The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Am I wicked because I don't go to church?
- John Scalzi is a Fuzzy
- CBC totally fails to explain why it expects Canadians to get permission to use public media
- HOWTO Dumpster-dive
- Horrifying stationery
- iPad + Skype + retro handset = ridiculously fun mobile phone
- Family of grumpy girl claims store clerk injured her by scanning her head
- Original "Alice" manuscript - none compares!
- Old manga used to grow vegetables
- Mathematician makes Mishima-inspired erotic film
- Soundshapes: Amit Pitaru/Zach Gage bring Sonic Wire Sculptor to iPhone
- Dr. Who's "regeneration" meant to be like bad acid trip
- Japanese robot figure catalogs from the 1970s
- Amazing and weird taxidermy auction
- Steve Thomas's Arcade Game Propaganda Posters
- Svankmajer, Surrealism, and the Sex Pistols: John Cusack
- The illustrated cell
- Rat smarts and the Prisoner's Dilemma
- The danger of science denialism
- Resurrecting ancient viruses
- Design contest for the developing world: save the rich world from itself
- Monochrom phatzine: telephone-book-sized cyberculture zine
- The Truth About ACTA: Video
- Happy 15th anniversary, HarperVoyager
- BITTER SEEDS: Alternate WWII novel pits English warlocks against Nazi X-Men
| Am I wicked because I don't go to church? Posted: 13 Apr 2010 06:07 PM PDT I went to church with a friend this past Sunday. I'm not religious, but I find it enjoyable to occasionally sit in on religious rituals to learn about different people and cultures. This particular service consisted of lots of joyful singing and a teaching from the Bible. The pastor who led the teaching read the following passage from Psalm 1 and broke down its meaning: Blessed is the manIt means, he said, that if you want to be happy, you should surround yourself with people who are not wicked, sinners, or mockers. The company you keep is a direct reflection of what kind of life you will live. I thought it was a really nice message. He gave a few anecdotes to illustrate this idea. Then came the kicker: the wicked, he said, are those who don't believe in God, who don't come to church regularly, and who don't believe in God's word. Is that really what this passage means? I would have interpreted it differently, but then again, maybe I just don't want to admit that I'm wicked. |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:46 PM PDT John Scalzi is a giant fan of H Beam Piper's classic science fiction novel Little Fuzzy (as am I -- it's the first sf novel I bought for myself, from the used shelf at Bakka Books in Toronto, on recommendation from the writer Tanya Huff, who was working behind the counter then!). Such a huge fan that he's written a novel in the Fuzzy universe. He could do this because Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, so he doesn't need to clear copyrights. But having written the book -- which is a loving tribute to Piper -- he decided to have his agent show it to the Piper family, who gave it their official blessing, making it part of the Fuzzy canon forever. Color me impressed. And jealous. But mostly impressed. Go, John, go! The Super Secret Thing That I Cannot Tell You About, Revealed: Introducing Fuzzy Nation Previously: |
| CBC totally fails to explain why it expects Canadians to get permission to use public media Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:47 PM PDT  This week's Search Engine podcast from TVOntario's Jesse Brown features an interview with the head spokesman for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, brought on to explain why the publicly funded broadcaster has signed on with iCopyright, an American licensing agency that aims to collect a monthly fee from any Canadian business that excerpts CBC media on its blog. Additionally, the CBC says that it requires anyone who wants to noncommercially excerpt the nation's public media for discussion, archiving, criticism, etc, must first get written permission from the Corporation (and be prepared to have permission rescinded at any time). Suffice it to say, the CBC's spokesman does not cover himself in glory. He alternately claims that he must deny permission to Canadian bloggers because the CBC doesn't want to be inconsistent, then, in the next breath, says that the Corporation gives its media for free to YouTube even though it's not consistent, because they're still "feeling their way." And he doesn't even know that the CBC's partner is offering a $1,000,000 bounty for Canadians who rat each other out for using public media without permission. If I'd been in Jesse's shoes, I would have asked this: The CBC wants to act like a business instead of a public service entity, right? Well, in that case, why don't you act like a business: we, the taxpaying public, were the angel investors for the CBC for a century or so. If you want to bring in another investor at this stage -- a commercial partner to sell licenses for the media we financed -- why the hell should we accept having our equity diluted down to zero? Shouldn't we continue to get our annuity -- in the form of free