The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Anachronistic photoshopping
- Proto-Vader and proto-C3PO masks
- Automagically milled steampunk winter wonderland
- Giant penis crop-circle mysteriously erected at Eiffel Tower in Paris
- Obesity a greater threat to US military than homosexuality
- Wikileaks: Assange bail hearing in UK today, statement from jail
- 13-day Boeing 747 repaint in under 4 minutes
- Fantastic Ice Scraper
- Is open diplomacy possible?
- Dear Abby offers poor advice to insulted maker
- The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo-Boo
- Netlabels: Release, Remix, Repeat
- Freelance business writers make $25-30K a year, 2 of every 5 were laid off
- Making a virtual FAO Schwartz floor piano with the Xbox Kinect
- Star log for Monday, December 13, 2010
- Liu Xiaobo
- Boing Boing Charitable Giving Guide, the 2010 edition
- Bus driver loses job after officials discover video of snowman murder
- Scraping By (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Julian Assange's OK Cupid dating profile
- Wikileaks supporters and Anonymous stage offline protests, too (photo)
- Intonation (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Dan Gillmor's Mediactive: masterclass in 21st century journalism demands a net-native news-media
- Mark Pescovitz (1955-2010)
- Mark Dery on the politics of enthusiasm
- Chrome, the iPad and the Crossroads of Civilization
- Mask of circles
- Christmas gifts for dad made easy
- Mean Monkey Monday (bonus material 1)
- Hiaasen's STAR ISLAND: blisteringly funny tale of sleazy popstars and paparazzi
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 11:59 PM PST  Photoshop virtuoso Daniel Polevoy creates these "anachronistic portraits" by inserting bits of improbable whimsy from the modern day into old still images. Amazing Photo Collages by Daniel Polevoy (via Neatorama) |
| Proto-Vader and proto-C3PO masks Posted: 14 Dec 2010 12:01 AM PST  These aren't Vader and C3PO masks -- they're "rescue masks" from the 19th and early 20th centuries: This pair of early rescue masks, shown above, dates from between the mid-1800s and World War I. They look a bit familiar, right? Almost a 100 years before Darth Vader and 3-CPO hit the big screen in "Star Wars" in 1977, these two smoke helmets were worn by firefighters carrying our rescues in smoke-logged buildings. The buzz among collectors is that George Lucas's designers must have found inspiration in these smoke helmets and other like them. In fact, one well-known 19th-century manufacturer was named Vajen-Bader--you could easily get the name Vader from that.Before Steampunk: Star Wars' 1800s Roots (via Neatorama)
|
| Automagically milled steampunk winter wonderland Posted: 13 Dec 2010 11:15 PM PST  Bradvertising sez, "Dan Sawatzky designed and built a tech center for CNC equipment company MultiCam in British Columbia using their machines to create every piece of decor. Everything was designed in 3D and fabricated with the push of a button. It is supremely badass." MultiCam Western Canada's New Ultra-Cool Tech Center (Thanks, Bradvertising, via Submitterator!) |
| Giant penis crop-circle mysteriously erected at Eiffel Tower in Paris Posted: 13 Dec 2010 10:29 PM PST  Holy dueling Gallic phallic symbols, Batman! French journalist Aude Baron tells Boing Boing, On Friday, if you were going to the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, you could see a giant penis! It was drawn into the snow covering the grass. A Dutch tourist took a picture and posted it on Twitter. Amazing view! But what if it was a PhotoShop? To be sure, I called the store which is a the first floor of the Tour Eiffel, and I was confirmed the masterpiece was still here, making everyone laugh. Unfortunately the garden department of Paris city hall told me they would soon rake it up.Full story here in Lepost.fr. The original picture is here. |
| Obesity a greater threat to US military than homosexuality Posted: 13 Dec 2010 09:42 PM PST "In 2008, some 634 military personnel were discharged for transgressing 'don't ask, don't tell.' That same year, 4,555 were discharged for failing to meet military weight standards." (via Souris) |
| Wikileaks: Assange bail hearing in UK today, statement from jail Posted: 13 Dec 2010 10:52 PM PST  (PHOTO contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by BB reader Mark Burban, aka pixelwhip.) • Lawyers for Julian Assange will today attempt to gain bail for the Wikileaks founder, who is currently being held in a UK prison on sex crime charges. • Anonymous may target UK websites if bail is denied. • Assange issued a statement from jail by way of his mother, which said in part, "We now know that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are instruments of US foreign policy. It's not something we knew before." • Assange's attorney Mark Stephens: "We have heard from the Swedish authorities that there has been a secretly impaneled grand jury in Alexandria (Virginia)." By the way, Mark Stephens is on Twitter. |
