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- How obscure security makes school suck
- Boyoyo Boys, "Back in Town" (Greatest Song of All Time of the Day)
- Original D&D art from 1974: our craptastic nerd origins
- Exhausting the entire problem space of animated teddy-bears, cars, people and pigeons
- Magic trick reverso: putting the tablecloth back on the table!
- Fat is a flavor?
- TSA analyst indicted for tampering with terrorist watchlists
- Hackers on Planet Earth NYC conference is looking for tech-art
- Pulling the tablecloth out from under the place-settings with a performance motorcycle
- 3*TYPE text leaps out at you
- Minute To Win It: fun game show premieres this Sunday on NBC
- Lady Gaga trash mosaic portrait, Jason Mecier
- White trash video addiction: Bargain Barn
- Fight terrorism with science: Scott Atran
- Old Jews Telling Jokes: Charlotte Bornstein
- Quote of the day: 7-year-old boy, calling 911 when armed men attacked home
- Untitled 3
- More on Alexander McQueen's final collection (and tweets): Angels and Demons
- BristleBots and LED throwie art at Crash Space
- Happy Birthday, Chuck Norris!
- EV Gray and the "fuelless engine" Fascination car
- Moviegoer stabbed for complaining about a woman on her cell phone
- Kitty cosplay
- Widespread support for toilets that separate crap from urine
- Woman imitates Michael Jackson after brushing her teeth
- GDC Gallery: How The Indie Fund Could Change Game Dev Destiny
- Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people
- Did Charley Patton play that way?
- Art of film title sequences
- OK Go leaves EMI, launches their own record label
| How obscure security makes school suck Posted: 11 Mar 2010 05:02 AM PST  Recently out of Virginia's public school system, youngster James Stephenson writes in to say that being a kid sucks. So what's new? A gauntlet of cameras, invasive searches and authoritarian security theatrics that don't make schools feel safer—but do tempt administrators into privacy abuses such as Lower Merion's recent webcam-spying scandal. Special feature: "Seen Not Heard: How obscure security makes school suck." |
| Boyoyo Boys, "Back in Town" (Greatest Song of All Time of the Day) Posted: 11 Mar 2010 04:47 AM PST Everyone from Malcolm McLaren to Paul Simon heard something in South Africa's Boyoyo Boys that they wanted to appropriate. Their '80s records are lively and surprising, both original and emblematic of their time. You can hear where whole chunks of popular American music, from Graceland to Vampire Weekend, were born and raised. After listening to "Back in Town," you'd have broken a UN boycott to work with them, too. |
| Original D&D art from 1974: our craptastic nerd origins Posted: 11 Mar 2010 04:15 AM PST  Something Awful's Steve and Zack have an excruciating look at the artwork and rules from the original, 1974 version of Dungeons and Dragons, which appears to have been drawn by a hyperactive 12-year-old during an extremely boring math class. I remember seeing these not long after getting my first set of the AD&D hardcovers and thinking that they looked intriguing, if a little thin. I also produced an enormous amount of artwork that looked like this for the dungeons I created. The Original Dungeons & Dragons Previously:
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| Exhausting the entire problem space of animated teddy-bears, cars, people and pigeons Posted: 11 Mar 2010 02:05 AM PST Animator/composer Cyriak just posted this surreal video featuring infinite giant teddy bears climbing out of the sea at the Worthing shore and crossing the road. You'd think that this would be thin gruel for three minutes' worth of animation, but you'd be wrong: it turns out that the number of variations on the themes of pigeons, people, teddies, cars and shore is a lot greater (and weirder and funnier) than instinct would suggest. Previously: |
| Magic trick reverso: putting the tablecloth back on the table! Posted: 11 Mar 2010 04:06 AM PST Magician Mat Ricardo writes in regarding this morning's post showing a motorcycle (seemingly) pulling the tablecloth out from beneath a very long table's-worth of place settings: "Here's what I do - for 20 years-ish I've been finishing nmy cabaret act by putting the tablecloth back on the table, underneath all the stuff. Took me years to invent, and I'm the only person in the world performing this trick. Maybe I need to get out more, but what can I say - it's a living!" You can see the gag around 2:15 in the video, but it's well worth watching the whole thing. I was gutted to learn that I missed Mat last weekend when I took the kid down to Covent Garden in London to see the performers, but I'm looking forward to catching his act next time we head down. Mat Ricardo showreel (Thanks, Mat!) Previously: |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 10:47 PM PST Researchers at Australia's Deakin University have published a paper in the British Journal of Nutrition showing evidence that human beings can taste fat -- that is, they can distinguish between two flavourless solutions in which one has more fat than the other. I believe that this is true -- and that fat can offset bitterness the same way that sweet can. For example, raw cacao nibs mixed with cashew nuts taste sweet and chocolatey. Australian researchers say fat is 'sixth taste' (via Kottke) (Image: Beale's Open Kettle Rendered Pure Lard, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Steve Snodgrass' photostream) Previously: |
