The Latest from Boing Boing

Profile of creator of Sugru, the super fixum gunk
FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future
Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion: stupendous essay
Linux users twice as generous as Windows users
Sergio: must-see HBO documentary on "a dream slain in Iraq"
Hey gang, Gulf Oil Spill has its very own official BP/US gov. Facebook page!
Yet another Facebook privacy risk: emails Facebook sends leak user IP address
Pentagon bars reporters from Gitmo trial for reporting already-public information
Bedbugs: not just for poor people anymore
ICANN switches on non-Latin domains for first time in internet history
Seller of $2MM fake Picasso is guilty, seller of $106.5MM Picasso is stinkin' rich
Ahmedinejad: Bin Laden is in Washington, DC
Times Square bomb suspect was a lone bungler, says Petraeus
Soul cover of Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"
Resembles Yoda, this cloud does
Vietnamese fishermen in Louisiana do not have it easy after the oil spill
Neat open air jungle house in Costa Rica
Mac Tonnies's fave Fortean, unusual, and fringe books
7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV
How to get a creative project funded online
Live turtle and frog ban angers Asian communities
A night in Times Square, 1910
D&D Soda
Uke Can Play interviews Amy Crehore about her painted ukuleles
Trailer for JJ Abrams/Steven Spielberg "Super 8" movie
Six steps from hipster to hippie
Teach this lawyer how to use Apple products for $200/hr
More stories from inside Area 51
McLuhan's "Medium Is The Massage" LP
Mobigame's Edge returns to the App Store

Profile of creator of Sugru, the super fixum gunk

Posted: 08 May 2010 12:28 AM PDT

Wired UK has a nice profile of Jane ní Dhulchaointigh, the inventor behind Sugru, a polymer clay that dries to a dishwasher-safe plastic that you can use to fix pretty much anything. I've used it to fix cracked cups, suspend fossils from my walls, and repair cracked picture frames. Love it.

"I was making things with silicone sealants and sawdust, and started using the leftovers around the house," she says at her east London base. "I modified a knife handle to make it more comfortable. My boyfriend said, 'Imagine if everyone could do that -- like with stiff jam-jar lids.'
It was a great idea." It took seven years, two experts and the materials department at Queen Mary, University of London, to create a silicone that would be sticky but would also set rock hard without heating.
The result is a substance officially called Formerol. Each pack includes hack suggestions, but ní Dhulchaointigh has seen some original uses: "Someone sculpted a pair of hands coming out of their bathroom sink to hold the soap." This enthusiasm, she says, is influenced by user-generated online suggestions. "If digital stuff can be manipulated then people are going to expect it from physical products as well."

Wired meets the woman behind Sugru (via Wonderland)

(Image: Perry Curties/Wired UK)

Previously:

Sugru: polymer clay that fixes and sticks to pretty much ...

FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future

Posted: 08 May 2010 12:12 AM PDT

The FCC has given Hollywood permission to activate the "Selective Output Control" technologies in your set-top box. These are hidden flags that allow the MPAA to deactivate parts of your home theater depending on what you're watching. And it sucks. As Dan Gillmor notes, "Fans of old TV science fiction will remember the Outer Limits. Given Hollywood's victory today at the FCC -- they'll be able to reach over the lines and disable functions on your TV -- the intro to the show takes on modern relevance."

The FCC says that they're doing this because they believe that if they do so, the MPAA will start releasing first-run movies (the ones that are still in theaters) for TV. They say that Hollywood won't make these movies available unless they get Selectable Output Control because SOC will stop piracy.

This is ridiculous.

First, it's ridiculous because this can't ever stop piracy or get first-run movies into your living room. Even with SOC, the studios are not going to release high-value movies that are still in theatrical distribution for viewing in your house, where you could set up a tripod and high-quality camera (along with ideal lighting) in order to make your own camcordered copy and put it online.

Now, the FCC could have solved this by saying that only movies that are in their first theatrical release run can have SOC turned on, but they didn't, because they knew that the MPAA was lying through its teeth about using SOC to enable the "new business model" of showing you first run movies in your home.

Second, it's ridiculous because it's possible in the first place. The FCC (and the candy-ass consumer electronics companies) allowed for Selectable Output Control to be inserted into your devices even though they claimed all along that they would never allow it to be used. Read your Chekhov, people: the gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off in act three. Allowing the MPAA to get SOC in your set-top box but "never planning on using it" is like buying a freezer full of chocolate ice-cream and never planning on eating it.

