The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Ice cold outside, "hot ice" inside
• Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, dies at age 89
• Rudy Giuliani: "We have always been at war with Eastasia"
• Levitating Cat
• Terre Thaemlitz's (DJ Sprinkles) deep house album
• You will become mentally ill in 2013
• A-Team movie trailer
• Modernistic coffee table DIY from 1959
• Just look at these "excited clown" cupcakes
• Kick Ass, the trailer
• Chairs placed on streets of NYC, then tracked with GPS
• BBC to debut new "Wheelchair dancing" reality competition show
• "Cruel Kindness," a 1967 UK educational film about childhood obesity
• Crap Hound vintage clip art magazine seeks funding via Kickstarter
• Endangered animal benefit art show in L.A.
• Animal tries to gnaw through chicken scratch bin
• Unicorn Samurai Chaser
• Homeless people relocated out of Whister, Canada, ahead of Olympics
• Year in Robotics
• Surreal CG film about architecture
• Obama: Software is to blame for underpantsbomber attack
• Goat trauma: America's hidden tragedy
• Extended album art
• Prison guard: better job than journalist, according to "worst US jobs" list
• Team William's "You Look Familiar" music video
• Five-and-Dime of the Gods
• Lost: What?
• Pharmaceutical company funds documentary about over-eating
• Snow: It doesn't disprove global warming

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Ice cold outside, "hot ice" inside Posted: 08 Jan 2010 11:19 PM PST Sodium acetate is such a useful little chemical. Not only is it responsible for the awesome flavor of salt and vinegar potato chips, but it also produces the heat in those little reusable hand and foot warmers you can buy at outdoor stores. Plus—when it's just too damn cold outside and you'd rather spend the day indoors—the same reaction that keeps your fingers and toes toasty can also be used for fun at-home art projects. You can buy sodium acetate online, but all the real Cool Kids are making it themselves. Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user puroticorico, via CC

Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, dies at age 89 Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:39 PM PST Despite Gumby's positive demeanor, his origins stem from tragedy. When [Art] Clokey was 9, his father was killed in a car crash. He lived with his mother for a while, but when her second husband made her choose between him and her son, Clokey was sent to an orphanage. Fortunately, he was adopted by a good family. But Clokey wouldn't forget his father, whose head shape - characterized by a cowlick hairdo - would later provide the inspiration for Gumby's trademark lopsided head. Above: Clokey animating the 1956 pilot episode of The Gumby Show. In this episode, embedded below, Gumby travels to the moon. "He also used Robots and went in and out of books. Way ahead of his time. Art still has his child-like sense about him to this day," reads the caption for this photo on the website for Clokey's production company. Obituaries: sanluisobispo.com, latimes.com (thanks, Steve Silberman)

Rudy Giuliani: "We have always been at war with Eastasia" Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:03 PM PST "We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama," said the man who was mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001.

Levitating Cat Posted: 08 Jan 2010 03:54 PM PST Judges You Positively. YTMND's new meme has many. worthy. spinoffs.

