The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- If chess were redesigned by MMORPG developers
- Super Punch's webby Tarot
- Apocalyptic short story about apocalypses will leave you moved, glum
- Profile of ex-narc who's declared war on the "War on Drugs"
- But what will the rest of the world eat?
- Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage to the military
- PublicACTA: a people's copyright treaty summit, NZ, 10 April 2010
- Petition to make "Hella" the prefix for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
- Piano built into a dining room table
- Architectural fan-drawings of classic sitcom houses
- iPad case with wings
- NASA: Chile quake shortened earth's days, bumped planet off axis
- Guru of Gang Starr in coma after heart attack
- Dinosaur-eating snake will rock your world
- Chanel selling temporary bling tattoos
- 17 meals, 5 dishes, 1 chicken, 0 mayonnaise
- Rod Stewart doesn't play good Rod Stewart music anymore, but these guys do
- Not a lie: Valve updates Portal with secret radio broadcast images
- Guest blogger: Jimmy Guterman!
- Building a better hot dog
- Bad Brains, the documentary
- Epic Beard Man, the documentary
- Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой
- Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry motherlode
- €10,000 scratch card winner eats ticket
- Short film about 1962 World's Fair in Seattle
- Gentleman holding coffee walks into glass door
- How to build a backyard chicken coop
- Interview with wife of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo
- Will Leitch on how Roger Ebert drew him to journalism
| If chess were redesigned by MMORPG developers Posted: 02 Mar 2010 01:50 AM PST AKMA sez, "As I was walking to work I started thinking about some of the reasons I got tired of playing World of Warcraft, and this angle occurred to me...." If Chess Were Invented By MMOG Developers (Thanks, AKMA!) (Image: Chess vortex, a Creative Commons Attribution image from fdecomite's photostream) Previously:
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| Posted: 01 Mar 2010 11:39 PM PST  In celebration of its third bloggaversary, the excellent Super Punch has asked a collection of talented web-artists to create a Super Punch Tarot -- a webby deck inspired by the eclectic and wonderful. Shown here, Queen of Hearts by Stéphane Massa-Bidal and Six of Cups by Jerrod Maruyama. Kawaii Jabba and Slave Leia. Introducing the Super Punch Tarot Previously: |
| Apocalyptic short story about apocalypses will leave you moved, glum Posted: 01 Mar 2010 11:32 PM PST The latest Futurismic short-story is an incredibly grim but sweetly smartassed apocalyptic tale called "Tupac Shakur and the End of the World," by Sandra McDonald. Tupac is the story of band of survivors of a plague that paralyses its victims and leaves them to die; as Susan, the narrator, slogs down the Interstate to Orlando, she has plenty of time to ruminate on what makes apocalypse stories so compelling. Neat narrative trick, and carried off well. Great way to cure your early-March-happiness. NEW FICTION: TUPAC SHAKUR AND THE END OF THE WORLD by Sandra McDonald (Image: The Apocalypse Is a "Once in a Lifetime" Thing! a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Sister72's photostream) Previously: |
| Profile of ex-narc who's declared war on the "War on Drugs" Posted: 01 Mar 2010 11:22 PM PST Here's a great, long profile of Barry Cooper, the ex-narc whose new reality TV show sets up stings for dirty drug cops and videos them making illegal busts and searches: Barry Cooper: Drug War Insurgent (via Beyond the Beyond) Previously: |
| But what will the rest of the world eat? Posted: 01 Mar 2010 11:01 PM PST  |
| Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage to the military Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:44 PM PST Have you been hearing a lot of gloom-and-doom talk about the need for American "cyberwar" preparedness lately? The coming cyberwar threat? Cybergeddon? Me too. Wired's Ryan Singel makes a good case in this article that cyberwar hype -- like terrorism hype -- has been fuelled by government contractors who have a product to sell, and who don't give a damn about the consequences to the net or to freedom. In this case, it's Michael McConnell, the Bush adminstration's director of national intelligence, now working as vice president at the "secretive defense contracting giant" Booz Allen Hamilton. He's been going before Congress and in the op-ed pages of the WaPo to declare that cyberwar is coming, and that we need to break the Internet so that every online action can be traced to a person and a place by the NSA. Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet Previously: |
| PublicACTA: a people's copyright treaty summit, NZ, 10 April 2010 Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:41 PM PST Gnat sez, "The final round of ACTA negotiations will be in New Zealand, 12-16 April. In the days before that, InternetNZ (which runs the .nz domain) will host an open conference called PublicACTA in Wellington. The idea is to get Internet experts, technology lawyers, and the public involved and heard. The outputs of the conference will be given to the NZ negotiators ahead of the final round." ACTA could affect everyone's rights on the Internet. Proposals from some countries seek to go beyond New Zealand's current public position. It is therefore very important that there is a forum for public discussion," says [InternetNZ Policy Director] Carter. Kiwis are blooded and proven copyfighters: they've been through the wars over three-strikes rules for their nation's copyright laws, and prevailed. They will kick all kinds of ACTA ass next month, mark my words. InternetNZ to take public message to ACTA negotiators (Thanks, Nat!) Previously:
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| Petition to make "Hella" the prefix for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:36 PM PST  Carl sez, "A petition to make Hella- the official SI prefix for 10^27, for measuring things bigger than Yotta- (the prefix for (US) billion trillion). For instance: 'the sun (mass of 2.2 hellatons) would release energy at 0.3 hellawatts.' It would also come in handy for eventually measuring Internet traffic and US national debt." The Official Petition to Establish "Hella-" as the SI Prefix for 10^27 (Thanks, Carl!) Previously:
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| Piano built into a dining room table Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:29 PM PST  Here's a nice space-saving design: an electric piano integrated into a dining room table, photographed by Joost van Brug. This could be a lot more space-saving if they'd built it into a small dining room table -- that thing is bigger than my apartment! Georg Bohle Piano Table (Thanks, Marilyn!) Previously:
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| Architectural fan-drawings of classic sitcom houses Posted: 01 Mar 2010 10:24 PM PST  Jay sez, "MARK BENNETT (b 1956) is a Santa Monica, CA letter carrier. A compulsive television watcher in his youth, he makes careful observations of the sets inhabited by popular tv shows, transforming them into fully realized architectural drawings. Wicked fun." Mark Bennett - Mark Moore Gallery (Thanks, Jay!) Previously: |
| Posted: 01 Mar 2010 08:12 PM PST |
| NASA: Chile quake shortened earth's days, bumped planet off axis Posted: 01 Mar 2010 07:52 PM PST The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile over the weekend—killing hundreds, and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless—may have shortened the length of each Earth day, according to JPL research scientist Richard Gross. Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days (NASA.gov) [Image: Earth, as seen through NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.]
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| Guru of Gang Starr in coma after heart attack Posted: 01 Mar 2010 06:59 PM PST Born Keith Elam, his stage name is an acronym for "Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal." No kidding, man. Embedded above, a classic Gang Starr track: Mass Appeal. Get well, Guru. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin) |
| Dinosaur-eating snake will rock your world Posted: 01 Mar 2010 06:22 PM PST A 12-foot-long snake that ate baby dinosaurs—possibly the most metal thing in paleontology. Plus, look at that artistic fossil reconstruction, just look at it. |
| Chanel selling temporary bling tattoos Posted: 01 Mar 2010 06:08 PM PST  Oh for croissant's sake, Chanel! Why not just open up a Jersey Shore outlet store while you're at it. What's next, Ed Hardy Nº 5? God help them, Coco. And $75 a pop. Perhaps it's for vajazzlers. LES TROMPE-L'OEIL DE CHANEL (Chanel.com, via Sandro Alberti) |
| 17 meals, 5 dishes, 1 chicken, 0 mayonnaise Posted: 01 Mar 2010 06:00 PM PST  Cheap, Healthy, Good is one of my favorite recipe blogs. Today, I noticed a challenge post of theirs from last year that breaks down the details of an inscrutable magic trick I never managed to successfully learn from my elders: Getting a couple weeks worth of food out of one roasted chicken. The rules:
The results look so fabulous that I think I'm going to give this a shot next week. How about you? How far have you stretched a chicken? Image courtesy Flickr user thebittenworld.com, via CC |
| Rod Stewart doesn't play good Rod Stewart music anymore, but these guys do Posted: 01 Mar 2010 06:13 PM PST Thanks Mark. Very happy to be here. Let's get started... I've lived in Massachusetts for 24 years, but in the first half of the '90s I spent a lot of time in Nashville. I worked as a reissue producer, compiling box sets of veteran country and blues performers. Some of the projects were fun, some were more challenging, but it was always great being in Music City.  One of the many musicians I met during my trip to Nashville was Bill Lloyd. You may know him as half of the popular country-rock duo Foster and Lloyd, but he's produced, recorded with, or written for dozens of acts you love, from Carl Perkins to Cheap Trick. (Disclosure: He contributed to my Sandinista Project a few years back.) One of Lloyd's more intriguing ongoing projects is The Long Players. When the spirit moves them, Lloyd and the Long Players, an ever-changing group of Nashville's finest, gallop through a classic rock'n'roll album. They've played through plenty of the usual suspects -- Blonde on Blonde, My Aim Is True, After the Gold Rush -- and they've stayed consistently true to the spirit of the originals but, at their best, just a bit wilder.