access and use of the media we paid for -- before you start to deliver value to these late-stage investors? Podcast #36: The CBC's Antisocial Media |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:28 PM PDT Thinking about going digging for gold in the dumpsters around your town? Start with the FAQ at Dumpsterworld, the online community for skip-spelunkers: Welcome to DumpsterWorld. (via Beyond the Beyond!) Previously: |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:22 PM PDT  Jacques Pense designed this award-winning stationery for 13th Street, the German horror network. It has given me a scorching case of stationery envy. If I got a letter on this stuff, I'd frame it and save it for my entire life. 13th Street "Stationery of Horror" (Design) on the Behance Network (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Previously: |
| iPad + Skype + retro handset = ridiculously fun mobile phone Posted: 13 Apr 2010 05:44 PM PDT |
| Family of grumpy girl claims store clerk injured her by scanning her head Posted: 13 Apr 2010 06:16 PM PDT A store clerk is on trial right now for pointing a price scanner to a grumpy 12-year old girl's forehead. The girl's family claims the scan burned her, causing PTSD and Tourette's Syndrome. |
| Original "Alice" manuscript - none compares! Posted: 13 Apr 2010 04:04 PM PDT   Amy Crehore points to the original Alice story. What could be more beautiful than the original manuscript? This is the original version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician. It is called "Alice's Adventures Underground" and it is a treasure of the British Library. The book is in their online gallery and you can look at each hand-written, hand-drawn page (all 91 pages).Original "Alice" Manuscript - None Compares! |
| Old manga used to grow vegetables Posted: 13 Apr 2010 03:38 PM PDT  Japanese artist Koshi Kawachi uses old manga collections to plant and grow vegetables. [via Pink Tentacle] |
| Mathematician makes Mishima-inspired erotic film Posted: 13 Apr 2010 05:26 PM PDT Berkeley math professor Edward Frenkel collaborated with a French filmmaker to create an erotic short film called Rites d'Amour et de Maths; in it, a doomed mathematician discovers the formula for love and tattoos it on his lover's belly. It's an homage to Japanese writer Yukio Mishima's movie Yukoku and his subsequent seppuku suicide. |
| Soundshapes: Amit Pitaru/Zach Gage bring Sonic Wire Sculptor to iPhone Posted: 13 Apr 2010 12:04 PM PDT Best known for his "irresponsible" art/game Lose/Lose -- which deletes files from your hard drive every time you take aim at its retro-pixel-invaders and was classified as malicious by Symantec late last year -- artist Zach Gage has since been quietly at work on a small handful of beautiful iPhone objects. The best of these, recently released, is a collaboration with NYC artist Amit Pitaru (who you might recall for his early-00s interactive art with James 'Presstube' Paterson as insertsilence; 'launch' their Pagan Poetry video for Bjork): Sonic Wire Sculptor, an iPhone version of one of Pitaru's gallery installations. As seen in the video at top, the Sculptor's a generative sound app that lets users play in the space between image and music with an instantly approachable interface -- creating sound out of recognizable images, or creating images of beautiful sound, and all points on the spectrum in between. It's quickly become one of my favorite iPad apps (even if it's not yet native) both for sculpting and browsing other user works, with Gage and Pitaru leveraging Twitter for cataloging and sharing functionality. Coincidentally, Gage is also giving away his debut iPhone puzzle game Unify for free today, which you should grab alongside his just-released 8-bit asteroid dodger Bit Pilot and synthPond, his Toshio Iwai-inspired audio toy. Sonic Wire Sculptor [Amit Pitaru & Zach Gage, iTunes link] |
| Dr. Who's "regeneration" meant to be like bad acid trip Posted: 13 Apr 2010 12:32 PM PDT Internal memos recently posted to the BBC Archive reveal that Doctor Who's "regenerations," in which the Time Lord was replaced by a new actor, were meant to convey the experience of a bad acid trip. From a 1966 memo about the tansition from the first Dr. Who, played by William Hartnell, would be regenerated into the actor Patrick Troughton: "Doctor Who regeneration was 'modelled on LSD trips'" |
| Japanese robot figure catalogs from the 1970s Posted: 13 Apr 2010 12:22 PM PDT   COOP scanned his collection of 1970s vintage Popy toy catalogs from Japan. According to Wikipedia, Popy was founded in 1971 as a subsidiary of Bandai and was "best known for its ground-breaking 超合金 ("Chogokin," literally "Super Alloy") robot figures." Of the catalogs, COOP says, "Aside from the obvious and gratuitous display of voluptuous toy pr0n, I'm digging the photography and graphic design, which, like pretty much everything from Japan, goes that extra mile to make even the most simple piece of promo/commercial ephemera look irresistible. Just look at that type treatment! Probably hand-drawn, too." Popy Toy Catalogs |
| Amazing and weird taxidermy auction Posted: 13 Apr 2010 11:37 AM PDT  The unicorn taxidermy above is up for auction right now at Duke's Auctioneers as part of the "Brading Collection of Taxidermy, Waxworks, Costume and Similar Items." The collection is from the Isle of Wright museum Brading The Experience. Also on the block: a flying cat, a taxidermy "Yeti," a "Wooly Pig," and a slew of other curiosities. From the Daily Mail: "Yetis, unicorns and even flying kittens: Inside the worlds zaniest zoo" (Daily Mail) The Brading Collection of Taxidermy, Waxworks, Costume and Similar Items," Duke's Auction House, Dorset, April 13th (Today!) (Morbid Anatomy) |
| Steve Thomas's Arcade Game Propaganda Posters Posted: 13 Apr 2010 11:01 AM PDT  Now available as prints at Zazzle, a series of arcade game propaganda posters for Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Frogger and Joust (above) by illustrator Steve Thomas. [via SuperPunch] |
| Svankmajer, Surrealism, and the Sex Pistols: John Cusack Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:08 PM PDT
Take his 1988 live-action/stop-motion animation retelling of Lewis Carrol's Alice, for instance. At the time of its release, the New York Times said his version "unearths the fears that animate dreams and nightmares." There's the crying scene: Alice's desperate clawing, her tears filling up the room, the mouse-man parting her long blonde hair to construct a little camp and a cooking fire right there on her scalp, a hearth on which to heat up his dinner.
ALICE (Neco z Alenky, 1988)
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| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 10:33 AM PDT  Illustrations like this make the cell look like a reef in some alien tropical ocean. Gorgeous! There's more cool biology images where that came from on the A Journey Round My Skull blog, all from Le Livre de Sante by Joseph Handler (Monte Carlo: Andre Sauret, 1967) (Via the ever-awesome Matt Novak of Paleofuture) |
| Rat smarts and the Prisoner's Dilemma Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:34 AM PDT |
| The danger of science denialism Posted: 13 Apr 2010 10:00 AM PDT One of the things I love best about this video is how journalist Michael Specter does a great job of articulating a sane relationship with technology and progress. We need more people reminding us that science has simultaneously helped us create the best time to be alive as a human ever, but has also caused problems and hasn't made everything perfect. And that the answer to that paradox isn't giving up on optimism and backing away from science, the answer is scientific innovation, creating better law and policy and improving science transparency and education. Also, I love that he just |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT  Roughly 8 percent of your DNA isn't really human. (How's that for a morning wake-up call?) Instead, it's the de-activated remnants of ancient retroviruses. All viruses hijack host cell machinery to replicate themselves, but retroviruses are a little more invasive than most. These viruses trick cells into turning viral RNA into DNA—the reverse of the normal DNA to RNA transcription process—and then snuggle that DNA right into the rest of the host's genome. They mutate frequently and, sometimes, accidentally deactivate themselves—in which case the "dead" viral DNA just ends up hanging out in the human genome. It's a sneaky tactic that makes retroviruses—including HIV—difficult to fight. But it also leaves researchers "fossils" to study, physical evidence of viral evolution and adaptation that isn't really available any other way. Scientists can separate out the viral DNA from the human, and use it to learn how to better fight modern retroviruses. Now, the jaw dropping part. That image above? That's a picture of particles of an ancient virus, budding off of a modern cell. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York used computer models to estimate what mutated viral DNA taken from the human genome would have originally looked like, and replicated a working version. Somewhere, a screenwriter is already hard at work on treatment that can only be described as, "Jurassic Park meets The Hot Zone!" Read more:
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| Design contest for the developing world: save the rich world from itself Posted: 13 Apr 2010 07:37 AM PDT Design for the First World: The Rest Saving the West: a design competition that challenges residents of the poor and developing world to produce designs to save the rich first world from itself: "Dx1W has proclaimed 2010 International Year of the First World in Need, and has defined four main areas to address: Food Production and Eating Disorders, Aging Population and Low Birth rate, Immigration and Integration to Society, Sustainability and Over consumption." (via Beyond the Beyond) |
