Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Jon Stewart on Obama's broken civil liberties promises

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 04:24 AM PDT

Here's Jon Stewart doing eight minutes on the promises that Barack Obama has broken on civil liberties since he took office -- from arresting whistleblowers to maintaining the suspense of habeas corpus to continuing warrantless wiretaps to sustaining extraordinary rendition to authorizing the execution of American citizens without trial outside of combat zones.

Like I said before: I didn't expect the guy to walk on water, but I'd love it if he wouldn't wallow in shit.

Jon Stewart on Obama's executive power record



Miniature sitcom sets

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 04:09 AM PDT


Charles Brogdon's "Hand-Made Hollywood" project involves creating incredibly detailed miniature replicas of the sets for vintage sitcoms and soaps (Cheers, Murphy Brown, Family Ties, Seinfeld, The Young and the Restless, etc), including all the set-lights and other pieces, as though standing ready for a claymation meta-TV-show about the shows' production and actors. Shown here: the Brady Bunch kitchen.

Hand-Made Hollywood (Thanks, Charles!)



ORGCon: London, July 24 -- book now!

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 03:07 AM PDT

Michael from the UK Open Rights Group sez,

James Boyle, Cory Doctorow and Tom Watson are heading up the first ever conference dedicated to digital rights in the UK, to be held July 24 in London. Top of the agenda at ORGCon is tackling the Digital Economy Act and the new Government.

Sessions will include:
- James Boyle on the future of copyright, in London especially for this talk
- Cory Doctorow talk and panel on how artists can make copyright work for them
- What MPs are doing about Digital Economy Act (Tom Watson, Eric Joyce, Julian Huppert)
- What does the 'Right to Data' mean? (Heather Brooke, Rufus Pollock)
- Opening up the Data Protection Directive: Can of Worms or Opportunity (Privacy International)
- Dismantling the Database State (No2ID)
- Theft! A History of Music (Jennifer Jenkins)

ORGCon: July 24 (Thanks, Michael!)


Sweet Tooth: gripping, post-apocalyptic graphic novel off to a killer start

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 02:12 AM PDT

Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth Vol. 1: Out of the Woods is a great post-apocalyptic graphic novel in the tradition of The Walking Dead and Y: The Last Man, featuring likable innocents walking a blasted, ruined America, helped and hindered by good people gone bad, and bad people gone worse.

In Sweet Tooth, we meet Gus, a 9-year-old boy living in a shack in the woods with his dying, deeply (and crazily) religious father. Gus isn't like other boys: he lives in the woods and has never seen a living soul apart from his father (and his mother, who died when he was an infant).

Oh, and Gus has antlers.

Some sort of plague has destroyed the world; a plague that made some children born part animal, a plague that is killing Gus's father. All Gus's father wants from his boy is for him to stay hidden once he is alone, to stay in the woods and avoid the fires of hell that burn outside their woods. But when his father finally dies, Gus is hunted by evil men from beyond, and then rescued by a strange, dour fellow who promises to take him to The Reservation, where other children like Gus are kept.

So begins the road trip, spattered with violence and slow revelations about the hell that has been visited on the earth. This first volume only gets the story started, gets us to a place of extreme and intense suspense, and then cuts off. If you can't wait to find out what happened next, you can try your local comic-shop for the singles that follow, but I'm going to wait for next December, and volume 2 of the bound graphic novels.

Sweet Tooth Vol. 1: Out of the Woods



1890 ad for "unrivalled" fairy cakes

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 10:07 PM PDT


You'd think that fairy cakes would be nonrivalrous, as well.

Peek Frean Fairy Cakes - 1890

HOWTO silence vuvuzela drone on your TV

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 10:05 PM PDT

If watching the World Cup has you feeling like you live in a building filled with enraged, sleepless bees, you can try filtering out the vuvuzelas' distinctive dentist-drill whine, using a computer or a TV with a good equalizer:

For the Vuvuzela-killer, we need only a high-slope band stop filter that takes out the corresponding frequencies. For this, in principle, any modern computer that has a sound card with low latency and corresponding software should work. In our case, we used a Mac Mini and Logic Express 8. (Actually, such a complex software such as Logic Express is not necessary. We use it only because it was already on it on the computer and the necessary filters are included.)
How to Silence Vuvuzela Horns in World Cup Broadcasts (via /.)


Shortest-possible Monopoly game

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 10:02 PM PDT

Here's the Scatterplot blog's recipe for playing a complete game of Monopoly in 21 seconds. Which is about as long as anyone should have to endure a game of Monopoly. (What a dumb game: as someone pointed out at The Story event, it takes forever to play, there's virtually no skill involved, and you can tell who's going to win a long, long time before it's finally over).

