Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread: lost comedy magic special resurfaces on YouTube

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 02:37 AM PST

A long-lost Penn and Teller special, "Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread," has resurfaced on YouTube in four parts. Get it while you can! P&T are hustling magicians who find themselves embroiled in a shadowy mystery when the men in black call them in for a consultation. There's magic Marx-Bros-esque shenanigans, grifter humor, and bad eighties hair. It's some vintage funny conspiracy theory stuff -- look for guest appearances from James Randi, Whodini, and Andy Warhol! Man, I want this on DVD.

Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread (Thanks, Tom!)

Previously:


Handsome booze packaging

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:42 PM PST


I know nothing about Bitter Sisters' cocktail mixes -- I don't drink hardly at all (puts me straight to sleep) and for all I know, this stuff tastes like gasoline. But the new packaging, designed by Shane Crawford, tickles my desiderata bone. Sure is purdy.

Bitter Sisters Cocktail Mixers

Previously:


The Prisoner viewable online

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 09:59 PM PST

Wikipedia En F F9 Prisoner Sm Uploads Prisoner
I didn't watch AMC's remake of The Prisoner when it aired last November, but I was delighted to see that all 17 episodes of the original 1967-1968 British series are still viewable in full for free on the AMC site. If JG Ballard wrote a TV series, I'd imagine it would have been something like The Prisoner. For those who aren't hip to it yet, the show is a trippy psychological drama about a former spy held captive in a mysterious resort-like prison. The Prisoner video player (AMC, apologies if non-US viewers are shut out)

Youthful harmonica prodigies have the blues

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:23 AM PST

Murray sez, "I recently launched a podcast at the UK-based harmonica website www.harpsurgery.com. The episode here features five young players aged 14-18 (with one 22-year-old to mess up our average) who are playing WAY beyond their years... and in some cases, pushing harmonica-playing into dark scary places where it was never meant to go. The podcast is a little ragged but the playing is great. I thought it pertinent to send this through after Roger Daltrey's shabby harp solo at last night's Super Bowl show. Any one of these kids could destroy Roger Daltrey with a single fog-horn like blast from their instrument. All he'd leave behind is a smoking pair of hush puppies."

Damn skippy: these kids are honkin' and smokin'.

Harmonica Podcast: The Kids Are Alright

Alternative link

MP3 link

(Thanks, Murray!)


Beautiful Japanese gramophones

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 09:43 PM PST

Alan sez, "A Japanese company is producing gramophones with natural touches such as bamboo needles."

The player is produced by world-class hobbyist supplier Gakken, and the quality shows. This gramophone supports all record sizes, features speed and tone adjustment, and even lets you record music! No file formats to worry about, no batteries to replace, and the warm, nostalgic sound of analog - this just might be the perfect music player.
Gakken Premium Gramophone (Thanks, Alan!)
Previously:


Iceland's paper of record bans linking

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 09:40 PM PST

Morgunblaðið, Iceland's oldest newspaper and most-visited website (now co-edited by the former prime minister and head of the central bank) has just announced an anti "deep linking" policy saying that Icelanders aren't allowed to link to individual pages on the site, only the front door. Which is to say, the people of Iceland can no longer talk about any news online unless it happens to still be on the front page of the newspaper. Ah, there's the commitment to public service that makes journalism so critical to a free society! (Thanks, Halli!)

Hipster puppies

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 07:58 PM PST

Mt. Semantics

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 06:39 PM PST

Mount Everest may be the tallest mountain on Earth, but that's only if you're measuring from sea level. Thanks to the curvature of the planet, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the highest if you're measuring from the center of the Earth. In fact, by this system, Everest comes in fifth. (Via Chris Pasco-Pranger)

Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition, March 12-14 in Emeryville, CA

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 07:05 PM PST

never.jpg

typeth.jpg The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition takes place March 12-14 in Emeryville, CA. Organizers promise "the best elements of traditional science fiction and fantasy conventions, [combined] with the passion, ingenuity, and hands-on workshops of Maker events, in a steam-powered, neo-Victorian setting that spans the 1830s through the early 1910s, from the cultured salons of gaslit London to the rugged coast of San Francisco." Sure sounds fun. I'm delighted to see a number of folks we've covered on Boing Boing before, including Jon Sarriugarte, Kimric Smythe, and The Neverwas Haul Crew in the "kinetics" portion of the event.

