Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Unscientific look into MIT students' sex-lives

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 12:11 AM PST

MIT's The Tech has the results of a wide-ranging survey of the sex-lives of the university's undergraduates. It's not very scientific (the respondents were self-selected, and 60% of the student body didn't respond), but the charts and commentary are a fun read. I'm particularly taked by the idea of a taboo against "floorcest" (shagging someone whose room is on the same dorm floor as yours).

Sex@MIT: The Survey (via MeFi)

Previously:


New York's small-town kangaroo courts: hives of abusive unchecked authority

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 12:05 AM PST

The New York Times has an excellent investigative piece on the small-town judges of New York State. These judges are elected to office, need no legal training, have no oversight (many don't even keep court records), and have the power to imprison people for up to two years (and some accused have been kept in jail for many more years, waiting for a judge to call their cases), and collect millions in (unaudited) fines and penalties. The system is a shambles, and there have been calls for reform since the 1920s, with no movement to do anything about it, despite racist remarks, blatant violations of law, pursuit of personal vendettas from the bench and other grave misconduct. Judges send abused women back to their spouses ("Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then," quipped Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper, now a judge in Malone, NY), lock up children, deny accused counsel, find accused guilty without a trial or a plea.

Reading this piece, you get the sense that the reporters struggled to winnow down the list of horrific abuses to fit the space -- the litany of absolutely nightmarish judicial behavior goes on and on and on and on.

And several people in the small town of Dannemora were intimidated by their longtime justice, Thomas R. Buckley, a phone-company repairman who cursed at defendants and jailed them without bail or a trial, state disciplinary officials found. Feuding with a neighbor over her dog's running loose, he threatened to jail her and ordered the dog killed...

In the Catskills, Stanley Yusko routinely jailed people awaiting trial for longer than the law allows -- in one case for 64 days because he thought the defendant had information about vandalism at the justice's own home, said state officials, who removed him as Coxsackie village justice in 1995. Mr. Yusko was not even supposed to be a justice; he had actually failed the true-or-false test...

In Mount Kisco, people who asked for the court's sympathy were treated to sarcasm: Justice Joseph J. Cerbone would pull out a nine-inch violin and threaten to play. Mr. Cerbone phoned one woman and talked her out of pressing abuse charges against the son of former clients, state records show. But it took eight years, and evidence that he had taken money from an escrow account, before the State Court of Appeals removed him in 2004 after a quarter-century in office.

The commission twice disciplined the town justice, Paul F. Bender of Marion, for deriding women in abuse cases. Arraigning one man on assault charges, he asked the police investigator whether the case was "just a Saturday night brawl where he smacks her and she wants him back in the morning..."

In 11 years as justice in Dannemora, in the North Country, Thomas R. Buckley had his own special treatment for defendants without much money: Even if they were found not guilty, he ordered them to perform community service work to pay for their court-appointed lawyers, although defense lawyers and the district attorney had reminded him for years that the law guaranteed a lawyer at no cost.

"The only unconstitutional part," he told the commission before it removed him in 2000, "is for these freeloaders to expect a free ride."

In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power
Previously:


JK Rowling didn't plagiarise Adrian Jacobs

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:48 PM PST

Teresa Nielsen Hayden expertly dissects the latest accusation of plagiarism against JK Rowling, and imparts rather a lot about the publishing industry in the bargain.
1. The plaintiffs haven't paid much attention to other works in the genre.

