The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Japan nuclear crisis: The downside of using sea water to cool reactors
- Why regulations are important
- Kids' sidewalk chalking banned because someone might trip into traffic
- Understanding the SSL security breach, preparing for the next one
- Photo collection features old-timey Happy Mutants
- Time lapse video of woman with HIV/AIDS
- Mark to give keynote talk at Digital Media in a Social World at Ohio State U., 4/1/2011
- Settlers of Catan: the only other board game I can stand
- First photos of Fukushima Fifty published
- Incredible video of Aurora Borealis
- Four US senators ask Apple to dump DUI checkpoint apps
- Music video with simulated special effects
- Trademark thought experiment: when should intermediaries be cops? (Barista vs. Barbie)
- New York Times advances weird, self-destructive trademark theory to prop up its paywall
- Cat becomes angry when its potato is misplaced
- The taste of cat, donkey, dog, and rat meat
- Google Book Search rejected: why not try fair use instead?
- Pole dancing for Jesus
- Great Muslim scientists
- Method for wiring chips with nerve cells
- A view inside the world's largest train tunnel, now under construction
- Grassroots archaeology and a 19th century murder mystery
- TOM THE DANCING BUG: Super-Fun-Pak Comix, featuring Recap Man and More!!
- DIY space exploration
- Eye of Sauron made with Kinect and Pufferfish
- Kitten Chaser
- Egypt: Amnesty condemns "virginity tests," sexual abuse of female protesters, journalists
- The other nuclear power: The reactors we have aren't the only option
- Randy Regier's "Fisher Fire Fly" model spaceship kit
- Japan: govt. chart shows levels of radioactivity in water throughout country
| Japan nuclear crisis: The downside of using sea water to cool reactors Posted: 23 Mar 2011 07:00 PM PDT Frustratingly, just as things were starting to look like they might be getting a bit more under control, another couple of problems have arisen at the beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Chief among these is a problem that stems directly from using sea water to cool the nuclear reactors. My grandparents drank well water at their farm, and it had a high mineral content. When my grandma boiled water for her coffee, the kettle was left with a layer or white residue—the minerals that had been left behind as the water they were suspended in boiled away. The same thing is happening to the salty sea water in the Fukushima reactors. As the water cools the reactor core, it boils. As it boils, it leaves behind salt. And that's a problem, as the New York Times explains:
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 07:04 PM PDT The confusion surrounding this latest Gulf spill points up a fatal flaw of America's oil pollution reporting system, which operates via a virtual honor code. Under present reporting protocols, polluters are tasked with the responsibility of turning themselves in when they're responsible for an accident -- knowing all the while that a federal inspector will probably never be dispatched to investigate. — from an article by Time's Bryan Walsh on the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, almost one year later. |
| Kids' sidewalk chalking banned because someone might trip into traffic Posted: 24 Mar 2011 12:46 AM PDT A cafe in Nunawading, Australia is being forced to stop toddlers from drawing with chalk on its sidewalk, despite the fact that the kids, the cafe, the townspeople and the mayor all like the drawings. The drawings contravene the town's anti-graffiti laws, and the mayor says he can't grant a permit because someone might trip over a child, fall into traffic and die horribly. As Lenore Skenazy says, Council slaps ban on child's play (Image: Sidewalk Chalk, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from crschmidt's photostream) |
| Understanding the SSL security breach, preparing for the next one Posted: 24 Mar 2011 12:38 AM PDT Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley has a good, in-depth analysis of the revelation that Iranian hackers acquired fraudulent SSL certificates for Google, Yahoo, Mozilla and others by spoofing Comodo, a major Certificate Authority. CAs are companies that are allowed to sell cryptographically signed certificates that browsers use to verify their network connections; with these spoofed certs, the hackers could undetectably impersonate Yahoo and Google (allowing them to read mail even if it was being read over a secure connection), the Mozilla certificate would allow them to slip malicious spyware onto the computer of anyone installing a Firefox plugin. It appears that the fraud was detected before any harm could be done, but Eckersley explains how close we came to a global security meltdown, and starts thinking about how we can prepare for a more successful attack in the future. Most Certificate Authorities do good work. Some make mistakes occasionally,2 but that is normal in computer security. The real problem is a structural one: there are 1,500 CA certificates controlled by around 650 organizations,3 and every time you connect to an HTTPS webserver, or exchange email (POP/IMAP/SMTP) encrypted by TLS, you implicitly trust all of those certificate authorities!Iranian hackers obtain fraudulent HTTPS certificates: How close to a Web security meltdown did we get? |
