Friday, May 28, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

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The Latest from Boing Boing

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Synthetic biotech: a monopolist's playground?

Posted: 28 May 2010 05:25 AM PDT

In the wake of Craig Venter's announcement that he and his team had created the world's first synthetic lifeform, Jamie Boyle considers the legal implications of a synthetic biotech world in which the norm is that the fundamental units of creation are exclusively held by a few patent owners:
In an article written for the journal PloS Biology in 2007, my colleague Arti Rai and I explored the likely legal future of synthetic biology. We found reason to worry that precisely because synthetic biology looks both like software writing and genetic engineering, it might end up combining the expansive patent law aspects of both those technologies, with the troubling prospect of strong monopolies being created over the basic building blocks of science itself. Some of the patents being filed are astoundingly basic, the equivalent of patenting Boolean algebra right at the birth of computer science. With courts now reconsidering both business method and perhaps software patents, and patents over human genes, the future is an uncertain one.

In the world of software, the proprietary model faces competition from open source alternatives, free both in price and in that their code is openly available and can be scrutinized and rewritten. Internet Explorer competes with the open source browser, Firefox. Microsoft dominates the desktop operating system market but there is a Linux alternative. Microsoft web server software competes with (and trails) the open source offerings from Apache and others. The same is true in the world of synthetic biology. The Biobricks Foundation is a nonprofit founded by scientists who are keenly aware of the parallels to the software world. They want to create an open source collection of standard biological parts, to make sure in other words, that the basic building blocks, the standard tools of this new world of biological science, remain "open" in a scientific commons. But their efforts, too, are rendered uncertain by the threat of overbroad patents on foundational technologies.

Monopolists of the Genetic Code? (Thanks, @sivavaid!)


Hackers on Planet Earth releases an API for its RFID badge

Posted: 28 May 2010 04:36 AM PDT

Every year, 2600: The Hacker Quarterly throws its Hackers on Planet Earth bash in NYC, and every year, they have elaborate, hackable badges. Lately, these have been OpenAMD RFID badges, whose in-built RFID tags can be hacked, tracked, monitored, spindled, folded and mutilated.

This year's badge sports its own API, for your hacking pleasure:

Conference attendees will see first hand where human tracking by commercial and government interests may be headed when they are offered an active RFID conference badge.

Participation in RFID tracking is completely voluntary. If you wish, you can request an electronics-free "unpopulated" badge at registration, or simply remove the battery from your "populated" RFID badge at any time. There will be a limited number of the full-featured badges, so register early to be guaranteed to receive one.

The RFID Strikes Back (Thanks, Aestetix!)


Man single-handedly building a metro rail

Posted: 27 May 2010 07:29 PM PDT

Pulitzer-winning fanfic: a non-exhaustive list

Posted: 27 May 2010 07:28 PM PDT

A non-exhaustive list of books that would be considered fanfic except for the fact that they won the Pulitzer Prize (provided as a service to writers who believe that fanfic is "immoral, illegal, plagiarism, cheating, for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own" and who feel "personally traumatized by the idea that someone else could look at your characters and decide that you did it wrong and they need to fix it/add original characters to your universe/send your characters to the moon/Japan/their hometown.")
* Jane Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres, a modernized AU (Alternate Universe) retelling of King Lear and winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. King Lear is itself a hybrid of multiple folk and fairy tales

* Rodgers & Hammerstein's Tony-Award-winning South Pacific, which was based on James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and is the only musical to win the Pulitzer Prize that is based on *another* work that also won a Pulitzer.

* Geraldine Brooks' March, a parallel retelling of Little Women and winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for literature

* Stephen Sondheim's Sunday In the Park with George, which is half-original fic, half-RPF (real person fiction) based on the artist Georges Seurat, and winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

* Jonathan Larsen's Rent, which is an AU fanfic of La Boheme (much like the movie Moulin Rouge, an AU hybrid crossover fanfic of La Boheme and La Traviata) and winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

* John Corigliano, 2001 Pulitzer-Prize winner for Music, who wrote the opera Ghosts of Versailles, a postmodern fantasy RPF/fanfic crossover AU about Pierre Beaumarchais and the characters from his play La Mère coupable.. Those characters were previously fanficced twice over, in two separate operatic masterpieces: Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, both based on the other 2 Figaro plays by Beaumarchais.