[ Image: Neverwas Haul, photo by Redteam. ]

Previously:

Previously:


Standard vaccine injections don't work as well for the obese

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 06:32 PM PST

Standard vaccine injections, done with a 1-in.-long needle, aren't as effective in obese patients. Instead, they need a longer needle to get the same level of immune response. Researchers aren't sure why, but it's possible that fat prevents shorter needles from delivering the vaccine directly into muscle, where it has better access to immune cells.(Via Ivan Oransky.)

Energy use and your food

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 06:20 PM PST

The whole American food system, from farm to fork, accounts for about 10% of the energy we use in this country. Of that, the largest single portion, 32%, is the energy involved in household food storage and cooking.

Put it another way: If we reduced agricultural energy use by 5%, nationwide, we'd save about 20 trillion British Thermal Units of energy a year. Them's no small potatoes.

But if just 5% of American households got a more efficient refrigerator, we'd save 54 trillion BTU.

Context: I'm spending today and tomorrow at a conference on energy efficiency in agriculture, put on by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Those stats come from a presentation by Martin Heller, a researcher with the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems.

Ugly furniture

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 06:19 PM PST

Video Link. I sneer at your loveseat! (via Dangerous Minds, thanks, Tara McGinley)

PopSci article on "mind reading"

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 01:34 PM PST

I wrote an article in the February issue of PopSci about visual cortex neuroscientists who are figuring out how to read our thoughts.

Battle of the Deathburgers: Heart Attack Grill sues Heart Stoppers Sports Grill

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 02:08 PM PST

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The owner of the Heart Attack Grill in Arizona, which offers a "quadruple bypass burger," is suing the owner of the Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Florida. Both businesses are "heart-attack/medical-themed," with "sexy nurse waitresses." Both serve obscenely large stacked hamburgers, and side dishes of similar nutritional content. At the Heart Attack Grill, there's a scale over in the corner, and if you weigh more than 350 pounds you eat for free. More: Phoenix New Times, WSJ law blog, WSJ Health blog.

The food and the concept may be repulsive to many (ok screw it, by "many" I mean "me"), but what gets me the most is the Sad Sexy Nurse waitress, at far right in the 'shopped image above, photo courtesy of the Florida ABC affiliate TV station WPBF. Sexy nurse, why you so sad?

Incidentally, WPBF-TV (=stands for "West Palm Beach Florida") is pretty rockin'. As I publish this blog post, their top headline is "Elderly Man Accidentally Shoots Self Outside Gun Store: 80-Year-Old Airlifted To Hospital."

(via Veggie Grill, which is totally awesome.)

FBI wants ISPs to retain your web surfing records for 2 years

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 12:28 PM PST

The FBI wants ISPs to keep tabs on which websites users visit, and retain those logs for two years. FBI Director Robert Mueller wants providers to store customers' "origin and destination information" to help in child porn and other felony investigations, said a bureau attorney at a recent federal task force meeting.

Sony Pictures layoffs explained

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 12:07 PM PST

Fred from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Paul Sweeting, one of the smartest analysts covering Hollywood's collision with the Internet, does a great job reminding us of the real reasons behind the recent spate of layoffs at Sony Pictures. 'Hitting the snooze button when the alarm goes off doesn't mean that what happens in the meantime is beyond your control. It means you're asleep.'"
The shift in consumer behavior toward rental? That was a function of wholesale pricing and the consumers' perception of value, which are entirely under the studios' control. If 40,000 supermarkets in America were selling new release DVDs for $8.99 by the checkout counter, how many consumers do you think would be lining up at the Redbox kiosk in the parking lot? How many supermarkets do you think would let Redbox on the premises?

Don't believe me? Then how is it the studios were previously able to alter consumer behavior from rental to purchase when they introduced the (comparatively) low-priced DVD to replace the high-priced VHS cassette?

Alarm bells come too late for Sony Pictures (Thanks, Fred!)

Science of Cocktails

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 02:25 PM PST

Images Images Cocktailsssssssssss Images Images 201002081319
Jonas Halpren is publisher of Drink of the Week and Channels Director at Federated Media.

San Francisco's famed science museum, The Exploratorium, recently transformed into a giant cocktail lab for an evening fundraiser. The Science of Cocktails featured interactive exhibits and presentations demonstrating the physics, chemistry and biology of cocktails and drinking.

