Monday, January 11, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Orson Welles on privacy, prescient remarks from 1955

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

Amy sez, "In 1955 Orson Welles created a BBC programme called Sketchbook. In this episode he is shockingly contemporary when he talks about passports, privacy and personal rights ending in his assertion that all members of the human race deserve to maintain their dignity and privacy. He also talks about about the role of police - interesting in light of recent invasions of privacy in the supposed interest of protecting citizens."
I wonder why it is that so many of us look like criminals in a police lineup when we have our pictures taken for a passport. I suppose it's the unconscious foreknowledge of the scrutiny to which our likeness will be subjected that gives us that hangdog, guilty look. Really, theoretically, a passport is supposed to be issued for our protection. But on how many frontiers in how many countries I've handed over my passport with all the emotions of an apprentice forger trying to fob off a five pound note on the Bank of England. Guilty conscience, I suppose ... Think of all of those forms we have to fill out, for example, you know what I mean, by police forms, we get them in hotels, on frontiers, in every country all over the world we're asked, state your sex, male or female, for example. Well obviously, I'm a male, I'm a man, why should I have to answer that? State your race and religion in block letters; well, now why should I have to confide my religion to the police? Frankly, I don't think anybody's race is anybody's business. I'm willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job, but it's the essence of our society that the policeman's job should be hard. He's there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that's an incidental part of his job. The free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman that the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal ...
Orson Welles on Privacy, the Passport and Personal Rights (Thanks, Amy!)

(Image: File:Orson_Welles_1937.jpg, Wikimedia Commons)

Previously:


HOWTO Run a meeting like Google

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:44 AM PST

BusinessWeek has a nice feature on Google's vice-president of search products, Marissa Mayer, who holds 70+ (apparently productive) meetings a week. I loathe meetings, to an entirely dysfunctional extent (as those who've worked with me can attest), but even I would consider attending one of Mayer's meetings. But not 70 of them.
1. Set a firm agenda.
Mayer requests a meeting agenda ahead of time that outlines what the participants want to discuss and the best way of using the allotted time. Agendas need to have flexibility, of course, but Mayer finds that agendas act as tools that force individuals to think about what they want to accomplish in meetings. It helps all those involved to focus on what they are really trying to achieve and how best to reach that goal.

2. Assign a note-taker.
A Google meeting features a lot of displays. On one wall, a projector displays the presentation, while right next to it, another projector shows the transcription of the meeting. (Yet another displays a 4-foot image of a ticking stopwatch.) Google executives are big believers in capturing an official set of notes, so inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be caught immediately.

Those who missed the meetings receive a copy of the notes. When people are trying to remember what decisions were made, in what direction the team is going, and what actions need to be taken, they can simply review the notes.

How to Run a Meeting Like Google (via O'Reilly Radar)
Previously:


What are your biopolitics?

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 03:45 AM PST

Are you a Left-wing Bioconservative? Perhaps you believe the assignment of rights should be based on species, rather than personhood and traits such as intelligence and capacity to feel. Maybe you're a Technoprogressive. Not sure? The handy overview by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) can familiarize you with some of the basic terms.

Biopolitics and bioethics will be two of the major driving forces in this century. Late last year, President Obama established the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. This replaces the President's Council on Bioethics created by President Bush in 2001. There's always a tug between fear-based bioethics, which focuses more on the dangers of new technology, and those who believe the dangers are outweighed by the potential benefits. What direction will Obama's appointees go? What direction will you go? Lot of other interesting goodies on that site.

Overview of Biopolitics (IEET)

Some recommended trans-themed films

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 02:49 AM PST

ma-vie.jpgHere are a few films I recommend based on my personal tastes. This is by no means exhaustive, inclusive, etc. Feel free to make further suggestions in the comments. Disclosure: Asterisks (*) mark films to which I have a connection.

Best of the best:

  • Ma vie en rose (A family struggles with a gender-variant child. The best scripted film to date, in my opinion)
  • Boys Don't Cry (True story of a trans man murdered in rural Nebraska. The second-best scripted film, in my opinion)
  • The Crying Game (An IRA soldier takes a British soldier hostage and later meets his girlfriend. Explores gender, race, nationality, misogyny)
  • Paris is Burning (Chronicles 90s New York ball culture. One of the best documentaries.)

