The Latest from Boing Boing

---

• Now with more scum
• An Enviable Post Office in Ghana
• Have you used an upside-down tomato planter?
• Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou
• Malcolm X assassin to be released on parole
• Amazon's worst garden sculptures
• Send in your samples to be photographed by a scanning electron microscope
• $30 amplifier kit in the Bazaar
• Peter Watts found guilty
• Dr Teeth tattoo
• In before commenters mention the singularity
• Quantum mechanics applies to objects that can be seen by the naked eye
• Jane McGonigal on how games can make the world a better place
• Crate-digging with John Cusack: Tiny Tim at The Hunt Club
• New ACTA leak: It's a screwjob for the world's poor countries
• Gary Bauer Pancakes Pratfall
• Farts are like snowflakes
• Caught Sleeping: Brandon Boyer on Jason Rohrer's Sleep is Death
• Ada Lovelace Day T-shirts!

Now with more scum Posted: 19 Mar 2010 06:45 PM PDT "Check back panel for nutritional information" [Thanks, Heather!]

An Enviable Post Office in Ghana Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:53 PM PDT This is music made by four postal workers as they cancel postage! When I listen carefully, I think I can actually hear the spring mechanisms as the stamps hit the ink. I love it as an example of music turning what is normally seen as a boring, repetitive task into something this joyful. The song was originally recorded in 1975 at the University of Ghana by James Koetting and appeared on a cd accompanying the book Worlds of Music, but you can download the whole clip here. Thanks to Bernie Krause and Anthropologist Steven Feld for helping me track this one down.

Have you used an upside-down tomato planter? Posted: 19 Mar 2010 04:00 PM PDT Have you used an upside-down tomato planter? I moved last year and I don't have as much space for a garden as I used to have, so I am considering getting a few upside-down tomato planters. If you have used them, please share your experience in the comments!

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou Posted: 19 Mar 2010 02:19 PM PDT Every time I have put this on at least three new conversions occur, where the listeners go on to permanently install this woman's music on their stereo. My neighbor even stalked me once just so she could listen to it more, until I just gave her my extra copy. Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a nun currently living in Jerusalem. She grew up as the daughter of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, but spent much of her young life in exile, first for schooling, and then again during Mussolini's occupation of Ethiopia's capitol city, Addis Ababa, in 1936. Her musical career was often tragically thwarted by class and gender politics, and when the Emperor himself actually went so far as to personally veto an opportunity for Guèbrou to study abroad in England, she sank into a deep depression before fleeing to a monastery in 1948. Today, she spends up to seven hours a day playing the piano in seclusion and even gave a concert to some lucky ducks in Washington D.C. a few years ago. A compilation of her compositions was re-issued on the consistently great Ethiopiques label. You can read more about her life at the Emahoy Music Foundation.

Malcolm X assassin to be released on parole Posted: 19 Mar 2010 02:50 PM PDT "I've been incarcerated for 40 years, and I've had a good record all around. I don't see any reason for holding me." —Thomas Hagan, the confessed killer of Malcolm X. The state agrees with him: he will soon be out on parole, a murderer and a free man.

Amazon's worst garden sculptures Posted: 19 Mar 2010 12:03 PM PDT Homegrown Evolution has a gallery of various terrible garden sculptures for sale on Amazon.com. This one is my favorite Amazon sculpture offering. Looks like something Saddam Hussein would have installed by one of the shark ponds. Suggestive and creepy all at once. The Scary World of Garden Sculpture

Send in your samples to be photographed by a scanning electron microscope Posted: 19 Mar 2010 11:12 AM PDT Jeffrey of ASPEX, a producer of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and microanalysis software says: Our company recently kicked off a "Send Us Your Sample" campaign, which allows anyone to mail us an object of their choosing and have it scanned for free under one of our powerful desktop SEMs. People can send us a piece of clothing, an old toothbrush, or even a dead insect...anything they want to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. It's pretty cool. Once we receive the samples, we'll notify senders of their results via email. You can view other reports we've done here. Above: a paper tear. SEM Image Gallery by ASPEX - Send Us Your Sample!

