Monday, August 9, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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Beef sundaes and doughnut burgers

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 09:51 PM PDT

Doughnutburrr
Beffffsun My brother Mark Pescovitz visited the Indiana State Fair today where he was tempted by a variety of fine cuisine such as Hot Beef Sundaes, Doughnut Burgers, and, of course, Fried Butter (not pictured).



Former softcore porn actress Jodie Fisher identified in HP CEO sex scandal

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 05:58 PM PDT

Above, while it lasts: the video demo reel on YouTube for actress Jodie Fisher (not Jodie Foster!), who was today identified by the New York Times, USA Today, San Jose Mercury News, AP, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal as the contractor at the center of the sex scandal that led to HP CEO Mark Hurd's recent ouster.

Ms. Fisher's film credits include a number of softcore adult films of the "Skinemax"/latenight HBO variety, filmed in the '90s: "Sheer Passion," "Body of Influence," and "Intimate Obsession," among them. She also performed in the television series "Silk Stalkings," and the noted B-schlocker "Blood Dolls."

Ms. Fisher, who is now 50, worked as a contractor with HP's marketing division from 2007 to 2009. She earned "up to $5,000 per event to greet people and make introductions among executives attending HP events that she helped organize," according to the AP. As an actress, her most recent role appears to have been on the NBC-TV reality dating show "Age of Love," in which twenty- and forty-something women desperate to make mortage payments claw each other's eyes out for the affections of tennis star Mark Philippoussis.

She is now (wait for it! shocker ahead!) represented by attorney Gloria Allred. Following, a screengrab of her Facebook page, which reveals that she likes listening to Eminem.

A slide show of science past

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 01:20 PM PDT

sciamold.jpg

From a deliciously geeky inside view of construction on the Eiffel Tower to a road map to Mars, this slide show of great moments from 165 years of Scientific American is worth flipping through.

Home-made vegan chocolate cherry popsicles

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 01:13 PM PDT

I just spent the weekend in Kansas City, where the temperature is pushing a-hundred-and-kill-me-now. Living in Minnesota has made me weak. But I think this home-made popsicle recipe—featuring a tasty mixture of frozen cherries, coconut milk and chocolate chips—could help.

Nope. High fructose corn syrup does not cause pancreatic cancer

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 01:09 PM PDT

Soft_drink_shelf.jpg

"Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds"

That's the headline on Reuters, touting recent research published in the journal Cancer Research by scientists at the University of California Los Angeles. The implication—pushed by Reuters, other news agencies and even the head of the research team, Dr. Anthony Heaney—is that this study proves a potentially deadly link between diets high in high fructose corn syrup and pancreatic cancer.

Reality: This is no smoking gun. Far from it. I spoke with Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, to get some perspective and find out what's really going on.

The researchers took existing* pancreatic cancer cells and grew them in a petri dish, outside of a human body. Some were fed on pure glucose, and some on pure fructose.

Cancer cells eat sugars of all kinds, Dr. Brawley told me. And this study confirmed that. The pancreatic cancer cells slurped up not only the fructose, but also the glucose. And they grew quite well on both. The difference lay in how efficiently the cells were able use the sugary fuel.

"Basically, certain cars prefer high octane gas versus regular. And what this article is saying is that, to these pancreatic cancer cells, fructose was more like high octane gas while sucrose was regular," Brawley said. "Fructose allowed them to grow more efficiently, which is different from faster. They were deriving a little more energy from every molecule of fructose."

The study does provide an interesting jumping-off point for further research, Brawley told me. But, on it's own, it doesn't say anything about high fructose corn syrup (which isn't pure fructose, but rather little-more-than-50/50 mixture of glucose and fructose). In fact, it doesn't even mean that pancreatic cancer cells in a human body would use pure fructose more efficiently than pure glucose.

That's because pancreatic cancer cells behave differently in a body than they do in a test tube, Brawley told me.

"I have treatments that can cure pancreatic cancer in the petri dish," he said. "We've had that for more than 50 years. But they don't work on pancreatic cancer in humans. That tells me there's a difference, biologically, between cancer cells in a petri dish and cancer cells in a person and we have to respect that."