Other great choices:



  • Different for Girls (Uptight greeting card employee meets former schoolmate in quirky romance)

  • Soldier's Girl* (True-life story about a trans showgirl and her US soldier boyfriend, who is murdered)

  • Transamerica* (Road movie about a trans woman and her long-lost son)

  • Prodigal Sons (Doc on trans woman who returns to her hometown and tries to reconcile with her troubled brother. Theatrical release in March)

  • Red Without Blue (doc on identical twins: one transitions, one doesn't)

  • XXY (Intersex youth struggles with gender identity)

Other documentaries worth a look:



  • Beautiful Boxer (documentary)

  • The Cockettes (documentary)

  • Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She* (documentary)

  • Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (documentary)

  • She's A Boy I Knew (documentary)

  • Southern Comfort (documentary)

  • Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen (documentary)

  • Transgeneration (documentary)

  • Transparent (documentary)

  • Wigstock: The Movie (documentary)

  • You Don't Know Dick: courageous hearts of transsexual men (documentary)

I linked as many as are available online below.


Recommended trans-themed films

Why Darwin was wrong about sexual selection

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 01:44 AM PST

bagemihl.jpgRunning out of time, so I am just going to post a few resources for those interested in biologists who research sexual variance in nature, and how non-procreative sex can be beneficial to a species, including humanity. This research challenges a number of assumptions about sexual selection that have been in place since Darwin wrote about them.

Cory blogged previously about my friend Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist at Stanford. Her book Evolution's Rainbow is an accessible overview.

I also recommend Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance, an extensive catalog of diverse sexual development and behavior. Their work challenges those who claim that non-procreative sexual behaviors are "maladaptive evolution" because they don't allow the individual to leave more offspring, but it's clear from many of our closest genetic relatives (especially bonobos) that sex is not just about reproduction. It is often about strengthening social bonds within groups, and that same-sex activity is an important part of that.

genial.jpgJoan has also been critical of Richard Dawkins' concept of the "The Selfish Gene." Her book The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness examines the assumptions behind this conept.

Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (Joan Roughgarden)

The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness (Joan Roughgarden)

Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Bruce Bagemihl)

Secret London: guide to the weird and wonderful secrets of London-town

Posted: 11 Jan 2010 01:13 AM PST

I've read plenty of London guidebooks since I moved here in 2003, but none have inspired me to go out and see my new hometown more than Secret London - an Unusual Guide, written by Rachel Howard and Bill Nash. This handsomely illustrated book has peeled back the covers on London for me, showing off this city's many oddments and wonders, curiosities that had been literally lurking right there on my daily walk to work, all unsuspected.

Some examples:

  • The cellars beneath the Viaduct Tavern in Newgate Street contain the last remaining cells from the notorious Newgate Prison, now used as beer-cellars (the staff will let you in if you ask nicely);
  • Somerset House's "Dead House," in the Strand is a grim and ancient tomb, practically next door to the post-office box where I've been getting my mail for seven years;
  • A rare surviving "sewer venting lamp" outside Charing Cross station, which lit up the streets of London with "firedamp" rising from the foetid Victorian cloaca;
  • Dennis Severs House, in Brick Lane (around the corner from our regular Sunday breakfast), a huge, mouldering row house formerly owned by a Canadian artist who filled it with junk antiques and curiosities, now open to the public;
  • The Mummy of Jimmy Garlick, in St James Garlickhythe Church in Garlick Hill -- a body that lay in state during the Great Fire was mummified by a trick of the great heat, which rested for centuries behind the church organ (exhibited to curiousity seekers for a few pennies), then moved to the hymnal cupboard, and finally located in dusty bell-tower, where he can be seen by appointment only;
  • A hidden pet cemetery in Hyde Park, where "hundreds of mildewed miniature headstones" mark the final resting places of dogs, cats, birds and a monkey;
  • The Crossbones Graveyard, a plague pit filled with 15,000 dead (including the local whores, who were called "punchable nuns" in the parlance of the day) that is now used as a bus-parking yard by Transport for London to the outrage of some Londoners, who stage a monthly memorial at the site at 7PM on the 23d of each month.
There are literally hundreds of incredible sights to see enumerated in Secret London, and my New Year's resolution is to get to as many of them as I can!

I picked up Secret London by the register at Clerkenwell Tales in London's Exmouth Market, near my office, where they have done an absolutely brilliant job of curating a display of quirky, interesting and beautiful books.