2. Non-writers think it's the ideas, rather than the execution, that makes a book. They've got that backward.

3. People who aren't accustomed to having a lot of ideas of their own have a very poor grasp of the odds that others might independently come up with the same ideas.
Rowling's being sued for plagiarism again

Previously:


Warren Ellis alarm clock

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:43 PM PST

Roger Ebert rages against takedowns of his Siskel tribute

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:39 PM PST

Hal sez, "Near the end of his long and touching Esquire article about the career and illness of Roger Ebert, Chris Jones writes about Ebert's discovery that somebody (probably Disney) had disappeared the YouTube videos of his tribute to Gene Siskel on his own freaking show:"
Ebert keeps scrolling down. Below his journal he had embedded video of his first show alone, the balcony seat empty across the aisle. It was a tribute, in three parts. He wants to watch them now, because he wants to remember, but at the bottom of the page there are only three big black squares. In the middle of the squares, white type reads: "Content deleted. This video is no longer available because it has been deleted." Ebert leans into the screen, trying to figure out what's happened. He looks across at Chaz. The top half of his face turns red, and his eyes well up again, but this time, it's not sadness surfacing. He's shaking. It's anger.

Chaz looks over his shoulder at the screen. "Those fu -- " she says, catching herself.

They think it's Disney again -- that they've taken down the videos. Terms-of-use violation.

This time, the anger lasts long enough for Ebert to write it down. He opens a new page in his text-to-speech program, a blank white sheet. He types in capital letters, stabbing at the keys with his delicate, trembling hands: MY TRIBUTE, appears behind the cursor in the top left corner. ON THE FIRST SHOW AFTER HIS DEATH. But Ebert doesn't press the button that fires up the speakers. He presses a different button, a button that makes the words bigger. He presses the button again and again and again, the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they become too big to fit the screen, now they're just letters, but he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still, now just shapes and angles, just geometry filling the white screen with black like the three squares. Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking, and he's still hitting the button, bang, bang, bang, and he's shouting now. He's standing outside on the street corner and he's arching his back and he's shouting at the top of his lungs.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man (Thanks, Hal!)

Writers describe the positive impact of D&D on their lives

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:29 PM PST

Matt sez, "With that rocks-for-brains reporter in Boston trying to link campus shooter Amy Bishop's crimes to Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I'd take an opportunity to look at the good D&D has done for several writers I know. This is that article. By the way, I've been a D&D player for almost thirty years now, and have been a happier, more productive person for it."

I haven't played since my early 20s (late teens?) but D&D was an enormously positive influence on my life and imagination.


Jay Lake, the author of ten novels including his most recent, Green, told me that D&D became a big part of his life as boarding school student.

"At boarding school, if you're good and fast with homework, and deeply socially and athletically inept otherwise, there's not a lot to do. I'd been to seven schools in nine years on three continents when I hit Choate Rosemary Hall," said Lake. "I possessed the kind of poor social skills that are almost hip today, but were a recipe for meat-grinder misery in the 1970s when too-smart, too-isolated kids didn't have ready access to the kind of virtual retreats we have today in gaming, programming and online life. Geek culture at the teen level didn't exist yet, except as a special class of victimhood. Combine that with a raging case of clinical depression, and I was a disaster waiting to happen."

Dungeons & Dragons provided a constructive way to pass the time for Lake and his friends.

"The alternate worlds and wild imagination of D&D gave me and my fellow misfits an outlet, and we had dozens upon dozens of hours per week to spend on it. Where else were we going to go? We lived in our high school. Think about that for a minute. Six or eight ferociously bright kids-Choate is one of the most academically competitive schools in the nation-with nothing to do but make things up to amuse one another, and D&D providing the framework."

Although those years have since passed, Lake still credited the game with providing a foundation he has built upon as a successful writer.

"Those three years playing D&D at boarding school did more to ground me in storytelling, plot construction, and sheer, raw imaginative throughput than any other single activity of my life. Today I'm a successful fantasy and science fiction novelist with ten novels and over two hundred short stories in print or on the way. I might have gotten to this point by a different path, but it would not have been the same journey,"

Writers reminisce about Dungeons & Dragons (Thanks, Matt!)
Previously:


Swarm of tiny illuminated helicopters as flying display screen?

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 09:17 PM PST



MIT researchers are exploring whether a swarm of tiny helicopters outfitted with LEDs could self-organize into a massive flying display "screen." The vision for the nascent Flyfire project is that each of the choppers acts as a pixel to form a dynamically-reconfigurable display.

