Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Composite photos made from time-series - "Chrono-Cubism"

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 02:11 AM PST


Brazilian photographer Diego Kuffer sez, "Photography only lets you capture instants (even long exposures are only blurred instants). So, I hacked the idea of photography, mixing together many photos of the same scene into a single one, slicing and dicing the images and putting them back together, chronologically. I call the grammar behind it 'chrono cubism.'"

Chrono-Cubism (Thanks, Diego!)

Internet furnishes fascinating tale of a civil rights era ghosttown on demand

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 11:05 PM PST

Last week, Redditor inkslave found himself in Cairo Illinois, an abandoned ghost-town that had fallen to utter ruin. After coming up blank on Wikipedia and Google, he asked Reddit just what happened to Cairo -- and got an immediate answer from a scholar who wrote his master's thesis on the subject:
Looking at a map of the USA, you'd think there would be a booming city at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. In the late 19th century, Cairo was a booming town, known as a railroad and river traffic hub with the untamed culture you'd expect from a northern New Orleans. Even though Cairo is in Illinois, it is the state's southern-most city and is actually further south than Richmond, Virginia. Its white-black race dynamic was as paternalistic as any in the "south," and its civil rights history was very violent. Though most people blame the violence in the 1960s and 70s for Cairo's economic decline, I found that it was really part of a general decline throughout the 20th century. The religious element in Cairo was able to ban gambling and prostitution in the late 19th century, so part of the allure of a northern New Orleans was lost and a vibrant industry was snuffed out. Then, the decline of the railroad and river traffic industries really ruined the town. In my research I found that the economic boycott in the 60s and 70s (many white business owners chose to close their businesses and move away rather than hire black employees) was really the final death knell of a town that had already been in decline since the 1920s, well before the Great Depression.
What the hell happened to Cairo, Illinois? (Reddit)

A Civil Rights Era Ghost Town (Visual News)

(via Warren Ellis)

Googy tiki bowling alley model railroad building!

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 12:12 AM PST


Mike Kozart, a decidedly happy mutant, has published a photo of his "Aloha Lanes" model -- a 1/87th HO scale googy bowling alley/tiki lounge that will soon be available in kit form: "This is part of a whole series of HO scale model kits aimed at the scale Model Railroader. There will be drive-thru Car Washes, theaters, banks, shopping centers, Department stores, car dealerships, mountain vacation homes, Yacht Clubs and many more. These will be sold under the CENTURY SCALE MODEL line."

ALOHA LANES a c. 1960 Southern California Bowling Complex in a South Seas setting (via Dinosaurs and Robots)

 


Princess Bride lightsaber swordfight

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:55 PM PST

In this youtube, talented video editor AllenGraph replaces the swords in the epic Inigo/Roberts swordfight from The Princess Bride with lightsabers. As Tor.com says, "The internet adds lightsabers to a lot of things, so it's hard to accept that we're only now seeing Inigo Montoya and The Dread Pirate Roberts's duel from The Princess Bride with lightsabers. The pairing is perfect. How did this not happen years ago?"

The Princess Bride...With Lightsabers

 


Captain Awesome and his awesome signature -- awesome!

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:48 PM PST


After a long legal battle, Douglas Allen Smith, Jr., an out-of-work carpenter, has won the right to change his name to Captain Awesome, in homage to a character on NBC's Chuck. Mr Awesome has the world's most awesome signature, too.
His original petition was delayed because the first judge he faced "questioned his seriousness." But Mr. Awesome would not be deterred. Mr. Awesome hit the books at the University of Oregon Law School library to study up on name change precedents, and when Mr. Awesome came to court a second time, the Judge was named Douglas Mitchell. Douglas helped a fellow Douglas out. I know. I'm tearing up, too.
This Is How Captain Awesome Signs His Name (via Neatorama)
 


Hilarious and gripping D&D game with Chris Perkins, Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:45 PM PST

In this rollicking podcast celebrating the launch of the Dungeons and Dragons "red box" set, Chris Perkins, Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton play a fun, funny, and tense game of D&D. Great, great listening. It's also available as a series of YouTube videos.

Prisoners of Slaughterfast

MP3 Link

(via Super Punch)

 


Travel posters for comic book cities

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:41 PM PST

Justin Van Genderen's vintage style travel posters for the storied cities of comicbookland are on sale for $18.03 each.

Gallery: ComicTravelLocations (5 images) (via Super Punch)

 


Pasta carpet!

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:36 PM PST


The We Make Carpets people have realized one of humanity's finest dreams: the creation of a brilliant pasta carpet made from uncooked ziti, macaroni, and others.

pasta carpet 2 (Thanks, Markhurst, via Submitterator!)

