The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Forced exorcism in Hong Kong shopping mall
- Man smashes 27 TVs at Wal-Mart
- Nexus One writeup in Technology Review
- Dreaming AI coming to Second Life
- Kraken booze package
- YouTube speed tester: Net Neutrality judo will show you when your ISP is messing with you
- Chip-and-PIN is broken
- Goofy Movie, by David Lynch
- HOWTO make paper animations like those in GALLOP
- International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures!
- Elaborate home-made pipe
- A brief history of pretty much everything, animated via flipbook
- Snow Warrior
- Ode to Snow-blower Man, hero of winter
- Highlights from TED 2010, Thursday: "Shooting mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers"
- The splendor of the Boing Boing Bazaar!
- Palm Pre production halted. True enough, but...
- TED fellow using nanoparticle paint
- Artist chases Paperchase over swiped character
- Anthropomorphize your pets with the Pet Speaker
- Read this: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Real world Lichtenstein girl
- Japan Sea and Air Exhibition poster, circa 1930
- Alexander McQueen has died
- NPR features breakup songs for V-day
- Xeni curating YouTube's homepage for the day
- Whisky toothpaste
- Romantic V-day song
- Sarcasm: Save the newspaper!
- IFTF's public FutureCast phone call with guest hardware hacker Phil Torrone
| Forced exorcism in Hong Kong shopping mall Posted: 12 Feb 2010 05:35 AM PST You don't need to be demon-possessed to experience an exorcism. Just walk into the wrong shopping mall in Hong Kong. A Taoist master is accused of trying to extort nearly $5,000 for an unsolicited exorcism. From CNNGo:
We're strolling through a shopping mall, minding our own business, when we're suddenly pounced on by a Taoist priest telling us that we're possessed by an evil ghost who is hell-bent on killing us within three days. Temple workers proceed to grab hold of us and an exorcism is performed despite our protests. After an hour of struggle, the evil ghost is purged and we're asked to cough up HK$36,000 for the Taoist priest's good deed. The forced exorcism is captured on video (see above), and produced -- along with animated dramatization -- by Hong Kong's Next Media. (This is the same group made famous worldwide for the Tiger Woods car crash animation.) Not quite Linda Blair. But definitely worse than that unsolicited cologne spritz at the mall. Thanks Zoe! |
| Man smashes 27 TVs at Wal-Mart Posted: 12 Feb 2010 02:13 AM PST In this security footage from a Georgia Wal-Mart, a man smashes 27 televisions with a baseball bat he had picked up in the sporting good section. There but for the grace of Cthulhu... |
| Nexus One writeup in Technology Review Posted: 12 Feb 2010 02:08 AM PST Technology Review's writeup of Google Nexus One phone hits all the high-notes. I've had one of these for a month now (we bought one for my wife and got another through Google's developer program) -- it replaced an aging and somewhat slow G1 I bought in 2008 -- and I am absolutely delighted with it. For one thing, it is fast as hell, which is very good for people like me with atrophied attention spans -- seriously, adding a lot of wellie to the CPU really shows off what the Android OS can do when it's matched with a decent processor. I kind of wish the battery would last a little longer (though I recognize that this is the opposite of wishing that the processor ran faster), but still, considering that this is a 1GHz CPU and that the battery lasts three times longer than my G1's did, I can hardly complain. My next step is to root the phone so that I can do tethering with it -- that is, use it as a 3G modem for my laptop. I'll let you know where I get with that (and do drop by the comments if you have any tips on the subject). Review: Nexus One and Android 2.1 (via Memex 1.1) |
| Dreaming AI coming to Second Life Posted: 12 Feb 2010 12:05 AM PST  Wagner James Au sez, "Second Life founder Philip Rosedale (who stepped down from managing the company he founded last year) is attempting an ambitious follow-up with his new spin-off company: Creating a sentient artificial intelligence which only exists in a virtual world, capable of thinking and dreaming. To do that, Rosedale will use Second Life's grid of thousands of servers as the AI's neural network. Or as his former CTO puts it, '[B]uilding Skynet always felt like an appropriate follow on to Second Life.'" Philip Rosedale Attempting to Create Sentient Artificial Intelligence That Thinks and Dreams in Second Life! (Thanks, James!) Previously:
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:59 PM PST  As a near-total teetotaller, I'm in no position to weigh in on the quality of Kraken Spiced Rum (haven't tried it, it might taste like paint-thinner and strip the enamel off your teeth), but I am here to tell you that I am in major raptures over the absolutely ass-kicking media kit package they've put it in. Growing up, my grandparents on both sides had elaborate rec-room bars with racy cocktail glasses (the bikini girls would strip off if you filled the highballs with cold liquid) and superb novelty bottles: Bols liqueur bottles with windup ballerinas inside, Jim Beam bottles shaped like every US state, bottles shaped like the CN Tower, very tall banana liqueur bottles (just look at them!), little brown jugs with XX on them, and more. I've always had an affinity for this kind of thing, even if I have very little use for the stuff inside the bottles. Previously: |
| YouTube speed tester: Net Neutrality judo will show you when your ISP is messing with you Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:50 PM PST  Google has rolled out a YouTube speed-tester that tells you how your ISP stacks up against other ISPs in your town and country, to "give you the ability to compare your speed numbers with other users in your region." Translation: Google is giving you the ammo you need to fight back if your ISP sucks, or if it is twiddling the knobs to discriminate against Google. It's a brilliant piece of pro-Net Neutrality judo, and I can only hope that they follow it up by figuring out tools that let users speed test all kinds of services and protocols so that we can get a picture of how ISPs are messing with us. YouTube Video Speed History (via DVICE) Previously:
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:43 PM PST Noted security researcher Ross Anderson and colleagues have published a paper showing how "Chip-and-PIN" (the European system for verifying credit- and debit-card transactions) has been thoroughly broken and cannot be considered secure any longer. I remember hearing rumbles that this attack was possible even as Chip-and-PIN was being rolled out across Europe, but that didn't stop the banks from pushing ahead with it, spending a fortune in the process. Chip and PIN is broken (via Schneier) (Image: Smartcard3.png, Wikimedia Commons) Previously: |
| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:35 PM PST In this 2007 video, Cody Richeson mashes up the (absolutely dreadful) Goofy Movie with cuts and sounds that are reminiscent of David Lynch, making something dark, creepy, and altogether better out of it. <> David Lynch's A Goofy Movie (via Neatorama) Previously:
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| HOWTO make paper animations like those in GALLOP Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:31 PM PST Robert sez, "Rather than a multi-page flipbook, this Instructable shows how to create the illusion of movement with a single sheet of paper and transparency." If you've seen books like the (absolutely excellent) Gallop, you're familiar with this effect. This project looks like a great way to take kids who love those books from readers to participants. Previously: |
| International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures! Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:25 PM PST Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, International Amateur Scanning League Previously:
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:15 PM PST  National Geo's Debjani Seth took this picture of gentleman at an Indian religious festival smoking with a home-made and extremely elaborate pipe. This person was smoking with his specially made instrument. (via Marilyn) Previously:
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| A brief history of pretty much everything, animated via flipbook Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:36 PM PST |
| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:18 PM PST A family of National Geographic readers sculpted a snowman version of the Terra Cotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor of China. Love it! (Thanks, Marylin Terrell!) |
| Ode to Snow-blower Man, hero of winter Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:07 PM PST  The Washington Post creates a new folk hero for the Blizzard of 2010: That Guy Who Owns a Snowblower. Frankly, he already held an honored place in the Minnesota pantheon, but its nice to see his legend spread.