$30 amplifier kit in the Bazaar Posted: 19 Mar 2010 10:57 AM PDT New to the Boing Boing Bazaar: the Tubby Amp Kit. It's easy to build and presents wonderful opportunities for creative packaging. Will you put it in a coconut shell? An old DDT can? Geronimo's skull? Tubby Amp Kit Previously: Aerogel chunks in Bazaar Chaotic Pendulums for sale in Bazaar Get a P8TCH at the Bazaar The splendor of the Bazaar! Miniboss T-shirt in the Bazaar Mustache crayons for sale in Bazaar Hine's felt camera cases in the Bazaar Tiny glass bell jar display case Zombie shadow maker T-shirts: robots, aliens, and zombies galore! Hollow spy coins for all your micro-smuggling needs Laser cut model rocket ship

Peter Watts found guilty Posted: 19 Mar 2010 03:54 PM PDT Early terse reports are that the jury has returned a guilty verdict for Dr Peter Watts, a science fiction writer who was beaten at the US-Canada border when he got out of his car to ask why it was being searched, then charged with assault. Peter faces up to two years in prison. I've emailed him for comment and I hope that he's appealing. More later. Update: More info from Peter

Dr Teeth tattoo Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:57 AM PDT Slave to the Needle's Andrea executed this completely freaking awesome Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem tattoo for a very lucky Muppet-fan. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

In before commenters mention the singularity Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:55 AM PDT Two electrodes, placed 30 cm apart on a human arm, can transmit data through said arm at about 10 megabits per second, according to researchers at Korea University. (Thanks, Ken Steidle!)

Quantum mechanics applies to objects that can be seen by the naked eye Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:39 AM PDT The UC Santa Barbara researchers seen below "have provided the first clear demonstration that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to the mechanical motion of an object large enough to be seen by the naked eye." Andrew Cleland, Aaron O'Connell, and John Martinis. Photo: George Foulsham In a paper published in the March 17 issue of the advance online journal Nature, Aaron O'Connell, a doctoral student in physics, and John Martinis and Andrew Cleland, professors of physics, describe the first demonstration of a mechanical resonator that has been cooled to the quantum ground state, the lowest level of vibration allowed by quantum mechanics. With the mechanical resonator as close as possible to being perfectly still, they added a single quantum of energy to the resonator using a quantum bit (qubit) to produce the excitation. The resonator responded precisely as predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics. Bob Harris says: "What's the real-world application? No one knows, although cats should start avoiding any box they could become trapped in." UCSB Physicists Show Theory of Quantum Mechanics Applies to the Motion of Large Objects

Jane McGonigal on how games can make the world a better place Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:09 AM PDT Here's game-designer Jane McGonigal at her most incandescently inspiring, speaking at TED. Her hypothesis is that games allow us to experience epic wins, incentivizing us to give them millions of hours to them in order to feel the thrill of success. She proposes that we can harness all that energy -- and all the good feeling and camaraderie that emerges from all that play -- to solve the world's hardest problems. And she makes a good case that we can do it. Key phrases: "blissful productivity" and "urgent optimism" and "the desire for epic meaning." Games can make a better world Previously: Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your ... Video: Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World ... Jane McGonigal's The Lost Ring alternate reality game Video: Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance ... Ask a Scientist: Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal joins Institute for the Future SF Weekly on Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal's new game: Cruel 2 B Kind

Crate-digging with John Cusack: Tiny Tim at The Hunt Club Posted: 19 Mar 2010 10:52 AM PDT BoingBoing pal and fellow happy mutant John Cusack visited the Boing Boing Video studio this week for an internet video crate-digging session, and shared the 10-minute clip above. This find is ample proof that Cusack possesses a doctorate degree with honors in the Studies of High Weirdness. The video is titled "Tiny Tim at The Hunt Club (The Festival Green Room)," and neither of us could figure out much about its origins. Which Hunt Club? What city, what year? What were the circumstances, an afterparty in a "green room," after some festival? There are some clues (the blip-flash between songs to sync light and sound suggests a certain era), but no answers. What is evident in the video is what a delightful freak Tiny Tim is. Cusack points out that the video is different from all the other clips you can find of Tim on YouTube, mostly television appearances in which his character is louder and over-the-top. But this one seems more vulnerable, more personal. Tim meanders in and out of modified Vaudeville classics, dips into an Al Jolson impression somewhere, all the while strumming his uke. "There's something about him that reminds me of Joey Ramone," Cusack observes—Tiny Tim was anything but classically handsome, just like Joey, and he had a certain talent and force of personality that the "normal" world had no use for. Until that talent burst forth, and the world came to appreciate it, weird punk freak that he was. Cusack also got a kick out of the "thank you/goodbye-kissies" hand-gesture Tim uses in this video, and compared it to Noh theatre. There's no kiss, really: he's just tapping his chin, a sort of oblique blessing-greeting. I'm tempted to use that one myself now, at tea parties. Here's to high weirdness. I've asked Cusack if he might join us on Boing Boing as a guestblogger, and he's thinking about it. If you have some thoughts to share with him on that matter, why don't you tell him yourself, in the comments? Incidentally, Cusack has a movie coming to theaters on March 26 that you should go see: Hot Tub Time Machine. It's not on YouTube, but it might show up on YouTub. Update: Thanks to the multiple Boing Boing commenters who identified the clip! The "Hunt Club" was the green room for VIPs at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and this video footage can be found on this Criterion DVD (Amazon). It's in the "additional material" section of the DVD. More about the what the disc contains here (criterionforum.org).

