Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

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The Latest from Boing Boing

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Gustaf Tenggren and the Genesis of the Golden Book Style

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 02:20 AM PST


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Just about all of us grew up with Little Golden Books. Some of the world's greatest illustrators worked for Western Publishing on the series- Feodor Rojankovsky, Mary Blair, Mel Crawford, Eloise Wilkin, Tibor Gergely, Richard Scarry and Alice & Martin Provensen, among others. But none were more responsible for the way the books looked than Gustaf Tenggren. Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, I've posted a massive illustrated article on a seminal book in Tenggren's career- "The Tenggren Tell It Again Book". In this book, Tenggren took elements from contemporary illustrators and merged them with his own Swedish folk heritage to create what went on to become the Golden Book style. Fantastic stuff!

Gustaf Tenggren and the Genesis of the Golden Book Style

Mass "overdose" planned in protest of Boots pharmacy sale of "homeopathic remedies"

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 01:42 AM PST

10:23, a pro-science, anti-homeopathy group, is planning an "overdose event" for Jan 30 at 10:23 AM UK time: "more than three hundred homeopathy sceptics nationwide will be taking part in a mass homeopathic 'overdose' in protest at Boots' continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them. Sceptics and consumer rights activists will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic 'pillules' to demonstrate that these 'remedies', prepared according to a long-discredited 18th century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills."

The 10:23 Event (via Derren Brown)

Previously:



Public Enemy's By the Time I Get to Arizona

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 10:06 PM PST

New clothes from store full of cooties, "butt flora," and microbes too gross for this headline

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 03:31 PM PST

When you go out and buy new clothing, it is a very good idea to wash those new garments before wearing them. Or, maybe wear hazmat-undies.

Miles O'Brien: This Week in Space

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:38 PM PST

Intrepid space and science reporter Miles O'Brien has come out with a new edition of "This Week In Space," his first new edition for 2010. Included in this episode...

The space nation awaits direction from President Obama, Endeavour gets ready to deliver a room with a view, how an abandoned McDonald's is being used to restore closeups of the Moon, a space telescope finds new planets, plus an interview with Hubble-Hugger-In-Chief John Grunsfeld.
Good stuff. Have a look, and there's more at Space Flight Now.

Previously:


Photo Essay: I Have Seen A Thousand Faces

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:37 PM PST


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I have known the rough-hewn face of time, tracing back to mend the frayed, unraveled thread of years. Though all reflection is an empty glass- replacing not one fragment dream, nor sealing off one avenue of fears.
Photo Essay: I Have Seen A Thousand Faces (Coronet/1949)

Photos of William Burroughs's belongings

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:45 PM PST

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In the 1970s, William S. Burroughs lived in New York City's Lower East Side in a former YMCA locker room, a windowless room affectionally referred to as The Bunker. Of course, Burroughs spent his later years in Lawrence, Kansas, but after his 1997 death, Burroughs's friend and landlord, avant-garde poet John Giorno kept the writer's Bunker bedroom intact. Photographer Peter Ross took a lovely series of photos of Uncle Bill's belongings. From an interview with Ross in The Morning News:
How did you choose what articles you wanted to photograph?

Most of the items just jumped out at me. How could I pull a book titled Medical Implications of Karate Blows out of a stack and not photograph it? Or the typewriter with his name on it? The blow darts and board that hang on the wall in his bedroom?

Well, how did you decide on the angle for each photograph--why the bottoms of the shoes, for example, instead of the tops?

I challenged myself to try and find what was unique to the items. I was looking for something historical and specific to their owner, and short of that I was pushing for an off-kilter angle or placement.

Shoes are just shoes, but only one man wore the holes into the bottoms of this pair. Just think of where these shoes have been, the conversations they have witnessed. These shoes likely have met many of my heroes of New York's 1970s and '80s culture.

"Burroughs" by Peter Ross (Thanks, Xeni!)

Diamond oceans on Uranus and Neptune?

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:15 PM PST

Old-school bOING bOING pal Jim Leftwich says:
A recent article in Nature Physics suggests there may be solid diamond icebergs floating in liquid diamond oceans on Uranus and Neptune. The article didn't mention whether there was also a diamond Titantic, along with diamond girl passenger wearing a diamond diamond.
"Diamond Oceans Possible on Uranus, Neptune"

Ralph Bakshi on Surviving in Tough Times

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 03:24 PM PST


When I first posted this video a little over a year ago, it flew like wildfire through the animation community. But I think it has something to say to all creative people.