 


Highlights from TEDWomen Session 2: Feministing.com, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, and A Call To Men

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 09:52 PM PST

There were three really amazing talks in the second session of TEDWomen this evening. (Highlights from session 1 are here.) Here's a quick summary:

5242672656_3cf9b0d967_z.jpeg

Courtney E. Martin, the 30-year old co-editor of Feministing.com, gave an engaging and deeply moving talk at Session 2 of TEDWomen today about how her generation is re-imagining feminism. She explained it as three paradoxes:

1. Reclaiming the past and promptly forgetting it.
Martin, the daughter of liberals, grew up denying that she was a feminist until she saw Manifesta co-author Jennifer Baumgardner in fishnet stockings. Part of the challenge of feminism, she says, is to acknowledge that aesthetics, beauty, and fun do matter. "My feminism is very indebted to my mom's, but it's very different. [She] says patriarchy, I say intersectionality... she says protest march, I say online organizing... Feminist blogging is the 21st century version of consciousness raising." Feminism is no longer about man-hating and Birkenstocks.

2. Sobering up about our smallness and maintaining faith in our greatness.
Shortly after graduating from Barnard College in 2002, Martin became disillusioned by the lack of impact she felt she was having even though she worked at a non-profit and took part in volunteer protests. When she sat down to tell her family about it, her mom said to her: I won't stand for your desperation. Even if what you're doing feels small, you still have to have faith in the grandeur of it all.

3. Aiming to succeed wildly and being fulfilled by failing really well.
Martin quoted Parker Palmer, who said:

We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.
After she picked herself up from her disillusion, Martin realized that life is not about glory or security; instead, you have to embrace the paradoxes, act in the face of overwhelm, and learn to love really well.

5242079859_2725c2c60a_z.jpeg


My favorite talk of the day was by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. We're lucky we live in a world where career choices for women are fairly unlimited, but the numbers at the top are still bleak. Of the 190 heads of state in the world, only 9 are women; only 13% of worldwide Parliamentarians are women; and corporations only have about 15% women at C-level jobs. Even non-profits only show a 20% female leadership.

We as women face much harder choices between professional success and personal fulfillment. So how do we keep women in the workforce? What kind of messages do we want to give to ourselves and our daughters? Sandberg admits even she doesn't have the answer, but provides three insights that really resonated with me:

1. Sit at the table.
When it comes to self-promotion and taking credit for good work, women often back off way earlier than men do. 57% of men after college negotiate for salaries; only 7% of women do. Men often attribute success to themselves ("Ask men and they'll say: I'm awesome") whereas women will usually say: someone helped me, I got lucky, I worked really hard. Quote:

Nobody gets to the corner office by sitting at the side of the table. No one gets a promotion if they don't understand or own their success. I wish I could tell that to my daughter, but it's not that simple.
Sandberg also points out that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. So when a woman is successful, people tend not to like her. This was proven in an experiment done with students, where the exact same example of a successful leader was given twice, one named Herbert and one named Heidi. Everyone loved Herbert; not that many people liked Heidi.

2. Make your partner a real partner.
When a male and female partner both work full time, the woman on average does twice the amount of housework and three times the childcare. So if one parent has to drop out of the workforce, it usually ends up being the woman. Households with equal responsibility have half the divorce rate and better intimacy; it's better all around if this was more the rule than the exception.

3. Don't leave before you leave.
A lot of women marginalize their work life if they think they're going to have kids in the near future, because they assume they will leave.

We're all busy. Everyone's busy. A woman is busy. She starts thinking about having a child... about making room for the child, and literally from that moment she doesn't raise her hand anymore. She doesn't take on promotions or look for new projects.

What happens when you start quietly leaning back? Once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back. It needs to be challenging and rewarding, and if two years ago you didn't take a promotion — if three years ago you didn't start looking for opportunities — you're going to be bored.

Stay in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the very day you need to leave to take a break for your child. Don't make decisions too far in advance.

Sandberg ended by saying that she hopes that things will change for future generations, and that one day, her daughter will not only succeed, but be liked while doing so. I strongly recommend that you watch this talk when it goes live on the TED web site.

5242346435_905cd95765_z.jpeg

One of the few men to speak today was Tony Porter, who runs an organized for men to end violence against women called A Call To Men. Porter was raised in Harlem and the Bronx, where men were raised to have no fear, no emotions except anger, to be dominant, in charge, superior, and strong. Women, on the other hand, are inferior, have less value, and are objectified. He calls this the collective socialization of men, or the "man box."

Porter makes a call to redefine manhood. Why can't boys cry if they're scared or sad? Why does a man have to apologize for crying at his own child's funeral? It if destroys a boy to be called a girl, then what are we teaching him about girls?

He ends by saying: "My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman."

Porter was amazing, but a few of us did find it odd that he and the one other man to go on stage during this session — a Maasai father who came full circle to accept his daughter back into his home after she ran away to escape female genital mutilation — were the only ones who got a standing ovation. Why do the few men on stage get applauded more loudly than the multitudes of women who have done amazing things?

Question asked by Eskimo hunter to priest

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 08:12 PM PST

Via Futility Closet:
I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?'

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

The worshipping baby

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 07:50 PM PST


Via Sociological images: "The amazing one-minute video [above] shows Ava Grace, a child of about two, at Ignited Church in Lakeland, Florida (source). The clip beautifully illustrates the socialization of children into particular kinds of worship. With hand motions, body movements, and facial expressions, this child is doing a wonderful job learning the culturally-specific rules guiding the performance of devotion."

