The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Hand-drawn D&D maps of yesteryear
• FreedomBox: wall-wart firmware to provide privacy and route around censorship
• London's annual clown memorial service for Joey Grimaldi, father of modern clowndom
• Giant dice -- Boing Boing Flickr pool
• New Drew Friedman print
• New science scout badges!
• Giant knitted squid made from plastic grocery bags.
• Detroit will pay you to take one of its houses
• Fragment lights
• Seth Godin asks: "What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?"
• Sun unleashes can of solar flare whoop-ass on Earth
• Smiling Coelacanth
• Are friends electric?
• Subway-style river maps
• Hesta Prynn: Can We Go Wrong (music video)
• Spanish Castle Magic: living towers made of humans
• Bahrain: peaceful protests turn violent as police attack demonstrators
• Artist James Gurney shows his dinosaur painting process
• SPECIAL FEATURE: Joi Ito: What's in my bag
• Video: Aquatic carnivorous plant gulps a meal
• Fox News caught faking it
• Iron & Wine livestream right now (it's over)
• Baby trashes bar
• Thrush: short film on love, life, and digital ephemera
• Mining giants bury Canadian critics with lawsuits
• Not Salt / Not Pepper shakers
• Neil Finn takes song request from fan holding up an iPad
• Swimming microbots master U-turns
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: Judge Scalia Spans the Time/Space Continuum!
• San Francisco on Thursday: event for new urban art book Trespass

Hand-drawn D&D maps of yesteryear Posted: 17 Feb 2011 12:43 AM PST The Plagmada gallery features David McClouth's "Dungeon folder" -- "This is the contents of a manila envelope full of adventures and maps made by David McLouth in the early 80s." It's pitched as "outsider art," but I appreciate it as pure nostalgia, a tribute to all those hours spent filling in crabbed maps and monster-counts, treasure and epic items. David McLouth, "Dungeon" folder   Visualizing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book - Boing Boing Weird D&D advice-column questions - Boing Boing Existential D&D comedy: when characters realize they are trapped ... Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 Makes Remote Pen-and-Paper Play Easier ... No D&D for US prison inmate serving life - Boing Boing

FreedomBox: wall-wart firmware to provide privacy and route around censorship Posted: 17 Feb 2011 01:25 AM PST The FreedomBox Foundation is a newly formed charity that has set out to make wall-wart sized, self-contained Linux routers that will provide important anonymizing and networking services, even when the government (or some other entity) terminates or surveils your network access. The project is led by Eben Moglen, formerly of the Free Software Foundation, now with the Software Freedom Law Center. Freedom Box exists to counter these unfree "platform" technologies that threaten political freedom. Freedom Box exists to provide people with privacy-respecting technology alternatives in normal times, and to offer ways to collaborate safely and securely with others in building social networks of protest, demonstration, and mobilization for political change in the not-so-normal times. Freedom Box software is built to run on hardware that already exists, and will soon become much more widely available and much more inexpensive. "Plug servers" and other compact devices are going to become ubiquitous in the next few years, serving as "media centers," "communications centers," "wireless routers," and many other familiar and not-so-familiar roles in office and home. Freedom Box software images will turn all sorts of such devices into privacy appliances. Taken together, these appliances will afford people around the world options for communicating, publishing, and collaborating that will resist state intervention or disruption. People owning these appliances will be able to restore anonymity in the Net, despite efforts of despotic regimes to keep track of who reads what and who communicates with whom. The FreedomBox Foundation   Fon releases open meshing WiFi router - Boing Boing We need alternative sources of bandwidth just like we need ... Sentient City Survival Kit: gadgets to foul the surveillance state ... HOWTO turn a $60 Linksys router into a $600 super-router - Boing Boing D-Link routers get green friendly firmware update - Boing Boing Why it's good to leave your WiFi open - Boing Boing French hackers unveil the HADOPI router: cracks nearby WiFi and ...