Every Picture Tells a Story is Stewart's bid for rock-and-roll immortality, an ambitious record in a variety of senses (he wants Elvis's wallet as well as his gifts) and dwarfs other such attempts, even successful ones like Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? Stewart's third solo album is an all-encompassing work: Stewart demands attention from everyone on every level. His imaginative songwriting is rife with telling detail: The hair-combing scene in "Every Picture Tells a Story," the morning-after madness in "Maggie May," and the weather report in "Mandolin Wind" are all the products of a man in love with the world and his ability to describe that world and reassure himself. The performances exceed the writing, especially on the outside tunes, which thrive on Stewart's devotion to them. "(I Know) I'm Losing You" is a hard-rock version of the Temptations hit that Stewart recorded with his sometime band the Faces. Stewart knows not to mimic the Motown original: He accepts the Sun dictum that personal expression far outlasts attempts to copy, that copying is in itself not merely fruitless but intolerable. Stewart puts across Tim Hardin's "(Find a) Reason to Believe" as an organ-driven call for moxie in the face of resignation, and on the mostly acoustic take on Bob Dylan's aching "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," Stewart is even more determined. Much of the time, the characters in Every Picture Tells a Story find themselves in a desperate condition, and what upraises them is the confidence of the narrator. Such endurance is most apparent on "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Maggie May," a pair of shattering acoustic hard-rock numbers about young men (or old boys, your call) gaining experience in ways they never expected or intended. These two songs, among the most durable pop-music offerings of the century, are so bold, so honest about their doubts, so willing and able to transcend their immediate difficulties, that they fulfill the dreams Woody Guthrie gave life to in "Bound for Glory." On Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart is an undeniable, as welcome, as any singer will ever be. Rod is long done with that now, of course, but the record is still very much alive. If you're in Nashville on March 6, go to The Mercy Lounge and witness The Long Ryders with special guests including Dan Baird, Warner Hodges, and Radney Foster as they keep this record alive. |
| Not a lie: Valve updates Portal with secret radio broadcast images Posted: 01 Mar 2010 08:27 PM PST  This afternoon's best mystery from the new reigning champs of brilliantly artful viral campaigns: a seemingly innocuous new update to the PC version of Valve's cult hit puzzle game Portal has turned out to be far more than anyone expected, and could be the first instance of using a three year old game itself to hint at future titles. The update's changelog only wryly stated that Valve had "changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations", causing players to note that each section of the game had been updated with a new radio object. At first glance, the new radios appeared to be the same that otherwise normally existed inside the game, which simply chirped out a samba version of the game's iconic end-theme song. Only later was it discovered that these new radios each contain a hidden audio file that's transmitted when you carry them to one particular point in each of the game's levels. Thanks to the Steam forum's overeager detectives, we've already learned that the most perplexing of these pirate transmissions are in fact SSTV encoded photographs -- the same used by shortwave operators to transmit images over the air -- each watermarked with the Aperture Science logo to stem any doubt about their authenticity. Follow the ongoing investigations here, and ponder, via Shawn Elliott, in-game lore tying the Half Life universe to Portal's via a character who "is cunning enough to encrypt... photographs, coordinates, blueprints and hailing frequencies within her message." Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum manage - Steam Users' Forums |
| Guest blogger: Jimmy Guterman! Posted: 01 Mar 2010 05:48 PM PST  We're happy to have Jimmy Guterman here as a guest blogger for the next two weeks. We've covered some of Jimmy's work here previously, both when he edited Release 2.0 for O'Reilly (example) and when he made his Sandinista Project Clash tribute free for a day, something he says he may do again over the next two weeks. And he wrote an appreciation of Bob Moog for me at Make. In addition to producing records and writing a bunch of books about rock'n'roll, he's edited many entertainment, business, and management publications; he's currently winding down a stint as executive editor of MIT Sloan Management Review. Some of the topics Jimmy says are on his mind these days: the latest in prewar country blues bootlegs, the case against productivity porn, why The A-Team went downhill when they stopped doing welding montages, why his theremin lessons went nowhere, the latest in diabetes technology, writing and his novel-in-progress, what unreleased Clash material needs to be released right now, why Hog Bay Software is awesome, Dawn Powell, the physics behind Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, generally accepted management wisdom that is really stupid, information design, Patricia Highsmith, how switching to the Mac is like getting out of an abusive marriage, his crush on Cindy McCain, reasons to hate the Kindle that even Cory hasn't thought of, what Marcel Proust and SpongeBob SquarePants have in common, why worshipping Paula Fox is a good idea, and the time he was almost a dot-com millionaire for 5 minutes and 17 seconds. Welcome aboard, Jimmy. (You can write him here.) |
