The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- RIP, Parke Meek: Eames design team member, steampunk wizard, wunderkammer guardian
- Gizboingdo at CES
- Game-themed cupcake quiz
- DIY mosquito killing device
- Launching a Christmas tree with 32 large model rocket engines
- Hoof shoes
- Cocaine vaccine leads addicts to take 10 times more cocaine
- Super Mario Blocks computer icons
- Does noise help or hurt concentration?
- The ascendancy of the non-private person
- Robotic snake takes a swim
- Vatican agrees with Bruce Schneier on security for pope
- Backwards Beekeepers T-shirts
- Nanomotors and pizza tossing
- More Facebook privacy woes: rogue marketers can data-mine your info
- If only news organizations today were more like this '80s TV promo...
- Danish tourism board produces video marketing Denmark as a country with drunk women who have unprotected sex with random tourists
- Teen found after fleeing to hook up with 42-year-old woman he met in Warcraft
- Report: China sentences Tibetan filmmaker to 6 years for documentary on Tibetan refugees
- Software maker sues China for $2.2bn over Green Dam web filter
- Celebrity science gaffes
- My Dinner with Ollie (North's airplane)
- More on Bono's filesharing hypocrisy: Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge
- Missing patient found dead in hospital
- Bottled honey shuts down California airport
- Muslim head coverings banned at Boston pharmacy college
- Alma: Animated short is "equal parts Pixar and The Twilight Zone"
- Tommy Lee Jones built Great Wall of China, pyramids, according to Japanese TV ad
- Remote-controlling a car? Piloting an aerial drone? There's an iPhone app for that
- Philip K. Dick's estate threatens Google
| RIP, Parke Meek: Eames design team member, steampunk wizard, wunderkammer guardian Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:37 PM PST  (Image: Claes Andreasson, via American Public Media's "Weekend America" archives) I did not know him, but have peeked in the windows of that wonderful store many times. What sad news. I asked Eames Demetrios (director of the Eames Office, Chairman of the Board of the Eames Foundation which takes care of the Eames House) if he would like to share some thoughts with our readers on Mr. Meek's passing. Eames writes, I have known Parke all my life, so it is terribly hard to imagine the world without him—without knowing he is there to reminisce with, get an engagingly/irascibly direct comment from, or just to walk through his worlds of treasures. He told me he loved his time at the Eames Office because every day he came in, there was always some new project or task at hand: "you never knew what you were going to do," he said. And he always had that spirit of fun. People sometimes called him a curmudgeon, and you can almost see why, but he was always—even to the end—having way too much fun in life for that ever to be even close to the right word.Snip from the obituary in the Santa Monica local paper: Meek was born Jan. 1, 1924 in a small town in rural Indiana. During his youth, he would end up selling liquor out of the back of a taxi cab during prohibition, Bloch said, before moving on to the United States Marine Corps. While stationed at Guadalcanal, Meek was put in charge of a cannon at the young age of 18 because of his mastery of physics, able to aim and shoot better than his superiors.The entire obituary is a must-read: Famed Eames design team member dies (Santa Monica Daily Press) Weekend America produced this radio feature on Meek's Jadis antique store and prop shop in Santa Monica. The photo at the top of this blog post was featured in an accompanying image slideshow. When you enter Jadis, you see "a metallic replica of the robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi movie Metropolis flanked by model boats with big motorized flapping wings." Inside, there's all kinds of neat old lab equipment. A magical place, created by a fascinating man. Flickr user Mark Garland has a set of photos shot inside Jadis. |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 08:12 PM PST  Our pal Joel Johnson, formerly editor of Boing Boing Gadgets, just emailed me this snapshot from CES of our other pal, Brian Lam of Gizmodo, reppin' hard on the convention floor. Rob Beschizza and I had each planned to head out to Vegas for the yearly cattle roundup, but ended up not going. I'm happy we're represented after all. I think Brian is chewing gum in this photo. He doesn't know we're blogging it. Sssh! Don't tell him. You can still buy those sweet "Get Illuminated" Boing Boing/Gama Go t-shirts for $24, BTW. And you can read Joel and Brian's CES coverage here. |
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| Launching a Christmas tree with 32 large model rocket engines Posted: 06 Jan 2010 04:57 PM PST Gareth of Make Online says: "Oh my gawd, this is hysterical. These guys launched their Christmas tree on 32 rocket engines. The launch is glorious." |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 05:13 PM PST  Hoof shoes from Zagone Studios Turns out hoof shoes are making a comeback, but for humans. More examples: A Closer Look At The Hoof Shoe Trend: 5 Fashionable Or Freaky Hooves. My faves are the deer ones. |
