Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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Rare photos of Mercury astronauts on 50th anniversary of Alan Shepard's historic flight

Posted: 04 May 2011 11:39 PM PDT

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May 5, 2011, is the 50th anniversary of the historic flight by Alan Shepard which made him the second person, and the first American, in space. LIFE has published a photo gallery of rare, never-before-published photos of Shepard, Glenn, Slayton, Grissom, and the rest of the Mercury astronauts, along with observations by LIFE photographer Ralph Morse (dubbed "the 8th Mercury astronaut" by John Glenn)

When Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in April 1961, a stunned America asked, How did the Russians beat us? And more importantly: Will we ever catch up? Three weeks later, on May 5, the second question was emphatically answered when 37-year-old Alan Shepard blasted off from Cape Canaveral on his own historic flight -- a feat that made the New Hampshire native the first American in space, and marked the moment the U.S. caught, and surpassed, Russia in the Space Race.

Photo gallery here.

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Why I'm voting YES on Alternative Voting

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:00 PM PDT

This morning, I'll be casting my ballot in the UK in favor of the Alternative Vote, a proposal that will allow British voters to rank their preferences from among candidates. It's the system that's already in use to choose the winners in organizations like the Conservative Party, in political regions like the municipality of London, and in various other forums, such as the Hugo Award. I believe that AV will make politicians more responsive to their constituents and allow voters to better express their electoral preferences. I think it will serve as a major check on the power of party mandarins and big donors in government, and result in better lawmaking.

I hope that my friends here in the UK will consider these arguments when they go to the polls today.

Myth 1) AV will cost us £250 million
The only piece of equipment you need to vote with AV is a pencil. The No camp's sums, like their arguments, simply don't add up. Electronic counting machines aren't an issue in this referendum.

Australia has hand counted its elections for 8 decades. The £130 million of make-believe machines don't exist in Australia and won't exist in the UK.

AV will keep what is best about our current system - the link between an MP serving their local constituency - but strengthens it by making MPs work harder to get elected and giving voters more of a say. Short on arguments the No campaign are trying to claim we can't afford change. After the expenses crisis we can't afford not to.

Myth 2) AV is too confusing
Few people would be confused by this. Voters put a '1' by their first choice, a '2' by their second choice, a '3' by their third choice and so on. The logic's familiar enough to anyone who's ever asked a friend to pop down to the shops for a coke and said, "If they're out of that I'll have a lemonade."

Some people have a very low estimation of the British public.

Myth 3) AV helps the BNP

The BNP have already called on their supporters to back a 'No' vote. Currently because MPs can get elected with support from less than 1 in 3 voters, there is always a risk that extremist parties can get in. The BNP have learnt this lesson, and have used it to scrape wins in town halls across Britain. With AV, no-one can get elected unless most people back them. Therefore the risk of extremist parties getting in by the back door is eliminated.

Why should we vote Yes to AV in May? | Yes to fairer votes - Yes to AV - Alternative Vote

Huge asteroid to fly by Earth in November

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:21 PM PDT


"YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years," says Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.

Let our great grandkids worry about it.

Huge asteroid to fly by Earth in November

Why yes, you may ask about the stealth helicopters

Posted: 04 May 2011 06:15 PM PDT

RTR2LZQ11.jpegThe wreckage of a downed chopper, blown to smithereens by Navy Seals unwilling to leave it in foreign hands, was the last remnant of their mission left inside Osama Bin Laden's compound. It left under wraps, on the back of a truck laden with Pakistani soldiers. At Wired, David Axe offers a thorough guide to the high-tech mystery copter, and what aviation experts know about it.
Aviation specialists are picking apart pixel-by-pixel the dozen-or-so photos of the copter that have appeared online. They're assembling digital mock-ups of the aircraft and comparing them to lost stealth designs of the 1980s and '90s. Speculation abounds, and so far no one from the government is commenting. But depending on what the copter turns out to be, it could shed new light on everything from the abilities of U.S. commandos to the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
Spoiler! Best guess is that it's an upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60. Aviation Geeks Scramble to ID bin Laden Raid's Mystery Copter [Danger Room]

Dalai Lama receives human rights award from Amnesty International

Posted: 04 May 2011 05:57 PM PDT

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[iPhone snapshot above: Xeni Jardin; illustration inset, Shepard Fairey.]

