The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- New Southampton hackspace seeks members
- Filmography 2010: 270 movies mixed into one 6 min video
- Work with EFF's international team as a Google Policy Fellow
- Typewriter art from Keira Rathbone
- Wikileaks: U.S. Air force blocks more than 25 news sites that published secret cables
- Sleepy: Wild Parrot of Telegraph Hill (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Who is the specimen that describes Homo sapiens?
- Peer review gets catty
- Do one thing. Do it really well. Repeat.
- QR Code Scavenger Hunt
- If You Meet the Buddha Machine on the Road, Hack It
- Santa Claus is coming to your sky
- Internet posters angry at computers with which they are unfamiliar
- Doggie crosses his eyes on command
- Academic paper in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure
- Homemade felted magnetic Katamari Damacy set
- Naomi Wolf on rape, justice and Julian Assange
- What's in a (species) name?
- Comic strip versions of stories from Wikileaked cables
- HiLobrow merit badge giveaway
- Computer to race humans to drive deepest spikes on Jeopardy! railroad
- Council of Europe accuses Kosovo's prime minister of organlegging
- Michael Moore puts up $20K for Assange's bail
- Art museum bans pencils and sketchpads
- Simple Science: Minimalist examples of scientific concepts
- Sorry. There is no cheese in space.
- Dick Tracy watch ad
- Old Gold cigs will make your eyes turn insane with delight
- Gold pills turn your innermost parts into chambers of wealth
- Facebook World Map
| New Southampton hackspace seeks members Posted: 15 Dec 2010 02:48 AM PST Adam sez, "Southampton is currently lacking in the Hackspace department, so we've decided to solve this. SoutHACKton is currently in the process of setting up a space for people to come in and make amazing things. We're aiming to deck the space out with all that you'll need to create, and we will be running community projects for free, like a Drawdio building workshop and building open source equipment like a 3D printer and laser sutter for the Hackspace. We're currently in the process of setting up a non-profit organisation, and we're talking to Southampton council about funding opportunities and possible venues. Feel free to join the group and make your opinions known, the more people involved, the better the project will be." |
| Filmography 2010: 270 movies mixed into one 6 min video Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:39 PM PST Genrocks's "Filmography 2010" remixes 270 of this year's big budget movies into "one giant ass video" -- six minutes of thematically linked, brilliantly edited loveliness. Filmography 2010 (via Kottke) |
| Work with EFF's international team as a Google Policy Fellow Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:33 PM PST The Electronic Frontier Foundation is now accepting applications for its Google Policy Fellowship, which runs next summer. This year's Fellow will be working with EFF's international team on global treaties, censorship and other issues: Google Policy Fellows work to advance debate on key policy issues affecting the public for a minimum of 10 weeks in June - August 2011. Google kindly offers a $7500 stipend to the selected fellows. Google is now accepting applications at its GPF application page before January 17, 2011. Applicants will then be reviewed by host organizations and the successful applicant for each organization will be informed by Google by February 28, 2011. EFF is looking for a fellow with a global perspective, who has substantial knowledge about the international issues in which we are involved. More information about the focus of the work our Google Policy Fellow will take on are available here. More information about the GPF program is available in the FAQ.Law students: there's also a program for legal interns. |
| Typewriter art from Keira Rathbone Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:30 PM PST  Keira Rathbone produces lavish ASCII art with typewriters, going places a VT100 dare not tread, thanks to a typewriter's capacity for overtyping, partial linefeed, and overall mechanical goodness. The Art of Keira Rathbone: Typewriter Art (via Neatorama)
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| Wikileaks: U.S. Air force blocks more than 25 news sites that published secret cables Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:26 PM PST I cannot recall a media blackout this massive ever having been implemented on a US military computer network. This is unprecedented. Reuters: "The U.S. Air Force has blocked employees from visiting media websites carrying leaked WikiLeaks documents, including The New York Times and the Guardian, a spokesman said on Tuesday." The Wall Street Journal broke the story here (paywall link). Eric Schmitt in the New York Times reports that more than 25 media websites are now blocked for this reason: When Air Force personnel on the service's computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says "Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored," according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites. |
| Sleepy: Wild Parrot of Telegraph Hill (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:01 PM PST  Photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by user Brandon Watson of Hayward, California. |
| Who is the specimen that describes Homo sapiens? Posted: 14 Dec 2010 08:14 PM PST While reading up for my earlier post on zoological naming conventions, I ran across a fun fact I hadn't known before:Homo sapiens sapiens has a lectotype—an individual that stands as a descriptive specimen of its whole species. In our case, the lectotype is none other than good ol' Carl Linnaeus, himself. At least, that's according to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Other sources will tell you that our lectotype is American paleontologist Edward Cope, but ICZN has a detailed explanation of why this is not only incorrect, but could not possibly be true, according to the rules that govern the designation of species lectotypes. So there. |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 07:27 PM PST  Every December the journal Environmental Microbiology shows just how harsh the seemingly staid process of peer review can be, offering up a collection of snarky, funny, and otherwise memorable quotes from peer review critiques of the past year. (Remembering, of course, that "funny" is relative and depends largely on how far removed you are from the situation.) Some choice excerpts:
Thankfully, it's not all bad news.