Presentation topics ranged from "Ice and Thermodynamics in Cocktails" to "Anatomy of a Hangover". I also studied the effects of vodka on gummy bears. Image above right.

Recipes and videos after the jump.

In addition, San Francisco's top mixologists were strategically placed around the museum serving up an amazing array of cocktails. Heaven's Dog, Alembic, 83 Proof, and 15 Romolo were all represented.


Erik Adkins from Heaven's Dog explained that coldness and dilution of a cocktail is heavily dependent on the type of ice, shaking time and vessel used. Basically, it's all in the wrist.


Alembic's Daniel Hyatt opened our minds when thinking about infusions. The time necessary to steep ingredients vary widely. Most of us don't waste good booze, so if it is already interesting, it may not need to be infused.


The crowd was also treated to a bitters contest. We were asked to vote based on best use of bitters in a cocktail. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it.


The hit of the evening was the Old Cuban Cocktail aerated with nitrous oxide into a foam and frozen with liquid nitrogen, which was mixed up by Doug Williams of Liquid Alchemy. Instead of drinking this cocktail, it is best eaten with a spoon. This nitrous infused and frozen Old Cuban Cocktail was light, crispy and boozy.


Old Cuban


1 oz. Cachaca

½ oz. Fresh lime juice

½ oz. Simple syrup

Sparkling wine

Fresh Mint

Muddle mint with lime juice and simple sugar. Add ice and rum. Shake and strain into a Collins glass over ice or straight up in a cocktail glass. Top with sparkling wine.


Watch the video for more on the molecular mixology version of this classic cocktail.






Recipe courtesy Sagatiba Cachaca


The exhibits included a taste test using your different senses. Try tasting with your nose plugged, it makes a huge difference. Pictured at the top is the boozy progression of vodka soaked gummy bears.



They totally lose it as they soak up the vodka.

We attended a demonstration on layering drinks, but my favorite demonstration was Eric Muller's Bar Tricks. Member of the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute and author of "While You're Waiting for the Food to Come" showed us how to win some free drinks at the bar. There is good science behind all bar tricks. He used two shot glasses to demonstrate surface tension. Watch the video to see the trick.






This next trick utilizes 2 forks, a cork, toothpick, cocktail glass, lighter and a bit of physics. Master this and free drinks may be coming your way.







Back to the cocktails, my night was complete after trying Jacques Bezuidenhout's Black Opal. This cocktail is an amazing combination of Repasado Tequila, Guinness, port, agave nectar and bitters. May not sound good on paper, but tasty in execution.


The night at the Exploratorium exposed the complexity of mixology and everything that goes on behind that pre-dinner Manhattan. It's more than just booze, bitters and ice.

4chan says Verizon is blocking 4chan

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:55 AM PST

Verizon Wireless is said to be filtering HTTP traffic to/from boards.4chan.org (all image boards). From status.4chan.org: "After an hour and a half on the phone, we've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are 'explicitly blocked."

South Carolina now requires "subversives" to register

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:53 AM PST

subversiveagentform.jpg

Planning to overthrow the US government? If yes, and you live in South Carolina, you must pay a five-dollar subversive registration fee. (Via The Agitator)

Skip James plays "Crow Jane" in 1967

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:43 AM PST


Skip James plays "Crow Jane" in 1967. (After watching this video, I had to go back and watch one of my favorite YouTube videos ever, "Inflatable tube man dances to Cream's 'Glad.'") (Via Tinselman)

Haiti: Red Cross blog post on why donating cash is better than donating "stuff"

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:45 AM PST

"First let me debunk a couple of myths, starting with the principle that 'anything is better than nothing'. Trust me, it's not. Relieving suffering should be guided solely by need and not what people have to donate." —Claire Durham at Red Cross Blog, on why cash is better than your janky, tattered old yoga mat.