Image courtesy Flickr user bossco, via CC |
| Highlights from TED 2010, Thursday: "Shooting mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers" Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:49 PM PST Here's my round up of highlights from the second day of the TED 2010 presentations. My head is abuzz with all the thought-provoking ideas I learned today. (Here's yesterday's roundup.) First Myhrvold showed off a container that can keep vaccination medicine cold and fresh for six months. The old way -- a styrofoam cooler with ice -- keeps the medicine cold for just four hours. The new container loses less than 1/2 watt. It's similar to a cryogenic dewar, with the same kind of insulation. But this one works like a Coke machine, vending out vials one-at-a-time so warm air never gets inside the container. Next, malaria. Every 43 seconds a kid dies of malaria in Africa. What can we do about it? Spraying is effective, but there are environmental issues. There's not an effective vaccine yet. Bed nets are effective, if you use them, but people use them for fishnets instead, and it won't make malaria extinct. So Myhrvold and his colleagues have invented several technologies to fight malaria. First is a little gadget to make an automatic malaria diagnosis. It doesn't draw blood. It looks at the whites of eyes or through fingernails for the presence of hemozoin, which is produced by the malaria parasite. They are also developing a system that filters out the parasites in a patient's blood, like a dialysis machine, but this one relives the parasite load. Myrvold's invention company has a supercomputer they like to use for modeling. They're using it to figure out the most most effective malaria eradication technique. He showed a map of Madagascar, with every road and village, and rain and humidity information (which tells you if you have standing water for mosquitoes to breed). It displays a heat map of malaria. It waxes and wanes as seasons change from wet to dry. "We want to eradicate malaria thousands of times in software before we do it in real life." Now the fun stuff: Shoot mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers. ("A pinkie-suck idea.") It can be built with consumer electronics -- a Blu-ray player has a blue laser, a laser printer has fast-moving mirror. You can use them around clinics. The shoot 100% organic photons. You can measure wingbeat frequency and size the of flying insect and decide whether it is worth killing. Moore's law makes technology so cheap we can decide whether or not to kill a bug. They have one here, built from parts purchased on eBay. They are using a green laser pointer instead of a killing laser, for safety reasons. We see a box of skeeters being tracked and zapped. We hear the mosquito wingbeat. He ends the presentation showing a high-speed, slow-motion, super-close-up video of mosquitoes getting blasted out of the sky in mid-flight. A wisp of smoke curls up with each zapped mosquito. "This is very satisfying." Here are some videos.
ENDING SLAVERY 27 million human beings live on Earth as slaves. Kevin Bales is leading the effort to end the contemporary slave trade. He's the co-founder of Free the Slaves, an organization dedicated to ending slavery around the world in 25 years. I liked his optimism. In the early 1990s, Bales was at a public event and he picked up a leaflet about slavery. His first reaction: "No way." As a sociology professor, he had never heard of modern slavery and so he didn't believe it. But he did a literature review and found 3000 articles about slavery. Two were about contemporary slavery. He continued researching and started visiting countries with the highest density of slavery: africa, india, eastern europe. "This is real slavery -- not bad marriages or jobs that suck. These are people who cannot walk away without being killed. They don't get paid." (Only Iceland and Greenland have no slaves.) The recipe for slavery: civil wars and ethnic conflicts create destitute people. The absence of the rule of law -- allowing thugs to use violence with impunity -- turns destitutes into slaves. The effects of slavery, beyond the obvious human suffering: it's hurting the planet. Slaves are used in destructive, poison-spewing work that ruins the environment. Here's how to become a slave: live in a country where lawlessness prevails. Have no way to work. Have children who are starving. Eventually man will drive a pickup truck into your village and say: "Want a job? Get in the truck." The guy will look sketchy and you will be suspicious but you get in the truck, because there's no other option. You'll be taken away and ordered to perform dirt,y dangerous work. You won't be paid and you won't be allowed to stop working. You will come to the realization you are a slave. Contemporary slavery is the same as old slavery, with an important exception: there is a complete collapse in the price of human beings. Slavery used to be very expensive. Now slaves are incredibly cheap. You can buy one for $5 or $10 in India. If you live in the United States, you'll pay between $3,000 and $8,000 for a slave. In any case, human slaves are like "styrofoam cups. You use them then throw them away." Perversely, this is good news, because it means the slave trade is not very profitable. Other "good" news: slave labor generates just $40 billion a year. That's the smallest number ever, adjust for inflation. The slave trade is "standing on the precipice of its own extinction." The total cost of sustainable freedom for 27 million slaves is just $10.8 billion. That money cannot be used to buy people out of slavery. That won't work. "Liberation and the work after liberation is the answer." We must learn from the "botched emancipation" of 1865, in which slaves were liberated then dumped, sentenced to generations of violence, poverty, and discrimination. Ex-slaves are working to free others. "Frederick Douglass in in the house!" For first time in Ghana, three human traffickers were imprisoned for trading in child slaves for the fishing industry. Are we willing to live in a world of slavery? It's a horrific fundamental violation of our civil liberty. If we can't end slavery, are we truly free?