| 13-day Boeing 747 repaint in under 4 minutes Posted: 13 Dec 2010 09:44 PM PST Manchester-based Vivid Photo Visual created this piece for Boing Boing's aviation friends at Virgin. It shows the remarkable amount of work it takes to repaint a Boeing 747 with new Virgin Atlantic livery. Like any good repaint, preparation takes most of the time. Those enormous stencils must be fun to wrestle with, too! Video link. (via Johnson Banks) |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 03:16 PM PST  I bought this Fantastic Ice Scraper in 1982 at a gas station in Wisconsin. It's such a superior scraper that I've been careful to make sure it transferred from disposed-of vehicle to replacement vehicle four times since then. The thin, stiff, but mildly conforming brass blade slides easily between ice and glass and does so without scratching because brass is softer than glass. Oh, yeah, it still costs $2. Important: don't use it to hack at the ice because you may deform the brass blade, after which it won't slide between ice and glass well at all. -- Jeff Morrow Brass blade is the real deal. I've given these to friends and family because they are so much better than the crappy plastic ones. Brass is soft enough to not damage the glass. The blade is thin and not really sharp to the touch, but is great on ice. The plastic scrapers get dull pretty quickly and then just skip over really tough ice. -- Scott Christensen Had one of these for years and it was the best I have ever used. You just have to be careful about hitting the rubber gasket with it - it will cut. That is the reason the blade is not as wide as the blade holder. -- Jim Sheafer Fantastic Ice Scraper $2 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool! |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 02:58 PM PST  Bioethicist Peter Singer has a thought-provoking piece on Wikileaks' Cablegate, in which he discusses The Treaty of Versailles, one of the most notable pieces of secret diplomacy. Since the treaty bore substantial responsibility for several of the conditions that led to World War II, Singer says "it has a fair claim to being the most disastrous peace treaty in human history." He brings up points both pro and con: Openness is in this respect like pacifism: just as we cannot embrace complete disarmament while others stand ready to use their weapons, so Woodrow Wilson's world of open diplomacy is a noble ideal that cannot be fully realized in the world in which we live.Is open diplomacy possible? (project-syndicate.org) via @EvgenyMorozov (Image: Detail from William Orpen (1919). The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919. via Wikimedia Commons) |
| Dear Abby offers poor advice to insulted maker Posted: 13 Dec 2010 02:32 PM PST  Handmade card by amy[treespacestudio] Yesterday's Dear Abby offers a plaintive story sent in by "BLUE AT CHRISTMAS," a maker: DEAR ABBY: Five years ago, when my niece was 9, we came up with the idea of making Christmas cards and sending them out to special friends and family members. We both work hard to make sure each is attractive and in good taste, and we handwrite a personal note inside. We also print on the back that the card was "handmade with love." This has become a tradition for the two of us, and the cards are quite beautiful. Last year, after we sent them out, I received a card from a friend with a small check inside. The card read, "I'm sending you this check so you can afford to buy 'real cards' next year."Further consultations with 'friends' revealed that they too thought she was a cheapskate, even though making them by hand actually incurred greater costs. Unfortunately, Abby's response is absolutely inadeqate! She recommends: "I hope you returned it and deleted her from your Christmas card list." This will not do. BLUE AT CHRISTMAS, the trick here is to respond to your friend's meanspirited ignorance with a Tsar Bomba of passive aggression. I have prepared a letter for you to mail to her in response, which should also be copied (by hand!) to any friends of yours similarly unimpressed by the beautiful handiwork produced by your niece and yourself. Dear Peregrina, I'm sorry that our carefully hand-made cards, prepared at far greater expense than the cheap, mass-produced ones you mail out each year, lack whatever it is that animates your sense of worth. It's true that when it comes to expressing the spirit of Christmas, there's nothing quite like a generic illustration of Santa Claus or a pine tree inaccurately overprinted with glitter, embossed into the world's most inexpensive polyeurethane-sealed card stock. Nevertheless, my niece and I will take our chances with the creative enjoyment we fill our family time with, which we will continue to share with our genuine friends. Yours sincerely, BLUE AT CHRISTMAS This marks the extent of your own correspondence. On the separately-mailed and uncashed check, however, have the child respond with the following, in flesh crayola: Upset my auntie again and I'll rip your head off and make macramé doilies out of your miserable gin-tightened sinews, you consumption-addicted simulation of a human being. Merry Christmas. You may also buy your friend an appropriate cross stitch.  Honestly, I don't know why they keep Abby on. |
| The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo-Boo Posted: 13 Dec 2010 02:19 PM PST If you've seen the trailer for the upcoming Yogi Bear 3D CGI atrocity, you may have had fleeting fantasies about the scenario Edmund Earle created. Rarely do concept and execution (!) come together this seamlessly, though. Video link. (via @PaulScheer) |
