published two years later: by then the war had got so unpopular with the public that every book about it, brilliantly entertaining or not, was struggling. I hope in time it will become recognised as a classic.

The Guardian: The Decade's Best Unread Books

Major record labels gang up and screw over indie record store

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:05 PM PST

A small indie record store owner in Ottawa, Canada, has plead guilty to a charge of copyright infringement for importing rare CDs from abroad. Apparently, these discs (which are themselves licensed, as far as I can tell) aren't licensed for sale in Canada, and Canadian law (apparently) bans this kind of parallel importation.

But none of these CDs are actually available in Canada. And no one orders rare, expensive imports unless he's already got the artist's entire catalog. And, of course, the record labels that went after this record store owner (whose whole purpose in life is to sell their CDs) are presently being sued for $60 billion in copyright damages for ripping off artists, and have admitted to $50 million in liability already.

"I can't believe I'm standing here right now," Nolan said outside court. "I've never bought a pirated item in my life."

Prosecutor Rob Zsigo said in an agreed statement of facts that the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), acting as experts for the RCMP, concluded that 294 discs -- including live concerts, imports and CDs without UPC codes -- violated Canadian copyright law...

Nolan said the 100 CDs represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of recordings in his collection and that the discs at issue are mostly imports.

An example is a recording of 1950s singer Gale Storm. Big labels don't press them but seniors still want to buy them so he orders them from import distributers [sic], Nolan said.

"I have to have the things the bigger chains don't have," Nolan said. "It's kept my business alive.

"I feel like the RCMP has robbed me."

CD seller pleads guilty to breaking copyright law
Previously:


Morbid Anatomy's Joanna Ebenstein on TV

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:56 AM PST



My friend Joanna Ebenstein who who runs the engrossing (sorry!) Morbid Anatomy blog was featured on a "Weird New York" episode of the "Toni On! New York" television show. The host took a tour of the Morbid Anatomy Library and saw some of Joanna's favorite curiosities.

Mathematical mockery in Wonderland

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:17 AM PST

The original story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is missing what have become some of the book's most iconic characters and scenes: the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter's tea party, the Knave of Hearts' trial, and several other great moments. Why did Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) add them later? According to Alice scholar Melanie Bayley, Dodgson, a mathematician by day, created the scenes to make fun of edgy math ideas floating around at the time. From New Scientist:
2008 08 Alice-And-The-Caterpillar Outgunned in the specialist press, Dodgson took his mathematics to his fiction. Using a technique familiar from Euclid's proofs, reductio ad absurdum, he picked apart the "semi-logic" of the new abstract mathematics, mocking its weakness by taking these premises to their logical conclusions, with mad results. The outcome is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Take the chapter "Advice from a caterpillar", for example. By this point, Alice has fallen down a rabbit hole and eaten a cake that has shrunk her to a height of just 3 inches. Enter the Caterpillar, smoking a hookah pipe, who shows Alice a mushroom that can restore her to her proper size. The snag, of course, is that one side of the mushroom stretches her neck, while another shrinks her torso. She must eat exactly the right balance to regain her proper size and proportions.

While some have argued that this scene, with its hookah and "magic mushroom", is about drugs, I believe it's actually about what Dodgson saw as the absurdity of symbolic algebra, which severed the link between algebra, arithmetic and his beloved geometry...

The madness of Wonderland, I believe, reflects Dodgson's views on the dangers of this new symbolic algebra. Alice has moved from a rational world to a land where even numbers behave erratically.

"Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved"

Previously:


Why are the Alps getting taller?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:56 AM PST

Alpspic.jpg

Here's a conundrum: The African and European plates of the Earth's crust are no longer pushing into each other, but the Alps (created by the collision of those plates) are growing by about .05 in. per year. At first glance, those facts might make you question plate tectonics. But the real explanation is even weirder.

The Alps grow because they swim in the Earths mantle. Mountains like the Matterhorn or the Zugspitze lose one meter of stone every 1000-2000 years, Sauer reports. Like a melting iceberg slowly rises out of the water to adjust to the loss of weight, the alps rise according to their weight loss due to erosion. Sauer explains, that this was a hypothesis for years, but that it is proven now, because German scientists from the Research Center for Geoscience in Potsdam developed a new method to measure the erosion.