| Posted: 01 Mar 2010 05:41 PM PST  "If you were to take the best engineers in the world and asked them to design a perfect plug for a child's airway, you couldn't do better than a hot dog." That's according to a doctor with the American Academy of Pediatrics. To solve the problem, Fast Company set design firm RKS to the task of creating a less-deadly processed meat paste sausage. Their solution was this spiral dog, the result of some delightful experiments with a Play-Doh Fun Factory. (Via Popular Science) Photo taken by RKS |
| Posted: 01 Mar 2010 05:43 PM PST Via Dangerous Minds: word of a documentary film on the profoundly influential hardcore band Bad Brains, following the band from 1979 to now. The first punk show I ever saw, when I was too young to legally get into clubs. They changed my life. It was exactly like this. |
| Epic Beard Man, the documentary Posted: 01 Mar 2010 05:10 PM PST (Thanks, Sean Bonner, via Blame it On the Voices) |
| Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой Posted: 01 Mar 2010 08:24 PM PST Nothing I can say here will make this any better. (Thanks Jim and Steve!) |
| Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry motherlode Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:54 PM PST Michael Geist sez, On the heels of the leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak has hit the Internet. A new European Union document prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the U.S., the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty. This is probably the most significant leak to-date since it goes even beyond the transparency debate by including specific country positions and proposals.Major ACTA Leak: Internet and Civil Enforcement Chapters With Country Positions Previously: |
| €10,000 scratch card winner eats ticket Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:53 PM PST Ryanair has been handing out scratch cards to their passengers as part of a prize competition. On a flight from Poland to the UK, one gentleman won €10,000. He asked the flight crew for his money on the spot. When they told him that he couldn't collect his money until the plane had landed, he became upset and ate the ticket. |
| Short film about 1962 World's Fair in Seattle Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:39 PM PST From the wonderful Prelinger Archives on Archive.org, a teen couple "romps through the futuristic landscape of the Seattle World's Fair, centered in the Bell System pavilion." My favorite part was the pigeon in the Skinner box, about 4 minutes in. (Thanks, Eric!) |
| Gentleman holding coffee walks into glass door Posted: 01 Mar 2010 04:04 PM PST This simple video is a thing of beauty: Man holding coffee walks into glass door. (via Jesse Dylan) |
| How to build a backyard chicken coop Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:14 PM PST  My friend Erik Knutzen of Homegrown Evolution wrote a short article on the important things to keep in mind when designing and building a henhouse and a chicken run. He knows what he's talking about and the information he provides is essential for backyard poultry keepers. My four ladies sleep in a hen house that is a 4-foot by 4-foot foot waterproof wooden box with a tin roof. I use high quality (dust free) wood shavings on the floor which I clean out every week, depositing the litter into a compost pile. The hen house also contains a nesting box that I built myself out of plywood. Check out some nice plans for nesting boxes here. Mine is 12"x12"x12". Chickens like a tight space to lay their eggs, so don't make it any bigger than that. Plan on having one box for every four hens. The nesting box should be kept full of straw or wood shavings. Ideally the nesting box is inside the hen house--hens like a dark, secure place to lay their eggs. In cold climates you will need to insulate the hen house well and keep their water from freezing.How To Build a Backyard Chicken Coop |
| Interview with wife of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:09 PM PST Jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo wrote to his wife, Liu Xia: "Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes." The author of the Charter 08 call for reforms in China has been in jail for 11 years. (via @ronamaynard) |
| Will Leitch on how Roger Ebert drew him to journalism Posted: 01 Mar 2010 12:30 PM PST Deadspin's Will Leitch has a beautiful post up explaining how movie critic, cancer survivor, and cultural icon Roger Ebert drew him to journalism. (via Susannah Breslin and @nicknotned) |
After millennia in beta, Échecs Games presents the interactive strategy game for the twenty-first century: Shah-mat 64.0! 
For years, McConnell has wanted the NSA (the ultra-secretive government spy agency responsible for listening in on other countries and for defending classified government computer systems) to take the lead in guarding all government and private networks. Not surprisingly, the contractor he works for has massive, secret contracts with the NSA in that very area. In fact, the company, owned by the shadowy Carlyle Group, is reported to pull in $5 billion a year in government contracts, many of them Top Secret. 
I would never buy this, but I give it props for being equal parts creative and kinda nasty. It's $30. 
He computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second). 
Terrible terrible news. Legendary emcee 
I wish I was going to be in Nashville on Saturday night because they'll be performing maybe my favorite-ever album, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story. Yeah, I know: Rod hasn't made an interesting album since the Nixon Administration (and the first Nixon Administration at that), but he was once as good as rock'n'roll got. 
Thomas Bruso, known on the internet as "Epic Beard Man," is the subject of a documentary which focuses on the release of 
Update: I've swapped out the video embed in this post with a version that doesn't include obnoxious ads. This embed, and more about the incident, | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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