| Netlabels: Release, Remix, Repeat Posted: 13 Dec 2010 02:13 PM PST  (Photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Josh Koonce) If there's a more robust realm of music more closely simpatico with the Creative Commons philosophy than netlabels, please let me know what it is. Netlabels are online record labels that actively release music for free download, with the full and enthusiastic participation of the musicians involved. The vast majority use a Creative Commons license that allows for free download, attributed redistribution, and remixing. They are largely enterprises invested heavily in electronic music, albeit a wide and disparate range thereof -- from phonography (darkwinter.com) to sound art (stasisfield.com) to techno (monokrak.net) to instrumental hip-hop (dustedwax.org) and beyond. As just one sign of the phenomenon's ever-increasing popularity, there are various competing curated lists of netlabels available online. The one I refer to primarily is maintained at disruptiveplatypus.wordpress.com/netlabels. As of this typing, it contains 13 scrolling screens of active netlabels (OK, I'm on a netbook; your scrolling may vary), from the Guadalajara, México-based amp-recs.com to the Modena, Italy-based zymogen.net (plus a bunch whose monikers start with numbers or symbols). Since these netlabels exist almost entirely online, they're pretty much known solely by their URLs -- though there are several, like the estimable Portugal-based Test Tube, that have less mnemonic-friendly addresses (it's at monocromatica.com/netlabel/). Some, like the Switzerland-based insubordinations.net, sell lovely collectible limited-edition physical artifacts.
The Disruptive Platypus list also maintains a helpful set of netlabels that while having ceased operation still archive some or all of their back catalogs for continued consumption, including what was if not the first netlabel then was certainly one of the first, Monotonik (link), which ran from 1996 through 2009. The operative word is "archive," as a lot of these netlabel websites are really just wrappers around archive.org-hosted files. Another popular free hosting service is the netlabel-dedicated sonicsquirrel.net. Since these netlabels sometimes disappear for periods of time with no formal announcement as to why, the Disruptive Platypus archive defines inactivity as a label that's been silent for more than six months. But you never know when one will reanimate. The promising yoyo pang! netlabel (ambulatore.com/yoyo) ran steadily throughout 2008, and only released one single song in 2009. And then just last week, on December 8, it popped up again -- like a sudden, brief signal on a forgotten numbers station -- with three tracks of glistening glitch. Who knows what will come of netlabels? It's possible that true micropayments will turn them into commercial enterprises. If streaming actually manages to replace downloading, perhaps they'll become indistinguishable from online radio stations. In the meanwhile, the netlabel is a prosperous undertaking, and our ears and sonic imaginations are the beneficiaries. |
| Freelance business writers make $25-30K a year, 2 of every 5 were laid off Posted: 13 Dec 2010 01:47 PM PST "Freelance business journalists in North America make an average of $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and two out of every five were laid off, according to an informal survey conducted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers." Data from 2010. Related: Federal Poverty Guidelines for the USA, Data from 2009. (via Romenesko) |
| Making a virtual FAO Schwartz floor piano with the Xbox Kinect Posted: 13 Dec 2010 01:53 PM PST Recently untethered from the Xbox, independent developers have been making some really awesome pieces of software with the Kinect. This project is a perfect example of what's possible when anyone can start writing code for new hardware.
These guys used the OpenKinect library and some Python code to make a virtual keyboard they can place on any surface. The Kinect is accurate enough to allow them to play on a small space on their desk, but also allows them to scale it up to a whole room and get their Tom Hanks on. [via Kinect Hacks] |
| Star log for Monday, December 13, 2010 Posted: 13 Dec 2010 01:53 PM PST  (photo: "Starry Twilight," contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by Mike Geiger of Ottawa, Canada.) I'm assigning no new astronomical homework for tonight. It's your chance to catch up in case your schedule or your clouds or your sleep have prevented you from going out and seeing the sights yet. Mercury is still visible just as the sky gets dark after sunset. I saw it last night, but the skies were thoroughly clear and the horizon was thoroughly flat if you miss it this time around, fear not there will be better chances coming soon, so keep yourself aware by following something like the fabulous nightly Earth & Sky site. If you were ever unsure which object in the sky is Jupiter tonight is definitely your night. First, find the moon, the find the really really bright thing next to it. Bingo. Even with the moon so bright you can still get out those binoculars and check out where the moons of Jupiter are this time. The moon has climbed now all the way to first quarter. It rises around noon; see if you can impress your friends by pointing it out in the afternoon! And, the best treat of all, tonight should be the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, which is well worth waking up in the middle of the night for.