London's annual clown memorial service for Joey Grimaldi, father of modern clowndom Posted: 17 Feb 2011 12:57 AM PST NK Guy sez, "Every year dozens of clowns gather in a London church to celebrate the life of Joey Grimaldi, the father of modern clowndom, who died in 1837. They also mourn the passing of any fellow clowns who may have died that year." I used to have an office around the corner from Exmouth Market, Grimaldi's former home, and I loved to stop and admire his blue disc (alas, my landlords went batshit and I had to move; luckily I found new digs right under the marvellous London Hackpspace). Born of an Italian father and an English mother in 1778, Grimaldi lived and worked in the world of London theatre. His talent for physical comedy made him a massive superstar of his age, though Grimaldi's life fell into a predictable pattern of tragedy, and he died broken and crippled in Islington, age 58. Since the war, British clowns have been holding a special memorial service each February to celebrate the life of this founder of British clowndom. And since the 60s Holy Trinity Church in Hackney has permitted them to attend in full clown regalia. The event is organised by the Clowns International group, who also maintain a small clown museum in Wookey Hole. Joseph Grimaldi memorial service and Chinese New Year.   One look at the Jell-O clown and he will haunt your dreams ... Brazilian TV clown elected to high office, passes literacy test ... Criminal clown - Boing Boing Mexican TV clown host threatens Twitter user - Boing Boing Bozo the Clown's last flight - Boing Boing

Giant dice -- Boing Boing Flickr pool Posted: 17 Feb 2011 12:29 AM PST From the Boing Boing Flickr pool, 8one6's snap of the enormous comedy-dice on the floor of RPG convention GenCon, taken back in 2007. I'm thinking these'd make a great outdoor playground set. big dice   Giant and awesome dice-rolling machine - Boing Boing Polyhedral dice cake - Boing Boing Enormous dice collection full of irregular and improbable ... Polyhedral dice for musicians - Boing Boing Scientist attains ultimate polyhedral dice-density with D4s ... Boing Boing: Japanese battle-pencils: using pencils like long dice Rotting dice - Boing Boing

New Drew Friedman print Posted: 16 Feb 2011 09:33 PM PST DrewFriedman.net announces a new limited edition fine art print of comedian Joe E. Ross. Known foremost as the co-star of TV's Car 54, Where Are You?, the mug-faced Ross was also a raunchy stand-up comic with a crude act that sustained him for decades. In fact, the jokes Ross told in the 1970s were the same ones he told in the '40s. His TV fame was almost accidental, and his success unsustainable due to a decadent lifestyle of mobsters, hucksters, hard drink and prostitutes (he married at least eight hookers). After hitting superstardom, Ross made the network variety show rounds, flew first-class to marquee dates--but no matter where he went, he was rarely invited back. His behavior shocked those who only knew him as a lovable, bumbling TV cop. The strip clubs, Bowery bars, and Florida burlesque circuit of the late 1940s left an indelible imprint on his psyche. Ross was lowbrow to the bone; much to the chagrin of fellow actors, he'd never change. The portrait of Joe E. Ross by Drew Friedman has been issued in a run of 20 limited edition, numbered prints, each signed and hand-titled by the artist. Prints are offered for $125 each (+ s/h). Prices will increase as the edition sells down.

New science scout badges! Posted: 16 Feb 2011 10:33 PM PST Just a quick note to say that I've taken the suggestions from this previous Boingboing post and from twitter, and have put up some new science scout badges. Now, you too can earn the "I make weaponized lasers" badge, or the "I punch moon-landing deniers" badge. And as always, leave a comment if you have any other badge ideas.

Giant knitted squid made from plastic grocery bags. Posted: 16 Feb 2011 09:21 PM PST Deadly Knitshade has put up some amazing photos of "Plarchie," a freakishly awesome 8 metre giant knitted squid, made out of orange (Sainsbury) plastic grocery bags. The squid is cool enough (is it weird that I want to buy it?), but the setting is also pretty much perfect since the photos were all taken at London's Natural History Museum, where Plarchie's original source of inspiration lives. Plus, I've got to say that I love the one where Plarchie is cozying up with Charles Darwin. Looks like they're made for each other. Deadly Knitshade has a book, too! Meet Plarchie: the giant plastic knitted squid

Detroit will pay you to take one of its houses Posted: 16 Feb 2011 09:36 PM PST Photo by Kevin Bauman. See more of Kevin's stunning photos of abandoned Detroit homes. From Business Insider: Mayor Dave Bing is trying to save Detroit by offering incentives to lure residents back to abandoned neighborhoods. One program offers $150,000 in housing renovation money and requiring only $1,000 down to police officers who are willing to relocate to the city. Another offers college graduates $2,500 to rent and $20,000 forgivable loan to buy properties. Potential home buyers can choose from plenty of cheap or free homes, especially in the blighted neighborhoods of Woodward Ave. and Brush Park. Detroit Will PAY You To Take One Of These 100 Abandoned Homes