I'm done explaining to people why fanfic is okay. (via Making Light)


Google unwilling to share data with German regulators

Posted: 27 May 2010 04:51 PM PDT

Google inadvertently collected personal data from open WiFi hotspots. Then it inadvertently stored it. Now it's inadvertently refusing to surrender it to regulators. Privacy laws, it suggests, make it illegal to hand over data on those whose privacy it breached--if nothing else, this would seem an admission that the data was specific and personal enough to fall under the relevant statutes.
"As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany, which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available," Peter Barron, a Google spokesman in London, said, in a statement. "We hope, given more time, to be able to resolve this difficult issue."
It's never the dump, it's always the evasive maneuvers that follow it. I wonder if corporate crisis management's biggest failure is that it values liability over reputation: lawyers red-penning the PR people, that sort of thing. Consider, for example, British Petroleum. One suspects that a clever PR operation from the first moment something went wrong could have made them into heroes when they cap this thing. But there's not even the chance of that, now: everything it's said and done since the disaster is so conniving and alienating that no-one could ever be fooled. Whatever they say, it sounds a bit like "We will do anything at all to minimize our legal exposure now, even at the ruin of our credibility forever." Google Balks at Turning Over Data to Regulators [NYT]

Noby Noby Theatre: At Play With Mr. House

Posted: 27 May 2010 12:34 PM PDT

This week's most adorable madness (after a long series of such): Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi double-blinded beneath a scarf and felt-constructed House mask doing some light focus testing of the iPad version of his game with some very confused but still bemused toddlers. As a bonus, below is the followup where the pair finally really start to warm up to their surroundings. No subtitles on either, unfortunately, but the language of slightly leery delight is universal.



"Space Jam" and Mayan mythology

Posted: 27 May 2010 03:17 PM PDT

The Popol Vuh is the creation story of the ancient Maya. One of the main plot threads involves hero twins who are summoned to the underworld to take on the gods in a high-stakes ball game. In a 2001 paper, linguist Michal Brody points out some surprising similarities between the Popol Vuh and ... yes ... the Michael Jordan/Bugs Bunny team-up, Space Jam. I'd not made that connection before, but Brody makes a pretty good case for the Mayan influence on Warner Brothers.

The horrible, beautiful world of Bad Postcards

Posted: 27 May 2010 05:04 PM PDT

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A friend of mine is about to go on a 10-day car trip through the Mountain States, and yesterday, at the end of a phone conversation, I asked him to send me a postcard from the road. I have no idea what dusty, atavistic part of my brain spawned this request, which is clearly ridiculous: What I was asking him to do was find and buy a postcard, secure stamps, write on the postcard, address the postcard, stamp the postcard, and find a place to mail it while traveling through unfamiliar surroundings. All this went through my head in less than second, after which I laughed sheepishly and asked him: "Do people even send postcards anymore?" Answer: No. Of course not. What am I, a hundred?

And yet, I miss them. I miss their janky composition, their gut-wrenching typography, their eye-stabbing color palette. Postcards represented a genial kind of fraud -- a moment posed trying to pass for a moment captured. They were a window into an alternate universe that was sort of like our own, but way more awkward and weird. Bad postcards? This Tumblr site is almost redundant. Which is exactly what makes it great.

Top 10 new species

Posted: 27 May 2010 03:31 PM PDT

From a bombardier slug, to a carnivorous plant named after David Attenborough—the best new species discovered in 2009 are pretty freaking cool.

4 ways to Nudge Yourself

Posted: 27 May 2010 02:24 PM PDT

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Photo by chatirygirl / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

A few months ago, I did an experiment in which I tried to be totally and completely rational for a month. To eliminate all of my brain's mental quirks and Paleolithic biases.

Of course, I failed. My irrational monkey mind has a powerful hold on me, and won't let go so easily. But I made some baby steps.

Plus, the experiment introduced me to the idea of nudging myself. The recent (okay, 10-day-old) New York Times article on Cass Sunstein reminded me of this notion. (Full disclosure: Cass is my cousin, which is how I first heard about nudging and behavioral economics in the first place). The article is about Cass's idea of taking advantage of our brain quirks to produce better behavior. As the Times puts it: Nudgers want "school cafeterias put the fruit before the fried chicken, because students are more likely to grab the first food they see. They support a change in Illinois law that asks drivers renewing their licenses to choose whether they want to be organ donors. The simple act of having to choose meant that more people signed up. Ideas like these, taking human idiosyncrasies into account, might revive an old technocratic hope: that society could be understood so perfectly that it might be improved."