Christakis has been analyzing obesity and social networks, looking for correlations. It turns out that obese people cluster together in social networks. Also, you can see clusters of smoking, drinking, altruism, and divorce. "The network has a memory, it moves, things flow through it. Is has a resilience that allows it to persist over time. It's a living thing." Emotions, too, flow through networks. When we have emotions we show them and others can read them, and they copy them. They're contagious. There are different kinds of emotional contagions. One kind is the "punctuated outburst," like a riot. The other kind of emotional contagion spreads over time with larger numbers of people. These "emotional stampedes" ripple through social networks. Christakis found "happiness clusters" and "unhappiness clusters." It's like a patchwork quilt, with happy and unhappy patches, and your happiness depends on what patch you are in. Here's the difference between the happy and unhappy patches: Unhappy patches are on the edges of networks; happy patches are in the center of the quilt. Christakis showed a social network with connected nodes, each node representing a person with lines representing links to friends. He pointed out two nodes, each of which was connected to four friends. In one case, the four friends were connected to each other, and in the other case the four friends were not connected to each other. I found his comment about this especially interesting: "Your genes determine whether your friends know each other or not. Some people like to introduce their friends to each other and knit their network tightly. Others like to keep their friends separate. The connections in a social network defines the nature of the resulting "superorganism." Compare a lump of coal with a diamond. Same atoms, but the pattern of the connections gives them different properties. In a social network, the patterns of connections confer different properties on groups of people. The architecture of ties between people defines the kind of superorganism you are in. Final thought: Social networks can be used to spread good and bad things, but social networks are fundamentally related to goodness. "If I made you sad or gave you germs, you would cut the ties with me," so those network paths get pruned and the nodes become isolated to the edges. But nodes that spread good ideas, love, and other things of value get more connections.
Michael Sandel at TED2010, Session 5, "Provocation," Thursday, February 11, 2010, in Long Beach, California. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson
Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel started out with a quote from Aristotle: "justice means giving people what they deserve." He gave the example of distributing flutes to people. He asked the audience: "Who should get the best flutes?" The audience shouted out opinions: "Give them to the best players," "the worst players," "distribute them randomly." Aristotle said the flutes should go to the best players. Why? One audience member said, "We'll hear better music if best players get the best flutes. We will all be better off." Aristotle's reason was different: We give the best flutes to the best players because that's what flutes are for. To be played well, and we must honor and recognize the best musicians. Sandel described a court case involving a pro golfer by the name of Casey Martin. He was born with a defect in his right leg that makes it very painful (even dangerous) for him to walk very far. He asked the PGA if he could use a golf cart in tournaments. The PGA deliberated, came back and said "No. That would give you an unfair advantage over the other players who must follow the rules that require them to walk." Martin sued, saying the PGA's ruling violated the Americans with Disabilities act. Sandel polled the TEDsters: if you were a judge how would you rule? There was a good division of opinion. A woman in the audience, named Charlie, said she would rule in favor of Casey because, "walking the course is not part of the game of golf." Another audience member, named Warren, replied that the "endurance element is an important part of the game." (When asked if he golfed, Warren said, "I'm not a golfer." Charlie fired back, "And I am!") Sandel described what happened in the case. The lower court brought in golfing greats to testify -- Nicklaus, Palmer. They all said that the fatigue factor is an important part of the game and therefore walking is fundamental to the nature of the game. But when the case went to the Supreme Court, the judges ruled 7-to-2 in favor of Casey. The majority of the judges agreed that walking was not part of the essential nature of golf. Scalia dissented, saying it's not posible to determine the essential nature of a game like golf. Since a game has no purpose other than amusement, it is impossible to say if any of a game's arbitrary rules are essential. Scalia's opinion is questionable: if sports fans thought rules were arbitrary and not designed to bring out the best in the people who played the sports they wouldn't care about the game. With golf, as with flutes, it's hard to decide what is justice without looking at the essential nature of the activity and what qualities are worthy of honor and recognition. You can look at same-sex marriage through the same lens. Sandel asked the audience whether or not same sex marriage should be allowed (I saw one man raise his hand opposing same sex marriage). People against same-sex marriage consider the nature of marriage to be procreation, and people in favor say lifelong loving commitment is the nature of marriage. Sandel's conclusion: A way towards mutual respect is to engage directly with each other's deepest moral convictions. This will restore democratic discourse.