Report: Wikileaks cables show Texas company "helped pimp little boys to stoned Afghan cops"

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 08:15 PM PST

In the Houston Press, an extensive blog post untangling an alarming story from the state department cables: "another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police," and apparent proof that the company procured male children for bacha bazi ("boy-play") parties.

The story boils down to this: this company, headquartered in DC with Texas offices, helped pimp out little boys as sex slaves to stoned cops in Afghanistan:

pedobear.jpg

For Pashtuns in the South of Afghanistan, there is no shame in having a little boy lover; on the contrary, it is a matter of pride. Those who can afford the most attractive boy are the players in their world, the OG's of places like Kandahar and Khost. On the Frontline video, ridiculously macho warrior guys brag about their young boyfriends utterly without shame.

So perhaps in the evil world of Realpolitik, in which there is apparently no moral compass US private contractors won't smash to smithereens, it made sense for DynCorp to drug up some Pashtun police recruits and turn them loose on a bunch of little boys. But according to the leaked document, Atmar, the Afghani interior minister, was terrified this story would catch a reporter's ear.

He urged the US State Department to shut down a reporter he heard was snooping around, and was horrified that a rumored videotape of the party might surface. He predicted that any story about the party would "endanger lives." He said that his government had arrested two Afghan police and nine Afghan civilians on charges of "purchasing a service from a child" in connection with the party, but that he was worried about the image of their "foreign mentors," by which he apparently meant DynCorp. American diplomats told him to chill. They apparently had a better handle on our media than Atmar, because when a report of the party finally did emerge, it was neutered to the point of near-falsehood.

Read the whole post.

Frontline covered the phenomenon earlier this year—I watched the documentary when it first aired in the US. It was hard to watch. The notion that an American company enabled the sexual and physical abuse of kids like this is nauseating. Video embedded below, may be geo-blocked for folks outside the USA.


(via Dave Winer)

Whatever the Julian Assange arrest is about, it's not about how much women suck

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 07:20 PM PST

At Salon, Kate Harding explains what Julian Assange is actually being charged with, why the claims that his accusers have CIA ties are pretty damn flimsy, and wraps it all up with a nice reminder that we can support what Wikileaks does and question the timing and handling of these rape accusations, all while simultaneously NOT diving off a cliff into victim-blaming, slut-shaming, or any other shameful treatment of two women who—for all we know—really were sexually assaulted.

This is one hell of a post, effectively going right to the heart of what's been bugging me about the reaction to Assange's arrest. And Harding positively nails the landing.

The fact is, we just don't know anything right now. Assange may be a rapist, or he may not. His accuser may be a spy or a liar or the heir to Valerie Solanas, or she might be a sexual assault victim who now also gets to enjoy having her name dragged through the mud, or all of the above. The charges against Assange may be retaliation for Cablegate or (cough) they may not.

Public evidence, as The Times noted, is scarce. So, it's heartening to see that in the absence of same, my fellow liberal bloggers are so eager to abandon any pretense of healthy skepticism and rush to discredit an alleged rape victim based on some tabloid articles and a feverish post by someone who is perhaps not the most trustworthy source. Well done, friends! What a fantastic show of research, critical thinking and, as always, respect for women.

I also highly recommend Feministe's look at what "sex by surprise" really means, and the larger implications of rolling your eyes at it.

I'm not particularly interested in debating What Assange Did or Whether Assange Is A Rapist, and I'd appreciate it if we could steer clear of that in the comments section. Rather, I'm interested in pushing back on the primary media narrative about this case, which is that women lie and exaggerate about rape, and will call even the littlest thing -- a broken condom! -- rape if they're permitted to under a too-liberal feminist legal system. In fact, there are lots of good reasons to support consent-based sexual assault laws, and to recognize that consent goes far beyond "yes you can put that in here now." It's a shame that the shoddy, sensationalist reporting on this case have muddied those waters.

From Bulgaria, with love

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 06:27 PM PST

Something to keep in mind if you're ever in Bulgaria—the country boys are, according to one recent study, better endowed than their citified peers.

How To: Move a rock without touching it

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 06:07 PM PST

3181760104_015056605d_b.jpg

Racetrack Playa in Death Valley is famous for it's "living stones"—photographed here by BoingBoing reader Rajesh Vijayarajan. In this patch of desert, rocks, ranging in size from pebbles to boulders, have left trails in the dry clay, as if they moved across the mostly flat Playa by themselves.

Based on analysis of the trails, scientists assume the rocks do move, but they still don't know exactly how. To date, nobody's ever seen the process in action. But there is a good theory. It starts with the fact that Racetrack Playa is also, occasionally, a very shallow lake.

Researchers noticed that although some trails change direction, most trend in a generally southwest to northeast direction. This is consistent with the direction of the prevailing winds. ... After analyzing their rock trail map, researchers found that the longest, straightest trails are concentrated in the southeastern part of Racetrack Playa. In this area, wind is channelled through a low point in the mountains, forming a natural wind tunnel ...