We went away to a rented country house last weekend for a friend's birthday and there was, of course, a Monopoly set. Which got me thinking: there are Monopoly sets everywhere: someone should figure out a Cheapass Games-style set of alternate rules for a really fun game that treats all that monoponalia as free infrastructure: a given that every household will have a box full of fake money, miniature houses and hotels, and so on.

Player 1, Turn 1:
Roll: 6-6, Lands on: Electric Company
Action: None, Doubles therefore roll again

Roll: 6-6, Lands on: Illinois Avenue
Action: None, Doubles therefore roll again

Roll: 4-5, Lands on: Community Chest "Bank error in your favor, Collect $200″ Action: Collects $200 (now has $1700)

The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly: 21 Seconds (via Kottke)


Yugoslavian illustrated children's encyclopedia, 1960

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 09:56 PM PDT

Book-tours with Android

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 09:52 PM PDT

My latest Guardian column, "The mobile revolution has arrived," describes the way that touring with a rooted NexusOne phone fundamentally changed the experience of being on a book-tour, delivering a touring author's two most precious commodities: better food and more sleep.
Travelling with your own internet source is brilliant. At Atlanta airport, I was stuck for four hours while a monster storm hammered the building with barrages of lightning. Immediately, every one of the expensive Wi-Fi networks in the building went dead as thousands of stranded travellers tried to use them all at once. I found a corner with a mains outlet, plugged in the laptop, tethered my phone, and enjoyed my own private network connection. It wasn't fast, but it was free and it worked.

I still have a US T-Mobile account from when I lived in the US, and I pay for the unlimited data plan there (which, like the Orange UK Sim I use here, has a bizarre and fraudulent definition of "unlimited" that includes a data cap). It's easily worth keeping the account alive for those times that I'm back in the US - one day's 3G savings (not having to pay for expensive hotel and airport broadband) pays for a month's mobile service.

The mobile revolution has arrived


Gregor MacDonald - Energy, transportation, and transitions

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 09:23 PM PDT

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Gregor MacDonald is an independent energy analyst & investment consultant. He publishes public analysis to his website, Gregor.us and hosts the internet investment show, StockTwits.tv, with Howard Lindzon. He offers private consultancy and regular email newsletters on global energy trends & investment guidelines.

I asked him some questions about his background, the state of global energy, the BP disaster, and California's dependency on oil...

How did you end up as an energy investment analyst? Would you describe the work you do now?

In 1995 I moved to London and found that living outside my own country enabled me to see the world with fresh eyes. In university I had studied cultural anthropology with an emphasis on markets and economies, and a number of the insights from those studies began to unfold the more time I spent in the UK, and Europe. I started to become interested in currencies as a cultural phenomenon, for example. I concluded there was very little logic in the purchasing power of the US Dollar, The British Pound, and continental currencies, and I started to form an early idea that perhaps in relation to oil, the US Dollar was overvalued. And that's how my interest in oil began.

For it
was soon thereafter that, in order to pursue my idea of the US
Dollar's overvaluation, I had to learn more about oil--which was this
separate and very large, complex, global system in its own right. Ten
years later, and probably 10,000 hours later (see Gladwell's Outliers
for a discussion on the significance of 10,000 hours), I find myself
doing a host of various research for individuals and a few
institutions--primarily on the broader subject of energy. At
www.gregor.us I share my ideas for free, and also produce a
subscription newsletter. At StockTwits.com, which is a very cool
startup based in the US, I run a model portfolio via
www.gregorweekly.com and host an internet based show each Sunday night
on www.stocktwits.tv. That broadcast has viewership around the world,
from Asia to North America. So, although my days in London are over
and I am living back in the States, I still feel connected to people
in other countries which is very important to me, and my work.


What does the current landscape of energy look like to you?
Do you think renewables will replace fossil fuels any time
soon?


Energy transitions, historically, are a long process which tend to be
measured best in decades. What's very clear now is that global oil
supply, which has been the primary energy source for the world, is no
longer available to fund economic growth. We have enough current oil
supply to maintain economic stasis for a few more years, but neither
in absolute supply volumes nor in terms of affordable supply volumes,
is oil able to increase its availability. To fund economic growth,
therefore, the world will have to turn to an array of other energy
resources. Unfortunately, none of them have the high levels of energy
density as oil. This is not only a problem best described by energy
physics, but its a problem for humanity because we have built the
world over the past 80 years using the most powerful energy source of
all. Transitioning now, away from this source, will be a difficult and
lengthy process.


What's the most important global trend, in your mind, that
people should be considering when thinking about energy?


That the world is increasingly turning to coal as an energy source, as
oil is no longer able to fund economic growth. It's nice that so much
wind and solar power is being constructed around the world. But, these
are technologies to capture diffuse energy. The important trend, and
risk, centers on coal.


How do you think the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will
affect energy policy in America?