New ACTA leak: It's a screwjob for the world's poor countries Posted: 19 Mar 2010 09:02 AM PDT The secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has leaked again. Michael Geist has analysis below: New ACTA leaks have emerged this week that fill in the blanks about the remainder of the still-secret treaty. While earlier leaks provided extensive detail on the Internet and civil enforcement chapters, these latest leaks shed new light into the criminal enforcement section, the chapter on ACTA institutional issues, and international cooperation. The international cooperation chapter includes extensive provisions on capacity building and technical assistance. This is noteworthy since it (1) confirms the vision that developing countries will ultimately be pressured to join ACTA and (2) represents a counter to the developing country focus at WIPO. While WIPO has typically provided this assistance, the emergence of the development agenda has promoted a more balanced approach to technical assistance in developing countries. ACTA seeks to return technical assistance to an enforcement oriented approach. Translation for non-wonks: Historically, developing countries have asked the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization for "technical assistance" with their copyright laws. This has usually amounted to "Create copyright laws that will make it easier for rich countries to get richer," but in the past several of years, WIPO has found itself with a large cadre of public interest activists and now, WIPO is working on a treaty on its "Development Agenda" to figure out a copyright system that serves humanitarian goals, too (for example, by making it legal for archivists and educators to work together to translated and adapt works that have different copyright rules in different countries). We've all known that ACTA is a way of writing copyright treaties without having to let poor countries and human rights advocates into the room. We've suspected that poor countries -- who aren't invited to the negotiations -- will be strong-armed into signing onto the treate afterwards. This leak confirms our worst fears: ACTA throws out the pretence of justice, fairness, and humanitarianism present at the UN, for pure, naked, crony-capitalism. It's an instrument for allowing entrenched corporations from rich countries change the laws of other countries to their benefit -- and to the detriment of the people of those countries. It's a hijacking of the world's legislative systems by private interests, abetted by the US Trade Rep. New ACTA Leaks: Criminal Enforcement, Institutional Issues, and International Cooperation (Thanks, Michael!) Previously: Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry ... ACTA leak: Now we know who is against transparency - USA, Korea ... EU Parliament votes 663-13 against ACTA's enforcement measures ... Danish activists demand to know why their governments block ACTA ...

Gary Bauer Pancakes Pratfall Posted: 19 Mar 2010 08:57 AM PDT I honestly don't remember much about 2000 Republican primary candidate Gary Bauer, but his backwards tumble at a New Hampshire pancake breakfast is a thing of beauty. I'd give it a 9 in the Pratfall Olympics. Update: The pratfall is at 21:08. Sadly C-Span Video Library doesn't seem to have a good way to cut right to the point. In related news: C-Span now has its full video archives up on the Web. The site covers 23 years and 160k hours of video. There's even Book TV, which means you can re-watch your favorite Rock Bottom Remainders live shows. Previously: Selleck Waterfall Sandwich Batman Lightsaber Shark Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza!

Farts are like snowflakes Posted: 19 Mar 2010 08:33 AM PDT No two farts smell exactly alike, according to this interview with Dr. Lester Gottesman, a proctologist from St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. The smell has to do with the amount of absorbed products like methane, which is made by fermentation of what we eat, and that's what causes the bad smell, basically. As a baby, when you're born, passing through the vagina, you're infected by the bacteria in your mother's colon, and that's the bacteria you're dealt for your lifetime. Also, everybody is different in how they'll digest wheat products, milk products, whatever. And if they are not digested properly there will be a lot of methane produced and a lot of acid, and that would tend to cause a stinkier bowl movement. Image courtesy Flickr user banjo_d, via CC

Caught Sleeping: Brandon Boyer on Jason Rohrer's Sleep is Death Posted: 19 Mar 2010 08:29 AM PDT Indie game developer Jason Rohrer (of Passage fame) recently took Brandon Boyer on a tour of his latest project, Sleep is Death. It's a two-player storytelling sandpit with the approachable look and feel of an old-school computer game, and it'll be out in just three weeks. Read Caught Sleeping, a Boing Boing special feature:

Ada Lovelace Day T-shirts! Posted: 19 Mar 2010 08:18 AM PDT I'm loving the design the Ada Lovelace Day organizers put together for these great T-shirts celebrating women in technology. Ada Lovelace Day, a blogging holiday honoring the often overlooked work done by women in the sciences, is March 24th.

You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610