Secret London - an Unusual Guide

Previously:


Makers tile game - embeddable flashtoy edition

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 11:24 PM PST

Each installment in Tor.com's serialization of my latest novel Makers was accompanied by a Creative Commons licensed illustration from Idiots' Books, in the form of a tile that can be interlocked with previous tiles on all four sides. We're planning to release these as a limited-edition deck of cards in the future, and we've also been releasing little flashtoys that let you play with the tiles onscreen as they were released.

Now Tor has an embeddable version, courtesy of Malloc, which you can stick in your blog or wherever you choose! Here's the code:

Makers Tile Game, now embeddable!

Previously:


OVERTIME, a new Charlie Stross James Bond/Cthulhu thriller

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 11:13 PM PST

Tor.com's got a new Charlie Stross "Laundry" story, part of his series of stories wherein Cthulhu meets James Bond, as part of its Cthulhu month -- there's also a podcast of the story!

All bureaucracies obey certain iron laws, and one of the oldest is this: get your seasonal leave booked early, lest you be trampled in the rush.

I broke the rule this year, and now I'm paying the price. It's not my fault I failed to book my Christmas leave in time--I was in hospital and heavily sedated. But the ruthless cut and thrust of office politics makes no allowance for those who fall in the line of battle: "You should have foreseen your hospitalization and planned around it" said the memo from HR when I complained. They're quite right, and I've made a note to book in advance next time I'm about to be abducted by murderous cultists or enemy spies.

I briefly considered pulling an extended sickie, but Brenda from Admin has a heart of gold; she pointed out that if I volunteered as Night Duty Officer over the seasonal period I could not only claim triple pay and time off in lieu, I'd also be working three grades above my assigned role. For purposes of gaining experience points in the fast-track promotion game they've steering me onto, that's hard to beat. So here I am, in the office on Christmas Eve, playing bureaucratic Pokémon as the chilly rain drums on the roof.

Overtime

Podcast MP3

Previously:


David Pogue tries DRM-free ebooks, sells more books than with DRM-crippled ventures

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 11:10 PM PST

Tech writing superstar David Pogue writes about his experiment with DRM-free ebook publishing. He concludes that even though his DRM-free book was pirated all over the net, the sales were as high as he expected them to be, based on his previous books' sales. Pogue goes on to talk about what he's learned here -- that DRM-free isn't necessarily bad for sales -- and invites other publishers to try it out. One thing he badly misses, though, is the technical failure of DRM to prevent piracy. Pogue's previous, DRM-crippled ebooks were also pirated, after all, because DRM isn't hard to break (ebooks are vulnerable to a particularly fiendish technical attack called "re-typing"). So when Pogue puts DRM on his books, he only locks down the readers who are honest enough to pay for his stuff in the first place. The people who cheat and download without paying get the copies that the DRM has been removed from.
My publisher, O'Reilly, decided to try an experiment, offering one of my Windows books for sale as an unprotected PDF file.

After a year, we could compare the results with the previous year's sales.

The results? It was true. The thing was pirated to the skies. It's all over the Web now, ridiculously easy to download without paying.

The crazy thing was, sales of the book did not fall. In fact, sales rose slightly during that year.

That's not a perfect, all-variables-equal experiment, of course; any number of factors could explain the results. But for sure, it wasn't the disaster I'd feared.

Should e-Books Be Copy Protected? (Thanks, Hugh!)
Previously:


Helvetica tee is type-nerd-bait

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 10:59 PM PST

Slovak aviation cops sneak explosives into travellers' luggage, jailarity ensues

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 10:55 PM PST

The Slovak aviation cops decided to test their airport security by planting explosives on travellers without their knowledge, to see if they'd be spotted by the security screeners.

It gets better: the screeners only caught seven out of eight explosive-plants. The remaining one was left in the luggage of an Irish tourist, who was nabbed on his return to Dublin and thrown in jail.

Three days later, the Slovak cops contacted their Irish counterparts, who let the poor bastard out of jail, cordoned off his street, and had the bomb-squad remove the Slovak explosives.

Ludmila Stanova, spokeswoman for Slovakia's ministry of the interior, says Dublin airport was warned to expect a person carrying explosive samples, and that the passenger was also alerted after his arrival.

"He was supposed to wait for the police to take the sample from him," she told the BBC World Service...

On Tuesday morning the man's flat near Dublin city centre was cordoned off while bomb disposal experts removed the explosives for further examination.

The Irish Army said passengers had not been put in danger because the explosives were stable and not connected to any essential bomb parts.

The Slovak minister for the interior has expressed his government's "profound regret" to Mr Ahern.

