The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Rocket to Russia: 100 rubles per jug
- More TSA "grope vs porno shoot" tees
- Worst book ever to win a Hugo
- Slow trees (from the Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Damn You, Auto Correct
- The biomechanics of cats lapping up milk
- During mass "Devil Attack," at Catholic school in Trinidad, Satan demands to go to the toilet
- Wordless Video for Haiti: How To Make Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) in camps, to combat cholera
- Pick Punch available at Cigar Box Nation
- Mobile tiki bar costume
- Los Angeles: GAMA-GO big sale on Saturday
- Micro-model airplane fun
- Gravity wheel perpetual motion device
- Cat Eye Orbit Bike Light
- AFI Fest honors two stop-motion shorts
- Bonkers geodesic futuristic homes of Idaho Falls
- Joel versus the volcano
- Make your own fancy-pants McRib
- CC licensed Dutch documentary on California and the subprime meltdown
- Tragically damaged Louis Armstrong statue as endangered Lenin monument
- U-Boat Slumberparty
- 23 years' worth of soap opera romance condensed into 6 minutes
- To do in SF Thu. Nov 11: The Decemberists' "Here Come the Waves" epic song cycle film, SF Int'l. Animation Festival
- Uptempo boogie-woogie blues that will get you moving: The Phantoms "Alive at the Diamond"
- HOWTO make art without getting "ripped off" online
- Tea Party candidate challenges write-in votes
- Over 10 years, retired Navy vet carves Declaration of Independence in wood
- What makes Mt. Merapi different from other volcanoes?
- Rad dad builds amazing Deadmau5 costume for 3yo son; Deadmau5 phones them
- Amateur Photog captures grizzly chasing bison down highway in Yellowstone
| Rocket to Russia: 100 rubles per jug Posted: 11 Nov 2010 06:20 PM PST  The correct gate (Pulkovo airport - St. Petersburg) (Moscow local time: 7PM. Weather, colder and rainier) The morning's shuttle through light snow flurries to the Pulkovo airport near St. Petersburg is effortless. At the airport we are thankfully without instruments, as they've been shipped a different way. Security is tight, and the examination area is packed with travelers, including a young mother with her baby having a tearful goodbye with Grandma directly inside the metal detector frame. A couple of minutes wait and this emotional scene is sorted out. Down and through several escalators and moving walkways, none of which are functional, we finally emerge in a small round glassed-in waiting area and, after a wait of no more than ten minutes, have our final boarding pass check and walk out on to the tarmac against the frigid wind. On the plane I'm seated next to a mother and her young son who is carefully reading aloud from a Russian publication of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is diligent in his pronunciation and his mother only corrects him when he looks up at her inquiringly, testing a new word. It's a short flight with a mysterious sandwich. Soon we are on the ground in Moscow, where we are met by Mike, who guides us to our ground transportation. The drive to the hotel in Moscow is about thirty minutes and takes us past many abandoned buildings and many, many blocks of apartments, some of which appear to be in severe disrepair. I remember that it is early winter and bare trees lend a somewhat maudlin look under this bleak mid-afternoon sunlight. There are many brand new shopping malls too, with familiar Western brands well represented. The malls with movie theaters have lines of chartered busses parked close to longer lines of warmly dressed people. At the hotel we are met by a small group of fans, clutching guitars, CD covers and posters for Joe to sign. Having connectivity in one's hotel room is 3000 rubles for a 24 hour period and, as there's free wifi in the hotel lobby, I make my way back down where I am greeted by a deferential but insistent fan who asks bluntly: "Where is Joe?" I gently point out that I do not know and he wanders away to wait with his posse. Soon afterwards we depart the hotel lobby for the club, an odd two minute walk to the ambitiously named Moscow Arena. It appears to be a large black box capable of holding over 3000 people. Tonight: Big Rock Show, Moscow style!
