Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

World's oldest leather shoe

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 09:42 AM PDT

Images 2010 06 10 World 10Shoe 337 Span 10Shoe 337 Span-Articlelarge-V2
Above is what archaeologists suggest is the world's oldest leather shoe ever found. Researchers found the 5,500-year-old footwear in an Armenian cave. Until the find, the oldest leather shoe was one worn by Ötzi, the murdered Iceman I posted about yesterday. From the New York Times:
Perfectly preserved under layers of sheep dung (who needs cedar closets?), the shoe, made of cowhide and tanned with oil from a plant or vegetable, is about 5,500 years old, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, scientists say. Leather laces crisscross through numerous leather eyelets, and it was worn on the right foot; there is no word on the left shoe.

While the shoe more closely resembles an L. L.Bean-type soft-soled walking shoe than anything by Jimmy Choo, "these were probably quite expensive shoes, made of leather, very high quality," said one of the lead scientists, Gregory Areshian, of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It could have fit a small man or a teenager, but was most likely worn by a woman with roughly size 7 feet.
"This Shoe Had Prada Beat by 5,500 Years"

Stop-motion Super Mario made out of sticky notes

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 09:48 AM PDT

Some of the most creative student projects in Japan are presented at bunkasai, the annual school festivals. One presented recently was this stop-motion video of Super Mario made out of sticky notes. Watch him as he journeys through the school building collecting coins and mushrooms.

(Thanks Kazu Y!) [via TokyoMango]

Survey of weird ice falls

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 09:32 AM PDT

Every so often, the sky falls. Or rather, huge chunks of ice drop from the sky, often damaging homes or cars. Usually, the ice is thought to have fallen off an airplane's struts and tail. Occasionally, the ice has a chemical smell or, worse, the odor of human waste, suggesting a leaky lavatory wastewater tank. In other cases, investigators have posited that the chunks are "ice meteorites" or massive hailstones. Fortean Times presents a casebook of contemporary ice falls. From FT:
A group of friends were drinking outside the Kilton Inn in Worksop on the evening of 9 August 2009 when they heard a loud smash. Wesley Chesters, who lives nearby, was narrowly missed by the 30cm square chunk.

Dawn Rennie, another Worksop resident, added: "We were just so lucky. We were so close to being killed when we were just sitting outside a pub quietly. Things like this just should not happen. Aeroplanes shouldn't be ejecting things over Eastgate."

A frozen condom was embedded in one of the blocks – proof it had fallen from a plane. A spokesman from the CAA said: "leaks from toilet systems can occur if there is a fault on the seal at the point where the hose from the collection vehicle connects with the aircraft… When ice falls are reported to the CAA, we attempt to ident­ify aircraft which may have been responsible, and request its operator examine mainten­ance records to attempt to identify possible causes and repair any faulty seals."

"Look Out Below!"

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx: free OS that Just Works

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 09:01 AM PDT


Today, I got caught up enough from my tour to update my ThinkPad to the latest version of Ubuntu. Lucid Lynx went in like butter. The update ran unattended, took about 1h including downloading the whole OS, updated all of my apps without a hitch, and is running smoothly. I'll let you know if anything breaks, but this looks like yet another flawless Ubuntu update for me, making me a very, very satisfied user indeed.

I know I once promised to document my Ubuntu Linux changeover in detail, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. To be honest, there just wasn't much to write about. I bought a ThinkPad (currently using the X200, lusting after the X201), downloaded and burned a CD, stuck it in the drive, turned it on, clicked "Install." To move my data over from my old Mac, I booted it into USB-drive mode and dragged the files over. Getting DRM'ed audiobooks out of iTunes was the hardest part (all hail AudioHijack, which let me capture the files, though it took a month's constant playback on three old Powerbooks to convert my thousands of dollars' worth of Audible books to MP3 so I could take them with).

Since then, it's Just Worked. When I need to do something new -- edit audio, say -- I go to the software center and look at what apps exist for that purpose, select some highly rated ones, download them, try them, keep the one I like (all the software is free, so this is easy). Migrating to new machines? Easy. Just take my list of installed apps to the new machine as a text-file on a USB key and ask Software Center to download them and configure them. Backups? Easy: external generic USB drive and rsync (exactly what I used with my Mac).