Once again, just as in the conditions which led up to the bursting of
the credit bubble, we have completely mis-priced risk. This is a huge
subject but the bottom line is that because the new barrel of oil is
expensive and hard to extract, not only will we have to pay more for
that barrel outright--but we may have to start paying the
environmental-risk costs of that barrel. I anticipate that insurance
rates will blow sky high for offshore operations, thus lifting the
cost structure for new oil even higher. The craziest thing of all?
Vast numbers of well-educated people in the West still don't
understand or accept peak oil. This is peak. You are watching peak in
action, and its coming to us various ways. In the BP Leak, it's coming
to us through price, and a tectonic change in perception of risk. As
for energy policy, sometimes events like this actually serve to
paralyze the policy making process more deeply. For example, there is
a spreading view that this event will finally cause Americans to wake
up. Don't bet on it.


Do you think there are circumstances or trends in America
that could lead to similar energy insurgencies as those in
Nigeria?


What we know from history is that large scale problems are simply too
big to be addressed by a political process, and often what happens is
that crisis--not discretion or choice--is the motivator to change. So,
in this regard, we could see a State's Rights movement unfold that
would derive some of its strength from those who want to assert state
control over resources. I can't see Nigerian level insurgency in the
US on the level of guns and boats and small scale military strikes.
But, I could see Louisiana suing the government to assert control over
oil extraction, or states in the interior attempting to rebuff Federal
control over shale gas extraction. We could indeed very much see the
issue of Federalism come into play over the issue of natural
resources.


What are some of the most important things that California
could do to manage it's energy dependence?


California needs to recognize that the automobile and highway system
is now in a state of diminishing returns. It's an energy and economic
sink, that is a net economic drag on the CA economy. I've done a lot
of work in this area. Look at San Bernardino and Riverside counties,
with their enormous and leveraged sensitivity to automobile and
highway transport. Economically they are hurting very badly. They need
gasoline at a dollar, not three to four dollars. Look at the food
stamp usage and the unemployment in these counties. It's severe. So,
California needs to realize that a dollar invested in maintaining the
road-based transport system is a dollar that's going to money heaven,
and never coming back.


What's the one possible energy outlier on the horizon that
you find most interesting?


If the United States decided to spend a trillion dollars on rail based
transport--light rail, commuter rail, high speed rail, and freight
rail--and used Chinese financing or manufacturing in part to undertake
this project, this could be the trigger for a Sino-American build-out
also of utility grade solar and wind to provide the power to such a
new system. Were that to happen, some economic synergies and economies
of scale might finally come in to play, depressing temporarily the
price of oil, and effecting a psychological shift in perception,
globally. It's important to remember that the construction fuel for
any global build-out of alternative energy is going to be oil. In that
context, oil's high energy density would be used more efficiently. In
other words, this is really the true fate of oil and the best tactical
use for oil: as the construction fuel to fund not further economic
growth but rather the massive 10-20 year global engineering project
required to build out new power grids and new power generation.
Obviously I hope that happens.

Painting: Kim Jong Il Launches Nuclear War

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 09:28 PM PDT

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This appears to be a rendering of Kim Jong Il overseeing a Pikachu ICBM nuclear war. I have no idea who the artist is but I love it!

Supercute! video "Not To Write About Boys"

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 08:10 PM PDT


I have a Facebook account but I hardly ever check it. I just took a peek at the hundreds of messages waiting for me, and saw that one of them was from Spike Priggen of Bedazzled!, who wrote in April,

So you posting that Supercute video got them on a big tour opening for Kate Nash!
Yippee!

Here's a recent video by "New York City's teen-indie-bubblegum-pop sensation."

Charles Schulz' comic strip for churchgoing teens

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 05:35 PM PDT

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This is what good ol' Charlie Brown and the other peanuts will look like when they finally hit puberty. It's freaking me out.

Charles Schulz's Teen Comics

Gorgeous luxury loudspeakers

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 02:50 PM PDT

Speakerrrrr
I have no idea how these speakers sound, but they are quite beautiful. And also quite expensive. They are the Davone Ray loudspeakers, available in a lovely walnut finish. $6000/pair. Davone Ray loudspeakers (Thanks, David "Mog" Hyman!)

BP Gulf Disaster: official leak estimate revised upward to 35,000-60,000 barrels per day

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 02:22 PM PDT

Up to 60,000 barrels per day. That's 60 times the original estimate put forth by BP.

Oil spill: Here's what you can do to help

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 02:17 PM PDT

driveless.jpg

Drive less.