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His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was in Long Beach, California this morning to accept the inaugural edition of a "Shine a Light on Human Rights" award from Amnesty International. My notes from the event follow.

He accepted the award with characteristic humility and good humor, saying, "I am just a single monk; no more, no less," later adding for the Amnesty volunteers and human rights advocates assembled, "Your work is good. Please continue."

Addressing the crowd before the spiritual leader spoke, Amnesty International's U.S. executive director Larry Cox said the award honored the fact that he has "tirelessly and peacefully defended the rights of people everywhere" for over 50 years. This month will also mark the 50th anniversary of the human rights organization's own founding.

The Dalai Lama took questions from Amnesty volunteers for more than an hour, and spoke of the imperative to protect those who are engaged in human rights work, as well as the need for freedom of information and expression in Tibet, China, and around the world.

Speaking through a translator, he described a Tibetan concept of generosity that encompasses not only material goods or comfort to those in need, "but also protection from fear."

"Individuals in some ways have more power than governments; the individuals, the artists, the activists who are compelled to change society—we must protect them."

Despite the white stubble he pointed to on his shaved head, the 76-year-old monk said he was optimistic that he would witness Tibetan "reunion" and peace with China in his lifetime.

"If you start a noble effort and encounter problems, and just stop— it is wrong," he said. "You must persist. If you believe that the goal of your work must materialize in your lifetime, it is wrong. It's still worthwhile, even if you never live to see it materialize."

The internet's enabling of increased access to information, and the increasing velocity of information, he said, is a good thing. "Because of new media, the news [of human rights violations] reaches us immediately."

Censorship and seemingly ever-tightening restrictions on internet flow are a predictable response from the Chinese government, he continued, but they are fundamentally unsustainable. "More soldiers, more [surveillance] cameras, they build mistrust and fear. Harmony is based on trust... so this is totally the wrong method. Censorship should not be there; there should be free information, a free press, and then an independent judiciary and gradual government change can follow. That will develop trust and harmony within China, and with the outside world. A closed society with no transparency creates suspicion."



"The lifespan of a totalitarian regime is generally longer than that of an elected government," he continued. "But China belongs to the Chinese people, and not the government. 1.3 billion Chinese people have the right to know reality, and to judge what is right and what is wrong for themselves."

Asked by a young student LGBT activist what advice he might give gay and trans teens who are bullied for their sexual or gender orientation, the Dalai Lama suggested that apart from pursuing legal protection, greater understanding and more education in "moral ethics and concern for others" may help.


But "sometimes the system to solve the problem turns into a problem itself," he added; "The court can turn into a demon, the 'medicine' can become a poison, and people who do not have access to knowledge and education can be more easily manipulated."


He then paused and added "If someone bullies you based on discrimination, you should fight back."

No questions were posed about the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces in Pakistan, but the Los Angeles Times noted his response on that issue yesterday at a "Secular Ethics, Human Values and Society" event, before an audience of 3,000 at University of Southern California.

Did bin Laden deserve forgiveness?

As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."

This, from a peaceful monk who avoids killing mosquitoes. "When my mood is good and there is no danger of malaria," he said at the USC event, he refrains from swatting even these pests.

While the Dalai Lama's thoughts on the specifics of the bin Laden assassination may remain an engima, Amnesty International's stated position is clear: the organization has long opposed extrajudicial execution, regardless of the subject involved.


This week, the group raised concerns that "US forces should have attempted to capture Osama bin Laden alive in order to bring him to trial if he was unarmed and posing no immediate threat," because perpetrators of terrorism and crimes against humanity "must be brought to justice in a manner consistent with international law."


In response to a question today in Long Beach by an Arab-American Amnesty International member about anti-Muslim hostility in America, the Dalai Lama described discrimination based on faith or culture as "backwards" and "outdated."


