Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Demonstration against Digital Economy Bill tomorrow at Parliament, London

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 04:50 AM PDT

If you can make it to London and are worried that the Digital Economy Bill is ploughing ahead with a provision that will disconnect whole families from the Internet if one member is accused -- without trial -- of violating copyright, come along to the Open Rights Group "Stop Disconnection" demonstration tomorrow (Weds) afternoon at 1730h at Old Palace Yard (opposite Parliament, next to Westminster Abbey). Another event is planned for Sheffield.

Come along to the ORG demo on Wednesday, 24 March at 17:30, and protest against disconnection and censorship on the internet.

We'll provide placards, just bring some black tape for gagging or blindfolding yourself.

Disconnection is collective punishment. It is unacceptable. It is unfair and it is disproportionate.

The demo will be held at Old Palace Yard (opposite Parliament, next to Westminster Abbey)

Open Rights Group | Stop Disconnection without trial

Kyrgyz computer education signs

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:21 AM PDT


Carl is stationed in Kyrgyzstan with the Peace Corps, and has photographed a computer-literacy classroom with beautiful hand-painted technical instructional signs, including this lovely BASIC tutorial, written in Kyrgyz (spoken by 5,000,000 people), using Cyrillics.

Programming: The International Language (Thanks, Carl!)

Previously:


Pruzy's Pot: Theodore Sturgeon's hilarious gross-out National Lampoon story

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 12:26 AM PDT

Earlier this year, Spider Robinson ran a recording of science fiction great Theodore Sturgeon reading his story Pruzy's Pot, originally published in National Lampoon in 1972 -- this is one of the grossest, funniest science fiction stories you've ever heard, and Sturgeon reads it live before an audience who are audibly convulsed with mirth and disgust.

Without too much spoilering, Pruzy is a story of great scatological mirth, involving an extremely mysterious toilet, a strait-laced and prim school-chum, and some back-to-the-landers. I listened to it while making breakfast for the family and almost couldn't eat it afterwards, so taken was I with both ick and ha.

Spider On The Web: Pruzy's Pot by Theodore Sturgeon

MP3 link

Podcast feed

Previously:


Indo-Pakistani border crossing ceremony

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:41 PM PDT

The India-Pakistan border-crossing ceremony is "more like a cricket match than a ceremony" -- a kind of elaborate transborder military display complete with impressive hats and other regalia. Igpajo sez, "This ceremony looks like the bastard love child of a certain Monty Python skit and a Maori War Dance! Gotta love the little handshake at the end after all the posturing and stomping."

Indian Pakistan Border - Wagah (Thanks, Igpajo!)

Previously:


YouDunnit: a game that travels backwards in time

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:38 PM PDT

Over on Play This Thing! Greg Costikyan reviews YouDunnit, a difficult-to-play but incredibly clever game based on levels that go back in time and challenge you not to violate causality:
The basic setup is this: You murdered someone, in locked-room detective story-like fashion, and the detective has shown up to investigate. He's asking everyone their stories. If you catches you out in an inconsistency -- or if you somehow permit everyone else to establish a clear alibi -- you're screwed.

The actual gameplay involves a series of "levels" that are a hour in the past, two hours in the past, three hours in the past, and so on. If you do anything in a level that "violates causality," you are "caught in a lie." Thus, for example, if you give someone a cat in hour -1, and fail to pick up the cat in a previous hour, you lose. You have to keep track of the events that occur, and make sure things remain consistent.

YouDunnit
Previously:


Kids take high-altitude zipline to school

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:33 PM PDT

Kids in a remote village in Colombia travel to school via a precarious, high-altitude zipline, carrying their younger sibs in hemp sacks and slowing their descent with a wooden fork:
Despite her youth, Daisy is expected to travel down the flying fox at speeds of up to 62km/h with her younger brother attached beside her in a sack.

It's a high pressure journey, with a 400m drop into the Rio Negro river facing her if the pulley system gives way.

Children take flying fox to school (via JWZ)

(Image: cropped thumbnail from a larger image by Focus/Otto/Rex)

Previously:


Delusional EU ACTA negotiator claims that three strikes has never been proposed at ACTA

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:25 PM PDT

Michael Geist sez,
The European Commission hosted a fascinating consultation on ACTA [ed: the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret, far-reaching copyright treaty] today. Luc Devigne, the lead European negotiator, opened with a brief presentation and proceeded to field questions for over an hour.

One of the big issues of the day was three strikes [ed: The idea that your whole family would have its internet connection severed if one person in your household was accused of copyright infringement] with Devigne repeatedly stating that the EU was bound by EU law and that it was not supporting any inclusion of three strikes in ACTA. In fact, Devigne went further in claiming that no one had even proposed the possibility of three strikes. This despite the fact that a memo produced by his own department stated: "EU understands that footnote 6 provides for an example of a reasonable policy to address the unauthorized storage or transmission of protected materials. However, the issue of termination of subscriptions and accounts has been subject to much debate in several Member States. Furthermore, the issue of whether a subscription or an account may be terminated without prior court decision is still subject to negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council of Telecoms Ministers regarding the Telecoms Package."