The evidence suggests that strong gusts of wind and swirling dust devils, in combination with a slick playa surface may set even the heaviest the rocks in motion. Off they go, scooting along downwind until friction slows them down and they come to rest.

That's currently the accepted professional explanation.

But, based on what he observed on a trip to the Play, blogger Brian Dunning thinks the scientists are missing two key factors: Ice, and a lake that moves.

In the early spring of 2002, I made one of my many trips to Racetrack Playa with two friends, Dan Bocek and John Countryman. The surrounding mountains were still covered with snow, and the playa itself was firm but had a large lake covering about a fifth of its surface, perhaps an inch or two deep at its edges, concentrated at the playa's south end where it's lowest. We ventured out, armed with cameras, shortly before sunrise. The temperature was just above freezing. The wind, from the south, was quite stiff and very cold. When we reached the lake, we found to our great surprise that the entire lake was moving with the wind, at a speed we estimated at about one half of a mile per hour.

The sun was on the lake by now and we could see a few very thin ice sheets that were now dissolving back into water. This whole procession was washing past many of the famous rocks. It's easy to imagine that if it were only few degrees colder when we were there -- as it probably had been a couple of hours earlier -- the whole surface would be great sheets of thin ice. Solid ice, moving with the surface of the lake and with the inertia of a whole surrounding ice sheet, would have no trouble pushing a rock along the slick muddy floor. Certainly a lot more horsepower than wind alone, as has been proposed. The wind was gusty and moved around some, and since the surface is not perfectly flat and with rocks and various obstructions, the water didn't flow straight; rather it swapped around as it moved generally forward. Ice sheets driven by the water would move in the same way, accounting for the turns and curves found in many of the rock trails.

I didn't totally follow the description the first time I read it, but about half way through this video, you can see the phenomenon he's talking about. It's pretty fascinating.

Scientists have thought about the role ice might play in moving the stones, and they've mostly ruled it out. Why? Because fresh trails have been spotted during periods when the Playa was too warm for ice to form. (Check out Chapter 7 of this 1998 dissertation. It also gets into more detail about what makes the surface of the Playa slick enough that rocks could move over it when it was wet.)

That paper doesn't mention the action of the lake, itself, moving across the valley, though. And I haven't found any other scientific references that do. I wonder if this is something researchers haven't observed? Or if it's just interesting, but not necessary to the movement of the rocks.

Image used with permission. Found on the BoingBoing Flickr Pool.

College for Randroids goes bust

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:59 PM PST

Inside the world's first transistor

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 06:20 PM PST

I love prototype technology. There's a magic in seeing what the original working model looked like, which makes so many systems instantly more-understandable to a lay person. Strip away the perfection and packaging, and you can see what's really going on.

In this video, Bill Hammack—professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and part-time Engineer Guy for the Internet—demonstrates this effect by introducing us to a model of the world's first transistor. An amplifier for electric signals, transistors were at the heart of all the miniaturization and techno-populism that began in the 1960s and 70s. Watch this video, and you'll understand how a transistor works, and why these little things are so very important. Thanks, Engineer Guy!

Learn more at PBS's great Transistorized! site

Pundit calls for development of magical anti-Wikileaks computer virus

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:27 PM PST

It's hard to even begin to summarize coverage on Wikileaks-related stuff today. But if you read one thing, read Marc Thiessen's fresh item at the Washington Post. It's not the fact that he's vigorously opposed to Wikileaks that's interesting, but rather his understanding of the technology at the heart of this entire saga:
Some say attacking WikiLeaks would be fruitless. Really? In the past year, the Iranian nuclear system has been crippled by a computer worm called "Stuxnet," which has attacked Iran's industrial systems and the personal computers of Iranian nuclear scientists. To this day, no one has traced the origin of the worm. Imagine the impact on WikiLeaks's ability to distribute additional classified information if its systems were suddenly and mysteriously infected by a worm that would fry the computer of anyone who downloaded the documents. WikiLeaks would probably have very few future visitors to its Web site.
It all gives me this vision of Thiessen dreaming about single-handedly stopping Wikileaks by typing "OVERRIDE PASSWORD" into Julian Assange's laptop, then hitting the delete button after a stern British female voice declares "ACCESS GRANTED." Then there is a tense moment as a glowing neon blue progress bar slowly deletes Wikileaks, but will it finish before Julian returns from the virtual reality cyber conference with George Soros where they are laughing about having just gotten an oblivious Julian Sands thrown in jail?


