The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Victorian-era human anatomical "CAT scans," 1872
- Do It (Tomorrow)
- Lawsuit accuses American Apparel CEO Dov Charney of forced sex with 18yo
- Prison rape and the government
- Cool 3-string guitar kit on Kickstarter
- Thermos + Threadless bottles, lunch bags, and shirts
- Passport ownership prevents diabetes
- Mardi Gras in New Orleans (big photo gallery)
- Librarians Against DRM logo
- Billions of dead anchovies clog Redondo Beach harbor; die-off cause a mystery
- First Steps on the Moon
- Photographing Florida farms: a felony?
- Will all digital books eventually cost 99 cents?
- Trying new things for 30 days: Matt Cutt's TED2011 presentation
- American prison labor used to build Patriot missiles for UAE arms deal
- Extinct invertebrates caught in a 40 million year old sex act
- TuneUp's new office: smart 2x4 and pegboard desks
- Warner Bros will offer feature films through Facebook
- Tracking the astounding pace of digital storage
- The Charlie Sheen Browser Blocker: "Tinted Sheen"
- Two scientists say they've found a man who is "beat deaf"
- Happy Mardi Gras!
- The U.S. military is getting serious about energy change
- Candy sushi nyotaimori
- Craig Newmark launches Craigconnects.org, to connect and protect nonprofits
- Visualization of an attack on a VOIP server
- Homeless robot begs for energy
- Hacking an old lens and bellows onto a Canon DSLR
- Energy at the Movies—lecture and panel in Austin, TX
- 1954 Leica, 2011 Fujifilm
| Victorian-era human anatomical "CAT scans," 1872 Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:48 PM PST  Our friends at Bibliodyssey spotted this wonderful collection of anatomical drawings from the University of Leipzig in the late 19th century, reminiscent of high resolution medical imaging of today. |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:33 PM PST My name is Bill, and I'm bad at GTD.  Many, many factors account for this -- let's call it a character flaw. But the biggest is probably this one: My utter inability (or maybe it's just an unwilingness) to see beyond what's right in front of me. This one failing has knocked the pins right out from under every GTD implementation I've ever looked at, and I've looked at 'em all. You know in the cartoons, when somebody's confused and words start circling his head? That's me with a new GTD app. Projects? Next tasks? Near-term goals? Far-term goals? Why, you're just talking gibberish!  This may be why I've embraced Do It (Tomorrow), a dead-simple to-do app for iOS. (Free for the iPhone; a $1.99 universal version adds cloud sync.) Do It (Tomorrow) builds on -- or maybe it takes away from -- the work done by earlier apps like Put Things Off, a simplified sort-of-GTD client that allows you to schedule tasks for today or shove them off indefinitely. The trouble is, even that feels like too much work to someone like me. Here's the uncomplicated beauty of Do It (Tomorrow): It offers two choices: Do it today, or put it off for tomorrow. That's it. In reducing the vista of available time, it allows me to focus on only those things that really need doing right now, or close to it. Do It (Tomorrow) embraces the functioning part of my brain, which can see about 36 hours ahead, and doesn't bother with the rest. It's simple, good-looking and -- for me -- supremely functional. |
| Lawsuit accuses American Apparel CEO Dov Charney of forced sex with 18yo Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:38 PM PST Those who are of the opinion that the CEO of American Apparel is a skeevy sonofabitch who exploits young female employees will not find this news story surprising. |
| Prison rape and the government Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:31 PM PST In the NY Review of Books, David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow take a disturbing look at the vastly under-reported and under-prosecuted phenomenon of rape and sexual assault within the US prison system, and what our government isn't doing to address the problem. |
| Cool 3-string guitar kit on Kickstarter Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:28 PM PST I love the look of Rafael Atijas' 3-string Loog guitar kits. He is seeking $15,000 on Kickstarter to fund the project. If you kick in $150 or more, you'll get a Loog of your own. Rafael says: I am a Boing Boing junkie and everyday I feel inspired by the posts you share with us. Today I have a project I would like to share with you. I launched it yesterday via Kickstarter and I couldn't be more excited. |
| Thermos + Threadless bottles, lunch bags, and shirts Posted: 08 Mar 2011 01:13 PM PST   Thermos and Threadless teamed up to create a fun line of lunchboxes and thermos bottles. I wanted to buy the spaceman bottle above for my son, but this style is only available in the 24 ounce size (as opposed to the 18 ounce) and that's a bit bulky for a 4-year-old to bring to school every day. So instead, I got him the t-shirt of this same fantastic graphic titled "Funkalicious," by Christopher Golebiowski. There are more than a dozen designs in the Thermos+Threadless series. Thermos/Threadless items Thermos+Threadless (Threadless.com) |
| Passport ownership prevents diabetes Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:26 PM PST  It's conclusive: owning a passport will prevent you from becoming diabetic. (Left: Andrew Sullivan's Map of the Day. Right: Diabetes Belt stretches across Deep South and Appalachia) |
| Mardi Gras in New Orleans (big photo gallery) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:07 PM PST  A mask of a member of the Mondo Kayo Social and Marching Club is seen as they march down St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans, Louisiana March 8, 2011. (photos: REUTERS/Sean Gardner) Members of the Mondo Kayo Social and Marching Club march down St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans, Louisiana March 8, 2011.