Fragment lights Posted: 16 Feb 2011 08:56 PM PST Anzfer Farms, started by Jonathan Anzalone and Joseph Ferriso, makes curious little lamps out of driftwood found on the beaches near San Francisco. Wiring and modifications of the original fragment are modest and discrete with and attention to the overall sculptural presence of the object. The lights cast a romantic warm glow similar to a candle. The small globe bulbs create a symbolic compliment to the natural irregularities of the fragment. Many different designs are available at their Etsy shop; the bulbs are available frosted or clear at either 10w or 15w.

Seth Godin asks: "What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?" Posted: 16 Feb 2011 08:44 PM PST Over at the newly launched TED Conversations, Seth Godin asks "What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?" The responses to his request so far look fantastic. (Now I'm going to have to get myself a copy The Universal Traveler.)

Sun unleashes can of solar flare whoop-ass on Earth Posted: 16 Feb 2011 06:30 PM PST BBC News on a solar storm we'll be feeling the effects of here on the home planet: "The eruptions are expected to hit the Earth's magnetic field field over the next couple of days, causing an increase in geomagnetic activity." (Submitterator, thanks Jack)

Smiling Coelacanth Posted: 16 Feb 2011 06:18 PM PST Via the BB Submitterator, Marilyn Terrell tells us: Everyone thought they died out in the Cretaceous era, but no. Rediscovered in 1938 by South African museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer who spotted this bizarro creature in an otherwise ordinary haul of fish, the coelacanth had been quietly minding its own business for millennia. They live so deep that they're rarely photographed alive. But in 2010, a specially trained team dived deep to photograph some in Sodwana Bay, South Africa for National Geographic. Photo by Laurent Ballesta, and there's a larger gallery of images here.

Are friends electric? Posted: 16 Feb 2011 06:16 PM PST A science fiction milieux where tech jargon becomes the language of everyday life: a mundane, hypnotic, self-absorbed dream. Gary Numan sang "Me! I Disconnect from You!" more than thirty years ago, evoking the interpersonal specifics of computer-mediated social networking long before Mark Zuckerberg was even born. [Thought Catalog via iO9]

Subway-style river maps Posted: 16 Feb 2011 05:50 PM PST Daniel P. Huffman, a lecturer in cartography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, created some intriguing subway-style maps of U.S. watersheds. You can buy prints of them at Zazzle. He also runs Cartastrophe, a good blog about bad maps. River Maps [Something About Maps]

Hesta Prynn: Can We Go Wrong (music video) Posted: 16 Feb 2011 05:38 PM PST [video link] It starts with brownies and a pretty girl, and before you know it, lasers are blowing up the city skyline. Hesta Prynn is here, and she's on the Twitter, too. Buy her music on Amazon here. Video directed by Randy Scott Slavin. This stop-motion piece was created from more than 13,000 still photographs. Co-Producer/Light Holder- Stacey Angeles. VFX Brian Morrisson. (thanks, Julie Potash!)

Spanish Castle Magic: living towers made of humans Posted: 16 Feb 2011 05:28 PM PST [Video Link] Video by Mike Randolph: In the city of Tarragona, Spain, castellers gather every two years to see who can build the highest, most intricate human castles. This uniquely Catalan tradition requires astonishing strength, finesse, and balance. Not to mention courage. Here are more photos of this amazing sport. (thanks, Clayton Cubitt)

Bahrain: peaceful protests turn violent as police attack demonstrators Posted: 16 Feb 2011 05:06 PM PST Breaking: Amira Al Hussaini at Global Voices: "Bahrain police have just launched an attack on protesters at the Pearl Roundabout." She has a Twitter roundup, and you can also follow NPR's Andy Carvin right now for fast and furious RTs from people who are there, apparently being teargassed and shot with rubber bullets and/or other forms of ammunition. It is 3AM there; the demonstrators were sleeping; news crews are are nowhere to be found. (photo, inset, via maryamalkhawaja, above Abu Sufyan, both via @acarvin)