For the first two or three weeks, there was some disorientation. None of the things I used were where I expected to find them. It was the OS equivalent of when we remodeled the kitchen and it took me two weeks to remember where the new cutlery drawer was. Then the OS vanished: of course it did. It's plumbing. You're not supposed to notice plumbing. If you have to notice plumbing, there's something wrong with the plumbing.


Do I have to type in a lot of arcane command-line gibberish? No. I sometimes choose to because I like having little pythony things lying around that friends have written for me or that I've pieced together myself, but that was true on my Mac as well. I could happily do all the important things on my machine without ever touching the terminal.


Does everything work? Hell yeah. Ubuntu's support for arcane stuff like 3G modems is vastly superior to anything I've seen on the Mac or Windows: just plug in the modem, wait for it to autodetect, confirm its guess, and go. The sexy multifunction Logitech mouse? Just worked -- no drivers required. My HP all-in-one scanner/copier/printer? Just worked. Webcams, USB mics, etc etc? Never had to download a driver, never had to install a driver: they just worked.


Oh, sure, sometimes I don't know off the bat how to do something a little arcane (after I replaced the UK keyboard my ThinkPad came with with the US version, I had to figure out where to tell the OS about it, for instance), but it's never more than one or two googles away. And sometimes apps crash, but not often -- and the OS itself has crashed so infrequently that the most common cause of my reboots is running out of battery.


The folks at Canonical were kind enough to give me a comp support account, and I've used it a couple times for weird, dire things, like recovering from serious hardware errors or getting the crypto stuff on my encrypted partition just right, and they are excellent, but these are the kinds of problems I expect to need a hint or two from an expert with.


So there you have it: Ubuntu: It Just Works. Install it, spend two weeks wondering where the cutlery drawer is, watch it disappear. Thereafter, only notice it when it does something amazing, like flawless OS updates or very simple transfers to new machines.


You can download and burn a Lucid Lynx CD free, boot any machine from it, and give Ubuntu a test-drive. Try it!


Lucid Lynx



Darth, Interrupted: Does Vader have Borderline Personality Disorder?

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 09:01 AM PDT

vader2.jpg

Armchair psychiatric diagnoses of real people can probably be classified as, in general, a bad thing. Armchair psychiatric diagnoses of fictional characters, though: That's pretty much just awesome.

Case in point: The team of researchers at Toulouse University Hospital in France who not only make a pretty good, DSM-based case for the mental illness behind everybody's favorite black-clad evil overlord—they actually took the time to do the diagnosis right, publishing in the journal Psychiatry Research

'He presented impulsivity and difficulty controlling his anger and alternated between idealisation and devaluation (of his Jedi mentors). Permanently afraid of losing his wife, he made frantic efforts to avoid her abandonment and went as far as betraying his former Jedi companions. He also experienced two dissociative episodes secondary to stressful events. One occurred after his mother's death, when he exterminated a whole tribe of Tuskan people, while the other one took place just after he turned to the dark side. He slaughtered all the Jedi younglings before voicing paranoid thoughts concerning his former mentor and his wife. Finally, the films depicted his quest to find himself, and his uncertainties about who he was. Turning to the dark side and changing his name could be interpreted as a sign of identity disturbance.'

Sadly, I'm not sure I buy their argument that publicizing Darth Vader as a BPD sufferer is going to do anything to take away the stigma away of mental illness.

British Psychological Society Research Digest: Does Darth Vader meet the diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder?

Photo by Flickr user AlexSlocker, used via CC

India to WTO: Secret copyright treaty is illegal!

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 08:35 AM PDT

Michael Geist sez,
The Government of India came out forcefully against ACTA this week in an intervention at the World Trade Organization. The India position, which may well reflect the views of other ACTA-excluded countries, demonstrates that ACTA is emerging as a contentious political issue that extends well beyond civil society and business groups concerned with the agreement. Countries excluded from the ACTA process have to come to recognize the serious threat it represents both substantively as well as for the future of multilateral organizations.