But in addition to the government or institutions nudging us, we can nudge ourselves. Here's some of the homespun, unofficial strategies I've come up with.

They seem to work for me - though I realize it could be the placebo effect. On the other hand, the placebo effect is kind of a nudge as well. So we shouldn't underestimate placebos.

1. A mirror on my desk
This isn't vanity. Or isn't simply vanity. Studies show people behave more virtuously when a mirror is present. They can see themselves sinning, and they stop. So I have a small mirror next to my laptop. I swear it's cut down on the number of times I check gossip websites. Also, I use mirrors in eating. I got this idea from Cass's co-author, the behavioral economist Richard Thaler, who told me that people eat less when they eat in front of a mirror. We're too self-conscious. A warped mirror - one that makes you look fat - could even cut more calories out of your diet, though I haven't resorted to that yet.


2. Watchful eyes

Studies show that people also behave better when there are pictures of eyes on the wall. You don't even need real eyes. Just pictures of eyes.

People unconsciously think they're being watched and judged. So I've snipped out dozens of eyes from magazines - Sela Ward's eyes from a clothing ad, John Malkovich's from an interview -- and taped them around my home office. I put a stern-looking set of eyes (Lynne Cheney's) on the cabinet where the fruit snacks are kept.

I taped some eyes in my kids' room. I realize it kind of makes my house look like it was decorated by DeNiro's character in Cape Fear.

But I kind of like it. Plus, my son seems to throw slightly fewer tantrums. An anecdotal finding no doubt, but nobody's offered to fund a rigorous study.

3. Light Bulb
This is a new addition to my office. I adjusted the lampshade off one of my lamps so I could see the bare bulb. This was inspired by this study on priming effects.

If you see a light bulb, it brings to mind the idea of creativity. And, in one experiment at least, the sight of a light bulb made people more creative: they solved logic problems better. I'm behind deadline, so I need all the creativity I can get.

4. Memento Mori
This is an ancient nudge, and perhaps my most effective. I have a memento mori on my computer desktop. As you might know, memento moris are reminders of death, and were popular in the Middle Ages when paintings often included skulls and other macabre symbols. So I have a JPEG of a skull on my computer. But I didn't want it to be gruesome, so it's a fun, multicolored skull -- a design I downloaded from some site. It puts things in perspective. It helps stop the small-stuff-induced sweating. Reminds me to enjoy my life and my family while I'm here.

RFID collar keeps dog away from chicken's feed

Posted: 27 May 2010 01:29 PM PDT

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In the comments section of my post about my honey harvest, Alan Graham mentioned that he put an RFID chip in his dog's collar. Now, he says, "if the dog tries to go into the chicken coop (she loves their feed) the door closes on her." It's a canine version of the story of Tantalus!

Drill, baby, drill: Oil execs sexed regulators

Posted: 27 May 2010 02:26 PM PDT

O3121.jpg "Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said...." More here about the bonking scandal two years ago involving the Mineral Management Service, the US government agency tasked with overseeing stuff like, ohhh, the oil rig that BP allowed to blow in the Gulf of Mexico—now the worst oil disaster in American history. As the oil continues to spew today, this most extreme evidence of inappropriate coziness is worth revisiting.

Yesterday, the MMS offshore drilling chief resigned. Today MMS head Liz Birnbaum, quit. Here's the Mineral Management Service website, which at the time of this blog post still displays a funny photo of Birnbaum that's begging for an alternate caption. Don't miss the "ethics" section. Hubba hubba.

Soviet Hobbit illustrations

Posted: 27 May 2010 01:01 PM PDT


Thomas sez, "English Russia posted the gorgeous illustrations from the first soviet edition of Tolkien's The Hobbit, accompagnied by three videos of a 70's low budget telefilm/play broadcasted to entertain Soviet children. The result is truly hilarious, and yet touching. Gollum is a must-see!"

Russian Lord of the Rings



Sushi on a stick

Posted: 27 May 2010 12:57 PM PDT


Sushi Poppers are, well, sushi on a stick. Made fresh daily, wrapped in paper, and intended to be shoved free of their papery cocoons and eaten on the go. By people who are willing to eat sushi on a stick.

The Sushi Popper (Thanks, Chris!)