| TSA analyst indicted for tampering with terrorist watchlists Posted: 10 Mar 2010 10:39 PM PST A former TSA analyst has been indicted for computer crimes after being allegedly caught tampering with various terrorist watchlists (his work duties involved keeping these databases up to date). He'd been given notice that he was being fired before the incident. The article doesn't explain what he's suspected of doing, though the possibilities are interesting: adding enemies to watchlists? Taking people off of watchlists? Douglas James Duchak, 46, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday with two counts of damaging protected computers. According to a federal indictment, Duchak tried to compromise computers at the TSA's Colorado Springs Operations Center (CSOC) on Oct. 22, 2009, seven days after he'd being given two weeks notice that he was being dismissed. He was also charged with tampering with a TSA server that contained data from the U.S. Marshal's Service Warrant Information Network.Former TSA analyst charged with computer tampering (via /.) Previously:
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| Hackers on Planet Earth NYC conference is looking for tech-art Posted: 10 Mar 2010 10:19 PM PST  Aestetix sez, "Traditionally HOPE [ed: Hackers on Planet Earth, the annual NYC conference put on by 2600 Magazine] conferences have been more about the talks than the physical projects, but with the 2008 conference that started to change, and this time organizers are pushing for an even stronger showing of projects and tech art. This call for projects goes out to hackers, makers, technologists, artists, and free thinkers around the world. Come share your passions and ideas with 3,000+ of your soon-to-be closest friends." Fun-loving hackers and improbable tech-art: what a match made in heaven! HOPE is probably my top conference that I've never been to (I almost made it in 1999 but the flight was cancelled!). I continue to miss it every year, despite my best efforts (it usually overlaps my birthday, which is family time, for obvious reasons!), but I vow to go someday. I mean, just have a look at that call for proposals: games to be played by thousands of hackers over three floors of a massive hotel; midnight to 9AM sessions; hardware hacking village... Talk about nerdvana. Call for Projects and Tech Art (Thanks, aestetix!) Previously: |
| Pulling the tablecloth out from under the place-settings with a performance motorcycle Posted: 10 Mar 2010 10:09 PM PST This is a very clever way to promote your performance motorcycle: BMW chains a very, very long tablecloth with a very, very elaborate cluster of place-settings to a S 1000 RR "superbike" and has a driver roar off, taking the cloth away and leaving the dinner setup intact. Impressive acceleration! Video: BMW S 1000 RR pulls off the old tablecloth trick (Thanks, Alan!) Previously:
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| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 06:32 PM PST Ben Greenman invents the 3*TYPE 3*TYPE process, saves text-based media from ignominious death death. |
| Minute To Win It: fun game show premieres this Sunday on NBC Posted: 10 Mar 2010 06:15 PM PST My friend Eric Hoberman helped develop a new game show that will premiere on NBC on Sunday March 14 from 7-9 p.m. ET/PT. It's called Minute To Win It, and the object is to win a series of 10 easy-to-understand but increasingly-hard-to-win challenges. As the title suggests, the players must successfully complete each of the games in a minute. The award structure is like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- the cash amount increases with each game up to a million dollars, you can walk away with what you've won at any point, and you can lose it all if you blow a challenge. Eric gave me a box of props so I could try out the games myself. The show's contestants are also given props and rules for the games before they come on the show so they can practice. The props are household items -- golf balls, cookies, a deck of cards. Here are a few of the challenges contestants will have 60 seconds to complete: • Move two Oreo cookies from your forehead to your mouth using your facial muscles only. (I failed!) • Stack three golf balls vertically. (I failed!) • Balance a deck of playing cards on a soda bottle and blow all the cards off but the bottom one, the joker. (I failed!) • A dollar bill is sandwiched between two bottles, one upright, the other inverted and placed on top of the upright bottle. You have four tries to remove the bill without touching or toppling the bottles. (Success!) I'm interested to know if anyone can successfully complete the tasks I failed at. If you make a YouTube of it, please provide the link so we can watch it! |