I had the opportunity to interview the legendary Ralph Bakshi at the San Diego Comic Con. Ralph was in "pitch mode" talking a mile a minute about all the things he was working on at the time. I got the chance to get one question in, and Ralph swung like Babe Ruth and hit it out of the park. Every once in a while, I watch this video again to remind myself what it means to be an artist.

More on Ralph Bakshi at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive...
Ralph Bakshi at the Cartoon Hall of Fame
Bakshi on 2D vs 3D Animation
Bakshi Phone Doodles
RalphBakshi.com

Karen Finley's *very* NSFW "Tales of Taboo"

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:16 PM PST

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On June 15, 1998, the US Supreme Court declared that the National Endowment for the Arts had the right to take "into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public" when determining whether artists are worthy of NEA funding. That landmark decision was the key moment in a case filed by four artists -- Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes -- who lost their NEA funding because their work was deemed to be indecent. The artists sued the NEA for breach of promise and violation of their First Amendment rights, took it to the top, and lost. Eventually, the artists did get their grants reinstated, but the culture wars continued to rage and the NEA was essentially eviscerated. I was first exposed to Finley in 1986 through her infamous dance track, "Tales of Taboo," heard in this YouTube clip. The DJ at the alternative/punk/gay/freak club where I hung out would play it to either clear the dance floor, or fill it, depending on how many "bridge-and-tunnel" types had made the scene that night. NSFW. Listen with headphones. Trust me.

Karen Finley

"NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. KAREN FINLEY, ET AL."

iPhone Goes "Mod"

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 01:53 PM PST

swiphonemod2489.png It's four decades too late for the Summer of love, but aging hippies can relive their youth with a new iPhone app from my buddy, Larry Weinberg. He describes it thusly...
PhotoTropedelic uses advanced image processing techniques to analyze your ordinary photographs; translate the colors, textures, and lighting; then draw upon the colors and symbols of 60's Pop Art to produce boldly unique art.

Peter Max, eat your art out!
PhotoTropedelic for iPhone

HOWTO Read science-fiction

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 01:16 PM PST

On Tor.com, Jo Walton's stupendous essay on reading science fiction -- one of those moments where someone says something that seems to perfectly crystallize something you've been trying to explain for years without much success:
A reviewer wanted to make the zombies in Kelly Link's "Zombie Contingency Plans" (in the collection Magic For Beginners) into metaphors. They're not. They're actual zombies. They may also be metaphors, but their metaphorical function is secondary to the fact that they're actual zombies that want to eat your brains. Science fiction may be literalization of metaphor, it may be open to metaphorical, symbolic and even allegorical readings, but what's real within the story is real within the story, or there's no there there. I had this problem with one of the translators of my novel Tooth and Claw--he kept emailing me asking what things represented. I had to keep saying no, the characters really were dragons, and if they represented anything that was secondary to the reality of their dragon nature. He kept on and on, and I kept being polite but in the end I bit his head off--metaphorically, of course...

People have been writing science fiction for more than a century, and we've had more than eighty years of people writing science fiction and knowing what they were doing. The techniques of writing and reading it have developed in that time. Old things sometimes look very clunky, as if they're inventing the wheel--because they are. Modern SF assumes. It doesn't say "The red sun is high, the blue low because it was a binary system." So there's a double problem. People who read SF sometimes write SF that doesn't have enough surface to skitter over. Someone who doesn't have the skillset can't learn the skillset by reading it. And conversely, people who don't read SF and write it write horribly old fashioned clunky re-inventing the wheel stuff, because they don't know what needs explanation. They explain both too much and not enough, and end up with something that's just teeth-grindingly annoying for an SF reader to read.

SF reading protocols
Previously:


Secret "Jesus" Bible codes inscribed on American military weapons

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 03:18 PM PST

ABC News reports that high-powered rifle sights provided to the US Army and Marines by Michigan weapons maker Trijicon include coded references to Bible passages about Jesus Christ:
Jesus_gun.jpg The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes (ABC News)
Trijicon (corporate website)

Emergency room accidents: a cavalcade of winceworthy moments

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 12:40 PM PST

The South Florida Sun Sentinel's database of emergency room failures will induce instantaneous wincey click-trances in all but the hardest-hearted. Between the telegraph-style notes and the bizarre injuries, it's like reading demented haiku from the Itchy and Scratchy writing-team: HORSING AROUND W/ A FRIEND IN THE SHED CUT ARM ON A MACHETTE LACERATION LEFT FOREARM, SWALLOWED A BATTERY, STRUCK BY MAT BLOWN BY WIND AT STORE, PATIENT WITH ROUND TOY BALL IN EAR UNKNOWN AMOUNT OF TIME; FB REMOVED.