Today's Hello: a longer look behind the cape of Joe Danger

Posted: 27 May 2010 12:26 PM PDT

Above, a rare glimpse at an indie game developer actually enjoying and being challenged by their own game (alongside this extra Coin Dash here), provided by the UK's Hello Games and their upcoming PlayStation Network debut Joe Danger. It's been a while since I last mentioned the IGF-finalist Danger, but the team have been doing an amazing job at documenting the highs and lows of their first time striking out in the indie world, with an incredibly honest and open diary at Edge Magazine. This week's entry is particularly enlightening:
It was late last year and I was sat shivering in my car, shouting into my mobile and trying to pretend Hello Games owned a conference line and a meeting room. I decided it best not to mention that I was racking up a huge mobile bill as three grown men discussed the importance of monkeys to the digital download demographic. "We've been talking a lot about this, Sean. You know we love you guys and we love Joe Danger. I'm just not sure how other people feel about it. It's a cute game, so marketing are thinking maybe a cuter character... like a monkey. We're loving monkeys." I wish I could say I hung up the phone immediately. I wish I could say that, but I didn't.
Get to better know Hello via their official site or the ongoing Edge diaries.


A new Drug Policy Alliance PSA

Posted: 27 May 2010 12:16 PM PDT


The people (including Sting, George Soros, and Montel Williams) in this PSA video from the Drug Policy Alliance offer different reasons for ending the war of drugs ("it's really a war on people). I like the fact that Sting and Montel basically say people have the right to take drugs so bugger off.

Sting, Soros, Montel and More: We are the Drug Policy Alliance

Dairy farm worker arrested on 12 counts of cruelty after undercover video goes viral

Posted: 27 May 2010 12:07 PM PDT

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One of the dairy factory-farm workers who reportedly appeared in an internet video in which multiple men tortured cows has been arrested on 12 counts of animal cruelty. The animal rights group Mercy for Animals shot the undercover footage, and released it online. The video shows men:

• Violently punching young calves in the face, body slamming them to the ground, and pulling and throwing them by their ears
• Routinely using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs, and stomach
• Kicking "downed" cows (those too injured to stand) in the face and neck
• Maliciously beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars
• Twisting cows' tails until the bones snapped
You can watch the video, or read about what it contains, here. Be forewarned, it's a real bummer. The arrested worker's mugshot is here. I figured a nice happy free-range bovine was better for this blog post than either of those eyeball-burners.

(Creative Commons-licensed image shot by Flickr user Ferdi's World.)

Man arrested for shooting at car of iPhone thieves

Posted: 27 May 2010 01:39 PM PDT

Roger Witter, 48, was in an Oregon AT&T store when he saw two young men stealing iPhones. He chased them outside, pistol in hand, and fired shots at the car as it sped off.

Witter told police he was trying to shoot out the car's tires. He was arrested and charged with "unlawful use of a weapon, reckless endangerment disorderly conduct. and unlawful discharge of a firearm. His handgun and concealed weapons permit were seized."

201005271136"It is important to remember that no matter how frustrated one may be with crime and the criminal justice system, it is not permissible to use deadly force in this type of situation," Gresham Sgt. Rick Wilson said in announcing Witter's arrest. "Those two rounds could've gone anywhere. In fact, we're still not sure where they went. They could've struck an innocent bystander or damaged property." 

Witness to iPhone theft shoots at suspects, faces own arrest (Thanks, Alan!)

Canada's copyright minister: superinfringer

Posted: 27 May 2010 11:38 AM PDT

Tony Clement, the Canadian minister who ignored the results of his own consultation on copyright and decided to bring Canadians a restrictive, US-style Canadian DMCA, admits to being a copyright infringer.

First, there's the matter of his much-vaunted iPod, held out as an example of his technical savvy, which he admits to filling with illegally ripped music. His new law will make it legal to rip CDs and load them onto your iPod, but not if there's any DRM on the CDs or other digital music files, in which case, all bets are off. Clement's law makes it illegal to break DRM, even if you're doing so for a lawful purpose.

Then there's the video above. As Ben notes, "Tony Clement, was found to have been doing commercials for a company selling chemicals in China. Aside from hilariously poor production values, the video contains blatant copyright violations. This is ironic, as he is one of the Ministers responsible for overhauling Canadian copyright laws."

