The Latest from Boing Boing

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• UK gov't apologizes for decades of secret nuclear power industry corpse-mutilation
• Achtung! TSA!
• Balletic grilled bread prep
• You, frozen in carbonite
• Understanding COICA, America's horrific proposed net-censorship bill
• Lad tricks bully into drinking urine, needs advice
• Gengineered concrete-patching bacteria: BacillaFilla
• London cops shut down anti-police website; mirrors spring up all over the net
• Tokyo subway poster: that's not Santa, you're just drunk
• Fluid-filled dress knit from plastic tubes
• The Inevitable Taiwanese News Animation about the TSA's Touching of Junk
• Beautiful gallery of destroyed Apple products
• RateMyBackscatter.com
• Digging up the body of Tycho Brahe (again)
• Live chat with scientists in Antarctica pushed back one day
• Institute for the Future: Map of the Robot Renaissance
• Art mask forces you to smell fresh patch of grass, listen to your own breath
• Man murdered in street shooting
• Close encounter with a pregnant hammerhead shark killed in illegal net
• Delta Megarack Post Porter Seatpost Rack
• Awesome song about the TSA
• Heroic pilot "Sully" Sullenberger is against The Touching of Junk
• Proposed space-time cloak to "hide" events?
• Viktor "Merchant of Death" Bout extradited to US, along with his formidable moustache
• Molecular animators and biological cinema
• Seal of Approval (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
• Willy Wonka's tunnel to hell
• TSA tee: "We get to touch your junk"
• NJ, ID legislators ready to ban airport pornoscanners - your help needed!
• Buildings in the shape of baskets, books, bottles, and bureaus

UK gov't apologizes for decades of secret nuclear power industry corpse-mutilation Posted: 17 Nov 2010 04:37 AM PST The UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has apologized for 40 years' worth of clandestine, illegal mutilation of the corpses of British nuclear energy workers. When these workers died, pathologists and coroners colluded with the energy authority to remove their organs without the consent or knowledge of their families, in part to remove the possibility of a lawsuit for cancer caused by their work environment, but partly out of a seeming cavalier, better-safe-than-sorry approach that had them scooping out organs that had no diagnostic value. The corpses were then stuffed with random detritus from around the shop to disguise their mutilation; for example, broomsticks were used in place of bones removed from workers who'd died of leukemia. "The part played by these public servants should be of particular concern to us all, because they listened to the representatives of the UK nuclear organizations rather than taking into account the concerns of the families and the interests of society as a whole, even to the extent of delaying post mortems and organizing second post mortems in order to take organs from our loved ones. "The coroners and pathologists, in particular, should have been impartial but they not only let down these families, they sometimes deceived them." Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds Apology over organs taken from nuclear workers' bodies (via /.) (Image: Nuclear Power Plant Michigan City, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from paul_everett82's photostream)

Achtung! TSA! Posted: 16 Nov 2010 11:37 PM PST Oleg Volk has a smashing new TSA checkpoint warning side: Achtung! TSA breast-groping ahead! Achtung, TSA!   Make the TSA Meet the Resistance - Boing Boing TSA demands testicular fondling as an alternative to naked ... Man at San Diego airport opts out of porno scanner and grope, told ...

Balletic grilled bread prep Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:55 PM PST These South Asian gentlemen have their parotta-cooking down to an art -- they fling the bread with perfect, unseeing grace to one another. One has to wonder: why not move the tables closer together? Perfect Catch (via Kottke)   Video: Annual bean-throwing festival in Japan - Boing Boing Knife-throwing mommy - Boing Boing Random video of the day: The President of Georgia, tossing a baby ...

You, frozen in carbonite Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:55 PM PST Nerd sculptor-laureate Paul Pape will make you a custom mini you-frozen-in-carbonite for an extremely reasonable $50 plus shipping. He promises to get them done in time for the Solstice Holiday Season, too! Custom Carbonites (via Super Punch)   Frozen Han in carbonite ice-mold - Boing Boing Han Solo in Carbonite desk - Boing Boing Demented Barbie in Carbonite sculpture - Boing Boing Sculpture of George Lucas frozen in Carbonite - Boing Boing Boing Boing: HOWTO make a Carbonite Han Solo chocolate bar Han Solo in Cake-onite - Boing Boing Fictional Star Wars artifact: Boba Fett's invoice to Jabba the ... Boing Boing: Portraits in carbonite brick