He pointed to the Hindu caste system in India (where he resides in exile) as the same, and said it too "must change."


"People should not say that Muslims as a whole are bad. I have many Muslim friends, and they tell me genuine followers of the Koran do not take bloodshed. If you do, you are not a genuine practitioner of Islam. The real meaning of 'jihad' is not fighting, but a kind of internal struggle. In Tibetan Buddhism, we also have a terminology of engaging in combat with our inner afflictions, fighting for internal spiritual freedom. This is the real meaning of jihad."


(special thanks to Kala'ayan Mendoza)

Gweek podcast now on iTunes

Posted: 04 May 2011 03:35 PM PDT

gweek-logo-01.png Its easier than ever to find out why Rob and I are inordinately fond of adventure and dungeon crawler games for mobiles. You can now subscribe to Boing Boing's new Gweek podcast via iTunes.

Rental laptops equipped with spyware that can covertly activate the webcam and take screenshots

Posted: 03 May 2011 11:31 PM PDT

A furniture rental chain called Aaron's Inc. is being sued for allegedly installing hardware- and software-based spyware on the laptops it rented, and using them to log keystrokes, take covert webcam photos and screenshots, and transmit them to the company's offices. The suit was brought by Brian and Crystal Byrd, whose payments for their rented laptop were allegedly pocketed by a corrupt employee; the employee's manager believed that they were in arrears on their laptop payments, so he came to their home to repossess the machine, and stressed the seriousness of his claim by showing them photos of the couple that had been covertly snapped with the machine's webcam.

The Byrds have initiated a class-action suit on behalf of other Aaron's customers who've been spied upon by their rented laptops. They emphasize their distress at the idea that photos of them and their underage children, undressed or partially clothed, might have been taken and transmitted to Aaron's without their knowledge or consent. I assume the case will also make reference to banking passwords, privileged attorney-client communications, and other confidential material that Aaron's had the potential to intercept.

That's when the Byrds contacted police, who, their attorney said, have determined the image was shot with the help of spying software, which the lawsuit contends is made by North East, Pa.-based Designerware LLC and is installed on all Aaron's rental computers. Designerware is also being sued.

"It feels like we were pretty much invaded, like somebody else was in our house," Byrd told the AP. "It's a weird feeling, I can't really describe it. I had to sit down for a minute after he showed me that picture."

Aaron's, which also manufactures furniture and bedding, said it believes that none of its more than 1,140 company-operated stores had used Designerware's product or had done any business with it.

Pa. suit: Furniture rental co. spies on PC users (via Consumerist)

History and future of bin Ladenist extremism

Posted: 04 May 2011 03:31 AM PDT

Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and an expert on middle eastern politics, has a long, meaty, informed comment on the assassination of Osama bin Laden and what it means for al-Qaeda. Cole's piece provides great background on the historical Cold War forces that gave rise to al Qaeda and bin Laden's brand of extremism, and what the future holds for the violent caliphate movement in the face of pro-democracy movements in the middle east.
They were all dictatorships- the Soviet Union, the Communist government of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, and the Taliban. Usama learned to take the law into his own hands because he had no other way to effect change. He wanted to see the region's dictatorship overthrown in favor of his renewed Islamic Caliphate. It was a crackpot, fringe, pipe dream, but he brought to the aspiration all the experiences and training he and his men had learned during the Reagan Jihad against the Soviets. Then he and his number two man, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to the conclusion that the reason they could not overthrow the governments of Egypt (Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship) and Saudi Arabia and so forth was that these were backed by the United States. They decided it had been a mistake to hit the "near enemy" first. They decided to hit the "far enemy" on American soil. Bin Laden thought that if only he could entice the US into the Middle East, he could do to it what he thought he had done to the Soviet Union.

Hence the horrific attacks on the US of September 11, 2001.