I asked Brawley whether there had been any studies done that correlate diets high in high fructose corn syrup to prevalence of pancreatic cancer in humans. There are two, he said. But both show only a very weak statistical relationship. And there are several other studies, looking at the same thing, which found no connection at all. If there is a link, nobody has proved it.

So here's what we know:
1) Pancreatic cancer cells eat all kinds of sugar and use it to grow and multiply.

2) In a test tube, they can do that process more efficiently with fructose than with glucose.

3) We don't know whether that applies to pancreatic cancer cells in a human body. There's a reasonable chance that it doesn't.

4) These results are not something that can be extrapolated to apply to consumption of high fructose corn syrup in a human diet.

That's it. That's all the evidence tells us. Nothing else. There may well be health problems with high fructose corn syrup—I'm not familiar enough with the broader research to know—but this particular study really shouldn't be pointed to as evidence for that theory.

*I underline that because some people have apparently gotten the idea that the study shows fructose causes pancreatic cancer. The study absolutely did NOT show anything of the sort.

Thanks to our own Antinous for suggesting that I look into this fascinating issue, via the Submitterator!

Proposed Facebook icon for "meh" (as opposed to "like")

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 08:07 AM PDT

Via the BB Submitterator, Boing Boing reader obeyken says, "I know that man-about-Internet John Hodgman has come out strongly against the whole "Meh" thing, but I couldn't help whipping this up."

A Proposed Facebook "Meh" Button.

The Last Musketeer: whimsical, dreamlike, delightful comic

Posted: 01 Aug 2010 03:26 AM PDT

Norwegian cartoonist Jason's book The Last Musketeer is the kind of whimsy that's easy to do wrong and nearly impossible to get right, but Jason gets it very right indeed.

Athos is an unemployed, destitute musketeer in contemporary Paris, reduced to begging for money to buy booze, when Martians begin bombarding France with a laser cannon. He runs to the home of Aramis, who long ago gave up musketeering and has become a contemporary Frenchman, and begs his old comrade to join him in a fight to save France from the Martian menace. Aramis insists that in the modern world, the President and his authorities can defend France, and there is no need for musketeers. Athos denounces him for a coward, accuses him of betraying the memory of Porthos and runs into the night.

Alone, Athos confronts two Martian invaders, killing one and taking the other hostage, demanding passage to Mars. But as soon as he arrives, he is overcome by the emporer's guard, and there begins the Martian campaign. Athos is jailed, escapes, wins over the evil emporer's beautiful daughter, destroys the laser cannon, and turns a killer robot into an ally.

It's a story that follows a dreamlike, comic logic, always silly and always fun, and every page has several large grins waiting to jump onto your face as you read.

Many thanks to the staff at Toronto's wonderful independent comic shop The Beguiling for recommending it.

The Last Musketeer



Adorably deadly Mini Cannon returns

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 08:17 AM PDT

Boing Boing reader gatetree points us to a comeback video from the Mini Cannon (blogged earlier by Mark) and notes,

The mini-cannon videomaker seems to have followed almost every suggestion from the boingboing post of his first video in May.
[via Submitterator]

Cylon Moose guards a restaurant

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 05:55 PM PDT

Boing Boing reader Bonedoggie shares this photo gallery with us via the BB Submitterator, and says,

I had driven all day to collect my oldest daughter from iD Visual Arts Camp in Montreal (we live in NJ) and we were looking for a bite to eat on the way home. We stumbled upon this joint: the Blue Moose Tavern on Rt 9, a bit south of Lake George. Decent food, but a wonderful piece of metal work in the front of the establishment. Thought I would pass the pics along. The iD Digital Photography camp BTW - was the bomb! My daughter loved it.
It's all about the detail, folks. Nothing says "I care" like butt-vents on a Cylon Moose. Detail shot follows.

Electric Baseball Bat Fiddle

Posted: 08 Aug 2010 07:55 AM PDT

Boing Boing reader MrJM shared this video with us via the BB Submitterator, and explains:

Glenn Donnellan, who plays for the National Symphony Orchestra, created an electric violin from a Louisville Slugger bat. He played the National Anthem Aug. 8 at the game between the Washington Nationals and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Video Link.
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