|
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 01:21 PM PST  An image of dissident writer Liu Xiaobo is projected on a hotel in the center of Oslo, Norway, following the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony on December 10, 2010. The jailed Chinese activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a ceremony where he was represented by an empty chair and he dedicated it from prison to the "lost souls" of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. (REUTERS/Toby Melville) |
| Boing Boing Charitable Giving Guide, the 2010 edition Posted: 14 Dec 2010 04:55 AM PST Boing Boing's charitable giving guide has become a seasonal tradition of ours, listing the charities we personally support and want to give more attention to. As in previous years, we invite you to add your own favorite charities in the comments section. Last year, the econopocalypse gave the charitable sector a rough holiday season. A year on, improvements are slow to come. But many of these charities help keep the world fair, free and healthy, so please spare what you can.
Electronic Frontier Foundation It seems like every year, EFF's reason for existence becomes more self-evident: from Wikileaks-panic censorship to cozy telcoms deals to scuttle network neutrality to scary evoting mysteries to more warrantless wiretapping... EFF was founded by people who realized that the electronic world would quickly become as important as the real world for many aspects of our lives, and that the civil liberties battles we've fought in "real life" would have to be fought all over again online, by technically skilled, principled people. EFF always gets my biggest donation -- because our future is riding on it.
Creative Commons has permeated my life in a thousand ways -- on Boing Boing and in my writing, Creative Commons is responsible for how I get the job done and how I get paid for it. CC's advocacy of a nuanced, intelligent position on creativity and sharing changes the lives of creators, educators, scientists, scholars, and kids, all over the world. —CD
The Participatory Culture Foundation PCF keeps on growing and making me proud to serve on its board. In addition to Miro, its brilliant Internet video client, they've just shipped their ambitious Universal Subtitles project, which aims at nothing less than to render every video on the Web universal, multilingual, and accessible. —CD
The Friends of the Merril Collection Friends of the Merril Collection: Every library's "friends" organization deserves your support, but the Merril is special -- it's the largest public science fiction reference collection in the world, and performs a real service for the global community of sf writers and readers. As of this year, Americans can also get a tax-receipt for their donations to the Merril. —CD
Compassionately healing seals from diseases they did not want to contract the Marine Mammal Center then releases them into their native habitat -- if you are a marine dwelling mammal in trouble, and they can find you -- its proof positive the MMC will do their all to ensure your return to health. This tireless and heroic group of full-time staff and army of well trained volunteers need our help to continue helping beautiful creatures who can not help themselves. — JW
From Gen. Buford's heroic first day defense to Pickett's disastrous charge -- no three days more define the struggle we now call the American Civil War. Viewed as the turning point of the war and the high-water mark of the confederacy, walking the roads, fields and hills of Gettysburg truly allows you to feel a deep connection with men and women who struggled here. Sadly, developers and other creeps continually try to modify, encroach upon and invade this monument; luckily we have an organization that still fights to preserve and continually improve access and education in and around the park - the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg. They tirelessly work to preserve my favorite National Park, which is saying a lot as I live inside another. — JW
Youth Radio is an afterschool program that teaches journalism, media, and audio production skills to underserved young people, mostly high school age You can hear their stories on National Public Radio, local airwaves, and of course online. A lot of the graduates stick around for a while as paid writers, producers, engineers, and teachers. — DP
The US's oldest and biggest grassroots environmental organization. Whether it's protecting endangered species, opposing dams, or helping you learn how to green your home, the Sierra Club has spent more than a century trying to keep the wonder of the natural world wonderful. — DP
Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational group that helps young people study issues around racism, antisemitism, and prejudice in history, from the Holocaust to today's immigrant experiences to the killing fields of Cambodia. Their aim is to teach young people "to think critically, to empathize, to recognize moral choices, to make their voices heard, we put in their hands the possibility--and the responsibility--to do the serious work demanded of us all as citizens." — DP
