Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Right-left symmetry photos of Qaddafi

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 09:55 PM PST

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Muggum is a .99 iPhone app that generates two symmetrical side-by-side portraits -- one from the left side of the face, and one from the right. Here's both sides of ol' whatshisface.

Make ran an article that shows how to do this on a PC.

Hunter S. Thompson comic bio

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:47 PM PST

Hsttttt Hunterrrrrcomccc Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith have just published a graphic novel-style biography of Hunter St. Thompson, titled Gonzo. I haven't read it yet, but Don't Panic posted an interview with the authors and sample panels from the book.

"Interview with the authors of Gonzo"

Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson (Amazon)

Work in progress: Pig Lady drawing

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:37 PM PST

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Tara Helfer, a friend of mine from a comic book drawing class I took about a year ago, is in the process of inking and coloring a really cool illustration of a pig-lady-thing holding a rooster. I really enjoy her totally weird mutated creations, and her process documentation shows some insight into how much time she spends making them just right.

Pig Lady work in progress - Thanks Tara!

TOM THE DANCING BUG: After the Revolution, with the Federal Gov'mint off our backs!

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:28 PM PST

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Music/Art exhibition at NY MoMA

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:47 PM PST

Tina Weymouth Grandmaster Flash © Laura Levine 1981 New York's Museum of Modern Art is hosting their third exhibition on the intersection of music and art. Titled "Looking at Music 3.0," this show presents the New York scene of the 1980s and 1990s, a rich period when graffiti, performance art, and hip hop emerged from the underground. The show features the work of dozens of artists like Keith Haring, Diamanda Galas, Karen Finley, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth, Run DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre, and Laura Levine. At left is Levine's stunning portrait of Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth and hip hop legend Grandmaster Flash, shot in 1981 for a cover of New York Rocker.

Looking at Music 3.0 (MoMA)

Laura Levine photo gallery

These are not the clones you're looking for

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 02:41 PM PST

5468358335_72a9cfd948_z.jpeg Photo: Kalexanderson via the BB Flickr pool.

Imagineer Rolly Crump remembers his early years with Disney

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 10:31 PM PST

Legendary Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump has kicked off a weekly column describing his early years with the company. This week: How Walt Disney's incapacity to remember his name turned "Roland" into "Rolly," with a brief detour through "What's His Name."
I'd been sitting in on meetings with Walt for over a year when all of a sudden he started calling me Owen.

I finally figured out that the reason he called me Owen was because there was a writer who wrote for the live action pictures and his name was OWEN Crump. I think Walt mixed up his Owen and his Roland.

So I was Owen Crump for awhile, and then I became Orland. I don't know where that came from. I spoke with Walt's daughter one time and she said that Walt always had trouble with names.

But as far as I was concerned, Walt could call me whatever he wanted.

The coup de grace happened one day when Walt and I were in a meeting with Yale Gracey to talk about The Haunted Mansion. Walt turned to Yale and said, "I want you to work on the Mansion together with [and here he pointed to me] What's His Name".

So I became "What's His Name', which I got a big kick out of.

The Truth of the Matter Is (Thanks, Bob!)
 


Photos of kids waiting at Disneyland

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 01:20 PM PST


Hugh sez, "Designer Arin Fishkin took some delightful photos on a recent trip to Disneylad -- all of kids waiting for rides."

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part (Thanks, HughElectronic, via Submitterator!)

Capitol Defense: tower defense game illustrates lobbying pressure on Congress

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 01:17 PM PST


Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez, "This morning, like much of the country, Washingtonians woke up to snow outside their windows. Sure, there wasn't enough to shut down the Capitol the way that the snowpocalypse did last year, but we decided to celebrate the same way: Snowball fight! Introducing Capitol Defense, a free, online game that pits you against the special interests and lobbyists spending increasing amounts of money to overcome the puny levels of congressional willpower. And how do you protect your congressional reps? Using snowballs, of course.

"This game was a nice chance for us to see how far we could stretch HTML5 technologies. It may not be the most important thing Sunlight's ever done, but we think it's pretty fun. And, of course we're always eager to find new ways of illustrating just what unbelievably large amounts of special interest money flow through this town. Play a couple rounds to see just how much different industries spend -- and share it with your friends."

