The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- New media give way to newer media and get even better
- ORGCon: Your crash-course in digital rights, London, July 24
- MC Frontalot's First World Problem: "deep nerdcore and a wee bit political"
- Android App Inventor: giving everyone the ability to hack their own tools
- Terry Bisson/Rudy Rucker illustrated picture book
- Arrested for blowing bubbles at the G20 in Toronto?
- Liveblogging from Launch Pad, NASA's science fiction writer camp
- FedEx driver chokes on pork rinds, ends up in ditch
- Bankrupt site for gay teens may hand over personal data to new owner
- Bug and Bean Photography: shots from the BB picnic
- Tuli Kupferberg, RIP
- Gulf spill nearly capped?
- What Women Want
- British Empire presents new kite to Darth Vader
- p0nd
- Holocaust survivor dances to I Will Survive at Auschwitz
- Boing Boing Picnic: fire-eaters, dirigibles, magic, and mutants
- Analog Twitter at the Boing Boing picnic
- Evil Pikachu, dragons, and UFOs: from the BB picnic drawing board
- Boing Boing picnic exquisite corpse story
- Super cute Black Diamond headlamps
- Candwich = sandwich in a can
- DNA or RNA friendship necklaces
- Jung's The Red Book
- San Francisco may ban bottled water
- How to talk online smack in Chinese
- Jousting in the NYT Magazine
- Collecting beggars' handmade signs
- Mental health: the game
- Consumer Reports "can't recommend iPhone 4" after antenna tests
| New media give way to newer media and get even better Posted: 13 Jul 2010 03:34 AM PDT My latest Guardian column, "Reports of blogging's death have been greatly exaggerated," discusses the way that new media give way to newer media, and, in so doing, become truer to themselves: Do a search-and-replace on "blog" and you could rewrite the coverage as evidence of the death of television, novels, short stories, poetry, live theatre, musicals, or any of the hundreds of the other media that went from breathless ascendancy to merely another tile in the mosaic.Reports of blogging's death have been greatly exaggerated |
| ORGCon: Your crash-course in digital rights, London, July 24 Posted: 13 Jul 2010 02:26 AM PDT The first-ever ORGCon, a one-day conference on digital rights in the UK, is coming up on July 24 in London. Over 300 people have signed up to attend, and there are only a few spaces left. If you're planning on going, you'd best book now!
ORGCon is your crash course in digital rights. This one-day conference will deliver everything you need to get campaigning on issues like the Digital Economy Act and the Database State. As well as stellar speakers James Boyle, Cory Doctorow and Tom Watson, there'll be contributions from Liberty, NO2ID and Big Brother Watch.ORGCon tickets running out fast - get yours now |
| MC Frontalot's First World Problem: "deep nerdcore and a wee bit political" Posted: 13 Jul 2010 12:50 AM PDT Here's nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot's single "First World Problem" from his latest album Zero Day, animated by Shawna Mills of Brooklyn. Frontalot sez, "The song is deep nerdcore and a wee bit political. The video tells a secondary story which interweaves thematically. Enjoy!" MC Frontalot - First World Problem [OFFICIAL VIDEO] (Thanks, MC Frontalot)
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| Android App Inventor: giving everyone the ability to hack their own tools Posted: 13 Jul 2010 12:45 AM PDT  Google's new App Inventor for Android is a free graphic environment for creating software for Android devices. It's a scriptable, drag-and-drop tool in the tradition of HyperCard and other great simple tools for software creation. I love these tools -- my first programming job was using HyperCard to make CD ROMs for Voyager Books -- especially for the way they democratize access to technology. It's one thing to go and ask a bunch of teachers what software they want and then try to interpret their desires with code; another altogether to empower teachers (or secretaries, doctors, nurses, librarians, hot dog vendors, etc) to make their own tools using simple environments. Sure, these graphic kits tend to be constrained and less speedy than writing to the metal using more programmerly languages, but this is a fair trade-off for giving the ability to hack to anyone who wants it. |
| Terry Bisson/Rudy Rucker illustrated picture book Posted: 13 Jul 2010 12:38 AM PDT How cool is this: Rudy Rucker painted a series of illustrations for Terry "Bears Discover Fire" Bisson's series of "Billy" short stories, and they've released the resulting ebook as a free download: Bisson & Rucker: "Billy's Picture Book" NOW
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| Arrested for blowing bubbles at the G20 in Toronto? Posted: 13 Jul 2010 12:37 AM PDT This video shows a police officer at the G20 protests in Toronto threatening to arrest a protestor for blowing soap bubbles ("If one of those bubbles touches me, it's assault") and then leading the protestor away, presumably for the aforementioned "offense." If the goal of the police at the G20 was to act pissy and escalate minor incidents into major ones in order to assert their authority, mission accomplished. If, on the other hand, their mission was to de-escalate, keep the peace, find rapport, and celebrate the democratic right to protest, this officer is an abject, total failure. G20 Policing: From Bubbles to Bookings? (Thanks, Collin!)