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| The splendor of the Boing Boing Bazaar! Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:53 PM PST  At great hazard to life and limb, the editors of Boing Boing have scoured the most exotic corners of our vast and wondrous planet -- from her inky ocean floors to her highest peaks -- bringing back to you a most extraordinary collection of astounding oddities, curious novelties, and sensational artifacts, available at prices that confound our competitors and incite jealousy amongst the most intrepid collectors of natural and manmade marvels. Behold the splendor of the Boing Boing Bazaar! The items for sale in the Bazaar have been personally curated by the editors of Boing Boing. We will add new items when we come across ones wonderful enough to include in our display case, so check back often. Here's more information about the Boing Boing Bazaar (which is part of the new Makers Market) from Dan Woods, general manger of Maker Retail: After almost a year of development, we're proud to take the wraps off of our newest ecommerce offering -- Makers Market, a curated marketplace of wonderful science, tech, and artistic creations created and sold directly by some of our favorite Makers from around the World.Boing Boing Bazaar |
| Palm Pre production halted. True enough, but... Posted: 11 Feb 2010 06:20 PM PST When you read the news, you'll often see quotes from analysts. It's the result of a quid-pro-quo: the reporter gets a "researcher" to whom a statement can be attributed, and the analyst's reputation gets buffed in print. But most analysts know little more than reporters: they just sell their research privately instead of using it to pursue stories. At best, they act as a dial-a-quote service, used to launder opinion into news--it's a way to create multiple-source stories on deadline. At worst, analysts set out to place stories in the press to influence markets and make money for clients. Today offers some intrigue, with OTR Global claiming that Palm has suddenly shut down production of cellphones. This was debunked with prejudice by Engadget's Nilay Patel, who reports that it's Chinese New Year and the workers are off. This leaves an interesting question: was the report the result of sheer ignorance of a temporary holiday halt? Or was it an attempt to create a desired outcome by willfully misrepresenting it? |
| TED fellow using nanoparticle paint Posted: 11 Feb 2010 02:14 PM PST  Kate Nichols is a painter trained in 15th century Northern Renaissance techniques. But this week she will give a presentation at TED, perhaps the most prestigious big-think technology conference. Her topic? Nanotechnology. It might sound bizarre, but when you listen to the story of Nichols' quest to recreate the brilliant blue iridescence of the Morpho butterfly, her scientific presentation makes perfect sense. Nichols learned painting as painters did in 15th century Flanders: by apprenticing under a master and learning to make her own paints. She became skilled at creating the type of complex colors only possible as light travels through thin layers of oil glaze. But she eventually found that no amount of layering could recreate the complexity she saw in the Morpho butterfly's wings. [More images and more about the artist after the jump]
It's called structural color, and it became Nichol's goal to incorporate it into her work. "I realized that I would have to use architectures much smaller than those you can create with thin oil glazes in order to generate structural color effects," Nichols said. Enter nanotechnology. Through some research of her own, Nichols realized she needed to work at the nanoscale. So she wrote an email to Paul Alivisatos, who runs a nanotechnology lab at the University of California at Berkeley (he's also director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab). In 2008, she became the first artist-in-residence in his lab. Nichols was recently named a TED fellow. See her TED page here. Also check out her website to see her nano-art as well as her amazing oil paintings.
