The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Creative misuse + Lego Star Wars = Lego Star Trek
• You freak!
• House Industries printed wood serigraphs
• Mindshare LA: A Night of Enlightened Debauchery - Thursday, August 19th
• Books with X in the title
• 2001: A Double Rainbow Odyssey
• Ali vs. Marciano: the Super Fight simulation from 1970
• The League of S.T.E.A.M.'s Interactive Performance
• Shuffler.fm is a clever, blog-powered take on online listening
• Krull: the movie... and the wedding
• But Sigur Ros sped up does not sound like Justin Bieber
• "Two Rocks Converse," by Tom Gauld
• Man in dog makeup sings religious song for kids
• New monkey species found, nearly extinct thanks to us!
• Drop me off in Harlem
• The nitty-gritty of whittling down your possessions
• Harm Goslink Kuiper's new album features his homemade instruments
• Is the web really dead?
• Wall Street Journal's "cookie madness," and conflict of interest on privacy reporting
• James Bond in India
• And now, an important message regarding elves
• Brody's Ghost: Mark Crilley's 6-part graphic novel
• Hal Turner convicted
• Justin Bieber slowed down

Creative misuse + Lego Star Wars = Lego Star Trek Posted: 17 Aug 2010 09:03 PM PDT Horribly biased Lego executives have seen fit to not have any Star Trek Lego playsets. But we all know that just means more opportunity for creatively constructing the things we actually want to play with. The Legohacker blog does just that, turning Star Wars Lego toys into Star Trek ones. As someone raised on both universes, I absolutely this. Above, a Star Wars Corporate Alliance tank droid becomes a Federation starship. An excellent example, especially given the magic of turning a lame part of Star Wars into a wondrous bit of Trekkie goodness. Best part: The Legohacker in question is a kid. Way to go, young padawan! (Via Geek Dad)

You freak! Posted: 17 Aug 2010 05:42 PM PDT Wired's Ryan Singel quotes Yahoo! Chief Scientist Prabhakar Raghavan: But there's a misconception, according to Raghavan, that the world is divided into BoingBoing viewers -- the freaks -- and Justin Bieber fans -- the normals. The data say otherwise. "The truth is everyone is partially weird," Raghavan said. "We all have head interests and make forays into something weird." Yahoo Wants to Blind the Competition With Science [Wired Epicenter]

House Industries printed wood serigraphs Posted: 17 Aug 2010 05:03 PM PDT Rich Roat says: House Industries is descending on Reserve Gallery with a batch of freshly printed wood serigraphs. Macro and micro letter-based elements, furniture-grade plywood, David Dodde's steady squeegee hand and screen printing inks create a typographic terrine drawn from House Industries' vast warehouse of alphabetic anomalies. The show opens on Friday, August 20, 2010 and runs through October 20. Reserve Gallery is at 420 N. Fairfax Ave. in West Hollywood, Calif. and is open every day. House Industries printed wood serigraphs

Mindshare LA: A Night of Enlightened Debauchery - Thursday, August 19th Posted: 17 Aug 2010 05:00 PM PDT Micki Krimmel of NeighborGoods will give a presentation at the next Mindshare LA. The next Mindshare LA is August 19. Once a month LA's intellectually and culturally curious gather for an evening of "Enlightened Debauchery" in one of LA's downtown venues for a night of mind-opening speakers, elbow-rubbing with a diverse and colorful crowd, food trucks, cocktails and an eclectic mix of music. Thursday, August 19th marks the beginning of the Mindshare's fall residency in Downtown LA's new megaclub, Exchange LA, and the triumphant return of a hosted bar. Guests will hear from Neuroeconomist Paul Zak, Micki Krimmel of NeighborGoods (above), Pedal Patch Community and the comic book artists behind "AXE COP." The night will also feature musical performances from DJ Jacob Henry and interactive installations from the UC Santa Barbara Media Arts and Technology program. Breakout sessions after the speaker program will give Mindsharians the chance to interact with Mindshare speakers one-on-one. Returning this month will also be upstart tobacco company Ploom, with vaporizing fun for everyone. Cost: $30 Mindshare ticket info

Books with X in the title Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:47 PM PDT Joshua Glenn says, "I've been scanning and posting the covers of my "File X" collection — i.e., paperback novels from the 1940s-70s the titles of which include a freestanding letter "X." Interesting to note that three or four of the SF novels in my collection were retitled at some point to get that sexy "X" in there... HiLowbrow: File X