Obama and the End of Al-Qaeda (via Making Light)

Rumsfeld and other US officials say torture didn't help catch bin Laden

Posted: 03 May 2011 11:40 PM PDT

Reports from present and former senior US officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, indicate that waterboarding and other forms of torture practiced by the US and its allies were not useful in locating Osama bin Laden. Rather, traditional military intelligence techniques -- covert operatives, surveillance -- yielded the intelligence that led to bin Laden's assassination. This confirms earlier White House discussion of the intelligence that led to ObL's death.
The senior administration official told reporters on Sunday that "for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location." It took until "four years ago" -- 2007, then -- for intelligence officials to learn al-Kuwaiti's real name. By then, President Bush had ceased waterboarding and shuttered the black sites, moving the detainees within them, including Mohammed and al-Libbi, to Guantanamo Bay. In a Monday interview, Donald Rumsfeld said "normal" interrogation techniques were used at Gitmo on those detainees.

If this timeline is correct -- and there may be a lot of adjustment to it in the days and years to come -- then that means waterboarding and other abusive techniques failed to get the name out of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi. A New York Times account has both men claiming not to know even the courier's nom de guerre, which actually may have counted as a kind of confirmation by omission in this case. That says something about the limits of brute force in interrogation.

It took more traditional sleuthing to get al-Kuwaiti's real name, according to the Times. That meant putting more operatives on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan to track him, yielding a partial name. Once they had that, they unleashed "one of their greatest investigative tools": the National Security Agency's surveillance net. The NSA monitored email and phone traffic until they had his full name: Shaikh Abu Ahmed.

Surveillance, Not Waterboarding, Led to bin Laden

(Image: Richard Wilkinson original illustration for limited edition Little Brother 08)

Tyson on pigeons

Posted: 04 May 2011 11:46 AM PDT

The New York Times ran a touching item by Mike Tyson concerning his love for pigeons: "They are highly intelligent animals and arguably the most loyal. Make a pigeon your friend and you'll never be lonely."

Parallel machine made out of 17 stitched-together Apple //e's

Posted: 03 May 2011 11:22 PM PDT


Michael J. Mahon's AppleCrate II is a parallel computer stitched together out of 17 enhanced Apple //e main boards from the dim recesses of personal computing history. It's the second iteration of the design (the earlier AppleCrate I was racked in a literal roughly carpentered crate).
Since the Enhanced //e ROM has only $200 bytes available, a new "passive" boot protocol had to be devised. The new ROM code continuously monitors the network for a broadcast BOOTREQ control packet containing the load address and length of the immediately following boot code data. When the boot image has been correctly read from the network, control is passed to its starting address. This passive boot code only needs to read packets from the net, and so occupies just $190 bytes, which comfortably fits in place of the Enhanced //e ROM self-test code at $C600.

The new boot protocol capitalizes on the fact that boot code is sent as a broadcast transaction, so the machines being booted do not need IDs to receive boot code. A page of "second-stage boot" code is added at the front of the slave machine boot image. This code is given control immediately after the boot image is received, and, when enabled by the "GETID daisy chain", it sends a GETID request to the machine that &BOOTed it, making use of the code in the full NadaNet boot image to do so (see the BOOT2 code in the NADA.CRATE listing for details).

The GETID daisy chain functions just as it did in the AppleCrate I. The "first" machine is permanently enabled by connecting its PB2 to ground. AN2 of each machine is connected to PB2 of the "next" machine. The second-stage boot code running in each machine initially sets its AN2. Then it waits until it sees its PB2 go low, enabling it to send its GETID request. When its GETID is successful it drops its AN2, enabling the next machine. Then it clears its video display, writes a banner showing the machine ID, and enters its server loop.

AppleCrate II: A New Apple II-Based Parallel Computer (via The Command Line)

May we ask about the stealth helicopters?

Posted: 04 May 2011 11:04 AM PDT

Confused about why Wikileaks became so successful? CNN's Wolf Blitzer explained it very succinctly in a interview yesterday: "Well, let me ask you this -- and if it's too classified, don't tell us ... are there stealth helicopters?"

TOM THE DANCING BUG: How Will God-Man Handle This "Close Call"?!