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| More TSA "grope vs porno shoot" tees Posted: 11 Nov 2010 08:59 PM PST  With their new "You choose: star in a porno shoot or let me squeeze your genitals" policy, it really feels like the TSA may have finally found the limit of Americans' tolerance for pointless humiliation in the service of some inarticulate "security" goal -- at least judging by the flood of TSA shirts, pledges, civil disobedience campaigns, etc, that we've gotten today. Among that pack, one of the better entries is this pair of tees from Despair.com. Perfect for an airport checkpoint near you. TSA T-Shirt (Thanks, madashell!)
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| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 08:59 PM PST On Tor.com, Jo Walton continues her highly entertaining series of posts analyzing all the past Hugo winners and nominees. She's just made it to 1955 and They'd Rather Be Right, the "worst book ever to win a Hugo": "The book is generally believed to be so awful that there are conspiracy theories about why it won. Goodness knows what the voters at Clevention in Cleveland in 1955 were thinking. The most sensible suggestion I've heard is Dave Langford's--Clifton had written good short stories, the voters hadn't read the novel and were going on past performance. In which case, oops. It isn't in print. It is barely in the memory of having been in print." |
| Slow trees (from the Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 11 Nov 2010 08:22 PM PST  "The real trick to sustainable forestry," a photograph submitted to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by BB reader Jane Boles. Shot at at Merve Wilkinson's Wildwood model forest, a 90-acre site near Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 08:07 PM PST  I am easily amused. I LOL'd at this website. |
| The biomechanics of cats lapping up milk Posted: 11 Nov 2010 07:52 PM PST Feckin' felines, drinking liquids: how do they work? "It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. " (via BB Submitterator, thanks EMJ) |
| During mass "Devil Attack," at Catholic school in Trinidad, Satan demands to go to the toilet Posted: 11 Nov 2010 07:43 PM PST From a local newspaper in the Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago: "17 female students fell mysteriously ill and began rolling on the ground, hissing and blabbering in a strange tongue, after suffering bouts of nausea and headaches. Two of the students reportedly tried to throw themselves off a railing and had to be physically restrained, triggering fears of a possible demon attack." The devil spoke through the girls, and said he wanted to go to the toilet. (BB Submitterator, thanks Stevedore) |
| Wordless Video for Haiti: How To Make Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) in camps, to combat cholera Posted: 11 Nov 2010 07:29 PM PST Via the BB Submitterator, Liz Ditz says,
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| Pick Punch available at Cigar Box Nation Posted: 11 Nov 2010 05:16 PM PST My pal Shane Speal says: I have a bunch of Pick Punches in stock in the Cigar Box Nation store.Pick Punch available at Cigar Box Nation |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:56 PM PST (Video link) My friend Todd Kessler pointed me to this video of a friend's amazing Halloween costume -- a mobile tiki bar! |
| Los Angeles: GAMA-GO big sale on Saturday Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:40 PM PST  GAMA-GO brings their wagon train down to Los Angeles this Saturday for their big holiday sale. It's at Model Citizen Studio from 12-5pm. Harass the Gama Goons, live and in person!"GAMA-GO LA Holiday Sale This Saturday" |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:32 PM PST (Video link) Fun video of micro-model airplane builders having a blast inside a gymnasium in Japan somewhere. Rubber band ornithopters! Flying angels! Itty-bitty biplanes! Styrofoam pterodactyls and sea turtles! (Thanks, George!) |
| Gravity wheel perpetual motion device Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:19 PM PST (Video link) This fellow made a beautiful perpetual motion machine out of wood. Unfortunately, the "first attempt is not working yet." It didn't work on his second attempt, either. But he says he's "really on the edge of cracking this." I can't wait! |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:20 PM PST  For the past 6 months I have been using the cat eye orbit wheel light. It clips onto my bicycle wheel spokes. By squeezing the housing the light turns on. It makes a soft, but bright, illuminated glow which spins with my bike wheel while riding down the road. I have seen car drivers noticing the lights. There are two remarkable things about the orbit. First, in 6 months of parking my bike on the street I have not had to change the battery once. Second, ask any cyclist in San Francisco how long they expect their bike like to last before it's stolen by some thieving hipster. The answer is "not long." I don't have to worry about the orbits being stolen because they look like old fashioned reflectors.  I love em. There is a similar product from Nite Ize called the Spoke Lit, but I haven't tried it. --Andy Bot [Note: Some people have complained about these being shipped in "try me" mode. To turn it off simply push and hold the button for 10 seconds or until the light flashes rapidly and then let go.-- OH] Cat Eye Orbit Bike Light $20 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool! |
