The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- 3D printed "thorn dice"
- Coop's Monster Manual
- Warp drive in real life
- Learn the basics of bike repair at home
- Ex-copyright troll lobbyist-turned-judge hands down troll-friendly verdict
- Machete-shooting rifle-slingshot
- Nothing Really Mattress
- First image from Mercury orbit
- The new maker toolbox
- Best Flour Duster
- Skeleton cutlery
- Book about people who eat dirt
- Robot bird takes flight
- Back issues of COILHOUSE now available digitally
- Canadian ISPs admit that their pricing is structured to discourage Internet use
- Science fiction growth-chart takes your kid from Tribble to Vader
- Ghost pub stations in London to become bars and concerthalls
- Paleofuture: Now in dead tree format
- Lightbulb with integrated wireless speaker
- Open access legal scholarship is 50% more likely to be cited than material published in proprietary journals
- Sanxi's cavemen
- Treasures from the AT&T video archives
- Senior London cops lie to peaceful protestors, stage mass arrest
- iZombie: snappy, sassy supernatural comic
- Human disease and our animal cousins
- Why are there so many different ways of measuring radiation?
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:20 PM PDT  Shapeways user Ceramicwombat created these great "thorn dice" and they're available in a number of polymers and metals, fresh and piping hot from the 3D printer. |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:16 PM PDT  Illustrator Coop is continuing to travel through the Monster Manual (a trip that began with a magnificent take on the Beholder), and he's added two more entries. Also: he's put a weiner on the bugbear! This bodes well for more to come! (Shown here, the saucy mindflayer, a la Coop) |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:12 PM PDT Warp drive technology, as described in Star Trek, is nonsense, but there might actually be something to the idea of "warp drive" as a concept, says theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. |
| Learn the basics of bike repair at home Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:35 PM PDT It's spring! Time to watch some videos that will teach you how to tune-up and repair your own bike. (Not that I would need a pre-spring tune-up, of course. I've totally been riding all winter. Yeah. Totally.) |
| Ex-copyright troll lobbyist-turned-judge hands down troll-friendly verdict Posted: 29 Mar 2011 05:47 PM PDT The judge who reversed all precedent to date and said that it was permissible for copyright trolls to sue hundreds of people who never met or communicated in "reverse class action" suits? She just quit her job as a lobbyist for the copyright enforcement industry, earning $415,000 |
| Machete-shooting rifle-slingshot Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:23 PM PDT This handy gentleman has built an (arguably ill-conceived, but nevertheless impressive) rifle-cum-slingshot that fires machetes, should you find yourself with the need to fire machetes. He also has a sideline in selling parts for making your own insane slingshot-like inventions. Shooting Machetes with the Slingshot (via Geekologie!) |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 10:27 AM PDT  Trixie Bedlam's photo captures a poignant moment of bedbug existentialism. anyone can see (via Warren Ellis) |
| First image from Mercury orbit Posted: 29 Mar 2011 02:22 PM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 03:19 PM PDT Wired asked me to write about some of the cool tools that are becoming increasingly available to DIYers. I described inexpensive computer-aided design software, 3-D printers, computer numerical control machines, rapid-prototyping services, and the Arduino microcontroller. (The piece is below the profile of Limor Fried.) Illustration: Nina Rausch |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 01:58 PM PDT  I've used this flour duster for about 5 years and have found nothing else that can compete. It allows for remarkably light and even dusting of dough or a work surface. You simply squeeze the wire handle which expands the spring bulb so that the bulb wires have space between them. Then you stick it in a bag of flour, stop squeezing and the spring bulb closes around a golf ball sized wad of flour. Then you shake it over a work surface squeezing gently (I tap it over my free hand a la David Byrne's "Once in a Lifetime") and voila; a very even dusting is achieved. --Robert Narracci Best Flour Duster $15 Don't forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool! |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:12 AM PDT  Artist André Lassen's created a set of sinister, skeleton-adorned flatware that Raven Armoury is selling in stainless steel or bronze (a carving set is coming soon). Great for your evil overlord dinner parties! André Lassen - Cutlery (via Neatorama) |