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| Liveblogging from Launch Pad, NASA's science fiction writer camp Posted: 13 Jul 2010 12:26 AM PDT Jeff VanderMeer sez, "Awesome writer Rachel Swirsky is at Launch Pad, the NASA-sponsored workshop for SF writers, and she's liveblogging the heck out of her experience all week. giving others an invaluable look at what goes on there." Launch Pad, Day One: Kevin R. Grazier on Solar System/Cassini |
| FedEx driver chokes on pork rinds, ends up in ditch Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:21 PM PDT A 42-year old FedEx driver ended up in a ditch in Washington State because he choked on spicy pork rinds. |
| Bankrupt site for gay teens may hand over personal data to new owner Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:32 PM PDT Oh, this'll end well: Bankruptcy courts may force gay teen magazine and website XY.com to sell off its user list, and all personal data associated with its (mostly gay teen) users. Founder Peter Ian Cummings filed for bankruptcy this year, and the data is said to be one of the only remaining assets he could offer the court. (via danah boyd) |
| Bug and Bean Photography: shots from the BB picnic Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:08 PM PDT   I was thrilled when talented San Francisco family and lifestyle photographer Nancy Nguyen-Wong of Bug And Bean Photography asked if she could set up a photo station at the Boing Boing picnic! She's posted some selects from the picnic on her blog, including a sample of the portraits and also candid shots. If you're in the Bay Area and want a pro photo of your family or child, I couldn't recommend Nancy enough. She's really fun to be around and somehow manages to get the perfect shot while you're busy chatting or, depending on your age, babbling away. Bug and Bean Photography: BB Picnic |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 08:16 PM PDT Tuli Kupferberg, iconic bohemian and co-founder of 1960s proto-punk counterculture band The Fugs has died. New York Times obituary |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 07:33 PM PDT If the live view from robot submarines is to be believed, the gulf spill is almost beat. [PBS] CNN reports that tests are underway to determine the newly-installed cap's effectiveness. |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 07:05 PM PDT |
| British Empire presents new kite to Darth Vader Posted: 12 Jul 2010 08:59 PM PDT  Britain's Ministry of Defense announced this unmanned fighter jet today, the Tiranus. Named for the Celtic god of bad-assery, it looks markedly more sinister than America's one, itself revealed in May. There's something about that blue-gray hangar ... it reminds me of something. Photo: Sienar Fleet Systems. MoD lifts lid on unmanned combat plane prototype [BBC] |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 04:31 PM PDT p0nd, a flash game, offers a wonderful and haunting experience, especially the ending. Now this is art. Eat it, Ebert! [Peanut Gallery Games via IndieGames] |
| Holocaust survivor dances to I Will Survive at Auschwitz Posted: 12 Jul 2010 02:54 PM PDT Our friend Joe Sabia found this video of a Holocaust survivor, his daughter, and his grandchildren dancing to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive at various concentration camp sites throughout Europe. The YouTube comments seem to be split between those who are offended by it and those who are on board with this celebration of survival. |
| Boing Boing Picnic: fire-eaters, dirigibles, magic, and mutants Posted: 12 Jul 2010 07:16 PM PDT  (photos: Daisy with fire by Alexia Tsotsis/Andy Wright of SF Weekly. At left, BB banner and Boinged-out Doughboy by bgreensf) We had so much fun at the first-ever Boing Boing Picnic (actually, the first meatspace BB event of any kind!) in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park this weekend. Good heavens, where to begin. Several hundred Boing Boing readers gathered at Doughboy Meadow for fun, food, and what truly felt like an offline manifestation of the eclectic, random, shamelessly dorky stuff you find here on the blog. Here's the SF Weekly photo gallery and report! Some highlights: • A young woman named Daisy did a fire-eating performance inside a little redwood grove off to the side of the meadow.
