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- Music industry duped by spammy BitTorrent ad, band caught in the middle
- Science, politics, art & more at the Conference on World Affairs
- Does the Paleolithic Diet make sense?
- DIY publishing: getting Amazon and Lulu to co-exist
- Misleading government stats and the innumerate media who repeat them
- TEDxObserver talk on kids and privacy
- Ivory Coast conflict: 800 killed in one town on one day; France takes over airport
- China: Renowned poet and artist Ai Weiwei detained
- Japan Nuclear Crisis: Sawdust, shredded newspaper, "diaper absorbent" fail to soak up radioactive water
- US gov budget crisis could end Data.gov transparency project; act now
- Moscow cops confiscate copies of book outing corrupt authorities
- Childless by choice
| Music industry duped by spammy BitTorrent ad, band caught in the middle Posted: 04 Apr 2011 05:14 AM PDT Here's a fascinating look at how two opposing groups with an interest in inflating piracy numbers drove each other crazy and screwed up a nice-seeming band in the process.
So Tilbury kind of freaked out. After all, the band only had 176 Twitter followers and one YouTube video with 79 views -- if they'd gone piracy-platinum without earning a penny, well, that was pretty weird and disturbing (and heartening, as the lead singer noted that the band was "flattered that people could love our music that much"). The story got picked up by the Canadian Recording Industry Association's astroturf site, "Balanced Copyright for Canada" (despite its name, CRIA represents the interests of the four major international labels, who are the only voting members -- most Canadian labels staged a walkout some years ago from the organisation). CRIA and "Balanced Copyright" ran with the story, touting it as proof that piracy was destroying the careers of fledgling indie bands who were struggling to launch their careers. TorrentFreak, who broke the story (and who were rubbished by the band's manager) are sympathetic to the band's disappointment at "losing" 100,000 fans, and is calling on its readers to follow the band on Twitter and check out its video and debut album. I'm going to end this piece with an unusual request because, to be brutally honest, I feel sorry for this band. All good musicians want to be heard and One Soul Thrust have just 'lost' 100K fans overnight. From what i've seen they seem really nice guys (and girl) and are completely innocent in all of this and although their music isn't my scene, it sounds fairly decent to me.CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band (Thanks, @maradydd!) |
| Science, politics, art & more at the Conference on World Affairs Posted: 03 Apr 2011 09:21 PM PDT  All this week, I'm going to be attending—and speaking at—the 63rd Annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado. What is the Conference on World Affairs? I like Tim Lloyd's concise description: "The Conference on World Affairs is the democratic version of TED." Founded by a University of Colorado professor who was inspired by the formation of the United Nations, CWA brings together a broad swath of interesting people. There are artists, musicians, scientists, journalists, and more. This year, the lineup includes people like Jello Biafra, Andy Ihnatko, and David Crosby—as well as less instantly recognizable names, like Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women, SETI's Seth Shostak, and conservative political scientist Robert Kaufman. All the speakers are mixed and matched into panel discussions, based on the speakers' areas of expertise—and on topics that they're just interested in, even if they aren't experts. But here's the best part: The Conference on World Affairs is free and open to the public. If you're anywhere near Boulder this week, I highly recommend dropping in for some of the sessions. The full program is online. If you can't make it, though, never fear. I'll be tweeting from presentations during the day, and posting summaries of some of the cool stuff that I've learned right here. Here's the list of panels I'll be speaking on:
• Monday, April 4: "The Wild, Wild Web: We Are All Outlaws Online", 4:30 pm • Tuesday, April 5: "My Car, Your Car, No Car", 12:30 pm • Wednesday, April 6: "Science, Media, and Myth", 3:00 pm &bull: Thursday, April 7: "Growing Up in the Dark: Alternative Energy Technologies", 9:00 am &bull: Friday, April 8: "Urban Agriculture", 1:00 pm |
| Does the Paleolithic Diet make sense? Posted: 03 Apr 2011 10:20 PM PDT Is the Paleolithic Diet—the fad regimen that suggests we should all eat more meat and no grains, ostensibly mimicking the diets of our ancestors—really healthy for the average human living today? Is it even actually representative of what human ancestors ate? Good tackles these questions and more, in a round-table interview with a group of anthropologists and evolutionary biologists. |
| DIY publishing: getting Amazon and Lulu to co-exist Posted: 04 Apr 2011 04:10 AM PDT My new Publishers Weekly column has just gone up, documenting the progress with my DIY short story collection, With a Little Help. This month, I talk about the Baroque process of getting a book listed on both Lulu and Amazon: Getting the book on Amazon was much harder than I anticipated. At first, I considered selling the book using Lulu's wholesale channel, which can feed into Amazon. But once both Lulu and Amazon had taken their cut of the book, my net price would have been in nosebleed territory, somewhere in the $20 range. Add to that a $2 royalty for me and the book would be remembered as one of the most expensive short story collections in publishing history.With A Little Help: Hitting My Stride
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| Misleading government stats and the innumerate media who repeat them Posted: 03 Apr 2011 10:43 PM PDT This week's Bad Science column from Ben Goldacre is an entertaining and frustrating look at the way that the government manipulates statistics with help from a tame and innumerate news media: Anarchy for the UK. Ish. |
| TEDxObserver talk on kids and privacy Posted: 03 Apr 2011 09:54 PM PDT Here's a video of my talk on kids, privacy and social media ("A Skinner box that trains you to under-value your privacy: how do we make kids care about online privacy?") at last month's TEDxObserver event in London. It was a great day and there were a ton of interesting talks (the set is here). |
| Ivory Coast conflict: 800 killed in one town on one day; France takes over airport Posted: 03 Apr 2011 11:36 AM PDT  (Forces loyal to Ivorian presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara prepare to head to the frontline in the capital Abidjan, April 2, 2011. Soldiers of Ivory Coast's rival leaders battled for the presidential palace, military bases and state TV in the main city Abidjan on Saturday, in a conflict becoming so brutal that it killed 800 people in one town alone. Advancing soldiers backing Alassane Ouattara, who U.N.-certified results show won a Nov. 28 presidential election, met stiff resistance from fighters remaining loyal to incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to step down. Image: REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun) The Red Cross reports that as many as 800 people may have been killed in a single town on a single day in Ivory Coast, in "intercommunal violence" resulting from ongoing political turmoil. (Reuters). Good, comprehensive resources on this story at Global Voices. France, in cooperation with the UN, has just today taken over the country's main airport to evacuate foreigners: 12,000 French citizens live in the west African nation. Al Jazeera reports that state television in Cote D'Ivoire is accusing France of "preparing a Rwandan genocide". The international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), has been active in the region for years. Here is their latest update:
Many wounded people suffering from gunshot or machete wounds have arrived in hospitals in the western towns of Danané, Man, and Bangolo. MSF surgical teams in Bangolo are supporting the hospital there.
