The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Working steampunk firearms
• Locus poll, 2009 edition
• Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the rich
• Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes
• Tahoe-LAFS: a P2P filesystem that lets you use the cloud without trusting it
• Cheshire Cat papercraft
• Photog sued for shooting a street that contained publicly funded art
• Back to the Future DeLorean optical illusion in glorious tape-o-vision 3D
• Uganda's "kill the gays" bill is also a "kill the straights" bill, and blames uncensored 'net
• An open letter to James Cameron from Papyrus
• Wait, you can buy USB Rootkits in SkyMall?
• Could China's antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" threaten global health?
• Start your weekend off right with dancing hexapod robots
• Font fussbudgets fume over use of Papyrus in Avatar subtitles
• Check out the sunglasses in this curious Danish sci-fi B-movie
• Touch Noir: Tribal Games & Mighty Boosh release The Mighty Decider for iPhone
• Stewart annihilates Boing Boing!
• TechCrunch fires writer who abused position
• Hackers swipe millions of dollars worth of carbon credit swaps
• Latvia will auction off former Soviet radar base ghost town
• Pardon Me? becomes infinitely recursive internet karaoke meme, with bunnies
• Customized vans as ephemeral art: photos by Joe Stevens
• Twitpics In Space
• Size matters in international diplomacy
• Hypermusician Tod Machover on music and the mind
• Science of gun duels
• Lootkit
• Hello Chainsaw
• Shanghai's Crackdown on... Pajamas

Working steampunk firearms Posted: 05 Feb 2010 11:01 PM PST Jamie sez, "Denver artist Jonathan Alberico has created two fully functional steam punk guns. Black Betty, a dual barrel pistol uses flash paper to shoot fire balls. Doris is a beastly air cannon that fires bouncey ball at high enough speeds to rip through boxes and even bounce back and catch the videographer in the hip! Both pieces have corresponding youtube clips of them in action." functional Steampunk rifle functional Steampunk gun 1 (Thanks, Jamie!) Previously: Steampunk Nerf guns - Boing Boing Steampunk Magazine #2 - Boing Boing Mass-produced gun as olde worlde heirloom - Boing Boing Steampunk Star Wars modded action figures -- woah! - Boing Boing Steampunk Justice League costumes - Boing Boing Steampunk PC from Datamancer: The Archbishop - Boing Boing Steampunk leather mask with a breathing tube beard Boing Boing

Locus poll, 2009 edition Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:56 PM PST It's time once again for the annual Locus Poll and Survey , where you, the readers of science fiction, get to vote for the best books and stories of the year.

Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the rich Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:46 PM PST Here's a fascinating profile on radical Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, an empiricist who says his research doesn't support the Chicago School efficient marketplace hypothesis. Instead, Bowles argues that the wealth inequality created by strict market economics creates inefficiencies because society has to devote so much effort to stopping the poor from expropriating the rich. He calls this "guard labor" and says that one in four Americans is employed to in the sector -- labor that could otherwise be used to increase the nation's wealth and progress. The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin. The problem, Bowles argues, is that too much guard labor sustains "illegitimate inequalities," creating a drag on the economy. All of the people in guard labor jobs could be doing something more productive with their time--perhaps starting their own businesses or helping to reduce the US trade deficit with China. Guard labor supports what one might call the beat-down economy. Community Action's Porter sees it all the time. "We have based almost everything we have done on the idea that we always need a part of our workforce that is marginalized--that we can call this group into action at any time, pay them nothing and they will do anything that needs to be done," she says. More discouraging, perhaps, is the statistical fact that a person born into this workforce has little chance of rising beyond it. Born Poor? (via MeFi) Previously: China's labor unrest worse than suspected - Boing Boing Which Side Are You On? Explaining what happened to labor in ... Questions from economics honors exam at Oberlin College Boing Boing EVE Online's economist speaks -- economics as an experimental ... Max Keiser's curmudgeonly TV economics show: the Oracle - Boing Boing Mackerel economics in prison - Boing Boing Economics of Malware - Boing Boing MP3s from "Economics of Open Content" conference - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Psychology, design and economics of slot-machines

Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:39 PM PST An Indian U of Maryland physics prof came up with these zero rupee notes that Indians can slip to officials who demand bribes. They've been wildly successful, with a total run over over 1,000,000 notes, and the reports from the field suggest that they shock grafters into honesty. Fifth Pillar is the NGO that produces the notes, and they're available for download in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen. Anand explained that a number of factors contribute to the success of the zero rupee notes in fighting corruption in India. First, bribery is a crime in India punishable with jail time. Corrupt officials seldom encounter resistance by ordinary people that they become scared when people have the courage to show their zero rupee notes, effectively making a strong statement condemning bribery. In addition, officials want to keep their jobs and are fearful about setting off disciplinary proceedings, not to mention risking going to jail. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization--that is, they are not alone in this fight. Paying Zero for Public Services Fifth Pillar) (via Kottke) Previously: Judges jailed for taking bribes from private juvie prisons to send ... Boing Boing: Canadian copyright czar forced to turn away industry ... MPAA bribing NYC cops to bust bootleg DVD sellers? - Boing Boing Boing Boing: No pensions for dirty Congresscritters WIPO's $50 million bribery scandal - Boing Boing Army officer charged with using Iraq $$ to pimp out her NJ crib ...

Tahoe-LAFS: a P2P filesystem that lets you use the cloud without trusting it Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:32 PM PST Zooko sez, Tahoe-LAFS is a p2p filesystem. You pool your spare hard drive space together with that of your friends. This forms a distributed filesystem which endures even if some of your friends' computers are unreachable. Everything is automatically encrypted, so backing up your files onto the distributed filesystem doesn't necessarily mean sharing the files with your friends. But, it is easy to share specific files or directories with specific friends. It comes with a command-line interface and a web interface. If you choose, you can allow remote HTTP clients to connect to the web interface. We've configured our test grid to do that so that you can take Tahoe-LAFS for a test drive just by clicking here. Please try it out and contribute bug reports! We are an all-volunteer project of Free Software hackers in the public interest. We need encouragement, love, and bug reports. This looks like some exciting stuff! From the announcement: In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have developed related projects to integrate it with other tools. These include frontends for Windows, Macintosh, JavaScript, and iPhone, and plugins for Hadoop, bzr, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. As of this release, contributors have added an Android frontend and a working read-only FUSE frontend. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [3]. We believe that the combination of erasure coding, strong encryption, Free/Open Source Software and careful engineering make Tahoe-LAFS safer than RAID, removable drive, tape, on-line backup or other Cloud storage systems. ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.6 (Thanks, Zooko!) (Image: King Cloud, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from akakumo's photostream) Previously: Grooveshark -- DRM-free P2P music -- pays uploaders - Boing Boing Verizon teaming up with P2P companies, Yale, to make file-sharing ... Boing Boing: Congress moving to criminalize P2P The military applications for P2P - Boing Boing Christian P2P: is it a sin? - Boing Boing P2P Spam Filter - Boing Boing

Cheshire Cat papercraft Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:22 PM PST Here's a lovely little Cheshire Cat papercraft to print and assemble, released a month before Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland adaptation hits screens. Exclusive! Cheshire Cat Paper Toy in Wonderland: (via Super Punch!) Previously: Alice in Waterland: disturbing vintage postcard from mermaid park ... Structure of the Sun papercraft Boing Boing Beautiful, immense papercraft castle Boing Boing Fractally-delicious Papercraft - Boing Boing Papercraft deep-sea creatures and submersibles from Japan Agency ... Quake papercraft - Boing Boing Papercraft Enigma machine to assemble at home - Boing Boing Alice in Wonderland journal - Boing Boing Tim Burton to direct Alice in Wonderland - Boing Boing Free reading of Alice in Wonderland - Boing Boing