Artist James Gurney shows his dinosaur painting process Posted: 16 Feb 2011 04:13 PM PST My friend, James Gurney (creator of the stunning Dinotopia series of books), is one heck of an illustrator. In this video, he goes through his process of painting a dinosaur scene. A couple of months ago, Scientific American magazine asked me to illustrate a feature for the upcoming March issue about an amazing discovery: a group of small dinosaurs who died together, trapped in mud. When I delivered the oil painting of the scene, I also produced a short video showing how I did the painting. Yesterday Scientific American put the video up on their official website, along with a blog post describing my "wonderfully analog process"--you know, pencil, clay, glue, and paint. If it wasn't below freezing outside, I would have been out in the pond muck wallowing around to see what it feels like to die in quicksand. James Gurney's Mud Trap painting

SPECIAL FEATURE: Joi Ito: What's in my bag Posted: 16 Feb 2011 04:18 PM PST Joi Ito: I change my bag depending on whether it's likely I'll be riding a bike, snowmobile, etc. I also sometimes carry an iPad. The amount and type of dive gear and camera(s) changes with where I'm traveling to as well. However, this is a pretty good sample of what is typically in my bag these days. Read the rest

Video: Aquatic carnivorous plant gulps a meal Posted: 16 Feb 2011 02:50 PM PST In this video, you can watch a carnivorous aquatic bladderwort plant suck down tiny crustaceans in half a millisecond. Slurp! From Science News: Using high-speed cameras, researchers have gotten the first good look at how these underwater plants spring their ambushes. Bladderworts sport trap doors that buckle in with a tiny nudge, creating a whirlpool that sucks in wee critters — all in about half a millisecond. That's some of the fastest plant action on Earth, a French and German team reports online February 15 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B... "Utricularia are the smallest of carnivorous plants and also, evidently, the most sophisticated," says Lubomír Adamec, a plant physiologist at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. These netlike veggies are dotted with tiny traps, often no wider than an ant is long. Small or not, the traps are masterpieces of suction. Pumped nearly dry, the chambers set up a pressure difference between the plant's innards and the water outside. When swimmers brush up against a series of hairs along the trap door, the door bursts open and sucks water and crustaceans alike in. "Carnivorous bladderworts suck up prey"

Fox News caught faking it Posted: 16 Feb 2011 01:04 PM PST When reporting that Ron Paul had defeated mainstream Republican Mitt Romney in the CPAC straw poll, Fox News superimposed archive footage of people booing from last year's event. Bonus Fox misbehavior! When a liberal blogger asked Fox News reporter Jesse Watters for comment on recent claims from an insider that the network makes stuff up, Watters ignored the question and mocked the interviewer's cheap camera. After MSNBC ran the clip, which makes Watters appear evasive and smarmy, Fox produced heavily edited versions of the clip for its own shows, claimed their man was ambushed (he was in fact approached at the same heavily-attended conservative event) and praised its reporter for 'trash talking' the interviewer.

Iron & Wine livestream right now (it's over) Posted: 16 Feb 2011 02:34 PM PST UPDATE: Show's over but maybe they'll post a recording later! The fantastic singer/songwriter Samuel Beam, better known as Iron & Wine, is performing live right now at Belgium's Ancienne Belgique and you can watch it for free. A lovely lunchtime concert for a rainy San Francisco day. Iron and Wine stream from Ancienne Belgique (Wikimedia Commons photo by Tristan Loper)

Baby trashes bar Posted: 16 Feb 2011 12:34 PM PST [ Video Link ] Trailer for the short film "Las Palmas" by Johannes Nyholm, which is due out later this year. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin! Music: "Låt i H-moll" by Björn Olsson, from the record "The Lobster" released by Gravitation.)

Thrush: short film on love, life, and digital ephemera Posted: 16 Feb 2011 12:05 PM PST Boing Boing Video buddy Joe Sabia, who's been working with us to curate short films for our Virgin America in-flight entertainment channel, recently turned me on to Gabriel Bisset-Smith's stunning short film from 2009. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thrush Directed by Gabriel Bisset-Smith and Graham Turner. Written by Gabriel Bisset-Smith. Music by Golden Silvers.