This refers to the footnote in the ACTA text proposed by the U.S. which states "an example of such a policy [ISP policy] is providing for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscriptions and/or accounts on the service provider's system or network of repeat infringers."

The EU ACTA Consultation: European Commission vs. European Parliament (Thanks, Michael!)
Previously:


Dreamlike animation illustrating Fibonacci sequence, Golden Ratio, and more

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:19 PM PDT

In "Nature by Numbers," filmmaker Cristobal Vila presents a series of animations illustrating various mathematic principles, beginning with a breathtaking animation of the Fibonacci sequence. Then it moves on to the Golden and Angle Ratios, the Delaunay Triangulation and Voronoi Tessellations. This would be math-class gold, and it's awfully sweet even if math class is years behind you.

Nature by Numbers (Thanks, Peacelove)

Previously:


Cackle Sisters

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 05:54 PM PDT

Before they were the first women to become famous on the Grand Ole Opry and the National Barn Dance, The Cackle Sisters, (also known as the DeZurick Sisters) were raised on a farm in Royalton, Minnesota. To develop their unique yodeling style, Caroline De Zurik has said they simply "listened to the birds and tried to sing with the birds."

You can hear and download more tracks on wfmu's beware of the blog. I especially love tracks like "Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia","Little Golden Locket" and "Sing Hallelujah", where they seem to hit the sweet spot between their bizarre but amazing stereo-clucks and brilliantly close harmonies.

Mind-blowing medical science

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:53 PM PDT

A "vaccine" for brain tumors. A drug-and-electric-shock cocktail that wakes patients out of vegetative states. A single drug that seems to reverse Fragile X syndrome. And gene therapy that allows the blind to see. It's all a little crazy. It's all more-than-a-little for real. (And, hey, that gene therapy for the blind was covered here on BoingBoing a few months ago!)

Two idiots call for President Obama's assassination on Twitter

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 04:08 PM PDT

In the past two days, two idiots tweeted that President Barack Obama should be assassinated, apparently incensed over the health care reform vote. @THHEE_JAY, identified as Jay Martin, tweeted just that, and followed up with "If I lived in DC. I'd shoot him myself. Dead f***ing serious." A day earlier, one Solly Forell tweeted, "ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations and Lincoln & Kennedy. We'll surely get over a bullet to Barrack Obama's head." Incidentally, both people happened to be black, and both self-identify as conservatives. They've both been paid visits by their new pals at the Secret Service.

Dr. Steve Brule: For your Meatpacking District!

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:40 PM PDT

brule.jpg

Taking form on a wall in New York City's Meatpacking District, photographed by Gavin Purcell: Dr. Steve Brule, the beloved character from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, played by John C. Reilly. He'll soon have his own 11-minute show, to immediately follow TEASGJ, to be titled Check It Out!, With Steve Brule.

Today is World Water Day

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:28 PM PDT

Today is World Water Day. Dirty water kills more people than violence, according to the UN.

Google and China: not a pullout, not an end to censorship, but a shutdown of Google.cn

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:19 PM PDT

Siva Vaidhyanathan notes that "Google says 'we stopped censoring' Google.cn and many are buying it. In reality, Google shut down Google.cn." Danny Sullivan expands on this critical line of thinking in a Search Engine Land post:
Beginning today, Google is no longer censoring results on its Chinese search engine, the company has announced. But rather than the expected “pullout” from China, Google hopes to continue operating within the country. It all comes down to whether the Chinese government decides operating off a Hong Kong domain — rather than the main Chinese domain — lets Google get around its censorship rules.

(...)Specifically, Google said that it is no longer censoring on its search services — Google Search, Google News China & Google Images — that were aimed at people in China. In reality, those services have actually been closed. If you try to reach them, you get redirected to a new domain.



Two thousand scientists sign letter to Senate demanding climate change action

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:14 PM PDT

"We call on our nation's leaders to swiftly establish and implement policies to bring about deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions. The strength of the science on climate change compels us to warn the nation about the growing risk of irreversible consequences as global average temperatures continue to increase."—From a letter co-signed by more than 2,000 scientists, demanding the US Senate take immediate action to solve the climate crisis. (via Al Gore)

Responding to Google, China's Xinhua invokes the spirit of Lady Gaga

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 04:37 PM PDT

goodth.jpg

(Photo: a cc-licensed image by Flickr user Cory M. Grenier)

After condemning as "Totally Wrong" Google's decision to shut down Google.cn, China's state-run news agency issued an article today titled, "Can China live without Google?"