Yeah, OK, that's pretty simplistic. But the point is: You and I are not helpless bystanders in this mess. Offshore drilling—especially deepwater offshore drilling—is not a simple project that BP and other oil companies get involved in for the giggles. They do it because there is a demand for the oil. If we were to completely and permanently halt offshore drilling in this country, it wouldn't fix the problem. In 2009, 1.7 million barrels of oil were produced, every day, from offshore wells in United States. That's a drop in the bucket compared to our 19.5 million barrel a day consumption, or even the almost 9 million barrels of gasoline we burn through every day.

But that doesn't mean offshore oil is inconsequential. If we don't get it here, we'll still get it from somewhere. And that has consequences, both for our pocketbooks and the environment. (Canada is the biggest exporter of oil to the United States. Eliminating offshore wells and increasing our use of tar sands is not exactly a healthy trade off.) Plus, as Jeff Vail of the Oil Drum blog told me, this model—complicated, risky drilling for a relatively small amount of oil—is the future. We simply aren't finding a lot more of those big, easily accessed wells that fueled the past century.

These are the facts. And there's basically two ways of looking at them. One perspective assumes that U.S. oil consumption will only increase, that we must have this resource. Thus, we must have offshore wells. And lots of them.

The other perspective: It's time to actually get serious about reducing our oil demand. With a 9% reduction in national daily gasoline consumption, we could eliminate our need for offshore oil. At 22.4 miles per gallon, that's just 4.2 fewer miles of driving, per person, per day.

Bill Finch at The Nature Conservancy did this calculation back in May, but his numbers are a bit off from what I'm seeing on the Energy Information Administration site, so I'm going to do this again, real quick. I've made it easy to skip if your eyes glaze over.

Here is where we start talking about statistics and numbers

1.7 million barrels: Amount of oil produced by all offshore drilling in U.S. waters, per day.

About 20 gallons of motor gasoline can be made from each 42-gallon barrel of oil

So offshore drilling represents about 34 million gallons of gasoline per day.

Total U.S. daily consumption of gasoline: 378 million gallons per day. This number only includes the kind of gasoline that runs the average car. Aviation and jet fuel, diesel fuel for commercial trucking, that's all extra. We aren't dealing with that here.

To eliminate the need for the amount of gasoline represented by offshore oil, we have to reduce daily gasoline consumption by about 9%.

US daily vehicle travel averages out to about 40 miles per person, per day. The average driver actually does a bit better than that: 29 miles per day. But, because we're talking about national rates of consumption, we're going to stick to that scale and talk about national mileage.

22.4: Miles per gallon the average car gets in the United States.

At 40 miles of travel, an American with an average car would use about 1.8 gallons of gasoline per day. A 9% reduction means taking that down to about 1.6 gallons, or 35.8 miles of travel. 4.2 miles per day less.

There's a possibility that I'm missing something here, either in the logic or the math, that one of you will point out to me. But as I figure it, them's the facts.

Here is where we stop talking about statistics and numbers

Obviously, this is a little difficult to apply on an individual level, as we all drive different amounts and have vehicles with a wide variety of gas mileages. But we can all reduce the amount of gasoline we consume by 9%. And there's a wide variety of ways to can get there: Combine trips, drive a vehicle with better gas mileage, take public transportation, carpool with friends and neighbors, walk or bike instead, find shorter routes, or even just skip a trip. You just use your odometer to figure out your average daily mileage each week, and to figure how many miles per gallon your car is really getting. Then mix and match the solutions to reduce your daily gasoline consumption by 9%.

I'm not going to pretend that this is simple. It takes some restructuring of the way we live, and it takes planning where you didn't have to plan before.

But, if we really don't want another Deepwater Horizon spill, this is part of the solution. We can't complain about BP's greed, the government's lack of oversight and everybody's post-spill floundering and not acknowledge the part of the blame that lies on our shoulders. We wanted that oil. We wanted that oil cheap. In giving us what we wanted, BP and the government made some horrible decisions that we wish they wouldn't have made.

They picked up a gun, loaded it and shot into the dark. But we're the ones who told them that the night was full of zombies. Can we really say we're not responsible when they accidentally kill a healthy toddler?

So, cutting our daily gasoline consumption by 9%. Some of it will be fun—biking, chatting with friends in a carpool, coming up with new activities to do within walking distance, instead of driving for our entertainment. Other times, it will be a pain in the ass. But, that's our responsibility. That's what we owe for our role in this mess.

Image courtesy Flickr user midorisyu, via cc

Lightning strikes massive Jesus statue

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 02:15 PM PDT

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Last night, lightning struck a six-story tall Jesus Christ statue north of my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, sparking a fire that burned the figure down to its steel frame. The end is nigh. From the Associated Press:
The sculpture, 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way his arms were raised, as though reaching out to catch a football. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.

The fire spread from the statue to an adjacent amphitheater but was confined to the attic area, and no one was injured, police Chief Mark Neu said. The fire department would release a monetary damage estimate Tuesday, he said.
"Gigantic 62-foot Jesus statue struck by lightning, destroyed" (Thanks, everyone!)