| AFI Fest honors two stop-motion shorts Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:13 PM PST Big day for stop-motion shorts, apparently! Pesco posted the lovely Stop motion history of stop motion this morning, and this afternoon, AFI Fest announced their short film winner was the crazy-cute stop-motion Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp. Honorable mention to Photograph of Jesus directed by Laurie Hill (shown above, mentioned by Richard Metzger on BB last year). Live-action doc The High Level Bridge also got an honorable mention. Congrats to all! |
| Bonkers geodesic futuristic homes of Idaho Falls Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:37 PM PST  Jesse sez, ""Growing up in Idaho Falls, Idaho was strange enough but I always wondered what was up with this collection of futuristic hippy homes in my neighborhood above I.F. (called Rimrock Estates, in Ammon, ID). The place is overrun with starter castles today, yet these architectural anomalies built sometime in the early 80's, presumably by the same developer continue to amaze. I've actually been in two or three of them, this pyramid shaped one being the coolest. A nuclear family including two fraternal twin piano prodigies lived there. Fitting somehow." The Geodesic Homes of Idaho Falls, Idaho (Thanks, Jesse!) |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:19 PM PST Joel Johnson delivers a blistering smackdown to the trolls, miscreants and entitled creeps who infest comment threads at Gizmodo. |
| Make your own fancy-pants McRib Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:01 PM PST There's the McRib and then there's this—a barbecue pork belly sandwich on brioche, with homemade pickles and sauce. Saveur reinterprets a fast-food favorite for the foodie crowd. |
| CC licensed Dutch documentary on California and the subprime meltdown Posted: 11 Nov 2010 02:29 PM PST Pascalvanhecke sez, "California Dreaming is a documentary broadcast on Dutch TV November 8. It portrays the consequences of a the subprime crisis and crumbling local government. You can download the doc in HD format with a CC license and reuse for your own purposes." California is a strong brand, the state of new beginnings, dreams and movie stars, of surfers and a wonderful climate. But the Golden State is bankrupt and the city of Los Angeles is running out of cash. Public services are being cut and unemployment keeps rising. At the same time, optimism, entrepreneurship and the belief in the power of America are stronger than ever.California Dreaming (Thanks, pascalvanhecke, via Submitterator!) |
| Tragically damaged Louis Armstrong statue as endangered Lenin monument Posted: 11 Nov 2010 02:31 PM PST   Many jazz-fans in New Orleans were distraught to learn, back in July, that an incompetent contractor had botched the refurbishment of Louis Armstrong Park, including damaging the iconic statue of Satchmo. Construction on the park has stalled since then, and the site is fenced off. Nevertheless, I found myself wandering around the site yesterday as I followed a bum steer from my phone's GPS while looking for a laundromat. In the park's center, I found the damaged Armstrong statue, now held up by a haphazard set of ropes, looking for all the world like a statue of Lenin about to be pulled down during a moment of Glasnost exuberance. I snapped some pictures before moving on (and by the way, I heartily recommend the wash-and-fluff service at Clothes Spin on North Rampart!) Mayor Mitch Landrieu says Armstrong Park contractor AME has been taken off the job |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:50 PM PST Remember the contest from a while back, where the winner got to spend a month living in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry? Awesome as the idea is, I'll admit it kind of fell off my radar. Today, I discovered that the winner of that contest, Kate McGroarty, moved into the museum on October 20th and is down to her last few days. They do seem to let her out occasionally—she's been to some grade schools and a Bulls game. Less appealingly, from my pov, she seems to spend a good chunk of her day in a giant, plexiglass cube. Like a gerbil. On the other hand, maybe that bit of surreality is worth it in order to fulfill the ultimate Midwestern childhood fantasy of having a sleepover in the U-Boat. The U-Boat, people. Enjoy this all-access tour of the Museum of Science and Industry U-Boat, via flashlight. I know I did. It's not professional filming, but I think that's OK. It feels every bit as spooky and claustrophobic as I'd imagine being in the dark, alone, in the U-Boat ought to be. Plus, she got to out on top of it! If you want to know more about what this experience has been like for McGroarty, Wired has an interview. |