Mining giants bury Canadian critics with lawsuits Posted: 16 Feb 2011 12:47 AM PST Canadian academics and free speech advocates are up in arms over two mining multinationals' use of libel law to bury their critics in lawsuits. Alain Deneault, Delphine Abadie, and William Sacher published a book called Noir Canada. Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique that detailed well-sourced human rights abuses by the multinational resource companies Barrick Gold and Banro Corporation. The companies have responded with $11 million in lawsuits, aimed at bankrupting their critics with court fees. Barrick Gold has threatened other publishers on the basis of brief summaries of yet-to-be-published critical books. These clear threats against academic freedom of expression and freedom of speech are cause for serious concern and the Free Speech at Risk site aims to bring attention to these cases and open up the public debate over the issue. Authors and academics should not have to fear legal action for simply asking questions based on material and reports that are already in the public domain. This site was started by Professor Michel Seymour from the Université de Montréal, along with author Alain Deneault, and Anne-Marie Voisard of Écosociété. Several organizations have also pledged their support. If you are an academic professor, please consider signing our Academic Petition and concerned Canadians can also consider signing our Citizen Petition. Free Speech at Risk (Thanks, Dad!)   Canada's Crown Copyright: high-cost censorship - Boing Boing Anti-Olympic mural censored in Vancouver Boing Boing Access Denied: report on Internet censorship around the world ... Canadian gov't scientists protest gag order, go straight to public ...

Not Salt / Not Pepper shakers Posted: 16 Feb 2011 10:34 AM PST It shouldn't be confusing but to me it is. From the mind of Ben Greenman.

Neil Finn takes song request from fan holding up an iPad Posted: 16 Feb 2011 10:26 AM PST Neil Finn, whom you may know better as the lead singer of Crowded House, is hands down one of my favourite song writers. He's also very good live, and is a natural talent when it comes to interacting with the audience. Anyway, here is a funny little video of a recent show at the Seymour Theatre in Sydney, where someone in the audience requested a song by holding up their iPad. I'm not sure if this is a common thing to happen at concerts these days, but Neil, always the entertainer, took it in stride by making a few humorous comments before performing the song. FYI: some of the banter is about "Elias" who was a fan in the audience who tried his best (i.e. not a professional musician) with the piano accompaniment in the previous song.

Swimming microbots master U-turns Posted: 16 Feb 2011 10:13 AM PST Tiny robots swimming through our bodies zapping polyps or delivering drugs has been the stuff of future tech hype for decades. But even as this concept becomes closer to reality (albeit slowly), one of many big questions is: How do you steer the micromachines? North Carolina State University recently demonstrated a technique to make their microbots do U-turns. From New Scientist: The microbot, a mere 1.3 millimetres long, is essentially a diode - an electrical element that only allows current to pass in one direction. The diode is exposed to an alternating electric field, which induces a voltage across it, creating an electric dipole. This dipole pushes on ions in the water, driving them backward and propelling the microbot forward.  In order to make the bot turn, the group added a DC element to the field, modifying the initial AC field. Rachita Sharma and Orlin Velev believe that the DC field changes the distribution of the ions near the diode, and the torque they exert on the electric dipole causes the microbot to rotate. Once the microbot completed its 180-degree turn, the researchers turned off the DC field, and the microbot swam off in the other direction. "Microbots made to twist and turn as they swim"

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Judge Scalia Spans the Time/Space Continuum! Posted: 16 Feb 2011 10:59 AM PST

San Francisco on Thursday: event for new urban art book Trespass Posted: 16 Feb 2011 09:45 AM PST Our pals from the Billboard Liberation Front will make a rare public appearance at San Francisco's historic City Lights bookstore tomorrow, Thursday 2/17, at 7pm to celebrate the release of Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art from Taschen Books. Various other members of the prankster elite will be lurking in the shadows too! From the book description: Made in collaboration with featured artists, Trespass examines the rise and global reach of graffiti and urban art, tracing key figures, events and movements of self-expression in the city's social space, and the history of urban reclamation, protest, and illicit performance. The first book to present the full historical sweep, global reach and technical developments of the street art movement, Trespass features key works by 150 artists, and connects four generations of visionary outlaws including Jean Tinguely, Spencer Tunick, Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shepard Fairey, Blu, Billboard Liberation Front, Guerrilla Girls and Banksy, among others. It also includes dozens of previously unpublished photographs of long-lost works and legendary, ephemeral urban artworks. "SF Book Release of Trespass At City Light Books, Feb 17" Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art (Amazon)

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