| Photo collection features old-timey Happy Mutants Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:34 PM PDT  Scroll through this set of black and white photos and you will find that our Great-Grandparents' generation was perfectly capable of letting their freak flags fly when they wanted. It starts off slow, with a stained mattress. But before long there's bear wrestling, toddlers smoking, comic misuse of med-school skeletons, and, well, this guy right here. |
| Time lapse video of woman with HIV/AIDS Posted: 23 Mar 2011 03:22 PM PDT |
| Mark to give keynote talk at Digital Media in a Social World at Ohio State U., 4/1/2011 Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:06 PM PDT  If you live around Columbus, OH, I'll be giving the keynote talk at Digital Media in a Social World at 9am on April 1. Admission is free. Details here. Later that day, I'll show 15 people how to make a candolin (also free). Sign up here. I hope to see you there! |
| Settlers of Catan: the only other board game I can stand Posted: 23 Mar 2011 04:48 PM PDT  Photo by Nathan Jongewaard. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. (Read my earlier post about the game Carcassonne, and my dislike of most boardgames.) The board game Settlers of Catan has been around since 1995, and has been awarded many prizes. Over 15 million copies of Settlers of Catan and other games in the series have been sold. However, I'd never heard of the game until a couple of years ago, and didn't play it until last week. Now, I'm sorry I waited so long! I love this game. I bought the iPad version of Settlers of Catan ($4.99) and played it with my seven-year-old daughter on Saturday. My wife was running errands, so Jane and I added a computer player to the mix. I'm glad we started with the iPad version, because the software handles the scoring and other mechanics of the game, and it was a good way to understand the rules (which are pretty simple). However, the playing board is pretty small on the iPad, and because players are supposed to keep certain cards hidden from view, there is a clunkiness to the digital version of the game. (Carcassonne, on the other hand, is wonderful on the iPad.) The object of Catan is to be the first person to get 10 Victory Points, which are earned by building settlements and cities on an island made of 30 hexagons representing different kinds of terrain), and by acquiring certain Achievement cards. In order to build roads, settlements, and cities, players need to collect resources: bricks, ore, grain, sheep, and lumber. A big part of the fun of the game is trading resources with other players. While Jane and I enjoyed playing Settlers of Catan on on the iPad, we loved playing the large, attractive game board version. ( I bought it for $43 at an incredible gaming store in Studio City, California called Knight Ware Inc. I went there on "Boardgame Day" and enjoyed watching a dozen or so folks at two tables playing some kind of sword and sorcery game). When we play the board game version, my wife joins Jane and me. I don't think it would be much fun with two players. (I searched online and noticed that people have come up with various sets of modified rules for two players. I haven't tried those yet, and would be interested in hearing if they make the game fun for two players.) There's one problem with the board game: it's too easy to disturb the small wooden pieces on the board with a clumsy throw of the dice. After about the third time my seven-year-old daughter did this, I downloaded a free dice rolling application for my iPhone and now we use that instead of rolling physical dice. Problem solved. I found out that there is a travel edition of Settlers of Catan! As I plan on doing some traveling with my family in the near future, I just ordered it. If you're like me, and have avoided boardgames because you figured they all stink as much as Monopoly, Risk, Parcheesi, and Sorry, I recommend you give Settlers of Catan (and Carcassonne) a try. I never imagined I would enjoy board games, but these two titles have changed my mind. Settlers of Catan is available on Amazon.com in the US for $33.60 |
| First photos of Fukushima Fifty published Posted: 23 Mar 2011 04:10 PM PDT What are described as "the first photos of the Fukushima Fifty," the TEPCO nuclear plant workers who stayed behind to Fix This Shit Before Shit Gets Even More Catastrophically Real, have been published. (AP, via Daily Mail) |
| Incredible video of Aurora Borealis Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:57 PM PDT Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd spent one week around Kirkenes and the Norway-Russia border, in -25 Celsius temperature, to make this magnificent time-lapse video of the Aurora Borealis. |