Terre Thaemlitz's (DJ Sprinkles) deep house album Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:14 PM PST Bart Nagel photo My dear pal and bOING bOING Digital contributor Terre Thaemlitz is a transgenre / transgender computer musician who makes challenging electroacoustic music, glitchy folktronica, and deep house. But even as it makes your ass shake, Terre's work tears into heavy issues like gender identity, the human/machine interface, consumer culture, and queer politics. Terre moved from San Francisco to Tokyo almost ten years ago, so I was especially thrilled when I opened up this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian and saw a long rave review of his recent album, Midtown 120 Blues. Released by Mule Music, Midtown 120 Blues is the first full length album from DJ Sprinkles, Terre's alias when he spun at New York City underground gay clubs in the 1980s. (You can get tastes of the tracks here.) From the SFBG: The intellectual rigor of Thaemlitz's music doesn't compromise its pleasure. Most of Midtown 120 Blues' tracks hover around the 10-minute range, and none are vocal tracks. As a producer, Thaemlitz has explored as broad a range of styles as anyone, from ambient on the Instinct label (Tranquilizer, 1994, and Soil, 1995) to electroacoustic experiments on the Mille Plateaux label, but the dominating sound here is deep house. With sustained, liquid jazz chords stretching out over an unhurried 4/4 pulse and expertly manipulated flute samples, "Brenda's $20 Dilemma" is headphone music that, while not formally ambient, inspires reverie rather than dancing. More stylistically consistent than any other release Thaemlitz has had a hand in so far, Midtown topped dance music Web zine Resident Advisor's 2009 album poll -- something one imagines Thaemlitz might not be too comfortable with. Thaemlitz doesn't offer political messages for listeners to parse, preferring to insert ambiguities in the process of production itself. His 2000 release Fagjazz (Comatonse) is, as he described in an interview with the Advocate, about "the illusion of an acoustic improvisational jazz moment," arrived at through careful sequencing and zero instrumental virtuosity. Deep house's debt to jazz suggests one of many routes connecting these otherwise distinct projects. In attempting to corral all of the different positions Thaemlitz has occupied as a producer and DJ, we come around to the recognition that his true project is pushing against naturalizing claims about origins. "DJ Sprinkles finds some hyper-specific space for reverie in the house" (SFBG) DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues (Comatonse.com) Previously: Terre Thaemlitz: a complete musical archive Terre Thaemlitz: "How MAD's Dave Berg and Roger Kaputnik Introduced Me To Post-Modernity"

You will become mentally ill in 2013 Posted: 08 Jan 2010 03:09 PM PST Toronto is a lovely and tolerant city full of amazing resources for LGBT people and their allies. My many visits resulted in nothing but the fondest of memories. However, Toronto/Ontario taxpayers unwittingly harbor and nurture the most reactionary sexologists in the world. They are all clustered at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), formerly the Clarke Institute, nicknamed "Jurassic Clarke" for its antiquated views on sex and gender minorities. Now CAMH "experts" have set their sights on declaring many of you mentally disordered because of your sexual preferences. Do you prefer people who are "too fat," or "too skinny," or "too tall," or "too short"? Do you think transgender people are beautiful, or do you prefer to date disabled people? Do you get tingly watching sexy cartoons or prefer dressing up and roleplaying during sex? Do you like dating people who are "too old" or "too young" for you? Under the expanded definition of "paraphilia" which CAMH experts hope to codify in 2013, you will likely become a mentally ill paraphilic. This diagnosis could then be put in your medical records and other databases, with all the attendant joys of being declared mentally disordered. And if that diagnosis doesn't fit, there's always "video game addiction" and "internet addiction," both under discussion for inclusion in the APA's 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Read on, future sickos. Image: So i herd u liek web pr0n and exbawks. Images via Wikimedia Commons Let's start with "paraphilia." Currently led by U.S. imports Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard, Toronto's CAMH "experts" have weaseled their way into key positions in the government, in Toronto universities, in most sexology trade groups, as well as in the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Because the field of sexology commands little academic respect, it's a bit of an intellectual vacuum where a lot of mediocre minds find a home. Zucker and Blanchard have spent the last three decades setting the tone for the academic pathologization of transgender people, and now they are eyeing many of you. They're poised to extend their influence even further by broadly expanding the definition of "paraphilia." The concept of "paraphilia" was created in the 1920s to cover all criminal sexual interests. Homosexuality used to be classified as a paraphilia, but since sexology is just a bunch of politicians in labcoats, they eventually changed their minds about that. They also changed their minds about homosexuality being a mental disorder in 1973, but they kept paraphilia in place. Ray Blanchard, who refuses to publicly acknowledge his own sexuality, is leading the push to expand paraphilia. His new proposed definition classifies paraphilia as sexual preference for someone who is not "phenotypically normal." Blanchard and pals are also seeking to make a wide range of sexual interests into thoughtcrimes. You can be diagnosed even if you never act out your fantasies, but just think about them. Before, paraphilias were only diagnosed if they caused "clinical distress," but under the current definition, even those who have self-acceptance about their sexual interests can be diagnosed as mentally disordered. Did I mention that having "too much" or "too little" sex, or painful intercourse are also mental illnesses? These are usually diagnosed for women, where "paraphilia," according to these guys, afflicts men. They consider paraphilia an "erotic target location error," part of a range of "courtship disorders" that can occur in men. In 2008 Toronto taxpayers shelled out CDN$325,000 to pay Zucker and Blanchard for all their hard work pathologizing people worldwide, including the previously mentioned reparative therapy on gender-variant children. As for internet and video game addiction, there's a growing movement that questions the very concept of "addiction," which is a big problem for a place named the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. We argue that "addiction" is a metaphor that couches human habits in pseudo-medical language, and as Thomas Szasz says, the only reason to make the distinction between habit and addiction "is to persecute somebody." If you are living in Ontario, do not under any circumstance seek services at CAMH. Go to the Sherbourne Clinic or to The 519, or to many other better options that won't treat your interests as addiction and disease. And for the rest of you, enjoy the next three years while you're still legally sane. Time's up for psychiatry's bible (New Scientist)