Scientists figure out structure of enzyme that causes plaque to stick to teeth

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:34 PM PST

Scientists have modeled the structure of the enzyme used by the dirty rotten Lactobacillus reuteri bacterium to attach itself to tooth enamel and cause cavities. "This knowledge will stimulate the identification of substances that inhibit the enzyme. Just add that substance to toothpaste, or even sweets, and caries will be a thing of the past."
teeth-cavities.jpgThe University of Groningen researchers analysed glucansucrase from the lactic acid bacterium Lactobacillus reuteri, which is present in the human mouth and digestive tract. The bacteria use the glucansucrase enzyme to convert sugar from food into long, sticky sugar chains. They use this glue to attach themselves to tooth enamel. The main cause of tooth decay, the bacterium Streptococcus mutans, also uses this enzyme. Once attached to tooth enamel, these bacteria ferment sugars releasing acids that dissolve the calcium in teeth. This is how caries develops.
Tooth Decay to Be a Thing of the Past? Enzyme Responsible for Dental Plaque Sticking to Teeth Deciphered
Photo by Shakespearesmonkey. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Highlights from TEDWomen Session 1: finance in Iceland, Hans Rosling on washing machines, and how women + humor = change

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 09:45 PM PST

I'm at TEDWomen, which takes today and tomorrow at the International Trade Center in Washington, DC. The organizers have turned this venue into a wonderful little sanctuary with massage stations, a cartoon exhibit, and lots and lots of coffee — much needed after the red eye that brought me to the biting cold East Coast just this morning. Here are some highlights from the first session:

5242553392_97aa878f8b_z.jpeg

Hans Rosling gave a funny talk that posited economic development against the proliferation of the washing machine. When Rosling was seven, he watched his mother load a washing machine for the first time in his life. They invited his grandmother over to watch — she has been heating stoves on firewood to handwash clothes for seven children with her entire life — and the grandmother sat mesmerized in front of the contraption through the entire wash cycle. "To [her], the washing machine was a miracle."

It doesn't take much research to know that the bottom two billion people live on less than $2 a day — below the poverty line — and that one billion people spend more than $80 a day — above what he calls the "air" line. Rosling did some serious digging and number crunching to divvy up the economic scale by washing machine ownership. It turns out that an additional one billion people own washing machine, i.e. live above the "wash" line. These people spend about $40 a day. This means that, in a world with seven billion people, two billion have washing machines and the remaining five billion still wash their clothes by hand. This is a task that mainly falls on women, who spend hours every week performing this heavy-duty task by hand, often lugging water to their homes or their laundry to a water source far away. "They all want a washing machine. There's nothing different about their wish than my grandma's two generations ago in Sweden."

Rosling wrapped his talk with two important points: one, that as the population grows, the top consumers of money and energy need to spend less energy and transfer some of the current energy usage to green energy usage. Two, having a washing machine allowed him and his mother the time to enjoy things like reading books.

5242551846_6b294e7ba6_z.jpeg


Halla Tomasdottir explained how her financial firm, Audur Capital, survived Iceland's 2007 economic collapse without any direct losses because she incorporated feminine values into her business:


1. Risk awareness: not investing in things she didn't understand. "It's not complicated, but there was a lot of reckless risk-taking in 2007."

2. Straight talking: using simple language that people understand.

3. Emotional capital: "We believe that doing emotional due diligence is just as important as financial due diligence. It's people that make and lose money, not Excel spreadsheets."

4. Profit with principles: looking beyond just economic profits in the next quarter to long-term financial, social, and environmental benefits.

Tomasdottir thinks pairing female values with sustainability practices will yield some of the most interesting investment opportunities in the years to come. A lot of people try to rebuild models that have failed over and over again, but a new way of thinking about consumerism and the balance between the men and women could lead good businesses to change the world.


5242552496_d90a17c83b_z.jpeg


Also...


* New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly gave a hilarious illustrated short talk about the expectations girls grow up with (eat this, wear that, don't be like this); how her mother gave her a cartooning book instead of pushing these ideals on her; and how women + humor = change.

* Ted Turner showed up for a quick interview with organizer Pat Mitchell. He reiterated an idea presented in the past that, if only women held positions in elected office for the next 100 years, they would spent money on healthcare and education — not aircrafts and weapons — and end war. When asked what women have influenced him most, he said: "My mother, my last wife Jane Fonda, my daughters... and all the women I've loved before."


* In taped footage from a November TED event, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said this about being the "iron lady" of Africa: "Being a woman and going through what I went through set me apart and enabled me to achieve what I achieved. I've been a victor of circumstances."

Nick DeWolf's hungry eye

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:24 PM PST

nick_dewolf02.jpgNick DeWolf was one of those passionate, indefatigable amateurs who were just made to live on via the Internet. He wasn't an amateur at his chosen profession, which was engineering; he co-founded Teradyne, a manufacturer of electronic test equipment that survives him. In his spare time, though, he was a photographic hobbyist, and a good one, and over a period of about fifty years he photographed everything: Guys in cars. The Boston skyline. Women on subway platforms. How many images are there in total? Who knows? DeWolf's devoted son-in-law, Steve Lundeen, has been uploading them a few at a time to Flickr for about the last six years. There are now almost 44,000 of them. Taken together they represent a vast, varied swath of the latter 20th century. "He carried a camera with him at all times," Lundeen writes, "usually a family of cameras. If you knew Nick, you got used to this...eventually, he'd be pointing his camera at you." (Via Retro Thing.)

Susan Philipsz becomes first sound artist to win Turner Prize

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 02:53 PM PST

[Video Link]

Student protests greeted the announcement of Susan Philipsz as this year's winner of the Turner Prize, the biggest annual award for an artist in Britain.

