The Latest from Boing Boing |
- Fight Back! A radical primer from Britain's winter of discontent
- What does Libyan revolution mean for bit.ly?
- What Watson might do after crushing humankind on Jeopardy
- Skull cups
- The Dumbest Thing Ever Said!...by Hillary Clinton, about the Drug War
- EFF is representing publisher of Urban Homestead book against Dervaes Institute trademark claim
- The Wrinkles of the City: French street artist JR hits Venice, CA
- Whirling vortex of angry, dismissive Judge Judy animations
- Cartoonist plays trick on homophobes
- An informative video about the Honey Badger
- Funny 1969 short film by Matt Groening's father Homer
- Sultan Berlusconi on Trial
- Identify these outrageous false teeth and get $500
- OC Weekly: "Dervaes family sends out ridiculous press release claiming they're not trying to shut up urban homesteaders
- Optical illusion inventor goes on to invent copyright threats against 3D printing company
- Is this how the Escher Waterfall machine works?
- Crappy themepark operators convicted of "engaging in a commercial practice which was a misleading action"
- HBGary's high-volume astroturfing technology and the Feds who requested it
- Straight line traced by 500 individuals: mutation in action
- Robotic hummingbird spy plane
- 1960s Acid Test posters up for auction
- Interview with psychedelic artist Fred Tomaselli
- Authors Guild argues in favor of censorship (also: they don't know shit about Shakespeare)
- Functional Rubik's Brain
Fight Back! A radical primer from Britain's winter of discontent Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:43 AM PST Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest collects 340-some pages' worth of the best writing on the wave of anti-cut demonstrations that have rocked Britain this winter; writing from radicals and reformers, students and members of the UKUncut movement -- a discussion ranging from philosophy to strategy and tactics. It's a fascinating, Creative Commons licensed download, with a print edition to follow. Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest (Thanks, @PennyRed!)
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What does Libyan revolution mean for bit.ly? Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:14 PM PST DomainWire asks what will happen to the popular bit.ly URL shortener if Libya shuts down its Internet service (.ly is the country code for Libya). Several people have noted that no matter how cute the .ly suffix is to us in a domain name, it is ultimately controlled for a loony dictator, and therefore perhaps not suitable as a piece of global network infrastructure. But if Libya "shuts down" the internet rather than taking aim at a particular service (and it could take aim at bit.ly given its use to spread news about Libya on Twitter), what happens to anything on the .ly domain name?Is Bit.ly Toast if Libya Shuts Down the Internet? (Image: Who's Next..., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from showmeone's photostream)
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What Watson might do after crushing humankind on Jeopardy Posted: 18 Feb 2011 04:54 PM PST Now that Watson has predictably used his inhuman buzzer skills to romp on non-inhumankind, what does the big lug do for a follow-up? Stephen Baker, who has written a whole book and this blog about Watson, explains: Consider Watson as a research assistant on a medical diagnostic team. A patient comes in with a puzzling set of symptoms. Watson launches a search through hundreds of thousands of journal articles and case studies. It returns with six possible diagnoses and its level of confidence in each one -- along with links to the evidence it studied. Let's say two of those six are far-fetched... [d]octors know enough to rule out a few others. Still, if even one of those six possibilities leads the team toward plausible answers they hadn't considered, the machine will have done its job. I'm sure that's the rationale the maniacal cyborgs use in some sci-fi movie, too, back when they're first verging on sentience. But until the replicants destroy us all, it does sound pretty cool. |
Posted: 18 Feb 2011 04:52 PM PST "The next time you're in a museum, keep a sharp eye out for skull cups," Gadling advises brightly today, following up on a BBC report about the discovery of three ancient skulls that were carved into drinking cups. And you can bet your life I will, Gadling, because skull cups can be beautiful, like the one above (apparently Chinese, although its provenance is a little murky) but mostly because they are SKULLS carved into CUPS and ancient people DRANK OUT OF THEM, and if that doesn't give you nightmares, take another good look at the less aesthetic and more terrifying model whose picture accompanies the BBC story and remind yourself that once upon a time it was the repository for SOME GUY'S BRAINS. |
The Dumbest Thing Ever Said!...by Hillary Clinton, about the Drug War Posted: 18 Feb 2011 04:38 PM PST ReasonTV explains black market economics to Hillary Clinton. Recently, during an interview with Mexico's Televisa, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the United States can't legalize drugs "because there is just too much money in it."The Dumbest Thing Ever Said!...by Hillary Clinton, about the Drug War |
EFF is representing publisher of Urban Homestead book against Dervaes Institute trademark claim Posted: 18 Feb 2011 03:49 PM PST Breaking news: Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is now representing the authors and publisher of The Urban Homestead in the Dervaes Institute "Urban Homestead" trademarks dispute. An official announcement is expected on Monday/ |
The Wrinkles of the City: French street artist JR hits Venice, CA Posted: 18 Feb 2011 03:20 PM PST Liz Ohanesian of the LA Weekly points us to news that The French street artist JR, who is receiving the TED prize this year, is in LA working on a city-wide art project, "The Wrinkles of the City." His first two pieces just went up in the Venice area of Los Angeles.Here's the LA Weekly article, with photos.