I'm sure I forgot something or someone. If you were there, please remind me in the comments. And if you took photos or video, or have other reflections to share, please do so.
 Stacey Reineccius and the Airship Victoria team. photo: Xeni Jardin
photo: Dean Putney
A sign: "Dear gopher you would make People :) [smile] if you came out." photo: BgreenSF
 photo: Peter Conrad
 The Analog Twitter feed. photo: rragan
 photo: Xeni Jardin
Lisa Katayama. photo: Dean Putney
photo: Xeni Jardin
photo: Xeni Jardin
David Pescovitz. photo: Xeni Jardin
Dean Putney. photo: Lisa Katayama
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| Analog Twitter at the Boing Boing picnic Posted: 12 Jul 2010 02:09 PM PDT Boing Boing reader SFslim started an impromptu Analog Twitter board at the Boing Boing picnic. Following it gives you a decent idea of some of the events that were happening on-site. Here's a transcript (it was originally offline and written in Sharpie): Will: Because no one else wants to post first! |
| Evil Pikachu, dragons, and UFOs: from the BB picnic drawing board Posted: 12 Jul 2010 02:09 PM PDT  Some of our readers put together this exquisite collaborative drawing on the Boing Boing drawing board at the picnic this weekend. Thanks guys! |
| Boing Boing picnic exquisite corpse story Posted: 12 Jul 2010 02:10 PM PDT We had an exquisite corpse game going at the Boing Boing picnic this past weekend. It was written on a giant yellow notepad; I brought it home and transcribed it. The resulting story is truly a reflection of the Boing Boing readership — it takes unexpected twists and turns and features soul-eating clowns, fire-breathing dragons, and toilet paper tweets. Many thanks to all you awesome readers who contributed to the story! Please identify yourselves in the comments so we can give you a shout out.
What is Adam's homepage?? Feel free to continue the story in the comments!