Original story is in German at Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
English summary from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker

Image courtesy Flickr user toprural, via CC

Fantastically strange cake sculptures

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:26 AM PST

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Amazing artists Korin Faught and Savanna Snow sent me photos from Korin's birthday party where they celebrated with the magnificent Jesus cake, above left. It was baked in Los Angeles by their pal Jana Danae Groller who, I've since discovered, makes some of the most insane cakes I've ever seen. For example, look at that Siamese Cat Head cake above right. Just look at it. Jana*s Fun Cakes

Brain on the Sistine Chapel?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:19 AM PST

Saving Pete Hawley's terrific illustrations from the incinerator

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:07 AM PST

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Why are these kids so darn happy? Have they been sharing the nitrous oxide balloon with their clown friend? Of course not. They are happy because this gorgeous piece of art by Pete Hawley, along with many more of his feverishly giddy original illustartions for the Merrill Publishing company, were saved from the incinerator, thanks to the diligent efforts of Jean Woodcock.

The full story appears in print edition of Illustration Magazine #22 (thanks for the subscription, David!).

Leif Peng has a couple of excerpts and more of Hawley's work on his blog.

Pete Hawley and the Merrill Company

Bacteria-powered micromachines

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:56 AM PST



The gears above are just 380 microns across, or about four times thicker than a human hair. They're being turned by bacteria that are bumping into the spokes. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed the bacteria-powered gears in an effort to develop "hybrid biomechanical systems." The speed at which the gears turn can be controlled by changing the amount of oxygen in the solution. From an Argonne National Lab press release:
The microgears with slanted spokes, produced in collaboration with Northwestern University, are placed in the solution along with common aerobic bacteria, Bacillus subtilis. Andrey Sokolov of Princeton University and Igor Aronson from Argonne, along with Bartosz A. Grzybowski and Mario M. Apodaca from Northwestern University, discovered that the bacteria appear to swim around the solution randomly, but occasionally the organisms will collide with the spokes of the gear and begin turning it in a definite direction.

A few hundred bacteria are working together in order to turn the gear. When multiple gears are placed in the solution with the spokes connected like in a clock, the bacteria will begin turning both gears in opposite directions and it will cause the gears to rotate in synchrony for a long time.

"Argonne Scientists Use Bacteria to Power Simple Machines"

Excellent 1948 British cartoon: Charley in New Town

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:45 AM PST


The design in this eight minute British cartoon, "Charley in New Town," is excellent.

'New Town' is an entry in a Central Office of Information-sponsored animated series featuring the everyman character Charley, and promotes an escape from grimy, smoggy towns and arduous commutes to work. With the highly distinctive animation style of husband-and-wife team Halas and Batchelor, this short aims to explain the rationale behind the planning of the new towns, with their enticing offer of green open spaces and a type of housing to suit everyone.

Building skywards - Manhattan-style - is quickly ruled out for us Brits; "Don't be silly, I'd never get me pram up there" pipes up a member of the unseen chorus of unhappy city-dwellers. But considering the urban sprawl now devouring the south-east of England, perhaps skyscrapers were the way to go after all.

"Poor little blighters." (Via Shane Glines)

Progress report on liberating America's video archives

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:11 AM PST

You'll remember that I've been urging people to go watch the public domain videos that rogue archivist Carl Malamud has been liberating from the US government and putting on YouTube, so that he could demonstrate the pent-up desire to watch these things and get the Feds to stop sitting on them. Now Carl has given his testimony and he reports:

Thanks to everybody for viewing the public domain videos I posted from the National Archives. NARA officials informed me that total revenue from the Amazon deal back to NARA over the last two years has been $3,273.66. I read their contract (link to pdf) and my back-of-the-envelope calculations say total DVD says can't be more than 11,000 units and are more likely well under 5,000 units.

In less than a week, we did 14,664 views on just 46 videos, and I'm pretty sure if we put all 1,899 videos on-line for a while, the number of views would go up by a couple of decimal places!