Posted: 03 May 2011 03:00 PM PDT

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Police tase nude runner

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:49 AM PDT

Last weekend, Brett Henderson, 31, was running through downtown Cincinnati in a marathon when his shorts kept falling down. (He apparently wasn't wearing any underwear.) Eventually, Henderson left his shorts behind and headed toward the finish line, ignoring police demands to stop. So the cops tased him. From the AP:
Henderson's mother Lee said Monday that he had borrowed a pair of running shorts from his father, but they kept slipping down as he ran. She says he kept running without shorts because he was determined to complete the race he had trained for.
"Cops: Ohio man arrested for running naked in race"

Russian criminal tattoo documentary on YouTube

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:30 AM PDT


Alix Lambert's fascinating documentary from 2000 about Russian criminal tattoos, The Mark of Caïn, is available under a Creative Commons license and viewable in full on YouTube. David Cronenberg, who used the film as reference for his own Eastern Promises, has said, "This is a very courageous documentary...I don't know how it ever got made, but it's beautiful, scary, and heartbreaking." From Wikipedia:

The Mark of Cain documents the fading art form and "language" of Russian criminal tattoos, formerly a forbidden topic in Russia. The now vanishing practice is seen as reflecting the transition of the broader Russian society. Filmed in some of Russia's most notorious prisons, including the fabled White Swan, the interviews with prisoners, guards, and criminologists reveal the secret language of "The Zone" and "The Code of Thieves" (Vor v zakone).

The prisoners of the Stalinist Gulag, or "Zone," as it is called, developed a complex social structure (documented as early as the 1920s) that incorporated highly symbolic tattooing as a mark of rank. The existence of these inmates at prisons and forced labor camps was treated by the state as a deeply-kept secret. In the 1990s, Russia's prison population exploded, with overcrowding among the worst in the world. Some estimates suggest that in the last generation over thirty million of Russia's inmates have had tattoos even though the process is illegal inside Russian prisons.

The Mark of Cain examines every aspect of the tattooing, from the actual creation of the tattoo ink, interviews with the tattooers and soberly looks at the double-edged sword of prison tattoos. In many ways, they were needed to survive brutal Russian prisons, but mark the prisoner for life, which complicates any readmission to "normal" society they may have. Tattoos expressly identify what the convict has been convicted of, how many prisons he's been in and what kind of criminal he is. Tattoos, essentially, tell you everything you need to know about that person without ever asking. Each tattoo represents a variety of things; cupolas on churches represent the number of convictions a convict has, epaulets tattooed on shoulders represent the rank of the individual in the crime world and so on and so forth.

The Mark of Caïn (via Technoccult)

 


Music video: Alexander Tucker's "His Arm Has Grown Long"

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:16 AM PDT


Above, the video for Alexander Tucker's new track "His Arm Has Grown Long," from his latest album Dorwytch released this month on Thrill Jockey Records. Tucker's effected guitars, mandolin, and trippy vocals provide a beautifully droning, blissed out soundtrack for this short film starring what appears to be the illegitimate child of Sasquatch and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Video by Elliot Dodd, Alexander Tucker, Jessica Coleman, and Dominic Garwood. (via Further)

T-Rex with chainsaw arms tattoo

Posted: 03 May 2011 11:12 PM PDT

Nothing says "bad ass anachronism" like this tattoo, inked by Joshua Ross, depicting a chainsaw-armed raging T-Rex and the motto "VROOM!"

Joshua Ross (via Neatorama)

Sony hack timeline

Posted: 04 May 2011 10:05 AM PDT

Snoybuilding.jpg Kotaku has a timeline of the Sony hackocalypse from the last couple of weeks, condensed from their own missive to congress: "According to details from Sony themselves in a letter to congressional subcommittee, Sony was aware that data had been removed from their systems six days before warning customers that accounts had been compromised." They Knew For Six Days: The PlayStation Network Hack Timeline [Kotaku]

Bin Laden had cash and phone numbers sewn into clothes

Posted: 04 May 2011 09:55 AM PDT

Osama Bin Laden had some interesting items sewn into his clothes, according to CNN.
Osama bin Laden had 500 Euros (about $745) in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, a source present at a classified briefing on the operation Tuesday told CNN Wednesday.
The numbers, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, were for a Pizza Hut and a 24-hour taxicab service in Highbury, North London.