| Cocaine vaccine leads addicts to take 10 times more cocaine Posted: 06 Jan 2010 04:14 PM PST PopSci: "TA-CD works by preventing cocaine from entering the brain, thus stopping the user from getting high. It does not, however, stop cravings, leading some test participants who received the vaccine to take 10 times as much cocaine in the hopes of overriding the vaccine and getting high, or to bankrupt themselves while trying to do so." |
| Super Mario Blocks computer icons Posted: 06 Jan 2010 03:57 PM PST |
| Does noise help or hurt concentration? Posted: 06 Jan 2010 03:07 PM PST For years, I've thought that low-level background noise can actually help concentration. Bart Kosko talks about this notion in his book Noise. There's also recent research suggesting that noise can improve cognitive performance in children with ADHD. However, physiologist Mark Andrews of the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine writes in the new issue of Scientific American Mind that noise can lead to stress which actually impairs learning and memory. Bottom line? When it comes to noise, YMMV. From SciAm: Several studies have indicated that stress resulting from ongoing white noise can induce the release of cortisol, a hormone that helps to restore homeostasis in the body after a bad experience. Excess cortisol impairs function in the prefrontal cortex—an emotional learning center that helps to regulate "executive" functions such as planning, reasoning and impulse control. Some recent evidence indicates that the prefrontal cortex also stores short-term memories. Changes to this region, therefore, may disrupt a person's capacity to think clearly and to retain information."How does background noise affect our concentration?" (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!) |
| The ascendancy of the non-private person Posted: 06 Jan 2010 01:49 PM PST  OK, I lied about no more wonky posts. Xeni's Facebook post reminded me of something. I want to float an idea about privacy as a commodity, vs. privacy as a right.Tiger Woods, described frequently as a "very private" person, was unable to keep his private life private. Why? Because he interacted with non-private people. The reason Kim Kardashian and the Jersey Shore denizens have risen to positions of prominence in popular culture is because they each epitomize the non-private person. They have nothing to hide, so nothing that becomes public knowledge can hurt them. Ms. Kardashian can be urinated on in a sex tape and actually be helped in terms of being a public figure. My own ability to be effective as a transgender rights activist is because there's nothing anyone could expose about me that would deter me from my activism. That gives me enormous power over anonymous haters who vent their impotent fury at me to no avail. Their own fear of exposure (loss of privacy) is their greatest weakness. What does this mean for you, dear reader? Read on. (images via WikiMedia Commons) Although the US government has taken steps to protect privacy as a right since Louis Brandeis formalized the concept in 1890, there is always a clash with commercial interests who view privacy as a commodity. What we have seen is that those who want privacy are going to have to pay a lot for it, a trend that will continue to trickle down from public figures to the general public. Gated "communities," "identity theft protection" rackets, etc. are symptoms of the commodification of privacy. At last year's Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, there was a lot of debate about industry self-regulation vs. government regulation. "Wireless Advertising Messaging" (WAM) is something you'll be hearing a lot more about in coming years. The Nexus phone introduced yesterday is the clearest sign that marketers know that the future of advertising is on the mobile web and through local search. Heng Xu, John Bagby, and Terence Melonas of Penn State presented a paper at PETS on whether Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPP) compliance should be by policy or by design. This great theoretical paper lays out a good summary of the right vs. commodity debate: "The first camp views privacy as a fundamental human right, like the right to liberty or life. Such fundamentalist position holds that privacy is tied to a cluster of rights, such as autonomy and dignity. The second camp holds privacy to be of instrumental rather than fundamental right; that is, the value of privacy comes because it sustains, promotes, and protects other things we value. In this view, privacy can be traded off because doing so will promote other values (e.g., personalization)." The question then becomes this: what is the value of our privacy, and for what are we willing to trade our privacy? What will we pay to keep it? We are already seeing a cottage industry for people who