Industry minister admits to breaking copyright law to build iPod collection (Thanks, Ben and Andrew!)



Python script turns any song into a swing number

Posted: 27 May 2010 11:33 AM PDT

dj BC sez, "Tristan Jehan from M.I.T. has created a unique and simple music hack, which my buddy Solcofn stumbled across on Paul Lamere's excellent 'Music Machinery' blog."
White Rabbit - The Swing Version by plamere

One of my favorite hacks at last weekend's Music Hack Day is Tristan's Swinger. The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect.

Check out the examples from the likes of The Police, Daft Punk, Metallica, and Prince.

The Swinger (Thanks, dj BC!)

First honey harvest

Posted: 27 May 2010 10:56 AM PDT

I checked my beehive a couple of days ago and was stunned by the amount of honey bulging out of the frames! As a test, I removed two frames (out of 20 in my hive) and used Kirk Anderson's crush-and-strain honey extraction method. Here's a video showing how he does it:


I got 28 ounces of honey this way:

Img 1989

I'm going to add another box to the hive, because it seems like the colony wants to grow.

My next step is to take the leftover wax and mix it with some oils of coconut and peppermint and make lip balm. I'll put them in 1 oz glass jars like this.

Hey Toronto: Messhof is your special guest at tonight's Hand Eye game event

Posted: 27 May 2010 10:24 AM PDT

As previously mentioned, I'll be helping host tonight's installment of Toronto's indie game/creative community focused Hand Eye Society event, starting 7:30pm at Unit Bar, located at 1198 Queen West. And, as promised, there'll be another special guest showing up at the event: NYC indie dev Mark 'Messhof' Essen, creator of games like the awesomely punishing Flywrench, the drugged-up-on-drugs madness of Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist and the warped maze game collaboration with Pixeljam, Cream Wolf. Fresh from being inducted into Intel and Vice Magazine's 'Creators Project' (alongside Spike Jonze, UNKLE's James Lavelle, and Phoenix), the highlight of the evening should be the local debut of Essen's gloriously stylish latest, NIDHOGG (above, created for NYU's 'No Quarter' exhibition), which should provide for intensely gladiatorial proceedings. Here's to braving this city's record-breaking & utterly infernal heat wave for a night of good games and good company! The Third Social of 2010: Thursday, May 27th. [Hand Eye Society]


Two year old smokes 40 cigarettes a day

Posted: 27 May 2010 09:32 AM PDT

Check out this smoking baby.

Mark's new book: Made by Hand

Posted: 27 May 2010 11:37 AM PDT

Made-By-Hand-Cover

My new book is out! Made by Hand is about the fun and fulfillment I got from making my own stuff. I wrote about my not-always-successful attempts to do things like raise chickens, keep bees, grow and preserve food and make my own musical instruments.

Made by Hand is published by Portfolio / Penguin, who described it like this:

DIY is a direct reflection of our basic human desire to invent and improve, long suppressed by the availability of cheap, mass-produced products that have drowned us in bland convenience and cultivated our most wasteful habits. Frauenfelder spent a year trying a variety of offbeat projects such as keeping chickens and bees, tricking out his espresso machine, whittling wooden spoons, making guitars out of cigar boxes, and doing citizen science with his daughters in the garage. His whole family found that DIY helped them take control of their lives, offering a path that was simple, direct, and clear. Working with their hands and minds helped them feel more engaged with the world around them.

Frauenfelder also reveals how DIY is changing our culture for the better. He profiles fascinating "alpha makers" leading various DIY movements and grills them for their best tips and insights.

Here are a few advance reviews:

• "This is a must-read book. Mark has lovingly and candidly documented the complex, myriad, intangible and often very tangible rewards of grabbing the world with both of your hands, and learning how it works." -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

•"...this is one of the most inspiring book for do-it-yourself'ers that I've ever read." Shane Speal, Cigar Box Nation

• "Made By Hand is a wonderfully inspiring read and makes turning to a make-centric way of life feel not only approachable, but utopian." -- Jaymi Heimbuch, Treehugger

• "Made by Hand an absolutely fascinating read."  -- Jon Mueller, 800CEOREAD

• "...not only was I entertained I was educated on a wide range of topics!" -- Recycled Crafts


• "Frauenfelder has been at the center of the emerging maker movement, chronicling its rise as an economic force. Here, he describes a parallel evolution: his own embrace of making, as he applies the lessons he's been learning to his own life. It's as inspiring as it is entertaining. You'll never look at your lawn the same again!" -- Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired


• "Why do otherwise well-adjusted people take to raising chickens in Studio City? What sort of contrarian spends a lot of time and money to kill his own lawn? These may be the projects of one quirky individual, but they point to something universal and true. Human beings find their proper home not in large-scale corporate structures but in the struggle for individual agency. You have to admire the doggedness with which the individuals in Made By Hand try to render their own world intelligible." -- Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft


• "Frauenfelder believes -- as do I -- that the DIY ethic is only partly about the things you produce. It's also about learning how to learn, about connecting with others who share your interests, and about taking pride in your accomplishments. ... I think the book is great, and I encourage you to pick up a copy if you're at all interested in DIY." -- J.D. Roth, Get Rich Slowly

Buy Made by Hand | Read free sample chapters

USB cufflinks

Posted: 27 May 2010 08:58 AM PDT

wgancufflinks.jpg These USB drives disguised as cufflinks are not bad-looking, but I tend to think that gadgets and jewelry should be two separate things. What do you think?

4GB USB flash drive cufflinks [Cufflinks.com via Gadget Lab]

Eggshell art

Posted: 27 May 2010 08:31 AM PDT

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Franc Grom, a Slovenian artist, makes these amazing designs by drilling holes into egg shells. He has made over 300 so far; sometimes it takes him months to finish a single piece.

via WebUrbanist

Cat survives washing machine drama

Posted: 27 May 2010 08:58 AM PDT

Kimba, a white fluffy cat in Sydney, climbed into a front-loading washing machine, fell asleep, and survived through a wash and spin cycle with just minor eye damage and shock.

Tentative good news from the Gulf

Posted: 27 May 2010 08:00 AM PDT

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Yesterday, BP started an ambitious effort to stop the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with a "top kill"—pumping drilling "mud" into the well at a fast enough rate that it backs up the flow of oil behind the broken blowout preventer and starts to form a plug. Today, the Coast Guard announced that this effort appears to be working. It's too soon to call it an unqualified success, but things are looking good and we may get the leak officially stopped up in the next day or so. That doesn't solve the clean-up issue, but it's a relief to know that something is working.

I've seen a lot of really bad explanations of the top kill process in the news. Frankly, I wasn't entirely clear on how it worked until I read this description on the Oil Drum Blog. It likened the leak to a stopped up sewer line. If you have tree roots growing through your sewer, you can still turn the sink on, and liquid can get through. But if you up the volume—flush the toilet or run the washing machine—everything gets backed up and flows back into your basement. Essentially, the broken blowout preventer is the tree roots, and the drilling mud was used to increase the volume of liquid enough that it couldn't get through the break.

Also, for the record, drilling mud isn't mud like you'll find in your backyard. There's been a lot of confusion on that point, and a lot of the news reports I've seen haven't cleared it up much. Drilling mud is an engineered lubricant. Clay is often one ingredient, but there are many types of drilling fluid that get called "mud" and they're usually a mixture of clays, water and various chemicals. Amusingly—at least for anyone who saw "There Will Be Blood"—drilling mud is supposed to look a lot like a chocolate malt.

Rich Fulcher's Tiny Acts of Rebellion: BB Video Interview

Posted: 27 May 2010 09:55 AM PDT

richth.jpg( Watch on YouTube or download MP4 | More Boing Boing Video ).

Comedian Rich Fulcher is best known for his multiple character roles on the hit BBC comedy series "The Mighty Boosh"—the most notorious of whom is Eleanor—and for his dark sketch comedy show "Snuffbox."

I caught up with him on a Venice Beach rooftop to discuss the release of his very funny new book, Tiny Acts of Rebellion, and to roast s'mores beneath the stars. The resulting Boing Boing Video episode includes gutbusting fits of laughter, and melted marshmallows coated with gravel and cat-hair. Fulcher's a lot better at comedy than he is at cooking campfire treats.

LA folks: Fulcher will be performing this Friday, May 28, at Largo in Los Angeles, with a terrific lineup including Chris Hardwick, Har Mar Superstar, and Neil Hamburger. Maybe Eleanor will make an appearance?

Poster with details below, tickets here, and proceeds benefit a Nashville flood disaster response fund. More Fulcher (and Eleanor) shows in LA and other US cities to follow...

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