Flyfiremonanananana
From MIT's SENSEable City Lab, co-developers of the Flyrire project:
With the self-stabilizing and precise controlling technology from the ARES Lab, the motion of the pixels is adaptable in real time. The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.


Flyfire serves as an initial step to explore and imagine the possibilities of this free-form display: a swarm of pixels in a space.
Flyfire

Babies With Laser Eyes

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 02:33 PM PST

lazer.jpg

babieswithlasereyes.com, via Dangerous Minds (thanks, Tara McGinley).

Open-source environmental protection

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 02:17 PM PST

What do you think the Environmental Protection Agency needs to be paying attention to? How should they make data more transparent? Who could they collaborate with? Now you can take your ideas to the people who matter. As part of the Agency's Open Government plan, they're soliciting input from the public through March 19th. Not only can you offer ideas, you can vote, and comment, on other people's.

Quite possibly the greatest segment in the history of Antiques Roadshow

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 02:00 PM PST


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"You seldom find them so cute and so animated... a real charmer."

Garth Johnson of Extreme Craft has extensive coverage about this wheeled and squeaking toy pig being appraised on Antiques Roadshow.

I agree with Jesse Thorn that this segment is quite possibly the greatest segment in the history of Antiques Roadshow.  A rather smug gentleman shows off his rare "animated" pull pig toy.  The fellow doesn't get his comeuppance, though.  His confidence in the awesomeness of his pig toy is rewarded by a $2000-$2500 appraisal for his $200 investment.
Animated Pig Pull Toy

Images of Madness

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 01:55 PM PST

madness.jpg

Rogier van der Weyden: The Last Judgment (large size image here), 1446-52. From this livejournal treasure trove of historical engravings and prints depicting people who have totally lost it. (Thanks, Miss Calpernia!)

Funky Friday: Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, circa 1970

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 01:52 PM PST

orchestre.jpg As regular readers of this blog know, I travel with some regularity to West Africa, and there's a soft spot in my heart for Benin. I was listening to Garth Trinidad's Moja Moja podcast this week, and heard this track (Amazon MP3 album link) from a psychedelic band out of Cotonou (Benin's capital) in the early 70s. I then tracked down this YouTube clip of the same band from Analog Africa, who released this compilation album packed with afrofunky goodness from those early years. They have a very informative post up on their blog about this particular band. Shown at left, one of the Orchestre's album covers, featuring the band's super-dapper lead singer Vincent Ahehehinnou. His cheeks are adorned with the "serpent mark" tribal facial scars common in Benin. So beautiful. And the man can out-scream any punk band I ever slamdanced to in the eighties, that's for damn sure. Watch and listen.

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Dahomey - Gbeti Madjro (Analog Africa)

Previously:


Survey on connectivity and food

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 01:27 PM PST

Jeremy sez, "Shareable.net and the consultancy Latitude are co-launching a study to understand how new connectivity--improved accessibility, transparency, organization, and socialization of information--alters our desires and decisions around food and food-purchasing. The study will remain open for participation for 1-2 weeks, and results will be posted to Shareable and life-connected.com by mid-March. And when the study reaches 50 participants, we will donate $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger."

Howtoons Visual Communication guide

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 03:04 PM PST

Screen Shot 2010-02-19 At 1.09.01 Pm

Former Boing Boing guest blogger and Howtoons co-creator Saul Griffith says:

We just finished a huge project in collaboration with Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams - Seeing the Future: A Visual Communication Guide - which is a 20 drawing/inventing guide that teaches kids/adults how to get those big ideas down on paper.  Please pass it along; we would love this to get to as many kids (and big kids) as possible.  
About the guide | Seeing the Future! the Howtoons Visual Communication guide | PDF version

Everything in a pizza pocket, the poster

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 12:58 PM PST

Awesome, whole-house "mousetrap" contraption

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 12:04 PM PST

This whole-house "mousetrap" contraption proves that opening the curtains in the least efficient way possible is often also the most awesome way possible. Best part of the video: The cellphone call.