A-Team movie trailer Posted: 08 Jan 2010 03:59 PM PST This is the trailer for the new A-Team movie, due out this summer. I will only be satisfied if this newfangled B.A. Baracus can also make a DIY bazooka that fires cabbages. Previously: Star Wars/A-Team intro mashup Boing Boing Boing Boing: Maybe you can hire the A-Team

Modernistic coffee table DIY from 1959 Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:28 PM PST Make this swell modernistic coffee table from plywood and ceramic tile by following the instructions on page 186 of the January 1959 issue of Popular Science.

Just look at these "excited clown" cupcakes Posted: 08 Jan 2010 01:49 PM PST Just look at them. Lifted from the excellent Cakewrecks blog. There's a larger size photo here, but, I mean, wow. You've been warned. To be clear, it is my understanding that these were not from an "adult" or "novelty" bakery, they are simply cupcakewrecks.

Kick Ass, the trailer Posted: 08 Jan 2010 02:34 PM PST Above: Trailer for Kick Ass, the new everyman-underwear-pervert/"real life superhero" movie, featuring the recently-Boinged Nic Cage. The film will open the annual SXSW festival in March. Kick Ass: official website. There's a NSFW "red band" trailer here. (via George Ruiz)

Chairs placed on streets of NYC, then tracked with GPS Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:30 PM PST Jeremy Adam Smith says: Blue Dot Studio put 25 of their chairs on the streets of Manhanttan, and then followed the chairs through a combination of GPS and video surveillance as people picked them up and took them home--which, by the way, the public could follow in real time on Twitter. Then they interviewed the chair-collectors. This is the film. I love the friendly use of hacked mobile and surveillance technologies to enhance the shared nature of urban experience, and the exploration of how today's brick-and-mortar cities are fused with real-time electronic interactions. I love the way these people talk about how the chairs intersect with their lives, and the passionate way they speak of "curb-mining" and upcycling the things they find on the city streets. Blu Dot Real Good Experiment

BBC to debut new "Wheelchair dancing" reality competition show Posted: 08 Jan 2010 12:59 PM PST Dancing on Wheels is the title of a new BBC reality TV show which features people dancing in wheelchairs with non-wheelchair-using partners. More on Disaboom blog.

"Cruel Kindness," a 1967 UK educational film about childhood obesity Posted: 08 Jan 2010 07:33 PM PST Jack Sargeant says: "The Wellcome Trust - Britain's largest and most unique medical archive - has a channel at YouTube where they are posting archival medical films and films about the archive. Titles you can watch include a 1917 documentary on War Neuroses and footage of a Henry Wellcome archeological dig." From the description for "Cruel Kindness," a 1967 UK educational film about childhood obesity This extremely enjoyable film, which contains excellent footage of late 1960's home life, attitudes to food and meal times, addresses obesity in children. A female GP narrates the story of three children who are overweight for their age stressing that although there may be some inherited causes of their obesity, it is mostly due to over-feeding on the part of the parents, what the GP calls a cruel kindness. One interesting thing about this film is that the most of the "obese" children in it look like average kids today. Cruel Kindness (1967)