Capitol Defense (Thanks, Nicko!)

 


Window Alert

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:51 PM PST

hummingbird-back.jpeg I have tried many different methods to stop birds from striking my windows including sticking white label dots all over the window. I found these UV decals that go on the exterior of your window to be the easiest and most successful of any solution. Birds read the reflection of nature in your windows as real and think they are traveling towards trees or sky or another bird--whatever is reflected. The WindowbAlert decals are nearly invisible (so you can barely see them when looking through the window) but the birds see UV light reflected back from the decal, thereby deterring them from flying into the window. Before applying the decals I made sure to wash the window and used rubbing alcohol to remove any residue. It also helps if you place feeders and bird baths either very close to the window or away at an angle. --Terry Powell Window Alert U.V. Decals $7.00 Don't forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!

Mexican Border Tribal Tron: "Glowing at the OK Corral"

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 11:45 AM PST

[Video Link] In this short video piece from Spanish-language network mun2, we meet a young man named Xavier in Dallas, Texas, who has modded his border-cool nightclubbing outfit with el-wire and various glowing things, to Tron-like effect. We're featuring this video in the next Boing Boing Video in-flight channel edition on Virgin America Airlines, along with a few other fun clips from Mun2. (thanks, Jose Marquez)

SPECIAL FEATURE: James Gurney: What's in my bag

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 08:45 PM PST

James Gurney is the author and illustrator of the Dinotopia book series
. His most recent books are called Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (2009) and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010). In 2008, he traveled with to North Africa on a watercolor expedition, painting portraits of wild macaques in Gibraltar, Berbers in Moroccan casbahs, and Arab guards in the alleyways of Fez. But he's just as happy sketching in American laundromats and old diners.

Read the rest



Alaska state rep refuses TSA grope of her mastectomy scars, drives home from Seattle

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 11:36 PM PST

Alaska State Rep Sharon Cissna, a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy, was barred from flying home to Juneau from Seattle by the TSA when she refused to allow a screener to touch the scars from her operation. She drove home instead. Apparently she is always selected for an invasive "hand screening" because the "irregularities" presented by her prosthesis when viewed through the pornoscanner raise the TSA's suspicions. As others have observed, the War on Terror is really a War on the Unusual -- it's the systematic erosion of rights for people with nonstandard appearance, health, itineraries, and beliefs, without regard to whether those "irregularities" are correlated with terrorist activity. It's as though the TSAhas said, "All terrorists are engaged in something unusual, therefore all unusual occurrences should be viewed as potential terrorism."
"So last night, as more and more TSA, airline, airport and police gathered, I became stronger in remembering to fight the submission to a physical hand exam. I repeatedly said that I would not allow the feeling-up and I would not use the transportation mode that required it."

"For nearly fifty years I've fought for the rights of assault victims, population in which my wonderful Alaska sadly ranks number one, both for men and women who have been abused. The very last thing an assault victim or molested person can deal with is yet more trauma and the groping of strangers, the hands of government 'safety' policy."

"For these people, as well as myself, I refused to submit."



America's Chief Apocalypse Officer, a Fed job ad from 1956

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 12:11 AM PST


In 1956, the US Office of Emergency Preparedness advertised a job opening for someone to plan and oversee the recovery of America after an all-out nuclear exchange, a kind of Chief Apocalypse Officer.
The position description clearly makes distinctions between pre- and post-attack responsibilities of the Chief of the Damage Assessment Division: under "Nature of Purpose of Work", part 1, section A (1) it reads "a pre-attack capability for translating likely patterns of attacks into losses of manpower, industrial capacity, and weapon systems output'. In Section A (2) we see"a post-attack capability for assessing actual losses, for alternating alternate levels of output consistent with surviving resources and for testing feasibility of proposed new mobilization programs". Or in other words, sifting the rubble to see who and what was left and to see where they could be actually plugged into whatever scenarios had already been planned, and alter as necessary. And also on page two, part (3) "development and maintenance of capabilities for both rapid and deliberate damage assessments in event of actual attack..."