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| Super cute Black Diamond headlamps Posted: 12 Jul 2010 12:37 PM PDT  It's summer in San Francisco, which means it's freezing in the city and super warm if you drive a couple hours north or south. That's why I'm going camping this coming weekend. I wish I had one of these new Black Diamond headlamps — in really cool retro and cute girly patterns + same or better awesome tech as its predecessors — to light up my path with when I need to find a place to pee. |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 12:07 PM PDT  A strange new food product called the Candwich is currently at the center of a SEC lawsuit involving a Utah money manager and his investment failures. Candwich main page [via NY Times] |
| DNA or RNA friendship necklaces Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:58 AM PDT   In the Boing Boing Bazaar, Raven from Made With Molecules offers these nerdy chic DNA or RNA base pair friendship necklace sets. They're $80 and made from reclaimed sterling silver. From the product description: Celebrate a friendship with someone with whom you pair well by giving your friend one side of the pair and keeping the other.DNA or RNA friendship necklaces Do you want to set up shop in the Boing Boing Bazaar or Makers Market? Apply now! |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 09:23 PM PDT  For more than 25 years, pioneer psychologist and seeker Carl Jung's Red Book was hidden away inside a Swiss bank vault. A huge lovely volume bound in red leather, also known as Liber Novus (The New Book), the book is essentially Jung's personal journals written in calligraphy and gorgeously illuminated during a very strange period in his life. The Red Book is finally available to everyone in an oversize clothbound edition published by WW Norton & Company. My friend/IFTF colleague Bob Johansen kindly shared his copy with me and I was quite blown away. The Red Book is a breathtaking travelogue from Jung's journey into his unconscious, and best enjoyed in small, powerful doses. From Fortean Times: "The Occult World of CG Jung" (Fortean Times) The Red Book by CG Jung (Amazon) |
| San Francisco may ban bottled water Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:51 AM PDT |
| How to talk online smack in Chinese Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:43 AM PDT  The ChinaSmack website offers a regularly-updated list of "common Chinese-language internet terms, expressions, acronyms, and slang" so non-Chinese speakers can better understand funny or offensive language used by Chinese speakers on and offline. Valuable things I have already learned from this website, even by focusing solely on the list items that do not include Chinese characters: "3P" means a threesome. "BT" means perverted. "JJ" and "J8" refer to male anatomy, while "JC" refers to cops. Also: "Human Flesh Search Engine"? Yeah. Think I'm all set to cruise the messageboards now. (via @phuntsokdorjee) |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:26 AM PDT The New York Times Magazine visits the Gulf Coast International Jousting Championiships, a new old extreme sport spun-out of Ren Faires. The videogame image seen below is just for giggles. "This is the real deal," (said one attendee,) a Renaissance-fair regular named Renzy Hill. "There's a real possibility of getting hurt." From the NYT: "Is Jousting the Next Extreme Sport?" |
| Collecting beggars' handmade signs Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:07 AM PDT  Michael Zinman collects signs he buys from beggars, and writes about what he discovers from his interactions with their designers and the designs themselves. Clearly there's a lot of sharing of ideas going on: I did engage with all the individuals I purchased signs from, and quite often, my offer of purchase was declined. I would guess at least two out of every five people on the street turned me down, and I was not able to purchase their signs. They were just unwilling to part with them. I think it was a matter of self dignity, and I was ever sensitive to their condition and never tried to further persuade them to sell.Hard Times (via Kottke) |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2010 10:39 AM PDT  My wife Alice's latest game commission for Channel 4 UK just went live: SuperMe is a series of mini-games and activities around the theme of mental health and resilience for teens, a game that lets you level up so you're "better at life." The work was done by our neighbors in London, Somethin Else and Preloaded. As Alice sez, "It's about resilience: how to feel good when life chucks you lemons. How to be better at thinking positively. How to cope with (and learn to love) failure. I'm really pleased with this, because I think it's ultra key for our target audience of 14+ teens." |
| Consumer Reports "can't recommend iPhone 4" after antenna tests Posted: 12 Jul 2010 11:41 AM PDT  Just a week after issuing a report titled "iPhone 4's supposed signal woes aren't unique, and may not be serious," Consumer Reports today announces that the iPhone 4 won't go on the "Recommended" list because lab tests showed that without a non-conductive case, or a little bit of strategically placed tape, reception can take a hit when the device is gripped a certain way: When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side--an easy thing, especially for lefties--the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal.The iPhone 4 scored high in all other respects, but "until Apple offers a fix" at "no extra cost," the device won't receive CU's coveted blessing. The post goes on to say that AT&T's network might not be the sole or primary cause for reception issues reported early on, including in my own review of the device. While "normal grip" use sans case or tape in good signal areas resulted in relatively stable reception for me, I was able to repeat the "death grip" results in extended testing with the iPhone 4: cover all three of those gaps between the band that wraps around the edge, and reception strength drops by varying degrees. I compared and cross-tested extensively with an iPhone 3GS, and a first-gen device. I used SpeedTest to measure signal strength in various grips, at various locations with varying signal strengths (as indicated by the device itself, in the number of bars displayed).