If the CE companies and FCC wanted to prevent SOC from being used, the best way of doing that would be to not include it in devices in the first place.

Finally, this is ridiculous because of what it's really for: ensuring that Hollywood gets control of all the features in your home's devices and computers. Here's how that works:

SOC only works with DRM-crippled outputs, like those locked with HDCP, DTLA, etc.
Now that some content will have SOC on it, every manufacturer will race to add SOC (and hence HDCP and DTLA and so on) to their devices
The committees that run DTLA and HDCP and other DRM cartels are absolutely in thrall to the MPAA. When I've attended DRM committee meetings, I've watched the MPAA reps tie the consumer electronics guys in knots, playing them off against each other, bullying them, dirty tricking them
Putting DTLA or HDCP in your devices isn't simple: in order to do so, you have to comply with an enormous about of restrictions that the MPAA dreams up and crams into the license agreements (much of these agreements are secret, and not available for regulators or consumer to inspect)
Ergo: now that the FCC has allowed SOC in devices, all devices will have SOC, and since SOC comes with DRM, and since the studios control DRM licensing, and since they shove all kinds of restrictive crap into DRM licenses, the FCC has essentially just guaranteed that the future of all media will be controlled by Hollywood, to our eternal torment and detriment

Now here's the really scary part:

I'm not just talking about TVs and set-top boxes here. This stuff is targetted squarely at operating system vendors. Both Apple and Microsoft have enthusiastically signed onto adding DRM to their OSes in order to comply with HDCP, DTLA and other "device-based" DRMs.

In the PC world, compliance with DTLA and HDCP rules isn't just about what features the OS can have, but what features the video cards, hard-drives, network interfaces, motherboards and drivers can have.

So the FCC has just handed the keys to specify drivers and components for general purpose PCs to the thrashing dinosaurs of Hollywood. Because even your cheapo netbook or homebuilt Linux box relies on components that are manufactured for the gigantic mainstream PC and laptop markets.

Now that the mainstream component market has a new de-facto regulator at the MPAA, watch for all of those components to come with restrictions built in.

The Obama White House has done some good, but its administrative branch is stuffed with Hollywood lawyers who are Democratic Party stalwarts. The FCC has some great tech people on this, but the commissioners' staffers who wrote this memo are either the most credulous yokels that ever met an MPAA lobbyist, or they're in the pockets of Big Content.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER PDF

(Thanks, Adam and Dan!)

Previously:

Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion: stupendous essay

Posted: 07 May 2010 11:25 PM PDT

Disney's original, 1969 Haunted Mansion opened in Disneyland's New Orleans Square, which made a certain sense -- all those stories of haints on the bayou made the Mansion a good fit for a New Orleans theme-area. But two years later, they opened the Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion in Florida's "Liberty Square," which was a slightly weirder fit (in Tokyo, they relocated it to Fantasyland; in Paris they put it in the western-themed Frontierland).

The Passport to Dreams blog explains the fascinating process by which Liberty Square became home to the Mansion, and has a stellar critical look at why the Mansion captures our imagination:

The question of time allows us to open the door on another question which is perhaps instructive about the darker recesses of this attraction. When I was younger and more literal-minded, the question of what I called the "continuity flaws" of the attraction bothered me to no end - when you're in the stretching gallery, for example, lightning flashes outside the windows, but later, in the Music Room, there's nothing but ominous clouds and moonlight. Later, at the conservatory, there's a foggy landscape, in the ballroom we have lightening again, then in the graveyard there's thick fog, rolling clouds and twinkling stars. All of these weather patterns, of course, are even stranger depending on the weather patterns outside the show building - in the real world - when you enter, but this further complication is usually swallowed up by the trancelike state inside the attraction, where it is perpetually night.
The logical answer to this question, of course, is that all of these scenes were developed independent of one another and linked in an order that most made sense, the atmospheric effects of lightning flashing through windows is only dependent on what will enliven the scene and give the proper atmosphere. I'm not interested in the logical answer here however, but the poetic one, for no attraction is like the Haunted Mansion in seeming to be a genuinely expressive freeflowing harmony of light, sound and motion. I think we can see the Haunted Mansion in terms of its 1969 promotional image, especially that old LP, The Story and Song From the Haunted Mansion, and her threadbare plot of teenagers spending a night in an old dark house.