| Book about people who eat dirt Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:58 PM PDT  I just got done reading an excerpt from a book that sounds completely fascinating. It's all about pica—the overwhelming desire to eat dirt, starch, and other things that aren't food. Apparently, this phenomenon happens all over the world, primarily to pregnant women. In fact, says author Sera Young, in some cultures eating dirt is the go-to pregnancy "gotcha" symptom—the same way that every American knows to suspect a woman who pukes in the morning, or wants pickles with her ice cream. That's really where a lot of the fascination comes from for me. Why is this tendency so specific to pregnant women? And why does the frequency of pica vary depending on location? Even though people do this all over the world, studies have shown some big differences between populations. For instance, Young writes, .01% of pregnant Danish women eat dirt, but 56% of pregnant Kenyan women do. There's clearly some interesting overlaps between biology and culture happening here. Do the lower numbers of Danish pica practitioners, compared to Kenyan, reflect differences in genetics? Does this say something about the differences in diets between developed and undeveloped countries? (An interesting train of though, as Young points out that pica was widely known and accepted by American women in the rural South as late as the mid 20th-century.) Or would more Danish women eat more dirt if it was a culturally accepted practice? Do more Danish women eat dirt, and just not want to admit it? Young says the book delves into some of the biological and cultural "Why's". I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it and finding out more.
Columbia University Press: Craving Earth Ironically, as I wrote this, I was eating an orange peel, pith and rind. That's not pica. But it was close enough to make me feel a little self-conscious. (Via Kerim) Image: Some rights reserved by RJL20 |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:13 PM PDT Festo, creators of robot penguins and a robotic elephant trunk, created the majestic robot bird in this video. From New Scientist: SmartBird is modelled on the herring gull and can take off, fly and land while its flight is controlled remotely from the ground in real time."Robot bird soars through the sky" |
| Back issues of COILHOUSE now available digitally Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:17 PM PDT  The fine folks at COILHOUSE magazine (mentioned many a time here in the past, and who featured Xeni and Boing Boing Video in issue 3 have just put made available for the first time all five back issues as DRM-free PDF downloads. Issues are $5 each or $20 for all five, with promises that the funds from this will go directly into the production of issue number 6. The COILHOUSE team are some of my favorite people; if you missed picking up the printed versions when they were available, now is your chance to catch up. |
| Canadian ISPs admit that their pricing is structured to discourage Internet use Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:03 AM PDT Canada's cable-based ISPs have filed regulatory comments on their "Usage-Based Billing" model that caps bandwidth use and then charges high rates for overage. In these comments, they admit that the rates they charge have nothing to do with what it costs them to provide their service, and are instead aimed at punishing their customers for "overusing" the Internet. In other words, they've set out to limit the growth of networked based business and new kinds of services, and to prevent Canadians experimentation that enables them to use the Internet to its fullest. Cable Companies on UBB: No Link Between Cost and Price (Image: Girlfriend's aunt network diagram, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from pitel's photostream)
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| Science fiction growth-chart takes your kid from Tribble to Vader Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:36 PM PDT  This geeky dad made a growth-chart for his daughter that allows her to log her height against Star Wars and other science fiction franchise characters. It comes as a seven-foot-tall PDF, in case your kid happens to grow to Darth Vader heights. Growth Chart (via MeFi) |
| Ghost pub stations in London to become bars and concerthalls Posted: 29 Mar 2011 11:56 AM PDT A London entrepreneur is planning to convert a half-dozen unused subway stations into clubs, bars, and live music venues. Ajit Chambers' plans have apparently been blessed by London Mayor Boris Johnson, but other officials are skeptical. From The Independent: "Why pubs are on track to open in 'ghost stations'" |
| Paleofuture: Now in dead tree format Posted: 29 Mar 2011 11:43 AM PDT If you aren't already a reader of the history of futurism blog, Paleofuture, then you are making a serious mistake that future generations will someday mock. And there is no better time to learn the wonders of Paleofuture, now that the blog is also a magazine. The first issue focuses on retro-futuristic food—from meals-in-a-pill to robot chefs. |