This growing concern from countries such as India represents a major new pressure point on the ACTA discussions. The notion that ACTA countries could negotiate an agreement that would ultimately be used to pressure non-ACTA countries to conform without attracting opposition from those very countries was always unrealistic. If the April ACTA round of talks was marked by the mounting pressure for greater transparency, the late June ACTA round of talks will undoubtedly have developing country opposition as its core concern.

India Comes Out Swinging Against ACTA at WTO


Get this game: the pitch-perfect pitfalls of Bit.Trip Runner

Posted: 06 Jun 2010 03:32 PM PDT

Bit.Trip Runner [Gaijin, WiiWare] Much has already been written (lots of it previously on Offworld) about Gaijin Games' approach to retro-inspiration with their Bit.Trip series, a franchise which digs even further back than the usual 8-/16-bit classics to gaming's earliest iconic mascots -- the block, the paddle, the ball -- and brings them forward into the 21st century with their rainbow-tinged chiptune-laden signature. Their first three games Beat, Core, Void are suitably stark, purist games, at heart, interaction at their simplest, and almost damningly difficult, for the amount of "full screen at once" observation they require. And then came Bit.Trip Runner: a jog forward in inspiration from Pong to Pitfall!, the first to put their Commander Video mascot at the fore, and, put plainly, the best game they've created yet.

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You'll be somewhat forgiven to cry "Canabalt!" at first glance (honestly an entirely coincidental comparison, with Runner deep in the design phase well before Saltsman's release), but while both feature perpetually-rightward-running stars, the two couldn't be more diametrically opposed.

How? Like this: where Canabalt gets its power from a procedurally-generated landscape that asks you to adapt to its uniqueness, Runner is a game that demands you dance to its tune, a choreographed routine precise down to the microsecond.

And that's actually a fairly apt metaphor, as the act of jumping/ducking/sliding/springboarding/busting around Runner's world is a sonically-synced act of creating additional layers of the background music that drives the game, like a side-scrolling platforming version of Q's cult classic shooter Rez, or, more accurately and obscurely, a polychromatic take on NanaOn-Sha's monochromatic vector-runner Vib-Ribbon.

And here, too, Gaijin have put their distinct stamp on the game in the form of yet more sadistic difficulty: any mis-step in that dance routine zips you unceremoniously straight back to the start of the song (one of many references to that Pitfall inspiration). But, unlike their earlier games, Runner's worlds are split into several dozen much shorter and tighter stages, 60-90 second loops of gameplay that never become tiresome to replay, and -- if anything -- better inspire that perfect, sticky, "one more go" quality.

Even if the memory of its boss battles will give you panicked, sweaty night-terrors from here until forever (speaking first-hand, here), even if you never ever manage to make your way to the end of its low-bit bonus challenge levels (seen above, and, again, first-hand!), Runner is the product of a team truly coming into their own and creating something beautiful, and -- once you finally learn to lock into their steps -- capable of fantastic synaesthetic audio/visual highs.



Clay Shirky's COGNITIVE SURPLUS: how the net lets us share and do more than ever

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 05:43 AM PDT

Clay Shirky's second book, The Cognitive Surplus, picks up where his stellar debut, Here Comes Everybody left off: explaining how the net's lowered costs for group activity allow us to be creative and even generous in ways that we never anticipated and haven't yet fully taken account of.

Shirky's hypothesis is that a lot of the 20th century stuff we used to take for granted -- most people didn't want to create media, people didn't value homemade and amateur productions, no one would pitch in to create something for others to enjoy unless they were being paid -- weren't immutable laws of nature, but accidents of history. The Internet has undone those accidents, by making it possible for more people to make and do cool stuff, especially together.

Cognitive Surplus fizzes with great insights about how people use networks and interact with each other. For example, Shirky dismisses generational explanations for technology use and misuse. He rejects the idea that kids today value their privacy less than their forebears because they put all their personal info on Facebook, proffering this explanation instead: the older generation kept its info off of Facebook in the 1980s because Facebook didn't exist then, not because they possessed the wisdom to abstain from oversharing. Likewise, there's nothing inherent about being a senior citizen that makes it implausible that you'll use email -- which is why there are so many elderly emailers today.