| Four US senators ask Apple to dump DUI checkpoint apps Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:49 PM PDT  People who enjoy drinking and driving probably don't have much time to download PhantomALERT from the iTunes App Store, because a group of US senators have complained to Apple about apps that alert drivers about DUI checkpoints. The CEO of the company that makes that app claims it's completely legal, saying that police often advertise the same checkpoint locations before they're set up, warning drivers to be careful in certain areas, and never to drink and drive. A police officer in Oregon, according to ComputerWorld, is pretty indifferent to the whole argument. "If things like these apps increase awareness on the part of drivers to slow down and drive to the signs posted and the conditions," he said, "that helps people stay alert and drive safely."Senators urge Apple to pull DUI checkpoint apps |
| Music video with simulated special effects Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:44 PM PDT [Video Link] Ayahiko Sato, a member of visual design unit in Japan called Rakudasan wrote to me about this cool music video they directed for a 16-piece band called Gaka. The song is called Tsuchinoko. He said: "Now, as you know we are in critical situation by earthquake. However we think that what we can do is to get more attention for Japan and Japanese creativity. We need positive news to get energetic power, because we are showered with negative news." This music video is called pantomime music video created with a help of performer called maimuima. |
| Trademark thought experiment: when should intermediaries be cops? (Barista vs. Barbie) Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:40 PM PDT  A little trademark thought-experiment: under a proposed UN treaty, Internet Service Providers (as well as search engines, social media sites, online auctions, online games, and sites like Etsy and Thingiverse) will be responsible for detecting and interdicting trademark infringement and helping punish infringers by retaining and providing their personal information on demand from a trademark holder, without a court order. Now, many coffee shops today are ISPs (that is, one of the kinds of intermediary targetted by this proposal). And many coffee shops today are the locus of trademark infringement -- say, when you walk in with your kid clutching a fake Barbie from a stalls market or a blanket in Santee Alley or on Broadway. If you applied this intermediary liability standard to the real world, every barista would have to be on the lookout for this kind of trademark infringement. If someone in the shop were to say, "Hey, I work for Mattel, and that Barbie's a fake!" it would be the barista's duty to leap over the counter and take away the fake Barbie. But her responsibility wouldn't stop there: her employer would have to set up cameras and cash-register logs so that they could identify infringers later. So after you left with your kid (who is by now in tears, screaming for her lost Barbie) (or "Barbie") the barista would have to pull your name off your credit card receipt and hand it over to the random dude who says he works for Mattel, without seeing any ID (much less a court order). And she'd have to print out the photos and turn them over too. Or she could refuse -- but if she's wrong and the Mattel guy is right, well, her boss will be on the hook for the trademark infringement, too. The barista had better be some trademark expert if she plans on refusing the request. Many institutions are "intermediaries" for bad acts: kids ride the subway to parties where they drink before they're legally allowed to; is it the transit authority's job to police alcohol laws? Cruel pet owners hit their dogs with rolled up newspapers; adulterers meet in hotels; fraudsters use telephones, pens, photocopiers and envelopes. All these criminal acts are not subject to policing by intermediaries -- why should one industry's civil actions be the entire world's responsibility? Discuss. (Image: Abandoned Barbie, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from derekgavey's photostream) |
| New York Times advances weird, self-destructive trademark theory to prop up its paywall Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:14 PM PDT  FreeNYTimes writes, "The twitter account I set up to broadcast data from the NY Times API, @freeNYTimes, was recently suspended, ostensibly for trademark infringement. But I set up a mirror at @freeUnnamedNews, which should be good to go because it doesn't use the paper's name in the feed. Right?" Some background: the new NYT paywall allows for unlimited free article views for people following links from Twitter. The @FreeNYTimes feed created links to all the NYT stories, which meant that you could read the whole paper gratis, simply by following the feed (presumably, you could also create an index of Twitter URLs that corresponded to all the URLs on the Times's site, a kind of codex of free backdoors to the paper). The NYT has many options to fight this sort of thing. They could program their firewall to restrict Twitter referers, or to simply block anything from the @FreeNYTimes account. Instead, the Times lodged an utterly bogus trademark complaint with Twitter -- bogus because trademark doesn't generically give you the right to stop people using your product or company's name; rather, it stops people from doing so deceptively. The Times's position effectively was that Times readers would mistake @FreeNYTimes for a big-hearted gesture from the Times