Slovaks plant explosives on air traveller
Previously:


Bugs in the Arroyo: sf podcast about metal-eating bug apocalypse

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 10:03 PM PST

The latest installment of the excellent Tor.com science fiction story podcast is Steven Gould's "Bugs in the Arroyo," a sharp little tale about a world where alien, lethal metal-consuming bugs have rendered the American southwest uninhabitable except in the style of the pioneers. It's got heart, scientific speculation, and pulse-pounding adventure (as you'd expect from the author of the must-read Jumper).

Tor.com Story Podcast 004 - "Bugs in the Arroyo" by Steven Gould

MP3 Link

Tor.com Podcast Feed

Previously:



Tuper Tario Tros: Super Mario meets Tetris

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:56 PM PST


SwingSwing's Tuper Tario Tros. is a mashup of Super Mario Bros. with Tetris: hitting spacebar toggles between a challenging Tetris game (don't let the falling blocks squash Mario!) and a Super Mario level that's composed of the Tetris blocks you've dropped in Tetris mode. It's funny, clever, and way fun to play.

Tuper Tario Tros.

Previously:


Britain's Digital Economy Bill will cost ISPs £500M, knock 40K poor households offline

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:50 PM PST

In the UK, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has tabled his "Digital Economy Bill," a terrible piece of legislation that requires ISPs to police their customers on behalf of the music industry when the latter claims that its copyrights have been violated (no evidence necessary). The UK music industry blames piracy for £200 million in annual losses, and this is Mandelson's excuse for abridging human rights and fundamental justice in his witch-hunt for pirates.

But the government's own research shows that Mandelson's plans will cost the UK ISP industry £500 million to implement, and when these costs are added to each customer's bill (as they surely will be), the rise will be enough to knock an estimated 40,000 British families off the Internet.

What's more, the government's own Digital Inclusion research has shown that poor households with Internet access enjoy a substantially higher quality of life than their offline neighbours, thanks to a variety of factors, from low-cost online shopping, to savings through online utility billing, to better research tools for school-kids, job-seekers and people with health problems.

Half a billion pounds down the drain, 40,000 of Britain's most vulnerable families knocked offline, and for all that, there's no reason to believe that Mandelson's plan will do anything to reduce piracy.

Today, according to a new report, government ministers have admitted that the costs will amount to £500m ($799.2m).

ISPs say that issuing warnings will cost every customer £1.40 ($2.24) and otherwise meddling with accounts at the behest of the music industry will add £25 ($40) total to an annual subscription.

Worryingly, ministers say that this extra cost will force 40,000 UK households offline, with BT's John Petter calling the plans "collective punishment that goes against natural justice."

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said that it is "grossly unfair" for the government to force all broadband customers to foot the bill, and noted that forcing tens of thousands offline will go against government targets of increasing Internet take-up among the most disadvantaged communities.

Piracy Surcharge Set To Force 40,000 Households Offline
Previously:


If HP Lovecraft wrote C manuals

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:40 PM PST

I can't say that it made me a better programmer, but this mashup of Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie's classic "The C Programming Language" with the elder horrors of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos has alerted me to the urgent problem of inadvertent dimensional rifts that may be opened through poor programming practice:

And yet I saw them in a limitless stream- flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating- sorting themselves inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. Their croaking, baying voices called out in the hideous language of the Old Ones:

void Rlyeh
(int mene[], int wgah, int nagl) {
int Ia, fhtagn;
if (wgah>=nagl) return;
swap (mene,wgah,(wgah+nagl)/2);
fhtagn = wgah;
for (Ia=wgah+1; Ia<=nagl; Ia++)
if (mene[Ia] swap (mene,++fhtagn,Ia);
swap (mene,wgah,fhtagn);
Rlyeh (mene,wgah,fhtagn-1);
Rlyeh (mene,fhtagn+1,nagl);

} // PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULHU!

The C Programming Language (via JWZ)
Previously:


Hilarious Microsoft ad: "Office 2010: The Movie"

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 09:33 PM PST

Microsoft's ad agency Traffik/@radical.media produced this trailer for a godawful thriller based on Office 2010, a kind of 24 meets Enemy of the State thing. As a short comic film, it's a real success -- I laughed aloud at least twice -- but I'm not sure about its value as an advertisement. The humor is in-jokey, aimed at people who already know pretty much everything they need to know about Microsoft and its products and who tend to have their minds made up already (I haven't used Office since switching to the excellent OpenOffice.org years ago, and haven't missed it once; most of the Office users I know upgrade when they get a new version gratis with a new PC). So I suppose that this thing is meant to alert avid Office users to the existence of Office 2010, an hypothesis that is further borne out by the absence of any product info in the ad.