2001: A Double Rainbow Odyssey Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:15 PM PDT If Stanley Kubrick had directed Double Rainbow, in outer space: 2001, a Double Rainbow Odyssey. [Thanks, Tara McGinley]

Ali vs. Marciano: the Super Fight simulation from 1970 Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:05 PM PDT What I learned from watching the film Rocky Balboa on TV a few nights ago: In the late 1960s, the fighting styles, punching patterns, and other data about famous boxers like Jack Dempsey, Max Baer, Rocky Marciano, and Muhammad Ali were entered into a computer to produce simulated "fights" between individuals who were never in the ring together. The simulations were then narrated as radio plays. Taking the idea further in 1970, Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano, weeks before his death in a plane crash, were filmed in a studio acting out a slew of fight situations. Those moments were then edited together into the fight film above based on the outcome of another computer simulation. From Wikipedia's description of the first round of simulations for the radio plays: Punch-by-punch details of the boxer's records during their prime were entered into an NCR 315 computer. Also their strengths, weaknesses, fighting styles and patterns and other factors and scenarios that the boxers could go through were converted into formulas.The NCR-315 with 20K of memory was supplied by SPS (Systems Programming Services), an independent service bureau in Miami Fla. The algorithms were supplied by an NCR mathematician, and programming was done in Fortran by an employee of SPS. Hank Meyer, President and salesman with a one other partner in SPS, was instrumental in setting this competition up, and contended at the time that it was his idea. The actual running of the software was done the night before each broadcast round of the 'computer championship' and took approximately 45 minutes to run, the ouptut was a formatted report containing a series of codes describing each punch. This was then written to magnetic tape, the tape was then manually transferred to a Univac 1005 and printed. This early form of "foot-powered" networking was referred to as sneakernet, the reason for doing this was cost, it was cheaper to print on a 1005 than the 315. This took place in early 1968; the NCR 315 was a state-of-the-art computer at the time... On January 20, 1970, the (Ali/Marciano fight film) was shown only once in 1500 theaters over closed-circuit television in the United States, Canada, and throughout Europe. It grossed $5 million. The computer had determined that Marciano would knock Ali out in the 13th round and the film was edited to present that outcome. All prints of the fight except one were supposed to be immediately destroyed. However, many theaters played the show long after January 20th. "The Super Fight"

The League of S.T.E.A.M.'s Interactive Performance Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:31 PM PDT Photo: Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly from "An Evening with the Unfamiliar" You've probably seen The League of S.T.E.A.M. on Boing Boing before, as both Cory and Xeni have posted their videos. In addition to videos, they do interactive live performances at parties across L.A. The basic premise is that they hunt supernatural creatures with steampunk-inspired gear. If you see them at an event, they usually have a few display tables set up where the League will demonstrate how their props work. They'll also take partygoers on ghost hunts or chase after vampires throughout the venue. I've seen the League perform a handful of times over the past year and it's always a good time. They've appeared at nightclubs and Comic-Con parties as well as their own events. For those who will be at Dragon*Con this year, the League has a short in the convention's film festival. Links: League of S.T.E.A.M. "An Evening with the Unfamiliar" (Photos)

Shuffler.fm is a clever, blog-powered take on online listening Posted: 17 Aug 2010 01:49 PM PDT David Greenwald, blog editor for the L.A. Times' Brand X reviewed Shuffler.fm, a way to listen to songs by visiting the blogs they appear on. The landing page presents a list of genres. Once a user chooses his or her own adventure (at present, anything from hip-hop to lo-fi to singer-songwriter), the site shifts to an appropriate blog post, with Shuffler.fm displayed as a toolbar streaming a randomly chosen track. Users can click forward and back, jumping from song to song and blog to blog, where the songs being streamed can generally be downloaded as MP3s. The songs are sorted into genres by filtering them through Last.fm, itself a dependably accurate, if broad, user-powered music-listening and statistics hub. Meet Shuffler.fm, the music blogosphere's newest aggregator