Fighting words

Posted: 04 May 2011 09:14 AM PDT

A full bottle will strike a target with almost 70% more energy than an empty bottle. In other words, it takes less muscle work to achieve a greater striking energy when fighting with a full bottle, even though lifting the bottle requires slightly more energy. — quote from text of Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?, a peer-reviewed research paper in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 2009.

Minnesota GOP leader declares war on Neil Gaiman

Posted: 04 May 2011 09:32 AM PDT

Murisan sez, "Minnesota House Majority leader called author Neil Gaiman a 'pencil-necked weasel' that he 'hated' for earning $45K from a state arts fund for speaking at a library." The $45K in question was specifically earmarked for bringing authors to suburban libraries, and Neil donated it to charity.
House Majority Leader Matt Dean said he reminded Urdahl of the "importance of making sure he has [Republican] caucus support" for Legacy funding for arts and cultural heritage projects, an area of spending that Dean acknowledged had rankled some Republicans. "MPR, it's safe to say, has been a concern in the past," said Dean.

Dean also singled out a $45,000 payment of Legacy money that was made last year to science fiction writer Neil Gaiman for a four-hour speaking appearance. Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."

GOP targets Legacy funds for MPR, arts

John Ashcroft assumes charge of "ethics and professionalism" for Blackwater

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:50 AM PDT

In a surreal moment of unintentional crony-capitalist comedy, John Ashcroft has taken a job at the infamous mercenary/profiteer firm Blackwater (now called "Xe"), where he will be in charge of "ethics and professionalism."
Ashcroft's arrival at Xe is yet another clear signal it's not giving up the quest for lucrative government security contracts now that it's no longer owned by founder Erik Prince, even as it emphasizes the side of its business that trains law enforcement officers. In September, it won part of a $10 billion State Department contract to protect diplomats, starting with the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. Ashcroft, a U.S. senator before becoming attorney general in the Bush administration, is a very known quantity to the federal officials that Xe will pitch. Even if he's not lobbying for Blackwater, Ashcroft's addition on the board is meant to inspire confidence in government officials of its newfound rectitude.

To some, Ashcroft will be forever known as the face of Bush-era counterterrorism, the official who vigorously defended the Patriot Act's sweeping surveillance powers; told civil libertarians that their dissents "only aid terrorists"; and covered up the Spirit of Justice's boob. At the same time, when Ashcroft was critically ill in 2005, he resisted a White House entreaty to his hospital bed seeking to reauthorize warrantless surveillance in defiance of the acting attorney general.

Blackwater's New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft

Funny sticker annotations to the London tubemap

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:43 AM PDT


An anonymous sticker-comedian has been decorating London tube-maps with commentary on the stations of the Central Line (that's the long red one that runs down the centre). I like this bit of transit-time humor, though the Chunnel-themed one is quite good, too.

Stickers on the Central Line (via Futurismic)

Celebrate Star Wars and/or hemp history!

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:43 AM PDT

It's both Hemp History Week and "May the 4th Be With You" Day (a celebration of all things Star Wars and pun-related). Perhaps this relationship is causal? I'm not sure. But I do know that you can download and print a celebratory mask that is probably appropriate for either holiday. (Via Bonnie Burton and Ivan Oransky.)

Inside the ancient Maya's plumbing

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:25 AM PDT

Look at this DIY banana DNA extraction

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:23 AM PDT

Just look at it.