Still, if someone produced a video this funny for the next Ubuntu release, and managed to work in a couple of actual compelling sales messages aimed at proprietary OS users, I'd applaud.

Office 2010: The Movie

Previously:
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

System Lord Obama

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 05:54 PM PST

systemlordobama.jpg Designers make eyes 'pop' by whitening the whites, but sometimes the results just look odd--especially if the source image is an arty sort of thing. So I wonder if this unflattering shot of President Obama betrays a measure of shoop--if not quite so much as granted to System Lord Condoleezza Rice--or is just a trick of the light. The close-up is a cellphone photo of the mag itself, on which I superimposed a thumbnail of it from Ebony's website.

Review: Energizer Night Strike LED flashlights

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 03:19 PM PST

energizernightstrike.jpg Energizer's rugged Night Strike LED flashlights, available in "Compact" and "Swivel" editions, offer 40 and 100 lumens respectively from double-AA batteries. Apart from white light, each waterproof design has multiple colored LEDs and can survive a claimed 10' drop.

The smaller model, light enough to clip onto the bill of a baseball cap, has green, red and blue LED lights, eight hours of runtime from a single lithium battery, and a "find me" setting that flashes the green LED once every half-second.

The larger model also has an ultraviolet light, a swiveling head, and can run on one or two AA batteries. A three-position lever switches between UV, visible spectra, and a 'locked' position, which prevents it from being turned on or off.

The compact model is powerful and feels much more rugged than most miniature flashlights. The swivel model's lever and size makes that version relatively unweildy, but it's far brighter and no more pricey. Both offer features that everyday users won't ever need, at considerable expense--$80 each--so they're best considered as flashlight 'tools' for those with a real need for the extra colors or durability. For the rest of us, there's just no reason to get them, at that price, unless you're dying for the looks.

Wendy Carlos and color perception

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 01:41 PM PST

andy-gilmore.jpgIn addition to being one of the most historically significant pioneers in electronic music, Wendy Carlos is fascinated with how people see and hear. I am, too. She has been conducting experiments on color perception for over 50 years. Wendy created a cool little red/green color lightbox and a series of pages that show how two monochrome images can create full-color images when combined. She explains the origins of her interests:
Interestingly enough, most primates which evolved in Africa, Europe and Asia and environs posses a similar wide range as ours, while those which evolved later in "The New World" of the Americas usually have the narrower range of human color deficiency. The technical distinction is between: "trichromats (human and old-world primates)" and "dichromats (new-world primates and the common human color deficiencies)." Anyway, I built a lot of amusing devices way back in grade-school that allowed me to tinker with mixing various colors, both with paints (subtractive mixing of: magenta, yellow and cyan) and with colored lights (additive mixing of: red, green and blue). I read everything on color I could get my hands on, and with many years of more or less scientific experimentation, I thought I knew a bit about the subject. But I was wrong.
Experiments in Color Vision (Wendy Carlos)

Wendy's music (recommended: 'Tron' and 'A Clockwork Orange' soundtracks, Switched-On Bach, and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer)

Image: Another amazing Andy Gilmore design via bridbird.com.

The Americanization of "mental illness"

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 08:55 AM PST

watters.jpgDuring my guestblogging stint, I have mentioned a couple of American expats who exported their problematic conceptions of "mental illness" all over the world from their base in Toronto. Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard are egregious examples of this problem, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of the most important political issues of the 21st century, but it is one of the most difficult for both practitioners and the general public to step back and see in its historical and geopolitical context. It involves challenging some of the most deeply held beliefs about how the world works.

Today, the New York Times has an excellent introduction to the concept, by Ethan Watters, author of Therapy's Delusions. It's a good overview of his upcoming book. Quoth Ethan:

In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill -- doctors or shamans or priests -- inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. Because the troubled mind has been influenced by healers of diverse religious and scientific persuasions, the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another. That is until recently.
The Americanization of Mental Illness (article)

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (book)

Palm CEO: "I've never used an iPhone"

Posted: 10 Jan 2010 06:06 AM PST

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein says he's never used an iPhone. Interviewer Kara Swisher didn't believe him, but it hardly matters. If it's a joke, he's asking people not to take him seriously. And if it's true, he's asking people not to take him seriously.
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