Krull: the movie... and the wedding Posted: 17 Aug 2010 12:44 PM PDT In 1983, a dozen couples traveled to a Burbank soundstage to be married in a group wedding themed around the science fiction/fantasy film Krull. They had won a national essay contest by revealing "why their 'Fantasy Come True' would be to have a 'Krull' wedding in Hollywood." It's not clear what would have inspired that fantasy considering the film wasn't even released yet. From Tim Kirk's write-up in The Moving Arts on the Krull wedding promotion: One after another, they walked past a pair of futuristic soldiers in fanciful armor, down a red carpet flanked by strangers in folding chairs, and up to an altar made of faux stone. These were the lucky winners of a national contest sponsored by Columbia Pictures. They had penned the winning statements describing, as the studio's press release states, "why their 'Fantasy Come True' would be to have a 'Krull' wedding in Hollywood..." This promotion was largely ignored by the press. The film had a poor opening weekend and suffered dreadful reviews. Variety called it a "blatantly derivative hodgepodge of Excalibur meets Star Wars."  The BBC chimed, "a sub standard space opera with pretensions to being a British Star Wars."  The idea of running a feature on the "Krull" Weddings, and photos of the participants, next to a scathing review of the film seems downright cruel. It is probable that the studio realized that rolling out some photos of folks getting married in the manner of a scene in a film that no one saw wouldn't do much to resuscitate ticket sales. The promotion was dropped. 'Krull' Weddings: The Awkward Teenage Years of Movie Marketing (Thanks, Rodney Ascher!)

But Sigur Ros sped up does not sound like Justin Bieber Posted: 17 Aug 2010 12:54 PM PDT As we learned earlier today, Justin Bieber's "U Smile," when slowed down 8x, becomes a numinous ambient epic similar to the work of Sigur Ros. I regret to inform you that speeding up Sigur Ros does not result in Biebage.

"Two Rocks Converse," by Tom Gauld Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:36 PM PDT I've expressed my admiration for Tom Gauld before (The Gigantic Robot, Characters for an Epic Tale). He is one of the best cartoonists around! Read Tom's comics here.

Man in dog makeup sings religious song for kids Posted: 17 Aug 2010 12:15 PM PDT His name is Jim Steager and he has a website, but sadly, I couldn't find more videos of him in animal makeup. (Via Cynical-C)

New monkey species found, nearly extinct thanks to us! Posted: 17 Aug 2010 12:00 PM PDT This incredible critter is Callicebus caquetensis, a species of titi monkey newly discovered in the Colombian Amazon. Humans have destroyed their natural habitat, leaving less than 250 in the wild. No wonder he looks freaked out in the photo. From New Scientist: The monkey was found in a region called Caquetá, in the south of Colombia, which had been inaccessible for many years due to a violent insurgence. About the size of a cat, the Caquetá titi has grey-brown hair and makes an extremely complex call. Unusually for a primate, it forms lifelong monogamous pairs. "New monkey species already looks scared"

Drop me off in Harlem Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:31 AM PDT Frank Jacobs' great Strange Maps blog turns up a real treasure this week: "A Night-Club Map of Harlem," drawn ca. 1932 by cartoonist Elmer Simms Campbell. The map hits all the high spots, metaphorically (The Cotton Club, Small's Paradise, The Savoy) and literally (131st and Lenox, where a figure helpfully identifies himself as "th' Reefer man"). The only major omission, a caption says, "is the location of the various speakeasies but since there about 500 of them you won't have much trouble." The thing bristles with helpful information (Tillie's "specializes in fried chicken -- and it's really good!") and bursts with life -- all over the map, figures furtively ask about the day's number, and at 142nd and Lenox, a white-tuxedoed Cab Calloway rises toward the heavens, wailing an ecstatic "Hi-De-Ho." If Harlem was half as jumping in 1932 as Campbell makes it seem, every legend about uptown in its heyday must be true.