itself, operated by the Times in order to defeat the Times's paywall. This is a stupid thing to assert. It's also damaging to journalism: there are many trademark holders, from Sarah Palin to Dow Chemical, who'd love it if the NYT could only use their name with permission. There is no trademark confusion when the Times prints Sarah Palin's name; there is also no trademark confusion with @FreeNYTimes. So now there's @FreeUnnamedNews, and there's no trademark basis to use to stop the account. The next step from the Times may well be to object on the basis "deep linking," and that is a doctrine that is nearly as damaging to journalism as the exotic trademark theory the Times has already advanced: for if plain true facts ("this page exists at this URL") are property, then the Times had better get its checkbook out, as there are plenty of true facts in every edition of the Times whose putative owners would love to get paid rent for them -- and there are plenty of true facts whose "owners" would love to deny to journalists altogether (think, for example, of the true facts surrounding political corruption). And, of course, in order to sue, the Times (whose reporters have gone to jail to protect their sources) will have to demand that Twitter turn over the personal identity of the FreeNYTimes/FreeUnnamedNews person. On the other hand, the Times might just add more complexity (and more brittleness, expense, and false positives and negatives) to its paywall by instructing it to inspect Twitter referers in detail and reject those coming from @FreeUnnamedNews. Over time, the paper will compile quite an enemies list in this fashion, a long catalog of people who are not allowed to refer other people to NYT stories. Commercially, this is not good. As I wrote before, the mental state that the Times paywall strives to evoke in its reader is "Hey, I'm getting so much value from this site, I think I'll sign up as a paying customer," not "Oh, those bullies at the Times have clobbered another programmer and this is the fifteenth time this month that it mistook me for a freeloader. Screw them!" The Times's staff have tweeted that they are glad to have traffic from users who leap the paywall -- a visitor is a visitor -- and implied that I've mis-stated the nature of their strategy. However, this trademark theory, hostile to free speech and an open society, belies their bravado. The problem with the Times's paywall isn't (just) that it won't work -- it's that it will lead an institution whose mission is free speech, transparency and due process into a war with its readers that demands that it oppose these values to hold its ground against them.
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| Cat becomes angry when its potato is misplaced Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PDT [Video Link] If someone moved my potato I'd be mad, too. (Via Arbroath) |
| The taste of cat, donkey, dog, and rat meat Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:09 PM PDT An interesting item about the flavor of pet, vermin, and work animal meat, courtesy of Futility Closet. An Open Mind |
| Google Book Search rejected: why not try fair use instead? Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:05 AM PDT On Ars Technica, Timothy Lee has some excellent legal analysis of the Google Books settlement, which was just rejected by a US federal judge. Under the terms of the settlement, Google would get permission to scan, sell, and distribute all the books ever published, in exchange for a modest amount of cash paid in accord with terms set by the Washington-based Authors Guild (a small and reactionary pressure group that represents a minuscule fraction of all authors). Lee points out that what Google had originally set out to do -- index all the books, in the same way that it indexes all the web-pages -- is arguably fair use, and Google could have mounted a fair use defense against the Authors Guild claim. A victory there would have paved the way for a competitive landscape of multiple search engines indexing books under the same legal theory. But by settling with the Authors Guild, Google got far more rights than it ever could have exercised under fair use, and what's more, it set no precedent that its competition might take advantage of. Indeed, the acrimony following the settlement likely poisoned the water against any comparable future settlement from a competitor, and the terms of the settlement were extremely favorable to Google and its business model. Effectively, the settlement would have set in stone a virtual monopoly on book indexing for Google. Lee wants Google to keep trying, but to focus its efforts on the fair use defense that would make it possible for competition to spring up in this sector, so that authors and publishers will have a number of services bidding to give them the best deal possible. Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out that the judge was also critical of the privacy policy set by Google for its book search program (the policy reserved Google's right to hand out the fine details of your reading habits to anyone, without insisting on a warrant -- this includes the words you searched on, the books you looked at, the pages you read, and the links to followed to reach them, as well as your location while you read and other details). Second, Judge Chin noted that there were many conflicts of interests between the named plaintiffs (the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers) and copyright holders they were supposed to represent. For example, a group of academic authors argued that many academics seek to maximize access to their works, whereas the named plaintiffs were commercial authors and publishers focused on maximizing profits. The settlement was also opposed by numerous groups of foreign authors who argued that their interests had not been adequately represented in negotiations. They also argued that the opt-out requirements were particularly burdensome for foreign authors and that the settlement conflicted with international treaty obligations. Federal judge rejects Google book monopoly
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:58 PM PDT It's hard to to top the phrase "pole dancing for Jesus" -- I dare you to even try -- because it satisfies so many absolutely awful contemporary needs in just four words. It's the perfect bogus local-news trend story. (I first saw it on Wonkette, but it was picked up from the Fox affiliate in Houston.) It's an SEO bonanza. And it's an awesome name for the next band you never heard of that's suddenly appearing on "Saturday Night Live" for some reason. The fact that it's an actual thing -- there's a class in it at a dance studio in Spring, TX, a northern suburb of Houston, and the newsbabe somberly assures the anchordude that "you have to bring your church program with you in order to get into the class' -- only makes it better. Or worse. Or something. "Tune in," newsbabe tells anchordude, promising him in this teaser segment that she herself will take a few twirls for Jesus in the nine o'clock hour. "We will," anchordude replies, a glittery mix of prurience and ratings-lust in his eyes. Or is that just good old-fashioned religious fervor? it's getting so hard to tell. |
| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:47 AM PDT Scientific American has a neat slide show showcasing the work of some historic Muslim scientists whose names deserve to be better known. Among them: Abu al-Iz Ibn Ismail ibn al-Razaz al-Jazari, who lived during the 13th century. He designed water-powered automata (including moving peacocks) and invented the crankshaft and camshaft as we know them. |
| Method for wiring chips with nerve cells Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:38 AM PDT  Research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison points to progress in creating hybrid computer chips combining silicon and neurons. Biomedical engineers demonstrated a novel technique for weaving the tendrils of mouse nerve cells into a network of semiconductor tubes. Yeah, that's just an illustration above. But eventually, a neural-electronic device such as this could be used to study diseases of the nervous system, test drug efficacy, or potentially lead to new brain-machine interfaces. From Science News: To lay the groundwork for a nerve-electronic hybrid, graduate student Minrui Yu of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues created tubes of layered silicon and germanium, materials that could insulate electric signals sent by a nerve cell. The tubes were various sizes and shapes and big enough for a nerve cell's extensions to crawl through but too small for the cell's main body to get inside."Computer chips wired with nerve cells" |
| A view inside the world's largest train tunnel, now under construction Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:34 AM PDT  A miner climbs on excavated rocks after a giant drill machine broke through at the final section Sedrun-Faido, at the construction site of the NEAT Gotthard Base Tunnel March 23, 2011. Crossing the Alps, the world's longest train tunnel should become operational at the end of 2016. The project consists of two parallel single track tunnels, each of a length of 57 km (35 miles). (REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann) |
| Grassroots archaeology and a 19th century murder mystery Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:19 AM PDT 
A lot of eerie folklore and some community organized archaeology uncover a murder mystery on Philadelphia's Main Line. Image courtesy the Duffy's Cut Project |
| TOM THE DANCING BUG: Super-Fun-Pak Comix, featuring Recap Man and More!! Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:00 AM PDT
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:19 AM PDT Spacehack is a clearinghouse for space geeks who want to participate in offworld exploration but may not have a science background and probably can't afford a ticket to orbit. Yet. Space.com interviewed Spacehack founder and former NASA employee Ariel Waldman about the project and her not-so-far-out motivations. From Space.com (photo by Matt Nuzzaco):
"How to Do Space Science at Home: Q&A With Space Geek Ariel Waldman" (Space.com)
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| Eye of Sauron made with Kinect and Pufferfish Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:51 AM PDT The Technology Studio connected a Kinect sensor/camera to a Pufferfish round video screen and created their own animated Eye of Sauron that follows you around the room. Kinect & Pufferfish Eye of Sauron (via Super Punch) |
| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:07 AM PDT  "Mikas," a photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by Boing Boing reader Jani. |
| Egypt: Amnesty condemns "virginity tests," sexual abuse of female protesters, journalists Posted: 23 Mar 2011 10:58 AM PDT Amnesty International has issued a report condemning the sexual abuse of female demonstrators and reporters who were present at anti-government protests. Army officers detained the women, beat them with sticks and hoses, tortured them with electric shocks, stripped them and photographed them while naked. A man in a white lab coat forcibly performed "virginity tests" on the women. This, too, was photographed. Women deemed "not virgins," falsely or otherwise, were threatened with being "exposed as prostitutes" publicly; a condemnation that in Egypt carries with it far heavier social penalties than here in the US. Previous Boing Boing item here. |
| The other nuclear power: The reactors we have aren't the only option Posted: 23 Mar 2011 10:47 AM PDT Are the design flaws and technology problems that led to the crisis at Fukushima a necessary evil inherent in nuclear power? Not really, says Alexis Madrigal, writing for The Atlantic. There's definitely a bit of irony circling around the Fukushima reactor failures. The plant uses very old reactor designs, dating to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Reactors like this exist in the United States as well, and they're flawed in some ways that would be almost comical, were it not for the risk those flaws impart. Maybe you've wondered over the past couple of weeks why anyone would design a nuclear reactor that relied on external generators to power the pumps for it's emergency cooling system. In a real emergency, isn't there a decent chance that the backup generators would be compromised, as well? It's a good question. In fact, modern reactor designs have solved that very problem, by feeding water through the emergency cooling system using gravity, rather than powered pumps. Newer designs are much safer, and more reliable. But we haven't built any of them in the United States, partly because people are afraid of the old designs. Like I said, irony. On the other hand, the full explanation of why light-water reactors like the ones at Fukushima dominate nuclear power is much more complex. In fact, as Madrigal points out, it starts before the general public became afraid of nuclear power—before any nuclear power plants had been built at all.
If you want to better understand the history of how we ended up with light-water reactors, I'd recommend reading this week's excerpt from Madrigal's upcoming book, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. In it, he explains how GE, Westinghouse, and the United States government let their excitement at the possibilities of nuclear power get away from them, and pushed through the commercialization of nuclear energy technology before that technology was really ready to be commercialized. |
| Randy Regier's "Fisher Fire Fly" model spaceship kit Posted: 23 Mar 2011 10:43 AM PDT  Sculptor Randy Regier, who makes toys limited to one unit, made a flying model kit of the "Fisher Fire Fly" spaceship. In a continuing effort to explore the potential and parameters of my American Dream Technical Institute I have added another piece to the Institute's collection. This is a flying model kit of the ADTI's full size "Fisher Fire Fly" spaceship. It is in the original box, and includes a steel launching pad with telescopic guide rod. Later this year this piece will be launched using an Estes D-12-7 model rocket engine. Results are expected to mirror the performance of the full size Fire Fly. Dimensions 14" x 8" x 8"See more photos of this cool model rocket after the jump.
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| Japan: govt. chart shows levels of radioactivity in water throughout country Posted: 23 Mar 2011 10:40 AM PDT This chart released online by the government of Japan plots levels of radioactivity measured in drinking water in various cities. Also new, this data about radioactivity levels around the Fukushima nuclear plant. Also just released: a chart measuring levels of radioactivity in the rain throughout Japan. Google Translate can help, for those who don't read Japanese. |
Can we PLEASE stop catastrophizing this way in every situation? If the kids are an accident waiting to happen while they draw on the sidewalk, aren't they an accident waiting to happen while they just stand on the sidewalk, too? After all, someone could bump into them! A car could jump the curb! A dog could chase them into the street! And inside the cafe, a patron could spill boiling tea on them. Every situation can be dangerous if you think about it hard enough. Why use THAT as an excuse to curtail childhood? 
During the German siege of Paris in 1870, residents had to eat whatever animals were at hand. Daily News correspondent Henry Labouchère recorded his opinions: 
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