BP vs. Aquaman

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 01:53 PM PDT

AQUAMAN.jpg

Image from Rob, at the Aquaman Shrine

(thank you, Jason Wishnow).

Chris Reccardi's space colony print

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 01:45 PM PDT

System Product Images 7347 Original 2464Dream
Los Angeles illustrator/animator Chris Reccardi, who worked on classics like The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack, was one of the first artists to set up shop in the Boing Boing Bazaar. I was delighted that his limited-edition psi-fi prints sold like gangbusters! Now, Chris has issued a mindbendingly cool new print at a very low price compared to many of his other more-limited fine art editions. "2464 Dream" is a signed and numbered 13" x 19" print, limited to 250, and sells for $65! "2464 Dream"

John Robb interview: Open Source Warfare & Resilience

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 02:20 PM PDT

Tdaxp Upload Brave New War Md John Robb is a globally-recognized author, technologist, and entrepreneur specializing in the complex systems of insurgency and asymmetrical warfare. His book, Brave New War, is an Amazon best-seller and established his expertise as a researcher & military consultant. He has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, and the Wall Street Journal. His daily thoughts are collected on his blog, Global Guerrillas.

I asked him some questions about his work, our times, and the shifting landscape of governance & power...

In your book Brave New War you explore the changing nature of warfare. What are some recent examples of insurgency, resource conflicts, or terrorism that you feel best illustrate this new landscape?

Here's an interesting story that may do the trick. Back in 2004, the US military was getting trounced in guerrillas in Iraq. Worse, the US military establishment didn't know why. Didn't have a clue. To correct this, I began to write about how 21st Century warfare actually worked on my blog, Global Guerrillas. Essentially, I concluded that guerrilla groups could use open source organizational models (drawn from the software industry), networked super-empowerment (freely available high tech tools, network information access, connections to a globalized economy), and systems disruption (the targeting of critical points on infrastructure networks that cause cascading failures) to defeat even the most powerful of opponents, even a global superpower.

The new theories of warfare I developed on the blog proved both predictive and very popular. As a result, I spent a lot of time on the speaking circuit in Washington DC (DoD, CIA, NSA, etc.). Of course, since my work was on a blog everyone could read it, even the guerrillas themselves.

So, it was a little surprising although not
unexpected when I got an e-mail in 2009 from Henry Okah, a leader of MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). He invited me to Nigeria and stated that he was an avid reader of my
blog.


It was a moment out of history, as if the UK's General Liddell Hart
(the originator of blitzkrieg armored warfare) got a note from
Germany's tank General Heinz Guderian in 1939, thanking him for his
work. Here's why: MEND's campaign against Shell (the oil company) and
the Nigerian government between 2006 and 2008 was a great example of
how I thought 21st Century warfare would be fought. The organization
structure was loose and organized along the lines of an open source
movement. Lots of small autonomous groups joined together to take down
the country's oil infrastructure by targeting vulnerable points in the
network (Nigeria is a major global oil exporter). During 2007, they
were able to take out one million barrels a day of oil production.
This shortfall was the reason oil prices rose to $147 a barrel. Those
high prices had a negative global economic impact: the start of a
global recession and a spike in default rates in US sub-prime
mortgages (due to higher driving and food costs). That spike in
sub-prime mortgage default rates radically accelerated the demise of
our grossly over leveraged global financial sector, which in turn led
to the financial panic of 2008.


In short, MEND's disruption campaign, yielded tens of trillions of
dollars in global economic damage for tens of thousands of dollars
spent on making the attacks. That's a return on investment (ROI) of
1,000,000,000%. How do nation-states survive when an unknown guerrilla
group in a remote corner of the world can generate returns on that
magnitude? They don't.

The United States is suffering both the economic decline of
its industry and the ongoing dismantling of the social welfare
apparatus supporting the citizenry. In your opinion, will this
inevitably lead to some form of armed insurgency in America?


Yes. The establishment of a predatory and deeply unstable global
economic system - beyond the control of any group of nations - is in
the process of gutting developed democracies. Think in terms of the
2008 crisis, over and over again. Most of what we consider normal in
the developed world, from the middle class lifestyle to government
social safety nets, will be nearly gone in less than a decade. Most
developed governments will be in and out of financial insolvency.
Democracy, as we knew it, will wither and the nation-state bureaucracy
will increasingly become an enforcer for the global bond market and
kleptocratic transnational corporations. Think Argentina, Greece,
Spain, Iceland, etc. As a result, the legitimacy of the developed
democracies will fade and the sense of betrayal will be pervasive
(think in terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union). People will
begin to shift their loyalties to any local group that can provide for
their daily needs. Many of these groups will be crime fueled local
insurgencies and militias. In short, the developed democracies will
hollow out.