Butch cupcakes for men

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 02:06 PM PST

NYC's Butch Bakery (founded by a lawyer) makes "manly cupcakes" like the B-52, shown here, "not a frilly pink-frosted sprinkles and unicorns kind of cupcake." These baked goods have become so popular that the company has suspended telephone orders.

Butch Bakery (via Sociological Images)

Update: Pipenta's got my vote for comment of the year, for #20, below, which opens "Why stop here? They aren't even making the shift from red velvet to black leather cupcakes! These aren't nearly butch enough! What about shaving stubble cream filling? Pigskin, jockstrap, cigar butt cupcakes. At the very least, there should be a Guinness option, a beer belly cupcake. Wasabi might be too dainty, but kimchee and a hot chili icing option would be on the money." It gets ruder and better from there.

Previously:


The Dawning of the Age of Biology

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 06:43 PM PST

edgedinner.jpg

Some people whose names you may know or computers you may have used all had dinner together last week.

Photo above: Apocalyptic shit-disturber John Cusack eats the final grape at the namedrop alpha table, drawing heated commentary from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who sources say did not get a single grape.

(L-R, for reals, EDGE 2010 dinner: Jared Cohen, US State Department; Dave Morin, Facebook; John Cusack, actor/writer/director/thinker; Dean Kamen, Inventor, Deka Research; Bill Gates, Microsoft, Gates Foundation; Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post; Michael Shermer, Skeptic Magazine. Not shown in this photo, but huddled around the same table, were Peter Diamandis, George Church, and me. )

Here's the photo gallery for this dinner, hosted by John Brockman and EDGE to herald "the Dawing of the Age of Biology." Let the jpeg record show that I managed to get up close and personal with Marissa Mayer and Nathan Wolfe, then later with Danny Hillis.

More about the big ideas discussed, after the jump.

John Brockman, in presenting the theme for this 2010 edition of the annual EDGE dinner, wrote:



In the summer of 2009, in a talk at the Bristol (UK) Festival of Ideas, physicist Freeman Dyson articulated a vision for the future. He referenced The Age Of Wonder, by Richard Holmes, in which the first Romantic Age described by Holmes was centered on chemistry and poetry, while Dyson pointed out that this new age is dominated by computational biology. Its leaders, he noted, include "biology wizards" Kary Mullis, Craig Venter, medical engineer Dean Kamen; and "computer wizards" Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Charles Simonyi. He pointed out that the nexus for this intellectual activity — the Lunar Society for the 21st century — is centered around the activities of Edge.




All the scientists mentioned above by Dyson (with the exception of Simonyi) were present at the dinner. Others guests who are playing "a significant role in this new age of wonder through their scientific research, enlightened philanthropy, and entrepreneurial initiative" included Larry Brilliant, George Church, Bill Gates, Danny Hillis, Nathan Myhrvold, Jeff Skoll, and Nathan Wolfe.

EDGE: "The Edge Dinner: A New Age of Wonder, Where the Dawning of the Age of Biology Was Officially Announced." (Thank you, John Brockman / EDGE.org)

Miniboss T-shirt in the Boing Boing Bazaar

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:31 AM PST

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Seibei, based in Poughkeepsie, NY, is selling these handsome MINIBOSS shirts in the Boing Boing Bazaar. Sizes range from ladies small to unisex XXX large.

Miniboss T-shirt

Previously featured items from the Boing Boing Bazaar:


Disney goes goth

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 11:12 AM PST

Disney's launching a line of girl-goth merch to tie in with the release of Alice in Wonderland, whose soundtrack features Cure frontman Robert Smith performing a track from the 1951 Alice movie: "Walt Disney Co.'s consumer-products division is aiming its marketing firepower at young women and teenage girls, particularly those who gravitate to darkly romantic entertainment like the 'Twilight' series." (Thanks, @keithabramson!)