Members of the Krewe of Zulu march down St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans, Louisiana March 8, 2011.
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| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:55 AM PST  Nina Paley designed this great "Librarians Against DRM" logo to accompany the Readers' Bill of Rights for Digital Books.
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| Billions of dead anchovies clog Redondo Beach harbor; die-off cause a mystery Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:25 AM PST "Yesterday everything looked absolutely normal. This morning when I got up, there were millions and millions of them floating everywhere." Walter Waite, who lives at Redondo Beach harbor, on the billions of dead anchovies blanketing the sea bottom and floating on the surface of the water this morning at King Harbor. So far, the cause is a mystery. The photos are creepy. |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:16 AM PST  First Steps on the Moon, a photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by photographer and BB reader fdcomite. |
| Photographing Florida farms: a felony? Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:20 AM PST A bill introduced by Florida state senator Jim Norman would make it a felony to take a photograph of a farm without the owner's permission: "A person who photographs, video records or otherwise produces images or pictorial records, digital or otherwise, at or of a farm or other property where legitimate agriculture operations are being conducted without the written consent of the owner, or an authorized representative of the owner, commits a felony of the first degree." (NYT Lens blog) |
| Will all digital books eventually cost 99 cents? Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:23 AM PST  On his Technium blog, Kevin Kelly wrote: I am having trouble convincing myself why digital books will not cost 99 cents within 5 years. All books, on average. Just as the price of music does not in general change on the length or quality. |
| Trying new things for 30 days: Matt Cutt's TED2011 presentation Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:37 PM PST  Photo of Matt Cutts at TED2011. Credit: TED I enjoyed Google engineer Matt Cutts' presentation at TED2011 about his series of "30 Day Challenges." In May of 2009, Matt decided to walk at least 10,000 steps a day for 30 days. He was happy with the results, so he followed that exercise by giving up television for 30 days. He now tries something new every 30 days. The challenges so far have included biking to work, not using Microsoft software, not using Twitter, not using an iPhone, not responding to any external e-mail (that is, e-mail outside of Google), not having caffeine, not having sugar, meditating 15 minutes a day, reading the Bible, reading 15 books (he only made it 12), using only cloud-based software, taking one photo a day, writing a novel, getting his finances in order, and learning a new word every day. In his talk Matt said that some of the main benefits of doing these 30 day challenges is that time slows down and life becomes more interesting. I want to give this a try! Matt has a blog where you can follow his 30 day challenges. |
| American prison labor used to build Patriot missiles for UAE arms deal Posted: 08 Mar 2011 10:55 AM PST "This spring, the United Arab Emirates is expected to close a deal for $7 billion dollars' worth of American arms. Nearly half of the cash will be spent on Patriot missiles, which cost as much as $5.9 million apiece," reports Noah Shachtman. And some of the workers manufacturing parts for those Patriot missiles are prisoners, who earn as little as 23 cents an hour. |
| Extinct invertebrates caught in a 40 million year old sex act Posted: 08 Mar 2011 10:44 AM PST  University of Michigan Museum of Zoology researchers Pavel Klimov and Ekaterina Sidorchuk captured this image of a pair of extinct mites who were trapped in amber in the midst of getting it on. Their results were published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. Mite sex is probably more complex and interesting than you might imagine for speck-sized creatures. In many present day mite species, males coerce females to mate. The males fight off other potential suitors, and guard females before and after mating. If a partner isn't in the mood, too bad. Male harassment of females is common.40-Million-Year-Old Sex Act Captured in Amber (via Making Light) (Image: Ekaterina Sidorchuk) |
| TuneUp's new office: smart 2x4 and pegboard desks Posted: 08 Mar 2011 10:35 AM PST  I recently visited the new, raw office space of TuneUp, my pal Gabe Adiv's startup that makes a really good iTunes plugin to fix your music library's metadata. (I can personally vouch that it worked magic on my massive mess of album titles and songs.) When I got to their new digs, I was struck by the furniture. Rather than go the typical Ikea route for low-budget work tables, Gabe asked local designer Holt Hinshaw to whip up some practical, unique, and inexpensive desks. I really dig the raw wood, industrial wheels, and especially the plain old pegboard. My son would love one of these for his art/craft table. In fact, so would I! |