pay to DELETE F***ING EVERYTHING, such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo.com. Both were blocked by Facebook this week for violating their terms of service. This arms race is going to escalate as businesses continue to maximize effectiveness of their messaging through more and more personalized messages and technologies. The amount of money at stake is enormous, which means the rights at stake are enormous as well. Short of going off the grid, what do you think we should do to protect our right to privacy? Or if you see it as a commodity, what can we do to maximize its value so we can make more in trade (vs. bartering it to businesses like Facebook in exchange for using their service)? |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 12:58 PM PST It's almost creepy to watch. For comparison's sake, there's a video of a real meat-based grass snake swimming in a pool after the cut. (Thanks, Hugh Clare!) |
| Vatican agrees with Bruce Schneier on security for pope Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:28 AM PST Spotted on Bruce Schneier's blog, a note that the Vatican has acknowledged that "it was not realistic to think the Vatican could ensure 100% security for the Pope and that security guards appeared to have acted as quickly as possible... zero risk cannot be achieved." Schneier agrees: "This is particularly enlightened in comparison to the fears that somehow the President was endangered by people sneaking into a dinner with him." |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 11:02 AM PST  My friends Russell Bates (l) and Kirk Anderson (r) are modeling the new Backwards Beekeepers T-shirts, which are available for $15. Backwards Beekeepers is the name of the organic beekeeping club in Los Angeles I belong to. From the blog: We're a group of organic beekeepers in Los Angeles, quickly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. We're "Backwards" because we rely on observation and natural practices rather than pesticides and other chemicals to keep our bees thriving.Backwards Beekeepers T-shirts! |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 11:02 AM PST Nanoscientists at Australia's Monash University recently studied the physics of flying pizza dough. The data will be used to inform the development of tiny nanomtors. From Physorg: Advanced dough tossers can perform multiple tosses (tossing the dough repeatedly before it rests in the chef's hands). In multiple tossing, the scientists found that the optimal motion is a semi-elliptical trajectory, in which the disk flies through the air at an angle rather than flying perfectly flat. Multiple tossing is more complex, as it risks entering chaotic and chattering regimes, emphasizing the disk's sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Generally, dough tossers use the helical motion for the first toss, and change to a semi-elliptical motion for subsequent tosses."The Physics of Pizza Tossing" (Physorg, via Smithsonian) "The Behavior of Bouncing Disks and Pizza Tossing" (EPL) |
| More Facebook privacy woes: rogue marketers can data-mine your info Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:42 AM PST More on privacy problems posed by Facebook's recent changes: Wired reports that sneaky marketers could "take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected -- and upload those through a dummy account -- which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses." Using a scraping tool, the marketer could then turn that list into a rich set of marketing profiles, with "names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends." |
| If only news organizations today were more like this '80s TV promo... Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:39 AM PST The minute-long '80s-era promo for Milwaukee television station WITI contains everything needed to save the struggling news business. Jazzy theme music, manly mustaches, molester vans, foxy newsdames and clipboards galore! YouTube Video (from the archives of milwaukeetvmadman via Doug Lussenhop) |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:39 AM PST In this video a Danish mother talks about her one-night stand with a foreign tourist. "We met one and half years ago when you were on vacation here. We went back to my house and we ended up having sex," says Karen. It looks real, but Karen is a fictional character played by an actor. The video was produced by VisitDenmark - a tax funded tourist organization. Why would a tourist agency produce such a video? In Politiken, Dorte Kiilerich, CEO of VisitDenmark explains: Karen's story shows that Denmark is a free place with space for you to be who you want. The film is good exposure for Danish self-sufficient and dignified women. Politeken asked Ms. Kiilerich: "Why have you chosen to market Denmark as a country with drunk women who have unprotected sex with random tourists?" Kiilerich's answer: "That is not a story that I recognize. We're telling a nice and sweet story about a modern responsible woman, that lives in a free society and takes responsibility for her choices. And she uses a modern and social media."Danish women as tourist attractions (This all went down a few months ago, but I just read about it on Sociological Images) |