But the meat of the argument is about how the best explanation for many of the group phenomena we see online, from ICanHazCheezburger to Wikipedia, is that people like sharing with each other and collaborating. Not always, of course. But there are architectures of participation that encourage the kind of sharing and generosity that enriches us all, and by experimenting with them, we can create media and social change that harnesses millions of people to help and amuse each other.

Shirky is very good on the connection between trivial entertainments and serious business, from writing web-servers to changing government. Lolcats aren't particularly virtuous examples of generosity and sharing, but they are a kind of gateway drug between zero participation and some participation. The difference between "zero" and "some" being the greatest one there is, it is possible and even likely that lolcatters will go on, some day, to do something of more note together. These sections are a warm and compelling rebuttal to people who argue that the net is a fad or a toxic waste heap, and his systematic argument is so well-reasoned that it might as well be a road-map for winning frustrating arguments about the net.

The last chapter of the book is a kind of roadmap for building your own structures for enabling participation, drawn from Clay's long history of teaching and consulting, and it's as practical as the rest is theoretical.

Cognitive Surplus continues to prove that Clay Shirky is one of the best thinkers and advocates the net has. It's a delight to read and will change how you think about the future.

The Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Previously:


Psychedelic Soviet/Latvian kids' cartoons

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 03:27 AM PDT

Ham radio and maker culture

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 03:47 AM PDT


In this editorial (PDF), CQ Amateur Radio editor Rich Moseson makes the connection between maker culture and ham radio traditions: "The spirit of figuring out how it works and making it work better (or do something completely different) is so ingrained in our culture that it has even become part of the FCC rules that govern our operation [§97.1(b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.]. Experimentation is not only permitted, it is encouraged. Hams are the only FCC licensees who, as a group, are permitted to build and modify their own gear and who are generally exempted from FCC equipment certification requirements." (Thanks, Chris!)

(Image: Collins 706A-2, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from boboroshi's photostream)

SF in SF reading series, Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuire

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 12:42 AM PDT

San Franciscans, behold: the latest installment in the SF in SF reading series is upon you: Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuire, Saturday June 12th, Variety Preview Room Theatre, the Hobart Bldg, 1st floor (entrance between Quiznos & Citibank), 582 Market St. @ 2nd & Montgomery, San Francisco. Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM. Readings begin at 7:00PM. Readings are followed by Q&A moderated by Terry Bisson.

Science fiction short-film contest

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 01:17 AM PDT

Aspiring sf film makers, take note: "From June 4 through September 15, 2010, the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival will accept short film submissions, up to 15 minutes in length, that have been produced after 2006 for entry into the competition. Multiple submissions will be accepted according to the rules and regulations. Submissions will be judged based on originality, quality, artistic merit, innovation, voice, style and narrative. The festival will accept animated or live-action submissions in science fiction (examples: futuristic stories, space adventure, technological speculation, social experiments, utopia and dystopia) and fantasy (examples: sword and sorcery, folklore, urban fantasy, magic, mythic adventure). The festival welcomes submissions that step outside the boundaries of reality and inspire a sense of wonder. The festival will not accept horror submissions. Submissions are accepted through Withoutabox."

Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival (Thanks, Emily!)

Paper and envelopes that look like icons

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 12:37 AM PDT

Locals and Tourists maps show where visitors and locals take pics in major cities

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 12:34 AM PDT


Eric Fischer's "Locals and Tourists" Flickr set uses geotags to compare photos taken by locals (people whose photos come from the same city, over long terms) and tourists (people whose photos come from a city for less than a month, and who have some other city they usually post from) and produces colored maps showing the difference. Readers use Flickr's annotator to add explanatory notes. Here's London.

