The Latest from Boing Boing

Sweden exports sweatshops: Ikea's first American factory
Wisco county clerk whose homemade voting software found 14K votes for Tea Party judge is an old hand at illegal campaigning
Canada's New Democratic Party promises national broadband and net neutrality
Flapper's dictionary: 1922
Wild Fermentation
Toronto's Silver Snail to leave Queen Street West
Canadian Tories' campaign pledge: We will spy on the Internet

Sweden exports sweatshops: Ikea's first American factory

Posted: 10 Apr 2011 10:13 PM PDT

World-beating tax-cheats Ikea have a reputation for being a great employer in Sweden; but in America, their first factory is a model sweatshop, with rock-bottom wages, mandatory overtime, abusive vacation policies, and forced reeducation meetings for employees who support forming a union:

Some of the Virginia plant's 335 workers are trying to form a union. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said a majority of eligible employees had signed cards expressing interest.
In response, the factory -- part of Ikea's manufacturing subsidiary, Swedwood -- hired the law firm Jackson Lewis, which has made its reputation keeping unions out of companies. Workers said Swedwood officials required employees to attend meetings at which management discouraged union membership...
Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days -- eight of them on dates determined by the company.
What's more, as many as one-third of the workers at the Danville plant have been drawn from local temporary-staffing agencies. These workers receive even lower wages and no benefits, employees said.

Ikea's U.S. factory churns out unhappy workers (via Reddit)

(Image: Midnight at the Glassworks: Lewis Wickes Hine/Wikimedia/Library of Congress [Public Domain])

Wisco county clerk whose homemade voting software found 14K votes for Tea Party judge is an old hand at illegal campaigning

Posted: 10 Apr 2011 12:54 PM PDT

The plot thickens for Kathy Nickolaus, the Waukesha, Wisconsin county clerk who used her own home-brewed voting software to miraculously discover 14,000 votes for her former boss, Tea Party-favored Supreme Court Justice David Prosser. Yes, former boss -- Nickolaus worked under Prosser at the disgraced Assembly Republican Caucus, who were exposed while illegally conducting secret campaigns for Republican legislative candidates. What's more, Nickolaus is something of an old hand when it comes to voting irregularities:

In 2006, Nickolaus, who was elected Waukesha County clerk in 2002, was criticized for posting election returns that temporarily skewed results of a Republican primary for the 97th Assembly District. At the time, Nickolaus told reporters some returns from the city of Waukesha were entered in the wrong column.
And last summer, the Waukesha County Board ordered an internal audit of her office, citing concerns Nickolaus was secretive and refusing to cooperate with the county's technical staff in a security review of the computerized election system.
Some officials also were critical of Nickolaus' decision to stop posting municipal results to save time. Auditors who looked at the Waukesha County system found 26 of 62 counties surveyed also did not post local results -- a step that might have revealed the missing Brookfield numbers.

Waukesha County clerk has drawn criticisms in the past

Canada's New Democratic Party promises national broadband and net neutrality

Posted: 10 Apr 2011 10:46 AM PDT

Canada's left-leaning New Democratic Party have unveiled their Internet campaign promises for this election; they're a stark contrast to the Tories, who've vowed to re-engineer Canada's network to make it easier to spy on Canadians without a court order. Instead, the NDP promises to extend broadband (wired and wireless) across the nation, to force the CRTC (the national telcoms regulator) to be more responsive to consumer interests, and to enshrine net neutrality (a term coined by Canadian Tim Wu!) into law.

* We will apply the proceeds from the advanced wireless spectrum auction to ensure all Canadians, no matter where they live, will have quality high-speed broadband internet access;
* We will expect the major internet carriers to contribute financially to this goal;
* We will rescind the 2006 Conservative industry-oriented directive to the CRTC and direct the regulator to stand up for the public interest, not just the major telecommunications companies;
* We will enshrine "net neutrality" in law, end price gouging and "net throttling," with clear rules for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), enforced by the CRTC;
* We will prohibit all forms of usage-based billing (UBB) by Internet Service Providers (ISPs);
* We will introduce a bill on copyright reform to ensure that Canada complies with its international treaty obligations, while balancing consumers' and creators' rights.

NDP Unveils Its Digital Economy Strategy: Reshaping Internet Access in Canada

(Image: Rainbows, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jaqian's photostream)

Flapper's dictionary: 1922

Posted: 10 Apr 2011 10:34 AM PDT

JimL sez, "Originally published in the July 1922 edition of FLAPPER magazine, this dictionary went into some detail, listing the group's slang and providing definitions. In the process, it also provided an insight: through the slang we can begin to discern attitudes and priorities and the mindset of the adherents. And the adherents, after all, were our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Who knew?"