| Teen found after fleeing to hook up with 42-year-old woman he met in Warcraft Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:47 AM PST A 16-year-old boy in Ontario, Canada, says he met and fell in love with a 42-year Texas mother of four while playing World of Warcraft. Their chats were sexually explicit, she flew to Toronto, he snuck off there to meet her and escape in her rented car. He's home now, and reportedly playing WoW again. The response from parents and police seems remarkably mellow. Would things have been handled differently if genders/ages were reversed? |
| Report: China sentences Tibetan filmmaker to 6 years for documentary on Tibetan refugees Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:48 AM PST Reports are circulating today that Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been sentenced to six years in prison by the Chinese government for having produced "Leaving Fear Behind," a film about the plight of Tibetan refugees. An excerpt from that film, above. The Chinese government replaced Mr. Wangchen's attorney with a state-appointed lawyer earlier this year, a move condemned by Human Rights Watch as a "violation of China's criminal procedure law and its obligations under international human rights law, which guarantee criminal defendants the right to choose their own defense counsel and to meet with their counsel while in detention". Before he was removed from the case, Wangchen's attorney Li Dunyong said his client was tortured during interrogations, and sustained injuries that still caused him to suffer. Wangchen's wife, who lives in exile, say he has hepatitis and is that his basic medical needs are not being met in prison. More: Tibet.net, Phayul. Background at RSF. Previously: Tibetan documentary filmmaker faces trial in eastern Tibet for "inciting separatism." |
| Software maker sues China for $2.2bn over Green Dam web filter Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:14 AM PST CYBERsitter, LLC, the company that created the Internet filtering software of the same name, wants $2.2 billion in damages from China, two Chinese software makers and seven PC makers, according to an Informationweek report. The California-based company claims China's filtering project known as Green Dam included code copied from the CYBERsitter filtering program. No comment yet from the Chinese government. |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:10 AM PST The UK's Sense About Science charity surveyed some of last year's science-related boners pulled by celebrities. From New Scientist: Did you know that when you eat meat, it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? "That is a fact," according to the model and charity campaigner Heather Mills..."Politicians and celebrities shamed for science gaffes" (New Scientist) "Celebrities and Science 2009" (Sense About Science) |
| My Dinner with Ollie (North's airplane) Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:10 AM PST  High on a cliff overlooking the ocean near Quepos, El Avion was a lot like other restaurants we'd been to in Costa Rica, in that it consisted of tables spread out under a roof with nary an exterior wall to be found. Unlike those other restaurants, the center of El Avion's floor plan was taken up by the hulking carcass of an aging cargo plane. There was a bar inside the plane. And normally, this gimmick alone would have been enough to make me happy. Then we found out what used to be carried in there. I tell you what. I would not have thought that "Iran-Contra Affair" would make a great idea for a restaurant theme. But then, this is apparently why I'm a writer and not a successful restaurateur.
You're looking at the interior of a 1954 Fairchild C-123, specifically one of two such planes bought with the help of the CIA to run weapons (also purchased with the help of the CIA) to guerrillas in Nicaragua in the early 1980s. The whole scheme worked something like this: First, America sells weapons to Iran (a country under an arms embargo) as a means of softening them up and getting them to release American hostages. Second, the money from those sales is then funneled to Central America, where the people of Nicaragua had, in 1984, elected a socialist government that we didn't like. Third, opponents of that government use the money to buy planes and more weapons, which they then use to commit widely documented human-rights atrocities. Mumble mumble mumble. Profit. Wait, profit? Oh, yeah. See, everybody was adding markups along the way. Of the $16 million raised from selling arms to Iran, only $3.8 million made it to the Contras. Time magazine later reported that retired Major General Richard Secord and his Iranian- born partner, Albert Hakim—the men who actually sold the Contras the weapons—profited the most off the deals.