Contact asobrevivientes@yahoo.es or info@sobrevivientes.org. Telephone (502) 2285-0100 or (502) 2285-0139 Fundacion Sobrevivientes (In English, "Survivors Foundation") works to end "femicide" in Guatemala. They provide legal aid, psychological care, and protection for rape victims -- including children. They assist women whose children have been snatched from them to be sold illegally into adoption. They provide support for families of female assassination victims. Founder Norma Cruz was featured in the documentary Killer's Paradise. Her work links the murders of thousands of Guatemalan women to the country's 36-year civil war. She, her colleagues, and family are frequently targeted by those who seek to prevent the center's work. — XJ
Free Software Foundation/Defective By Design The Free Software Foundation's principled litigation, license creation and campaigning is fierce, uncompromising and has changed the world. You interact with code that they made possible a million times a day, and they never stop working to make sure that the code stays free. —CD
Via Susannah Breslin, whose "War Project" interviews I've blogged here on Boing Boing, a recommendation to consider the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project. The group works to raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members; helps injured service members aid and assist each other, and provides unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members. Many veteran's charities exist, few get as much good work done for actual vets as this one.—XJ
A free repository for all of human knowledge, a bottomless source of bandwidth and storage, the Internet's collective memory, the reinvention of the library right before our eyes. I don't know what I'd do without it. —CD
The Gutenberg Project: The world's leading access-to-public-domain project. They have truly created a library from nothing, and oh, what a library. —CD
I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the MusicBrainz project. MusicBrainz is a free and open alternative to the evil (dis)Gracenote, which took all the metadata about CDs that you and I keyed in and locked it away behind a wall of patents and onerous licensing deals. The org that controls the metadata controls the world -- this needs to be in the public's hands. —CD
I'm also a volunteer on Clarion's board, helping to oversee the world-famous Clarion Writers' Workshop, a bootcamp for sf writers that has produced some of the finest talents in our field, including Octavia Butler, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and Lucius Shepard. I'm a graduate myself, and an instructor (I taught in 2005 and 2007) -- I received a substantial scholarship to the workshop in 1992 and it changed my life. I will pay that debt forward every year. —CD
Just famed for their principled, effective campaigning for justice and fair treatment under the law, Amnesty has its finger in every pie -- freeing Gitmo detainees, defending jailed journalists, fighting torture and human trafficking, and standing up to bullies wherever they find them. They deserve every cent we can give them. —CD
I make a donation to this charity every year in memory of my dear friend, former Boing Boing guestblogger Pat York. Pat was killed in a car accident, and her family nominated this charity for memorial gifts. —CD
For the liberties the EFF doesn't cover, here in sticky meatspace, we have the ACLU. Fearless upholders of the Constitution -- an org that knows that you have to stand up for the rights of people you disagree with, or you aren't in a free society. Unwinding the violence done to fundamental freedoms over the past eight years will take time and money. The number of bad laws and regulations to overturn is staggering. —CD
I travelled to Mumbai last year for research and was overwhelmed by the terrible, ubiquitous child poverty -- thousands and thousands of children, barefoot, disfigured, begging. I asked my Indian friends about it and was told that it was endemic to Mumbai and India in general, and that many children are exploited by desperate parents or criminal "pimps" who muscle them out of the majority of their earnings. As a new parent, I couldn't help but wonder again and again how I would feel if it were my child living in those circumstances. I'm no stranger to poverty -- I helped build schools with Nicaraguan refugees in Central America, worked to set up an NGO in sub-Saharan Africa -- but I'd never seen anything to rival this. On advice from my Indian friends, I investigated and made a donation to CRY). CRY works to remedy the root causes of child poverty in India, in cities and the countryside, with a special emphasis on protecting girls from exploitation. The problem is deep and huge, but the solution has to begin somewhere. CRY also maintains a UK site for British donors. —CD Canadian Charities
Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation My aunt Heather died of breast cancer when she was only 41. My whole family is now involved with the society. I don't live in Toronto and can't join the annual run for the cure there, but at least I can donate to the cause. —CD