| Lady Gaga trash mosaic portrait, Jason Mecier Posted: 10 Mar 2010 05:39 PM PST  Lady Gaga, a "trash mosaic portrait" by San Francisco-based artist Jason Mecier, who has shows coming up in LA and SF. Richard Metzger has more at Dangerous Minds. |
| White trash video addiction: Bargain Barn Posted: 10 Mar 2010 06:15 PM PST (Thanks, Mikael Jorgensen!) |
| Fight terrorism with science: Scott Atran Posted: 10 Mar 2010 05:13 PM PST "We are fixated on technology and technological success, and we have no sustained or systematic approach to field-based social understanding of our adversaries' motivation, intent, will, and the dreams that drive their strategic vision, however strange those dreams and vision may seem to us."—Anthropologist Scott Atran, who believes the quest to end violent political extremism needs more science. (edge.org) |
| Old Jews Telling Jokes: Charlotte Bornstein Posted: 10 Mar 2010 06:29 PM PST Eric Spiegelman of "Old Jews Telling Jokes" explains this episode: "My cousin Michael recommended that we get Charlotte Bornstein on camera to tell some jokes. He also advised that we 'just keep the camera running.' You'll see why." Many more new episodes of this stripped-down, oldschool comedy at oldjewstellingjokes.com. (Technical note: If you have trouble viewing the embedded Flash videos hosted on Blip.tv, as I did, you may have better luck downloading the videos as iTunes podcast episodes.)
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| Quote of the day: 7-year-old boy, calling 911 when armed men attacked home Posted: 10 Mar 2010 06:43 PM PST "Bring cops... a lot of them!... And soldiers too."—Carlos, a brave 7 year old boy from Norwalk, California, calling 911 after armed attackers broke into his home and threatened to kill his family. (Audio of the call) |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 04:56 PM PST  Yup. |
| More on Alexander McQueen's final collection (and tweets): Angels and Demons Posted: 10 Mar 2010 03:52 PM PST  Snip from Wall Street Journal article on the last collection of Alexander McQueen. Twice in the weeks leading up to his Feb. 11 death, Mr. McQueen messaged on Twitter, 'Hells angels [sic] and prolific demons.' What seemed a non sequitur now appears to be a reference to the collection he was working on, imprinted with the angels of Sandro Botticelli and the demons of Hieronymus Bosch.He had finished some 16 looks, about half of what the collection would typically include, at the time of his death. His Twitter account has been taken offline, but a Google Cache exists. The final tweet: "De sade, Marie A- god rest there souls." [sic] (thanks, Kelly Sparks)
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| BristleBots and LED throwie art at Crash Space Posted: 10 Mar 2010 03:22 PM PST Look at Todbot's BristleBots go! He held a workshop at Crash Space in Culver City, CA last night and showed people how to make them. (I'm sorry I didn't announce it in advance!) |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 03:09 PM PST "America is not a democracy. It's a Chuck-tatorship. (...) We'd go down the line and he'd say, 'He's honest. He's honest. He's corrupted.' And I'd walk up to him and I'd say, 'You're fired." If he didn't move immediately, I would choke him unconscious and lay him over to the side there."— Mr. Chuck Norris, who, as Rachel Maddow reminds us, turns 70 today. |
| EV Gray and the "fuelless engine" Fascination car Posted: 10 Mar 2010 02:39 PM PST  I, too, am very, very anxious for the day to come when I can purchase a Fascination car with an EV Gray fuelless engine. The Fascination Car was the brain child of Paul M. Lewis, of the Highway Aircraft Corporation. It was developed with a standard engine, but he wanted to power it with ANYTHING that didn't burn gasoline. He was in negotiations with Ed Gray for a while to use the EMA Engine, but that fell through. He then approached Josef Papp for his plasma engine. Ultimately, neither the engines or the car were ever produced. |
| Moviegoer stabbed for complaining about a woman on her cell phone Posted: 10 Mar 2010 12:26 PM PST A man was stabbed with a meat thermometer in a movie theater in LA after complaining to a woman about talking on her cell phone during a Saturday night screening of Shutter Island. |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 01:50 PM PST  [via Global Post via TokyoMango] |