Understanding COICA, America's horrific proposed net-censorship bill Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:47 PM PST COICA is back: that's the proposed US law that would establish a "Great Firewall of America" used to nationally censor the Internet to block putatively infringing websites. Progress on COICA was suspended during the midterms, but now it's back in the Senate and on the schedule for this Thursday. Peter Eckersley from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has legislative analysis summing up four important objections to the legislation: This bill won't help creators get paid when their work is distributed online. In fact, it will do the opposite. This is a censorship bill, with a blacklist and everything. The bill will undermine the Internet's Domain Name System and massively increase data traffic costs. The bill is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and a threat to innovation. This is a censorship bill, with a blacklist and everything. Hollywood's previous adventures with blacklists were a dark period in American history. This time, it's not people suspected of being too communist, it's websites suspected of being too "piratical." Senator Leahy is leading the government into the swamp of trying to decide which websites should be blacklisted and which ones shouldn't, and they're going to discover that the line between copyright infringement and free political speech can be awfully murky. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) copyright enforcement provisions give copyright owners the relatively narrow power to remove just their copyrighted content from a website. Even then, there have been numerous mistakes, mishaps, and abuses of that narrow takedown system to censor legitimate speech online. Now imagine the mistakes, mishaps, and abuses we'll see with COICA's broader, government-initiated, domain-wide takedowns. The Case Against COICA   The "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA ... MPAA: ACTA's censoring firewalls will help governments avoid ... US copyright net-censorship bill is dead -- for now - Boing Boing Bill gives DoJ power to close sites accused of piracy anywhere in ...

Lad tricks bully into drinking urine, needs advice Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:20 PM PST A Redditor is seeking advice for a young friend-of-a-friend who, tired of having his Mountain Dew stolen by a bully, filled the MD bottle in his backpack with urine and then watched in delight as the bully greedily helped himself to a big bottle of piss. Now the enterprising young fellow has become embroiled with his local constabulary. Fed up with this and being a cunning lad, last Tuesday Todd drinks the mountain dew before class, and pisses in the bottle. Brian drank the piss, shat brix, and Todd emerged the victor that day. Now, Brian's family is threating to sue, claiming Todd endangered Brian's health. Todd's family is apparently shitting and scrambling to collect character references for Todd from teachers, letters from doctors saying urine isn't harmful, and generally thinking their son is a psycho. I applaud Todd and think that he should walk into court holding a bottle of piss, it's freedom of expression, some people like piss filled bottles, but IANAL. A relative of a close friend helped a school bully drink piss, and now the family is suing. Is he liable? (Image: German Mountain Dew, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from like_the_grand_canyon's photostream)   Pranknet's Skype "phone assaults" detailed, head bully in charge ... Dad arrested for confronting bullies who tormented his 13-year ...

Gengineered concrete-patching bacteria: BacillaFilla Posted: 16 Nov 2010 11:34 PM PST "BacillaFilla," is the pet-name given by University of Newcastle researchers to a gengineered bacterium based on Bacillus subtilis that has been modified to fill and bond cracks in cement caused by earthquakes and other violence. The bacteria burrow into the concrete until they have filled all its cracks, then they politely turn into calcium carbonite carbonate and die. The researchers have tweaked it's genetic properties such that it only begins to germinate when it comes in contact with the highly-specific pH of concrete. Once the cells germinate, they are programmed to crawl as deep as they can into cracks in the concrete, where quorum sensing lets them know when enough bacteria have accumulated. That accumulation lets the bacteria know they've reached the deepest part of the crack, at which point the cells begin to develop into bacterial filaments, cells that produce calcium carbonate, and cells that secrete a kind of bacterial glue that binds everything together. Once hardened, the bacteria is essentially as strong as the concrete itself, restoring structural strength and adding life to the surrounding concrete. The bacteria also contains a self-destruct gene that keeps it from wildly proliferating away from its concrete target, because a runaway patch of bacterial concrete that continued to grow despite all efforts to stop it would be somewhat annoying Engineered Bacteria Can Fill Cracks In Aging Concrete (via JWZ) (Image: Cracked Concrete Texture #1, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from designmag's photostream)   Mario made with genetically engineered bacteria - Boing Boing Glowing bacteria that finds landmines - Boing Boing