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Whirling vortex of angry, dismissive Judge Judy animations Posted: 17 Feb 2011 11:07 PM PST The FourFour blog has collected an amazing assortment of animated Judge Judy GIFs, a kind of juddering array of dismissive gestures; angry, pinched expressions; and ferocious scowls. You really should click through to get the whole effect. Judge Judy gifs (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) |
Cartoonist plays trick on homophobes Posted: 18 Feb 2011 02:41 PM PST The repugnant homophobes at the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) hotlinked one of Zach Weinersmith's webcomics, and Zach changed the image to the rainbow flag and an appropriate Thomas Jefferson quote. NOM is a group whose major function is lobbying against gay marriage. They were made notorious for this video [See "Fake people tell fake stories about the threat of gay marriage" and search for the torrent file of the video of the actors auditioning for the commercial here (because NOM removed the video from YouTube) -- Mark]. They seem to have construed the comic to have some stance in favor of traditional sexuality. Apparently they don't read my comics regularly.N.O.M. N.O.M. N.O.M. (Thanks, Jacob Covey!) |
An informative video about the Honey Badger Posted: 18 Feb 2011 02:38 PM PST I found this video about the Honey Badger to be very educational. (NSFW) |
Funny 1969 short film by Matt Groening's father Homer Posted: 18 Feb 2011 01:57 PM PST Amy Crehore alerted me to this funny short film by Homer Groening, "Basic Brown, Basic Blue" (1969). Ever wonder how Matt Groening of The Simpsons got his quirky sense of humor? Probably from his filmmaker dad, Homer Groening, who passed away in 1996. Although known for his documentaries, Homer Groening directed and narrated this film, ostensibly about color, but filled with an ongoing series of bikini-clad bathing beauties. The film is perhaps best viewed as a graphic artifact that will interest media historians seeking additional insight into the elements that influenced the cartoonist.Basic Brown, Basic Blue (1969) |
Posted: 18 Feb 2011 01:47 PM PST [video link] Silvio Berlusconi will be the first head of a G-7 state to be arraigned in court on charges of paid sex with a minor. A few days ago, the court from Milan issued a subpoena for the Italian premiere, on a charge that could carry a penalty of 15 years of prison. This April 6, sugar daddy Silvio will face three adult female judges from Milan, the Italian women that the press here in Italy call his "Nemesis." A right wing commentator of the TG1, one of the TV channels owned and controlled by Berlusconi himself, said: I believe in his innocence, but by the time he proves that, his reputation will be gone forever. And to tell the truth he worked hard on that himself! What on earth did he think he was doing when he meddled with minors and showgirls? The Church as well as Catholic believers are divided. It's not about sex, says one of the high ranked church officials: hardly any Italian anymore confesses those misdeeds as sins. It's his way of doing it. Then there's the hardcore of Italian machismo, who aspire to that level of misbehavior themselves, and frankly admire Berlusconi for his orgies. "Ruby The Heartstealer," the Moroccan illegal belly-dancing minor, was the last-known in the lengthy chain of Berlusconi's sweethearts. Ruby may have triggered a final avalanche of shameful publicity that will crush the lascivious premiere... but, Ruby nevertheless just cheerily appeared in Italian television, in black lingerie, peddling a tell-all book. Italians have always adored sexy foreign girls: Belen Rodriguez, the Argentinian top model, is the star of the Sanremo music festival although she cannot sing, and also the spokesmodel for a wireless Internet service, though her appeal is by no means high-tech. Italy's high-fashion business puts a premium on female beauty, not to mention a bald market price.
So what did Berlusconi do so wrong in his unfortunate dalliance with Ruby, and the numerous other girls that he invited to his home and paid generously? The court in Milan issued 27 pages of evidence. Ruby was a minor when she was partying "bunga bunga" style at his place, and he knew it. Ruby was caught stealing from friends, and he freed her from the police although the cops had her in custody as a minor. Ruby was an illegal immigrant, and he smilingly promised to forge her papers for her. Finally, he arranged to deceive the Italian police by absurdly claiming that Ruby was the niece of recently deposed president Hosni Mubarak, in order to set her free. In short, Berlusconi abused his political position and flouted the law so as to keep his harem running smoothly. This cost him hundreds of thousands of euros given away to girls as presents, cars, and lodgings. Ruby at a certain point asked for 5 million euros in hush money, and that didn't seem to be a problem.