I really wish this annual article were available free to the public. It's a rare peek at daily life in the backrooms of science, and a valuable reminder that science is just a job, performed by people—rather than a series of stone tablets handed down from on high. It's great to see the push and pull, and very human personalities, that drive the search for truth. Sadly, you can only read this article with a subscription. These quotes come from Cesar Sanchez' Twisted Bacteria blog. I've linked the original article above, but if you want to read more quotes—and you aren't already paying for Environmental Microbiology—Twisted Bacteria will probably be more useful to you. Image: Some rights reserved by smiteme |
| Do one thing. Do it really well. Repeat. Posted: 14 Dec 2010 07:32 PM PST  I've tangled with every GTD app there is. I've wrestled with setting repeating tasks in iCal. I didn't know it, at least not beyond a certain inchoate longing, but what I wanted was something that didn't hogtie me with complexity. I wanted something that would live in my pocket and execute simple reminders with deadly efficiency and an absolute minimum of fuss. What I was looking for was Due, "the missing reminder app" for iPhone. I understand the impulse to bulk up a smartphone with pre-installed apps, and the impulse to make those apps Swiss Army knives. But I have a tremendous affection for software that does one thing and does it really well. Due, from developer Lin Junjie, is like that. It's about the reminder, the simple nudge in the ribs to draw your attention to a task that may be need to be done as infrequently as once, versus the "task" or the "project," ungainlier creatures that can have multiple steps and deadlines. It's uncomplicated, beautiful and functional. My only beef with it is that it includes a secondary functionality that's sort of neat, I guess -- you can define and save timers of varying lengths keyed to different events -- but which I never use. Just knowing the timers are there detracts a tiny bit from the gorgeous simplicity of the thing. I'm a purist that way. But is Due in every other respect an essential addition to my home screen? Absolutely. It passes the highest test I can imagine for an iPhone app: It's so smart, and so pretty, I can't imagine why Apple didn't bake something like it right in. |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 03:45 PM PST Attention New York! BB Quizmaster David Israel has a QR Code Scavenger Hunt going on, in which you can win a car: "The hunt begins at four different locations -- the Upper East Side, Upper West Side, and in the East and West Villages -- starting at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, December 21. Both @neatorama and @mental_floss will tweet the precise starting locations from their Twitter handles at 10:30 a.m. that day." |
| If You Meet the Buddha Machine on the Road, Hack It Posted: 14 Dec 2010 03:33 PM PST  Looking for that perfect holiday gift for your most sonically adventurous friends or loved ones? Look no further. The Buddha Machine, introduced in 2005 (and blogged here many many many many times before), is a portable little sound-loop device in a plastic box introduced five years ago by the China-based duo FM3 (aka Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant). It so resembles an impressively generic AM radio that Muji products look like Prada by comparison. The first two generations of the Buddha Machine contained short varied loops of ambient sound. Generation two (2008) introduced pitch control, allowing the user to alter the speed of the loops; this was, in part, a nod to enthusiasts who'd hacked the first generation. I always find myself slowing the loops as much as possible, to get them to their drone-iest, which suits the device's zone-out charm and its background-music functionality. The third generation, newly released this month, retains the pitch control but replaces all those electronic-audio recordings with loops recorded on an ancient Chinese instrument known as the qin. This gen-three Buddha Machine is named the Chan Fang (or 禅房), which translates as Zen Room. (Between the second and third generations there was also Gristleism, a device that resulted from a collaboration between FM3 and Throbbing Gristle, whose longtime member Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson passed away late last month.) The qin, or guqin, or 古琴, is the ancient Chinese zither. It's a long instrument with seven strings, and its history dates back thousands of years.