Bottom line from my own extensive testing: with normal use, and normal grip, this just wasn't a big problem for me. I live and work in areas where AT&T coverage is relatively strong. But with one of those $30 "bumper" cases offered by Apple with the iPhone 4, or a little bit of gaffer tape over the sensitive bits, call stability (reception and sound quality, number of dropped calls) compared to earlier editions has been great. Consumer Reports may not be able to recommend it, but I can (and have) with good conscience and that one caveat: use a case for best results. Overall reception and stability (for voice calls and cellular data) are far better—measurably so— than earlier models. And as noted in my earlier review, a wide array of other upgrades—the display clarify, improved camera, zippy speeds with the A4 processor—make the device a big improvement from those earlier models, and from competing smartphones. It's too bad the debut of an otherwise terrific device was marred by an issue that seems to be solveable with such a simple fix.
Update: Several commenters have pointed out the Anandtech review of iPhone 4, which includes lots of meaty, detailed technical testing on the "antenna issue." It's a good read, and their results are in line with my experience. "The antenna is improved," they report, but: The drop in signal from holding the phone with your left hand arguably remains a problem. Changing the bars visualization may indeed help mask it, and to be fair the phone works fine all the way down to -113 dBm, but it will persist - software updates can change physics as much as they can change hardware design. At the end of the day, Apple should add an insulative coating to the stainless steel band, or subsidize bumper cases. It's that simple.
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"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge." - Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)
photo: 
One day, while prospecting in Golden Gate Park, Jackhammer Jill came upon an unbelievable sight. An enormous, hairy beast in a tutu! "Pickles!" he exclaimed. A she ran, no, PRANCED, towards the luscious fields of pickles... he gasped! Four hours later, he was in the ER, overdosed on sodium and dill. "Don't worry," said the doctor, "We can fix you with science! Quick! Swallow this!" Reaching into his lab coat pocket, he pulled out a spike-studded bowling ball. Three holes, filled with strawberry jam, exquisitely telling of a past affair with a breakfast bun in an empty Coney Island fun house. As the soul eating clowns emerge I run toward a blinding light. Which turns out to be a fireball that I quench with my ice rod. You know, my "Ice Rod," wink wink. I'll quench your "fireball" with it, if you know what I mean. "What do I mean?" I thought, what a rude thing to say to a perfect stranger. However, an imperfect stranger, someone who's strangeness was somehow flawed, would understand the hidden alchemical reference. The hour of mice was drawing closer... if they could not decipher the message... then the world will change in a way no one could predict. They had to act fast. 
It was Jung's break with Freud that led to his own 'descent into the unconscious', a disturbing trip down the psyche's rabbit hole from which he gathered the insights about the collective unconscious that would inform his own school of 'analytical psychology'. He had entered a 'creative illness', unsure if he was going mad. In October 1913, not long after the split, Jung had, depending on your perspective, a vision or hallucination. While on a train, he suddenly saw a flood covering Europe, between the North Sea and the Alps. When it reached Switzerland, the mountains rose to protect his homeland, but in the waves he saw floating debris and bodies. Then the water turned to blood. The vision lasted an hour and seems to have been a dream that had invaded his waking consciousness. Having spent more than a decade treating mental patients who suffered from precisely such symptoms, Jung had reason to be concerned. He was ironically rather relieved the next summer when WWI broke out and he deduced that his vision had been a premonition of it. 
The championship event was created by two men, both professional jousters, who are on a mission to transform jousting from Renaissance-fair entertainment to arena sport. One is Shane Adams, the knight who unhorsed Tolle. The other is Charlie Andrews, a Hummer-driving former bull rider who spent six years as a Navy Seal and is hard-pressed to utter a sentence that doesn't include at least one profanity. "I personally believe that Shane Adams and myself are the two best jousters in the world, period," he says. "Anybody wants to argue it, you can come out and joust us or shut your pie hole."| You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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