In a word, yes. Wipe the sneer off and read with a straight face. It's fascinating. They namedrop Gaga and The Colonel, and describe the standoff between the search giant and "the world's biggest internet market" as "a shocking cultural clash between the West and the East." Snip:

The Reform and Opening-up policy in China has been carried out for 30 years since 1979, with earlier icons like Coca-Cola, and later McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks Coffee. The incoming Western goods also brought Western cultures and lifestyles. For instance, the biggest Internet retailer Amazon named its service in China Zhuoyue (excellence). The albums of the U.S. pop star Lady Gaga and Britain's talent Susan Boyle fly off the CD shelves in China.

All commodities come with some cultures and ideologies. China definitely is influenced by the West, but the influence is mutual. People of a certain culture learn to know a different new thing, but the new thing also has to learn to suit its new customers. That's why KFC serves Chinese porridge and McDonald's provides Chinese food menus here.

It all shows that China never rejects Western culture, but not all Hollywood movies will be a hit in China like "Avatar".

Can China live without Google? (Xinhua/Han Jingjing)

Previously:


Hunger in Haiti: how "free-market" policies damaged agricultural capacity

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:44 PM PDT

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."—Bill Clinton, apologizing for pushing policies that destroyed the native production of rice in Haiti. (HuffPo via Ned Sublette)

French TV show uses famous Milgram torture experiment

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 02:36 PM PDT

Bob Harris pointed me to this BBC story about Stanley Milgram's famous torture experiment, repeated on French TV and contextualized as a reality game show.
Milgram-Game-ShowEgged on by a glamorous presenter, cries of "punishment" from a studio audience and dramatic music, the overwhelming majority of the participants obeyed orders to continue delivering the shocks - despite the man's screams of agony and pleas for them to stop.

Eventually he fell silent, presumably because he had died or lost consciousness. The contestants didn't know that the man, strapped in a chair inside a cubicle so they couldn't see him, was really an actor. There were no shocks and it was all an experiment to see how far they would go.

Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock.

Row over 'torture' on French TV

The Beauty of Bones (and Skinput)

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 01:34 PM PDT

I've always been a fan of anything that uses the concept of bone conduction. A friend who worked as a field medic for public protests years ago told me that he'd often diagnose and locate bone fractures by taking a tuning fork, striking it, and holding it against the limb in question--the sound would travel up and down the bone and cause a stronger 'sensation' (ouch!) wherever there was any sort of a break in continuity. Now, thanks to research being done at Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft, you can use this same basic technology to play tetris!

The video has a more in-depth demonstration, but the idea is based on the fact that our bodies are pretty effective conductors of minute acoustical information, so vibrations from something like a tap on the forearm or fingertips can be picked up by a bio-acoustic sensor positioned somewhere else along the arm. Because every part of the body is composed of specific combinations of different kinds of tissues with various densities, every location hypothetically has a signature resonance that can be tracked.

While it's still in development, they're already teaming the technology up with wearable pico projectors. I think it's really interesting for the future of AR, in terms of creating the ultimate ephemeral user-interface--Tablets are SO 2010.

Virgin flight of Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise: Photo Gallery

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 01:40 PM PDT

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The VSS Enterprise was unveiled last December, and today flew for the first time out of Mojave Spaceport in California, as captured in the image above. "VSS Enterprise remained attached to its unique WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, for the duration of the 2 hours 54 minutes flight, achieving an altitude of 45,000ft (13716 metres)." Both crafts are developed for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic by Burt Rutan and team at Mojave-based Scaled Composites.

The VSS Enterprise test flights will continue through 2011, progressing from "captive carry" (that's what today's experiment was), to "independent glide," and then fully powered flight, before commercial operations begin.

More photos (in glorious wide-o-vision!) from the dawn liftoff and flight are after the jump.

More about today's flight at VirginGalactic.com.

vss-enterprise-takeoffwi.jpg

vss-enterprise-takeoff-2-wi.jpg


vss-enterprise-takeoff-3wi.jpg


vss-enterprise-in-flightwi.jpg


(Photos courtesy Mark Greenberg)

Previously:


Girl scares people by standing in vestibule

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:34 PM PDT


One man doesn't take kindly to this prank.

Bigfoot finger puppets

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:39 PM PDT

Afingerpuppet1 This delightful Bigfoot finger puppet was spotted in the giftshop at Loren Coleman's International Cryptozoology Museum (ICM) in Portland, Maine. They're handmade by local artist and ICM docent Sarah McCann. The puppets are $12/each (US postpaid) or less if you grab one at the museum. Order by emailing Loren at lcoleman@maine.rr.com with "Finger Puppets" in the subject line!
Previously:


Binder clips as cable organizers

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:31 PM PDT

201003221228 Yes.

Google: "Today we stopped censoring our search services on Google.cn."

