The Latest from Boing Boing

---

• Discount menswear ad, 1917
• Pillow Army's "Happy" -- uplifting Seattle pop
• Music industry lobbyist calls for death penalty for piracy
• Warren Ellis tweets the World Cup
• Remember, only your doctor can cure the clap
• Other things JFK's moon-launch speech might have justified
• American Look, 1958: Documentary on the delights of American mid-century design
• What I got wrong about women in science
• HOWTO remove a stripped screw with a rubber band
• HOWTO make a steampunk binary game watch
• Koja's novel THE CIPHER to be a film
• Post-apocalyptic steampunk mask
• Peer review provides £209,976,000 public subsidy to commercial publishers
• New Jersey kills successful oyster-based anti-pollution projects
• Ankh-Morpork subway map
• Detroit police and fire HQ move to old casino
• Tiny cartoon penis disqualifies Ulysses comic from iPad store
• Law.gov: liberating the American legal code
• Video: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg at Personal Democracy Forum

Discount menswear ad, 1917 Posted: 14 Jun 2010 04:21 AM PDT The hyperbole in this Seattle discount menswear store ad from 1917 could be run in a contemporary paper with hardly an edit. I wonder if there are stone tablets waiting to be dug up advertising CRAZY ENKI'S END-TIMES TOGA OUTLET. No Flying Machines Over Seattle

Pillow Army's "Happy" -- uplifting Seattle pop Posted: 14 Jun 2010 04:09 AM PDT The Seattle stop on my book-tour last month included a band, Pillow Army, a five-piece rock act that included a cello, violin, stand-up bass, kick-ass percussion, and some really goddamned great music. The first track off the band's debut EP, To Comfort and Destroy is a jaunty number called "Happy" that does what it says on the tin. I've listened to it about ten times in a row now (I shipped the CD home from my next tour stop, San Francisco, and it's only just arrived) and I'm incredibly happy. Now it's your turn. Buy Pillow Army MP3s on Amazon

Music industry lobbyist calls for death penalty for piracy Posted: 14 Jun 2010 01:56 AM PDT Here's Fran Nevrkla, Chairman and CEO of Phonographic Performance Ltd, a UK music industry association, addressing the group's AGM. Some choice morsels: Thank you, David, and thank you for putting some of those pirates behind bars. I know that regrettably capital punishment was abolished in this country some 50 years ago, sad it is, but a few years in jail is probably pretty OK... To the industry I would say, we would be well advised to delete two or three words from our vocabulary entirely and they are 'promotion' and 'promotional value'. There is no such thing in the 21st Century. There is usage, there are benefits, hopefully often, if not always to both sides but there is no favour in it and no indulgence and no promotion. PPL AGM 2010: Fran Nevrkla's Address Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking ... Home Taping is Killing Music: funny video about UK record ... UK music industry execs can't talk straight about DRM Is the UK record industry arrogant or stupid? Britain's Digital Economy Bill will cost ISPs £500M, knock 40K ... UK music industry blackballs 12-y-o musician for supporting ... British musicians -- Paul McCartney, Elton John et al -- speak out ... How the UK gov't spun 136 survey respondants into 7m infringers ...

Warren Ellis tweets the World Cup Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:41 PM PDT Warren Ellis livetweeted the World Cup US-England game: * Ah. The England team appear to have gotten drunk during half-time. * Rooney confused by round thing flying through air. It am not bird. Maybe still good to eat? Rooney try to kill with head. * I wish to assure our American friends that, for this performance, the England team will in fact be executed. * Jesus. That was like watching two dozen fraggles wrestling in a pit of molasses. England vs USA on Twitter

Remember, only your doctor can cure the clap Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:20 PM PDT No Home Remedy or Quack Doctor Ever Cured Syphilis or Gonorrhea Quack back massager from 1930 Quack 19th cen. vamp-hunting kits for sale Quack breast enlargement ad from 1924 Exhibit of quack imagery

Other things JFK's moon-launch speech might have justified Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:20 PM PDT Today's XKCD has a funny visual component (click through to see it), but even better is Randall's commentary on JFK's moon-speech: "Also, if you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars." Southern Half (Image: Early NASA artist conception of the Apollo command and service modules, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from chrisspurgeon's photostream) XKCD role-players reenact "I Love the World" strip Xkcd fans bring chess-sets on roller-coasters XKCD explains the baseball metaphor for sex - Boing Boing Xkcd webcomic on online sexism - Boing Boing XKCD creator in Wired; reappearance of blog-goggles in today's ... Cape, goggles and XKCD - Boing Boing XKCD comic on Internet arguments - Boing Boing Ninjas attack Richard Stallman, reenacting xkcd comic - Boing Boing