London cops shut down anti-police website; mirrors spring up all over the net Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:10 PM PST London police demanded that the website Fitwatch's hosting company shut it down, despite the lack of any court order or proof of wrongdoing. Fitwatch publishes advice for demonstrators, including a post on avoiding arrest. In the wake of the takedown, over 78 other websites republished the information: In a blogpost published hours earlier, Fitwatch gave advice about avoiding arrest to students involved in last week's protest at the Millbank headquarters of the Conservative party. Fitwatch was removed soon afterwards, but tonight the offending blogpost, which recommended that students "get rid" of clothes they wore at the demonstration and change their appearance, had been republished on an additional 78 websites, including Facebook. Many of the websites republishing the material were run by political activists, who disseminated the material via Twitter in what they described as a campaign to show the futility of police censorship. Fitwatch campaigners said they planned to get their original website rehosted within 36 hours, adding that it was also likely that they would republish the offending article. Websites publish advice to student protesters on how to avoid arrest   London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity ... London Police poster mashup - Boing Boing London police demand that new pub owner installs a CCTV as a ... Waterboarding used on pot suspects, says London police officer ... Oxford cops reprimanded for tobogganing on riot shields Boing Boing

Tokyo subway poster: that's not Santa, you're just drunk Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:04 PM PST According to WrascalBC's translation on this Vintage Ads post, the text on this Tokyo subway poster reads, "I look like Santa because you've had too much to drink. It's only October. If you drink, be considerate of the other passengers." I'm not as merry as I seem....   How to behave on the Tokyo subway - Boing Boing Slime as Engineer - brainless mold mimics Tokyo subway Boing Boing Japanese subway etiquette poster campaign - Boing Boing

Fluid-filled dress knit from plastic tubes Posted: 16 Nov 2010 08:18 PM PST Fluid Dress from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo. Two years ago, I got the opportunity to visit the workshop of Minneapolis artist Charlie Bucket and see his fascinating efforts to knit plastic tubing into wearable art that could then be pumped full of colored liquid. The last time I saw this stuff, he had a very simple, very loosely knitted prototype dress made up, and hadn't totally figured out how to control the movement of fluid. Now, just look at it. Bucket's done some amazing work. I'm so pleased to see such an awesome end result! Check out his Vimeo page to see what this evolved from. There's a couple videos from two years ago showing an early skirt and the basic, original knitted shape.

The Inevitable Taiwanese News Animation about the TSA's Touching of Junk Posted: 16 Nov 2010 08:11 PM PST Video Link. The TSA's enhanced testicle-fondling and schlong-scanning procedures get the NMA treatment. LOLs: 1) random cross-dresser 2) RapeScan Systems, Inc. 3) Osama's Secret.

Beautiful gallery of destroyed Apple products Posted: 16 Nov 2010 07:51 PM PST A gallery of images produced by Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild. (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

RateMyBackscatter.com Posted: 16 Nov 2010 06:46 PM PST RateMyBackscatter.com (Thanks, Random Tangent)

Digging up the body of Tycho Brahe (again) Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:48 PM PST You're looking at the skull of Tycho Brahe—gifted observational astronomer, failed duelist, legendary partier*—alongside a picture of his skull taken the last time it was exhumed, in 1901. Although the great man has been dead for more than 400 years, his mustache seems to be eerily intact. Researchers from Denmark's Aarhus University dug the body up again this week. Which begs the question: Why is everybody so keen on getting a look at Dead Tycho Brahe? Turns out, he's one of those historic figures who died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, which people often attribute to murder. The original cause of death was listed as "kidney stones", but none were found in that 1901 exhumation. What they did, reportedly, find: Elevated levels of mercury in that glorious mustache. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean Brahe was poisoned. The 1901 exhumation was fast and dirty, so it's hard to know if they really found what they claimed to find. Plus, like a lot of scientists of his day, Brahe dabbled in alchemy and might have even been taking mercury as medicine. However, that hasn't stopped enthusiastic armchair historians from labeling his death a homicide and, from time to time, pointing the finger at poor Johannes Kepler. But, while they will probably run some tests for mercury levels, the current researchers aren't particularly interested in how Brahe died. In fact, one told the Prague Post that the mystery will likely never be solved. Instead, this is more of an anthropological mission, dedicated to finding out more about Brahe's life—from his health and childhood illnesses, to what chemicals he was using in his experiments outside the field of astronomy. *He owned a pet moose, which was great fun at parties. In fact, Brahe used to loan it out as entertainment. That is, until somebody got it so drunk that it fell down the stairs and died. True story. These are the sort of things you learn working at mental_floss. Lots more pictures of the remains of Tycho Brahe Transcript of a lecture on the life of Tycho Brahe, including some of the weird bits. Thanks to gpeare for Submitterating!. Photo: Jacob C. Ravn, Aarhus University

Live chat with scientists in Antarctica pushed back one day Posted: 16 Nov 2010 04:59 PM PST Semi-bad news: The weather is not cooperating with NASA's Antarctic flyover/live web chat with scientists. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, it's now been pushed back to Thursday at 1:00 Eastern. Worse comes to worse, the chat will still happen, even if the scientists aren't flying over Antarctica while they do it.

Institute for the Future: Map of the Robot Renaissance Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:27 PM PST Last week, my colleagues and I at Institute for the Future held our Robot Renaissance conference, where we presented our research on the future of robotics. As part of this year-long project, we developed the above map to summarize our big forecasts and present some striking signals, present-day examples of technologies that we think indicate or embody a future trend. As with much of our work at IFTF, this map, lovingly designed by our creative director Jean Hagan, is available for free under a Creative Commons license. I hope you enjoy it! Klaatu barada nikto! From the introduction to the map: After decades of hype, false starts, and few successes, smart machines are finally ready for prime time. In some areas, the robots will replace humans, freeing us up to do the things we are good at and actually enjoy. In other domains, the machines will become our collaborators, augmenting our own skills and abilities. The first robot boom was in the 1950s, when factory workers met the first industrial robots. Films like The Day The Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet packed theaters, and tin toy robots delighted kids. And now, as robots move out of the factories and make real a century of science fiction, we will once again see these machines in a new light, and we will also reconsider how we see ourselves. Of course, visions of the future of robotics could easily veer into dystopia. Hollywood loves a good cautionary tale of robots turning against humanity, taking over the world, and generally wreaking havoc. But as you delve into the specific domains where robots will likely have the most impact, a much richer canvas of possibilities emerges. That is because machines never replace humans but rather change the nature of what humans can do and establish new expectations and standards of performance. Certainly some routine jobs will be taken over by machines. That has already happened and will continue. But the real power in robotics technologies lies in their ability to augment and extend our own capabilities. Our tools change us in unexpected ways, and the next generation of robotic tools can be no different. We will make new robots, but the robots will also make us. Explore IFTF's Robot Renaissance: The Future of Human-Machine Interaction Map

Art mask forces you to smell fresh patch of grass, listen to your own breath Posted: 16 Nov 2010 02:33 PM PST "The Open, by Mattia Casalegno, is a mask that wraps around your face and forces you to smell a fresh patch of grass and listen to your own breath." More at We Make Money Not Art. (Submitterated by mat_kinotek)

Man murdered in street shooting Posted: 16 Nov 2010 02:27 PM PST Hannah Arendt famously argued for "the banality of evil"; British photographer James Davies makes a powerful case for the banality of violence in this Flickr set documenting the very ordinary places where 12 Londoners were murdered. The images aren't crime-scene photos as we've come to know them. There's no police tape, no chalk outlines of bodies. Davies' shots divorce the places from the crimes, leaving viewers with an unsettling reminder of a fact most of us would like to forget -- that violence (gun violence, in this case) can find you anywhere. (Via Londonist. Image © James Davies.)

Close encounter with a pregnant hammerhead shark killed in illegal net Posted: 16 Nov 2010 02:11 PM PST Over at Scuttlefish (ocean-themed blog, side project of Gizmodo's Brian Lam), contributor Aaron Philips shares the story (with photos) of how he encountered a female hammerhead shark who died in an illegally placed seine fishing net off the island of Oahu. Now, Kaneohe Bay is home to one of the highest mating populations of Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks of anywhere on the planet. Every year around 10,000 sharks are born in the bay, so when we found a dead newborn shark on the bottom, I was excited, but not surprised. As we swam around the islet we began to find more and more deceased infant hammerheads, until we stumbled upon a long seine twisted up and floating in the water. Illegal fishing isn't common in Hawaii, but it definitely happens. Especially in the more rural areas. Sometimes you find nets that have been set illegally or abandoned, and they do a ton of damage to whatever marine life may encounter them. Not knowing what was up with this net, my friend Ben decided to swim the length of the net and investigate. Visibility wasn't great. About 5-8 feet and less in the sandy areas, which made the 8-foot pregnant female hammerhead caught in the net all the more surprising, and we nearly shat our pants upon finding it. Obligate Ram Ventilator? I hardly know 'er! (Scuttlefish, thanks Brian Lam; photo courtesy Aaron Philips)

Delta Megarack Post Porter Seatpost Rack Posted: 16 Nov 2010 01:31 PM PST I've had this quick-release bike rack for about 6 years with on and off use (no pun intended). I use it with two pannier bags to commute to work carrying my laptop on one side and a set of clothes on the other. I like being able to quickly take the rack off of my bike for recreational riding after work or on the weekends. It's very easy to install/remove and requires no tools. It does exactly what it's supposed to and I've been very happy with it. It is also one of the few racks that can be used on bikes with rear suspensions. I bought mine at REI for about $60, but you can find them at Amazon. There's also a model without the vertical pannier supports, but I think the limited functionality is not worth a $15 savings. My seat post space was at a premium due to a bike light and an under-the-seat bag, so I attached a wooden dowel rod vertically to the back of the rack with a single screw to create another "seat post" for my bike light. The last benefit is that the rack acts as a mud/splatter guard for your rear wheel should you ride to work on wet streets. -- Harvey Chapman Delta Mega Rack Post Porter Seat Post Rack $40 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!

Awesome song about the TSA Posted: 16 Nov 2010 12:25 PM PST Jonathan Mann has been writing a song a day for almost 2 years. Today his song is about the TSA. He doesn't like them. Watch the video on YouTube or download the song from his site for a buck. I want to play this on a boombox at the airport. I'm sure I could get away with that, right?

Heroic pilot "Sully" Sullenberger is against The Touching of Junk Posted: 16 Nov 2010 12:08 PM PST "I don't want anybody but my wife and maybe my doctor touching me in the places these people are touching me."—Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, on the TSA's "We Will Either Photograph or Touch Your Junk" policies.

Proposed space-time cloak to "hide" events? Posted: 16 Nov 2010 11:30 AM PST Physicists today proposed making a tiny "pocket in reality" that can hide entire events. Strange but true! However, the device can only be created inside an optical fiber under very specific conditions. The "space-time cloak" is built upon recent invisibility cloaks made from metamaterials that can manipulate some wavelengths of light around an object so that it can't be seen. The space-time cloak bends light not just in space, but also time. Don't get any bright ideas about editing history though. From Nature: McCall and his colleagues have calculated the precise properties of the metamaterial needed to build a space–time cloak that would be perfectly invisible, and there are fundamental problems that prevent it from being constructed. The theoretical calculations work only in a vacuum, and to create a space–time void of even a few minutes would require a cloak bigger than Earth because of the space required to recombine the accelerated leading edge and slowed trailing edge of the light wave. Worst of all, the theory requires the metamaterial to boost light rays beyond the fundamental speed of light. Undeterred, the team has designed a less efficient version to be built from optical fibres — inside which light can be accelerated and slowed without breaking the fundamental speed limit. Lasers would be used to control the fibres' refractive indices, opening and closing the temporal void. The fibre-optic cloak could hide events only from observers standing directly ahead of the oncoming light waves, and it could not fully block all reflections from light travelling through the cloak while it is turned on, so some light might bleed out. A distant observer looking down the optical fibre would not spot the hidden event, but they would notice the background light getting brighter and dimmer. McCall hopes that a fibre-optic cloak creating a space–time void around 30 centimetres long, to hide actions taking place over a few nanoseconds, could be built within the next year. "Space–time cloak could hide events"

Viktor "Merchant of Death" Bout extradited to US, along with his formidable moustache Posted: 16 Nov 2010 12:22 PM PST Alleged global arms dealer Viktor "Moustache of Death" Bout was extradited to the United States on terrorism charges today. He arrived in New York on a U.S. chartered jet from Thailand, and maintains that he is innocent. The Russian government (and state news agency) says the charges are baseless, and they want Bout back. Neither Princess Toadstool nor Luigi were available for comment. Photo: Bout is escorted by members of a special police unit after a hearing at a criminal court in Bangkok October 5, 2010. A Thai court on Tuesday dismissed charges of money-laundering and wire fraud against Bout. The 43-year-old former Soviet air force officer known as the "Merchant of Death" faces U.S. accusations of trafficking arms since the 1990s to dictators and conflict zones in Africa, South America and the Middle East . (REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang) More coverage: Wired Danger Room, CNN, CSM, NYT, Slate Update: The Reuters shot in this post was shopped, I can tell by the pixels, and by having seen quite a few shops in my time. Rob Beschizza provides us with the unaltered original, below. Following that, a few additional shots I've found, all unaltered.

Molecular animators and biological cinema Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:50 AM PST Harvard cell biologist Janet Iwasa is a molecular animator who uses advanced computer graphics to visually represent the stunningly beautiful secret lives of cells. She honed her craft at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects alongside classmates hoping to be Hollywood's next SFX stars. The New York Times profiles Iwasa and several other scientist/animators who are turning raw data into striking films about the hidden world around and inside us. From the New York Times: To compose her animations, Dr. Iwasa draws on publicly available resources like the Protein Data Bank, a comprehensive and growing database containing three-dimensional coordinates for all of the atoms in a protein. Though she no longer works in a lab, Dr. Iwasa collaborates with other scientists. "All that we had before — microscopy, X-ray crystallography — were all snapshots," said Tomas Kirchhausen, a professor in cell biology at Harvard Medical School and a frequent collaborator with Dr. Iwasa. "For me, the animations are a way to glue all this information together in some logical way. By doing animation I can see what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. They force us to confront whether what we are doing is realistic or not." For example, Dr. Kirchhausen studies the process by which cells engulf proteins and other molecules. He says animations help him picture how a particular three-legged protein called clathrin functions within the cell. If there is a Steven Spielberg of molecular animation, it is probably Drew Berry, a cell biologist who works for the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. Mr. Berry's work is revered for artistry and accuracy within the small community of molecular animators, and has also been shown in museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2008, his animations formed the backdrop for a night of music and science at the Guggenheim Museum called "Genes and Jazz." "Scientists have always done pictures to explain their ideas, but now we're discovering the molecular world and able to express and show what it's like down there," Mr. Berry said. "Our understanding is just exploding." "Where Cinema and Biology Meet"

Seal of Approval (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:38 AM PST Cindy the Australian sea lion, rescued by the Pet Porpoise Pool, NSW, Australia. A photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Erik Veland (web) of Southport, Australia.

Willy Wonka's tunnel to hell Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:53 AM PST Last night, my 4-year-old son and I watched the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory from 1971. (Coincidentally, it was re-released today on Blu-ray!) I had forgotten that the tunnel scene is so deeply dark and psychedelic. Of course Wonka's poem, below, is amazing, but my favorite line from that part is spoken by Violet Beauregarde: "What is this, a freak out?" Hell yes it is. At one point, I asked my son if he was scared and he calmly responded, "No, because I'm not in that tunnel." There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going. There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a blowing? Not a speck of light is showing so the danger must be growing. Are the fires of hell a glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes! The danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing any signs that they are slowing!

TSA tee: "We get to touch your junk" Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:26 AM PST A whopping $30.99, proving that trademark infringement isn't always your best entertainment value. Junk Search (via Aetherczar)   Make the TSA Meet the Resistance - Boing Boing TSA demands testicular fondling as an alternative to naked ... Man at San Diego airport opts out of porno scanner and grope, told ...

NJ, ID legislators ready to ban airport pornoscanners - your help needed! Posted: 16 Nov 2010 09:58 AM PST Aaron Swartz sez, "Bold legislators in New Jersey and Idaho have introduced bills stopping the new porno-scanners, but that's not enough -- we need to pass these bills in every state! So I set up a thing to make it super-easy to contact your state legislator about it. Just add your name and zip code to our petition and we'll automatically email your state rep." Stop the TSA's Nude Scanners!   Man at San Diego airport opts out of porno scanner and grope, told ... We Won't Fly: national aviation opt-out day in protest of TSA ... Will TSA genital grope/full frontal nudity "security" make you fly ...

Buildings in the shape of baskets, books, bottles, and bureaus Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:07 AM PST Remember on the Brady Bunch when the glamorous cosmetics tycoon Beebe Gallini tells Mike she wants her new factory to look like a powder puff? Along those lines, Mental Floss put together a fun gallery of 10 buildings shaped like the products they offer. Above, the Kansas City Library garage with its facade of 22 giant book spines, including Catch-22, Invisible Man, and The Lord of the Rings. To the left, the headquarters of Newark, Ohio's Longaberger Company makers of, you guessed it, maple baskets. "10 Buildings Shaped Like What They Sell"

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