For those interested in the background on this as well as other NARA issues (like the $531 million computer system they're buying that the vendor has 15 patents on!!), I've posted my testimony on the subject.

Congress's official page for the hearing is here. My testimony in pdf and on scribd.

Perhaps relevant to the National Archives was Monday's announcement by the President of France that of his $50 billion stimulus package, he is devoting $1.1 billion to scanning the French National Library. My oral remarks to the Committee will suggest that we face a unique opportunity, in the midst of a great depression, to use Recovery.Gov to create enduring public works for the digital age.

National Archives and Record Administration (Thanks, Carl!)
Previously:


Bed gun rack

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:59 AM PST



The Back Up is a gun rack for, er, your bed. (Thanks, David Steinberg!)

Photos of rotting, abandoned water park at Walt Disney World

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:27 AM PST


Here's a gigantic gallery of the abandoned River Country water park at Walt Disney World, which has been shuttered for years (I last remember playing there in about 1987). The park was supposed to be kind of rustic and homey, and now the faux-weathered appearance has been augmented by actual slime-filled pools and rotting infrastructure. It's simulation become reality!

River Country

(May run out of bandwidth, try Coral cache mirror) (Thanks, Walter!)

The Year Before the Flood: Idelber's Accident

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:01 AM PST

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City.)

TYBTF_cover.jpg

Excerpt from The Year Before The Flood

To hear me reading this excerpt (in a shout, as I tend to do in clubs) at Joe's Pub, click here. Oh, and if you want to get on my e-mail list, send an e-mail saying "subscribe" to ned.sublette at gmail.com

Fully conscious and quite annoyed, Idelber was lying on the sidewalk on Magazine Street, bleeding from a long window-glass cut on the side of his head. It looked dramatic, but he wasn't badly hurt.

You can easily get creamed driving across Magazine. You have to creep way out into the street until you can see around the parked cars. Then you have to look both ways and go! In the time it took Idelber to look left and right and turn onto the street, an SUV came barrelling down the road from behind the phalanx of parked cars, outside his field of vision. It was going at least fifty when it made impact over Idelber's left front tire. Had he started out from the intersection a half-second earlier, he would probably have been dead.


As I got there, Idelber was being strapped onto a stretcher, and was asking them not to immobilize his head until he could have a cigarette. He had asked bystanders to come tell us about the accident not because he needed help but because he was concerned we'd think he was a jerk for pulling a no-show at dinner. I went through his glove compartment and scooped up all his insurance and personal info and jammed it into a bag. I called Chris, who raced over. The police said that since Idelber had a head injury he had to go to [cue ominous music] . . .

Charity Hospital! [Sound of screams in the background.]

Founded in 1736 (though not at the same location) with a bequest of ten thousand francs from a French sailor, Charity was the oldest continuously operating hospital in the United States. In 2004, Charity was the only place a lot of people in New Orleans could go for medical attention, and it was famous for its combat-hardened medical staff. It got the head wounds and the Saturday night gang-war casualties. A couple of years before, there had been a gunfight in the emergency room.

Chris went in the ambulance while I stayed with Idelber's car until it was towed. About an hour later, they called to say they were bailing from Charity, and they'd be waiting outside for me to pick them up. No one at Charity had looked at Idelber, who was perfectly able to walk and had had it with waiting around in what he called, possibly being hyperbolic, the hip-hop version of Dante's Inferno. As Idelber waited, someone came in with an eye torn out. Then someone arrived who'd been shot in the stomach, and then someone who'd been shot in the leg. But the one that sent Idelber out of there was the man who came running in, covered in blood, holding his detached penis in his hand and shouting, "My woman just chopped it off!"

Idelber was basically fine, though his head needed stitching up. We went to another emergency room, Touro. I sent Chris home and waited it out under the fluorescent glare in the orange plastic bucket seats while Idelber kept slipping out to smoke cigarettes, his head still bleeding somewhat.

Most of the people in the waiting room at Touro seemed to be there for emergency liposuction. They looked like eyes and mouths set in blobs of fat. I wasn't sure which ones were patients and which ones were waiting, though I figured the enormous teenage girl who went out and came back with a bucket of fried chicken was not a patient. Yet.