American Look, 1958: Documentary on the delights of American mid-century design Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:10 PM PDT Brad sez, "First it was 'good design.' Then it was 'crap from the 50s.' Then it was 'camp' embraced by smirking hipsters. Now, it's just 'good design' again! The narrator of this 1958 GM buy-design-or-be-a-pinko agitprop conflates patriotism with gnarly tailfins,and the score could scare crows out of a cornfield, but watch it for the flat-out Googie goodness of the rocket car, the see-through boat and the Sandra Dee clone couture. I love this stuff far too much." Presented by Chevrolet. Googie to the limit. The American Look(1958) (Thanks, Brad!) Googie architectural rendering prints Space Age City: Googie architecture, Here's a Googie roadtrip article Googie landmark threatened with demolition Space Age City: Googie architecture,

What I got wrong about women in science Posted: 13 Jun 2010 07:59 PM PDT In the comments section of my post last Friday on women in science, a couple people were confused by the idea that bigotry and discrimination could be something done, for lack of a better word, accidentally ... even subconsciously. I can understand why that's confusing. Most of us were raised understanding that discrimination was a bad thing, done by bad people who thought that they were superior to the people they discriminated against. It's logical to look at the way we learn about discrimination and say, "That doesn't describe me, so I'm OK." The truth, sadly, is a bit more complicated. Good people—people who aren't supremacists of any sort—can and do act in ways that support systemic discrimination. We do this, not because we're full of hate, but because we're full of other lessons we learned as kids ... things like, "Girl stuff isn't as cool" or "people of that race aren't like me, and that's bad." We might not cosign those ideas if they were expressed directly, but they can still quietly influence the way we act. And, if we happen to have been born into a non-minority category, we have the privilege of not even noticing when those old lessons direct us to do things that discriminate—because, from our point of view, the world still looks fair. Case in point: That post on women in science, itself. Several hours after I hit "publish", I realized that I'd managed to put together a panel on diversity made up of nothing but white people. I didn't set out to do that. But it happened, nonetheless. And it still furthered discrimination, by making it appear as if there aren't women of color scientists worth talking to, and by implying that their perspective on the issue wouldn't be any different from a white woman scientist's. Neither of which is true. Without intending to, I left out the people who didn't look like me. And because I have the privilege of seeing myself reflected in the media often enough, I didn't notice the point of view that was missing until after I'd already published the story. I'm writing about this now with the hope that it makes it more clear how discrimination happens, even in situations without big, evil villains. Sometimes, people with the privilege to not think about diversity don't, and they make decisions that leave out people not like them. When that same situation happens over and over and over, the people who don't look like the privileged end upmarginalized. It's simple. And, frankly, it's a lot scarier than big, evil villains, because it's harder to change. In the future, I'm going to try harder to think past my own privilege. And, whether your privilege is based on gender, race, wealth, sexuality, or culture ... I hope this post will remind you to do the same. Image courtesy Flickr user fireflythegreat, via CC

HOWTO remove a stripped screw with a rubber band Posted: 13 Jun 2010 11:10 AM PDT In theory, this looks like a pretty good way to cope with a stripped screw: use a bigger screwdriver and insert a rubber band between the tip of it and the screw-head to give you some traction. Never tried it, but it looks sound. How To Remove a Stripped Screw Without an Extractor (via Making Light)

HOWTO make a steampunk binary game watch Posted: 13 Jun 2010 11:03 AM PDT This Instructable guides you through the process of building a watch that has it all: steampunk case, temperature/range sensing, 16-bit drawing app, breakout, and binary/analog/digital display. Cost of materials runs about $250, and source for the Arduino controller is free. Arduino Watch Build Instructions (via Engadget) Nixie tube wristwatch! Kisai Tenmetsu: TokyoFlash's new skinny OLED watch By all that is holy and miserable, I want this watch and will ... Retrofuturistic Nixie Tube clocks by Peter Jensen ... Brushed metal nixie tube clock Gadgets Expensive watches from Baselworld