| Lightbulb with integrated wireless speaker Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:50 AM PDT Hammacher Schlemmer's "Audio Light Bulb" is a $300 pair of speakers that you screw into your light-socket (it has a set of white LEDs that provide light equivalent to a 60 Watt incandescent). It draws power from the light-socket, and uses a radio receiver to reproduce sound from your home stereo (you plug a matching transmitter into the audio output on your stereo or computer). It's a pretty interesting (albeit pricey) way of getting sound into lots of places in your home, though I don't know what it sounds like, and I'm not enough of an audio geek to know whether ceilings are good places to put your speakers. The catalog page doesn't say what frequency it runs on, but I'd guess 2.4GHz, which might clobber your baby monitor or WiFi. The Audio Light Bulb. (via Cribcandy) |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:42 AM PDT A paper from James M. Donovan (U Kentucky) and Carol A. Watson (U Georgia) analyzes the pattern of citations in law journals and finds that legal scholars who publish in open access (free and freely copyable) journals are 50 percent more likely to be cited in subsequent papers than those who publish in traditional journals, which can be very expensive. It's easy to see why publishing your work in a forum that is easier to get hold of would lead to it being read and cited by your peers, and this has also been the pattern in scientific open access journals. To date, there have been no studies focusing exclusively on the impact of open access on legal scholarship. We examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article's research impact. Open access legal scholarship - which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties - can expect to receive 50% more citations than non-open access writings of similar age from the same venue.Citation Advantage of Open Access Legal Scholarship (Thanks, DaraMcQ, via Submitterator!) |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:37 AM PDT  AsiaObscura has a short piece on the "cave dwellings" (窑洞) of rural Sanxi province, China. An older generation of local farmers have reared their families in these caves, which they praise for their natural temperature-moderation. "All of the young people have left," this old man said. "They've moved to the city, and to normal houses. But I like it here. It's warm in the winter, and cool in the summer. I've lived here for 60 years."Modern Day Cavemen of Shanxi (Thanks, AndyDeemer, via Submitterator!) |
| Treasures from the AT&T video archives Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:29 AM PDT  Rick Prelinger sez, "My friend Robin Edgerton, whom some of you will know from WFMU and VH1, just helped AT&T select a bunch of its cooler films from the thousands in its archives to put online. The selection and quality are just great, and there are a bunch I've never seen. Check out MICROWORLD (with William Shatner), I.C. A SHRINKING WORLD, both on microelectronics, and DECORATING UNLIMITED, a 1961 film from Jerry Fairbanks, maker of the sublime ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON. This has long needed to happen." AT&T Archives (Thanks, Footage, via Submitterator!) |
| Senior London cops lie to peaceful protestors, stage mass arrest Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:25 AM PDT Senior London police officers lied to peaceful protestors from UKUncut who had entered the luxury department store (and alleged tax evader) Fortnum and Mason, telling the demonstrators that they'd be escorted to a back entrance, away from "disorder outside," saying they were "free to leave." When demonstrators peacefully left on the proscribed route, they were seized and arrested, and the same officer said, "Yes, you're free to leave - to the police station. You're going to be arrested." UKUncut have a hard-won reputation for peaceful, well-organized protest that cooperates with police. With this shabby trick., the Met have squandered the trust of this protest group and protestors all over London and the UK. The video also shows the officer agreeing with protesters that a breach of the peace had occurred outside the store, but not inside, and that Uncut protesters were being held inside so they did not become "wrapped up" in that disorder.Cuts protesters claim police tricked them into mass arrest (Thanks, Midtempo, via Submitterator)