| Monochrom phatzine: telephone-book-sized cyberculture zine Posted: 13 Apr 2010 07:30 AM PDT  Johannes from the Austrian net-kook-art group Monochrom sez, "monochrom is a magazine object appearing in telephone book format, which is published by the art/tech group of the same name. monochrom came into being in the mid-1990s as a fanzine for cyberculture, science, theory, cultural studies and the archaeology of pop culture in everyday life. Its collage format is reminiscent both of the early DIY fanzines of the punk and new wave underground and of the artist books of figures such as Dieter Roth, Martin Kippenberger and others. With a great deal of forced discontinuity, a cohesive potpourri of digital and analog subversion is pressed between the covers of monochrom. Each issue is an unnostalgic amalgam of 125 years of Western counterculture cocked, aimed and ready to fire at the present. It is a Sears catalog of subjective and objective irreconcilability -- the Godzilla version of the conventional coffee table book. Published in English language, the lingua franca of late capitalism. The phatzine monochrom #26-34 (Goat of 1k Young) is an impossibility in an impossible universe -- an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. 500 pages (60 ounces) of outrageous printed bestiality. And we plan to thoughtfully present it in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York." monochrom #26-34 Ye Olde Self-Referentiality (Thanks, Johannes!) |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2010 12:01 PM PDT Michael Geist sez, "Over the weekend, over 100 people gathered in Wellington, New Zealand for the PublicACTA conference. As Boing Boing has noted, the resulting Wellington Declaration is a must-read with thousands of people around the world signing their support. I have posted the video of my keynote talk from the conference called the Truth About ACTA. About 40 minutes in length, the talk traces the background of ACTA, features extensive discussion on the reasons for concern (including the lack of transparency, substantive provisions such as three strikes, anti-circumvention rules, and statutory damages), and offers a brief comment on what can be done about the treaty." Previously: |
| Happy 15th anniversary, HarperVoyager Posted: 13 Apr 2010 07:13 AM PDT Today marks the 15th anniversary of HarperVoyager, the excellent British science fiction line by whom I'm privileged to be published in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other commonwealth territories. They've released this fun little vanity trailer to commemorate the event -- happy anniversary, everyone! Voyager 15th Anniversary Trailer (Thanks, Sarah!) |
| BITTER SEEDS: Alternate WWII novel pits English warlocks against Nazi X-Men Posted: 13 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT  Ian Tregillis's stellar debut novel Bitter Seeds hits shelves today. It's a beautifully written and thoroughly researched alternate WWII history, the twist being that a mad German scientist has discovered a way to endow a group of sociopaths -- raised from WWI orphans -- with X-Men-like powers that have made the Wehrmacht unstoppable. To counter this, a desperate Great Britain establishes a secret division composed of a tiny number of British warlocks -- shades of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell -- men who use speech in a mystical Ur-language, accompanied by blood sacrifice, to call up vast, brutal elemental forces. These forces, the Eidolons, loathe humanity and tremble in barely restrained rage at the stain we spread on the universe, but they can be bargained with, blood traded for elemental magick. Tregillis writes and plots beautifully. The characters -- twisted German psychics, bitter warlocks, the brutal calculators of the British intelligence apparat -- are complex, textured, surprising. The physical descriptions are wonderful. And the plot is relentless, a driving adventure story with intrigue, battle, sacrifice, and betrayal. I had the extreme pleasure of teaching Ian Tregillis at the Clarion Workshop some years ago, and he was one of my most promising students, a standout in a year of standout writers. So I am unsurprised -- but totally delighted -- to find myself reading such a tremendous debut from him. This is the first volume of the Milkweed Triptych, and I'm extremely eager to read the rest. |
Little Fuzzy itself is in the public domain, but its sequels are still under copyright. While it might have been technically possible to write Fuzzy Nation without the permission of the Piper estate, because of the status of the sequels there were enough (forgive the pun) fuzzy legal areas that I didn't want to have to deal with them. Beyond this, because Fuzzy Nation is in many ways meant to be a tribute to Little Fuzzy and to Piper himself, I wanted the blessing, so to speak, of the Piper estate. 
"The metaphysical change... is a horrifying experience - an experience in which he relives some of the most unendurable moments of his long life, including the galactic war," it said.
So how did these taxidermies first find their way on to the sleepy Isle of Wight? 
I don't remember when I first experienced the work of Czech artist and animator 
Then there's 
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