Koja's novel THE CIPHER to be a film Posted: 13 Jun 2010 11:03 AM PDT Hooray! Kathe Koja's classic debut novel The Cipher has gone into development as a feature film, entitled "The Muse." No further details yet, but Cipher was one of those lavish, frightening, erotic novels that you never forget. This is stellar news. Kathe Koja's BUDDHA BOY audiobook: bravery, bullying, complicity ... Kathe Koja's KISSING THE BEE audiobook: betrayal and emotional ... Kids' lit renaissance, don't miss Koja! Going Under: moving kids' novel Kathe Koja's KISSING THE BEE audiobook: betrayal and emotional ... Headlong: laser-fine YA novel about kids' friendships and escaping ... Flurb 9: more Rudy Rucker fiction picks

Post-apocalyptic steampunk mask Posted: 14 Jun 2010 02:30 AM PDT Ukrainian steampunk mask-maker Bob Basset brings the post-apocalyptic with the DRTM-6. DRTM 6 Bob Basset's latest steampunk mask Cthulhu mask on eBay Steampunk "Raptor Pilot" mask #4 Lord 3: steampunk mask Alien taxidermy throw-rug Steampunk leather mask with a breathing tube beard Mechanical flapping steampunk leather zeppelin Leather fetish pilot mask

Peer review provides £209,976,000 public subsidy to commercial publishers Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:57 AM PDT The Open University's Martin Weller looks at the Peer Review Survey 2009's numbers on free participation by UK academics in the peer review process for commercial science journals and concludes that 10.4m hours spent on this amounts to a £209,976,000 subsidy from publicly funded universities to private, for-profit journals, who then charge small fortunes to the same institutions for access to the journals. And so: Now that efficiency and return on investment are the new drivers for research, the question should be asked whether this is the best way to 'spend' this money? I'd suggest that if we are continuing with peer review (and its efficacy is a separate argument), then the least we should expect is that the outputs of this tax-payer funded activity should be freely available to all. And so, my small step in this was to reply to the requests for reviews stating that I have a policy of only reviewing for open access journals. I'm sure a lot of people do this as a matter of course, but it's worth logging every blow in the revolution The return on peer review (via Memex 1.1) Association for Computing Machinery tries to undermine open access ... Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results Harvard Law School goes open access! Librarians for Fair Access resists exclusive content contracts ... Royal Society to try open access science publishing Merck and Elsevier publish fake peer-reviewed journal

New Jersey kills successful oyster-based anti-pollution projects Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:55 AM PDT The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has banned research-related oyster cultivation. Oysters are excellent contaminant filters and as such, are a boon to polluted waters, such as those in New Jersey. However, you wouldn't want to eat the oysters that are busily filtering and reclaiming the water in polluted harbors, which is why, apparently, the "New Jersey Department of Completely Bonkers" has banned their cultivation, preferring toxic water and no bivalves to clean water and toxic bivalves: If you apply the same math to the oyster decision, then the decision still doesn't make any sense. Say there's a one-in-1,000 chance of contaminated oysters being found, chosen, removed, entered into the human-consumption supply chain, eaten, and ultimately damaging the New Jersey shellfish industry to the tune of say 25% of sales. Let's put the costs of the decision at $10 million: multiply that by 1,000 and you get $10 billion. 25% of New Jersey shellfish sales is $200 million. So you're essentially spending $50, here, for every dollar you save. It makes no sense. I suspect that what's happening here is a result of lobbying by the New Jersey shellfish industry, which will suffer no harm at all as a result of this decision. They're surely happy about it. But they seem also to have a callous disregard for NY/NJ Baykeepers, for the environmental protection of New Jersey's estuaries, and for New Jersey's taxpayers more generally. If similar reclamation schemes are a big success in the Chesapeake and elsewhere -- which also have commercial shellfish operations nearby -- they should work in New Jersey as well. So I hope there's some small chance that Martin will do the right thing and change his mind. Maybe New Jersey's oyster lovers can explain to him that they're not worried about their food, so he shouldn't be worried about it either. New Jersey's crazy war on oysters (via Making Light) (Image: Bed, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from feetwet's photostream)