Continuing on page two, the Damage Assessment Division would create damage estimates, "disseminate ...estimates of indirect effects including effects...on government, financial and credit systems, and production..." which of course is, well, everything. Except overall assessments of total numbers of people killed, which isn't a necessary statistic for most of the stuff we're talking about here.

The Office: Nuclear Weapons and Management Pre- and Post-Attack (!) Job Description, 1956 (via IO9)
 


Discretion please, not rulebooks

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 10:58 AM PST


("One Nation under CCTV," an illustration contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Tom Blackwell)

I'm writing this on a plane, having just passed through Security at Heathrow airport. An obviously nice young mother was distraught because she wasn't allowed to take on board a tub of ointment for her little girl's eczema. The security man was polite but firm. She wasn't even permitted to spoon a reduced quantity into a smaller jar. I couldn't quite grasp what was wrong with that helpful suggestion, but the rule book was implacable. All the official could do was offer to fetch his supervisor. The supervisor came and, equally polite but firm, she too was regretfully bound by the rulebook's hoops of steel.

There was nothing I could do, and it was no help that I recommended a website where a knowledgeable chemist explains, in delightfully comedic detail, what it would take to manufacture a workable bomb from binary liquid ingredients, working for several hours in the aircraft loo, using copious quantities of ice, in relays of champagne coolers helpfully supplied by the cabin staff.

The prohibition against taking more than very small quantities of liquids or unguents on planes is demonstrably ludicrous. It started as one of those "Look at us, we're taking decisive action" displays, the ones designed to cause maximum inconvenience to the public in order to make the dimwitted Dundridges who rule our lives feel important and look busy.

Same with having to take our shoes off (another gem of official wallyhood that must have Bin Laden chuckling triumphantly into his beard) and all those other classic exercises in belated stable door shutting. But let me get to the general principle. Rulebooks are themselves put together by human judgments. Often bad human judgments, but in any case judgments by humans who were probably no wiser or better qualified to make them than the individuals who subsequently have to put them into practice out in the real world.

No sane person, witnessing that scene at the airport, seriously feared that this woman was planning to blow herself up on a plane. The fact that she was accompanied by children gave us the first clue. Supporting evidence trickled in from the brazen visibility of her face and hair, from her lack of a Koran, prayer mat or big black beard, and finally from the manifest absurdity of the notion that her little tub of ointment could ever, in a million years, be alchemically magicked into a high explosive - certainly not in the cramped laboratory facilities afforded by an aircraft loo. The security official and his supervisor were human beings who obviously wished they could behave decently, but they were powerless: stymied by a rulebook. Nothing but a rulebook, which, because it is made of paper and unalterable ink rather than of flexible human brain tissue, is incapable of discretion, compassion or humanity.

This is just a single example, and it may seem trivial. But you, reader, can list half a dozen similar cases from your own experience.

Last week the father of a friend was the victim of a callous rule book enforcement. His wife needed an operation to save her leg, which had suffered a damaging loss of blood owing to a heart condition. There was a good chance that, when the surgeons investigated, they would decide to remove her foot, or even her whole leg, and her very survival was not guaranteed. Her husband went home during the lengthy operation and the family waited anxiously by the telephone for the result. When he telephoned the hospital, he was told he had to come in person: they would not inform him of the result of the operation by telephone. Can you imagine the dark thoughts this must have triggered in his worried mind, thoughts that accompanied him on the whole journey to the hospital? When he finally arrived after nearly an hour's journey, he was greeted with the joyful news that the operation was a complete success: his wife, and her leg, were saved. Why wouldn't they tell him on the telephone? He could only presume it was because of some ridiculous rule, no doubt drawn up by some pen-pushing lawyer. Once again, no discretion, no human kindness.

Talk to any doctor or nurse, and hear their frustration with having to spend a substantial proportion of their time filling in forms and ticking boxes. Who sincerely thinks that is a good use of expert, valuable time, time which could be spent caring for patients? No human being, surely, not even a lawyer. Only a mindless book of rules.