How big of a domestic threat is there from the
narco-insurgency in Mexico and the growing power of Latin American
gangs in America?


Very big. A threat that dwarfs anything we face in Afghanistan (a
useless money pit of a war). It's not a threat that can be solved by
conventional military means, since the problem is that Mexico is a
hollow state. Unlike a failed state like Somalia (utter chaos), a
hollow state still retains the facade of a nation (borders,
bureaucracy, etc.). However, a hollow state doesn't exert any
meaningful control over the countryside. It's not only that the state
can't do it militarily, they don't have anything they can offer
people. So, instead, control is ceded to local groups that can provide
basic levels of opt-in security, minimal services, and jobs via new
connections to the global economy - think in terms of La Familia in
Michoacana.


The real danger to the US is that not only will these groups expand
into the US (they already have), it is that these groups will
accelerate the development of similar homegrown groups in the US as
our middle class evaporates.


Do you see a diminishing role for the state in large-scale
governance? Does this compel communities to do it for
themselves?


Yes, large scale governance is on the way out. Not only are nearly all
governments financially insolvent, they can't protect citizens from a
global system that is running amok. As services and security begin to
fade, local sources of order will emerge to fill the void. Hopefully,
most people will opt to take control of this process by joining
together with others to build resilient communities that can offer the
independence, security, and prosperity that isn't offered by the
nation-state anymore. However, this is something you will have to
build for yourself. Nobody is going to help you build it.


In what ways are the new methods of insurgency & terror
instructive towards building strategies for resiliency?


Here are a few of the parallels:


* Powerful technologies. Inexpensive tools that make it possible
to produce locally what it used to take a global economy to produce.


* Networks. The ability to draw on the ideas of hundreds of
thousands of people working on the same problems through open source
tinkering networks. The ability to create new economic networks that
accelerate prosperity.


You're currently writing a book about local resiliency.
What are the primary global drivers behind your interest in
resiliency?


Yes, I am. It's about building resilient communities. Communities that
offer energy independence, food security, economic prosperity, and
protection. What are the global drivers that make resiliency
important? Simply: stability, prosperity, and security is going away.
You will soon find you are on your own, if you haven't already. If you
do nothing, you will suffer the predations of gangs, militias, and
corrupt bureaucracies that will fill the void left by retreating
nation-states. If you want to avoid this fate, you can build resilient
communities that not only allow you and your family to survive intact,
but to thrive. My goal with my new book, is to provide people with a
road map on how to build resilient communities from scratch.


What is the core messages you have to communities about
preparing for the coming age?


Produce everything you can locally. Virtualize everything else. The
value of your home will be based on the ability of your community to
offer energy independence, food security, economic vitality, and
protection. Survivalist stockpiles and zero footprint frugality are
pathways to failure. Think in terms of vibrant local economic
ecosystems that are exceedingly efficient, productive, and bountiful.

The Mexican Narco-Insurgency

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 01:50 PM PDT

6A011279457F1228A40134841858Fb970C-800Wi Benefiting from the inflated margins of the illegal drug trade, Mexican cartels move billions of dollars worth of cocaine, methamphetamine, & marijuana to the high-demand markets of the United States, using sophisticated weaponry and horrific violence to defend their markets against competitors and directly challenge attempts by state militia to control their activities. In return, they purchase guns from border states like Texas, Arizona, and California to arm their narco-insurgency. The Mexican state apparatus has become a hollow shell, heavily militarized but incapable of managing its territories.

PEMEX, the major oil developer along the Mexican Gulf, has reported that cartels siphon about $1B in oil annually, reselling it on the open market to fund their insurgency.

This tactic has escalated to include the
kidnapping of PEMEX workers, possibly to further infiltrate the
company. It was recently reported that href="http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2010/04/20/mexican-drug-cartels-reported-to-be-using-ieds/">cartels
may be using IED's to attack the Mexican military, suggesting that
the techniques of full-scale insurgency developed in Iraq are now
finding their way to Mexico.


Of particular interest are cartel incursions into the United States.
The DEA is tracking href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/18/mexico.us.cartels/index.html
">cartel networks across the major cities of the southern United
States. Americans have been indicted href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6770748.html">smuggling
weapons south across the border. Arrests of href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/us/18corrupt.html
">compromised Customs and Border agents has increased 40% in the
past year. Agents say that substantial cartel violence in the US is
only a matter of time. The href="http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/01/10/homeland-security-has-plan-if-mexico-drug-violence-spreads-to-us/
">US DHS has submitted plans to deal with cartel incursions into the
United States.


Recently, Pinal county sheriff, Paul Babeu, states that Mexican drug
cartels
control parts of Arizona. "We are outgunned, we are out manned and
we don't have the resources here locally to fight this," said Babeu,
referring to heavily-armed cartel movements three counties deep in
Arizona. Even href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drug-kidnappings12-2009feb12,0,1264800.story">Phoenix
has seen ongoing cartel violence.


