Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

List of economists involved in violent sex crimes, for Ben Stein

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:37 PM PDT

Some further thoughts on Ben Stein's defense of IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the Spectator (recap: Stein claims that Strauss-Kahn is probably innocent for a lot of pretty silly reasons). Randall Munroe of XKCD takes up one of Stein's claims: "Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?"
On a whim, I just did a little research, and couldn't believe what I found. Guess who holds an economics degree?

Paul Bernardo.

For those not familiar with the case, Bernardo is one of the nastiest serial killers in history. He and his wife drugged, raped, and tortured to death a number of schoolgirls in the late 80's and early 90's. The story is the stuff of nightmares.

I'll leave the debate over the rest of Mr. Stein's article to others. But as for his suggestion that studying economics precludes becoming a violent sex criminal, it seems history provides one hell of a counterexample.

One of Randall's readers provides a list of other economists who've been convicted of sex crimes.

Answering Ben Stein's Question

Creep recorded women with hidden surveillance camera inside Starbucks restroom

Posted: 18 May 2011 07:37 PM PDT

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A 25-year-old man hid a video camera disguised as a plastic coat hook inside the women's restroom of a Starbucks in Glendora, CA, and secretly recorded more than 40 women and children using the toilet over two days. The man "downloaded the device about every hour to his laptop computer while sitting in his car," according to police. (LA Times)

New security vulnerability forces Sony to take part of PSN offline yet again

Posted: 18 May 2011 08:19 PM PDT

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Sony president Howard Stringer, taking an unexpected phone call, glances at consumer products chief Kazuo Hirai earlier today. PHOTO: UNIN TENDO/REUTERS

Yes, again. Sony had to take part of its Sony PlayStation Network offline briefly today after it discovered a security vulnerability that allowed hackers to take over users' accounts. (ComputerWorld)

Guantanamo detainee from Afghanistan commits suicide

Posted: 18 May 2011 06:24 PM PDT

Another Guantanamo detainee died of an apparent suicide today. Here's the Department of Defense statement.

Man chooses "elective amputation" for bionic hand, after motorcycle accident

Posted: 18 May 2011 06:29 PM PDT

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A 26-year-old man in Austria who lost the use of his right hand in a motorcycle accident ten years ago has decided to undergo "elective amputation," after which he will be fitted with a bionic hand controlled by nerve signals from his own arm. German prosthetics company Otto Bock makes the bionic hands; BBC News reports the prosthetics can "pinch and grasp in response to signals from the brain that are picked up by two sensors placed over the skin above nerves in the forearm."

This will be the second such surgery performed by Professor Oskar Aszmann, of Vienna.

A 24-year-old Austrian man named Patrick was the first patient in the world to choose to have his hand amputated, again by Professor Aszmann, and a bionic replacement fitted. He lost the use of his left hand after being electrocuted at work.
More here, and there's video of the bionic hand in use by Patrick, here.

(Thanks, Marguerite // update: also found on Make today, via Phil Torrone)

Got a question for shuttle Endeavour astronauts? Live PBS webcast Q&A, Thu 6am ET

Posted: 18 May 2011 06:06 PM PDT


[Video Link]

PBS NewsHour, Google, and YouTube are teaming up to produce a live webcast with the Space Shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station astronauts, starting between 6 and 6:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, May 19. Space journalist Miles O'Brien will host.

The live webcast will be streamed at PBS and on YouTube.

Led by Endeavour commander Mark Kelly, the astronauts will answer questions from the internet in a live Q&A session hosted by Miles, as the crew orbits the earth at 17,500 mph. They're still accepting questions!



New York Times discovers yarn-bombers

Posted: 18 May 2011 05:43 PM PDT

[S]he knitted what looked like a leg warmer for a stop sign down the street; from there she slowly infiltrated Houston with her stitchery. Within a few years, she had tagged dozens of lampposts and stop signs and assembled a crew of fellow yarn bombers she called Knitta Please."&mdsah;The New York Times on Magda Sayeg, a 37-year-old Texan considered "the mother of yarn bombing."

Tips for dungeon master daddies (and mommies)

Posted: 18 May 2011 05:36 PM PDT

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If you are not both a geek and a parent of geeks, then the following post will be of little interest. press the "j" key and move on. Otherwise, there's some good information for parents who like to play rpg with their kids.