Idelber and I would have had plenty of time to go out for fried chicken. Since he wasn't bleeding to death, it took a couple of hours for the doctor at Touro to see him. When he did, he took a quick look and gave Idelber the choice of having the wound closed up with stitches or staples. But, he pointed out, the injection of anesthetic along such a long cut before the stitching would be about as painful as the staples. With the staples, no anesthetic, but it's quick.

"If it were me?" he said, "I'd choose the staples."

He was pretty much telling Idelber which to choose. Well, OK, said Idelber without realizing that what the doctor was really saying was that staples hurt like a motherfucker, but they were quicker and easier for him to do.

I had never seen this procedure. I thought, staples, well, that's some kind of technical term. No, the guy pulled out a stapler. Not a puny little office stapler, either. A big one.

If you are ever given this choice, don't choose the staples.

How shellfish saved the human race

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 07:56 AM PST

ourcrustaceanheroes.jpg

A couple hundred thousand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.

See, humans today may look pretty different from one another but, genetically speaking, there's not much diversity at all within our species. In fact, chimpanzees, which look pretty much the same from one individual to the next, are much more genetically diverse than we are. To scientists, that suggests that humans have come through a genetic bottleneck--a point where our numbers shrunk dramatically, and a relatively small population had to rebuild the species. For about 20 years, genetic anthropologists have been comparing the genes of modern human populations. Over time, they've used bigger and bigger samples, and better and better analysis, to hone in on when our bottleneck likely happened, and how many humans managed to slip through it.

Turns out, somewhere between 130,000 to 190,000 years ago, the human species was reduced to less than 1000 breeding individuals--just a few thousand people in total. Ancient, naturally driven climate change pushed our species to the brink, said Curtis Marean, Ph.D., a professor with the Institute of Human Origins and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.

What saved us? According to Marean, the answer may be "shellfish".

"They're a great source of protein," he said. "And shellfish are immune to colder ocean temperatures. In fact, when the water gets colder, those populations go up."

Marean used climate models to pinpoint locations in Africa where human hunter-gatherers could have hunkered down during a long glacial period that dried out the continent and expanded deserts. Of the four-to-six possible locations, he focused in on an area along the coast of South Africa.

"That area has a super high diversity of below-ground tuberous plants, which have high carb loads. People are excellent foragers for them. You need a digging stick and there wouldn't be a lot of animal competitors," he said. "And the tuberous plants are adapted to arid environments."

His team eventually found a site, dating to 164,000 years ago, that shows evidence of humans eating shellfish, working with natural pigments and creating technologically sophisticated tools. He thinks this could be the remnants of the humans of the bottleneck--ancestors of everyone alive today.

Other researchers have theorized that eating shellfish was actually the driver that allowed humans to develop the big brains we enjoy today, because shellfish are high in the Omega 3 fatty acids that the brain needs to function. But Marean thinks the big brain came first. You can't just walk down to the beach and score yourself some sweet shellfish action (at least, not enough to sustain a society) without being pretty bright. Ancient humans would have had to be able to do some pretty complex thinking about concepts like time, Marean said. They would have to be able to make connections between unrelated things, like phases of the moon, tides and when shellfish were most plentiful. And they'd have to be able to communicate all that to other people.

From Marean's perspective, big brains enabled a small group of humans to make the switch to a shellfish diet--an adaptation that allowed them to survive a climactic upheaval that wiped out most of their peers.

Naturally, this all begs the question, "Could humans adapt to and survive modern, anthropogenic climate change as well?" Again, Marean thinks the answer lies in our food supply.

"These people were hunter-gatherers, and beauty of a hunting and gathering economy is that it's very flexible. If you use 80 plants and 14 animals, and you lose 10 plants and two animals, you can just shift your resources. When you commit yourself to agriculture that has very narrow environmental parameters, and your whole population is dependent on that, slight changes in the environment can have catastrophic effects," he said. "I'd say we have the cultural and technological ability to make a change and adapt. But we need to get busy."

This story was inspired by Curtis Marean's lecture at the 2008 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. You can watch Dr. Marean's lecture online.