How often does a dangerous criminal walk free, not because evidence has been examined but simply because of a 'technicality'? Perhaps the arresting officer fluffed his lines when delivering the official 'caution'. Decisions that will gravely affect a person's whole life can turn on the powerlessness of a judge to exercise discretion and reach a simple conclusion which every single person in the court, including the lawyers on both 'sides', knows is just.

It isn't quite as simple as that, of course. Discretion can be abused, and rulebooks are important safeguards against that. But the balance has shifted too far in the direction of obsessive reverence for rules. There must be ways to re-introduce intelligent discretion and overthrow the unbending tyranny of going-by-the-book, without opening the door to abuse. We should make it our business to find them.

Identifying the victims of a 100-year-old tragedy

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 10:28 AM PST

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The final unidentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a 1911 tragedy that had a huge impact on the creation of American labor laws and building codes—have finally been matched with names. What's really interesting to me: The fact that the bodies weren't identified with DNA, or any other modern science, but through simple detective work.

That's because the mystery was more about consolidating and organizing information that already existed, than it was about identifying the bodies themselves. Even before they died, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were largely anonymous, except to the people who knew them personally. So, while official historians didn't know the names of all the dead, those names were always out there, buried in articles from small, neighborhood newspapers and passed down in family histories.

No New York City agencies and no newspapers at the time produced a complete list of the dead, Mr. Hirsch said. The most thorough list -- 140 names -- was compiled by Mr. Von Drehle when he wrote his book, and that was largely based on names plucked from accounts in four contemporary newspapers.

The obscurity of their names is evidence of the times, when lives were lived quietly and people were forced by economic and familial circumstances to swiftly move on from tragedies -- with no Facebook or reality television cameras to record their every step and thought.

Mr. Hirsch, 50, an amateur genealogist and historian who was hired as a co-producer of the coming HBO documentary "Triangle: Remembering the Fire," undertook an exhaustive search lasting more than four years. He returned to the microfilms of mainstream daily newspapers overlooked by researchers before him and to ethnic publications that he asked to have translated, like the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward and Il Giornale Italiano. He estimates that he consulted 32 different newspapers.

He looked for articles about people who, in the weeks after the fire, claimed that their relatives were still missing. He then matched what he discovered with census records, death and burial certificates, marriage licenses, and reports kept by unions and charities about funeral and "relief" payments made to the families of the dead. Lastly, he sought out the descendants of three of the unidentified to confirm that the names he found were still mourned as Triangle victims.

New York Times: Unnamed Triangle Shirtwaist Company Victims Identified

Bug eating in the Wall Street Journal

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 01:49 PM PST

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The Wall Street Journal gets on the bug-eating bandwagon with an article titled "The Six-Legged Meat of the Future." Edible insects are becoming trendy, with London's Archipelago restaurant topping their creme brulee with a bee and Manhattan's Tolache offering grasshopper-stuffed tacos. The image above is from the blog of Japanese bug sushi maker, Shoichi Uchiyama. The WSJ article includes sample recipes from "The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook" by David George Gordon:
Files 2008 07 Eat-A-Bug-Cookbook Recipe: Crispy Crickets Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Strip the antennae, limbs and wings (if any) from 20 to 30 clean, frozen adult crickets, or 40 to 60 cricket nymphs. Spread the stripped crickets on a lightly oiled baking sheet and place in oven. Bake until crickets are crisp, around 20 minutes. Yield: one cup.

Sprinkle these on salads or put them through a coffee grinder to turn them into bug "flour." You could even combine the crickets with Chex Mix for a protein-rich snack.

"The Six-Legged Meat of the Future" (WSJ, thanks Bob Pescovitz!)

Eat-a-bug Cookbook (Amazon)

Spoek Mathambo, "Control" (Joy Division cover), dir. Pieter Hugo

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 10:20 AM PST

Spoek Mathambo, "Control." A reinterpretation of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control ," directed by Pieter Hugo in Cape Town, South Africa. Via Clayton Cubitt, More at Dazed.

Nebula nominees announced

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 09:59 AM PST

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the 2010 Nebula Award nominees! Congrats all round.