Photog sued for shooting a street that contained publicly funded art Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:17 PM PST Ginger sez, " A Seattle man is being sued for taking photographs of public art--after he complied and destroyed his photos. The city commissioned the Dance Steps of Broadway more than 30 years ago, and used public funds to cover some costs. And the neighborhood quickly embraced it." But the artist claims that because the publicly funded art is copyrighted by him, people who violate his copyright must face the full might of the law. The photographer took some pictures of the street that incidentally reproduced part of the sculpture, and as far as the sculptor in concerned, that's illegal. I think the city needs to find some new art. Let them sell off the Dance Steps and use the money to commission art from a sculptor who won't demand that residents stop documenting their own streets. Mike Hipple took photos of those steps, and he's now being sued for the photos that earned him $60. "A large majority of the images were out of focus," Hipple said. "And you can see some of the dance steps, I think, maybe there were a handful of them (photos)." Out of focus or not, Jack Mackie, the man who sculpted the Dance Steps of Broadway sued Hipple, claiming the photographer side-stepped his copyright. "My agency, at that point, told me that they had complied with his wishes and had destroyed the images. There was no copies (sic) available," Hipple said. Man sued over photos of public art on Seattle street (Thanks, Ginger Red!) (Image: Komo News) Previously: San Francisco's secret public spaces that are privately owned ... Chicago's Bean sculpture is free to photograph, at last - Boing Boing

Back to the Future DeLorean optical illusion in glorious tape-o-vision 3D Posted: 05 Feb 2010 07:56 PM PST Boing Boing reader Matthew Vajen says, "My cousin Tony Pichotta created a Back to the Future optical illusion of a Dolorean on his basement wall using only painter's tape and elbow grease." Why, so he has! Video Link. As an aside: the talented Mr. Pichotta is an ad copywriter looking for a full-time job in Northeastern Ohio. If you are an agency with copy to be written, hook a mutant up.

Uganda's "kill the gays" bill is also a "kill the straights" bill, and blames uncensored 'net Posted: 05 Feb 2010 06:17 PM PST You don't have to be queer to deserve death under Uganda's proposed homophobic hate law. If you are a straight Ugandan citizen convicted more than once of failing to rat out your gay friends, you too can be executed by the state for "aggravated homosexuality," because those two strikes make you a "serial offender." walkingupnow points this out, and offers more analysis. The language of the bill itself is worth reading, and references the evil influence of "uncensored information technologies" as a corrupting factor. THE ANTI HOMOSEXUALITY BILL 2009 (PDF link). (via Jake Applebaum)

An open letter to James Cameron from Papyrus Posted: 05 Feb 2010 03:24 PM PST Following up on an earlier BB post about graphic designers mocking James Cameron's choice of typeface for the blue hippies' subtitles in Avatar: An Open Letter To James Cameron from Papyrus. (prttyshttydesign, thanks jpixl)

Wait, you can buy USB Rootkits in SkyMall? Posted: 05 Feb 2010 03:12 PM PST The hell? Who knew SkyMall sold USB rootkits? From the ad copy: "Easy To Use & Undetectable Total Computer Spying Tool Covertly Monitors Passwords, Chatting, Photos, Websites & More! Insert In USB, And In 5 Seconds Data Nano iBots Monitor All Computer Activity On ALL USER ACCOUNTS w/o Tell-Tale Hardware Left Behind. Covertly Record Everything A Person Does On A Computer. Remove Stealth iBot After 5 Seconds: No Hardware Left Behind. Undetectable By Most Anti-Spyware Applications. Store Up to 10,000 Screenshots & Virtually Unlimited Text. Total Surveillance - Record All Computer Activity - Even On Other User Accounts. Stealthbot (skymall.com, via Quinn Norton)

Could China's antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" threaten global health? Posted: 05 Feb 2010 02:59 PM PST Beware the coming onslaught of Chinese superbugs: "Studies in China show a 'frightening' increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA . There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and internation food sourcing."

Start your weekend off right with dancing hexapod robots Posted: 05 Feb 2010 02:26 PM PST They've got better moves than some people I know. (Via ScienceHack, one of my favorite sources for science videos of all types.)