Image courtesy Flickr user avlxyz, via CC

The Boing Boing 20, pt. 2: the best indie and iPhone games of 2009

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:27 PM PST

cs8.jpg It may seem arbitrary lumping the indies and the iPhone together for the second half of this feature on the best games of 2009 (which previously ran down the best retail console and handheld games of 2009), but this year more than ever the lines between the two blurred, as the App Store continued to evolve into a marketplace second only to the web where a one-person team has as equal a chance for success as the biggest publishers in the business. Granted, that chance still continues to be "slim", and most recently the tides have been turning slightly to top-seller lists reading more like those you'd find on the DS and PSP, but nearly all the iPhone games on this list earned critical praise and top slots in the charts with marketing staff and budgets approaching zero. Still, I wish this list could be longer. Even moreso than the first half of this feature, where the best games left off the list were the ones that were called out as the year's finest nearly everywhere else, the selections that didn't make the cut here were still at the top of their game. Releases like the Bit.Trip games, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, Bonsai Barber, Words With Friends and reams of other iPhone games (as I've been continuing to cover weekly), and especially Spelunky (which technically is a late 2008 release, though it didn't progress to truly sublime until a few months later) all deserve their high praise. So then below, the best web, PC, Mac, and iPhone games -- freeware, commercial, and uniquely otherwise -- that sprang from the best of the indie community this year.

Canabalt [AdamAtomic, web/iPhone, App Store link]

Canabalt will probably be the least obscure name on this list, not least for its repeat coverage here in recent months, and in the frequent high-score updates you'll have no doubt spotted in your friends' twitter feeds.

Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman's one-button game was one of the truest "sensations" this year: launched in late August as a knocked-out five-day experiment which took instant storm, leading to fast lessons in social add-on integration and an equally fast but even more compulsive iPhone port, culminating in this week's release of a newly enhanced version, adding more obstacles and more of composer Danny Baranowsky's music, and formalizing an official leaderboard for the game.

And the success of Canabalt simply as a well-designed game was just part of the story: just as interesting was how in that span of time the community truly made the game its own, spawning not one but two fan-made Twitter-scraping leaderboards. Also worth note was Saltsman's decision to not succumb to the 99 cent pressures of the App Store, a move he expounded on at length here, and hopefully one that helps inspire other iPhone developers to move the device toward a more sustainable economy.

Previously:

Captain Forever/Successor [Farbs, web]

You'll be forgiven if Captain Forever's willfully obscure homepage layout led to some blank stares, but it's all in the name of maintaining the underlying 80s-star-pilot narrative that literally binds you (via your webcam) to the seat of your ship.

It's this retro aesthetic and anachronistic faux-command-line inconvenience that helped make Forever a year-topper for many indie devs themselves, but even moreso the way developer Farbs has given his players a window into a so-far limitless universe and asked only that they create something beautiful and deadly.

And its clear that he has no intention of letting Forever slip quietly off the edge of that universe: taking smart cues from the MMO sphere and other online successes like Valve's ever-evolving Team Fortress 2, Farbs is building up his Captain as a brand, charging a project wide 'supporter fee' (which gets you early access to new versions of the game, like the recently upgraded Successor) rather than a per-copy asking price, allowing him to monetize development as he steers the ship in newer and more complex directions.

It's an incredibly strong indie-career starter from someone who less than nine months ago made the leap from full time gainful employment (announcing the departure to his employer, you'll recall, via a version of Super Mario Bros), and one of the projects I'm most anxious to see where it's headed next.

Drop7 [area/code, iPhone, App Store link]

You've either never played Drop7 or the mere mention of its name sends nic-fit twinges through your spine. There is, I've found, no middle ground. One of the year's first best games, Drop7's lethal addictiveness spread throughout the year, aided by late Spring Facebook integration, and since that time I haven't met a single person who didn't follow up "yeah, I've played it," with lengthy praise/condemnation for how much they've played it.

Many games lay claim over the 'minutes to learn/lifetime to master' claim, but Drop7 actually deserves it -- its balance of strategy and randomness is what gives it its compulsive charm, even after a daunting first few minutes struggling with its wholly original numerical premise.

If you haven't played it yet (and if you lack an iPhone, its original incarnation as a web-based TV series tie-in is still available), by all means go, but go warned.