Berlusconi answered to the subpoena with a stonewalled denial and a large smile: he refuses to speak to press about sex scandals, he bluntly refuses the authority of the Milanese court, and has no fears of the consequences to the state or himself. He is trying however to move the case away from the court in Milan to a kinder jurisdiction that he can control, or possibly buy. Last night, at the festival of Sanremo, the Oscar wining Italian author and actor Roberto Benigni, gave a long, emotional speech about the subject of a united Italy. March 17, 2011 is the sesquicentennial of the country's unity, and San Remo was draped in tricolor Italian flags. 2011 is a symbolic year for Italian democracy and the Italian national way of life. The new economic data are showing Italy as the slowest-growing EU country. The expectations of Italian young people are very low, if not nonexistent. The nation is torn by the anti-federalist demands of right-wing parties, which want to split the country into rich regions (theirs) and poor regions (everyone else). Long-standing cultural differences among Italian regions are being exaggerated and manipulated, as the power-brokers quarrel over the shares of a pie that grows smaller. Petty regional bosses are fighting for more autonomy and their own power centers. Divide and reign, united we stand. We are stronger together, said Benigni in his moving speech. He analyzed word by word an idealistic poem written by a twenty-year-old Risorgimento martyr for Italian unity: the Italian anthem. We cannot give democracy away, we cannot squander it, Benigni appealed. Today, Wikileaks on Italy is published by major dailies. These leaks from the American state department have become a kind of news agency that bluntly states truths about Italy that every Italian already knows. Americans are increasingly worried about Italian national stability, and not merely because of its leader's reckless sex scandals. His relationship to the autocratic Putin, his prolonged overtures to the tyrant Moammar Gadhafi, his crooked money interests, organized corruption methods and mafia connections... His rude remarks to other heads of state and his sheer unpredictability all worry the American Big Brother. But he is still useful, they conclude.
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Identify these outrageous false teeth and get $500 Posted: 18 Feb 2011 01:32 PM PST An estate sales expert needs your help identifying these false teeth, and is willing to pay for it: Do you know who owned these Antique False Teeth? If you do, and can credibly prove it, we will reward the first person to do so with $500.00$500 Reward: Who Owned These Antique Gold False Teeth? (Thanks, Jesse Thorn!) |
Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:55 AM PST Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly has been staying on top of the story about the Dervaeses of Pasadena, California, a family of urban farmers who have trademarked the term "Urban Homestead." (See previous post). A week ago, the Dervaes Institute sent out a number of DCMA takedown notices to Google, Facebook, and other sites notifying them of "Allegedly Infringing Material" -- that is, web pages that use "urban homestead" without indicating it is a licensed trademark of the Dervaes Institute. (Here's a Trademark DMCA Complaint to Google that was posted to Chilling Effects on February 13, 2011.) As a result of these DMCA takedown notices, several Facebook page owners say their pages have been deleted. Here's what Arellano has to say about a combative press release the Dervaeses issued early this morning to defend their actions: [The release states:] "In the attempt to maintain the reputation and integrity of the trademarks, Dervaes Institute has privately informed, to date, a total of 16 organizations, publishers and businesses about the proper usage of the registered terms," the press release reads (their underlining, not ours). "No threat was made against anyone's first amendment rights; yet, there has been a heated argument in the media against what should have been the Dervaeses' normal rights to protect their trademarks." I'm sure there will be more news to come. OC Weekly: Dervaes Family Sends Out Ridiculous Press Release Claiming They're Not Trying to Shut Up Urban Homesteaders |
Optical illusion inventor goes on to invent copyright threats against 3D printing company Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:22 AM PST Yesterday, I blogged about Artur Tchoukanov, who figured out how to make a 3D printed "impossible" Penrose triangle. Turned out I didn't have the details quite right. The guy who came up with the 3D design in Thingiverse had made it after seeing someone else's model for the same thing on Shapeways, and he'd made the triangle design to show that he'd figured out how the trick was done. The person who invented this way of inventing this 3D Penrose Triangle was Ulrich Schwanitz, who sent me some emails asking me to correct my post (which I did as soon as I got back to my laptop after a day at a conference), but he sent a much more substantial email to Thingiverse, a service that hosts 3D models: in this email, Mr Schwanitz accused Tchoukanov of violating his copyright and demanded that the model be removed from the Internet in accord with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In so doing, Mr Schwanitz has become the first person in history to threaten Thingiverse with a copyright lawsuit. Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy |
Is this how the Escher Waterfall machine works? Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:12 AM PST Yesterday, I blogged about an anonymous YouTuber who appeared to have built a machine that could make Escher's impossible self-replenishing waterfall a concrete reality. David Goldman thinks he knows how it was done, and sent this diagram along. (Thanks, David!) |