Font fussbudgets fume over use of Papyrus in Avatar subtitles Posted: 05 Feb 2010 01:40 PM PST Allan Haley at the Fonts.com blog, on Avatar: "[W]hy are the sub titles for the Na'vi people, the alien protagonists of the film, set in Papyrus?" (via @shellen)

Check out the sunglasses in this curious Danish sci-fi B-movie Posted: 05 Feb 2010 01:39 PM PST Look at those sunglasses, just look at them. Here's some background on the über-outré 1992 cult cinema specimen from which the video clip above was snipped: A Blog Post Referencing The Title Which I Cannot Bring Myself To Type About The Movie That Must Be Seen To Be Believed. It really is hard to wrap your head around the fact this movie was made. More: IMDB, Wikipedia, and the director. A few additional video embeds after the jump. Does anyone know more about this film, or the actors who appeared in it? When I type WTF in this case, it's not rhetorical, I'm truly seeking answers. Video: "Female Creatures." Video: "Part 2 of 3" (no part 1 in this guy's upload series) And, "Part 3" (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Touch Noir: Tribal Games & Mighty Boosh release The Mighty Decider for iPhone Posted: 05 Feb 2010 01:17 PM PST Though Xeni and I still have yet to hold our crimp-off for local number one fan status, it's safe to say that pretty much everyone around these parts is a fan of cult TV/radio/theater supergroup The Mighty Boosh (who you've previously seen on Boing Boing Video here and here and here). You can imagine, then, my pleasant surprise to learn that the just-launched iPhone debut of SF indie devs Tribal Games is this: The Mighty Decider, an app created in partnership with the Booshes themselves. Though the App Store has no general lack of magic-8-ball-alikes, The Mighty Decider is quite clearly the only of its kind that lets you (as pictured above): coin flip with Boosh universe urban legend The Crack Fox, have your fortune told by freelance shaman Naboo the Enigma, spin a bottle of Bob Fossil's heady love potion, and, of course, seek advice from the cheerfully obtuse Moon. The Boosh's own Noel 'Vince Noir' Fielding created much of the artwork you see in the App, and all the cast provided their own voice work, including an all-too-familiar app-starting red curtain introduction, making it basically an essential digital bit of collectible Boosh fandom. The Mighty Decider is available in the App Store now [iTunes link], and is currently on sale for its introductory weekend. Previously: BB Video: Xeni with Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh (pt 1) (BB Video) Mighty Boosh, part 2: Crimpin' Ain't Easy (BB Video) Mighty Boosh, pt 3: Slashfic, Boosh books, Eleanor's NORAD link

Stewart annihilates Boing Boing! Posted: 05 Feb 2010 12:41 PM PST You so do not want to know what Jon Stewart did to us last night. [Current.com, NSFW]

TechCrunch fires writer who abused position Posted: 05 Feb 2010 12:30 PM PST Kudos to Mike Arrington for immediately disclosing his discovery that a young TechCrunch writer solicited expensive gifts from the startups on his beat. Unfortunately, the sacked 17-year old doesn't seem willing to accept much responsibility, writing that 'In some way or another, a line was crossed'. See, readers? There are good uses for the passive voice!

Hackers swipe millions of dollars worth of carbon credit swaps Posted: 05 Feb 2010 10:14 AM PST Via Wired: Der Spiegel reports that hackers obtained unauthorized access to online accounts where companies maintain carbon credits, and stole around $4 million worth of carbon credits. "At least seven out of 2,000 German firms that were targeted in the phishing scam fell for it. One of these unidentified firms reportedly lost $2.1 million in credits in the fraud."

Latvia will auction off former Soviet radar base ghost town Posted: 05 Feb 2010 09:54 AM PST Via HuffPo, news that the Baltic nation of Latvia will auction off a Soviet ghost town abandoned after the Russian military departed. The town, Skrunda-1 (map), centered around a now-abandoned radar base that was part of the Soviet early warning system. Auction starts today, starting bid $300,000. If I'm not mistaken, this is a Flickr set of images from this place.

Pardon Me? becomes infinitely recursive internet karaoke meme, with bunnies Posted: 05 Feb 2010 09:49 AM PST Thank you, Robert Popper. Previously: Pardon me?