The whole thing came to light only when the other C-123 was shot down over Nicaragua and cargo handler Eugene H. Hasenfus parachuted to safety—in direct violation of CIA orders that he not carry a parachute—and was immediately arrested by the Nicaraguan government. I do not know what happened to that plane, but I doubt there is currently a bar in its belly. The airstrip used as an arms-dealing launchpad was in northern Costa Rica, and the owners of El Avion were able to buy their piece of history in 2001 for a mere $3000—not including the cost of taking it apart piece by piece, towing it to the Pacific, shipping it by boat to the port in Quepos, hauling it halfway up a mountain and resembling it on the site of the current restaurant. By now, you're probably wondering, "But Maggie, how was the food?" I'm happy to report that El Avion serves pretty tasty cuisine. I ordered the grilled tilapia, crusted with black pepper, the heat of which was cooled with a nice passion-fruit sauce. My husband had a seafood casserole—really a spicy coconut-milk broth studded with oysters and tiny purple octopuses, and served over rice. Educational and delicious!
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| More on Bono's filesharing hypocrisy: Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:50 AM PST Public Knowledge founder Gigi Sohn tackles Bono's recent NYT op-ed, in which the rock star suggested we follow China's lead on net-filtering technology to limit the scourge of file sharing. Ms. Sohn writes: Bono's "One" Ignorant Idea (Public Knowledge, via EFF) |
| Missing patient found dead in hospital Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:53 AM PST A 60-year-old man, missing for five days, was found dead in a doctor's waiting room at a hospital. From Daily Dispatch Online: It is alleged the man was seen by a nurse and a doctor on December 24, and five days later his decomposing body was found locked inside the room."Missing patient dead in doc's office" |
| Bottled honey shuts down California airport Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:52 AM PST A hazardous material crew and bomb squad were called to Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield when sharp eyed TSA spotted jars of honey in a passenger's luggage. The agents are apparently sharp-nosed, as well. From the news article: Two Transportation Security Administration officers were also treated and released from the hospital after being exposed to what were described as "fumes" from the bottles.Honey panic |
| Muslim head coverings banned at Boston pharmacy college Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:49 AM PST Clothing that obscures the face, namely face veils and burqas, are now banned on the campus of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Services. The ban comes after a Muslim alumnus (also the son of a professor) was charged with planning terrorist acts. In the lamest cover-your-ass quote ever, a college spokesperson said the ban ''is not directed to any group or individual. It applies to all students and faculty." |
| Alma: Animated short is "equal parts Pixar and The Twilight Zone" Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:43 AM PST "Alma" is a terrific five-minute animated film about a creepy doll shop. I watched it once, then called my 6-year-old daughter to watch it with me, and we watched it twice. I recommend the full screen version on Vimeo. Alma, by Rodrigo Blaas (Via Drawn!) |
| Tommy Lee Jones built Great Wall of China, pyramids, according to Japanese TV ad Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:25 AM PST Bet you didn't know that Tommy Lee Jones built the pyramids at Giza or the Great Wall of China! Thankfully, this recently-released Japanese television commercial for a sweetened, canned coffee beverage sets history straight. YouTube Video (via Danny Choo) |
| Remote-controlling a car? Piloting an aerial drone? There's an iPhone app for that Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:21 AM PST Two of the most interesting iPhone projects we've seen of late: one designed to remotely control an automobile, and another to wirelessly control a helicopter drone (via Tim O'Reilly). |
| Philip K. Dick's estate threatens Google Posted: 06 Jan 2010 09:22 AM PST Nexus One, the new cellphone from HTC and Google, is named in homage to the the Nexus series of androids in Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Andoids Dream of Electric Sheep," filmed as "Blade Runner." Dick's estate's response? It's threatened Google. Names can't be copyrighted, so the vague legal mutterings imply a trademark fight. As there are hundreds of live trademarks for the term "Nexus" -- one filed by Google last month! -- this'll be a fun one. |
Boing Boing reader Genise Schnitman says, "Parke Meek, the self-taught steampunk technical wizard who worked in the Eames office and was the curmudgeonly doyen of 
But the most absurd thing about Bono's endorsement of draconian copyright enforcement is that it undermines just about everything else he professes to stand for. Look at the activities and goals of | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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