| 23 years' worth of soap opera romance condensed into 6 minutes Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:50 PM PST Here's a sweet little animation spelling out 23 years' worth of the complex interpersonal relationships on The Bold and the Beautiful, a soap-opera, visualized with artists' maquettes and liberal use of connecting lines and narration. Beautiful LAB - EPISODE 0 in English: The Bold and the Beautiful in 6 minutes |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:55 PM PST  Bay Area BB readers, drop what you're doing tonight and check this out!Here Come the Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized, an animated music film produced by Flux and Hornet with the Decemberists, is the opening night presentation of the 5th Annual San Francisco International Animation Festival. The filmmakers kindly granted Boing Boing permission to run the film in entirety on our Virgin America in-flight Boing Boing Video channel, and it's gorgeous (I believe it may still be in rotation, if you have a flight on Virgin America coming up any time soon!). If you're in San Francisco, I strongly recommend the theater experience tonight. From the event description: One of the most acclaimed albums of 2009, the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love is an epic song cycle that the band has played to sold-out audiences all over the world. Inspired by the album's heft and range, four animators (Peter Sluszka, Julia Pott, Guilherme Marcondes, Santa Maria) with widely different approaches have created original films that visualize the album in its entirety.More stills from the film below, along with event details.
Thursday November 11th
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| Uptempo boogie-woogie blues that will get you moving: The Phantoms "Alive at the Diamond" Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:33 PM PST  I just disappeared into a sweet and fully rocking memory for 45 minutes, and I'm still bopping. I recently discovered that Jerome Godboo, former frontman for 1980s Canadian blues/rock band The Phantoms has put much of his back catalog online as free MP3 downloads (and as commercial CDs that he'll ship to your front door). The album I disappeared into was Alive at the Diamond, the first album released by The Phantoms, pieced together from live shows at the Diamond club in Toronto. I've seen the Phantoms play live many times, and they never failed to get me out of my seat and lost in the music; I wore out three copies of the Alive at the Diamond cassette in various Walkmans, and when my last copy disintegrated, I thought the music was gone forever. So I've spent the past 45 minutes with the biggest goddamned grin on my face, bopping so hard in my seat that I could barely type, getting reacquainted with one of my favorite albums of all time. The Phantoms played hard-driving modern blues with an emphasis on Godboo's insane, James-Cotton-grade harmonica virtuosity. The lyrics were good -- though never outstanding -- but the arrangements and performances and the vocals were so goddamned rocking that they made the Phantoms into a band I could never forget. Start with the opening track, Everything is Changing, then move onto the instrumental boogie-woogie baddassery of The Skull (I defy you to stay seated for this track), and then check out their one-of-a-kind cover of Ain't Too Proud to Beg. Then support Jerome by buying the album. Godboo has a new album out with CDBaby called Humdinger. As soon as I can stop playing Alive at the Diamond on constant loop, I plan on giving it a listen. Try and stop me! |
| HOWTO make art without getting "ripped off" online Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:31 PM PST Artist Gwenn Seemel's post, "How I make sure my art doesn't get ripped off on the Internet" is a wonderfully calm, sensible and practical approach to living as a 21st century artist in an age where reproduction is a given. Seemel starts from six simple points: Seemel then goes on to explain these steps in detail, talking about her mindset as she approaches the net, her public, other artists, her customers and her work, and how this approach makes it possible for her to get paid, get along, and be happy and artistically fulfilled: "Everything from screaming about your intellectual property rights and threatening lawyers to shrink-wrapping your images online and making them not right-click-able is just burying your head in the sand. An open source world is the one we've always lived in: it's the one we built." How I make sure my art doesn't get ripped off on the Internet (via David Isenberg) |