As Britain's slide into the surveillance society continues, as unelected officials present insane proposals to dismantle privacy and due process to catch pirates, ORG just gets more and more relevant. Membership is up 25% since the Digital Economy Bill was introduced and it continues to grow. Your £5/month pays to keep the lights on for a group of activists working to keep DRM off the BBC, working to ensure that you won't lose your Internet connection because someone in your house was accused of infringement. —CD
NO2ID stands as the nation's best, last bulwark against an Orwellian nightmare of universal tracking. NO2ID has won substantial victories against the New Labour's compulsive move towards a national ID card, keeping it at bay for years. The government wants to issue me (and other immigrants) one of these when my visa next renews, in two years. If they try to, I'll leave and take my family with me. My grandparents fled the Soviet Union rather than live under a ubiquitous surveillance system -- I'm not going to be enmeshed in one two generations later. —CD
Britain's answer to the American Civil Liberties Union. Every single time I read or hear a news-story about incursions on human rights in the UK, there's an articulate, knowledgeable Liberty commentator countering government's flimsy arguments and campaigning for our freedom. In an era where politicians spy on us seemingly through naked instinct, like ants building hills, it's groups like Liberty that present our best bulwark against tyranny. —CD
Software in the public interest -- it's a damned good idea. MySociety produces software like Pledgebank ("I will risk arrest by refusing to register for a UK ID card if 100,000 other Britons will also do it") and TheyWorkForYou (every word and deed by every Member of Parliament). It's plumbing for activists and community organizers. —CD |
| Bus driver loses job after officials discover video of snowman murder Posted: 13 Dec 2010 12:55 PM PST [video link] An Illinois bus driver lost their job (or quit, it's not entirely clear) after supervisors at the transit agency viewed this YouTube video of the driver running over a snowman in the middle of a street. The video is posted on YouTube. It shows the bus veering toward the snowman on the University of Illinois campus and running over it. The video was posted after a snowstorm earlier this month and shows only one other vehicle on the street at the time. That car steered around the snowman moments before the bus hit it. It isn't clear who built the snowman or shot the video.Story's here. Next: Anonymous vs. Bus Drivers? |
| Scraping By (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 13 Dec 2010 12:13 PM PST  "Scraping By," a photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by user Ricardo Wang of Portland, OR. |
| Julian Assange's OK Cupid dating profile Posted: 13 Dec 2010 12:11 PM PST # I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil. Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women! |
| Wikileaks supporters and Anonymous stage offline protests, too (photo) Posted: 13 Dec 2010 11:30 AM PST  WikiLeaks supporters wear masks of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Guy Fawkes masks emblematic of "Anonymous" during a demonstration calling for the release of Assange from prison. This photograph was taken in Malaga, southern Spain, over the weekend—but demonstrations took place in a number of cities around the world. (photo: REUTERS/Jon Nazca) |
| Intonation (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 13 Dec 2010 11:05 AM PST  Intonation: a beach in Scotland, contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by greengymdog of Aberdeen, UK. |
| Dan Gillmor's Mediactive: masterclass in 21st century journalism demands a net-native news-media Posted: 13 Dec 2010 11:14 AM PST  Dan "We, the Media" Gillmor's latest book, Mediactive is a master-class in media literacy for the 21st century. Gillmor, a former star reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, serial entrepreneur, and journalism professor, has produced an extraordinary text that disrupts the current poor-me narrative of failing journalistic business models and counters it with a set of sensible, entrepreneurial proposals for an Internet era news-media that invites broad participation without surrendering critical thinking and healthy skepticism. Mediactive is divided into three sections. The first section is a history of the dismal state of current media -- partisan and bickering, financially troubled, insufficiently critical of power and overly sensitive to Internet upstarts. Gillmor explains how reporters can (and sometimes do) use online media to get their stories straight, and in so doing, explains how you can do the same, and become a smarter consumer of, participant in, and maker of news. This is a crash-course in being a better consumer of the news, asking active questions about how the news you see and hear and read is constructed. Part two is an information age journalism program encapsulated in a swiftly moving section on using