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| Artist chases Paperchase over swiped character Posted: 11 Feb 2010 09:12 PM PST  Paperchase is 'strenuously' denying allegations of plagiarism leveled after art similar to work by Hidden Eloise was spotted adorning its products. On the left, the original painting. On the right, the design as printed on bags and other items by the British stationery company. (The photo is from iworkatborders' livejournal.) After the topic fired up Twitter, Paperchase posted a statement claiming that it bought the design 'in good faith' from a 'reputable' agency, which itself denies plagiarizing her artwork. Hidden Eloise responds:
Eloise complains that Paperchase has released more products featuring the design since being shown the original. Lawyers ask for "astronomical amounts of money" to go after them, she adds. Chasing paperchase [Hide n Seek] (The artwork is for sale here) Paperchase forced to deny it 'plagiarised' British artist's work after Twitter campaign [Telegraph] |
| Anthropomorphize your pets with the Pet Speaker Posted: 11 Feb 2010 12:01 PM PST  Pet Acoustics' "My Pet Speaker" purports to entertain animals by transforming your music into sounds they enjoy. It is recommended for dogs, cats, and horses. My suspicion is that this $250 item's only verifiable success is turning the press release cliché "unleashed" into a pun. [Pet Acoustics] |
| Read this: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:31 AM PST  What happens to the blood you leave at the doctor's office? The little plastic cups full of urine? That mole you had removed that one time? All those samples get tested, of course. But what then? The trash? Not always, writes Rebecca Skloot, in her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Sometimes, they end up in storage. In fact, according to Skloot, every one of us probably has some biological material on file somewhere. The samples are kept for research, on the off chance that a part of you might someday be interesting to science. You'll likely never know for sure, though, because nobody is under any obligation to tell you about it. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book about the imbalance between the needs of medical science and the individual impacts of medical ethics (or the lack thereof). At its heart is the story of a woman—whose fatal cancer led to some of the major scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century—and the family who suffered through her death, then found out 30 years later about her afterlife in a petri dish. Henrietta Lacks was a black woman, born on land left to her ancestors by the former slave owners who'd fathered them. She married, moved to Baltimore, had five children. When she was 31, Henrietta died, the victim of a frighteningly fast-moving cervical cancer. That was 1951. But not all of Henrietta had been laid to rest. Cancer cells, taken before and after her death by doctors at Johns Hopkins, had become the first human cells to grow and thrive in the lab, living and multiplying indefinitely in test tubes around the world. Known as the HeLa cell line, little parts of Henrietta Lacks helped develop the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, in vitro fertilization and more. It might be a story of human triumph, except that nobody got Henrietta's permission to use those cells for research. No one told her family about the samples. In fact, the Lacks' only learned about Henrietta's immortal life in 1973, from a chance conversation with a friend who worked at the National Cancer Institute.
That clash permeates the whole of Skloot's book. Time and time again we meet excited, grateful, clueless scientists who are thrilled and inspired by the research HeLa cells made possible, and don't understand why the same history makes the Lacks family furious. Over the years, scientists and researchers flitted in and out of the Lacks' life, taking blood samples, congratulating them on being related to such important cells, but never explaining what had happened to Henrietta the person, what implications her death had for her children's health, or what, beyond buzzwords and jargon, was currently happening to Henrietta's cells. And, despite the profits made off direct HeLa sales and indirect HeLa research, nobody has ever offered the Lacks' a cut. The children of the woman behind some of the greatest advances in medical science can't afford health care. Skloot's book tells the story of HeLa as the story of Henrietta and the Lacks family, especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was only a toddler when Henrietta died. For Deborah, understanding HeLa was about finding a connection to the mother she never knew. It's a unique perspective on scientific history. In fact, the story of HeLa cells has been told before, but by writers who mostly ignored the Lacks family—focusing instead on the brave and bold scientists—or just talked about their victimization. By letting the Lacks' be people, and by putting them in the center of the history, Skloot turns just another tale about the march of progress into a complicated portrait of the interaction between science and human lives. Ultimately, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks forces us to ask what we're willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Are lifesaving medical breakthroughs worth it if we can only get them—as researchers have successfully argued in court—by studying tissues taken from patients who aren't told how their cells are being used and aren't included in the patents or profits made on