Phasers, Stargates, and Alien Legs: The Science Fiction Collector's Collector

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 10:04 AM PST

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Alienleg Alec Peters has one of the finest collections of Star Trek props and costumes in the galaxy. From Romulan Disruptors to classic Tricorders to the various styles of Vulcan robes, Peters either has one in his collection or know where to find one and how much you should pay. His Star Trek Prop, Costume & Auction blog is a major online hub for folks into such things, and a way of sharing his knowledge and collection with the federation at large.

"I bought my first prop from Profiles in History in 1996," Peters told The Prop Blog. "It was a Judge Dread Lawgiver pistol from the Stalllone movie. I then bought a screen-used Captain America costume from the Reb Brown 1980′s TV movie on eBay. I am a huge Captain America collector and so that piece is special, despite the movie being so bad! I then really dove into the hobby during the 2006 Christie's Star Trek auction. I bought two costumes at the auction, two more right after, and I then started my blog."

The next step was turning his obsession into a career. Eventually, Peters moved from Atlanta to Hollywood to launch Propworx, a company that helps studios make cash by selling costumes and props. Interestingly, Propworx sometimes gets involved while shows and movies are still in production. How? By "ensuring the correct number of props and costumes are created and used on-camera to preserving and cataloging those assets to ensure they are available after the production.  For Battlestar Galactica, Propworx created an additional $ 200,000 in auction receipts in just one month of production." It's a strange form of product placement where the product's use in a film is an advertisement for that precise thing, as opposed to a mass-produced item. By making and using yet another uniform rank pin a BSG episode, the studio creates an aura of authenticity around the pin with the intent of selling it later.

Want a piece of the action, literally? Propworx has just launched a new science fiction auction on eBay with nearly 300 items from BSG, Iron Man, Aliens, Star Wars, X-Men, and other shows and films. Now is your chance to own a segment of a Stargate, an Iron Man Mark III costume (with battle wounds!) or, even my pick seen at left, an Alien Queen leg from Aliens! Starting bid on that lovely appendage: $1500.

Propworx

Propworx on eBay

(Peters photo from Trekspace)

Advertisement:

This series is underwritten by the Dockers Wear the Pants™ Project. Win $100K to finally do what you love. Enter now.


How Anonymous decides: inside the lulz-sausage factory

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 12:48 AM PST

On the heels of the news that the Westoboro Baptist Church attempted to lure sympathizers of the Anonymous movement into attacking it comes this excellent Ars Technica feature by Nate Anderson into the chaotic consensus decision-making inside Anonymous's message-boards. As a loose group without any formal membership requirements or constitution, Anonymous's decisions can be divisive and difficult (which is not to say that formal, constitutional groups have it easy!).
A common complaint was about being sidetracked. Another concluded, "Anonymous, you've decided to go f**k about with trolls rather than helping protestors gain their freedoms. Why, Anonymous?"

A Christian Anon begged his compatriots to ignore Westboro in favor of more important projects. A UK Anon suggested that the group was "being trolled into the sh*t by the religous right."

Other notes went even further, casting doubt on past operations like the recent hack into security firm HBGary. "We have invaded the privacy of corporations, and no matter what other Anons say, the standard behind Anonymous did not agree with the HBGary hit," said one document. "In fact, many of us are waiting for those who were involved in that Operation to be taken in by the law and will not associate with that sort of outlet. Those who are happy with that Operation are nothing more than trolls and we apologize for this as well."

Reading the blizzard of Anonymous notes on the topic of Westboro, one can see the hivemind in action. It's chaotic, often at odds with itself, and open to simple infiltration (several pieces suggested that Westboro may have written the initial "Anonymous" press release just to ignite a war). Leadership is exerted through numbers more than through hierarchy.

Empty suit: the chaotic way Anonymous makes decisions

(Image: Anonymous Declaration of IndepenDance. Wallpaper (3923x4656), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from thinkanonymous's photostream)

 


Playable "Angry Birds" birthday cake

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 09:38 AM PST

Mike Cooper's son Ben is the luckiest little boy in the entire world. And you can make moppets, or whimsical adults, just as deliriously happy with the help of Cooper's Angry Bird cake tutorial.