Locals and Tourists (via Kottke)



NYC sidewalk with tourist lane: culprits revealed

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 03:57 PM PDT



Several weeks ago, Cory posted about a prankster painting a "tourist lane" on a busy New York City sidewalk. Turns out, the culprits were none other than our friends at Improv Everywhere! Bravo! "The Tourist Lane"

Natural oil seeps: Not proof oil spill worries are overblown

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 03:11 PM PDT

tarball.jpg

Forbes and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour say we shouldn't really worry much about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—after all, natural oil seeps are constantly leaking hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and everything is fine. So, are they right?

As you might guess, there's a bit of distortion going on here.

Natural seeps are real—kind of the underwater oil deposit equivalent of a natural spring of water popping up through the ground on land. They really do release a lot of oil into the world's oceans—as much as 14 million barrels per year. But, as Cutler Cleveland, Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Boston University, wrote on the Oil Drum blog, they do that at a much slower rate than man-made oil spills.

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. By May 30, the Deepwater Horizon site had released between 468,000 and 741,000 barrels of oil, compared to 60,000 to 150,000 barrels from natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico over the same 39 day period.

Natural seeps also don't run constantly or consistently. They stop and start, and put out more or less oil over time. And most of the seeps have been seeping for a very long time.

Why does all this matter? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dose makes the poison.

Smaller amounts of oil, released a slower rate, into a local ecosystem that has evolved in tandem with the ongoing natural seep isn't as big of a deal as a whole metric crap-ton of oil dumped quickly into a larger area of ocean. (Just like smaller amounts of Corexit oil dispersant can be legitimately safe, even though we don't know anything about the toxicity of the product when used in huge quantities.)

The existence of natural oil seeps is not a legitimate argument against the very real need for concern about the effects of a massive oil spill. Tell your friends. And maybe Gov. Barbour, if you get a chance.

Oil Drum blog writers Gail Tverberg and Prof. Dave Summers were instrumental in answering my questions about oil seeps. For more details on the seeps, read Cutler Cleveland's full post, and this follow-up by Summers.

Tar ball on the beach in Alabama. Tar balls can be cause by both natural seeps and spills. It's impossible to know which without testing. Photo by Flickr user EveMBH, via CC

Russia: Stalin-era mass grave discovered

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 01:24 PM PDT

In Russia today, approximately 500 skeletons—nearly all of which show head gunshot wounds—have been discovered in a mass grave believed to date back to Stalin-era purges in the 1930s.
grave.jpg "Practically all of the skulls have bullet wounds," said Yaroslav Livanksy, the head of a group of volunteers who helped to excavate the site. He said money and clothes from the 1930s had been found at the site. A crushed child's skull was discovered close to a bead bracelet and a small slipper.

Irina Fliege, a senior researcher with Russian human rights group Memorial, which collects information about Stalin-era killings, said she had no doubt that the victims were shot by Stalinist forces. She said far more bodies were likely to be found as adjacent sites are studied.

"This happens all over the country, it's impossible to say how often," Felige said. "All we can to is put up monuments to remember the dead."

(thumbnail: Reuters)

Report: AT&T security breach exposed 114k iPad users

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 02:31 PM PDT

If you own a cellular iPad, an AT&T web address has exposed your personal info to anyone wily enough to ping it, reports Ryan Tate at Gawker. Your email address, and a tracking ID unique your SIM card, were open to any who may have discovered the hole before it was closed.
According to the data we were given by the web security group that exploited vulnerabilities on the AT&T network, we believe 114,000 user accounts have been compromised, although it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed. We contacted Apple for comment but have yet to hear back. We also reached out to AT&T for comment.
Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed [Gawker]

Amazing skydiving photography

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 02:06 PM PDT

skydive3MikeBurdon.jpg

Photographer Mike Burdon is also a skydiver. He was chosen for an invite-only 16-person jump at the end of May, and took the opportunity to get some astounding shots of humans in free-fall. I was curious about the coloring in these pictures and asked Burdon about it. He says...

I do not like discussing too much about my techniques but will say that there is no Photoshop involved.

That said, the Behance Gallery of all the shots in this series is tagged with the keyword, "Infrared". Speculate from that as you will.

