The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Hollowed-out bug-sculptures
- Keeping abreast of photoshop horrors
- BookArc laptop stand "speeds up" your computer
- Lorna: Relic Wrangler -- upcoming comic book preview
- DJ Bei Ru: Crate-digging and vintage vinyl sampling, Armenian style
- Fat Cookies shut down
- Cherished Coca-Cola "ghost sign" must go, say Frisco bureaucrats
- Jam Hands plays "Modest Geologist" on ukulele
- Injustice Everywhere: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project
- Transmetropolitan Graffiti on the streets of NYC
- Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 on launchpad
- Video: Trail of Dead's Conrad Keely on his comic art
- Travel guide for American invalids, 1887
- Highlights from AAAS: More great stuff from around the Web
- Indiana deputy attorney general tweets: "Use live ammunition" on demonstrators
- Youtube prankster is facing serious jailtime
- Highlights from AAAS: When solar flares attack
- Attack of the Pink Armadillo
- Single mom sets herself on fire in Morocco
- Libyans gotta Lib
- Highlights from AAAS: Plant-inspired robots
- Apple looks set to unveil iPad 2 on March 2
- Erlang the Movie: just the calls
- Archive.org and 150 libraries create 80,000 lendable ebook library
- Highlights from AAAS: Microbial spit in the Gulf of Mexico
- Irish government sneaks in Internet censorship law
- Big problems for online porn credit card processor
- Highlights from AAAS: The sign language of science
- Snowman Slide: insanely elaborate slide `
- Today on BoingBoing: Highlights from the world's largest general science conference
| Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:41 PM PST  Scott Bain's "Micromachina" sculptures use hollowed-out beetles and other bugs with tiny dolls and doll-furniture to make a statement about humanity's relationship to the natural world: Micromachina (via Super Punch) |
| Keeping abreast of photoshop horrors Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:00 PM PST  Heather sent in this photo of an ad inside the current issue of Vogue. I imagine the designer's career will be a total bust after this one. |
| BookArc laptop stand "speeds up" your computer Posted: 23 Feb 2011 05:21 PM PST  Twelvesouth makes the $39.99 BookArc, a MacBook Air stand that helps you keep your desk tidy when you want to hook it up to a keyboard, external display and so forth. The marketing literature makes an interesting point about its product, Want to Speed Up Your MacBook Air? Try a BookArc. Really. BookArc for MacBook Air is more than a beautifully designed stand for your Mac. If you work with an external monitor, BookArc can actually improve the performance of MacBook Air. How? When you work with two monitors, your Mac's video memory is split between the two, but when you work with your MacBook closed, your Mac only has to power the external display. ... Can a notebook stand really speed up your MacBook? If it's a BookArc, the answer is yesAre they saying that because putting your laptop on their stand means that the lid will be closed, any performance improvements that result may be attributed to the stand? I do believe they are. Other items that also offer this attractive feature include: a pile of small books; a baked turd with a laptop-sized groove chiseled in it; resting a kitten atop your already-closed laptop to prevent gusts of wind opening it and incurring a negligible drop in performance; and nearly every other laptop stand in the known universe. BookArc  [Amazon Link] |
| Lorna: Relic Wrangler -- upcoming comic book preview Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:42 PM PST  Here's a preview of the upcoming one-shot issue of Lorna: Relic Wrangler, coming on March 23 from Image comics. Fun fact: Washington D.C.'s occult architecture was configured to roll out the red carpet for an extra-dimensional Dark Lord. And only one woman can rescue mankind from certain doom! See preview pages after the jump. Preview pages from "One Nation...Under CHAOS!" Story by Micah S. Harris, pencils/inks by Loston Wallace, colors by Steve Downer, and lettering by Nate Pride.