SEARCH Database: Injuries reported by emergency rooms (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: 365 Days -- Attempt #2 -- Day 8 -- Mmmmm.... IV Painkillers really help!, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from pmarkham's photostream)

Previously:


Kids' sleepovers with the dinosaurs in London's Natural History Museum

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 12:18 PM PST

OK, this is pretty awesome: groups of five or more kids and their grownups can sleep over at London's Natural History Museum once a month.
Dino Snores is suitable for children aged 8-11 years old. Accompanying adults are free. There must be a minimum of 5 children and 1 adult in your group.

Experience lots of thrilling activities and stalk the corridors as night descends and shrouds the huge hulking form of Tyrannosaurus rex in shadows.

Activities include:

* a torch-lit tour of some of our famous galleries including the Dinosaurs
* snuggling down at midnight after the fun in the shadow of our Central Hall Diplodocus skeleton for the night.

The morning after, tuck into breakfast and other fun activities before the Museum opens its doors to the public.

Dino Snores (Thanks, Zorca!)

(Image: Dinosaur Fossil @ Natural History Museum, London, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Darren Copley's photostream)

Previously:


I Have A Dream

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 12:02 PM PST

3D-printed math and science sculptures

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 11:56 AM PST


Bathsheba Grossman is a sculptor who uses cutting-edge technology to render math- and science-inspired shapes in three dimensions. You can buy 3D-printed laser-cut metal ones, or order them in plastic at lower costs from ShapeWays. That sound you hear is my jaw scraping my keyboard.

Bathsheba Sculpture - Math Models (Thanks, Nalo!)

Previously:


"I'm going to wake up as a nom nom"

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 11:56 AM PST

Manvszombies is another micro-blogged mini-fiction about the zombiecaust, but this time the protagonist is about as mindless as the victims. What more perfect medium to capture the thoughts of zombies? I'd put the odds of marketing stunt at 4/7. Cynical, me! [Thanks, Neo Xander De La Vega]

Haiti, HAARP, and conspiracy theorists

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:11 PM PST

Arthur Goldwag, a former BB guestblogger, is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.

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I was almost afraid to do it, because I knew it would get me upset. But with so much conspiracy-mongering already rife in the mainstream -- Pat Robertson and Haiti's deal with the devil (maybe Aricept would help?), Rush Limbaugh's insinuation that Obama is exploiting the catastrophe to burnish his creds with, in Limbaugh's words, "the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country" (lest his listeners forget that light skinned blacks are just as black as their darker-skinned confederates) -- I thought it behooved me to find out what the hard-core conspiracists are saying too. So I typed the words "Haiti" and "Conspiracy" into Google and watched to see what came up.

From the Ahrcanum blog (click here for full post):


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Is it amazing that the DR had no damage, or by intention?


What was HAARP up to on January 12, 1010? The official HAARP facility is located in Gakuna, Alaska. The conspiracy theory claims that HAARP could be used as directed-energy weapon, weather control, an earthquake induction device and/or for mind control.

Ahrcanum's tone is fairly agnostic, all things considered (he admits that earthquakes do occur naturally in the Caribbean Basin), but check out this comment from one of his readers:
Up here in edmonton, alberta, Canada...the clouds have been quite freakish, (Jan 12-14) and their all looking like waves going in the south east direction today like this> )))))))..... Whether HAARP did earthquake or not I don't know, BUT SOMETHING is going on and they are using the Ionishere as a Weapon....Interesting. If I darw a line froM Alaska HAARP to Haiti It seems to cut though edmonton.