| Widespread support for toilets that separate crap from urine Posted: 11 Mar 2010 03:23 AM PST  People in seven European countries have expressed willingness to try "NoMix" toilets that keep crap and urine separate, allowing for more efficient waste processing and less seepage of urine-borne pharmaceuticals into the water supply. The study was conducted with 2700 people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, with 80 percent supporting the toilets. Even higher numbers were willing to use urine as fertilizer. The article doesn't discuss infrastructural issues, though: would you need a second black-water sewer for the yellow gold? NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in 7 European countries Previously: |
| Woman imitates Michael Jackson after brushing her teeth Posted: 10 Mar 2010 11:50 AM PST In this weird video, a French comedienne transforms herself into Michael Jackson with just some mascara, lipstick, and scotch tape. |
| GDC Gallery: How The Indie Fund Could Change Game Dev Destiny Posted: 10 Mar 2010 11:19 AM PST  Like UK studio Introversion's indie-rallying clarion call at the 2006 Independent Games Festival, the announcement of an indie-led investment strategy -- simply called the Indie Fund -- could be the next watershed moment for the future of independent gaming. Organized by a consortium of indie devs that've seen breakout success (like World of Goo creators 2D Boy and Braid developer Jon Blow), the fund aims to maintain control of the funding cycle -- keeping it out of the hands of publishers and traditional investors alike -- and keep indies in charge of their own destiny. Opening the 2010 Independent Games Summit, 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel took to the stage to explain why the fund was needed, with Braid artist David Hellman illustrating the strange over-complex steamwork behemoth of traditional business models that no longer serve the indies best: the full hi-res gallery continues below.
Adding nuance to the title of his session, Carmel admitted the real problem was more specific: that the real problem was shoe-horning the new world of digitally distributed indie games into the old regime of traditional retail game publishing.
As game development has evolved over the past few decades, he explained, traditional software engineering practices have come with it: "waterfall approach" processes that emphasize doing as much pre-production design as possible as early in the process as possible, postponing the actual building. Throughout the 90s, though, agile practices emerged that saw development models being thought of as much more fluid processes, with studies showing that this model isn't just cheaper and better for actually creating software, but maintaining it as well. The indies are currently facing the same situation today in regards to funding new games, said Carmel, as the industry still hasn't recognized the importance of creating a new mechanism that takes the new digitally distributed landscape into full account.
The problems: publishers give too much money for what should be smaller budgets. World of Goo's development costs were in the region of $120,000, Braid's at $180,000: if publishers are giving out $500,000-$1 million (presuming old model additional costs of manufacturing and maintaining inventory, working with retail, marketing), they're taking on too much risk and can never hope to make up that investment. "The machinery for triple-A retail games doesn't scale down," said Carmel -- it becomes inefficient and developers end up becoming tenant farmers. 2D Boy saw this inefficiency in effect first hand when they approached both Valve and Microsoft to distribute World of Goo on both Steam and Games for Windows Live. With Games for Windows, each step of the process had to go through each of the above behemoth's component sectors: they'd talk to a business development agent, which would then move up the chain to managers for approval before being passed to lawyers, more engineers, platform specialists, whereas at Steam, the business was handled by one person.
As a result, what took Valve and 2D Boy one day of legal work and four days of technical integration on Steam took two months of contract negotiations and an additional two months of technical work to prepare the game for launch. It's not an entirely fair comparison, Carmel added, with Games for Windows' inherited Xbox Live Arcade and retail business model and their newness on the scene -- Steam's "been around for years" and simply "figured out how to do this efficiently." Live Arcade is not the biggest console distribution platform by accident, he said, "it takes iterations to get things right."
But in this new landscape that's emerged with Steam leading the way to Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Direct2Drive, Greenhouse, the developer and publisher equation has been upended, said Carmel: indies no longer need the traditional distribution channels publishers once provided, they simply need the funding. And so, Carmel said he and the consortium aimed to do for funding what Steam did for distribution.