Now I kind of want to make a playable Crayon Physics Deluxe cake.

Via Evidence Matters & also Submitterated by readers dove and Doug Schmidt.

Interview with a deep-sea submarine pilot

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 09:22 AM PST

Marine biologist Al Dove recently went on an expedition to Brazil's Abrolhos reef, where he was part of a team that studied life in the depths where light begins to fade—an area called the mesophotic zone. To reach those twilight waters, Dove and his colleagues traveled aboard the Johnson Sea Link, a deepwater research submarine that seats a pilot and a passenger inside a five ft. diameter sphere made of clear acrylic.

In this video, Dove interviews the Johnson Sea Link's pilot, Don Liberatore, to find out how Liberatore ended up with such an amazing job.

You can also take a short tour of the Johnson Sea Link at Dove's blog.

Via Deep Sea News

Egyptian orders a pizza for the Wisconsin demonstrators

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 10:46 PM PST

Ian's, a pizzeria near the Wisconsin state capitol that is sympathetic to the demonstrators, has been facilitating the process of supporters around the world who want to send pizza to the protest. They've fielded an order from Egypt -- now that's solidarity.
The blackboard behind the counter lists the "countries donating" as "Korea, Finland, New Zealand, Egypt, Denmark, Australia, US, Canada, Germany, China, England, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy" and has the abbreviations for all 50 states listed below, with donating states circled.
From Cairo to Madison, some pizza (Thanks, Nextnik, via Submitterator!)

(Image: Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from wrestlingentropy's photostream)

 


Why was the Christchurch Earthquake so destructive?

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 08:44 AM PST

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Image: Simon Baker / Reuters

New Zealand is no stranger to the results of plate tectonics. The country sits almost directly on top of the boundary between two chunks of the Earth's crust, the Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate. The two plates grind against each other, creating tension spots where potential energy builds up and is released in the form of earthquakes—a lot like pushing on a stuck door until it finally flies open. New Zealanders feel as many as 200 earthquakes every year, but most are nothing more than a minor jiggle. And even big, throttling shakes, like the 7.1 magnitude quake that hit the country five months ago, can come and go without killing anyone.

Today's earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand is different. Although it was relatively powerful—6.3 magnitude—it was still weaker than the quake last Fall. And yet, it's already the deadliest earthquake to hit New Zealand since 1931. What made this earthquake so dangerous? It's all about location, says New Scientist:

Last year's 7.1-magnitude earthquake was more than 10 times as strong as today's but caused no deaths, probably because it occurred at greater depth and further away from Christchurch: its epicentre was 70 kilometres west of the city. And the focus of September's quake was some 10 kilometres below ground - today's was half as deep.

Via Discover magazine's 80 Beats blog

What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 12:06 AM PST

Here's the fascinating story of Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, the only person to have stuck his head into a particle accelerator. His head accidentally strayed into the path of the proton beam at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino in 1978, and the beam bored a hole through his brain and out his nose. The radiation absorbed by his head was in the region of 1000 gray. 5 gray worth of X-rays is generally considered fatal, but Bugorski survived and went on to complete his PhD (a proton beam moving near the speed of light has different characteristics from an X-ray!). The side of his face that was burned by the beam's exit has not visibly aged in the years since the accident.

I attended the Clarion science fiction writing workshop at Michigan State University in 1992, and we were privileged to tour the university's Cyclotron. Of course, the first thing we asked was, "How do you kill someone with one of these?" (we'd been working on plotting). The scientist's answer was very disappointing -- he insisted that it was all very safe, with too many checks and balances to be a useful murder weapon. As I recall, he suggested that you could pry loose a brick from the wall and hit someone in the head with it.

As you can see from the picture, the beam entered the back of Bugorski's head and came out around his nose. Shortly after this happened, Bugorski's left half of his face swelled up beyond recognition. He was taken to the hospital and studied as this was something that had never been seen before and so they closely monitored him thereafter, fully expecting him to die within a few days at most.

Although the skin on the part of his face and back of his head where the beam hit eventually peeled off over the next few days, Bugorski did not die as they thought he would. The beam also burned through his skull and brain tissue along with the afore mentioned skin. However, ultimately he came through it all surprisingly well.