and this one...
Did you notice how the US media is all over Haiti, as if Haiti is now a part of the USA ? When the big eathquake happened in Italy, the US didn't show this grand interest. Other earthquakes didn't interst the US this much either. And now, even the US army is there, allegedly distributing water, food, end medicine. Since when is that kind of help the army's job ?? Looks like an occupation to me ! Have you noticed that some "Haitians" wear neat, clean, fresh T-shirts with writings like "America", "Samsung", etc, already providing pro-US propaganda ? They may be sort of implants, maybe handed to some locals randomly, to get the propaganda machine going for international corporations. Diana Sawyer, Roberts, and Dr. Besser are there for days now, reporting non-stop, recruiting Americans into thinking that Haiti is "special" to the USA. "Special" it is indeed, as Haiti is going to be the next US colony. Remember, how a US coup ousted their president just some years ago ? The US has very special interests in that region. Economically, politically, and militarily. HAARP is capable of initiating anything, from earthquakes to rain, to draught. Nowadays, some countries will be "taken" by HAARP, not bombs. All a part of the New World Order conspiracy.
And here's this, from "Pair A Normal Guys Inc," posted on Now Public.com (click here).
While the loss of life and devestation in Haiti is unimaginable there may be a more hidden agenda behind this tragedy. Suppose this "natural disaster" been a weather weopan aimed at Cuba but came up short in it's delivery? The possibility of this being true is not far fetched or out-of-this-world in theory. Weather manipulation and weather warfare are not new concepts and certainly could be the choice of the powers that be to devastate an enemy with a cloak of Mother Nature's disguise to fall back on.
I like the idea that the New World Order is so powerful that it can cause the earth to tremble, but so inept that 1) It needs to resort to science fiction weaponry and disinformation disseminated via T-shirts to secure as militarily weak a target of conquest as Haiti, and 2) That though it hurls thunderbolts like Zeus, it has the eyesight of Mr. Magoo-it can't distinguish one Caribbean island from another.


HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is a joint scientific research project of the US Air Force and Navy, whose principle facilities are located in Gakona, Alaska (I don't get cable, but I understand that Jesse Ventura visited the site on his TV show). According to its home page (click here), it is:

A scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.


The HAARP program is committed to developing a world class ionospheric research facility consisting of:


* The Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high power transmitter facility operating in the High Frequency (HF) range. The IRI will be used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere for scientific study.


* A sophisticated suite of scientific (or diagnostic) instruments that will be used to observe the physical processes that occur in the excited region.


Observation of the processes resulting from the use of the IRI in a controlled manner will allow scientists to better understand processes that occur continuously under the natural stimulation of the sun.


Scientific instruments installed at the HAARP Observatory will be useful for a variety of continuing research efforts which do not involve the use of the IRI but are strictly passive. Among these studies include ionospheric characterization using satellite beacons, telescopic observation of the fine structure in the aurora, and documentation of long-term variations in the ozone layer.


They would say that, wouldn't they? If you're not a sheeple and you want to dig deeper, author and lecturer Jerry E. Smith's 1998 book Weather Warfare: The Military's Plan to Draft Mother Nature (click here for author's web page) is one place you might start.

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Starting with Nicola Tesla's earthquake machine of the 1890s I trace the possibility of "earthquakes on demand" from the development of a "tsunami bomb" during World War II (as revealed by documents recently declassified by the New Zealand government), through Project Faultless which caused a massive earthquake in the Nevada desert after a high yield atom bomb was intentionally detonated on a fault line, to evidences of human initiation of several major quakes and the 2004 Christmas tsunami with "scalar" or other electromagnetic waves.


Also included is an update on recent developments at HAARP..... The US Air Force insists that it has no interest in "controlling the weather" yet HAARP represents the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade of research and construction in a program whose avowed purpose is to modify the atmosphere. What, if any, is the difference between "modifying the atmosphere" and "controlling the weather"?

I often find myself quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald when I write about conspiracy theory, who said that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time." It's an ability that no explorer of the outer fringes of conspiracy theory can live without. One conspiracist will tell you that anthropogenic global warming is a fraud, a propaganda ploy manufactured by Al Gore and a consortium of disingenuous scientists to undermine US sovereignty and the free market and bring about the New World Order. Then another will tell you that New World Order scientists are already modifying the weather on a daily basis and even setting off earthquakes, not to mention streaming H1N1 across the sky in chemtrails, targeting weaker populations for extermination and altering our genes with bogus vaccines. They'll tell you that the Apollo moon landing was faked on a sound stage in Area 51-and also that Area 51 is where UFOs are being reversed engineered into super-secret weapons and spacecraft.