It's important to understand that the Mexican narco-insurgency is
possibly the most direct threat to the stability of American
communities, far more so than any of our foreign wars. Immigration
laws will not work, just as drug laws have failed to stem the flow of
drugs across US borders. Legalization of drugs is perhaps the most
obvious solution, though it's not without its own costs. In all
likelihood, near-term management will take the form of increased troop
deployment to southern states, coupled to advanced enforcement
technologies. For example, Wired recently reported that href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/faa-uav-civil-airspace/">the
FAA is considering how to integrate drones into US airspace.
Certainly the landscape of the America's southern states is shifting
to include a more violent and militarized gang presence.

Remember the sinkhole? Guatemala still reeling from Agatha, here's how to help

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 01:34 PM PDT

undimiento.jpg

The photograph above went viral a few weeks ago, when massive storms and volcanic eruptions caused displacement, injury, and death throughout Guatemala. The sinkhole snapshot is long gone from the top of trending Google link lists, but people are still suffering throughout the country—the worst off, as usual, are marginalized indigenous communities who make up the poorest sector of the population.

As dramatic as this photo was, the sinkhole is the least of Guatemala's worries. How you can help...

201005_gua_searching4bodies-1.jpg

(PHOTO: Mercado Global, via AIDG - Searching for survivors in a mudslide)

Renata Avila (disclaimer: a colleague of mine in a not-for-profit org that serves this region) writes,

The Rigoberta Menchu Foundation has a digital center based on one of the most affected areas, San Lucas Toliman, so it is a good channel to help people. General Info in English here. Also, I've created this repository of aid links and disaster info, mostly in Spanish, and I will try to keep it updated.

Catherine Lainé of AIDG points us to this emergency appeal update from AIDG, who do good work in the area:


AIDG sent a team down last week to work with the Lake Atitlan based organization Mercado Global to assess damage and coordinate repairs on water systems for communities. Water is a critical need as pipes have been washed away and local water systems have been damaged.

Read more here. Link includes a donation button.

David Byrne: The Venue Makes the Music / Creation in Reverse (TED video)

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 12:56 PM PDT

TED has published video of a presentation by David Byrne at this year's edition of the event. Byrne explains,
cjcbyrne.jpgMy talk (it wasn't a musical performance) was based on the idea that the acoustic properties of the clubs, theaters and concert halls where our music might get performed determines to a large extent the kind of music we write. We semi unconsciously create music that will be appropriate to the places in which it will most likely be heard. Put that way it sounds obvious...but most people are surprised that creativity might be steered and molded by such mundane forces. I go further -- it seems humans aren't the only ones who do this, who adapt our music to sonic circumstances -- birds do it too. I play lots of sound snippets as examples, with images of the venues accompanying them...enjoy.
Watch the video on the TED website, or you can download it as a video podcast from iTunes.

(photo: Clayton James Cubitt)

Al Gore: Stop the censorship in the Gulf

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 12:41 PM PDT

Al Gore on reports that journalists and news photographers have been banned and bullied away from the scenes of devastation in the gulf, and from interviewing sources who might provide information unflattering to BP:
This behavior is completely unacceptable. Access by reporters should be as unfettered as possible. This de facto form of censorship needs to stop
(via Instapundit)

Jesus in a tortilla, meet Satan in an oil spill

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 12:39 PM PDT

Oil-Demon_photo_medium.jpg

Douglas Hand asking the questions others are afraid to ask, on the website for the stupendously fantastic radio program Coast to Coast AM.

Watching a live video of the leak I see streams of faces blowing upwards—screaming souls escaping from hell (...) this image is undeniable. Note the teeth, horns and claw hand, and could that spot on the coast be the 'splash' from a tossed object?
Undeniable.


Devo exploits cats to promote new record

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 12:46 PM PDT

kiteh.jpg This CAT LISTENING PARTY on Ustream.tv for Devo's new release Something for Everybody is the best thing ever. Ongoing through 8pm PT today. The cats seem happy with the record, but there's an awful lot of toy mousie carnage. (Ustream, via Marc Brown)

Dangerous Minds interview with Mark

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 11:15 AM PDT



My old friend Richard Metzger interviewed me about Made By Hand for his Dangerous Minds program.

Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World is Mark Frauenfelder, editor of Make and co-founder of Boing Boing's ode to the DIY lifestyle and slowing life down enough to allow for purposeful—and life enhancing—activities. Mark discusses bee keeping, raising chickens and the four and a half months he and his family spent living on a tiny island in the South Pacific. He also talks about his recent appearance on The Colbert Report and about the burgeoning DIY Maker scene across America.
If you haven't seen any of Richard's other interviews, I highly recommend them. In particular, check out the interviews with Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle, Kim Fowley of The Runaways, and Paul Krassner of The Realist.