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| DJ Bei Ru: Crate-digging and vintage vinyl sampling, Armenian style Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:44 PM PST  Liz Ohanesian of the LA Weekly (a onetime Boing Boing guestblogger) emailed me recently about a hip-hop DJ/producer in LA named Bei Ru. Liz did a story a few weeks ago about him and his new album, Little Armenia (L.A.). "It's the best thing I've heard in a long time," Liz says, "If you're into stuff like DJ Shadow, you should check out his work." "Bei Ru's album is based on samples from vintage Armenian albums, particularly obscure funk and soul releases from the '60s and '70s," Liz explains. "He spent a long time seeking out vinyl in LA and on his travels to Lebanon and Armenia. I think he perfectly captured Armenian-American culture in L.A." Here is her story for the LA Weekly, and here is the website and MySpace page where you can hear the tunes. Buy Bei Ru's "Little Armenia (L.A.)" album on Amazon. |
| Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:34 PM PST  San Francisco's Department of Fun Prevention has shut down Fat Cookies, the thing where some folks sold cookies by dangling them out of a high window for customers passing-by. The operators hope to sort out the relevant permit issues and get back into business soon. [Facebook] Previously: Selling cookies like a crack dealer, by dangling a string out your kitchen window |
| Cherished Coca-Cola "ghost sign" must go, say Frisco bureaucrats Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:02 PM PST  Todd Lappin says: "Instead of complaining about advertising, San Francisco's progressive Bernal Heights neighborhood is rallying to save a vintage Coca-Cola "ghost sign" from the 1940s. City bureaucrats have declared it an "illegal" sign, and they are threatening the homeowner -- who lovingly restored the old sign at the request of his neighbors -- with fines if the mural is not removed. Most neighbors say the mural is not a billboard at all; they view it as a cherished link to the lost history of the neighborhood. (The building itself used to be a corner store.) Now the fight is on to document the history of the vintage mural and keep the bureaucrats at bay. Rhetorical question: Why does the San Francisco Planning Department hate Americana so much?" Todd's been covering the story in Bernalwood, a neighborhood blog he created late last year. |
| Jam Hands plays "Modest Geologist" on ukulele Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:52 PM PST [Video Link] Here's Jam Hands playing "Modest Geologist" on the ukulele. |
| Injustice Everywhere: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:04 PM PST |
| Transmetropolitan Graffiti on the streets of NYC Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:27 PM PST  Boing Boing reader Giant Eye, aka Matthew Borgatti, says, "Here's a sneak peek of something I'm working on for the Transmetropolitan Art Book. It's on the corner of W 26th st and 8th in Manhattan. If you live in the city you should come and see it before the installation gets graff'd over." For those who aren't familiar: Transmetropolitan |
| Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 on launchpad Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:09 PM PST  A lovely photo by Tom Moler of NASA. Click here for the Twitpic'd full size image. The shuttle is due to launch tomorrow, Thursday February 24, at 4:50pm ET. The mission will be the 39th and final flight of Discovery, and the 133rd flight of the Space Shuttle program, which began on 12 April 1981. (via Beth Beck, who is Space Operations Outreach Manager with NASA.) |
| Video: Trail of Dead's Conrad Keely on his comic art Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:54 PM PST ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead singer Conrad Keely is also a talented comic artist. His lovely artwork adorns the band's Web site and a variety of their album packaging, including their new release Tao of the Dead. In the exclusive video above, Keely talks about the epic album cover, steampunk, and the imaginary universe that's home to the music and the accompanying comic art. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead Tao of the Dead (Amazon) |
| Travel guide for American invalids, 1887 Posted: 22 Feb 2011 10:18 PM PST 1887's Appleton's illustrated hand-book of American winter resorts for tourists and invalids is a whirlwind tour through all the places you can go and die of consumption in the America of yesteryear: Appleton's illustrated hand-book of American winter resorts for tourists and invalids (Thanks, ButIfAndThat, via Submitterator!) |
| Highlights from AAAS: More great stuff from around the Web Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:22 PM PST  The hills are alive with the sounds of science! I've found lots of fascinating stories based on the lectures and panel discussions from last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. In this post, I've linked to a bunch I think you'll really enjoy. If there's great stuff that I missed, mention it in the comments! The image above comes from a line of truly awesome T-shirts that make me wish AAAS was the sort of casual event where I could wear a T-shirt and not look like a slacker. •New Scientist: Religion, society, and the hunt for extra-terrestrial life •Time: The Natural Debt Crisis: Learning to live within our means •The Guardian: Seaweed as a source of new malaria drugs •Uncertain Principles blog: Fracking Annoying—a tone-deaf panel on natural gas drilling •80 Beats blog: Bilingual brains resist dementia •The Forum on Science, Ethics, and Policy: A panel on the benefits and detriment of GM crop regulations •NASA: Cleaning up black carbon and methane to reduce short-term impacts of climate change •The Guardian: Mice engineered to help us understand why humans stutter •The Guardian: Bears in Space—How scientists are applying the lessons of hibernation to humans •CNN: Better than a 3-D printer—Printing skin onto open wounds •Discovery News: Scientists stand up for animal testing •Baltimore Science News Examiner: Using gaming to teach people about the risks of climate change •Science News: Climate-specific genetics •Scientific American: How many people can the Earth really support? •Science magazine: Transcript of a live conversation with robotics researchers •Scientific American: Why are Americans so ill-informed on the topic of climate change? |