Customized vans as ephemeral art: photos by Joe Stevens Posted: 05 Feb 2010 09:58 AM PST Vans and the Places they Were, by Joe Stevens, via Todd Lappin. Above (photo by Joe Stevens): "Tradesman with Candy Paint Stripes," Hollywood, California, Winter 2009. Let there be a large-format book, please!

Twitpics In Space Posted: 05 Feb 2010 09:13 AM PST That's an image of the Moon and Earth sent via Twitter on February 3rd by International Space Station astronaut Jose Hernandez. I've seen plenty of official space photos were equally breathtaking, but there's something about getting them from Twitter that makes this, and other photos sent by Hernandez and fellow astronaut Souichi Noguchi, feel more intimate. Suddenly, I'm not looking at A Very Important Photo from Space, it's a real picture taken by a real guy ... and, for a moment, the infinite out-there feels just a bit closer. Sin palabras, indeed, Astro_Jose. Slideshow with more great pics up at Io9.

Size matters in international diplomacy Posted: 05 Feb 2010 08:35 AM PST A respected Pakistani diplomat keeps getting rejected as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Why? Because his full name translates into Arabic as "Biggest dick." (Thanks, Samuel Rubenfeld!)

Hypermusician Tod Machover on music and the mind Posted: 05 Feb 2010 07:46 AM PST MIT Media Lab musician/inventor Tod Machover talks about the neuroscience of the musical experience, and using technology to close the loop between brain activity and what we're hearing in real time. In the near future, he says, you can imagine having the ability to "design a piece of music... that is exactly right for you, and only you at this particular moment." Tod Machover at Big Think

Science of gun duels Posted: 04 Feb 2010 10:40 PM PST In the gun duels of Hollywood Westerns, the one who draws first (usually the bad guy) always tends to lose. Why? Decades ago, Nobel laureate Niels Bohr claimed that would likely be the case in a real duel too because the cowboy who draws second would have a reactive advantage -- the person reacting "without thinking" moves quicker than the person who consciously draws first. Indeed, new research on the matter by University of Birmingham psychologist Andrew Welchman suggests that the brain's wiring evolved such that reactive movements are faster than voluntary ones. However, Welchman says that this doesn't mean the Hollywood cliche is based in reality. In experiments he ran where players competed by hitting a series of buttons rather than firing on one another, the reaction time -- the delay between a stimulus and execution of a response -- negated the reactive advantage. From New Scientist: There was a "reaction time"... delay of 200 milliseconds before the players started to respond to their opponent's actions. So although they moved faster, they never won. The only way the last guy to draw could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw. "It would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent," says Welchman. He thinks fast reactions evolved for avoiding unexpected danger, or for confrontations in which animals are in a face-off, and the second to move needs speed. Indeed, Welchman's "reactive" players hit the buttons less accurately than the "intentional" players, another reason fast reactions may not win gunfights. "Draw! The neuroscience behind Hollywood shoot-outs" Previously: Puzzle: three-way pistol duel - Boing Boing

Lootkit Posted: 05 Feb 2010 06:02 AM PST Sony, 'significantly exceeding expectations,' announces a profitable Q4. The gadgets division is leading the way. [NYT]

Hello Chainsaw Posted: 05 Feb 2010 05:36 AM PST Sent in by "Shelly" to Kitty Hell, spotted via Neatorama via Makezine via Wonderland.

Shanghai's Crackdown on... Pajamas Posted: 05 Feb 2010 05:26 AM PST As Beijing restricts online dissent and Urumqi clamps down on separatists, Shanghai is cracking down on... (wait for it)... pajama-wearing in public. The wearing of colorful, boldly-printed pajamas in public has been popular in the city for years, and well-documented on Flickr as well as National Geographic. But with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai just three months away, city officials have launched a public etiquette clampdown targeting the unseemly practice. The South China Morning Post reports that the city's Qiba neigborhood "has mobilized neighborhood committee officials and volunteers since July to talk people out of the habit of wearing pajamas in public." The article also consults Chinese sociologist Zhang Jiehai, who says pajama-wearing in public began "as a matter of practicality because people lived in cramped conditions with no clear line between public space and private place." Private pajama parties, anyone?

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