those cells? There's no easy answer. But facing the story of the Lacks family puts us in a much better position to move beyond either/or false dichotomies and start creating a new laws that make medicine more fair. You can show your appreciation for the ways HeLa cells have improved public health by donating to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation. Founded by author Rebecca Skloot, the Foundation is raising money for scholarships for Henrietta Lacks' descendants, and to help cover the cost of health care for her family. The Foundation gives "those who have benefited from HeLa cells—including scientists, universities, corporations, and the general public—a way to show thanks to Henrietta and her family." Disclosure: This review was based on a press copy of the book, which I received for free from Crown Publishing. Image of stained HeLa cells courtesy GE Healthcare (by way of Henrietta Lacks) via CC |
| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 10:35 AM PST  A MAC cosmetics shoot recreated Roy Lichtenstein's halftone-dot comic-girl to very good effect. The Real life Lichtenstein-Comic-Girl (Thanks, Patrick!) Previously: |
| Japan Sea and Air Exhibition poster, circa 1930 Posted: 11 Feb 2010 10:30 AM PST  (via Pink Tentacle) |
| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 09:53 AM PST |
| NPR features breakup songs for V-day Posted: 11 Feb 2010 09:43 AM PST To celebrate Valentine's Day, NPR's All Songs Considered is featuring a bunch of breakup songs. My favorite breakup song is Take a Bow by Rihanna, what's yours? |
| Xeni curating YouTube's homepage for the day Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:22 AM PST  YouTube's selected Xeni as Curator of the Month! She'll be picking interesting new videos (including some we've featured here) and some all-time-greats for inclusion on YouTube's front door for the rest of the day. From its official blog: We're pleased to have Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing curate our homepage today. She goes deep into the Boing Boing archives to give you her personal take on the interesting, funny and sometimes out-there videos that thrive on Boing Boing and YouTube. Below is a video she made just for the occasion, as well as some insightful notes about her selections. To view the full playlist, click here.Don't miss our channel at YouTube, BoingBoingVideo, too! Curator of the Month: Boing Boing Video [YouTube's blogspot] Guest Editor Channel [YouTube] |
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 08:26 AM PST djBC sez, "For Valentine's Day. Ska/Punk brats Big D and The Kids Table grow up and invent 'Stroll Music,' a fusion of classic R&B, ska, reggae, jazz, and rock. This tune reminds me of the best things about 'Exile On Main Street' - it's a paean to the healing power of travel, adventure and instant relocation. The video was made on a shoestring budget (the flashing lights outside were controlled by kids flicking light switches in time with the music), but they was somehow able to wrangle an airplane, and much of it was shot in the same building as Saw 2 (!). Favorite quote: 'You're much happier when you sing / about how much you dig everything.'" BIG D & THE KIDS TABLE - We Can Live Anywhere (Thanks, djBC!) Previously:
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2010 07:58 AM PST In the latest Search Engine podcast, Jesse Brown brings the sarcastic funny on the need to save newspapers from the net. JESSE BROWN: Save the Newspaper! Previously: |
| IFTF's public FutureCast phone call with guest hardware hacker Phil Torrone Posted: 09 Feb 2010 10:44 AM PST   My Institute for the Future colleagues Kathi Vian and Jerry Michalski are holding their next FutureCast open telephone call today, Thursday, February 11, from 11am - noon (PST). The guest is our pal Philip Torrone, senior editor of MAKE: and creative director of Adafruit Industries. The topic is open source hardware, hacker spaces, and the emerging maker movement. Please call in! The conversation will be recorded and featured as a podcast on the IFTF Future Now blog. To dial-in today, between 11am and noon PST: Toll Free number: 1-800-868-1837FutureCast: open-source hardware and MAKE-ing the future |
The Nexus One, by contrast, has a one-gigahertz processor--more than 60 percent faster than the processors in the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, and BlackBerry Bold 9700, according to several benchmarks. In my testing, it took 2.5 seconds, on average, to click from one Wikipedia page to the next using T-Mobile's 3G network--and half that long when using a Wi-Fi connection. You can open applications, zoom in on photos, and search your phone's databases instantly. The faster processor dramatically improves the phone's enjoyability. 
The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it's doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it's chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists' cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say "Verified by PIN". 
Boing Boing readers may be familiar with the FedFlix program, where Public.Resource.Org obtains government video and makes it available on YouTube, the Internet Archive, and our own Public Domain Stock Footage Library. 
Inventor Nathan Myhrvold, of 
Studying with mathematician Judy Holdener at Kenyon College, Nichols discovered that the brilliance of the butterfly's wings did not come from chemical coloring, as is the case with paint, but from the shape of super tiny structures inside the wing. 
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