Maywa Denki performance tomorrow in LA

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 09:39 AM PST

If you're in LA tomorrow, don't miss Otomatone inventor Maywa Denki's rare US performance at the Giant Robot store in Sawtelle. Details here.

Disney's Fast Play is the slow way to the DVD feature

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 09:26 AM PST

Bill Bumgarner had the same experience as I did with Disney's Fast Play option on DVDs. I watched Sleeping Beauty with my daughter last week and was tricked by choosing Fast Play.

How could anyone not be irritated by this stupid anti-feature?

We received Chicken Little from Netflix today and I noticed that it features "Disney's Fast Play Technology." When inserted, you get the choice between "Fast Play" and "Main Menu.'

If you make the mistake of hitting "Fast Play", you get upwards of 10 minutes of promo crap before the movie starts — just like before.

If you hit "main menu" you get, well, the main menu from which you can actually play the movie directly. That's right. Fast Play is the slow way to the feature.

Disney's Fast Play (Or Marketing of a Flipped Bit)

I Warned You to Stay Away From My Stuff

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 09:40 AM PST

shocking stapler.jpgThanks to the tireless efforts of a legion of Chinese engineers/joke-fabricators, it's now possible to a own a Dwight Schrute-like office cubicle where every single item in sight, from the stapler to the desk clock to the computer mouse to the can of soda, is engineered to provide a hysterically comical high voltage shock when touched.

Who would want to do that? Man, that would be so cool; who wouldn't? I added up the total price for all items listed below and the whole bill comes somewhere around $50.

Partial listing of Shocking Gag Devices available at just one online merchant and no doubt I'm just scratching the surface of the entire shocking gag gift industry:

Shocking gag lighter
Shocking pen (numerous models and manufacturers)
Shocking chewing gum
Shocking tape measure
Shocking lipstick
Shocking hand shaker
Shocking USB drive
Shocking pack of novelty quarters
Shocking calculator
Shocking flashlight
Shocking laser pointer
Shocking digital camera
Shocking MP3 player
Shocking computer mouse
Shocking car key remote
Shocking desk stapler
Shocking slot machine
Shocking dice set
Shocking Alarm Clock
Shocking razor
Shocking Compass
Shocking chocolate Bar
Shocking Soda can
Shocking joke Book
Shocking candy Jar
Shocking playing Cards

So maybe I'll do that. Or would that would just be immature?

2010 Nebula Nominees

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 08:43 AM PST

Good looking Nebula Awards ballot this year! Congrats to all the nominees -- this is as fine a reading list as you're apt to find. Start with the novels: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak, Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, The City & The City by China Miéville, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, and Finch by Jeff VanderMeer.

URL redirection service makes innocent URLs look sinister

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 08:40 AM PST

Screen Shot 2010-02-19 At 8.36.01 Am

ShadyURL: "Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening."

The shady URL for ShadyURL is http://5z8.info/--INITIATE-CREDIT-CARD-XFER--_r8a4a_dogfights (Via Neatorama)

What we can learn from Nepali orphans

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 05:23 PM PST

IMG_1171.JPG In January, I spent two weeks with the kids at Ama Ghar, a home for underprivileged children* in Kathmandu Valley. It's a narrow four-story red brick building off of a busy two-lane road, and it houses 38 children whose parents are dead or debilitated from physical and mental illness. Many of them come from remote villages that are a full day's walk from the nearest road; communities without electricity that have high illiteracy rates.

Materially, the kids at Ama Ghar have little beyond bare necessities. Their toys are soccer balls made of rubber bands and old car tires. In the mornings they wash their hair and brush their teeth at a cold water tap outdoors, and after school they play with their half-exploded imitation Mizuno volleyball near the neighbor's pigsty until the sun goes down. Most nights, they do their homework under a single solar-powered backup lightbulb because of scheduled electrical outages, before going to sleep in tiny rooms crammed with second-hand bunk beds.