| Indiana deputy attorney general tweets: "Use live ammunition" on demonstrators Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:50 PM PST Mother Jones: On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building--something that didn't end up happening--one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition." |
| Youtube prankster is facing serious jailtime Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:06 PM PST Via Blame it on the Voices: "21-year-old Michigan resident Evan Emory faces 20 years in jail for 'manufacturing child sexual abusive material.' What he did: he tricked representatives of an elementary school to let him film himself performing a song on his guitar in front of their 1st-graders and then he re-edited the video as if he was singing sexually explicit lyrics and posted it to YouTube." According to this news report: "The video was edited to make it appear the students were in the classroom, though they weren't." |
| Highlights from AAAS: When solar flares attack Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:51 AM PST  When the Sun's atmosphere explodes, it can have explosive consequences on Earth. The X-rays and UV radiation released by these solar flares are capable of interfering with everything from radio communication to our whole electrical grid. If that sounds a little scary, well, it should. That's why scientists held a session at AAAS 2011 to talk about space weather and how Earthlings can prepare for the damage it could cause. Jeff Foust of The Space Review was there. In an article for that website he explains why space weather is so dangerous to human civilization, what scientists are doing to improve space weather forecasts, and how freaked out we all really ought to be.
The Space Review: When the Sun sneezes |
| Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:46 AM PST [Video Link] Blame it on the Voices presents this scene from a Japanese show called Kikaida, in which "Pink Armadillo transforms itself into a voluptuous woman to entice men and implant control devices in their brains." |
| Single mom sets herself on fire in Morocco Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:39 AM PST Fadwa Laroui, an unmarried 25-year-old mother of two, used flammable liquid to set herself on fire in front of the town hall of Souk Sebt, in central Morocco, this week. She did this after being excluded from a social housing plan because she was a single mom. Laroui is the first Arab woman known to have set herself on fire in a protest at social conditions after Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation on December 17 led to a revolution that toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power and prompted several Arab men to do the same.(via @acarvin) |
| Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:23 AM PST |
| Highlights from AAAS: Plant-inspired robots Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:20 AM PST Animal biology is often used as an inspiration for robotics. Case in point: Cephalopods, whose distributed system of neural processing is being put to use in robotic arms. But plants can also play a role in the development of better robots. At AAAS 2011, researchers from the University of Michigan and Penn State talked about how they were designing artificial structures with the help of the Mimosa plant.
The Scientist: News from AAAS Highlights from AAAS: Microbial spit in the Gulf of Mexico |
| Apple looks set to unveil iPad 2 on March 2 Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:15 AM PST  iPad 2.0 to be launched on March 2. Your guess is as good as ours, but that's certainly what these invites, emailed out today by Apple to invited tech reporters, would suggest. |
| Erlang the Movie: just the calls Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:09 AM PST Erlang is a programming language developed in 1986 to improve telephone switching networks. For the non-programmer it's horribly dry stuff, but for those in the know it has some really interesting features. In order to show off some of those features, the creators at Ericsson made and starred in a short video entitled Erlang the Movie. I cut out everything but the telephone calls, just to see what it'd be like. I like the weirdness of them calling each other endlessly just to say hello. It reminded David of this video by William S. Burroughs. Enjoy. |
| Archive.org and 150 libraries create 80,000 lendable ebook library Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:07 AM PST Rick Prelinger sez, "Internet Archive (disclosure: I'm a board member) has joined with 150 US and Canada libraries to develop a cooperative collection of (mostly 20th-century) eBooks that library patrons can "borrow" on a laptop, an e-reader or a library computer while visiting a participating branch. This "digital lending" dramatically expands the collections of each library, and updates the traditional library model to embrace digital titles. Many rare and one-of-a-kind titles (e.g., genealogy, family history) are included." The reasons for joining the initiative vary from library to library. Judy Russell, Dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida, said, "We have hundreds of books that are too brittle to circulate. This digitize-and-lend system allows us to provide access to these older books without endangering the physical copy."Internet Archive and Library Partners Develop Joint Collection of 80,000+ eBooks To Extend Traditional In-Library Lending Model (Thanks, footage, via Submitterator!) |
| Highlights from AAAS: Microbial spit in the Gulf of Mexico Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:59 AM PST What happens to an ocean after a massive oil spill? Media attention may have drifted away from the Gulf of Mexico, but scientists are still there, studying the long-term impacts of last year's BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. One of those scientists is Samantha Joye. I've interviewed her before, for a story on BoingBoing about the tiny worms that live on underwater deposits of frozen methane. In her presentation at AAAS 2011, Joye focused on what she calls "microbial spit"—a slimy, organic substance produced when naturally occurring ocean bacteria dine on spilled oil. Joye thinks the spit is the mechanism responsible for carrying oil from the spill to the ocean floor, where it sits today.