It can all get a little bit confusing.

Envy 15 competition winner

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 01:22 PM PST

It gives me great pleasure to announce that your submissions to our latest short fiction competition have earned Boing Boing the top spot at Google for the search term "literary travesties." We are all winners today.

Only one of you, however, gets the $1,800 Envy 15 laptop offered by HP. The theme was "Re-write a scene from one classic book in the incongruous literary style of another." This was insanely difficult to judge; more than ever, selecting a winner feels more like the rejection of countless brilliant efforts. After the jump, the victor and more favorites.

Prize Winner: This SF recast of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude gives it an unexpectedly poignant kick. Posted early, it became the standard against which new entries were continually weighed --until I realized that this meant author Miguel Esquirol had aced it.

Blind Zen Archer offers some Fear and Loathing in Northanger Abbey.


Selenographer renders Vladimir Nabokov's edit of Albert Camus' The Stranger


Agsone's No Country for Old Jeeves serves up an enduring image of Stephen Fry as Antoine Chigurh.


Making the implicit explicit in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan might be a parlor game, but it's rarely done with as much style as Dr. Moonfire.


Pyramid Head Louse's retelling of The Princess and the Pea can stand on one leg and explain its philosophy.


J.D. Salinger! I liked Ben Curnett's Catcher in the Sky and Jacquewsphoto's Romeo and Juliet best of all.

You can thank CC for The neuromancer's guide to the galaxy.

Comparanoid's Kurtz holds forth on the horror of inadequately-maintained Georgian dolls.

JML's Cthulolita is the loathe of my life.

Orwell! For Boba Fett Diop, it is christmas in 1984. Not so for Suburbanburn's Seuss 1984.

A Tolkien trilogy: Eangerwickett's Twilight offers a very well-to-do vampire and lmm227's Hobbit quotes The Raven -- it's not the last we'll hear of Poe. "Hells bells," said the Balrog, as an immediate prelude to a fall into the abyss.

Drono's Nadsat Little Prince is appropriately baffling, and he made a wonderful illustration to go with it.

Thevalidvictorian's wedding of Ayn Rand and Gilbert & Sullivan was reported to the moderators as awesome.

SavannahJFoley's Oliver Twist in the style of Chuck P. was the best of the Fight Clubbers!

Further reading: Anonymous's mashup of Ben Hur and Dr. Seuss; UKMella's Clockwork Zombie; Giant Robot Architect's trip up the garden path; and Nilchii's clever rendering of Oedipus in the style of John Gardner.

There were good 'stunt' entries, too: William Faulkner's Hamlet, a play in five words; House of Snapes; a new Eye of Argon; and the Gothic Hungry Caterpillar. Also: Ook!

Finally, Shad Boiling charms us with Goodnight Dune: history will recall our writhes.

Academy Award for virtual lighting tech developers

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 10:48 AM PST

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Light Stage is a special effects system for films that records how people and objects look when lit from every possible direction. That way, virtual versions of actors can be accurately "lit" to perfectly match the background set. You've probably seen the magic of Light Stage (and not realized it) in fils like Spider-Man 2, Peter Jackson's King Kong, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and many other films. The Light Stage systems was first developed by Paul Debevec, a brilliant graphics researcher at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies who I first met (and wrote about) when we were grad students at UC Berkeley in the 1990s. Now, Debevec, and his colleagues Tim Hawkins of LightStage LLC, John Monos of Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Mark Sagar of WETA Digital received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for their work. I'm really proud of Paul. I distinctly remember when he first blew my mind with a demonstration of a photorealistic virtual fly-through film he had made of UC Berkeley's Campanille tower from photos acquired using kite aerial photography. The technique was later used in The Matrix's "Bullet Time" sequences. Congratulations, Paul and team! More info and Paul's demo video from TED after the jump.






From the ICT press release:

Based on original research led by Debevec at the University of California at Berkeley and published at the 2000 SIGGRAPH conference, the Light Stage systems efficiently capture how an actor's face appears when lit from every possible lighting direction. From this captured imagery, specialized algorithms create realistic virtual renditions of the actor in the illumination of any location or set, faithfully reproducing the color, texture, shine, shading, and translucency of the actor's skin.


While the first Light Stage had just one spotlight which spiraled around on a wooden gantry, Light Stage 2 built at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies featured thirty bright strobe lights on a ten foot semicircular arm which rotated to capture detailed facial reflectance in just eight seconds. 