| Warner Bros will offer feature films through Facebook Posted: 08 Mar 2011 10:21 AM PST Warner Bros Entertainment today announced that it will offer movies through Facebook, which users can pay for with the virtual currency Facebook Credits, previously used only in social games like Farmville. The first title to be offered: "The Dark Knight," rentable for 30 Facebook Credits, or $3. (Reuters) |
| Tracking the astounding pace of digital storage Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:26 AM PST Ivan Smith maintains a page tracking the price of digital storage over the years. This is one of technology's least appreciated growth stories -- we hear a lot about Moore's Law and the doubling of processing capacity, but storage-density's growth makes the pace of processor improvements look glacial. Every now and then I realize that the 32GB SD card in my camera costs less than the 16k memory upgrade I put in my Apple ][+ in 1980, even without accounting for inflation, and I am croggled. Here are David Isenberg's benchmarks, calculated from Smith's records:
It would be interesting to do the same chart for a megabyte -- you'd go from six figures to fractional pennies in a damned short period. Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space (via Isen.blog)
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| The Charlie Sheen Browser Blocker: "Tinted Sheen" Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:41 AM PST  Thank you, Greg Leuch and fffff.at, for providing us all with a tool for blocking Charlie Sheen from the Internet: Tinted Sheen. "Download the plugin for Firefox or Chrome, and never again worry about seeing his name or face." Now that's what I call #Winning! |
| Two scientists say they've found a man who is "beat deaf" Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:29 AM PST  It's like face blindness, but for music. Researchers at the University of Montreal say that a 23-year-old man they call "Mathieu" is functionally unable to move in time to music, or follow a beat that is part of a song. This is not an Onion headline. Sometimes, I feel the need to add that sentence to stories, just to help out the people reading from RSS feeds. We're reading straight from Science News, here.
Now, from that, it sounds like the researchers had already hypothesized the existence of beat deafness and were looking for people who might confirm the idea. Which leaves me to wonder what a different set of researchers, people without the upfront interest in beat deafness as a concept, would make of Mathieu. How much of this is real, and how much is confirmation bias—on the part of the scientists, the patient, or both? It's going to be a while before we know one way or the other. In the meantime, there's not much for us laypeople to do but entertain ourselves with videos showing how poorly Mathieu did when he tried to dance to some merengue. |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:08 AM PST [Video Link] In honor of one of the great American holidays, we present to you an encore post of "Mardi Gras 1956: Through my father's lens," a Boing Boing Video episode originally published in 2010. (Special thanks to Mar Doré, and Dr. M.X. Quetzalkanbalam) |
| The U.S. military is getting serious about energy change Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:03 AM PST  One thing the military is getting right these days: Making the connection between fossil fuel dependence and insecurity. I did a lot of research in the past year on efforts throughout the Department of Defense as a whole, and especially within the Navy and Air Force, to improve energy efficiency on military bases in the United States. For instance, Jacksonville Naval Air Station, in Jacksonville, Florida, has put young officers in charge of changing the culture of energy use from within their own units. They've convinced their fellow soldiers to make small changes, like turning off lights that aren't being used or sharing a single coffeemaker among several people. More importantly, they've got soldiers thinking in broad ways about energy, waste, and future security—What else could be done with the money spent on unnecessary energy use? What happens in a fuel-related crisis if this base can't be more self-sufficient? These changes in culture and ways of thinking are making a difference. Last summer, officers at Jacksonville Naval Air Station told me that, thanks to several different energy efficiency campaigns and improvements, they've watch activity on the base increase over the last three years while energy use on the base has fallen. There are some interesting and important changes afoot in the way the military handles energy. And not just at home. David Biello of Scientific American has a really fascinating story about the Department of Defense getting involved with ARPA-e—a Department of Energy program for developing cutting-edge energy technology. Among the collaborations: Energy storage systems for the front lines of war.