Saturday in L.A.: comedy show by Second City vets

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 02:01 PM PDT


For years I've been banging around helping the Boingers out with odd jobs - and regardless of how many times someone has said "That's really neat - you should blog it!" I've always run screaming.

This show is more than worth sharing...

If you are in Los Angeles this Saturday, June 12th, you have the opportunity to see two of the damn funniest people ever to take the stage, Jane Morris and Fred Kaz, in their show "All of These Things are True but Some of Them Never Happened." Both are long-time veterans of the Second City, writers, directors, and in Fred's case one of the most amazing jazz musicians you'll ever have the pleasure of hearing.

Jane, a founder of the Second City's E.T.C. a stage, film and TV performer, director, and comedy club owner has six stories to tell. All of them are based on true stories, veer off into the strange. She'll take you on an incredible tour of the bizarre and ironic as she explains such things as why everyone needs a new head or how divorce and theoretical physics are inter-related.

Each piece performed by Jane is then tied together by the music and storytelling of Fred Kaz. Fred is truly a master, if not the master. For thirty years, Fred served as musical director of the Second City Chicago. His music brings the comedy alive. Fred is an incredibly accomplished composer, writer, director and jazz pianist. Above is Fred playing at the Fanatic Salon last year. not the greatest quality but it gives you an idea. You can also find some of his jazz on his site, and his album "Eastern Exposure" can be had on iTunes.

Jane and Fred are planning to take the show to Chicago and New York in the near future and this may be the last time they run it in LA for a while. The theater, the Fanatic Salon, is a small and intimate venue - you couldn't pick a better spot.

"All of These Things are True but Some of Them Never Happened" plays at the Fanatic Salon at 8pm this Saturday, June 12th, 2010. The fanaticSalon is located at 3815 Sawtelle Blvd. in Culver City on the SW corner of Venice and Sawtelle. For more info, call 310.622.2046.

A rare treat.

A pictorial day in the life of a Tijuana millionaire's wife

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 01:35 PM PDT

Venegas_2008_Dr. Campos and Edgar.jpg

Dr. Campos and Edgar, 2008. Digital print, 40" x 50"

Above and after the jump, a gallery of images by Mexico City-based photographer Yvonne Venegas from her series documenting the life of Maria Elvia de Hank, the wife of eccentric millionaire and former Tijuana mayor Jorge Hank Rhon (for background, read this 2006 feature in the LA Weekly which begins: "They call him a criminal, a murderer and the worst mayor in Tijuana history. In search of Genghis Hank.")

"Yvonne Venegas: The Maria Elvia De Hank Series" is on display in large-format prints at Santa Monica's Shoshana Wayne Gallery (inside Bergamot Station Arts Center).

The Tijuana represented by international media—chaotic and dangerous, that despite its socio-economic and cultural emergence of recent years, does not decide to leave the third world and remains in the list of risk and misfortune—is not referenced in this series. Instead Venegas has focused on how power can isolate and reconfigure situations creating environments that when viewed from the outside, can appear to be mere illusion and contradiction.

By negotiating with Mrs. Hank, Venegas obtained access to the range of aspects that construct the family's everyday life on their vast estate: private parties with mainly upper middle class guests, a zoo, a bull ring, horse stables, dog and equestrian races, private school, football stadium, and a casino, among other activities. Both observer and record keeper, Venegas became integrated with the family while maintaining a paradoxical photographic eye.

And incidentally, Venegas happens to be the sister of popular indie chanteuse Julieta Venegas. If you're in the Los Angeles area, this exhibition is really worth seeing in person. It's up through August 28. Please enjoy the wide-format gallery of images that follows in this post (special thanks to Yvonne Venegas, and to Shoshana Wayne Gallery, for permission to present the work here on Boing Boing).