History and the Haunted Mansion (via The Disney Blog)

Previously:

Linux users twice as generous as Windows users

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:45 PM PDT

Crunching the numbers on the pay-what-you-like Humble Indie Bundle package, the Wolfire people noticed a curious thing: Linux users contribute twice as much as Windows users. "So far, the average Mac user is donating 40% more, and the average Linux user is donating 100% more!" I've got a half-formed theory in my head that living in a world where people are generous and share makes you generous and sharing, while living in a world where people are stingy and proprietary makes you stingy and proprietary. This would be why Econ students play the Ultimatum Game more cruelly than civilians.

Sergio: must-see HBO documentary on "a dream slain in Iraq"

Posted: 07 May 2010 06:20 PM PDT

At 7:58pm last night, my friend Susannah emailed:

Hey. If you want to get totally depressed, lose your faith in humanity, and confirm any feelings you have that great deeds do not go unpunished, watch the HBO documentary on Sérgio Vieira de Mello.

As it happened, the film was about to start airing in exactly two minutes, and I did. She was right (have kleenex handy, I guarantee you'll cry), but bummers aside, there was an awful lot that made the film worth watching.

Sergio was a riveting, tragic, and beautifully-crafted film about the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights killed in the 2003 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq. He is rightfully described as "half JFK, half 007," and his life, his work, and the circumstances of his death are important elements of our recent history—as are the stories of the two courageous Army reservists who tried to save him, and did successfully save the life of a man trapped in the rubble right next to him.

I urge everyone reading this blog post to catch the documentary when it re-airs this Sunday (or DVR it, or do what you gotta do, but see it). A few reviews: Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the one you can't miss is from John Burns at the New York Times. He was based in the Times' Baghdad bureau in 2003, and was present at the bombing in which Sergio and scores of other people were killed.

Trailer here, and embedded above. Documentary Blog has a great interview with the film's director, Greg Barker, who also directed the award-winning Ghosts of Rwanda. Indiewire has a great interview with Barker here. A snip:

What I found heartbreaking is that Sergio assumed the Bush Administration--having begged him to go Iraq--actually wanted him to draw on his 30+ years of conflict resolution, and he set about trying to end the occupation as soon as possible. Instead, he found himself accused by the growing insurgency as being a tool of the Americans...until on August 19, 2003, Sergio himself became the target.

The film is based on the Samantha Power book Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.

Hey gang, Gulf Oil Spill has its very own official BP/US gov. Facebook page!

Posted: 07 May 2010 04:11 PM PDT

What's the only thing that could possibly make the catastrophic Gulf oil spill any worse? Facebook! Here's a Facebook page launched by the joint U.S. and BP spill response team. So, what, we're supposed to hit the "Like" button? Related: BP's on Twitter. (via Tara)

Yet another Facebook privacy risk: emails Facebook sends leak user IP address

Posted: 07 May 2010 05:06 PM PDT

We've been covering the mounting privacy violation woes for Facebook users here on Boing Boing in recent weeks—here's another issue to be aware of. Facebook base64-encodes your IP address in every emailed event that you interact with.

Matt C. at Binary Intelligence Blog explains that Facebook's automated email notifications (which go out when, say, a friend comments on your status or sends you a message) appear to contain the IP address of the user who caused that Facebook email to be sent:

The email headers contain a line similar to:
X-Facebook: from zuckmail ([MTAuMzAuNDcuMjAw])
Copy this line out and feed it to this page:
http://www.myiptest.com/staticpages/index.php/trace-email-sender
You will get the IP address of your friend and clicking on it will get a geolocation-based map. This will also show you if your friend used their cell phone to post and who they use as their service provider.
This information is great when a fugitive is taunting law enforcement through their Facebook page, but not when a wife is trying to hide from an abusive husband and assumes Facebook is the best form of communication.

As Matt points out in the blog post, this may not be the most onerous of Facebook's privacy problems, and it's certainly not the only one. But no good purpose for users is served by leaking user IPs, and there are many good reasons not to. Facebook, get your shit together for chrissakes.

Facebook Leaks IP Addresses

(binint.com, thanks Jake Appelbaum / IMAGE: Facebook, a Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr stream of Franco Bouly)

Previously:

Pentagon bars reporters from Gitmo trial for reporting already-public information

Posted: 07 May 2010 06:04 PM PDT

The Pentagon will not allow four journalists to cover the trial of Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr because they are said to have reported the name of a military interrogator who testified Thursday "that he tried to frighten Khadr with the possibility of being raped in prison." The name of that interrogator had already been widely reported in the Canadian press.