Crap Hound vintage clip art magazine seeks funding via Kickstarter Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:33 PM PST Chloe Eudaly (proprietress of Reading Frenzy/Show & Tell Press) says: Crap Hound is the sporadically published vintage line art zine my friend Sean Tejaratchi edits and I publish. We have 3 issues slated for publication this year and are using Kickstarter to raise funds to get the first one to press. Kickstarter is a newish site (that you probably already know about) to raise funds for creative ventures. Our project is currently 17% funded with 35 days to go. I have the original edition of Crap Hound #4 from 1996 and it's fantastic. Crap Hound #4: Clowns, Devils & Bait!

Endangered animal benefit art show in L.A. Posted: 08 Jan 2010 01:24 PM PST Tonight in Los Angeles, a fantastic benefit art show for the world's endangered species opens at Thinkspace Gallery. Presented in collaboration with Born Free USA, the exhibition, titled "A Cry For Help," features works by BB faves Amy Sol, Liz McGrath, Tim Biskup, Travis Louie, Van Arno, and more than 100 other artists. Up through February 5, the exhibition is also viewable online. Twenty percent of proceeds will be donated to Born Free US. And if you're in the area this weekend, the gallery is also hosting animal adoptions and accepting donations of blankets, leashes, toys, and other stuff for animal shelters. Images above: left, Amy Sol's "Pika Mountain"; right, Tadaomi Shibuya's "Urei." "A Cry For Help" digital preview

Animal tries to gnaw through chicken scratch bin Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:34 PM PST What kind of nocturnal beast tried to chew its way into my plastic chicken feed bin? Close-ups after the jump.

Unicorn Samurai Chaser Posted: 08 Jan 2010 12:10 PM PST Here's a video of a fellow dressed as a unicorn, posing as a sword-wielding samurai. I don't know that I would like to be chased by him. (thanks, Jeff)

Homeless people relocated out of Whister, Canada, ahead of Olympics Posted: 08 Jan 2010 12:53 PM PST BB reader Jeremy Gruman says, "Last month, homeless people started showing up in droves in towns 100 miles or so outside of Vancouver. They had been given one-way bus tickets and were forced onto the busses. Local shelters in those communities have been completely overloaded. All so that the world can see a shiny and clean (and totally false) version of our city." Here's a related news story.

Year in Robotics Posted: 08 Jan 2010 04:03 PM PST Technology Review took a look back at the robotic breakthroughs of last year. Apparently, "During the past 12 months, robots got better at grasping, smiling, and avoiding angry humans." But have we gotten better at avoiding angry robots? The Year in Robotics

Surreal CG film about architecture Posted: 08 Jan 2010 11:35 AM PST BB mod Arkizzle points us to Alex Roman's magnificent animated short "The Third & The Seventh." Arkizzle says, "Its focus is architecture and space, and is entirely CG. His use of light, angle, colour, space and depth-of-field are just stunning..."

Obama: Software is to blame for underpantsbomber attack Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:33 AM PST Over at Wired Danger Room, Noah Schachtman reads through the lines in the White House underpantsbombing mea culpa report, and says, "crappy government software—and failure to use that software right—almost got 289 people killed in the botched Christmas day bombing." "Information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-sources analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not preventing from accessing it," the White House noted in its review of the incident. The problem was in the databases, and in the data-mining software. "Information technology within the CT [counterterrorism] community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enable analysts to highlight the relevant threat information." Previously: Yo dawg, I heard you like TSA security restrictions, so I put some security restrictions on top of your security restrictions Pantsbomber psyche laid bare in messageboard archives (corrected ... Do new post-pantsbomber TSA security directives kill inflight WiFi ... Word cloud of underwear-bomber's posts at Islamic forum Boing Boing TSA: tighter screening for flyers coming into USA from 14 ... Do new post-pantsbomber TSA security directives kill inflight WiFi ... TSA subpoenas, threatens two bloggers who published non-classified ...