Absent Treatment--Dancing with a bashful partner.
Airedale--A homely man.
Alarm Clock--Chaperon.
Anchor--Box of flowers.
Apple Knocker--A hick; a hay-shaker.
Apple Sauce--Flattery; bunk.
Barlow--A girl, a flapper, a chicken.
Bank's Closed--No petting allowed; no kisses.
Barneymugging--Lovemaking.
Bee's Knees--See "Cat's Pajamas"
Bell Polisher--A young man addicted to lingering in vestibules at 1 a.m.
Bean Picker--One who patches up trouble and picks up spilled beans.
Berry Patch--A man's particular interest in a girl.
Berries--Great.
Biscuit--A pettable flapper.
Big Timer--(n. masc.)--A charmer able to convince his sweetie that a jollier thing would be to get a snack in an armchair lunchroom; a romantic.

A Flappers' Dictionary (Thanks, JimL, via Submitterator!)

Wild Fermentation

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:04 PM PDT

Yogurt, bread, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, miso, kraut, and vinegar are among the many foods that are produced with the aid of microorganisms. Those are living beasties of a type that we ordinarily try to remove from what we eat. This cookbook is full of fermentation recipes. It presents a unified theory of "live-culture foods," a way of connecting their different methods in order to understand why fermentation is a Good Thing, and why there should be more of it. Fermentation is fairly easy to do. It can self-correct many beginner's errors. It is definitely a slow-food process, but at the same time, a low-effort process since the bugs do most of the work. The recipes here are starter ones, broad in scope, easy to do, just to get you going. The appendix contains a good roundup of sources for a large variety of live cultures. You can find deeper more complex recipes in specific books, but here in one slim volume is a great introduction to how to ferment. At least once, you should make your own yogurt, bread, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, miso, kraut, and vinegar. Find what you do well and make more of it. More importantly, ferment something new. -- KK Wild Fermentation Sandor Ellix Katz 2003, 200 pages $17

Sample excerpt:
By eating a variety of live fermented foods, you promote diversity among microbial cultures in your body.

I know of no food that is without some tradition of fermentation.

*
Hamid Dirar has identified eighty distinct fermentation processes in The Indigenous Fermented Food of the Sudan, a book describing an incredible array of ferments that result in consumption of every bit of animal flesh and bone.

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Toronto's Silver Snail to leave Queen Street West

Posted: 09 Apr 2011 11:25 PM PDT

The Silver Snail, Toronto's iconic Queen Street West comic shop, has sold up and is moving to new digs. The owner is selling to the wonderful George Zotti, who's been manager there for for years and years. The Snail was practically the last shop left on that stretch of Queen Street from its glory days, before it became, essentially, a megabrand mall selling the same junk you could buy at the Eaton Centre. Things are still interesting as you push further west on Queen Street, but the whole road is fast turning into a blighted corporate wasteland -- a kind of extended strip mall.

No word yet on where the Silver Snail is moving to, but I'm betting they end up in the Annex, nearby the great new digs that Bakka Books (the old science fiction bookstore that used to be situated across from the Snail) has ended up in on Harbord Street.

The vibrant, cavernous store will remain on Queen St. W. until at least February 2012. But it will move to a new neighbourhood, says Zotti.
"Queen Street is not the book-friendly place it used to be," he says. "If you want shoes or $300 jeans, it's a good place to go. It's lost that browsing, literary feel it used to have."
The store is legendary for hosting indie artists as well as comic book royalty -- including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and Sandman writer Neil Gaiman -- at store events. With its proximity to Much Music, it's also had drop-ins from a litany of celebrities with comic fetishes, including KISS's Gene Simmons, actor Robin Williams, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and Burton Cummings of the Guess Who.
"We've opened the store early so Harrison Ford and his kids could shop," says Zotti, who has worked at the store on and off since he was 15. "Mark Hamill came in when I was 18."
Then there was the Friday afternoon Bob Dylan strolled in.

The Silver Snail: Comics icon sold, to move (Thanks, Michael!)

Canadian Tories' campaign pledge: We will spy on the Internet

Posted: 09 Apr 2011 11:12 PM PDT

Michael Geist has timely analysis of the Canadian Conservative party's campaign promise to pass a massive "crime and justice" bill within 100 days, if re-elected. The bill -- which has never been debated or had hearings or public consultation -- includes massive, extrajudicial bulk surveillance over Canadians' use of the Internet.

More important than process is the substance of the proposals that have the potential to fundamentally reshape the Internet in Canada. The bills contain a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers.
The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight.
The second prong requires Internet providers to dramatically re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance. The bill sets out detailed capability requirements that will eventually apply to all Canadian Internet providers. These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions.
Having obtained customer information without court oversight and mandated Internet surveillance capabilities, the third prong creates a several new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.