Circuitben, the British hacker who made the adjustments, clearly appreciates the droning quality of the Buddha Machine -- his hack involves extending the pitch wheel "a wee bit," as he puts it. And here's a nifty little video featuring all three generations of the Buddha Machine (first in front, second in middle, Chan Fang in rear):
My wish list for the fourth generation of Buddha Machine would be the ability to easily upload our own sounds to its chip.
More on the Buddha Machine at fm3buddhamachine.com. |
| Santa Claus is coming to your sky Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:26 PM PST  (image via Wikimedia Commons: Space Station over Sedona.) For the first couple of Christmas eve's of my daughter's life, I would take her over to the computer and show her Santa's current position on the sweet and dopey Santa NORAD tracking site. Even by the time she turned four years old, though, she was beginning to get suspicious that this cartoon Santa had little to do with the real one. I needed a better shtick. And last year I found the best one ever. I will definitely be pulling this one again this year. Just around her bed time I warned her that Santa was coming soon and she definitely needed to be asleep if he was going to stop. We put out milk and cookies and carrots as I kept checking the time on my watch. At precisely 7:34 I said "I think he's about to fly overhead right about now." "REALLY????" "Yeah, let's go outside and look," I whispered.
We went out to the back yard, looked up at the sky for about a minute, and then something that looked like a little star silently rose from the southwestern horizon, passed straight overhead, and disappeared behind the mountains to the north. My daughter gasped. "Hurry inside. He's on his way!" I said. My daughter ran inside, jumped in bed, and pulled up the covers. Someday she'll figure out the trick, but until she does, she and I will be standing outside every Christmas eve, waiting for our glimpse of real magic flying across the sky. |
| Internet posters angry at computers with which they are unfamiliar Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:53 PM PST Joshua Kors bought a Mac, but cannot figure it out. Today in the Huffington Post he writes -- perhaps a little too confidently -- about flaws such as OSX's inability to move files between disks, run Windows software, or do more than one font. The funniest excerpts follow: The only word processor I could find on my iMac was TextEdit, essentially a stripped-down version of Notepad. The program had an excellent array of font options, like "Bigger" and "Smaller. ... I was heartsick to learn that the thesaurus WordWeb, every author's best friend, didn't work on Mac's OS. Cringey! But Mac fans can also summon a nerdrage that outstrips their understanding of the machine. Here's part of a recent post from one popular Mac blog (I won't name it, as has apparently since removed the post) unaware of iMac-style all-in-one PCs, the control panel, and, perhaps, the lurking horrors beneath OSX's clutter-hiding UI: Try having a clutter free desk when you are using a desktop PC, I can count at least 5 wires going in different directions in your desk. This is not just aesthetics, no, this is the way PCs are. After a month working with a brand new one you will find yourself with a soup of DLLs from installed programs, temporary files that never get deleted, swap files that never get clean and a myriad of other annoyances from windows that will make your life miserable, not to mention will slow down your system. Mac OS, while not perfect, handles this way better. Linux might be a solution, but then again if you are like my mom it will only confuse you. ... Try getting your ip on windows 7. Why can't we all just get along? |
| Doggie crosses his eyes on command Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:00 PM PST Video Link (thanks, Tara McGinley!) |
| Academic paper in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:51 PM PST James Siddle sends us a preprint of his paper "Choose Your Own Architecture - interactive pattern storytelling," about to be published in the patterns journal Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming. Choose Your Own Architecture - interactive pattern storytelling (PDF) (Thanks, James!) |
| Homemade felted magnetic Katamari Damacy set Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:50 PM PST I Felt Awesome author Moxie has created a genius magnetic Katamari Damacy handmade felted playset -- roll the ball around and it picks up the adorable foodlings and such! Felt Magnetic Katamari Playset |