Scientific American: U.S. Military links energy research to lives and dollars saved |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:05 AM PST You've might have seen the video above for the Popin! Cookin! sushi-candy making kit. The US distributor made a commercial that serves the candy nyotaimori-style (NSFW, below). |
| Craig Newmark launches Craigconnects.org, to connect and protect nonprofits Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:48 AM PST Craig Newmark, O.G. internet guy and founder of Craigslist, tells Boing Boing this morning: Hey, I know I say "this is a big deal" a lot, but this really IS a big deal. I've decided what I want to do for the next 20 years, which is to help connect and protect organizations that are doing good through a program I'm calling craigconnects. One way we'll CONNECT good, worthy organizations is on craigconnects' Home page . When you check it out, find the "Featured Nonprofit". Right now, it's DonorsChoose.org. |
| Visualization of an attack on a VOIP server Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:30 AM PST The Australian Honeypot Project is a group of volunteers who set up tantalizing decoy targets for cyber criminals. By carefully monitoring those honeypots, the group can gather data about the tactics and tools criminals use to attack real sites and servers. This video they made turns data in pictures to show what's happening during the early stages of an attack on a VOIP server. Via Arikia Millikan |
| Homeless robot begs for energy Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:14 AM PST  Pawel Hynek's 2006 image "Obsolete" depicts a homeless robot begging for electrical power; it's striking and funny as well as a little uncomfortable-making. It reminds me of one of the most demented scenes in science fiction history: the moment in Ian McDonald's stupendous novel The Broken Land in which a re-animated severed head is reduced to performing sexual favors on a street-corner in exchange for nutrient bath to fill the shallow dish in which its neck-stump rests. |
| Hacking an old lens and bellows onto a Canon DSLR Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:31 AM PST  Photo: Jake von Slatt I recently bought Canon's t2i DSLR camera and am having a lot of fun exploring the available lenses. I've avoided stuff from outside the Canon EF ecosystem so far, but after reading Jake von Slatt's post adapting old lenses on new cameras, a change my heart might be on the cards. While I have absolutely no desire to revisit the days of film, I was kind of interested in what sort of image the old German made lens would produce on my modern Canon DSLR so I went in search of a way to attach it. I found machined custom metal adapters, and adapters made with scavenged old Canon lens, but I was looking for something cheaper and easier to mod. It all came together when I spotted an inexpensive plastic adapter made to mount the plastic lens from a Diana camera on a Canon DSLR.The $10 Diana-to-Canon EF adapters are made of plastic and were so easy to hack to fit his old lens that Jake went on to attach a bellows lens scavenged from the town dump—a more involved procedure. Putting Old Lenses on a Canon DSLR [The Steampunk Workshop] |
| Energy at the Movies—lecture and panel in Austin, TX Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:03 AM PST Tomorrow in Austin, Texas: "Energy at the Movies" is a lecture and panel discussion about 70 years of energy on the big screen, and how our pop-culture understanding of energy has influenced our politics and policy. This sounds like an amazing event, and the panel discussion after features Sheril Kirshenbaum, an awesome scientist, science blogger, and co-author of Unscientific America. Plus, if you're like me, and currently nowhere near Austin, it looks like there's a live webcast option for those who pre-register. |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2011 01:49 PM PST  Photo: Nokton Pictured here are 1954's Leica M3 and Fujifilm's forthcoming digital homage, the X100. Both will set you back around $1,200: the former can be found in abundance on eBay, while the latter is currently on pre-order. The price tag on Leica's own digital M9 is left as an exercise for the reader. Cameras [Nokton's flickr via Gadget Lab] |
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