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:37 PM PDT

Earlier today, Google.cn (that's the China domain) began redirecting to Google.com.hk (that's the Hong Kong domain), as noted in this short Boing Boing update. Here's the official statement from Google:
Google_logo_cn.png [E]arlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.
And here's the official Google Evil-ometer that shows when and if China begins filtering the presently unfiltered Hong Kong edition of Googles' services.

Related: CDT is pleased.

Google.cn redirecting to Google.com.hk

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:11 PM PDT

On Twitter, reports are surfacing from internet users within China that Google.cn is suddenly redirecting to Google.com.hk. Rebecca McKinnon tweets, "If you go to google.com.hk it says 欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家 which means "Welcome to the new home of Google China search. (...) For those who aren't steeped in the intricacies of Hong Kong's legal system, websites in HK dont censor political content." Update: confirmed, and more first-person notes.

Reality is a quantum computer

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 01:28 PM PDT

Covers Large 978019 9780199237692
One of my favorite head trips is considering whether our reality is actually a control system of some kind. Quite a few people much smarter than me have theorized about the physics of this idea, that the entire universe may be made of information, of bits. Some physicists go as far as suggesting that the universe isn't like a computer, but rather it is a computer. One such person is Vlatko Vedral, a professor of quantum information science at Oxford University. Vedral has just published a new non-technical book about this mindbending field of inquiry, titled Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information. I haven't read Decoding Reality yet, but I'm always up for some quantum weirdness from those who've turned pro. Above is a video interview with Vedral from The Guardian. Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information (Amazon)

Previously:


Happy birthday, composer Angelo Badalamenti!

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 12:13 PM PDT

Angelo Badalamenti, the composer whose creepy-cool scores opened the '90s tv show Twin Peaks (embedded above) and graced David Lynch features Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, celebrates a birthday today. (via David Lynch)

Teacher's heartbreak and anger at No Child Left Behind

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:27 AM PDT

National Education Association Vice President Lily Eskelsen's essay "The Science of Making Up Stuff," talks about the disastrous "No Child Left Behind" program that has dominated US education since the first part of the Bush administration, the toll it's taken on teachers, the damage it's done to education. As the child of two teachers and the brother of a teacher, this kind of thing breaks my heart.
There is a lucrative science that undergirds No Child Left known in academic circles as: Making Things Up. It makes up that a standardized test is actually designed to measure "proficiency" or whether a school is actually failing or succeeding in making "adequate progress".

America's most dedicated educators have been praying mightily for an end to the hell of false labels and the testing tail wagging the dog-and-pony show that now passes as teaching and learning in schools where administrators are forced to bundle toxic testing strategies worthy of Lehman Brothers in their efforts to be accountable-not to the kids, but to hitting their numbers.

Good Teachers know the difference. We have continued to teach in spite of No Child Left.

The Science of Making Up Stuff (Thanks, Kevin!)

(Image: No Child Left Behind, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from aflcio's photostream)

Previously:


Odd items in Scotland's sewers

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:26 AM PDT

Sottish Water, manager of the country's sewer systems, apparently spends £6 million a year rooting out clogged pipes, which are sometimes plugged up with curious things that were flushed or fell into storm drains: toy soldiers, a Mexican desert king snake, a cow, etc. From STV.TV:
A goldfish now named Pooh, recovered in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, and a frog found in a pump in Dornoch, Highlands, were none the worse for their time inside the sewer system. A live badger found in a pumping station well at Drongan in Ayrshire also made a full recovery after it was rescued by the Scottish SPCA.

However, a sheep found in a manhole chamber and a cow recovered from a storm tank were not so lucky.

As well as animals, Scottish Water workers recovered items including a hardy Action Man still wearing his boots and an iron that still worked despite its time in the network. Workers in Dumfries even found the credit card of one of their colleagues, which had been stolen from his wife's handbag on a night out.

Found in sewers (via Fortean Times)

Dead drop spikes in the Bazaar

Posted: 22 Mar 2010 10:23 AM PDT

Sean Michael Ragan of Make: Online reviews a piece of essential equipment - the dead drop spike. It's for sale in the Boing Boing Bazaar.
201003221015For those who aren't up on their tradecraft, a "dead drop" is a place where spies or other clandestine-y folks drop off items for later retrieval by other agents. A "dead drop spike" is a particularly ingenious little container devised for the purpose. Basically, it's a hollow metal spike, with a threaded watertight closure at the top. You put your top-secret microfilm or whatever inside the spike, take it to your dead drop, and stomp it into the ground with your foot. Then you cover it up with a rock or a piece of trash or whatever. The lid has a pull-loop built into it, so that when your contact comes by later to clear the drop, he or she can grab the spike by the loop and yank it out of the ground again.

Dead Drop Spike $37

Previously:


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