Video Link

Submitterated by zounds

Visualizing Iowa's topsoil loss

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:14 AM PDT

IDOT Adair.jpeg

These pillars—located outside a rest area off Highway 80 in Adair County, Iowa—represent the topsoil Iowa has lost since large-scale farming began 150 years ago. In the 19th century, Iowa had 14-16 inches of topsoil. Today, it has just 6-8 inches of the stuff, and more is being lost all the time. The irony: The very farms that are depleting the topsoil desperately need it, too. (Image: RDG)

Mummifying chickens for fun and educational profit

Posted: 04 May 2011 08:05 AM PDT

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Last Thursday, I gave a presentation at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I was on my out, stepping out of the elevator lobby and into the parking garage, when I was hit by a wave of vomitous stench. The smell turned out to be coming from a not-quite-totally mummified chicken carcass held by Thor Carlson, one of the Science Museum's exhibit developers. It was fairly obvious why Carlson might want to mummify a chicken—there's a traveling King Tut exhibit at the Science Museum right now. But how true-to-history were his methods? And why a chicken, specifically? I called up Carlson this week to find out more about him, and his still-not-quite-totally mummified bird, which he's named Nefertweety.

Maggie Koerth-Baker: Tell me a little about yourself. How did you end up being a guy who mummifies chickens for a living?

Thor Carlson: Previously, I had actually been on the other end of these interviews, as a newspaper journalist. But I've volunteered here for about 10 years. Then, about 5 years ago ... well, with the way the newspaper market is these days I found myself looking for other directions. I do a lot with the Science Buzz section of our website, where we take current science topics from the news and boil them down for a general audience, and that got me into exhibit development.

One of the first projects I worked on was Lost Egypt, a traveling exhibit. While I was working on that, I came across a number of websites that tell you how to mummify chickens or cornish game hens. The idea just stuck in my head and I decided to try it out now that we have another Egypt exhibit. We try to have something on Science Buzz that relates to the traveling exhibit. And we have a history of looking at some of the grosser things in science. For instance, when we had a CSI exhibit a few years ago, Science Buzz took a pig carcass and recorded it on video as it decomposed over several weeks.

MKB: Why mummify a chicken?

TC: The museum has actually received feedback from a number of schools that did this with cornish game hens. They donated the mummified and wrapped hens to the museum afterwards. So we thought, "Let's do a chicken." It's a little bigger. It'll take more time. And we could go to the store and buy one that's already gutted and cleaned. It is taking a lot longer than we expected, though. We've really been reminded that this is something of an experiment.

It's really about education. The kids are learning about Egyptology and why mummification was important and how it might have been done. And one of the things we're finding out is that we don't know for sure all the details of how a mummifier did his job.

Nefertweetyday1.jpg

MKB: I was really curious about that. How do we know how mummification happened in Ancient Egypt. And how similar is the process of mummifying Nefertweety to those historical accounts?

TC: We end up talking to adults a lot about this. What we know about how Ancient Egyptians did it mostly comes from sections of The Book of the Dead, which is their map of what happens after death and how to get to the afterlife. It has information on different spells and the physical processes for different aspects of mummification. And we also get information on this from things that have been painted in tombs. There are a number of samples that show mummification being done.

One of the big variables [between ancient mummification and what we're doing] are the salts. What they used is a naturally occurring mineral called natron, and you can't go buy at the store in Minnesota. We're following a formula that we think would make up the closest thing to natron. It's one part table salt, two parts baking soda, and two parts sodium carbonate, which is also called washing soda.

Nefertweetyinnatron.jpg

MKB: How is making a mummy different from salting food? That's an easy thing to miss when we talk about human mummification, but with this chicken, it almost sounds like food preservation.

TC: It's actually really similar. A human mummy really isn't much different from human jerky. In a lot of ways it's the same thing, using salt materials to draw away the moisture and leave something preserved behind.

MKB: How do you know when it's done?

TC: According to the websites we've read, it shouldn't smell anymore when it's done, and it should be completely firm. Touching the chicken's legs, they should feel like rock, just solid. But, with Nefertweety right now, around the back end there's still some squishy soft places. The softest, thickest places on our bodies are the back end, too, and that would also probably take longest to mummify on a person.

MKB: What has this process taught you about mummification that you didn't know before? It's probably silly, but I was surprised to find that the body stinks while it's being mummified. I guess I'd sort of imagined that the salts blocked that.