Despite the beam going through his brain, his intellectual capacity remained the same as before. The few negative health drawbacks he did experience were not life threatening either. He lost the hearing in his left ear and experienced a constant unpleasant noise in that ear from then on. The left half of his face slowly became paralyzed over the course of the next two years. He also gets significantly more fatigued with mental work, though he did go on to get his PhD after this incident. The remaining side effects were occasional absence seizures and later tonic-clonic seizures, though these didn't show up right away.

What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator (via Warren Ellis)
 


Westboro Baptist Church attempts to lure Anonymous into attacking it?

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 11:56 PM PST

Last week, many news sources reported that the Anonymous movement had issued a threat against the notorious real-world trolls at the Westboro Baptist Church, comprised mainly of the extended family of Fred Phelps, who picket AIDS funerals with "God Hates Fags" signs, as well as trolling Jewish groups, military funerals, and other sensitive sites.

Now, some members of Anonymous have issued a press release disclaiming any threats against the Church. They claim that the Church had trumped up the threat in order to lure Anonymous supporters into launching a denial-of-service attack on the Church's site, which the Church could backtrack and use as the basis of a series of lawsuits against Anonymous participants.

I believe it. Close observers of the "Church" have opined that Phelps and his family have no particular strong beliefs, but that rather they are aggressive litigants who use shock tactics to lure private individuals and local police and governments into attacking them or abridging their rights. The family then brings lucrative civil action against all parties. It sounds like a sweet little racket if you're an utter sociopath.

If the threat from Anonymous was really trumped up, it's a pretty fine forgery, one that shows a high degree of attention and subtlety from the Phelps side -- someone there is a damned fine mimic of hacker bombast. It's also clever in that it attacks Anonymous in its weakest spot: the absence of any visible, formal governance structure makes it hard to sue or shutter Anonymous, but it also makes Anonymous vulnerable to these false-flag attacks and hoaxes (and it means that Anonymous has no institutional basis with which it might, for example, hire attorneys to sue Phelps or defend its members should Phelps sue them).

"You thought you could play with Anonymous. You observed our rising notoriety and thought you would exploit our paradigm for your own gain," said the group in a press release.

"When Anonymous says we support free speech, we mean it. We count Beatrice Hall among our Anonymous forebears: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' "

The hacktivist group said that, along with looking for more attention, the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to lure DDoS attackers into a "honeypot."

"They've got their ports wide open to harvest IPs to sue. Don't DDoS, and boycott Operation Westboro," warned Anonymous.

'We're not attacking Westboro Baptist Church' - Anonymous (via /.)

Embattled PS3 hacker raises big bank to fight Sony

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 12:57 AM PST

George "geohot" Hotz is the Playstation 3 hacker whom Sony is suing for unlocking his own PS3 so that he can run his own software on it. Hotz calls himself "pro-DRM" but he also believes in the right to jailbreak your own equipment. As confused as this sounds, it's still absurd and unjust for a gargantuan multinational to use its vast legal resources to crush a lone hacker whose "crime" is to figure out how to do (legal) stuff with his own property.

Hotz has raised money for his legal defence, which will be crushingly expensive. I'd planned on putting up $100 -- but then I discovered that Hotz had closed donations, evidently because he'd raised enough for now.

Since the donations page has gone up, Hotz has met his first goal and will be adding more lawyers to his legal team. For those without money to donate, Hotz is still asking for support. "Let people know how Sony treats customers," he wrote. "Let people know Sony would rather sue than be proactive and try to fix the problem. Let people know about laws like the DMCA which stifle innovation, and don't do anything to fix the problems they were created to solve."

If Sony offered to settle, Hotz has terms in mind: he wants the OtherOS option back on the PlayStation 3, and he wants a public apology from Sony. He's also willing to trade "a legit path to homebrew for knowledge of how to stop new firmwares from being decrypted." With a fresh infusion of funding and the attention of the media, Sony may find a more formidable opponent in Hotz than it expected.

Donations pour in for PS3 hacker; Sony court battle continues

 


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