The nitty-gritty of whittling down your possessions Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:26 AM PDT Boing Boing readers had a lot to say regarding yesterday's post about Kelly Sutton, the fellow who has gotten rid of almost everything he owns apart from his digital / Internet technology. I asked him to write about his lifestyle and here's what he wrote. It's fascinating. About a year ago, I came to the conclusion that the most logical thing to be done was to rid myself of all (or most) of my possessions. After meticulously itemizing all of my stuff, I put almost all of it up for sale on a site I built in a weekend, Cult of Less. Yesterday, the BBC News ran an article about myself and a few other folks replacing their physical media with their digital analogs. There are many implications of selling everything, some great and some not so great. I was a bit hasty in my desire to expunge my personal inventory but it's something worth considering. The following are a few things I learned, and where the project is going from here. Read the rest after the jump. (Photos by Aaron Sonnenberg) Unintended Benefits The greatest thing gained from Cult of Less has been an unprecedented amount of physical freedom. This is obvious to those that have read Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss takes owning nothing to an extreme and comes across as brackish in his suggestions, but there is an important point to take away from the book and accompanying blog. A willingness to drop your stationary physical possessions and move is the greatest freedom I have found in this project. Sure, you could get by without a bed, furniture and a few other essentials, but you will be miserable. No one wants to sleep on a floor if they can help it. Instead, I've found that a lack of attachment to my possessions to be the biggest win. My bed isn't important enough to me to haul more than a few blocks, should I move. Chances are, the person moving into my apartment after me would like a bed. Leaving it for them will be a nice move-in present. A minor yet pleasurable consequence has been interacting with people from around the world. It shot any hope of the project being hip and green, but I've shipped some of my belongings to places like Germany, New Zealand and the U.K. Warranted Skepticism As the everwise Internet collective was quick to point out yesterday, this lifestyle is not for everyone. In many settings, it can make your life more difficult. Owning less is easier in urban environments with efficient public transportation; in New York, it's mandated by the higher rent prices. Living in Los Angeles without a car is a difficult undertaking. Unfortunately, the uncluttered lifestyle is not for everyone. The subtitle of the original BBC article read "Living out of a hard drive." I do this with more than my media; my chosen profession also gives me an unlimited amount of mobility. The software I write on the beach in Venice, California, operates the same as code written in blip.tv's SoHo office. It's a shame not all professions have such freedom. Personally, I experience very few downsides with my current situation. There have been times where I've been unable to fix something right that second, but those happenings are rare. A quick trip to a hardware or grocery store usually solves the problem. Rather than preemptively stocking a toolbox without tools I might use, what I have in my apartment for minor repairs is lean but effective. Owning nothing is not for everyone and brings on certain difficulties, but those difficulties are minor if you live in a city that makes reducing your footprint easier. Learning What I Already Knew Another unintended philosophical nugget of the project was to understand that many things are worth less monetarily than you think. Some of your possessions might even have a negative value. (Old computer monitors, for example, cost money to throw out in some regions of the U.S. They have a -$25 value.) Every item on Cult of Less was appraised and intentionally undervalued. It means more to me for an individual to enjoy something that I have neglected than for me to spend time peddling my wares for an extra few bucks. People seem surprised that I would be willing to give away things that clearly have value for so little. Now every purchase I make comes with a second-guess: Do I really need this? Like really, really need this? In the past year, "impulse buy" has left my vocabulary. I found myself buying fewer things, but also nicer things. On the whole, it's led me to cherish my few purchases more. Every possession also requires a certain amount of upkeep, and I find myself with more time and less possessional guilt. Every thing owned begs to be used constantly; every second not utilized comes a shred of buyer's remorse. Everything I own I use at least once per month, save for my winter clothes. Moving (Forward) The Cult of Less project is not something that I can ever stop cold turkey. Throughout the coming years, I will be adding new possessions to my list occasionally. Embarking on the project has characteristically changed how I view owning things. Sure, buying less is probably environmentally friendlier. Sure, my friends think I'm (really) weird. Sure, there might be things that could make my life a bit easier occasionally. But now everything thing I own serves a purpose and holds a certain beauty in its role. The idea is utilitarian and far-fetched, but it's a small price to pay for being happy.

Harm Goslink Kuiper's new album features his homemade instruments Posted: 17 Aug 2010 09:44 AM PDT Harm Goslink Kuiper's homemade guitars, banjos, diddley bows, and other stringed instruments are delightful and inspiring. He plays them on his new album, Stil Leven. Harm Goslink Kuiper - 'Stil Leven'

Is the web really dead? Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:48 AM PDT Wired uses this graph to illustrate Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff's claim that the world wide web is "dead." Their feature, The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet, is live at Wired's own website. Without commenting on the article's argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn't account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice. You can probably guess that total use increases so rapidly that the web is not declining at all. Perhaps you have something like this in mind: In fact, between 1995 and 2006, the total amount of web traffic went from about 10 terabytes a month to 1,000,000 terabytes (or 1 exabyte). According to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total internet traffic rose then from about 1 exabyte to 7 exabytes between 2005 and 2010. So with actual total traffic as the vertical axis, the graph would look more like this. Clearly on its last legs! Assuming that this crudely renormalized graph is at all accurate, it doesn't even seem to be the case that the web's ongoing growth has slowed. It's rather been joined by even more explosive growth in file-sharing and video, which is often embedded in the web in any case. Update: It's also worth adding that bandwidth, though an interesting measure of the internet's growth, isn't so good for measuring consumption. It doesn't map to time spent, work done, money invested, wealth yielded... Does 50MB of YouTube kitteh represent more meaningful growth than a 5MB Wired feature? And, as others point out in the comments, many of the new trends are still reliant on the web to work, especially social networking.