Ankh-Morpork subway map Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:53 AM PDT Daniel sez, "I made an Undertaking (subway) map for Ankh-Morpork [ed: Terry Pratchett's imaginary city, from the Discworld books], set about 50 years in the future (from canon 'now'). I took some liberties with names of places, given the time gap. For instance, Dolly Sisters has become Dollisters, the Whore Pits has become Harpits. Locations are based on the canonical Ankh-Morpork map. Note that the logo is actually octarine -- your monitor may not calibrated to display that color properly." The concluding sequence from Making Money implies that the next project for Moist von Lipwig will be this subway -- that's a book I'm anxious to read. Ankh-Morpork's Undertaking (Thanks, Daniel!) Pratchett's "Unseen Academicals" - a gift to Discworld lovers and ... Terry Pratchett fan-afghan -- the Pratchgan Terry Pratchett gets a knighthood

Detroit police and fire HQ move to old casino Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:53 AM PDT The city of Detroit has bought an abandoned MGM Casino (it was supplanted by a bigger, glitzier one) to house the fire department and police HQ; it will also house the long-shuttered police lab, closed in 2008 because of "processing errors." "I am glad to finally be able to move our officers into a safe, sound and functional structure that is also citizen friendly and accessible," Mayor Dave Bing said in a statement today. "This represents an important step in making our city more operationally efficient ... and safe." Detroit to purchase old MGM Grand casino for new police HQ (via Consumerist) Lost Landscapes of Detroit from the Prelinger Archives Pictory's Neighborhood Treasures: Detroit Smile Stop robot poverty: i3 Detroit hackerspace fundraiser Turn a quarter of Detroit into "semi-rural" farms? Artists buying cheap houses in Detroit Buy an inch of land in Detroit Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Detroit now available for download ... Haunting photo-essay on rotting buildings in Detroit

Tiny cartoon penis disqualifies Ulysses comic from iPad store Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:06 PM PDT Apple declined to carry a comic-book adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses for the iPad because one panel showed a man's penis: "While the first chapter of the book, the one now at iTunes, doesn't contain 'offensive language' our comic does have frank nudity. Something we figured we might have to pixelate or cover with 'fig leaves'. But Apple's policy prohibits even that. So we were forced to either scrap the idea of moving to the tablet with Apple or re-design our pages." Joyce's Ulysses Banned Again--by Apple, Not the Government (Thanks, sixfngers!) iBooks naughty word filter doesn't let you say "sperm" Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either) - Boing ... Apple blocks Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist from iStore for ... Philip Pullman on censorship and free speech -- pithy and ...

Law.gov: liberating the American legal code Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:45 AM PDT Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, We're setting off some pretty fireworks next week in Washington, D.C. and I wanted to invite people to come watch. Since January, Public.Resource.Org has been organizing Law.Gov workshops all around the country with the help of a stellar cast of co-convenors. Over 500 people have participated in these workshops. The idea of Law.Gov is that government needs to do a much better job of making primary legal materials available. Code is law, law is code, and we think America's operating system ought to be open source. Next week is the conclusion of the Law.Gov workshops and we're going out with a bang. On Tuesday, John Podesta will be hosting us at the Center for American Progress and the whole thing will be streamed live on the net. There is a really stellar cast of participants including a half-dozen senior administration officials and some well-known net names like Vint Cerf and Tim O'Reilly. Then, on Thursday and Friday, Larry Lessig and John Palfry are hosting us at Harvard for a 2-day wrapup. Access to the Raw Materials of Our Democracy (Thanks, Carl!) NYT on Carl Malamud's International Amateur Scanning League ... Yes We Scan! Carl Malamud for Public Printer of the USA Carl Malamud, rogue archivist, in Wired Watch America's public domain video treasures, rescue the public ... Malamud's "By the People" - stirring history of the Government ... RECAP, a Firefox plugin that frees US caselaw one page at a time ... Public Resource demands the source code to America's operating ... CSPAN embraces freely copyable video

Video: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg at Personal Democracy Forum Posted: 13 Jun 2010 09:15 AM PDT Micah Sifry says, Here's video of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange talking with Daniel Ellsberg (the first time they'd ever talked) at Personal Democracy Forum on June 3rd. Julian was supposed to attend in person, but canceled at the last minute citing warnings he had gotten not to travel to countries "that don't respect the rule of law." Report: Pentagon launches "manhunt" for Wikileaks founder Wired News (and Adrian Lamo) report alleged Wikileaks leaker Iraq: Wikileaks video of US military killing journalists Soldier from "Collateral Murder" company speaks out Julian Assange profiled in New Yorker Wikileaks founder's passport confiscated Wikileaks and the 9/11 intercepts: Julian Assange interviewed by ...

You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610