Tom Fassbender says:

So I'm really digging the new Gweek podcast, and particularly I enjoyed your short review/recap of rpgKids and Joel's Castle Ravenloft summary in 003.

I have some recent experience with playing Castle Ravenloft with a group of four 7- and 8-year-olds (my daughter and three of her guy friends). Yeah, there were a lot of pieces, but this seemed to excite them rather than act as a deterrent. I didn't include them on the un-boxing, though, which may have been a missed opportunity, but it made the process go faster. When we were ready to play, it looked a bit like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fordsbasement/5462302095 (added it to the BB Pool)

We played a total of three times over a month. The first time was us (and by us I mean mostly me) trying to figure out the rules and getting the kinks out. The second time everyone had a blast. But by the third time, they got bored with it and I had to work hard to keep them interested.

The trouble was that the game is essentially the same thing every turn: move, draw some cards, roll a die, attack a monster. There's a bit more to it than that, but these are kids with rich imaginations; they kept wanting to do things outside the game's mechanics--climb walls, investigate coffins, find real treasure, and act out of turn in response to other events. I did my best to incorporate their choices into the game, but it wasn't always feasible or satisfying.

And even though we changed the characters a bit (gender, mostly) to fit preferences, these kids wanted to play their own characters, tell stories about them, and level them up.

So, in a move that leaves me questioning my sanity, I've decided to run a real D&D game with these kids using the new fourth edition essentials rules, albeit somewhat simplified.

The first game is this coming weekend. The kids may miss the finer points of role-playing, so I suspect it might turn into a "dungeon of the week" campaign, but overall, I think it's going to be a blast.

Have a tip for fellow dungeon master parents? Post in the comments!

Virgin Galactic's "feathered flight" as a David Ope animated GIF

Posted: 18 May 2011 06:45 PM PDT

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I'm a big fan of haute gif artist davidope, and his homage today to the first "Feathered" flight of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is quite nifty.

Here's the actual video, from Virgin Galactic.

 


Intro to L.A. Noire fiction anthology: a Boing Boing exclusive

Posted: 18 May 2011 04:46 PM PDT

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Mulholland Books sent me a copy of L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, featuring the work of Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Duane Swierczynski, Megan Abbott and Andrew Vachss. It's available as an ebook for $0.99 on June 6. It's a tie-in of the video game of the same name that came out yesterday.

I enjoyed Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai's introduction to the anthology, and Mulholland Books gave me permission to run it on Boing Boing. I hope you enjoy it, too. (And LA-based happy mutants: we should plan a Meetup at Musso & Frank soon!)

On the infrequent occasions that I make it out to L.A., to work on the cop show I have a hand in, I always make time to have dinner at Musso & Frank. They've been serving the same menu since 1919, the same steaks and chops, the same sauerbraten and lobster thermidor. The seats at the counter in front of the grill have the same buffed leather upholstery, and if you lean in close you can see rings on the bar left behind from Raymond Chandler's shot glass.

They say he wrote parts of The Big Sleep here, maybe all of it. They say Jim Thompson, author of The Killer Inside Me, often drank himself into a stupor here and had to be helped home. Charles Bukowski, too, and F. Scott Fitzgerald--writers of all stripes used to pickle themselves here. But because of Chandler and Thompson, and because of the look and feel of the place (it could be a set from Chinatown; it was, in fact, a set in Ocean's Eleven), it's got a special spot in the hearts of writers and readers of crime fiction. And not just crime fiction--the particular sort of crime fiction we call noir.

You might wonder why a crime writer living in New York would have to fly across the continent to Los Angeles to have a proper noir experience. It's the same reason that the folks at Team Bondi and Rockstar Games decided to recreate L.A. inside a computer to give gamers the ultimate noir (or noire, if you prefer) environment to explore. If you want a proper Western experience, you go to Tombstone, Arizona; for romance, you go to Venice or Rome. For noir, you go to L.A. Ironic, I suppose, given how strongly California is associated with brightness and sunshine; even more ironic given how synonymous Hollywood is with happy endings (if you say that a movie has a "Hollywood ending," you mean pretty much the opposite of what goes on in a film noir). But facts are facts, and for generations of readers and writers and filmmakers, L.A. is noir central.

I don't think this is in spite of Hollywood's sunny associations--I think it's because of them. Nowhere on earth do you get to witness more clearly the collision between fantasy and reality than in L.A., the clash between the dreams being spun for the cameras at twenty-four frames per second or enjoyed by stars in the mansions of the Hollywood Hills and the dire existence being lived by the other 99.9 percent of the population, the one doomed never to make it to the Technicolor side of the rainbow.

Musso & Frank is located right on Hollywood Boulevard, a street that is literally paved with stars--you don't get more dreamlike than that. But the last time I walked that stretch of pavement after the sun went down, I saw a young man in handcuffs being jammed into the back of a police car; then I was approached by another man walking along with his hands in his coat pockets muttering hopefully, "Medical marijuana...Medical marijuana..." Darkness and light. Pawnshops and drug clinics and tranny hookers plying their trade on the same boulevards on which chauffeur-driven Bentleys and Maybachs ferry studio executives working out hundred-million-dollar deals in the backseat. Would-be screenwriters and actors and makeup artists living on Craigslist gigs and ramen look up each night and see the Hollywood sign staring down at them from the mountains--so bright and clean and hopeful and impossibly far away. Yes, every major city has slums, has desperate people living desperate lives--but only in L.A. do the slums come with a view of Shangri-la.

L.A. Noire: the stories.

When Rockstar Games set out to create a classic noir experience, they realized that there were two equally important elements that had to be present: the look and feel, which had to immediately conjure up the unforgettable sights and sounds of the great noir films of the 1940s and '50s (and their neo-noir cousins from the 1970s and beyond), and the storytelling. Focus only on the sights and sounds and you have an empty shell, a pastiche. Anyone can put stick figures in trench coats and fedoras, slap some saxophones on the sound track, and call it noir. What makes genuine noir is not just the atmosphere but the stories -- heartrending tales about people facing terrible situations and, all too often, not surviving.

And what better lens through which to view these stories than the eyes of a cop? The characters involved in any particular crime get to see only the events of that one story -- a cop gets to see them all. So L.A. Noire puts you into the shoes of Cole Phelps, an ex-marine now working for the LAPD, a more or less clean cop in a more or less clean department with the good or bad fortune (you decide) of having worked his way up to the homicide desk during one of the most notorious years in LAPD history: 1947. That was the year that opened with the discovery in a city park of the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia by the newspapers; and as the year wound on, other women, one after another, were found murdered in gruesome and sadistic fashion -- this one strangled with a stocking, that one beaten to death with a claw hammer, yet another found with obscenities scrawled on her corpse in lipstick. Arrests were made in some cases, but the Dahlia's killer was never caught. And the problem is...who knows how many of the other murders the killer was responsible for? In some cases, it's possible that not only did the guilty party not go to jail, an innocent man went in his place.

That's the thoroughly noir real-world backdrop against which the stories of L.A. Noire unfold, and although Cole isn't assigned the Dahlia case itself, many of the cases Cole does investigate are ripped straight from the headlines of the day. You'll get to examine that lipstick-smeared corpse yourself -- better have a strong stomach. And lest you think that catching a latter-day Jack the Ripper is all you have to do to earn your pay, rest assured that Cole Phelps's workday is a long and full one. There are arsons and explosions to look into, vice cases involving fixed boxing matches and reefer peddling (Medical marijuana...Medical marijuana...), hit-and-run cases that hide sordid marital infidelities...oh, and some cases that are tied directly to the film business, though the films involved might not be the sort you'd find playing at your local theater.
Depends on your neighborhood, I guess.

These, then, are the stories in the game, and a satisfyingly sordid lot they are. But the Rockstar crew wanted to go even further on the storytelling front, wanted to give players an extra treat while also tipping their hats to the literary element that has always been central to the world of noir. What they did was invite some of the most acclaimed living practitioners of the noir storytelling art -- literary figures such as Joyce Carol Oates and Francine Prose, giants of the crime-writing world such as Lawrence Block and Andrew Vachss, award winners and stylistic innovators and cross-genre geniuses such as Joe Lansdale and Megan Abbott, Jonathan Santlofer and Duane Swierczynski--to each write a new short story inspired by the world of L.A. Noire. Some of the stories use particular cases from the game as a jumping-off point, others simply share the game's setting and era and spirit -- but they all give you a view of humanity in extremis, of the beaten-down and those who savagely dole out the beatings, and of the thin blue line that tries, not always successfully and not always in ways that are strictly legal, to stand between the two.

It is perhaps worth noting that, to the best of my knowledge, not a single one of these authors lives in L.A. The closest is probably Joe Lansdale, who lives in Texas; otherwise it's a bunch of New Yorkers, a Philly boy, a Jersey girl.

Doesn't matter. L.A. is where you come to drink at the weathered bar with Chandler's ghost -- to luxuriate in the shadows, to walk the mean streets, to remember, if you're a noir writer, where it is you came from. In its way, what Rockstar has done is invite eight of the finest writers in the business to a dinner at Musso & Frank -- and what a feast it is.
So: tuck in. Napkin in the shirt collar, knife and fork at the ready -- you're going to be served a rich and subtle and darkly delicious meal, savory in its unsavoriness. Just keep your wits about you. It takes a while to finish an eight-course meal, and it's getting dark out there. By the time you step out onto Hollywood Boulevard again, there could be some dangerous souls sharing the street with you. And, yes, those are police sirens you hear in the distance -- but if there's one thing L.A. Noire teaches us, it's that the police don't always make it to the scene in time.

L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories

bOING bOING: free collection from the print zine, 1989-1997

Posted: 18 May 2011 09:42 PM PDT

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Twenty-three years ago, my wife Carla and I came up with the idea to create bOING bOING, a zine that would cover comic books, cyberpunk science fiction, consciousness technology, curious phenomena, and whatever else surprised and delighted us. That zine, which ran for 15 issues until 1997, evolved into the very website you're reading right now.

The first few issues of Boing Boing had print runs in the low hundreds, and the biggest was 17,500 copies. Today, the blog easily gets that many page views in an hour, so it's safe to say that the vast majority of Boing Boing readers have never read anything that appeared in those early zines. Today we're happy to announce that we've made available a free anthology of some of our favorite interviews from bOING bOING, the zine. You can access it for free at Microsoft's Office Web Apps SkyDrive, whose sponsorship has made this project possible.

The anthology, called bOING bOING: History of the Future! is a collection of interviews with and articles by some of our favorite writers and thinkers - Robert Anton Wilson, Rudy Rucker, William Gibson, Kevin Kelly, Marc Laidlaw, and Bruce Sterling.

In the coming weeks, we'll be running posts about the articles included in the bOING bOING: History of the Future anthology. The first piece in the new issue is an interview with author William Gibson, whose novel Neuromancer introduced me to the fantastic cyberpunk science fiction genre.

1373 1075687938 00B97739C2 When I printed the first issue of Boing Boing in 1989, I located William Gibson's mailing address and sent him a copy. He wrote back with a complimentary letter, and I added him to the subscription list. I always appreciated receiving his occasional postcards, and reading interviews with him in other magazines where he mentioned bOING bOING as a zine he enjoyed.

bOING bOING's interview with William Gibson ran in bOING bOING #12 (cover at left) and was published in 1993 or 1994. In the interview, Gibson was asked if he thought the technology he'd envisioned in the 1980s would soon manifest itself in the real world. He said, "I don't think we're going to see anything too drastic happening culturally around computers until the user-interface evolves to the point where it's easy to use. I mean when you say 'hey, I do a lot of e-mail' or 'hey, I hang out on the Internet' -- the reason that has a kind of elite buzz to it, is that the learning curve is still too steep."

In addition to this entertaining interview, bOING bOING #12 contained a two-page comic strip about the legal battle between Margaret and Walter Keane, who painted those famous big-eyed sad kids.

The document is in Microsoft Word format but you can view it online at the SkyDrive whether you have Word on your computer or not. And if you'd like to download it for local perusal or printing and don't have a recent version of Microsoft Word or one of the many other applications that can open the document, you can use the free Word Viewer for Windows or Quick Look built into Mac OS X .

The History of the Future! A free anthology of articles from the bOING bOING print 'zine 1989-1997 (SkyDrive)

You've been a bad, bad sysadmin

Posted: 18 May 2011 03:51 PM PDT

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"Handcrafted Fire-Colored Cat-5 Cable Flogger," Etsy user feralswirl, a mere $10.
(via GeeksAreSexy via Jeff Simmermon)

Locke & Key: creepy and excellent graphic novel

Posted: 18 May 2011 02:47 PM PDT

locke_01_cvr.jpg Locke & Key is a dark supernatural comic book series available in anthology format by writer Joe Hill and cartoonist Gabriel Rodriguez. I won't be spoiling it to say it's about a family (the Lockes) whose father (a high school counselor) is murdered by a couple of his deranged students who have been directed by an otherworldly creature to retrieve two powerful artifacts (as you might guess from the title, they're keys). Locke's grieving widow and three children move from Northern California to the murdered father's childhood home in New England to get away from the bad vibes. The only problem is, the home is a dark Victorian mansion, and it's in a town called Lovecraft.

The gore and violence is over the top, and the mature subject matter prevented me from sharing the book with my 13-year-old daughter. Violence and darkness aside, Joe Hill's story is tight and well told, skillfully weaving flashbacks and present-day scenes, and inserting elements of foreshadowing to add just the right amount of complexity to the plot. Hill is the author of the acclaimed horror novel, Heart-Shaped Box (and his dad is Stephen King, which I just found out about 15 seconds ago).

I'm not familiar with Gabriel Rodriguez, the Chilean artist who drew Locke & Key, but his work is terrific. I have seen too many comics lately where the characters physical features vary from panel to panel so much that they are unrecognizable. Rodriguez's characters are extremely well-designed and consistent throughout the book, making it easy to figure out who is who. That might not seem like a big deal, but to someone like me, who isn't that great at recognizing faces, it's a big help. His depictions of architecture is stunning.

Most supposedly-scary novels and movies don't affect me, even though I enjoy them. But Locke & Key was both enjoyable and spooky. I highly recommend it.

I also found out that Fox is shooting a pilot based on the series. Locke & Key

U.S. Secret Service pulls a herp derp on Twitter

Posted: 18 May 2011 02:48 PM PDT

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Just nine days after joining Twitter, the Secret Service had its first major public relations blunder. Earlier today, posted on the @SecretService account: "Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering." The tweet was deleted promptly, and the agency said an "internal follow-up" was in progress.

"An employee with access to the Secret Service's Twitter account, who mistakenly believed they were on their personal account, posted an unapproved and inappropriate tweet," read a statement from the agency this afternoon. "We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account. Policies and practices which would have prevented this were not followed and will be reinforced for all account users."

Too bad: this was the first tweet from the account that read like it came from a human being.

Standing Desk Jockey: Kai Vermehr of eBoy

Posted: 18 May 2011 01:52 PM PDT

kais-desk.jpg Artist Kai Vermehr of eBoy recently switched to a standing desk and he loves it.
I finished the standup desk this weekend. The tabletop is a bit fancier than intended as I had two linoleum planks from a prior project. Also I placed my second monitor at the normal height so I could switch if I get tired. But I'm a bit stunned by the additional energy I'm experiencing since I stand. So I do not sit much anymore.

Also I found a German manufacturer with a nicer standup desk. They actually have two widths. The tabletop might not be deep enough to hold a screen, but it should be easy to exchange it for a bigger one.

Build your own table just like Kai's! He uploaded a model of the table to the SketchUp 3D warehouse.



Sunglasses that make you look like you've had your eyes blacked out

Posted: 18 May 2011 01:31 AM PDT


These novelty "Embarrassing Photo Protective Sunglasses" make you look like you've had your eyes blacked out by a censor bar: "Worried a paparazzo took a shot of you doing that thing you do that nobody knows about, because it would get you fired, arrested or worse?" They used to be sold by Urban Outfitters, but appear to have been discontinued.

Embarrassing Photo Protective Sunglasses (via Geekologie)

Billions of planets, alone in space?

Posted: 18 May 2011 01:15 PM PDT

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Hundreds of billions of planets the size of Jupiter are floating alone in space, or are so very far from their host stars that those stars aren't easily identifiable as associated with the planets. From the NY Times:
"It's a bit of a surprise," said David Bennett, a Notre Dame astronomer, who was part of the team. Before this research, it was thought that only about 10 or 20 percent of stars harbored Jupiter-mass planets. Now it seems as if the planets outnumber the stars...

Planetary astronomers said the results would allow them to tap into a whole new unsuspected realm of exoplanets — as planets outside our own solar system are called — causing scientists to re-evaluate how many there are, where they are and how they are created, even as astronomers immediately began to ponder whether the new planets in question are in fact floating free or just far from their stars, at distances comparable to those of Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.

"Either there is a large population of Jupiter-mass planets far from their star, or, yes, there are a lot of lonely planets out there," said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Billions of Lonely Planets, Adrift in Space" (Thanks, Jody Radzik!)

Grizzly bear beanbag chair

Posted: 18 May 2011 01:02 PM PDT

Il Fullxfull.207027119 This is a bean bag disguised as a grizzly bear. It can be yours for $168 on Etsy. Also available from Chic Sin Design, topiary ball beanbag chairs, tree log bolster pillows, and rolled or folded banknote pillows.
Big Sleeping Grizzly Bear Bean Bag (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Super senses exist, we're just too distracted to notice them

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:17 AM PDT

Technically, we all have the capability for what could be described as "superhuman" hearing, sight, and smell. A healthy young adult can see a candle flame from 30 miles away. We can detect a smell when just 30 molecules of certain substances are present. So why don't we feel like our senses are super strong? According to neuroscientist Bradley Voytek, it's because we aren't paying enough attention. Basically, what we can sense under optimal conditions doesn't reflect what we do sense in the busy, distracting, real world.

Portal prank: covering up crosswalk button sign

Posted: 18 May 2011 01:01 AM PDT


Someone's replaced crosswalk button with this funny reference to Portal, an addictive puzzle-game that uses a gun that generates "portals" that allow you to teleport through space.

Portal Crosswalk Sign Hack (via Neatorama)

Most expensive art photo ever

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:15 AM PDT

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This is the most expensive photograph ever purchased. Art dealer Philippe Segalot purchased Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96" (1981) for $3.89 million at a Christie's auction last week. I wonder how much Segalot will flip it for. "Cindy Sherman Print Sells For $3.9 Million At Auction, The Highest Ever For A Photograph" (Popular Photography, thanks Bob Pescovitz!)

An explanation for Roswell that's crazier than aliens

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:05 AM PDT

Annie Jacobsen, an editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, has written a book purporting to tell the real history of Area 51 and the Roswell Incident. Her book, which is based largely on interviews with people who lived and worked at Area 51, manages to simultaneously explain why the site would be so highly classified, while also trading in kind of mundane Cold War shenanigans—in other words, it's fairly believable. That is, except for the explanation one source gave her for Roswell, which is possibly the most insane story I have ever heard about that supposed alien crash landing. (And I watched the WB teen drama.) Scroll down to the section on "Interview Highlights" to read it.

Free download of horror film The Tunnel

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:11 AM PDT


[Video Link] The horror film, The Tunnel, is being offered for free, as a torrent. If you like it, you can kick in some money here.

In 2007 the New South Wales government suddenly scrapped a plan to utilise the water in the disused underground train tunnels beneath Sydney. In 2008, chasing rumours of a government cover-up and urban legends surrounding the sudden backflip, investigative journalist Natasha Warner led a crew of four into the underground labyrinth. They went down into the tunnels looking for a story - until the story found them.

This is the film of their harrowing ordeal. With unprecedented access to the recently declassified tapes they shot in the claustrophobic subway tunnels, as well as a series of candid interviews with the survivors, we come face to face with the terrifying truth.

This never before seen footage takes us deep inside the tunnels bringing the darkness to life and capturing the raw fear that threatens to tear the crew apart, leaving each one of them fighting for their lives.

I'm downloading it now.

Free download of horror film The Tunnel

HOWTO take pictures at a club/bar/venue

Posted: 18 May 2011 12:51 AM PDT


Jamie Zawinski, who owns San Francisco's DNA lounge, has some practical advice for people trying to shoot photos in dark venues, bars and clubs. In addition to tips on composition and lenses, he's got a lot of good solid stuff on bar etiquette:
Stop standing still.
We know your photos are the most important thing in the world, but you're pissing off all the other customers by blocking their view with the enormous piece of gear you keep holding up. Especially if you're tall. Or have a ridiculous hat. Move around! Don't stand in any one spot for more than a minute. You will get a wider variety of photos, and you won't irritate the people whose view you're blocking if you weren't there long.