Wall Street Journal's "cookie madness," and conflict of interest on privacy reporting Posted: 17 Aug 2010 09:39 AM PDT Over at Romenesko/Poynter, Bill Brazell (who used to work with Boing Boing via Federated Media) writes: "It's been disturbing to read the Wall Street Journal's ongoing "What They Know" privacy series without finding a disclosure notifying readers of the Journal's grave conflict of interest. As Jeff Jarvis and others have suggested, the Journal's use of a pay wall may even motivate the stories' fear-mongering tone. Actually, the conflict is deeper: The Journal should disclose at the beginning of every privacy story it publishes that it collects and sells Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and that none of the Top 50 publishers listed does so. Indeed, hardly anyone else on the Web does so."

James Bond in India Posted: 17 Aug 2010 08:16 AM PDT An assortment of panels (I've selected a few doozies, out of order) from the James Bond comic books Death of a Spy, Chinese Riddle and Super Duper, published in India by SP Ramanathan. I imagine them being read aloud by a cabbie in Delhi for maximum enjoyment. Bully has lots more here. [Via BB Submitterator, thanks Doc Roswell]

And now, an important message regarding elves Posted: 17 Aug 2010 06:55 PM PDT Before I learned about The Chris Valentine Show from Gabe Delahaye's videogum post here, I was unaware that: •Many of the elves in North Carolina are actually indigenous to Florida and California •Elves like to be near water where the oceans meet the mountains (?) •Elves enjoy privacy and are the shyest of all the nature spirits •They are thin, as you have seen in the elf documentary Lord of the Rings •They are the caretakers of the unicorns. Mock him at your own peril: Mr. Valentine has produced a number of other episodes with related important information about the spirit world: FAIRY HOUSE - Learn how to attract REAL Faeries! ("We got permission to film this from our fairy friend, Tinker, who said, "Go ahead and film this!"), Leprechauns are REAL! Learn How to Attract Them and How They Help Us! ("Beer or whiskey is the number one way!"), and Gnomes are Real! Episode 1 ("The gnomes told me, 'The world is going to be watching us!' and now, this YouTube video!") You may also find more to enjoy on Mr. Valentine's website.

Brody's Ghost: Mark Crilley's 6-part graphic novel Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:28 AM PDT I learned about cartoonist Mark Crilley through his series of YouTube instructional drawing videos (he's posted over 100!), where he demonstrates his enviable skills at drawing people. I'm not normally a fan of manga-style art but Crilley's blend of Western and Japanese style illustration hits the spot. A couple of days ago I got a copy of his latest book, Brody's Ghost, which came out this summer from Dark Horse. It's the first in a six-part series of 96-page graphic novels. The book is in black and white, but Crilley's fine sense of grayscale more than makes up for the lack of color. The story is set in a Bladerunner-esque world, and (like Crilley's art style) it has a blend of Western and Asian architectural styles and cultures. Brody, the lead character, is a disheveled, depressed curbside busker who plays his guitar only when his money jar runs so low that his stomach aches from hunger. One day, while sitting on the sidewalk, Brody encounters Talia, the ghost of a teenage girl who died of cancer five years ago. She senses that Brody possesses a hidden talent, and she convinces him to help her solve a grisly murder so she can get on with the businesses of leaving the Earthly plane (sort of like Clarence the angel from It's A Wonderful Life doing a good deed to earn his his wings). Crilley excels in conveying emotions through facial expressions, and the relationship between Brody and the Talia carries the story right along. While I'm waiting for the next Brody's Ghost book to come out, I think I'll check out his earlier work: Akiko and Miki Falls and read them to my daughters. Brody's Ghost: Book 1, by Mark Crilley

Hal Turner convicted Posted: 17 Aug 2010 07:28 AM PDT Hal Turner, a blogger who posted the addresses of the federal judges he told his readers "deserve to be killed," was convicted of making threats after two mistrials.Turner claimed that he was working as a right-wing shock jock under FBI direction. [Wired / Threat Level]

Justin Bieber slowed down Posted: 17 Aug 2010 06:46 PM PDT "Turn Justin Bieber into Sigur Ros in one easy step," writes in reader Yossarian . Slowed down 800%, the young star's inane "U Smile" becomes a languid, half-hour ambient epic. [via Submitterator] Update: If that link is dead, try this one. Update: hoax claim!

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