"Academy Award Honors Developers of USC ICT's Light Stage Technologies"

Get this: Namco's Muscle March breaks through to U.S. WiiWare

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 10:37 AM PST

Muscle March • WiiWare • Namco • www It was one of 2009's top game memes when video first emerged of its Japanese release, and now it's finally arrived: in a momentous occasion few thought we'd ever see (and even fewer genuinely hoped we would) -- Namco has just released Muscle March for download on U.S. Wiis. So how'd it turn out? Not surprisingly, pretty much exactly as you'd imagine from that video above. Strip away all the well-oiled bodywork and its a remarkably slim game of think-fast reaction time, a holdover from its arcade roots.

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The plot, so to speak, is simply to chase down the thief that's stolen your protein powder, be he a rogue football linebacker, alien Grey, or clownish/fey Nobunaga, striking whichever pose they choose to fit cleanly through the slapstick man-sized hole they leave in each subsequent wall.

It's an easier task at the caboose end of the muscled train, giving you plenty of time to anticipate each movement, but as each teammate drops out and leaves you alone to your task, the pace quickens to split second decisions, made even more difficult by last-minute feints.

mm02.jpg

Again indicative of its arcade origins, each game rarely lasts longer than a hot minute or two, and Namco has made no effort to provide depth beyond that: it simply strives to be the best scantily-clad-bodybuilder-breaking-through-walls game ever made, a glorious goal it's impossible to say it hasn't achieved.

New band: The Finches

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 10:21 AM PST

Spotted via metafilter, where poster Googly has it just about perfectly: "the best angular, atonal, postpunk, improvisational guitar I've heard in a while."

Urban prankster Mark Jenkins art show in Hollywood

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 10:47 AM PST

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One of my favorite prankster artists, Mark Jenkins, has a show of new work opening Thursday, January 21, at Carmichael Gallery in Hollywood, California. Regular BB readers will be familiar with Jenkins's terrific street installations involving cellophane tape babies, fake "living statues," and "sleeping" mannnequins. I think Mark's creativity, sense of humor, and quest for fun in his work is perhaps unparalleled in today's contemporary art scene. From Carmichael Gallery:
Markjenkinslondon2009 Works range from those in which the human is recast as a specialized object, such as Spokes, which features a tape cast sculpture of a girl fashioned to function as a bike, to those in which human posture is contorted to resemble that of another animal. Each piece is "an exploration of evolution within the realm of the absurd," says Jenkins...

Jenkins' process involves dry-casting everything from fire hydrants and toy ducks to baby dolls and people, often himself or his assistants, with box sealing tape, the latter often dressed to appear scarily life- like. When placed outside or slipped indoors, announced or otherwise, these sculptures have the ability to both camouflage into their surroundings and elicit spectacular amounts of attention from viewers.

Jenkins' works have been observed lounging atop billboards, slumped over on cafeteria tables, panhandling in the streets, emanating from street poles, drowning in bodies of water, clinging to statues, overturning street signs and more in locations such as Belgrade, Vienna, Washington D.C., London, Barcelona, New York, Moscow and Seoul.

Mark Jenkins

Previously:


Advisor: Should chatty cell phone users stick to social networking?

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 01:00 AM PST

2215069210_cdbf2b0bc5.jpgLast month, while waiting to get my typhoid vaccine for travel to Nepal at the immunization clinic in San Francisco, I found myself sitting across from a super chatty thirty-something year old woman with a cell phone. In the next 15 minutes, I learned more about this woman than I ever wanted to know, about ten times over. That's because she made multiple phone calls in which she had the following conversation, over and over, really frigging loud:

"Hey, it's ____, I'm getting my flu sot today, you know, because I work near kids, and because I also work around old people. I've been running around all day, sorry if I'm talking really fast, it's just been crazy and I had a lot of caffeine. But hey, do you want to come over for Christmas dinner? I totally understand if you already have plans, and if you don't end up coming over for Christmas dinner, you're welcome to come over for wine at my house tonight!"

When I went home and told Brian about it, he said: "She should stick to Twitter."

Which got me thinking — should she have stuck to Twitter, or is there still value in repeating the same information over and over by voice to give the semblance that the message is personalized? The fact that she was in a clinic waiting room made what she was doing super inappropriate. But her loud annoyingness aside, was her archaic method of inviting people over better than a Tweet, an Evite, a Facebook event, or a mass email?