Eliss [Steph Thirion, iPhone, App Store link]

Eliss, like Drop7 and Canabalt, is another name I've been tirelessly repeating throughout the year, and it's rightfully earned its place as one of the App Store's best for perfectly encompassing what it means to be an iPhone game.

It did that as one of the device's first true multi-touch games, and by seemingly effortlessly giving us a sense of style -- in its entirely original graphical/musical aesthetic -- that, especially at the time, was leagues above the App Store's standard fare of pastel-shaded and casual-focused design.

For as much as the iPhone has earned a reputation as a present from the future dropped in our hands (a feeling I know I still get navigating any foreign city with it constantly at my side), Eliss should be its ubiquitous Minesweeper: a curious concoction of accessible play and alien origin, unlike any other game and baffling precisely because of its uniqueness, and destined to be the standard of tomorrow.

Glum Buster [CosMind, PC]

Developer Justin 'CosMind' Leingang's labor of love (slaved on for years during off hours while creating similarly overlooked and forward thinking games like the DS's wifi-signal-collector Treasure World) still hasn't quite earned the reputation it deserves but stands as one of the year's best surrealist short stories.

As I've said before, part of that could be in its staunch refusal to speak in the language that game players have grown accustom to: entering its world means learning how to communicate all over again, even if its goals and navigation feel like standard platforming fare.

But that's precisely what gives it its magic, and a thrill of exploration that comes not just from the sights you'll see, but the way you'll interact with its inhabitants. It's an adventure into weird worlds, and its an experience that still begs for more careful attention.

Machinarium [Amanita, PC/Mac]

Long-time followers of Amanita's work wouldn't have been surprised that Machinarium ended up as one of the year's best: studio founder Jakub Dvorský has proved and re-proved himself as a creator that sees -- and constructs -- realities unlike any other, via his original cult hit Samorost, its commercial sequel, and a set of other short-form commissioned side projects.

What was surprising is in how much more rich its interactions were: gone were the simple pixel-hunt-and-click-to-move-on tasks of his earlier games, Machinarium dove even deeper into adventure gaming history and came back up with an even more complex and rewarding set of puzzles that took us into the bizarre order of its rusted steam-bot world.

One of the few developers left keeping the point and click torch lit, Amanita -- in an ideal world -- gave a new generation a taste of what it was that lends warm nostalgia to our own pasts.

Previously:

Rolando 2 [Hand Circus, iPhone, App Store link]

Hand Circus's followup to its landmark original -- one of the first iPhone games that caused the wider industry to sit up and take notice of the device as a true competitor -- stands a bit at odds with the rest of the games on this list, if only for how blindingly polished it feels next to the scrappy, experimental set aside it.

And that's certainly not without good reason: publisher ngmoco was surely dead set on giving the indie dev the time and resources it needed to deliver a game that looked and felt like it could stand next to those on handheld gaming's more established hardware, and on all counts it did.

For every part that felt slightly safer than its prequel, that formula felt doubly refined. It was smarter, flashier, and hit all the right notes that should have made it the iPhone's signature mascot platformer franchise, its Mario or Sonic -- should the studio continue to go down that natural path.

Saira [Nifflas, PC]

And then, from nowhere, came Saira. Making a surprise touchdown on PC just days ago (after originally being teased as a potential WiiWare game from the same team that are working on the console's gorgeously serene bedtime-story platformer NightSky), it didn't take long to recognize that it was going to leave a mark on the year longer than the year's last few weeks would otherwise allow it.

Part of that was simply the developer's legacy: Sweden's Nicklas 'Nifflas' Nygren is among the highest regarded indie dev within the community for his work on the Knytt series, a freeware franchise of tiny (by pixel count) worlds that are as stunningly expressive and atmospheric as they are austere (think: the lonely landscapes of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda).

And unlike the more physics-based puzzling of NightSky (Knytt's true chronological successor, but still maddeningly yet unavailable), Saira stays very close to Knytt's formula of exploiting the basic joys of exploration, and ups the ante considerably by connecting all those worlds via starships (with, wonderfully and unexpectedly, an onboard-playable pinball machine) and by introducing a photo mechanic that sees you hunting for clues in the landscape itself that are later used to unlock planetary defense mechanisms and allow you deeper into its twisting caverns.