The most surprising thing about these kids, though, is not their living conditions. It's their attitude. These are really good kids. Generally speaking, they don't cheat, steal, complain, sneak off, or flake on their chores. During an eight-hour field trip to a Hindu temple on the other side of the Valley, the children kept tabs on each other without being told to do so, waiting patiently for the adults as they bargained for potatoes on the side of the street. Not one child complained about being hungry or needing to use the bathroom. Like a tight-knit family, they hugged each other often and shared everything without selfishness. The children all studied hard at school, like their lives depended on it — probably because their lives really do depend on it. As Bonnie Ellison, the resident manager, told me: "It's not easy out there." Hers is the epitome of tough love; an American who herself grew up in Kathmandu, she is arming them with the skills and attitude they need to survive and thrive in Nepali society. I left Ama Ghar with the strong conviction that these spirited, bilingual, ambitious kids could very well shape the future of this beautiful, struggling nation.


IMG_1512.JPG

On my way home to San Francisco, I stopped through Tokyo to visit my parents. They were moving out of the property our family lived on for 22 years and had a lot of furniture they needed to get rid of. My mother was delighted when a nearby orphanage agreed to take the fridge and kitchen cabinet as donations. We made plans to visit the home and meet the director, who offered to give us a short tour.


We were immediately struck by how large the building was — by Tokyo standards, these 40 kids are living in a palace. The space, the meals, and the children's allowances ($30 a month for each junior high school kid and $55 once they reach high school) are all funded by the ward. These kids come here most often as a result of domestic violence, not poverty or the death of a parent. Currently, there are 30,000 children living in 550 homes like this one across the country, with 3,000 in Tokyo alone. It's a big, growing societal problem.


It was late in the afternoon when we visited the facilities, but none of the kids were around. School uniforms and manga were strewn across the floors of the oversized bedrooms shared by pairs of teenagers. The director, a gentle, large man with thick glasses, told us apologetically that the kids had dropped off their books and gone back out. I asked him if they got along with each other, and he sighed.


"All our children have severe social issues," he said. "They can't stay in the same room together for more than a few minutes before a fight erupts. I've been here for 25 years. Back in the day, it was indeed like a big family; the kids used to go on outings together and take care of each other. But these days, that's not the case at all."


I didn't meet many people at the Japanese children's home. I saw a couple of teenaged boys sitting around a table playing Nintendo DS, and introduced myself to one chubby 13-year old boy who wandered up to the director, imitated him for a few sentences, and then told us he couldn't wait until he was in high school so he could get a bigger monthly allowance.


One might expect the children in the Tokyo orphanage to be happier than the children in Nepal. After all, they have cash, video games, washing machines for laundry, and a huge urban playground to goof around in (the Nepali kids carry no cash, can't afford electronics, and wash their own clothes by hand). But the kids in Tokyo aren't happier. They can't get along with each other, never mind anyone else. There is no semblance of family life at the Tokyo orphanage. It felt like a repository for unwanted children.


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In many ways, Nepali culture of today closely resembles pre-tech revolution Japan. The way the aunties at Ama Ghar prepared food in the kitchen or washed clothes in buckets of cold water reminded me of the way my Japanese grandmother went about her daily chores — it's something about the pacing and the commitment to what may seem like the most menial tasks that made me nostalgic for my childhood. I see many similarities between Japanese and Nepali culture. They're both traditionally patriarchal societies, with heavy Buddhist influences; children are taught to respect and care for elders, and society as a whole values community over individualism. But an unfortunate side effect of economic growth was that some of these cultural values have been compromised — if not ignored outright, they have at the very least become marginalized.


At Ama Ghar, the aunties live and sleep in the same rooms as the children. This type of setup is common in Nepali homes today and was also common in Japanese homes not too many generations ago. At the orphanage in Tokyo, all staff members go home in the evening, except one night a week when they're required to supervise the children on rotation. I believe this makes a big difference in how home-like each of these two places feels to the kids who live there. (An expert in otaku culture once told me that the reason the imouto — little sister — fetish exists is because some men still crave the type of closeness that used to bond Japanese families together.) I believe the disintegration of these kinds of long-held values has something to do with the unhappiness the Tokyo orphanage was sheltering.**


I may never know what created the problematic conditions at the Japanese children's home, but the director's words about the orphanage being a much brighter place a quarter of a century ago made me sad. Maybe the Tokyo orphanage could use a values lesson from its own history or from its counterpart in the developing world.