And they'd do that with the Indie Fund, founded by 2D Boys Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler, Braid's Jon Blow, flOwer designer Kellee Santiago, Capy (Critter Crunch, Clash of Heroes) studio head Nathan Vella, Flashbang (Offroad Velociraptor Safari, Minotaur China Shop) co-founder Matthew Wegner and AppApove (Armadillo Gold Rush) head Aaron Isaksen. Their goals: to make the submission process shorter and more transparent, to make terms of funding deals publicly available ("Developers," said Carmel, "need to know when they're getting good or bad deals"), to maintain Steam's single point of contact and personal relationship, to allow development flexibility and experimentation, and to allow the developer both the full ownership of their intellectual property, and no editorial influence over their game ("If we provide funding, that's a vote of confidence in the team."). When an Indie Fund game ships, Carmel explained, "we recoup our costs first, and then for limited time get a revenue share from that game -- but that revenue share is going to be much smaller than what you'd get with a publisher." The first beneficiaries of the Indie Fund haven't yet been revealed, though Carmel promises we'll hear more soon -- keep checking their website to contact the team directly or to learn more. |
| Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people Posted: 10 Mar 2010 11:14 AM PST  In the 1990s Bill Geerhart was an unemployed, not-so aspiring screenwriter in his 30s. To pass the time, he channeled his inner child, 10-year-old Billy, and started writing letters to famous and infamous people and institutions. These letters, written in pencil on elementary school ruled paper, asked funny but relevant questions to politicians, serial killers, movie stars, lobbyists, CEOs, and celebrity lawyers. Geerhart saved copies of his letters and the replies he got back. This week, Harper Collins published them in a book called Little Billy's Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child's Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. The publisher gave us permission to run some of our favorites. Enjoy! Buy Little Billy's Letters on Amazon | Visit Harper Collins site for Little Billy's Letters The National Hobo Association believes that "unlike tramps or bums, the hoboes are usually very resourceful, self reliant and appreciative people." Susan Atkins is a convicted murderer former member of the Manson Family. When she died in prison in 2009, she was the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system, having been denied parole 18 times.
Robert Shapiro was a member of O.J. Simpson's "dream team" of defense lawyers.
The Catholic Church is the world's largest Christian church, with more than a billion members.
Caesars Palace is a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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| Did Charley Patton play that way? Posted: 10 Mar 2010 05:34 AM PST  Over the past seven years, I've had the outlandishly talented country blues singer and guitarist Charley Patton looking over me. (Don't know Charley Patton? Hear him here and then buy what may be the greatest CD box set ever.) For many years, a photo of Patton was as hard to come by as a pic of Robert Johnson, and -- as with Johnson -- the legitimacy of the image has been challenged. For our purposes today, let's assume that this is Patton. I draw your attention to his left hand, how it is posed over the frets like crab legs. Patton's style has always felt a bit eccentric compared to other country blues purveyors, and I wonder whether he might have fingered the frets in an unusual way, too. Now I know there are plenty of other guitarists from the 1920s and 1930s who have posed in similar ways, but I wonder: does this photo reveal something about Patton's style. I know there are a lot of guitarists here (hey, the guy who let me in here builds 'em), so I'm eager to hear any theories, no matter how dubious. And to learn more about the fellow in the photograph, see R. Crumb's comix history of Patton. (The Patton pic above belongs to Blues Images.) |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2010 09:47 PM PST  Art of the Title Sequence celebrates the world's greatest film/TV title sequences, those oft-experimental opening moments of a movie or TV show that really set the mood of what's to come. I've always been intrigued by this art form and it's fun to watch examples from around the globe. The site also features interviews with more than a dozen masters of the media. Art of the Title was mentioned in a New York Times article today about the South by Southwest Film Awards new Title Design Competition. Winners will be announced at the festival next week. According to the NYT, "The modern approach to film titles crystallized, more or less, in 1955 with "The Man With the Golden Arm." It opened with a kind of jazz ballet in which dancing white lines, over music by Elmer Bernstein, eventually tightened into the contorted arm of a drug addict. From the NYT: The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to create story-telling openings for films like "Psycho," "North by Northwest" and, later, "Goodfellas" and "The Age of Innocence.""New Honor for the Designs That Get Movies Moving" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!) |
| OK Go leaves EMI, launches their own record label Posted: 10 Mar 2010 10:39 AM PST The band OK Go, blogged many a time here for their wonderful music videos and savvy take on the state of the music biz, is launching its own record label. From okgo.com: The band has left the EMI family of corporations to form their own enterprise, a homemade upstart called Paracadute." |
"We know that the human tongue can detect five tastes -- sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury, protein-rich taste contained in foods such as soy sauce and chicken stock)," Russell Keast, from Deakin University, said Monday. 
"You buy it, you like it!" Bargain Barn was a public access cable show in Shawnee, Oklahoma in the mid-1990s—a sort of QVC for hillbillies, a televised flea market where one might pick up stray drill bits, chickens, or stained and ripped pillows. As 
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