The Latest from Boing Boing

Xoom will be $800, gets a TV spot
AOL buys Huffpo
PUNKS NOT DAD new video on the horrors of flat-pack furniture assembly
Goofy: How To Play Football (1944)
Operatic tribute to piratical cheese snack
Sarah Palin Circle-R wants a trademark on her name
Spectacular bookshelves at Uni of Buenos Aires med school
Bill Nye on America's "horrible" science education

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 05:03 AM PST

Motorola's Xoom, the first to run a version of the Android operating system optimized for tablets, will be available for $800 on Feb. 24 [Engadget]. In its new TV ad, the Xoom is represented by the only man who can afford cashmere sweaters in a drab world of identically-clad iPad users. [Motorola]

AOL buys Huffpo

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 04:38 AM PST

AOL is to buy the Huffington Post for $315M. Arianna Huffington will also "take control of all of AOL's editorial content." [NYT]

PUNKS NOT DAD new video on the horrors of flat-pack furniture assembly

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 10:31 PM PST

Middle-aged shed-themed punk band "PUNKS NOT DAD" have released a video for their new song, "Can't Get It Up!" It's a haunting ballad about the difficulties presented by assembling flat-pack furniture, and the feelings of inadequacy that accrue to those who attempt it.

CAN'T GET IT UP! From our forthcoming 'Retail Therapy' EP (Thanks, Uncle Wilco!)

Goofy: How To Play Football (1944)

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 05:43 PM PST

The sum of my knowledge on the subject.

Operatic tribute to piratical cheese snack

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 04:46 AM PST

JohnnyForeigner sez, "My friend Brian Friedland wrote this excellent piece: 'Using a package of Pirate's Booty Aged White Cheddar Rice and Corn Puffs as musical and artistic inspiration, the composition combines the artwork of Heidi Aispuro and the photographic and media savvy of his girlfriend Stephanie Golas with original music for voice, strings, and piano. Together, we tell stories of pirates on the quest for the perfect snack, my tragic personal addiction, and the life transforming potential of the cheesy puffs.'"

(Thanks, JohnnyForeigner, via Submitterator!)

Sarah Palin Circle-R wants a trademark on her name

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:44 PM PST

Some details on Sarah Palin's crazed attempt to register a trademark in her name; apart from making stupid errors in her application, there's the curious business that she considers "running for election" to be the same as using her name in commerce. Also, turns out Bristol Palin also wants a trademark on her name, for "motivational speaking services in the field of life choices."

On November 29, the application was rejected for two reasons. First, the examiner pointed out, the fact that your name appears in a news article or on your Facebook page is not evidence that you are "providing a website" featuring political information. Second, Palin did not sign the application.
The examiner pointed out that if a mark is the name of a particular living individual, it can't be registered unless that individual has signed or there is some other record of consent. (The examiner cited cases involving "Little Debbie," who is in fact a real person, and "Prince Charles," who arguably is too.) Because Palin hadn't signed, the application could not be granted.
It seems like signing your name is not something you would forget when your name is what you're trying to trademark, but she's a busy woman.

Sarah PalinTM Having Trouble With Registration

(Image: Sarah Palin, Queen of Pork, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from llyn_hunter's photostream)

Spectacular bookshelves at Uni of Buenos Aires med school

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 08:16 AM PST

From the Boing Boing Flickr pool Floriano Cathala's glorious bookshelf porn, taken in the Faculty of Medicine library at the University of Buenos Aires.

Libros

Bill Nye on America's "horrible" science education

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:51 PM PST

Popular Mechanics interviews Bill Nye the Science Guy on the state of US science education (Nye: "It's horrible."). He's anxious that science education ramps up too late ("Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10.") and, of course, that teachers are intimidated out of teaching the good science of evolution and other controversial subjects:

They're doing their job but they're under tremendous pressure. The 60 percent who are cautious--those are the people who are really up against it. They want to keep their job, and they love teaching science, and their children are really excited about it, and yet they've got some people insisting they can't teach the most fundamental idea in all of biology. There's the phrase "just a theory." Which shows you that I have failed. I'm a failure. When we have a theory in science, it's the greatest thing you can have. Relativity is a theory, and people test it every which way. They test it and test it and test it. Gravity is a theory. People have landed spacecraft on the moon within a few feet of accuracy because we understand gravity so well. People make flu vaccinations that stop people from getting sick. Farmers raise crops with science; they hybridize them and make them better with every generation. That's all evolution. Evolution is a theory, and it's a theory that you can test. We've tested evolution in many ways. You can't present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.