Case Sunstein: Feds should "cognitively infiltrate" online conspiracy groups

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 01:06 PM PST

Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, recently suggested that the feds should "cognitively infiltrate" conspiracy theorist hang-outs and anti-government groups online. Over at Huffington Post, former BB guestblogger Arthur Goldwag, author of the fantastic book Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, lays out why the government "shouldn't resort to secret agents and bought-and-paid-for claques and shills and ringers to promote its ideas." From HuffPo:
43Ancients 04Images Eyes God Great Seal 01 Sunstein's proposal was not issued under the auspices of the government, but in an academic paper. Co-authored with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule and published in The Journal of Political Philosophy in 2008 (it can be downloaded as a PDF file here), "Conspiracy Theory" surveys the existing scholarship on the origins and characteristics of conspiracy theories and contemplates whether or not governments should try to neutralize them. In general, it takes a social sciences approach, arguing that conspiracy theories are neither legitimate political ideas nor symptoms of a psychological disorder, but are rather the inevitable distortions of closed-off, self-reinforcing belief systems. Using government agents to inject "cognitive diversity" into those communities, it suggests, just might provide the body politic with an antidote to the thought contagions they inspire.
"Cass Sunstein's Thought Police"

Best Superbowl photo ever

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 01:44 PM PST

Thanks for sharing this wonderful Superbowl photo, Shelley!

Nuit Blanche

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:36 AM PST

nuitblth.jpg Video above: Nuit Blanche, from Spy Films, directed by Arev Manoukian. There's a "making of" video here.

US soldier waterboards his 4-year-old daughter for not reciting alphabet

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:04 AM PST

Joshua Tabor, a 27-year-old Army sergeant who served in Iraq for 15 months, was restricted to his Washington state military base after being accused of waterboarding his 4-year-old daughter because she refused to recite her ABCs. (via Andrew Sullivan)

Band Reunion at the Wedding

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 01:36 PM PST

bandth.jpgBest SNL skit since Black Flag was still together. Dave Grohl? More like Dave LOL. Video at Hulu, and alternate link which may or may not work for non-USA viewers. Or maybe this one. Sorry, region-blocking sucks. Alternates welcome in comments. (thanks, Sean Bonner)

Tech can be romantic: ask Ryan and Veronica

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:00 AM PST

This is the first time I thought a Q&A about IM, press events, and World of Warcraft was really romantic: read Geeksugar's pre-V-day interview with tech journalists Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont.

Brain scans enable communication with vegetative people

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 01:09 PM PST

Researchers have used brain scans to communicate with individuals in total vegetative states. Scientists at the University of Cambridge asked "yes" or "no" questions of the patients which they answered by imaging one of two different activities: playing tennis, or just moving around their house. Depending on what they were thinking, different regions of their brains lit up. From New Scientist:
Vegstatetete-1
"I think we can be pretty confident that he is entirely conscious," says Owen. "He has to understand instructions, comprehend speech, remember what tennis is and how you do it. So many of his cognitive faculties have to have been intact."

That someone can be capable of all this while appearing completely unaware confounds existing medical definitions of consciousness, Laureys says. "We don't know what to call this; he just doesn't fit a definition."

Doctors traditionally base these diagnoses on how someone behaves: if for example, whether or not they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly.

The work "changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our clinical practice."

One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable. "In purely practical terms, yes, it is possible," says Owen. "But it is a bigger step than one might immediately think."

"Giving the 'unconscious' a voice"

Previously:


BirdBox turns iPhone into nesting-box cuckoo alarm clock

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 10:14 AM PST


Emma says:

BirdBox is a physical bird box that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a nesting-box cuckoo alarm clock. Touching the clock face reveals the interior of the birdbox, whilst the alarm gently wakens you with the soundand sight of the nesting birds.

The BirdBox app is free and is on the App Store, whilst Birdboxes are for sale.

BirdBox Alarm Clock

Challenger space shuttle disaster amateur video discovered after 24 years

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 10:09 AM PST


On January 28, 1986 a retired optometrist named Jack Moss captured the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on his Betamax camcorder. He never showed it to anyone, but told his pastor, Marc Wessels, about it shortly before he died from cancer in December. Wessels, who is also the executive director of the Space Exploration Archive, found the tape and added it to the Archive.

It is believed to be the only amateur film in existence of the world's worst space disaster, recorded in an era before mobile phone cameras, when even home camcorders were rare.

... "It took a while to find someone with an old Betamax video player, [said Wessels] then I had to watch four hours of gameshows and sitcoms from the 1980s, but when I found the Challenger film my reaction was that people really have to see this."

Challenger space shuttle disaster amateur video discovered after 24 years

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