Posted: 18 Feb 2011 11:06 AM PST The operators of an insanely crappy Christmas themepark in Hampshire, England have finally been convicted of various fraud charges. They charged £30 a head to visit an empty field with a painting of a nativity scene, a small snack bar, and a few Christmas lights hanging from nearby trees: In bold, the website stated: "The attention to detail of our theme park will truly wow you."Lapland theme park brothers convicted of misleading customers (via Danny's Land) |
HBGary's high-volume astroturfing technology and the Feds who requested it Posted: 18 Feb 2011 12:34 PM PST The enormous corpus of email leaked from federal security contractor HB Gary following Anonymous's hacking of the company's servers continues to deliver compromising payloads. This time, it's internal emails detailing the creation of "persona management" software to simplify the process of pretending to be several people at once online, in order simulate widespread support for a point of view -- astroturfing automation software. The software appears to have been developed in response to a federal government solicitation seeking automated tools for astroturfing message boards in foreign countries. Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use...UPDATED: The HB Gary Email That Should Concern Us All (via MeFi) (Image: Shadows and Gold, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kevandotorg's photostream)
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Straight line traced by 500 individuals: mutation in action Posted: 17 Feb 2011 11:10 PM PST A strange little piece of crowdsorcery called "A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals" provides a sharp illustration of the magnification of transcription errors and the way that extreme mutation can proceed from small changes. A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing - trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves - kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals (via Kottke) |
Posted: 18 Feb 2011 09:52 AM PST Drone manufacturer AeroVironment has demonstrated their "Nano-Hummingbird" tiny spy plane. The prototype is approximately the size of a real hummingbird, weighs the same as an AA battery, and is outfitted with a video camera. AeroVironment is working on the device for the Department of Defense, 'natch. From PhysOrg: Manager of the project, Matt Keennon, said it had been a challenge to design and build the spybot because it "pushes the limitations of aerodynamics." The specifications given to the firm by the Pentagon included being able to hover in an 8 km/h wind gust and being able to fly in and out of buildings via a normal door.More on the Nano-Hummingbird here and demo video after the jump. |
1960s Acid Test posters up for auction Posted: 18 Feb 2011 09:30 AM PST This fantastic c.1965 handbill advertising Merry Prankster Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, and signed by Kesey himself, is up for bid right now in "The HeART of Rock and Roll Poster Auction." It's already up to $6,300! Collectors Weekly has more on the handbill and an even rarer Acid Test flier also on the block. "Rare Acid Test Posters Flying High" |
Interview with psychedelic artist Fred Tomaselli Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:26 AM PST Fred Tomaselli creates stunningly hyperdelic collages on wood panels consisting of medicinal plants, hallucinogenic drugs, prescription pills, scientific images, birds, flowers, trees, and people. He then paints on top of the collages and coats the whole thing in thick and glossy resin. Tomaselli says, ""It is my ultimate aim to seduce and transport the viewer in to space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction." Science writer Heather Sparks (aka my sister-in-law) interviewed Tomaselli for Story Collider, a terrific podcast that each week "brings you a story about how science affected someone's life." "The Story Collider: Interview with Fred Tomaselli" |
Authors Guild argues in favor of censorship (also: they don't know shit about Shakespeare) Posted: 17 Feb 2011 11:20 PM PST The Volokh Conspiracy's David Post shreds the Authors Guild editorial in this week's NYT. In it, Scott Turow and James Shapiro argue that America should introduce COICA, an official censorship law that blocks websites that large companies from the entertainment industry don't like. It's alarming to see authors arguing in favor of censorship, but the argument put forward in the editorial, "Would the Bard have Survived the Web?" is also profoundly ignorant account of how Shakespeare wrote his works: To begin with, how odd is it that they'd invoke Shakespeare in this context? "We need stronger copyright or else we won't get the next Shakespeare" is like arguing "We need the designated hitter, or how will we ever get the next Babe Ruth?" In a copyright-free world -- not that I'm advocating such a thing, but hey, you brought it up -- we'll get the next Shakespeare the way we got the last Shakespeare, in a copyright-free world. The first copyright statute, the Statute of Anne, wasn't passed until 1709, long after Shakespeare was a-moulderin' in the grave. [That's what we need a name for -- this kind of absurdly misplaced historical argument]What's more, old Billy the Shake's great plays were largely based on works by his contemporaries and forebears -- works that would have been illegal "derivative works" had our contemporary copyright laws been in place then. If you want to read something by an author who understands both copyright and Shakespeare, try James Boyle's "The Search for an Author: Shakespeare and the Framers." There Should Be A Name for This One, Too (via Copyfight) (Image: William Shakespeare, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from tonynetone's photostream) |
Posted: 17 Feb 2011 11:01 PM PST Jason Freeny created this marvellous Rubik's Brain by sculpting a cuboid brain around a Rubik's Cube, working in individual chunks that left the puzzle functional. Rubiks Brain Sculpt (via Super Punch)
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