Also, keep your elbows tucked in. You don't have to hold your camera like you're impersonating a windmill. The less space you take up, the fewer people you will piss off.

Don't post photos where people look like crap.
This really should be obvious, but if a photo is unflattering or otherwise no good -- if the subject is making a stupid face, or the lighting accents their zits or whatever -- don't post it. Why do that to people? You're not Diane Arbus. Some photographers think "but people want to see pictures of themselves, so if I took it, I should post it!" but that's not actually true. For candid nightlife shots, people only want to see good pictures of themselves. If you don't have a good picture of them, you'll just make them feel bad.

Lose the giant watermark.
If you feel you must caption your photos, just put your name or URL at the bottom in a relatively small font. Especially do not use a huge transparent logo. It looks terrible and amateurish and it is distracting.

In my experience, the size of the watermark is inversely proportional to the quality of the photo.

Personally, I never watermark any of my photos, because it's not like anyone's going to go and get rich off of some candid shot I took of them in a club. I know other people are much more hung up on getting credit about such things, but try to be a little understated about it so that your desire for credit doesn't take a big steaming dump on the composition of the photograph itself!

Nightclub photography: you're doing it wrong.

(Image: JWZ: The Sounds)

HIV and twins

Posted: 18 May 2011 10:48 AM PDT

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You'd assume that identical twins would respond to being infected with the same virus in pretty much the same ways. So why, years after they were infected with HIV, could one twin be mostly healthy and the other very sick?

I'm fascinated by the genetic differences that allow some people to basically be healthy carriers of HIV. But the answer behind this story wasn't what I was expecting. At the Virology Blog, Amanda Carpenter explains:

How is this possible? Infected individuals produce an estimated 1010 new HIV virions every day, with errors occurring at a rate of about 1 per 104 nucleotides incorporated. These frequent point mutations are a simple starting point to explain the divergence of a once identical virus. In addition, HIV virions are capable of exchanging their genetic material with a different strain of virus via a process called recombination. Recombination is likely a random event, but has important implications for the host immune system.

Part of the immune system's response to HIV is the utilization of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CD8+ cells), which target and kill virus-infected cells. These cells are very specific, and if a recombination event occurs, these cytotoxic cells may not be able to recognize the new viral strain as readily as the original. The immune system may adapt to the new strain, but the virus may recombine again and again, and the immune system will not be able to keep up. These recombinant strains are likely to become more prevalent through natural selection. If recombined strains are better at evading the immune system, and are therefore more detrimental to the host, does this mean they are more successful? Why would the virus that has higher genetic diversity, a growth rate, and a higher recombination rate cause less disease? Perhaps the answer lies in the immune system.

Once out of the womb, these twins no longer exist in identical environments. They are exposed to different pathogens, bacteria, and microbes, all of which affect the make-up of the immune system. The healthier twin's immune system may be better able to fight the virus, and so the virus must grow, diversify, and recombine in order to propagate the infection. In other words, because the sicker twin has a more depressed immune system, the virus is replicating with less resistance, and there is less incentive for the virus to evolve. Divergent viral evolution in the case of these monozygotic twins is likely due to random mutation and recombination events, combined with antiviral pressure from the hosts, whose immune systems are not identical at all.

Image: Twins, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jayneandd's photostream

Middleweight public intellectuals defend Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:41 AM PDT

DSK1.jpgPhoto: REUTERS/Emmanuel Dunand Yesterday it was Bernard Henri-Lévy, the Cirque du Soleil of modern philosophy. Today, it is Ben Stein, professor and presidential speechwriter, roused to insinuate that IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged victim must be lying. Henri-Lévy merely waved his literary arms passionately, but Stein suggests class warfare is behind the hotel maid's claims and the "embarrassing" treatment that Strass-Kahn received. Also, did you know that in France, even printing photos of Strauss-Kahn (or anyone else) in handcuffs is illegal? He needn't worry much, though, because the French media's obsequiousness to political and cultural elites is legendary: in 2009, after one satirist mocked Strauss-Kahn by suggesting buildings be fitted with alarms to warn women of his approach, he was fired. [Reuters]