tools and systems to make better news. Even if you're not planning on starting up your own blog, wiki, mailing list, or even a newspaper, this section should be required reading for anyone hoping to understand how smart use of the right tool can put the news in the service to its community, structured around the values of truth, humility, and honor. Part three is a big-think piece on the way that institutions -- from j-schools to the FTC and Congress -- can and should change the way they do things to clear the way for journalism that works with the net, not against it. Covering issues from pedagogy to DRM law, from comment moderation to Network Neutrality, Gillmor moves into the macro-scale with the same deftness that he brings to the details in part two. The overall book left me feeling smarter and more doubtful about the things I think I know about media, which is a heady combination. But it's not an unusual one for my interactions with Dan Gillmor, who is truly a journalist's journalist for the modern age, unparalleled for thoughtfulness, critical thinking, and technical savvy. His entrepreneurial, can-do approach to creating a sustainable networked press is a refreshing change from the Cold War rhetoric about parasitic bloggers and MSM dinosaurs. Mediactive (which features a great foreword by Clay Shirky) is available as a free, CC-licensed download (also in PDF and a print-on-demand book from Lulu.com. Gillmor's Mediactive site contains further resources and conversations on the book. |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 09:37 PM PST  "Blue Depth: Catedral de sal de Zipaquira" by Mark Pescovitz My oldest brother Mark Pescovitz died yesterday in a car accident. Mark was a true Renaissance man -- a transplant surgeon, medical researcher, fine artist, and philanthropist. Mark was a professor of microbiology/immunology and director of the transplant immunology laboratory at Indiana University School of Medicine. He didn't become a scientist when he grew up -- he was always a scientist. Mark was a maker from a very young age. He scavenged electronics by the pound and, before he was even a teenager, built a laser that he turned into an alarm system. He entered the project in a city science fair but didn't win because the judges refused to believe he made it himself. He built a chemistry lab in our basement, a darkroom in a spare bathroom, and a model rocket shop in our attic. Inspired by the space race, Mark dreamed of being an astronaut, was an early member of the National Association of Rocketry, and as an adult applied to be a medical doctor aboard the space shuttle. Mark taught me why a broken TV isn't junk and how to treat sulfuric acid with respect. He gave me my first computer and a book on programming. This year, he transformed my son into a dedicated rocketeer in just one afternoon. Ever since he was in high school, Mark had a passion for documentary photography. As his medical research became global, Mark had many new opportunities to take pictures. He had visited more parts of the world than almost anyone I know, from Malaysia, Egypt, and Iran to China, Israel, and Turkey, to perform surgery, train doctors in remote regions, present his research, and meet with collaborators. To maintain his sanity with such a hectic travel schedule he always added an extra day whenever he visited a new place to just explore the locale on his own with his camera. He treated that day as sacred, keeping it free of commitments. "Few would consider flying to Manila (a 15 hour non-stop flight) for a one day meeting a 'pleasure' trip," Mark once said, "but by bringing my camera and taking an extra day to wander around shooting photos, the perspective of the trip completely changes." One of 1000+ photos from Egypt, 2008, by Mark Pescovitz In 2008, Indiana University held an exhibition of my brother's travel photography, titled "The Unconventional Tourist." His photography also was featured in a group show at Boston's GASP experimental art gallery. Over the last few months, Mark was preparing a new series of photographs that he told me involved "collections of things." He mentioned that he had also acquired a large Van de Graaf generator for the project. I'm not sure why, but I bet he had a lot of fun with it. Mark was also a collector of fine art, finding inspiration in pieces by Chuck Close, Christo, MarÃa Magdalena Campos-Pons, and younger emerging artists. Mark loved music, from classical to bluegrass, and at various points in his life took up violin and mandolin. He served on the board of several charity organizations and was particularly excited about helping with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Mark and Ora have always been incredibly generous with their time and money, donating to many Jewish, medical, education, and art causes and making themselves available to those organizations in very real ways. My brother often spoke of the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, meaning that one should live with purpose, to help heal the world. Mark did that, with joy, wit, and passion. And the world is a little better for it.