With everyone still caught off guard and dazed by its sudden appearance, it's a game you should be hearing much more about in the coming weeks, as the holidays settle and everyone returns with reports on how it was the best way they spent their 2009 Christmas vacation.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [Tiger Style, iPhone, App Store link]

Like Eliss, Spider is the perfect example of the type of game that should be dominating the App Store: a brilliantly crafted mix of arcade overtones tooled specifically for the device (its flick-jump alone remains one of the year's best character control schemes), a beautifully vintage children's book style that instantly set it apart, and, at its core, a mature story that reclined quietly and let players ask all the questions of it rather than imposing itself on you.

Happily, it did enjoy the chart-topping success it deserved for a time, lending a sliver of hope that iPhone development does reward more than the lowest common denominator, and is always patiently waiting for something smarter to come along -- a sentiment that hopefully will be stirred again when the Tiger Style team release their upcoming 'Director's Cut' update and move on to whatever love letters they've got squirreled away in the dark corners of their future.

Windosill [Vectorpark, PC/Mac/web]

And finally, Windosill shares an important trait with a number of other entries on this list: it let us explore the make-up of a world entirely unlike our own and entirely representative of its sole creator, here multimedia/interactive artist Patrick 'Vectorpark' Smith.

Unlike those other surrealities, though, Windosill is made up of some manner of mathematical magic that lends a truly remarkable tangibility to its unearthly toy-box components. Even its most bizarre creations move as they "should", react believably to our prods and pokes, and, at their best, seem so alive and driven by a spirit of their own that it feels unfathomable that they're the product of code alone.

All of these are, of course, Vectorpark hallmarks, and have earned him his reputation over the past several years, but Windosill was important for promoting his work beyond the usual interactive/Flash appreciators and into the wider gaming sphere -- so much so that the game landed Smith his debut on no less a mass-market service than Valve's Steam, momentum that we can only hope will be carried through into the new year.

Farewell!

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 09:54 PM PST

My guestblogging experience here has been wonderful, thank you all! I've learned a lot, made some neat connections, and gotten many pointers for learning more and doing more about things I'm interested in. This pleases me greatly.

I tried to pursue what Cory has called "That feeling of trepidation, of being slightly out of control, of taking a risk, of not knowing whether you are going to crash and burn." I hope that this showed, and that the results were enjoyable to you. I think that if you're not continuously checking your sanity, testing if you're correct or deluded about how your efforts might bounce off of the real world, then you're limiting yourself.

Here it goes, one last post into the ether-- watch it bounce: boing, boing, boing, boing, boing...

Fondly,
Paul

Danish police abuse climate-change demonstrators

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:38 AM PST


Zoran sez, "Earlier this week (12th Dec), a massive, peaceful protest of 100,000 people -- the largest demonstration for climate justice in world history -- was met with a heavy-handed response by the Danish police. Thousands of riot police swarmed the march route, blocked off streets surrounding large groups of protestors, and arrested almost 1,000 people. Arrestees were cuffed and forced to sit in rows for hours, as the temperatures dipped below freezing; numerous people urinated on themselves after being denied use of toilets."
Of course, these protests are being motivated by frustration at the incredibly weak results of the COP-15 negotiations. Last week, a closed-room group of delegates from Global North countries shocked Global South delegates and climate justice activists by pushing for a secretly-negotiated "deal" that would allow global temperatures to be allowed to rise by another 2 degrees Celsius - over the vehement protests of delegates from Africa and small island countries, argue that any increase larger than 1 degree will devastate and - in some instances - literally flood them. Then, in the past two days, the negotiations on a deal on REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) - which are being touted as the "success" of Copenhagen - have degenerated into an incredibly weak potential deal, in which immediate targets for deforestation limits would be dropped and no financial commitments from Global North countries would be made. These failings on the part of negotiators from the Global North have been met with protests - both planned and spontaneous - by youth activists as well as delegates from the Global South.
Crackdown in Copenhagen (Thanks, Zoran!)
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