Venegas_2009_Bolsa.jpg


Bolsa, 2009. Digital print, 40" x 50"

Venegas_2006_Nirvana.jpg


Nirvana, 2006. Digital print, 40" x 50"

Venegas_2008_Ana y Amigas.jpg

Ana y Amigas, 2008. Digital print, 40" x 50"



Venegas_2007_Lago.jpg

Lago, 2007. Digital print, 40" x 50"

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Jorgito 2008. Digital print, 30" x 40"

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Muchachos, 2009. Digital print, 30" x 40"


Venegas_2006_Hipodromo 1.jpg

Hipodromo 1 (dyptich), 2006. Digital print, 30" x 40"


Venegas_2006_Reloj.jpg


Reloj, 2006. Digital print, 40" x 50"


Venegas_2008_Velas.jpg


Velas, 2008. Digital print, 40" x 50"

Charles Eames and photos of solar power history

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 12:08 PM PDT

Sunny Eames
This gorgeous photo shows designer Charles Eames demonstrating his Do Nothing Machine, an experimental solar-powered toy he made in 1958. The image comes from a LIFE photo series titled "Solar Power Back In The Day."

BP Disaster: The Gulf is not The Gulf, it is a giant grid carved up by hungry oil companies

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 11:46 AM PDT

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Over at Mother Jones, Mike Mechanic has yet another interesting piece up in their ongoing coverage of the BP blowout that continues to spew oil, kill wildlife, and destroy fragile ecosystems. Today's feature unpacks the data buried in Offshore magazine's 2010 poster of the Gulf (downloadable as a 16.6 MB PDF).

Inset below: Map detail, Mississippi Canyon. The BP spill site is circled. Mike writes,

gulfmapbp.jpgWhat energy executives see is a massive grid, tangled with scores of oil and gas pipelines and rival fields with macho names that sound like heavy metal bands, black-diamond ski runs, and weapons systems. (...) Red lines are gas pipelines and pink are gas fields, green lines are oil pipelines and green blurbs are oil fields.

What these maps really show is the degree to which the Gulf has played host to a feeding frenzy by big energy interests that snap up drilling leases on the cheap. Each of these numbered squares represents a lease site. As you can see from this Offshore magazine chart, the highest bid for a lease this year was about $53 million. Which, when you consider the value of the oil coming out of the Gulf, is chicken feed.

Who Really Owns the Gulf of Mexico? (motherjones.com)



Solving a 5,000-year-old murder

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 11:37 AM PDT

This is perhaps the coldest of cold cases. Seen here is Ötzi, a Neolithic Iceman who was murdered more than 5,000 years ago. Discovered in the Alps almost twenty years ago by two hikers, Ötzi has been subjected to a deep study by archaeologists who used X-rays, CT scans, and a slew of other forensic techniques to piece together the 33 hours before the Iceman faced his killer. From Cosmos:
Coldcaseeeee "The unique thing about this find is that a man has been preserved in full dress with all his equipment," says Angelika Fleckinger, director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where Ötzi resides today. It's not only the Iceman's age, but the 'wet' nature of the mummification process that makes him so scientifically valuable, she adds. "The tissue is therefore elastic; a lucky circumstance, as some scientific examinations would otherwise have been impossible."

"Ötzi is much older than any other glacier mummy and is a very rare case in which mummification took place by dehydration before the body became embedded in glacier ice," say researchers led by Klaus Oeggl of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

"Even the food residue in his digestive tract was very well preserved, and a test sample provided evidence of his diet, environment, and season of death."

Oeggl's team have used the remains of Ötzi's last meals (including ibex, grains and red deer meat) and tiny traces of different pollens, to reveal his whereabouts over his last 33 hours with surprising clarity.

"Ötzi's movements in his last days from sub-alpine regions down to the valley bottoms and then up to alpine regions again, as well as his lethal injury by an arrowhead, confirm that Ötzi's last days were hectic and violent...
"Who killed the iceman?" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

Richard Dunn (of Tim and Eric fame): in Memoriam

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 10:37 AM PDT

A video homage to Richard Dunn, the beloved "Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job" cast member who died last week.

We are deeply saddened to announce that our friend Richard Dunn has passed away. Richard was an irreplaceable member of our family and he will be greatly missed as a brilliant comic actor and a great friend.

-Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

A website been created at weluvricharddunn.com, and collections are being gathered for memorial and funeral services.