Science News: Gulf fouled by bacterial oil feast Today on BoingBoing: Highlights from the world's largest gathering of scientists Highlights from AAAS: The sign language of science Image: V. Asper/ Univ. of So. Miss. |
| Irish government sneaks in Internet censorship law Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:36 AM PST A reader writes, "Ireland goes to the polls in the most important election since the creation of the Republic, the parliament is empty as TD's canvas. The govt. sneaks through secondary legislation in the form of a statutory instrument that may require the filtering of every internet connection in the state vastly compromising the attractiveness of the country to the sort of high profile web businesses who hitherto have provided the only stable business sector in the state. Nice." |
| Big problems for online porn credit card processor Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:39 AM PST  Sanjiv Bhattacharya of Details profiled the rise and fall of online porn payment processor Chris Mallick. After earning a fortune processing online-porn payments, Chris Mallick spent $32million to make Middle Men, a movie about his fabulous rise starring Luke Wilson. The movie bombed, but that was just the beginning of his problems. His multi-million dollar company mysteriously imploded leaving thousands of cutomers asking, "where's our money?" This wasn't how the story was supposed to end. In the March 2011 issue of Details, Mallick opens up to writer Sanjiv Bhattacharya and chronicles the downfall of his empire and how it came to be true that, in some circles, "Mallick" is now slang for "swindle."Read the rest of the story at Details |
| Highlights from AAAS: The sign language of science Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:17 AM PST One of the most interesting stories I read about AAAS 2011 wasn't even about a presentation—or, anyway, it wasn't about the topic of a presentation. After watching sign language interpreters translate conference sessions for Deaf attendees, journalist Ferris Jabr wrote a fascinating piece for New Scientist about how sign language can be invented on the fly, with interpreters creating brand new signs for technical and scientific terms. It's no easy task, especially given the fact that interpreters aren't necessarily experts in the subjects they're signing about.
New Scientist: When hand-waving makes for good scientific discussion Image: Petteri Sulonen via CC |
| Snowman Slide: insanely elaborate slide ` Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:19 AM PST Some Snowman Slide in South Lake Tahoe! (via Reddit) |
| Today on BoingBoing: Highlights from the world's largest general science conference Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:37 PM PST  Last week, thousands of scientists gathered in Washington D.C. for the 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. While most science conferences are field-specific—a geology conference here, a bio-medicine symposium there—AAAS is the big, fully-loaded enchilada, featuring speakers and panels that cover just about every facet of science that you can imagine. It lasts for six days. The unabridged program is as thick as a phone book. The two times I've been to AAAS, in 2009 and 2010, I've found myself so wrapped up in rushing from one amazing presentation to the next that I would go through an 8-hour day before I remembered to stop and eat. I wasn't able to make it to AAAS 2011, but lots of other science journalists were there, and I've been reading their work. Today, I'm going to post about some of the most fascinating stories to come out of this year's conference—A few highlights, and another post with links galore. Want more sciency goodness? A great place to start is Science Magazine. This website is connected to the AAAS organization, who are also the publishers of the peer-reviewed journal Science. They've got all sorts of podcasts, videos, and stories from AAAS 2011, which should give you a good idea of the breadth of topics the conference covers. Image: Some rights reserved by krossbow |
MICROMACHINA examines what makes the insect world tick, and considers our attempts to control nature and the consequences. Humanity's blatant disregard for nature, where profit comes before life, will ultimately be our undoing. Pesticides, herbicides, genetic modification and massive urban expansion push the fine balance of life toward disaster. There has to be a point, when mother nature will say 'too far', and rid the earth of its biggest pest... us. 
Out west in scenic California the land and times were much, much different than today. Appleton's guide takes visitors on a botanical tour of "cacti of the most curious sort," and it also explains why I saw so many Eucalyptus trees while living there in 2000-2004: "But the people plant a little shoot of the Australian blue-gum (Eucalyptus globulus), and in two years it becomes a shade-tree 15 or 20 feet high." Fashion and comfort were obviously not commodities in the near horizon if Eucalyptus shade-providing trees were the amenities. 
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