|
| Mark Dery on the politics of enthusiasm Posted: 13 Dec 2010 08:41 AM PST Just look at Mark Dery's delightful essay about the "politics of enthusiasm." Just look at it. Embracing the positivity gospel of Alice Roosevelt Longworth's famous pillow, whose embroidered homily still tut-tuts at visitors to Hyde Park, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me," blogs that trade in the currency of exuberance tend to be epic catalogs of Things We Like. Indexes of enthusiasms, they ratify popular perceptions of blogs as virtual wunderkammern (Baroque "cabinets of wonder").Hate is All Around: The Politics of Enthusiasm (and its Discontents) |
| Chrome, the iPad and the Crossroads of Civilization Posted: 13 Dec 2010 08:43 AM PST  Photo: 惟①刻¾ John Brownlee on the shift to tailored, mobile-style user interfaces on personal computers: There's a lot of criticism of Google Chrome OS by the old vanguard of legacy computer users. "We already have netbooks, and those netbooks already run more full featured operating systems like Windows or even Ubuntu that everyone's already familiar with. Chrome OS is a backwards step: why would you give up local storage and backwards compatibility with older programs to be in the cloud when you can use a proper operating system and still be in the cloud too?" These people are missing the point.Unevenly Distributed: Chrome, the iPad and the Crossroads of Civilization [Gearfuse] |
| Posted: 13 Dec 2010 08:38 AM PST  Lynfyr's Mask of Circles, inspired by artsy video game Shadow of the Colossus, weds excellent handiwork with an atavistic quality that'll look great amid the standard issue furry kitten ears at your next pagan rite. Mask of Circles [$165 at Etsy] |
| Christmas gifts for dad made easy Posted: 13 Dec 2010 01:07 PM PST This Christmas, don't overthink it when it comes to dad's gifties: mom's might require careful deliberation and forethought, but pops can be taken care of using this simple guide, which determines the best three choices depending on his age group:
A degree of leeway is permitted in the details. For example, if dad fancies that he can tell the difference, upgrade to Lagavulin 16 and make do with Ryobi in the shop. If he's handy, splurge on Craftsman and rein the budget back in with Canadian Mist. If he has issues with the sauce, go wild on the other two: DeWalt and cashmere. In any case, don't skimp. If it comes in a plastic bottle, smells of glue or has the words "Black and Decker" on the side, you haven't spent enough money. Finally, if he asks for a jigsaw puzzle, don't fight it. It's a natural part of the aging process and the best thing you can do is help him accept it with dignity and grace. (If you insist on being clever about all this, don't miss our 2010 Gift Guide) |
| Mean Monkey Monday (bonus material 1) Posted: 13 Dec 2010 08:58 AM PST  Wild primates vs. domesticated primates in Japan. There really isn't much that needs translating in this report: it's just a collection of footage showing monkeys attacking people, grabbing food from the hands of tourists, shoplifting, and doing other aggressive or shocking things.The Aggressive Monkeys of Nikko More Mean Monkeys: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |11 |
| Hiaasen's STAR ISLAND: blisteringly funny tale of sleazy popstars and paparazzi Posted: 13 Dec 2010 02:29 PM PST Cherry Pye (nee Cheryl Bunterman) is a semi-underage, self-regarding, lip-synching pop star created out of raw greed: hers, her parents', and her scumbag promoter's. She's so whacked out on star-power (AKA vodka, Red Bull, a rainbow of pharmaceuticals, and weirdly, laxatives and birdseed) (don't ask) that she needs her own body-double: Ann DeLusia, an out-of-work actor who's job it is to appear in public, pretending to be Cherry Pye while Cherry herself gets her stomach pumped or is dried out at a tony rehab. But when a semi-homicidal, loathsome (and, weirdly, Pulitzer-winning) paparazzo named Claude becomes obsessed with Cherry and her no-doubt-imminent OD demise, the peaceful equilibrium of the "singer"'s life is shattered. What unfolds is classic Hiaasen, a series of misadventures involving some of my favorite characters from Hiaasen's other crime novels -- Skink, the feral ex-governor of Florida and Chemo, the 7-foot-tall, one-armed bumbling hitman whose face looks like it was mauled by a cheese-grater (don't ask) and whose left forearm has been augmented with a strap-on, battery-powered weed-whacker. Hiaasen is so totally, utterly over-the-top in his humor, and so completely spot-on in his pop-culture skewerage (here he tackles stardom, PR, botox, blogging, Twitter, digital photography, subprime crises, and numerous other contemporary subjects) and yet so deft at creating incredibly likable protagonists and real dramatic tension that he redefines what "screwball" can mean. I read Star Island over a weekend, sneaking away to cadge another page or two every few minutes, staying up late, getting up early. When I finished it, all I could say, was "Goddamn, that was a great book," over and over again, for about 20 minutes. It's a wonder my family didn't strangle me. |
As a medical researcher, Mark authored several hundred scientific publications on immunology and transplantation. Most recently, he and his colleagues published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine about a new way to slow and possibly even stop the progression of type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile-onset diabetes. In recent years, he traveled to Eldorat, Kenya to teach physicians there how to do their first kidney transplants. He brought his amazing wife Ora and kids Aliza, Naomi, and Ari with him, and they helped care for children in the town whose parents were suffering from AIDS. For Mark's efforts in Eldorat, the community there named him an honorary "Village Elder." 
People ask me all the time who my favorite writer is, and I always say something like, "Aw, I suck at favorites, here's bunch I like." But you know what? Secretly, my favorite writer is Carl Hiaasen -- specifically, his crime novels (though I'll trade a book of his essays or one of his brilliant kids' books for most any other book in the same field). After a four year hiatus, Hiaasen is back at crime novels with | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment