The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Aquarius satellite launches today, will measure ocean salinity from space
• Duke Nukem Forever finally available
• NSA whistleblower pleas out, will serve no jail time
• GM Chinese cows express milk with some proteins found in human milk, UK press reports "OMG! Cows give breast milk!"
• After Weiner shot leaks, Breitbart claims setup
• American right upset at report that Thatcher won't meet Palin
• Problematic glass staircase in new courthouse
• You got Les-rolled
• IMF considered harmful
• AT&T lobbies Wisconsin GOP to nuke Wisconsin's best-of-breed co-op ISP for educational institutions
• Raising money to promote Sailor Twain webcomic
• Developmentally disabled man harrassed by TSA at Detroit airport
• Miami cops intimidate citizen journalist who recorded shoot-em-up, smash camera
• NYC cyclist vs. bike lanes - kamikaze law-abiding
• Junkbots made with creepy doll fragments
• Judge to copyright trolls: you are "inexcusable"
• Wah wah crybaby extortionists wah wah
• Antique eye surgery training tool
• Antique Phonograph Music DJ and radio show
• Hand-feeding a great white shark
• Boing Boing Meetup Report: San Francisco
• Dice age: weird dice, wacky rules
• Is the world ready for this jelly?
• Pondering the mathematics of Yog-Sothoth
• Genetics and autism
• Skydiving on Saturn
• The last snow in St. Paul
• BoingBoing Meetup: Twin Cities edition
• Seedbomb vending machine
• Rob Walker on "Dedigitization"

Aquarius satellite launches today, will measure ocean salinity from space Posted: 10 Jun 2011 04:19 AM PDT Eilieen Gunn writes, If all goes well, the Aquarius satellite, which will map the salinity of the oceans, collecting more data in a couple of months than is contained in the entire 125-year historical record, will launch this morning (Friday. June 10) at 7:20 am, PDT. (That's 10:20 am EDT and 2:20 pm GMT.) I will watch, because this is more than just another great launch, another extension of the human mind and eye into the cosmos. This one is personal. For more than thirty years, my brother, John Gunn, has measured and analyzed ocean currents and the salinity and temperature that contribute to their function and variability. He has thrown current meters into Arctic and Antarctic waters from small vessels in frigid temperatures, recovered the meters, and analyzed the data. He has spent months in a submarine beneath the polar icecap--back when we had a permanent icecap--collecting data about how the seas function. For the past eight years, he has worked as part of a large international project involving teams of researchers from NASA, JPL, and Argentina's Comisipn Nacional de Actividades Espaciales to launch the satellite that will, he hopes, go up this morning. This is what he wrote to his family about it: 'The launch is taking place at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California no earlier than 7:20am Pacific time (10:20 Eastern). It can be seen on NASA TV and as streaming video on the Internet. Weather at the launch site can be foggy in June, so there may be limited (or no) visibility, but there will be a lot of views of anxious people in the control room. There is always a possibility of a delay and the launch window is only five minutes. If we miss that we have to go another day. Check the countdown timer at http://aquarius.nasa.gov/. Video coverage begins at 5:30 PDT and lasts until about 9am PDT.' He adds, 'After the launch there are a couple critical points. After the rocket leaves the atmosphere the cowling around the satellite breaks away. If this doesn't happen, the rocket doesn't make orbit but makes a big splash near Antarctica. As the rocket passes the south pole and approaches South Africa it drops the rocket body, again very important.' Aquarius will provide the essential sea-surface salinity data needed to link the two major components of the climate system: the water cycle and ocean circulation. There is a great overview of the purpose of the mission on the NASA Aquarius site. My brother is part of the team from Earth & Space Research, one of the many teams that made this complex project possible. Be there or be square. NASA: Aquarius Mission Web Site (Thanks, Eileen!)

Duke Nukem Forever finally available Posted: 10 Jun 2011 04:47 AM PDT Duke Nukem Forever, a game trapped in development hell since the mid-1990s, is finally on sale. You can download it from the Steam network, grab a copy in stores, or order at Amazon, where it ships monday. The critical response is as expected since about 1998: it is an old-fashioned, middling shooter, a Smiley Smile of crude humor and outmoded gaming ironies.

NSA whistleblower pleas out, will serve no jail time Posted: 10 Jun 2011 04:18 AM PDT The administration's case against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake has shriveled to a token charge of "exceeding authorized access to a computer." He will plead guilty to the misdemeanor and serve no jail time, reports Wired's Kim Zetter. Prosecutors had originally filed 35 years worth of felony charges; Drake revealed lawbreaking, incompetence and misconduct at the spy agency.

GM Chinese cows express milk with some proteins found in human milk, UK press reports "OMG! Cows give breast milk!" Posted: 10 Jun 2011 04:09 AM PDT A paper by scientists at China Agricultural University published in March 2011 in PLOS One details a study on transgenic cows that have been modified to express some compounds found in human breast-milk in their milk. The researchers claim the milk contains lysozyme (an antimicrobial protein), lactoferrin (a protein involved with the immune system) and alpha-lactalbumin. The researchers claim that this milk would be a suitable substitute for human breast milk, but do not cite any studies or data to directly support this claim. The reporting on this in the UK press is textbook bad science. Writing in April, the Telegraph's science reporter Richard Gray describes the cows as "physically identical" to non-transgenic cows (presumably he thinks that DNA exists solely in the realm of pure maths or possibly in the astral plane). He also credulously repeats the claim that because this milk contains proteins found in human breast milk, it will be a suitable substitute, and implies that there is some benefit known to arise from drinking breast milk into adulthood. Much of his story revolves around the European controversy over GM foods. A more recent report on Rupert Murdoch's Sky News is (predictably) much worse than the Telegraph, however. An article by-lined "Holly Williams, Beijing correspondent" describes the cows' milk as "human breast milk" (the leap from "cow's milk with some proteins found in human milk" to "human milk" being rather a large one). Williams cites dairy workers on the farm where the cows live as authorities on the nutritional value of the milk ("It's better for you because it's genetically modified."). Like the Telegraph, the Sky report is mostly a critique of EU rules and conventions on GM food, and has the thinly veiled subtext of "Our Eurocrat lords and lefty loonies are holding back nutrition." Neither report links to the original study or mentions its title. Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle (Plos One) Genetically modified cows produce 'human' milk (Telegraph) Chinese GM Cows Make Human Breast Milk (via JWZ) (Image: Cow, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from nuskyn's photostream)

After Weiner shot leaks, Breitbart claims setup Posted: 10 Jun 2011 04:03 AM PDT Commentator Andrew Breitbart, looking good after Rep. Anthony Weiner admitted tweeting inappropriate images, has somehow managed to pluck discredit from the jaws of vindication. During a radio show, he shared the most inappropriate image with his hosts and it soon found its way online. Breitbart claimed he was set up by the producers with secret cameras. Alas, no. [Gawker]

American right upset at report that Thatcher won't meet Palin Posted: 10 Jun 2011 03:31 AM PDT US right-wing blogs and radio hosts are apparently up in arms at a report in The Guardian stating that Margaret Thatcher won't meet with Sarah Palin. The report quotes Thatcher's "handlers" saying things like "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts." La Donna Hale Curzon, the host of Sarah Palin Radio, accused the Thatcher circle of disgracing the former prime minister. "Margaret Thatcher would never call a fellow Conservative, let alone Gov Palin 'nuts'," Hale Curzon tweeted. "Thatcher's handlers have disgraced the Iron Lady." The ally who criticised Palin said the Thatcher circle would not change their minds despite the backlash. "Margaret will not be meeting Sarah Palin. If necessary we will make sure that Margaret has an off day when Palin is in London." Sarah Palin snub by Margaret Thatcher aides infuriates US rightwing (Image: Remember Thatcher!, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from bixentro's photostream)

Problematic glass staircase in new courthouse Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:49 PM PDT Franklin County, Ohio Judge Julie Lynch is advising people in dresses to avoid a staircase with glass risers in the middle of a new $105 million courthouse that opened Monday. From CNN: She speculates that men, who didn't take half the population into account, designed the stairs. Attorney Lori Johnson was startled by the transparent stairs. She worries not only about stares, but also how many cell phones have cameras attached. "The next thing you know, you're on the internet," Johnson said, according to 10TV. "It sounds like a lawsuit in the making." While security guards warn women about taking the stairs, it seems most are just hoping people will be mature about the situation. "They hope people will be mature? That's not a solution," Lynch said to 10TV. "If we had mature people that didn't violate the law, we wouldn't have this building." "Glass staircase not dress friendly"

You got Les-rolled Posted: 09 Jun 2011 09:02 PM PDT A video in honor of today's excellent and musical Google Doodle. (Joe Sabia)

IMF considered harmful Posted: 09 Jun 2011 08:12 PM PDT In The Independent, Johann Hari describes the IMF's catastrophic pattern of "helping" poor countries by ordering them to abolish programs that help people so that the financial sector can take home more money. Hari suggests that while Dominique Strauss-Kahn's rape accusation needs to be taken seriously, the IMF has been raping whole countries for its whole existence. So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid. The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi's "worst ever famine." There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death. At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid, because the government had 'slowed' in implementing the marketeering 'reforms' that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They concluded that the IMF "bears responsibility for the disaster." Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi disregarded all the IMF's 'advice', and brought back subsidies for the fertiliser, along with a range of other services to ordinary people. Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe. Johann Hari: It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial (via Making Light)

AT&T lobbies Wisconsin GOP to nuke Wisconsin's best-of-breed co-op ISP for educational institutions Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:55 PM PDT Christopher writes, "WiscNet is a co-op network providing ISP services to libraries, schools, local government, and the University of Wisconsin system. AT&T (and incumbent allies) lobbyists have inserted a provision in Wisconsin's budget bill to effectively kill WiscNet (leaving many libaries, etc with only an incumbent provider as ISP). Additionally, the language requires the UW Extension service to return federal stimulus funds that have started building a network that will connect schools, libraries, etc., in four Wisconsin towns where they cannot presently procure those services. Finally, the language is so broad that without being changed, it will require UW to withdraw from Internet2 and other R&E networks. Republicans control the Legislature and are presently deciding just how much they want to defend this absurd provision. Rumors suggest final decisions will be made on Tuesday." Does AT&T Really Own the Wisconsin Legislature? Battle Over WiscNet Continues (Thanks, Christopher!)

Raising money to promote Sailor Twain webcomic Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:42 PM PDT Mark Siegel is using Kickstarter to raise money to promote his extraordinary webcomic Sailor Twain (or, The Mermaid in the Hudson), which has been featured here before: "Though Sailor Twain will come out as a printed book in 2012, the work is serializing as a webcomic--free and ad-free.The accompanying blog is filled with historical bits, process snapshots, and the dialog with readers has been extraordinary. A number of them even send their photos and appear as cameos in the story." Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson

Developmentally disabled man harrassed by TSA at Detroit airport Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:39 PM PDT A doctor reports that his developmentally disabled son was harrassed and traumatized by the Detroit airport TSA screeners, who wanted to investigate the "puffiness" caused by his adult diaper. They man, who is described as having the mental capacity of a two-year-old, also lost a beloved toy (a plastic hammer) because the TSA claimed it could be used as a weapon. The family was on their way to Walt Disney World. "You have got to be kidding me. I honestly felt that those two agents did not know what they were doing," Mandy told us. Dr. Mandy claimed they asked Drew to place his feet on the yellow shoe line, something he didn't understand. They proceeded to pat his pants down, questioning the padding which was his adult diapers. When the agents asked Drew to take his hand and rub the front and back of his pants so they could swab it for explosives, his dad stepped in and tried to explain that Drew was mentally challenged. "They said, 'Please, sir, we know what we're doing,'" Mandy said. The TSA agents saw Drew holding a six-inch plastic hammer. "My son carries his ball and his hammer for security. He goes everywhere with (them)," said Mandy. Dr. David Mandy: Special Needs Son Harassed by TSA at Detroit Metropolitan Airport (Thanks, lizditz!)

Miami cops intimidate citizen journalist who recorded shoot-em-up, smash camera Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:28 PM PDT A man who videoed a guns-blazing Miami cop shoot-em-up that hit four innocent bystanders was dragged out of his car by the officers. The police pointed their weapons at the photographer and his girlfriend, then smashed his cameraphone. Luckily, the man saved his memory card and the video. They also confiscated a news-crew's camera. On Thursday, The Miami Herald spoke to the couple that saw the end of the 4 a.m. police chase on Collins Avenue, then watched and filmed from just a few feet away as a dozen officers fired their guns repeatedly into Raymond Herisse's blue Hyundai. They say the only reason they were able to show the video to a reporter is because they hid a memory card after police allegedly pointed guns at their heads, threw them to the ground and smashed the cell phone that took the video... Shortly after the gunfire ends, an officer points at Benoit and police can be heard yelling for him to turn off the camera. The voices are muffled at times. The 35-year-old car stereo technician drops his hand with the camera and hurries back to his Ford Expedition parked further east on 13th Street... "They put guns to our heads and threw us on the ground," Davis said. Benoit said a Miami Beach officer grabbed his cell phone, said "You want to be [expletive] Paparazzi?" and stomped on his phone before placing him in handcuffs and shoving the crunched phone in Benoit's back pocket. He said the couple joined other witnesses already in cuffs and being watched by officers, who were on the lookout for two passengers who, police believe at the time, had bailed out of Herisse's car. It is still not known whether any passengers were in the car. Witness releases new video of fatal police-involved shooting during Urban Beach Week (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