| Naomi Wolf on rape, justice and Julian Assange Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:48 PM PST For those of us who felt uncomfortable with the cavalier attitude evinced by some Assange supporters in the matter of the Swedish sex-assault charge, but also smelled a rat at the drop-everything hustle demonstrated by Her Majesty's filth in getting Mr Assange behind bars, Naomi Wolf offers this nuanced analysis: In other words: Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned -- for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven. In terms of a case involving the kinds of ambiguities and complexities of the alleged victims' complaints -- sex that began consensually that allegedly became non-consensual when dispute arose around a condom -- please find me, anywhere in the world, another man in prison today without bail on charges of anything comparable.J'Accuse: Sweden, Britain, and Interpol Insult Rape Victims Worldwide (via Reddit) |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:49 PM PST  Meet Lepidocephalichthys zeppelini, a newly identified species of fish, named after Led Zeppelin. Why? An Auburn University graduate student thought the fish's pectoral fin looked like Jimmy Page's double neck guitar. It's a quirky way to name a species, but Lepidocephalichthys zeppelini is certainly not the most flippant or goofy Latin name to come along. There are fungus beetles known as Gelae belae and Gelae donut. Adonnadonna primadonna is an extinct fossil algae named for a 1963 pop song by Dion and The Belmonts. And Volva volva volva probably gives you some clue as to how insistent Linnaeus was that a certain sea snail had a shell shaped like a part of a lady's anatomy. Institutions have even auctioned off naming rights to the highest bidder, using the funds to pay for conservation efforts and further research. That's how we ended up with a monkey named after the Golden Palace online casino. Has science no shame? Are there no rules to this naming system? Quite the contrary. There is, in fact, an entire book of binding codes and an international organization to enforce them. But here's the thing—those rules are mostly related to working out who gets naming rights, and making sure that everybody is using a standard style. At the same time, there are lots and lots of species that need unique names. Thus, a certain level of creative silliness gets through. That said, there are limits. Really obvious jokes are frowned upon these days. As are rude gestures. Back in the day, Linnaeus used species names to construct elaborate insults against his enemies (and, presumably, the species being named). You can't do that anymore. The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature will also send you back to the drawing board if your proposed name is deemed too unpronounceable. Thanks to cantaconbravura for Submitterating! |
| Comic strip versions of stories from Wikileaked cables Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:45 PM PST  Cablegate Comix is Joe Alterio's series of mini-comics, "recounting true stories that came to light on November 28, 2010 -- when WikiLeaks published confidential documents of detailed correspondences between the US State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world." |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:37 PM PST Geeky merit badges are a good example of the trend to add game-like layers to real life. Hilowbrow's badges are escpecially nifty. Josh Glenn of Hilobrow says In August, new-media artist Peggy Nelson started challenging HiLobrow readers to earn gorgeous embroidered merit badges by demonstrating insight into recurring HiLobrow themes and memes, and/or by participating creatively in those themes and memes. As of this week, you can now earn seven badges: Radium Age, Pipe Dreams, Wingwalker, Feral Tendencies, The Node, Awaiting Instructions, and Games (see image below). Find out how to earn 'em here: |
| Computer to race humans to drive deepest spikes on Jeopardy! railroad Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:27 PM PST IBM has evidently designed a computer system optimized for winning Jeopardy! and have arranged for it to duel John Henry or a reasonable facimile on TV: 'Jeopardy!' to pit humans against IBM machine (via /.) (Image: John Henry Statue, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from redarrow101's photostream) |
| Council of Europe accuses Kosovo's prime minister of organlegging Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:47 PM PST According to a three-year Council of Europe investigation, Hashim Thaci, prime minister of Kosovo, is the boss of a crime syndicate that smuggles dope, arms and organs. The FBI helped with the investigation, whose conclusions have Thaci participating in the harvesting of organs at a clinic called Medicus in 2000. Thaci was just elected the first prime minister of Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports (via Warren Ellis) |
| Michael Moore puts up $20K for Assange's bail Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:50 PM PST As noted, Michael Moore explains why he's put up $20K for Julian Assange's bail, as well as pledging hosting and other support: "We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again." |