Bedbugs: not just for poor people anymore

Posted: 07 May 2010 03:05 PM PDT

A highly icky New York Magazine article explores the bedbug boom in New York City. Once the monopoly of impoverished tenement dwellers, these sociable parasites are now freely enjoyed by highfalutin' types on the Upper East Side. Of the many interesting factoids in the story, a reminder that the highly toxic chemical DDT was really pretty great at keeping bedbugs at bay in decades past.

ICANN switches on non-Latin domains for first time in internet history

Posted: 07 May 2010 02:52 PM PDT

ICANN has activated a system that allows web addresses that contain no Latin characters. "Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called 'country codes' written in Arabic scripts."

Seller of $2MM fake Picasso is guilty, seller of $106.5MM Picasso is stinkin' rich

Posted: 07 May 2010 02:55 PM PDT

An art and antiques dealer in West Hollywood today pled guilty to selling a fake Picasso for $2 million (she used the proceeds to buy a real DeKooning). Quite a week for Picassos: a genuine specimen sold on Tuesday night for a record-setting $106.5 million. As a friend noted, if the median salary for a working painter (the fine arts type, not the "exterior of houses" type) is $43K, that painting just sold for the equivalent of close to 2500 painter-years.

Ahmedinejad: Bin Laden is in Washington, DC

Posted: 07 May 2010 03:03 PM PDT

During an—I'm sorry, hilarious—ABC News interview with George Stephanopolous, Iranian President and noted nutcase Mahmoud Ahmedinejad answered questions about the possibility Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Iran with a reply conspiracy theorists will chew on for ages: "He was an old colleague of your president George Bush (...) I believe he is in Washington, DC."

Times Square bomb suspect was a lone bungler, says Petraeus

Posted: 07 May 2010 02:10 PM PDT

Gen. David Petraeus, the man who oversees America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Associated Press today he believes the Times Square bombing suspect operated as a "lone wolf" and did not work with other terrorists or terrorist organizations. If that's true, an entire week's worth of "terrorism experts" on TV were totally full of shit. Oh wait, that's business as usual.

Soul cover of Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"

Posted: 07 May 2010 01:57 PM PDT

Loving this catchy, brass-filled re-imagining of the haunting Wilco classic by Chicago's JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound. Perfect thing for a Friday afternoon!

Resembles Yoda, this cloud does

Posted: 07 May 2010 01:38 PM PDT

Image from Discover Mag's Bad Astronomy blog (thanks, Phil Plait)

Vietnamese fishermen in Louisiana do not have it easy after the oil spill

Posted: 07 May 2010 01:55 PM PDT

In East Asian Times, an article on one of many communities devastated by the oil spill: Vietnamese-American fishermen along the gulf coast in Mississippi and Louisiana. Many survived the war in Vietnam, KKK campaigns, and hurricanes. Now, this. (thanks, Maitri)

Neat open air jungle house in Costa Rica

Posted: 07 May 2010 12:29 PM PDT

Gisela Williams of The New York Times wrote about this cool jungle house built by an American couple who chucked their corporate gigs and moved to Costa Rica. Kent Gilbert took the photos, and the slide show is a must see.

From the moment the couple found and bought (for $72,000) the land, things moved relatively quickly. The family sold their house in Miami in June 2002, moved into a nearby rental house in Cocles Beach in Costa Rica and started building two months later.
"We had to build a road first," Mr. Pinto said. "It should have taken two weeks but it took three months because of the rains."
One of the people instrumental in facilitating the Pintos move to Puerto Viejo was Nicolas Buffile, a French architect who also owned the area's most upscale hotel, the Shawandha Lodge near Chiquita Beach. "We hit it off right away. He was more than just an architect," Mr. Pinto said. "Nicolas became a personal friend and helped us through all the procedures and introduced us to locals."
Construction of the house was completed in August 2003 for a total cost of $135,000, including the price to bring in electricity and build the road.

In Costa Rica, a Home Without Walls (Thanks, Darryl!)

Mac Tonnies's fave Fortean, unusual, and fringe books

Posted: 07 May 2010 12:41 PM PDT

Images Images Images Passport-To-Magonia-2

Mac Tonnies was a Fortean and science fiction author and blogger who tragically died last year at the age of 34. The book he had just finished writing when he died, The Cryptoterrestrials, has just been published by Anomalist Books and it looks to be a tour de force of high weirdness. ("For too long, we've called them 'aliens,' assuming that we represent our planet's best and brightest," writes Tonnies. "Maybe that's exactly what they want us to think.") While delving into Tonnies's body of online work, I came across his excellent nonfiction booklist of recommended reading. It's a terrific list of titles and I'm delighted that I've only read a small fraction of them. If there are additional books you think should be part of any respectable fringe/Fortean library, please share in the comments! And if Fortean thinking offends your rationalist sensibilities, please just move along... nothing to see here. From Mac Tonnies's Recommended Reading list:

(The books listed are) devoted to unusual/uncommon topics. I offer them as recommendations for anyone curious about extraterrestrial life, space colonization, quantum theory, life extension, UFOs, human origins, artificial intelligence, etc.
Note that some of these titles are quite "mainstream," while others are decidedly "oddball." I've found that healthy doses of both camps help in breaking out of existing "reality tunnels." In other words: challenge yourself. Hold everything you "know" in question. We only think we know it all.

Mac Tonnies's Recommended Reading list (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV

Posted: 07 May 2010 02:54 PM PDT

If you read the comments on my first three BoingBoing pieces (here, here and here) about the TV industry, you'll find a lot of interesting (and colorful!) opinions about television and the Internet. There are a ton of good thoughts and ideas in there, but also a lot of things I often hear repeated about TV and the Internet that aren't actually true. I compiled the 7 most common and laid out the realities around them, as seen from my side of the equation. Looking forward to reading a new round of comments that disagree with me ;) 1. The Internet is killing TV Everyone thought the Internet might "Napsterize" TV, but so far that hasn't happened. It turns out watching TV on the Internet leads you to watch more TV on your television. Plus, the Internet is a fantastic tool to promote and market TV shows. Syfy has an especially robust Internet presence (ahem), and we're having some of our best ratings in history. Here's a quote from a Nielsen survey that illustrates the point:

"The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different."

2. Internet distribution has made TV channels obsolete Also hasn't happened. Although you can get TV streamed over the Internet, as yet no remotely sustainable business model has emerged to make any real money off it. It turns out you still need the mature business model and massive revenues that TV channels provide to create the content people want to stream. In other words, without TV channels there would be no TV shows to make streaming TV on the Internet possible.

3. The traditional TV model is dying

The broadcast model of networks like ABC and NBC is certainly under a lot of pressure, but cable networks are doing very well. Part of the problem is actually a press issue...the bigger, older broadcast networks get a disproportionate amount of coverage, so when they have issues, it can seem like all of TV is in trouble. For instance, buried at the end of this otherwise doom and gloom filled MarketWatch article is an interesting tidbit:

"Cable was again a positive note for NBC Universal in the fourth quarter, showing an 8% increase in operating profit, with solid growth at USA, Syfy, Bravo and Oxygen, Sherin said. First-quarter advertising rates at the cable networks are up more than 30%, Sherin explained, after increasing by the same amount during the fourth quarter."

4. TV networks are stupid for not putting all their content online

This again goes back to a business model issue. On cable TV you have a healthy, mature business that provides major revenues on a consistent basis. It's in no danger of going away tomorrow. On the Internet you have a nascent business model that provides as yet little revenue, all of which comes from content funded by the old model. To abandon one for the other doesn't make any sense. What does make sense is trying to figure out the new stuff while still doing the old, working stuff. This isn't a zero sum game. New businesses can be additive to old ones.

5. TV networks stubbornly cling to the old business model and will die because of it

The cable TV model is a healthy one today, but it's not a static one. We try new things constantly. We created Hulu. We put our content on Web sites, on mobile devices and on services like iTunes. We create Web series and TV/Web hybrids. We build repositories of old series online to see if there is a Long Tail effect (so far...not really). We make widgets and apps and Syfy is even co-creating a massively multiplayer online game that will be tied to a TV series. When we find things that work, we do more of them. When they don't work, we do less of them. The reality is, TV networks probably do a lot more than you think to embrace new technologies, and we probably do a lot less than we think we do. See definition of "happy medium".

6. Web series like Dr. Horrible are the way of the future

Dr. Horrible was great, fun, successful and at this point it's unable to be replicated unless you happen to be Joss Whedon who has a lot of talented friends willing to work well below their normal rates. There are definitely successful Web series out there (hello @feliciaday!), but as yet the medium is still struggling to find its footing and is in no danger of replacing TV shows. In fact, many of the Web series producers I talk to made their shows as a way to get into the TV industry, not as a full-time career.

7. The elephant in the room is...

Every time I talk about TV with an Internet savvy crowd, someone brings up the elephant in the room. It seems there is one issue everyone knows about that the TV industry is ignoring and it will be our certain and final death: It's file sharing. It's antiquated Nielsen ratings. It's Google. It's Apple. It's Google AND Apple. It's college kids who don't watch your silly "TV" thing. It's new technologies that will make TV cheap to produce and put you out of business. Etc.