All 6500+ pages of Elfquest comics online

Posted: 18 May 2011 10:27 AM PDT

The Beat comics blog reports that the complete archive of Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest comic book series is available online. The scan quality is excellent.
elfquest.jpgSpeaking of fantasy, one of the pillars of the fantasy comics genres is now available in its entirety to read online. ELFQUEST, Wendy and Richard Pini's saga of homeless elves and their passions and battles, first published in 1978, was one of the foundational hits of the emerging indie comics scene, and after many publishers, movie options and assorted dramas, it's still a good story. Very few indie comics have spawned such a devoted cult or influenced so many spin-offs and imitators. Wendy Pini really hit the right notes at the right time with a style equal parts Kelly Freas, manga, and Walt Disney. It wasn't for everyone, but for those whose wheelhouse it hit, it was THE thing, with spin-off RPGs, novels and filk songs. ELFQUEST is also one of the first American comics to really nail the urgency and drama of manga storytelling.
All 6500+ pages of Elfquest comics online

'Taint hard to find a physical link to male fertility

Posted: 18 May 2011 11:43 AM PDT

A study of 117 men found a key difference between guys who had kids, and guys who were being treated for infertility. Anogenital distance is, as you might guess, the distance between where your balls stop and your anus begins. The average measurement for the fertile men was 44.6 millimeters. For the infertile men: 31.8 mm. Even more tellingly, sperm density, and the number of active sperm, increased by leaps and bounds for every extra millimeter of anogenital distance. Another recent study found very similar results. Cory posted about that earlier research a few weeks ago.

Update on "Spanish Revolution" protests: riot police surrounding protesters in Madrid

Posted: 18 May 2011 10:43 AM PDT

A quick followup on yesterday's post about widespread demonstrations in support of democracy and economic equality in Spain: according to various sources, including tweets from people at the protests, police are out in full force. There are concerns that things could turn violent. Follow #spanishrevolution on Twitter for a sense of what's unfolding. @teleoperador is broadcasting a live webstream here. This flyer is circulating widely, online and in the plaza, and explains some of what the protesters want.

David Dobbs on the importance of open-source science

Posted: 18 May 2011 10:04 AM PDT

Right now, most scientific research exists behind paywalls. And expensive paywalls at that. A license to read a single peer-reviewed journal article can set you back $50. Depending on the journal, that number might be a little lower, or a little higher, but access usually doesn't come cheap ... even if the research was funded with public money. When I write about a paper, I usually have to request a copy from the researcher before I can even know whether the paper in question is one I want to write about. And it's not just journalists that get locked out. Even scientists themselves can't always get access to the papers they need to read in order to do their jobs. New science is being stifled by the old business of scientific publishing, argues science journalist David Dobbs.

Open-access journals are different. These publications—the most famous being the Public Library of Science, or PLoS—make all the papers they publish available to anyone online, rather than printing expensive paper copies for subscribers. In a great article at his Neuron Culture blog, Dobbs makes the case for open-access science:

The current system, they note, grew out of meeting notes and journals published by societies in Europe over three centuries ago. Back then, quarterly or monthly volumes could accommodate the flow of ideas and data from most disciplines, and the printed journal, though it required a top-heavy, expensive printing and publishing infrastructure, was the most efficient way to share those ideas.

"But now," says Jonathan Eisen, "there's this thing called the Internet. It changes not just how things can be done but how they should be done."

... To get a sense of how the current system curbs science, consider a rare case in whichresearchers attacked a big medical problem with an open-science model. In 2004, in the United States, a network of government and private researchers, including large drug companies, used open-science principles to accelerate research into Alzheimer's. The project, as Gina Kolata aptly described it in the New York Times last summer, "was an agreement ... not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding immediately available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. Before that, researchers worked separately, siloing off much of their work. Now methods and data formats were standardized. The data would immediately enter the public domain, where anyone could build on it."

An extraordinary project ensued. The U.S. National Institute on Aging contributed over $40 million, and 20 companies and two nonprofit groups kicked in another $25 million to fund the first six years. The program produced an explosion of papers on early diagnosis and helped generate more than 100 studies to test drugs or other treatments. It greatly sped and opened the flow of findings and data. According to the New York Times, the project's entire massive database had been downloaded more than 3,200 times by last summer, and the data sets containing images of brain scans was downloaded almost a million times. Everyone was so pleased with the results that they renewed the accord this year. And all because, as a researcher told Kolata, "we parked our egos and intellectual-property noses at the door."
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