Al Jazeera has this background piece on the political forces behind the conflict. |
| China: Renowned poet and artist Ai Weiwei detained Posted: 03 Apr 2011 10:26 AM PDT Beijing: China's most famous artist and poet has been arrested for reasons not yet known. Police searched Ai Weiwei's studio, took his computers, and interrogated his assistants. (via Steve Silberman) |
| Posted: 03 Apr 2011 10:07 AM PDT  Would that this were a joke. Highly radioactive water is leaking into the sea at the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan. Workers there have tried to stop the flow with polymeric water absorbent, the stuff used in baby diapers, that can soak up 50 times its volume in liquid. At left, a snapshot of the material (photo: Kyodo News). They're also using sawdust and shredded newspapers. But Japan's nuclear safety agency, NISA, says so far none of this is working. And the government's top spokesperson says it will likely take several months before radiation stops leaking from the plant. Engineers put 8 kilograms of the polymeric water absorbent together with 60 kilograms of sawdust and three bags of shredded newspaper into pipes leading to a pit connected to the No. 2 reactor building where a 20-centimeter crack has been found to be leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, the agency said. "Absorbent yet to soak up radioactive water at Fukushima plant" (Kyodo News) |
| US gov budget crisis could end Data.gov transparency project; act now Posted: 03 Apr 2011 09:57 AM PDT From the Sunlight Foundation: "Data.gov, USASpending.gov, the IT Dashboard and other federal data transparency and government accountability programs are facing a massive budget cut, despite only being a tiny fraction of the national budget. Help save the data and make sure that Congress doesn't leave the American people in the dark." (via Kevin Werbach) |
| Moscow cops confiscate copies of book outing corrupt authorities Posted: 03 Apr 2011 09:27 AM PDT  The confiscation took place after Deputy Governor Igor Parkhomenko filed a libel complaint with the local police over the book, titled, "Corporation 'Moscow Region': How Russia's Richest Region Was Bankrupted."The book had a total print run of 5,000. On his Facebook page, editorial director Leonid Bershidsky at Eksmo, the book's publisher, says the other 1,500 copies of the book had already been shipped to bookstores, but... The confiscated books were not delivered to stores after an obscure company asked Eksmo to hold off on the shipments because it wanted to purchase them all, he said. The request came two days before the confiscation, but the company, Konsard, never picked the order. Read the rest of the Moscow Times article here. Forbes Russia has an item up today about the police action here. has released a sample chapter here, in Russian. Journalists in Russia whose work runs afoul of authorities and/or crime syndicates are frequently the target of intimidation, violent attacks, disappearance, and murder. Sokolova and those close to her are now understandably concerned for her safety. (via Joseph Menn) |
| Posted: 03 Apr 2011 10:15 AM PDT Boing Boing guest-blogger Andrea James has written here before about parenting as a lifestyle choice. This month in Details, an interesting piece on this same topic: why a growing number of couples in America are choosing not to have children—or, perhaps more broadly, just sort of ending up that way by the time they hit their forties. Snip: My wife, Nancy, and I have been married for nine years. By the time we tied the knot, everyone we knew was having children. Our individual philosophies on the subject fell somewhere between casual indifference and acute apathy. "You want kids?" "I don't know...do you?" "Um...not sure." "I'll have 'em if you want to. Do you?" "I don't know." "Wanna go see a movie?" "Sure!" "The No-Baby Boom," by Brian Frazer, in Details. (via Fark) |
The Sun said: "Police have charged nearly 150 people after violent anarchists hijacked the anti-cuts demo and brought terror to London's streets." The Guardian republished a Press Association report, headlined: "Cuts protest violence: 149 people charged". And from the locals, for example, the Manchester Evening News carried "Boy, 17, from Manchester among 149 charged over violence after anti-cuts march". 
Police in Moscow have confiscated 3,500 copies of a book written by a Anna Sokolova (shown at left, she's on | 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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