Goat trauma: America's hidden tragedy Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:24 AM PST "It was early Spring. The snow had just melted. Brandon D. went out to play. While in his own backyard, he was attacked by a bloodthirsty roaming goat... Not even celebrities are safe. Po was riding her scooter when this goat came over the hill towards her. She tried to get away but the goat soon overpowered poor Po." Don't be a victim. Learn the True Facts about Goat Trauma. (via Quinn)

Extended album art Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:28 AM PST The cover to Pink Floyd's classic Animals album cover, explained at last! Bloop's entry into B3ta's extending album art challenge is a masterpiece. Spotted at Uncertain Times.

Prison guard: better job than journalist, according to "worst US jobs" list Posted: 08 Jan 2010 10:14 AM PST Prison guards have it better than newspaper reporters or photojournalists, according to a list of the 20 worst jobs in the US, based on criteria including "environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress." But what I love the most: also included at the bottom of the list are the job titles "roustabout" and "stevedore," which I admit I had to Google.

Team William's "You Look Familiar" music video Posted: 08 Jan 2010 05:15 PM PST The music video for Team William's "You Look Familiar" has animation with a Fleischer Bros' bounce. Some parts are NSFW. (Via Cartoon Brew)

Five-and-Dime of the Gods Posted: 08 Jan 2010 08:57 AM PST The Woolworths stores of England appear to be sited in ways that create precise geometrical patterns, which—as we know from the study of Stonehenge and other prehistoric sites—can only mean one thing: Aliens. For example, three Woolworths sites around Birmingham form an exact equilateral triangle (Wolverhampton, Lichfield and Birmingham stores) and if the base of the triangle is extended, it forms a 173.8 mile line linking the Conway and Luton stores. Despite the 173.8 mile distance involved, the Conway Woolworths store is only 40 feet off the exact line and the Luton site is within 30 feet. All four stores align with an accuracy of 0.05 per cent. One possible conclusion from this pinpoint accuracy is that the Woolworths tribal duty managers positioned the stores as a form of "landmark satnav". This allowed travellers to find their nearest outlet for sweets that could be acquired in any combination they desired. This could offer us a fascinating insight into what life was like in 2008 England, and we can't rule out that alien help was required to position stores this precisely and to offer the Ladybird clothing range at such low prices. Times Online: Aliens with a taste for pick-n-mix—Woolworths stores follow uncanny geometrical patterns (Thanks, Lee Billings!) Image courtesy Flickr user x-ray delta one, via CC

Lost: What? Posted: 08 Jan 2010 08:14 AM PST When even the storyteller doesn't know what's going on, that anxiety tends to leak into the dialog.

Pharmaceutical company funds documentary about over-eating Posted: 08 Jan 2010 06:29 AM PST GlaxoSmithKline is financing a documentary about over-eating, in the hopes that it will boost sales of Alli—their over-the-counter drug that blocks your body from absorbing some of the fat you eat. (Fun game: Read the recent Science Question from a Toddler on poop and see if you can guess what the common side-effects are.) Glaxo says they won't have control over the content of the film and won't even be pushing to make sure Alli gets mentioned. They simply want to educate Americans about the fact that they eat too much. The partners say they hope to emulate "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's celebrated 2006 documentary on climate change. It cost an estimated $1.5 million to produce and sold $50 million in tickets worldwide. Ms. Ferdinando summarized the film as "the 'Inconvenient Truth' of mindless eating," with the story taking a "behind-closed-doors, fly-on-the-wall" approach that highlights unhealthy relationships people have with food. Artistically, the problem I see here is that successful documentaries—and really documentaries in general—are usually about challenging popular perception and either making a case for a viewpoint that's counter to "common-sense" or informing people about a situation that's mostly being ignored. The thesis "Fat People Eat Too Much" does not exactly fit into that mold. New York Times: Glaxo, diet drug maker, to pay for film on eating Image courtesy Flickr user yukariryu, via CC

Snow: It doesn't disprove global warming Posted: 08 Jan 2010 05:49 AM PST It is easy to forget on a -13 morning such as this, but 2009 was one of the hottest years on record.

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