My two cents is that it, for something as simple as inviting people over for drinks, an email or text message would have been enough — it would have saved her time, saved her friends time, and been easier to respond to. No matter how crazy advanced communication tech becomes, though, for me there will always be value in non-productive phone conversations with people whom I really care about.

Image via Samantha Celera's Flickr

Advisor is a column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email me at lisa [at] boingboing [dot] net.

Previously:


Have gills always been for breathing?

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 09:19 AM PST

Researchers studying the evolution of fish have produced evidence suggesting that gills may have evolved as a way to exchange ions with the water, rather than as a way to breathe. (Thanks, Mark Changizi!)

Monday morning science hoax

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 09:03 AM PST

This video looks like a freaky awesome kitchen chemistry experiment—but it's actually a trick. The cool thing? Even the trick has some nifty science going on behind it. Watch the video after the jump to find out what's really happening here.

ChemSpider Blog: A Well-Done Scientific Hoax Called 'Water Marbles'

(Thanks, Joanne Manaster!)

Newton and the apple: The original story

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 08:45 AM PST

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If you like biographies of great scientists and are intrigued by the challenge of parsing the baroque handwriting and spelling of 18th century English, today is your lucky day. The Royal Society has posted William Stukeley's handwritten 1752 manuscript for The Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life online. Even if you end up deciding to read the entire thing in a more legible typeface, the chance to see the original for free is pretty nifty.

The book includes Stukeley's account—as told to him by Newton—of the famous falling-apple-and-the-discovery-of-gravity story, which Scientific American says may not have been as apocryphal as its often made out to be.

"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea [sic], under the shade of some apple trees," Stukeley wrote. "[H]e told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."

Scientific American: Observations: What's the real story with Newton and the apple? See for yourself

Image courtesy Flickr user striatic, via CC

Leaked document: How the EU planned to force changes in Canada's copyright

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 08:41 AM PST

Michael Geist writes in with revolting news about the EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the EU's tactics on copyright: "The European Union and Canada are scheduled to resume negotiations on a free trade agreement with the EU hoping to pressure Canada into new IP and copyright reforms that include term extension, DMCA legislation, resale rights, and ISP liability. Now a negotiating strategy document has leaked revealing plans for increasing political pressure and dismissing a Canadian public consultation on copyright as nothing more than a 'tactic to confuse.'"
Now a second document has leaked, though it is not currently available online. The Wire Report reports that an EU document dated November 16, 2009, features candid comments about Canada and the EU strategy. The document, called a "Barrier Hymn Sheet" leaves little doubt about the EU's objective:

"Put pressure on Canada so that they take IPR issues seriously and remedy the many shortcomings of their IPR protection and enforcement regime..."

The document states that the trade negotiations are a "unique opportunity [for Canada] to upgrade its IPR regime despite local anti-IPR lobbying." It includes an assessment of recent copyright reform efforts, noting that two bills have died due to "political instability." The document adds that the copyright reform process was revived in 2009 with the national copyright consultation, but notes dismissively it may have been a "tactic to confuse."

EU's IP Negotiating Strategy With Canada Leaks: Calls 2009 Copyright Consult a "Tactic to Confuse" (Thanks, Michael!)
Previously:


What goes into making human robot girls, 1941

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 07:54 AM PST

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John Ptak, a dealer in rare science books, has a post about pamphlets published by The Ladies Home Journal from the mid 20th century that are "social engineering how-to's for youngish girls." He says "they'll make your teeth hurt."

Perhaps it was the ["How to Rate Another Date"] pamphlet that caused most of my teeth to fall out --- it is sheer and painful, offering virtually nothing to the young women reading it and practicing its morality play but gender obedience and servility.

"Did you give him all your attention?" "Did he run things?" "Did you give him a chance to impress you?" "Could you make him laugh?"  It isn't until the final rating question (#25) that we get to something that opened the possibility of a two-way interest in the relationship, but only barely: "Did you find you liked the same things?" It's sad, really. 

When I read some of this to my 17-year-old daughter, she just looked at me with an open mouth and eyebrow furrows:  it was simply beyond listening to, for her, and certainly not anywhere near worthy of a response. 

What Goes into Making Human Robot Girls, 1941

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