TC: We knew it would be stinky, probably. So we put it in a tupperware container under an aquarium hood. But we underestimated the stink. Until about two weeks in, we had been doing the mummification in the visible lab in our collections gallery. But after two weeks the stench was so strong that museum security came to ask us what was going on, because the smell was spreading to other parts of the building. That's when we realized we had to do this out in the parking ramp.

nefertweetyscentlocked.jpg

If you think about roadkill, it stinks because the decomposers of society—the bacteria and maggots—are eating at the flesh and releasing gasses and odors as part of that process. Natron is sucking away moisture from the body and it's kind of doing the same thing. The body isn't decomposing. But what the natron absorbs, that's what the bacteria and maggots would have eaten. That stuff has to go somewhere. In mummification, it goes into the natron. Periodically, we've had to dump out all the natron because its absorbed so much and smelled so bad.

We were also surprised by the weight loss of the chicken. It was 3.5 pounds when we started. And it's down to 1.75 pounds now. All of that natron sucking away the moisture inside the tissues has taken away half the chicken's body weight. Also, the chicken flattened out a lot. We don't really know why this happened, but we're thinking that it's because birds have hollow bones. As they lose moisture, the bones are also losing their strength and that's making the big arched chest cavity collapse down. Right now, it kind of looks like it was run over by a car. It's more than just drying up.

Nefertweety on the scale.jpg

MKB: How many days have you been working on Nefertweety?

TC: Today [Tuesday] is 54 days. Typical human mummification took 40-60 days. So that's got us wondering that we're doing something not quite right. You'd think it would take a chicken a lot less time to mummify than it takes a human.

The other thing we realized, is that we've been working on one little chicken for two months, but an Egyptian mummifier would have to have a lot more organization. He'd be working on several different bodies in different stages, all at once. There must have been a concentration of bodies, so mummification probably didn't happen in the center of town. It was probably on the downwind edge of town.

MKB: Once you have a mummified chicken, then what do you do with it?



TC: The ones we get from schools are wrapped up and the kids decorate them. But I'm really pushing for not wrapping Nefertweety, and, instead, showing what a mummified chicken looks and feels like compared to the chicken you buy in the store. I'd love to have it just be something people can hold and touch. People always want to know, what does a mummy feel like? I don't know if we can do that from human health standpoint, though. Maybe we can shellack it.

Thy took the human mummy we have over to children's hospital in St. Paul for a CT scan back on Halloween and the people there said it feels like carrying a skeleton, it's so light.

Hopefully, we'll have a chicken mummy by the end of the week. But i've been saying that for a few weeks now.

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Images: Mark Ryan for the Minnesota Science Museum. See more shots of Nefertweety on Flickr.

Finger nose

Posted: 04 May 2011 06:36 AM PDT

Aiwa's 1970s mini stereo in a suitcase

Posted: 04 May 2011 06:11 AM PDT

aiwa22.jpg

In the late 1970s, Aiwa produced the 22 series mini-separates stereo system. This was the classy Aiwa of the olden days, before it became a Sony subsidiary specializing in cheap gray polyethylene. The 22 was a striking product; a fully-featured, premium-grade stackable stereo component system, including tuner, cassette player, digital timer, pre-amp, power amp and goodness knows what else, all at a fraction of the size of the era's metal monsters. There were carrying cases and even furniture designed to accomodate a set. Matching speakers and a turntable were also on offer.

Best of all, the Aiwa 22 looks and sounds great. Sturdily crafted, with brushed metal faceplates and optional rackmount adapters, each component looks like a Mac Mini studded with heavy-duty knobs, lights and buttons.

If you're lucky, you might find a component or two in garage sales or thrift stores for a few bucks; on eBay, a set in good nick fetches hundreds of dollars. Successor systems of the early 1980s, such as the Aiwa 50, aren't quite as nice, though there seem to be more of them around.

Obviously, this class of system ultimately morphed into the standard low-end bookshelf systems that ruled low-end consumer audio for decades. Modern fans of the original can turn to Cambridge Audio, whose modern mini-separates include iPod docks and network audio players. As their set costs a small fortune, however, I'll be sticking with my eBay alerts ... and a slowly-growing family of ancient Aiwa 22 bits and pieces.


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