You can make a donation to Ama Ghar, the children's home in Kathmandu, on the Ama Foundation web site.


*Structurally, it's a lot like an orphanage, but the Ama Foundation doesn't call it that because many of the children still had one or both living parents, and the kids here are not up for adoption.

**After our visit, my mother got a phone call from the director saying that he didn't want our used furniture after all; they were going to get a charity organization to buy them all-new appliances.


(Thanks, Lee Nima Mam Ajq'ij Dr. M.X. Quetzalkanbalam, for your insights!)

Could This Really Happen to You?

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 07:55 AM PST

popscicover2.jpgAs a contributing editor at Make Magazine, I know how important a good magazine cover is for single copy sales. A pretty girl is good for sales, and a guy dissecting a house plant is not so good.

This is my favorite cover of all time - it has it all. (But I just can't imagine how the scenario depicted could possibly take place. Maybe these people are models on a photo shoot gone bad, or maybe this is the top floor of a parking garage.)

Sure made me want to buy the mag. So I went on eBay and bought it.

Centenary of First Ever Air to Ground Radio Message: "Come and Get this Goddam Cat"

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 07:18 AM PST

2010 marks the centenary of a number of great events, including the first air to ground radio message.

Exactly 100 years ago, a gray tabby named Kiddo became the first cat to cross the Atlantic Ocean by dirigible. Kiddo belonged to one of the crew members of American explorer Walter Wellman's airship America. In 1910 Wellman attempted to cross the ocean, leaving from Atlantic City, New Jersey on 15 October that year. kiddo-vaniman.jpg Kiddo stowed away in one of the lifeboats, and was after his discovery turned out to be as big a pain as only an angry, claustrophobic cat can be, scratching, mewing, and howling and generally bugging the heck out of everybody on board. The America carried radio equipment -- the first aircraft so equipped -- and apparently the historic first, in-flight radio message, to a secretary back on land, read: 'Roy, come and get this goddamn cat'

More information on this momentous event is here.

Fractal zoomer

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 06:31 AM PST

Guy sez, "This is my fractal generator and zoomer. The basic premise is I wrote a php program which will generate a fractal based on parameters passed to it and return it as an image to the browser. By calling this program with specific parameters a fractal can be generated that can be zoomed in on infinitely. The other link is a demonstration of the relationships between the Mandelbrot and Julia Set versions of the fractals. If you view the Mandelbrot fractal and then tile the Julia version you will begin to see the outline of the Mandelbrot version in the tiled Julia. This has been a lot of fun to write, I would love to take it a bit further and write some explanations and teaching tools. Please keep in mind that all the images are generated on the fly so if you do post this my server may go BOING!"

Welcome to the Fractal Generator (Thanks, Guy!)

Previously:


School district admits installing covert webcam activation software on student laptops, denies wrongdoing

Posted: 19 Feb 2010 06:16 AM PST

The Superintendant of the Lower Merion School District -- where parents have initiated a class action suit over the covert use of students' laptops to surveil them in school and at home -- has sent a letter to parents with more information about the spying. The school admits that there was spyware installed on students laptops that allowed for remote, covert activation of their webcams, but maintains that the measure was only to be used in the event of theft of the machine (some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case). The school also claims that the system can only capture still images, not audio or video. They have disabled the system for now and deny that it was misused.
As a result of our preliminary review of security procedures today, I directed the following actions:
· Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.
· A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.
· A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.
· A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.
School Sued For Spying On Students With Laptop Cameras Says It Was A Security Feature, Turns It Off (Thanks, Dan!)

(Image: IMG_6395, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from bionicteaching's photostream)

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