| Art museum bans pencils and sketchpads Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:17 PM PST  John William Waterhouse: Hylas and the Nymphs (1896). This painting is not in the special exhibition at the de Young. I just like it. Here's your daily dose of confoundingly moronic logic: the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum ( a public, city-owned institution in San Francisco) forbids people from sketching the special exhibitions. Pencils are allowed in all nooks of New York's Museum of Modern Art, for instance, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston only concerns itself with serious replication (as in, "you must obtain a written permit to copy using oils or acrylics, and/or to use an easel"). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? As long as you don't use a pen, you're fine.I've sketched at the Getty, and anyone who has sketched an original painting (and not just a print, which can never capture the vitality of the original) will attest to the incredible value of this type of study. De Young draws the line on sketching (Thanks, Jason!) |
| Simple Science: Minimalist examples of scientific concepts Posted: 14 Dec 2010 01:16 PM PST
Linda Dong, a friend of mine in the design department at CMU, has been working on this series of photos and videos demonstrating basic scientific concepts. What sets them apart from the rest is the attention to detail in her work: it's clean, simple, and usually on a plain white background. She even got some time on the school's scanning electron microscope to get images of a bug's eye and some pollen. I like the photos like this one representing potential energy:
Although they may not perfectly convey the concepts to people who aren't familiar with them already, these could probably be shown in a classroom setting and get the point across with a little explanation. These are more conversation starters than full descriptions, but they certainly made me look! |
| Sorry. There is no cheese in space. Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:51 AM PST Last week, SpaceX made history as the first private company to launch a capsule into orbit and return it safely to Earth. Called the Dragon, the reusable capsule is designed so that the same basic model can be configured to carry cargo, astronauts, or both. As a people mover, it seats seven. This particular launch was unmanned, however. So what was inside the Dragon? A lot of ballast weights, thousands of commemorative patches to hand out to SpaceX employees ... and a wheel of Le Brouère cheese. Why cheese? Like most inexplicable business decisions, it was a Monty Python joke. (Thanks to collectSpace for Submitterating!) |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:08 AM PST  Mostly, I'm just blogging this because, hell, we should all have this on our hard drive somewhere -- I mean, what if a repressive regime tried to suppress news of this amazing technology? We need a lot of local caches of this bitmap so we can Streisand Effect it to hell and back. Right, gang? DICK TRACY WRIST RADIO (Dec, 1952) |
| Old Gold cigs will make your eyes turn insane with delight Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:07 AM PST  From the March 17, 1941 Time, an ill-advised Old Gold cigarettes ad that apparently promises a kind of wide-eyed rapture in exchange for the concomitant health risks. That something must really be something |
| Gold pills turn your innermost parts into chambers of wealth Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:06 AM PST  Eat Tobias Wong & J.A.R.K.'s $425 "Gold Pills" and you will crap gold. Also, you will "turn your innermost parts into chambers of wealth." It's from Citizen:Citizen, an art installation, and the pills are "temporarily unavailable." Gold Pills (via Consumerist) |
| Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:03 AM PST  This map of Facebook activity corresponds closely to population density and economic activity maps and the like, but there are some interesting dark areas! Orkut, for example, is popular in South America, and Russians prefer Livejournal (I know! I know!). In China, face books you. View the map full-sized on Paul Butler's Facebook page. |
It's about adapting the Choose Your Own Adventure format to help readers learn the pros and cons of using different 
Peggy's challenges look intimidating, at first glance, but they're by no means impossible. In fact, 
Two of the venerable game show's most successful champions -- Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter -- will play two games against "Watson," a computer program developed by IBM's artificial intelligence team. The matches will be spread over three days that will air Feb. 14-16, the game show said on Tuesday. 
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