Susan_Philipsz.jpg Philipsz is the first artist in the 26 years of the prize to win for a work of sound art.

As the Guardian noted, she is the "first person in the history of the award to have created nothing you can see or touch."

The students, though, weren't protesting the absence of visuals in Philipsz's art; they were using media coverage of the announcement as an opportunity to protest prospective diminished budgets for the arts at universities.

The work for which Philipsz was commended, an installation titled "Lowlands," involved recordings of her singing an oft-covered Scottish song, "Lowlands Away," being played by the river Clyde in her native Glasgow. Her plain, natural, casual (i.e., largely untrained) voice seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere. It echoed against a massive bridge structure, and mixed in with the sounds of the environment.

work_philipsz_lowlands.jpg


[ Photo: Susan Philipsz, LOWLANDS 2008 / 2010 Clyde Walkway, Glasgow. Courtesy of the artist, the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, and photographer Eoghan McTigue. ]

The news about Philipsz's triumph is great for several reasons. The 45-year-old Scottish artist's win marks a major milestone for sound art, which is to say for so-called fine art in which audio is the core if not sole constituent element. It wasn't just the first time a sound-art work won -- it was the first time one was even nominated for the Turner.


And it's also a maturing point for sound art, which often involves electronically produced noises, but as evidenced by Philipsz's headline-making accomplishment, can also comprise popular song. (In addition, it's worth noting that exactly two decades ago in 1990, there was no Turner prize at all due to the absence of a sponsor, so it's great the thing is still around.)

Philipsz is the fourth woman to win the Turner. Past winners include poop-friendly duo Gilbert & George, skull-bedazzler Damien Hurst, and video remixer Douglas Gordon (whose slowing down of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho provided inspiration for Don DeLillo's recent novella, Point Omega).

More on the prize at tate.org. See also this Guardian story (one of many).

Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet.com: Welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog!

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:59 PM PST

marc.jpg

Today is Boing Boing guestblogger bonanza day: first, I introduced astronomer and "Pluto Killer" Mike Brown, then evolutionary biologist and ür-atheist Richard Dawkins, and now I am thrilled to welcome Marc Weidenbaum.

In 1996, Marc founded the seminal and influential website/blog/e-newsletter Disquiet, covering all things related to ambient music, and the appreciation of sound as art.

He's written for Nature, NewMusicBox.org, The Ukulele Occasional, and other publications. He also edits comics. Oh! And he's the person behind the wonderful "Anander Mol, Anander Veig" Hanukkah album, electronic re-imaginings of holiday and Jewish classics.

As my colleague Pesco said, "He has excellent taste." Marc, welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog!

Erik Davis: new anthology Nomad Codes

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:31 PM PST

BB pal Erik Davis, my favorite writer on high weirdness, has published a new anthology of his essays and articles, titled Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica. Davis is the author of the classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism and The Visionary State, a beautiful art book in collaboration with photographer Michael Rauner about California's strange spiritual streams. In all his work, Erik riffs on our culture's strange attractors with intelligence, understanding, and wit, keeping an open mind without succumbing to "belief" in any one cosmic rap. In this collection, drawing from his contributions to Wired, Salon, the Village Voice, and elsewhere, Erik delves into the likes of the Klingon language, UFOs, HP Lovecraft, and, of course, his "Date with a Burmese Transvestite Spirit Medium." Erik speaks tonight, December 7th, at 7pm at San Francisco's famed City Lights Books in San Francisco, and Thursday, December 9 at 7:30pm, at the Annie Besant Lodge in Los Angeles. From an interview with Erik at Reality Sandwich:
Images I 61Htikkcz4L For the uninitiated, what is occulture? And why does it interest you?

I am not sure who exactly coined that term; there's a British scholar who gets recognized for it but it was also online back in the day. It's a good one. For me it means the place where popular culture meets the underground and very real currents of magic, mysticism, and the esoteric -- a stream that has always been with us, but which was rediscovered and reaffirmed, in not always healthy ways, in the 60s. "Occulture" is also a way to claim the occult or the religious fringe as a kind of cultural identity or playground, rather than an overly serious and hidden realm. I try to look at the mysteries from both ends -- I think its important to look at, say, the contemporary ayahausca scene as a scene, with dress codes and slang and rock stars, not as a sacred separate realm. (Even though sacred things can and do go down there.) At the same time I think it is important (or at least more rewarding) to look at our often junky world of late capitalist culture as a place where the seeds of insight and vision might be found, if only you look at the landscape in just the right way...

Nomad Codes is a punctuation point of sorts. I started writing professionally in the late 80s and I had a wonderful time for almost two decades, managing to make a living writing about things I loved or that intrigued me for magazines, alternative newspapers, and online outfits, while managing to squeeze off a few books along the way. The twin prongs of the financial collapse and the Internet, which has not only glutted the mindspace with words but has encouraged the notion that writing should be free (and now with ebooks further undermining the publishing industry), stabbed the livelihood of people like me -- "mid-list" or alternative writers who were never going to be be bigtime but could once keep it going on the margins. I also realized that my interests had shifted, that I was more interested in teaching and in the sorts of esoteric and intellectual questions that are hard to ask in today's mainstream jabberfest. Serendipitously, I saw an opening in the academic world for people interested in outsider topics like me. So I am currently pursuing a PhD at Rice under Jeff Kripal, who is doing fascinating work on alternative religion, the paranormal as the sacred, and superheroes as avatars of transhuman mysticism. I just wrote a long paper on Christian demonology, stage magic, and the Deleuzian idea of the phantasm. It was pretty cool.

Nomad Codes by Erik Davis

It's Only a Sliver Moon (Daily Astronomy Log with Mike Brown)

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:29 PM PST

Sunset_view_at_Paranal_with_Moon,_Venus_and_an_AT.jpg (photo via Wikipedia)

This past Sunday began the last lunar cycle of the year, which, for the first time in almost 20 years, includes a full moon on the winter solstice itself. I'm going to spend some of the time between now and then using the moon as a guide for a little tour of the night sky.

Tonight, if your clouds part enough in the evening to reveal the just-set sun - very nearly as far south as it will ever get - you should also get to see a tiny sliver of a new moon hanging like an ornament above it in the not-yet-dark skies. This sliver moon is, to my mind, one of the most impressive sights to periodically grace our skies. To me, the ethereal part is not the sliver itself, looking like a razor sharp sickle glowing in the sky, but the ghostly outline of the rest of the moon that can be faintly seen.

What is that ghostly outline? If you pay close attention you might even noticed that it disappears after a few days. By the time the moon is up to first quarter all you see is that bright sunlit half of the orb. It's hard to tell precisely what is happening, because as the moon waxes towards full it gets brighter and brighter and you might just think that you're having a harder time seeing that ghostly outline in the presence of that brighter moon. But, no, the outline is indeed getting fainter.

What's going on? With a little thinking about what is illuminating the moon we can figure it out pretty easily and even make sense of the little details of when it is brighter and when fainter.

First, a few well known simple concepts. The moon goes around the earth (counter-clockwise when viewed from above the north pole), and half of it is always illuminated by the sun while the other half is not. The fact that we see sliver moons, quarter moons, and full moons is not so much because the moon is changing, as that our vantage point is changing. On those bright full moon nights we are seeing all of the illuminated side and the back is dark. When the moon is new we're seeing the unilluminated half, but if we could fly in to space to see the back side we would see it look full from there. Just like the earth, the moon always has a day side and a night side.


Now, let's assume that we're looking straight down at the north pole of the earth and that the sun is off in the distance at the 6 o'clock position. The moon is there in its counter-clockwise orbit. How can we see a full moon? First, the moon had better be in the right place. If the moon is at the 12 o'clock position, the part of the moon visible from the earth is fully illuminated by the sun, making it full. But that's not all you need; you will also need to be on a spot on the earth where you can see the moon. The best spot to be would be would be standing at the 12 o'clock position on the earth. That 12 o'clock position is in the middle of the dark side of the earth. It's midnight. If you're outside and you look up and see the moon straight overhead, you know it must be midnight.


You can also tell from this general idea when the full moon must rise and set. The earth, again viewed from above the north pole, also rotates counter-clockwise. Where are you standing when you see the moon on the horizon? At the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock positions. But notice at these positions you can also see the sun in exactly the opposite direction. If you're standing in the 3 o'clock position and the earth is rotating counter-clockwise, though, the sun is soon going to disappear. Sunset! In the 9 o'clock position the sun is just appearing. Sunrise! The moon, when it is full, is doing just the opposite of the sun. So the full moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.

Let's try next Monday's first quarter moon as an example. The first quarter is after the new and before the full. Where is the moon? In the mental picture we have been painting ourselves it should be easy to see. If we see the moon only half illuminated, it must be in either the 3 or 9 o'clock positions. But we know the moon is moving counter-clockwise in its orbit and that it will be full soon, so it must be in the 3 o'clock position.


Knowing where the moon is immediately tells us when we will see it. Next week, as the sun sets, look for the moon. The sun setting means that you are standing on the 3 o'clock position on the earth. The moon will be right over head in the sky (note, though, that I'm ignoring the effects of latitude here; if you're at the north pole, the moon will never actually be overhead in the sky. So when I say overhead, you should take me to mean "as straight over head as it ever gets from where you live")


When does next week's first quarter moon rise? You will first see the first quarter moon - which is at the 3 o'clock position - when you are standing on the earth at the 6 o'clock position, directly underneath the sun. Noon. Next week, I'll remind you to see if you can go find the moon rising in the east a little after noon. To most people the appearance of the moon in the daytime sky is always a bit of a mystery. If you have ever felt this way, make next week the day it is no longer mysterious by setting out to find it by knowing where it should be.

All of this brings us back to sliver moons. How can we see just a sliver of light? We must be seeing mostly the night side, but just a tiny bit around to the day side. If the moon were at the 6 o'clock position, we would see only the night side, and it would be new moon (and we would have the possibility of an eclipse; the reason they don't happen all of the time is that the moon goes around the earth on a circle which is slightly tilted compared to where the sun is, so most of the time the circles actually don't cross. ). A few days after new moon, though, when the sun is at, say, the 5 o'clock position, we should see just the tiniest sliver of the sunlit side against a mostly dark moon.

When does a sliver moon set? If you're standing at the 3 o'clock position, the sun itself has just set, and the sliver moon is low in the sky in the same direction that the sun just set. The sliver moon is always close to the sun in the sky, so it must set soon thereafter.


But wait. What about the glow? If the sliver moon is caused by just seeing a little of the sunlit side of the moon but mostly seeing the dark side, how could there possibly be a ghostly glow coming from the dark side of the moon? The side that is glowing cannot see the sun at all. How can we see it?

The answer comes from thinking about what the earth looks like from the moon. If you were standing on the moon and the moon were full, what would you see? You would be looking at the dark half of the earth. The lights of the major cities would fill the otherwise dark void.

What if there moon were at first quarter and you were looking down? You would see half of the earth illuminated, the other half dark. The people right at the line between light and dark would be the people for whom the sun were just setting. Those people could look straight up in the sky and see you standing on the moon.

Finally, let's look at the sliver moon. When we see only a sliver of light on the moon, people standing on the moon see only a sliver of dark on the earth. The earth itself is almost full.

When the moon is full the nighttime is so bright that you can walk around the wilderness without carrying a flashlight. If you were on the moon and the earth were full, the light in the sky would be nearly 60 times brighter (the earth is both bigger and more reflective). You could read your spacesuit repair manual without carrying any lights at all. The landscape would be illuminated the same as if it were twilight on earth.


And you would see that illuminated landscape from the earth. The part of the moon that should be dark would glow in earth light. When the people on the earth see a sliver moon, the moon sees an almost full earth. The dark side glows with earthshine.


The earthshine also explains, of course, why the glow starts to fade as the moon goes from sliver to quarter. By the quarter moon, like tonight, the earth appears quarter, too. There is only half as much light to illuminate the dark side. And in another week, when the moon becomes full but the earth is new, the earthshine is totally gone.


So while the crescent sliver is light that comes from the sun, reflects off of the moon, and then arrives at the earth, the ghostly glow is light that comes from the sun, reflects off of the earth, arrives at the moon, reflects off the moon, and then arrives back at the earth. The glow is the ghost of us. Tonight, when you look up at the sliver moon, look for that glow of earthshine. And wave at it. The light from your wave will travel up to the moon and be back again 4 seconds later and you'll be part of what I think is the prettiest treats to grace our skies.


Previously:

• Die, Pluto, Die!

• Mike Brown, astronomer and "pluto killer," welcome to the Boing Boing guest blog!

Online merchant who terrified customers to improve SEO is so very busted

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:11 PM PST

Remember the recent BB post by Andrea James about the online retailer who said he "deliberately antagonizes customers because their angry online reviews are part of his search engine optimization strategy?" 34-year-old Vitaly Borker is busted. So busted.

Sometimes, Scientists are Furries (photo)

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:05 PM PST

RTXVG33.jpg A researcher dressed in a panda costume puts a panda cub into a box before its physical examination at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve, Sichuan province.

The 4-month old cub, the first in the center to be trained for reintroduction into the wild, is monitored by hidden cameras. Researchers performing physical examinations on the cub wear panda costumes to ensure that the cub's environment is devoid of human influence, according to local media.

Here's a related story in the UK paper Telegraph.

(Picture taken December 3, 2010. REUTERS)

The Decemberists and Polaroid

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 01:09 PM PST

Autumndewilde-Impossibleproject 2-1
Autumndewilde-Impossibleproject 1-1
Earlier today, Mark posted about the Impossible Project's refurbished Polaroids and new instant film for the cameras. The Impossible Project has also teamed up with rock photographer Autumn de Wilde and the excellent indie folk/rock group The Decemberists on the band's magnificent new album package. The deluxe box Edition of "The King Is Dead" contains an original Polaroid photo that de Wilde shot around the farm/recording studio where the band made the record and her own home of Los Angeles. Sneak previews above. De Wilde is best known for her photographic tribute books to Elliot Smith, The White Stripes, and Death Cab For Cutie. The box also holds a hardcover book of de Wilde's photos and illustrations by Carson Ellis, a limited edition Ellis print, the recording on 180 gram white vinyl, and other goodies. There are only 2500 available and they're $165/each.
The Decemberists

Poland's "Crooked House"

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 12:41 PM PST

Wikipedia Commons F F6 Krzywy Domek W Sopocie
The Krzywy Domek (Crooked House) is part of a shopping center in Sopot, Poland. The 2004 structure looks like a set from Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, but according to Wikipedia, it was "designed by Szotyńscy & Zaleski who were inspired by the fairytale illustrations and drawings of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg." Krzywy Domek

Snow Chihuahua (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 12:21 PM PST

snowdog.jpg "Cliffy Explodes," a photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Andy Meehan of Bozeman, Montana, where it is undoubtedly very cold today. Who says Chihuahuas aren't snow dogs?
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

CrunchyTech

Blog Archive