| Tea Party candidate challenges write-in votes Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:29 PM PST In Alaska, the election isn't quite over. Votes must be manually examined due to the success of write-in candidate Lisa Murkowsky, who may well have defeated Tea Party-supported Republican Joe Miller. But write-in candidates -- where the name must be spelled out rather than simply checked -- face particular difficulties. From MSNBC: Shortly after the second day of write-in ballot counting began in the race, a Miller observer challenged a vote for Murkowski that appeared to have her name spelled and printed correctly, though the "L" in "Lisa" was in cursive handwriting.Murkowski camp cries foul in ballot count [MSNBC] |
| Over 10 years, retired Navy vet carves Declaration of Independence in wood Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:24 PM PST  Retired Navy veteran Charlie Kested of Johnstown, NY carved every word of the Declaration of Independence out of dark walnut wood over about 10 years, in his basement. It is beautiful. (via Submitterator, thanks eaphelps) |
| What makes Mt. Merapi different from other volcanoes? Posted: 11 Nov 2010 01:52 PM PST  This is what happens when your kitchen meets a nuée ardente. Literally a "burning cloud", the name is French for pyroclastic flow—a mass of hot gas, ash and rock released in some volcanic eruptions. Basically, it's an avalanche that happens to be hot enough to sear flesh. The danger of these things is that they move fast—hundreds of miles per hour, in some cases—and that they hug the ground, burning and suffocating everything in their path. Almost all the big, famous eruptions—from Mt. Vesuvius to Mt. St. Helens—included pyroclastic flows. And so have the recent eruptions at Mt. Merapi in Indonesia. In fact, these things happen so often at Mt. Merapi that the Mountain has become the namesake of a specific type of pyroclastic eruption, different from the ones that buried Pompeii and the Toutle River. You're probably most familiar with Pelean-type eruptions. Named after the volcano that flattened the Caribbean town of Saint-Pierre in 1902, these eruptions are often phenomenally destructive. Pressure builds up for decades under a dried lava "cork". When the lava dome collapses and the cork finally pops, the pyroclastic flows spill out—fast and furious. Merapi, in contrast, erupts a lot more frequently—on the order of every 4 or 5 years. Between eruptions, it builds up a lava cork of its own. In this case, though, the cork isn't very well supported by the underlying structure of the mountain, so it collapses any time it gets a bit too big. Collapse triggers pyroclastic flows, but, because so little time has passed, there isn't nearly as much pressure behind them. At Mt. Merapi, pyroclastic flows happen more frequently, but they're considered to be less dangerous. That doesn't mean they can't kill you, however. Most of the people in the way of these recent eruptions were evacuated ahead of time. But not all. As of yesterday, 153 people were reported dead. The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog has some truly devastating photos of the human toll. They are, in many cases, more explicit than you're used to seeing. But I think it's important to not get so caught up in the the zoomed-out, awe-inspiring perspective that we lose track of the impact these eruptions have had on individual people. The pyroclastic flow went through somebody's kitchen. Image: Dwi Oblo / Reuters (Thanks to Howard Koerth—Happy Mutant, raconteur, Dad—for bringing the Boston Globe photos to my attention.) |
| Rad dad builds amazing Deadmau5 costume for 3yo son; Deadmau5 phones them Posted: 11 Nov 2010 12:59 PM PST My pal Souris just alerted me to this super cool story: Hip dad Michael Cobra's three year old son really wanted to be Deadmau5 for Hallowe'en, after they saw him play at the Treasure Island Music Festival— so dad obliged. The video above documents the costume's creation. Today, Deadmau5 called the family, and dad says he was totally cool. More at Tiny Iron Fists, and here's the Vimeo link with related comment thread. |
| Amateur Photog captures grizzly chasing bison down highway in Yellowstone Posted: 11 Nov 2010 12:41 PM PST  Field and Stream has published a slide show of photos by Alex Wypyszinski that show a grizzly bear chasing an injured bison in Yellowstone National Park. Mr. Wypyszinski is retired professor and amateur photographer, and works at a post office in the park during the summers. He explains what we're seeing in each of these shots. (via BB Submitterator, thanks AdrenalineSleep) |
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