As it happens, we know about these issues, and the new ones that come up every day. They aren't being ignored or killing anything. On the off chance we overlook one, it's a good bet that Internet commenters on sites like BoingBoing will alert us to that fact. They often use key words like "FAIL!!!!" and "dinosaur" to flag us, making their notes especially easy to find.

The elephant in the room is that there are no elephants in the room.

How to get a creative project funded online

Posted: 07 May 2010 11:30 AM PDT

My friend Slava has a fun company called IndieGoGo that lets you fund creative projects through their web site, or start your own and get it funded. Some examples include a photography project that documents hospice patients in Pennsylvania (above), socialism experiments in Germany, and a short film about Big Foot's encounter with an alien. The way it works is similar to the microlending non-profit Kiva, except you can chip in to just about anything. Donors are incentivized by things like a shout out in a film's credits, free swag, or event invites.

If you're the one who has a project that needs funding, you can post your pitch for free; the company takes a cut of what you make but you still get to keep most of it. I'm thinking of trying it out on a forthcoming social experiment. Fun!

IndieGoGo main page

Live turtle and frog ban angers Asian communities

Posted: 07 May 2010 11:04 AM PDT

The Asian-American community in California is up in arms about a new law that prohibits the import of live turtles and frogs for food. Some vendors in Chinatowns across the state make up to 20% of their revenue from the sale of these delicacies.

A night in Times Square, 1910

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:52 AM PDT

SundayMagazine.org, which reprints hundred-year-old articles from the NYT Sunday Magazine, has a corker this week: an account of an overnight stay in Times Square, 1910:

Since 8 o'clock or before, building hope on the generosity of the theatregoing crowd the [homeless man wearing a] bundle of rags has been squatting in its corner, forcing out wheezy sounds from its wretched concertina. Before it, massing on the pavements, dashing across the street in front of whizzing motors and clattering caps, the panorama of Broadway has been unfolded -- that panorama of strange contrasts, with its luxury and pseudo luxury, to bring envy to the snapping point. But such a one as this, the bundle of rags aforesaid, has lost the spirit to be envious. At least a pallid hope, a sort of anaemic longing, that an occasional nickel will be dropped into the cup, mistaken in the darkness for a penny...
Three or four blocks up the street a string band is still playing away for a dozen or more couples who will not forsake the rather Bohemian restaurant until the gray of dawn, and who now, under the inspiration of their wine, are whooping it up in songs, telling silly stories, or retailing unpleasant gossip.
But in the big hotels, the Knickerbocker across the way, and the Astor, the fiddles have had time to get into a deep sleep, the lights in the grill are out, chairs are banked on the tables, and the sweepers are already busy in the lobby getting ready for another day...
But does Times Square ever sleep?
It never really does.

Night In A Fascinating Square That Never Sleeps (Thanks, David!)

Previously:

D&D Soda

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:27 AM PDT

(Thanks, Ryan!)

Uke Can Play interviews Amy Crehore about her painted ukuleles

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:25 AM PDT

BeatNik of the new blog Uke Can Play! interviewed my friend, Amy Crehore, about her painted ukuleles.

BeatNik: After you paint them, are they still playable?
Amy: They are all playable and sound great, and in the case of vintage, they have either been lovingly restored to playability or happen to be in mint condition. I would not have it any other way. However, one may not want to play them very often, but rather treat them as fine art collectibles and one-of-a-kind examples of my art. After all, the best specimens in the finest instrument collections are ones that have not been destroyed by playing. Some are quite rare.
BeatNik:I heard you are also in a band – are ukuleles part of your music, as well?
Amy: Yes. The ukulele fits well into the type of music I play with my husband – authentic jugband, early jazz and blues of the 20s and 30s. We prefer the sound of the black musicians of that period.

Ten Things I Had To Ask Amy!

Trailer for JJ Abrams/Steven Spielberg "Super 8" movie

Posted: 07 May 2010 12:03 PM PDT

The "secret" trailer for JJ Abrams' new film Super 8 has made it to YouTube. It appears that someone in a theater surreptitiously shot the trailer as it played on a movie screen, but of course that might be just what the studio wants you to think. In any case, what's not to love about this teaser: "In 1979, the U.S. Air Force closed a section of Area 51. All materials were to be transported to a secure facility in Ohio." More on the film at E! Online. (via Daily Grail)