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| iZombie: snappy, sassy supernatural comic Posted: 26 Mar 2011 09:30 PM PDT  iZombie: Dead to the World is the first collection of Chris Roberson and Michael Allred's smart, sassy supernatural thriller comic about a crime-solving zombie gravedigger and her cadre of supernatural pals. Gwen Dylan, the titular zombie, is an attractive, twentysomething artist who can't remember how she ended up dead (or undead), but she's determined not to end up a shambler. So she leads a "normal" life among the living as a gravedigger, burying the hapless residents of Eugene, Oregon by day and digging them up once a month by night to (reluctantly, it must be said) eat their brains. So long as she gets her monthly helping of the grey stuff, she goes on being normal, sensate and in control. It's not easy being in Gwen's situation, but she has good friends -- a go-go-booted ghost of a swinging chick who kicked off 40 years ago (and is struggling to understand the modern world, all malapropisms about "inner-nets" and so on; a were-terrier with an unfortunate crush on her; and the waitress at a local mob-owned coffee shop who mercilessly critiques the paintings Gwen is moved to execute after feasting on brains. Because when you eat a dead person's brains, you get that person's memories, and if those memories include (for example), a murder, well, you have to solve the crime to get them out of your head again. Supernatural Eugene hosts many spooks and haints beyond Gwen and her pals -- there's a gang of hottie vampire ladies who run a paintball gym where they can easily separate loners for a little bloodplay; an ancient and mysterious living mummy, and, of course, some monster-hunting dudes (including one stone fox whom Gwen can't help but fall for). Basically, this thing writes itself from here: you've got all these attractive, clever monsters and revenants and such, the business with the brains, and the op-art stylings of Michael Allred and it makes a fabulously entertaining package that's fun and spooky and surprising. I'll certainly be getting the future volumes of this one.
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| Human disease and our animal cousins Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:19 AM PDT  We hear a lot about animal diseases that make the jump to humans—swine flu, for instance. But this transfer goes the other way, too. There are 786 mountain gorillas left in the wild, and three quarters of those animals are used to being around people. Partially, that's an OK thing. The tourism industry has played a key role in keeping these gorillas protected. On the other hand, though, tourism also means that a small, previously isolated population of primates is regularly being brought into contact with diverse primates from all over the world. It's the perfect set-up for us jet-setting humans to pass on diseases that are completely novel to the gorilla's immune system. Human metapneumovirus is very common in people, and not terribly dangerous. Most kids have been exposed by the time they're 5. The only people who usually develop complications are elderly, very young, or have compromised immune systems. In gorillas, however, this virus can be deadly. During a 2009 outbreak among one group of gorillas, an adult female and an infant died This issue is interesting to me, because of the dilemma it poses. As the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases notes: "Human proximity to mountain gorillas is essential for their conservation, also crucial is minimizing the risk for human-to-great ape transmission of respiratory pathogens." How to cover both concerns, at the same time, will be a real dilemma. Image: Some rights reserved by viralbus |
| Why are there so many different ways of measuring radiation? Posted: 29 Mar 2011 05:51 AM PDT Slate has an interesting look at what's up with all the different ways of measuring radiation exposure. Sieverts, rems, grays—what's the difference? It is boils down to two issues. First, some units measure specific things. Sieverts, for instance, are different from grays because sieverts are a measure of the effect of radiation on human tissue, while grays are more about radiation absorbed by any object. And the second issue: It's a case of the Metrics.
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In order to be effective as an economic ITMP, the usage based price component needs to be established so as to discourage use above the set limit. The price should incent use in excess of the limit only to the extent that the consumer would gain significant value from that usage. If the price is set substantially below the consumer's value, it will have little influence on usage. It follows that the price does not necessarily reflect the cost of supplying the network capacity. 
Transport for London, offered a note of caution: "The majority of disused stations have not been used for many years and nearly all are next to the operational railway, which would present a significant safety challenge.
This is the wireless, illuminated speaker that installs as easily as a light bulb. It fits unobtrusively within a recessed can light receptacle, replacing a standard light bulb, for discreet audio and lighting. Providing crisp audio, the full-range, 10-watt speaker receives interference-free wireless audio signals from up to 50' away from its transmitter... | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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