Rent-a-white-guy for your Chinese business meeting

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 10:43 AM PDT

Chinese entrepreneurs are renting random white guys to pretend to be visiting businessmen, and to lend an aura of general Being Connected to the West to business meetings, conferences and receptions:
And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image--particularly, the image of connection--that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: "Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face..."

For the next few days, we sat in the office swatting flies and reading magazines, purportedly high-level employees of a U.S. company that, I later discovered, didn't really exist. We were so important, in fact, that two of the guys were hired to stay for eight months (to be fair, they actually then received quality-control training).

"Lots happening," Ken told me. "We need people for a week every month. It'll be better next time, too. We'll have new offices." He paused before adding: "Bring a computer. You can watch movies all day."

Rent a White Guy (via Kottke)

Tweet your favorite item in Makers Market / Boing Boing Bazaar to win it

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 10:30 AM PDT

201006151022

Make and Boing Boing are holding a contest to win your favorite item in the Makers Market / Boing Boing Bazaar.

Here's how to enter:

1. Look around Makers Market / Boing Boing Bazaar and pick out your favorite product of value $500 US or less. You can pick a more expensive product, in which case, if you win, the first $500 is on us.

2. If you're not already following the Makers Market Twitter feed, do so by visiting this link or by tweeting "follow @themakersmarket". Contest winners will be notified using Twitter's "direct message" feature, and if you're not following us, we can't message you, and you can't win.

3. Tweet the URL of your favorite product, and the URL of the contest landing page (http://bit.ly/9p97ad), and make sure you include "@themakersmarket" so we receive your tweet. We recommend cutting and pasting the following text into your twitter window...

Tweet your favorite item @themakersmarket to win it! http://bit.ly/9p97ad Mine is:
...followed by the URL of your favorite product. You will probably need to use a URL shortener to make it all fit into a tweet's 140 characters. We find bit.ly works well.

Eleven winners will be selected randomly from among tweets received before 11:59 p.m. PDT on July 15, 2010. One first-place winner will receive their tweeted choice of products from among those for sale on Makers Market having value of $500 US or less. If your favorite product costs more than $500, the first $500 is on us. Ten runners-up will receive $25 toward their choice of products from among those for sale on Makers Market.

Good luck and happy tweeting! Please see the contest landing page for more details, and official rules.

Afghanistan: Is miraculous $1T mineral discovery just war PR ops?

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 07:46 PM PDT

afghmap.jpg

American news media was all aflutter yesterday over a story by James Risen in the New York Times about an Immaculate Detection of massive mineral wealth in US-occupied Afghanistan. Finally, some positive news from America's longest-running war in history! Afghanistan is suddenly poised to become "the Saudi Arabia of lithium." Let's occupy the place forever, and say farewell to our dependence on foreign lithium for iPhones and Blackberrys!

A handful of essential follow-up reads: Armbinder in The Atlantic, a Christian Science Monitor post by Ben Arnoldy, Blake Hounshell in Foreign Policy, and this Wired Danger Room item by Katie Drummond, all of which point to documents on the "Afghan motherlode" dating back to 2007 and earlier.

[T]he military (and observers of the military) have known about Afghanistan’s mineral riches for years. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Navy concluded in a 2007 report that "Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered nonfuel mineral resources," including "large quantities of accessible iron and copper [and] abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, ruby [and] sapphire."

Not to mention that the $1 trillion figure is — at best — a guesstimate. None of the earlier U.S military reports on Afghan’s mineral riches cite that amount. And it might be prudent to be wary of any data coming out of Afghanistan’s own Mines Ministry, which “has long been considered one of the country’s most corrupt government departments,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

And the timing of the “discovery” seems just a little too convenient. As Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy notes, the Obama administration is struggling to combat the perception that the Afghan campaign has “made little discernible progress,” despite thousands of additional troops and billions of extra dollars.

No, the U.S. Didn't Just 'Discover' a $1T Afghan Motherlode (Wired News)

Oh, and the graphic above this piece is a US Geological Survey Geologic and Mineral Resource Map of Afghanistan from... 2006. Here's a PDF.

Update: James Risen was upset by critical reaction to the New York Times piece. In an interview with a Yahoo News blogger (heh), he said he thinks bloggers sit around "jerking off into their pajamas." The quote was edited to be more family-friendly. Risen later apologized for the outburst, saying he was taken aback by all the internet criticism. The Yahoo item is a good read, Risen is no slouch, and sometimes nuance is lost online. But as a blogger, I choose to remain personally and irreparably offended by the remark 'til the end of all time (or 'til we get out of Afghanistan, whatever comes first).
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