Four bright pink Japanese dieting contraptions

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 10:11 AM PDT

jpns dieting gadgets.jpg My mother always sends me this funny quarterly household gadget shopping catalog for a Japanese company called Nissen. The fall 2010 edition has this odd half-page section on low-impact dieting contraptions. I've never tried any of them before, but since they're kind of fun and silly I thought I'd share them with you.

At top right is a brand new thigh-slimmer. It's basically a cushion with strategically positioned contours that keep your thighs from spilling out. It claims to tighten the area around your butt while you're sitting on a stool. It's about $23.

Next to it is the beautiful ass and posture cushion. Similar concept, but designed to instantly force you to sit straighter. Also $23.

The ham-like thing around the woman's legs in the photo on the bottom right is aimed at keeping the pelvis fit. Just insert both calves in the holes and twist the thing side to side while lounging on the floor and watching TV. The woman in the corner is a Canadian-trained yoga instructor who claims to this tool is frequently used in yoga classes in western Japan. $23.

Last but not least, you can work your abs by breathing into this little mouthpiece-slash-whistle 30 times a day. Who knew? This one's only $14.

While the beautiful ass cushion is a tempting alternative to my IKEA desk stool, I'm a firm believer in real exercise. Not even this fun little catalog can convince me that twisting my legs around in a fake piece of ham can substitute for a run or a yoga class. On a side note, I think it's interesting that these dieting toys are all very pink.

Chinese farmer defends his field with DIY cannon

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 09:44 AM PDT

Farmercannnn
Chinese farmer Yang Youde, 56, of Wuhan built this DIY cannon to keep demolition crews off property that he says he has a legal right to use. Apparently, a commercial developer had requisitioned the land and offered him much less than he wanted for use of the property. So Youde took the A-Team route. The cannon uses fireworks as its ammunition. I think Youde should be invited to the next Maker Faire. From China Daily:
Local police had come to persuade him to hand in the rockets, citing laws regulating highly inflammable and explosive materials. But Yang refused and insisted that they are only fireworks.

In early February, some 30 demolition workers tried to evict Yang. They hid behind the excavators when Yang set off fireworks aimed at them.

"When the fireworks ran out, they came over and beat me," said Yang.

The police came to his rescue after nearby residents made calls and the police dispersed the workers, according to Yang.

In late May, Yang withstood the second offensive of the demolition corps on a shoddy watchtower until the police arrived. More than 100 people were deterred after he fired several shots of the rockets.
"Farmer defends his turf"

Inmate's rectum packed with impressive amount of contraband

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 11:04 AM PDT

Gavin Stanger, 24, of East Wenatchee, Washington smuggled the following into jail, in his rectum, all at once: a green cigarette lighter, cigarette rolling papers, a golf-ball size bag of tobacco, a bottle of tattoo ink, eight tattoo needles, a one-inch-long smoking pipe and a small bag of suspected marijuana. From Wenatchee World:
(Jail administrator Phil Stanley) said no contraband was found on a pat-down search or on a later strip search.

About 90 minutes later, with Stanger in a single holding jail, a jailer found a plastic bag and duct tape floating in the cell's toilet. After being questioned by jailers, Stanger surrendered the contraband.
"Gavin Stanger enters jail with large quanity of contraband up bottom"

Mark on the Colbert Report last night!

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 09:09 AM PDT

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Mark Frauenfelder
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox News


For those who missed it, here's Mark doing a terrific job on the Colbert Report last night. Congrats, Mark! We're proud of you!

List of women-friendly mosques in England

Posted: 09 Jun 2010 08:48 AM PDT

An inter-faith organization just released a list of the top 100 women-friendly mosques in England. The criteria included things like separate prayer room, daycare services, women in decision-making positions, and women-specific activities. From Faith Matters' web site:
...this project is about promoting (i) good practice (ii) providing a benchmark for other mosques to work towards (3) highlighting the needs of women within today's world so that religious institutions can meet those needs.

Therefore, inclusion and accessibility to religious institutions not only helps to increase the development of healthy communities but it also sends a powerful message to those who think equality is of secondary concern within some religious places of worship.

'Women-friendly' mosques directory launched [Guardian]
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