NYC cyclist vs. bike lanes - kamikaze law-abiding Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:21 PM PDT A NYC cyclist who received a fine for straying out of the bike-lane recorded this video of his attempt to ride around town without leaving the bike-lane, instead crashing merrily into any obstacle that he encountered, from taxis to construction equipment. Guy Crashes Multiple Times To Make Point About NYPD Ticketing Bicyclists

Junkbots made with creepy doll fragments Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:16 PM PDT Andrea Petrachi (AKA "Himatic") makes beautiful junkbot sculptures that incorporate creepy fragments of discarded dollies and toys. Andrea Petrachi a.k.a. Himatic (via Super Punch)

Judge to copyright trolls: you are "inexcusable" Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:12 PM PDT The judge in America's biggest-ever copyright troll mass-litgation campaign has yanked the quickie subpoenas the plaintiffs secured and described their attorneys' behavior as "inexcusable."

Wah wah crybaby extortionists wah wah Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:34 PM PDT The law firm behind a strange, extortionate gay-porn copyright shakedown is all sad about the coverage their weird scheme received on TorrentFreak, and they've made sure their judge knows it.

Antique eye surgery training tool Posted: 09 Jun 2011 04:58 PM PDT These are Opthalmophantomes, antique surgical training tools from the early 20th century. Animal eyeballs were clamped into the eye sockets so that budding ophthalmologists could practice their, er, chops. (via Cult of Weird and Live Auctioneers)

Antique Phonograph Music DJ and radio show Posted: 09 Jun 2011 03:20 PM PDT If Boing Boing ever throws a big bash in New York City, I'd hire Michael Cumella to DJ. Forget Technics 1200s; When Cumella spins a party, he brings two antique hand-cranked phonographs and a crate of 78s from the beginning of the 20th century. Besides offering his services as the "Crank-Up Phonograph Experience," Cumella is the host of WFMU Radio's "Antique Phonograph Music Program With MAC." If you've never heard the show, I suggest you fire up the Graphophone and get your Old Timey on with a quickness. Michael Cumella's Crank-Up Phonograph Experience Antique Phonograph Music Program with MAC (via The Wire) "The iPhonograph" kit (via Submitterator, thanks angelheaded!)

Hand-feeding a great white shark Posted: 09 Jun 2011 02:40 PM PDT This fearless lady pets a Great White like a dog as she hand-feeds it fish. [Video link: National Geographic via Metafilter]

Boing Boing Meetup Report: San Francisco Posted: 09 Jun 2011 02:02 PM PDT Tuesday's meetup in San Francisco saw more than twenty happy mutants enjoying drinks, pizza and conversation at the gorgeous Orbit Room Cafe. Thanks so much to Amy and Dean, who very generously hooked us up with some pizza and reserved the space for us! Among the many interesting things at the meetup were: Adam and Bennett brought a huge spread of chocolates, olive oils and vinegars (seen in the first photo) for people to try from their company Buyer's Best Friend. Doc Pop brought his yo yo, and showed us a cool trick called "Boing Boing" in Japanese. Kent brought a mysterious black box that claims to be a sleep inducer on the side. Megan brought a squishy toy monster that glows different colors. Someone brought a wristwatch radio, seen here being shown off by Doc Pop. Someone else brought a dollar bill he shrunk in liquid ammonia. I brought some cool silly putty I use to stretch my hands out when I'm working. It changes colors when it heats up! David brought his Timothy Leary watch with a different drug listed for each hour. Visiting from NYC, Doug Rushkoff was our special guest star mutant! Check out my Flickr set from the event to see a few more photos of the curiosities people brought to the event!

Dice age: weird dice, wacky rules Posted: 09 Jun 2011 01:24 PM PDT At Turnstyle, Noah Nelson talks to the creator of a game that uses weird, ornamental dice instead of traditional ones. Nor are we talking about standard six-siders, or even the 8-, 12-, and 20-sided dice familiar to Dungeons & Dragons players. "I went down to the definition of dice," says Convert, "which is an object which can stop on one side or the other, and I went crazy making shapes. Whatever shape is good so long as it stops on one side. So you have dice that have the shape of barrels, volcano, rocket, whatever goes." At last count four other games have been "discovered" by Dice Age players, making it not just one game but an entire system of play. Our duel went by quickly, with the game twisting and turning on each roll. I quickly saw how two players with carefully constructed sets of dice, ala Magic or Warhammer, could find themselves in a tense game of strategy, tactics, and chance. There's 10 days to go on a Kickstarter project to manufacture the set, but it's still got a few bob to go, Dice Age: Rolling up a new way to play [Turnstyle]

Is the world ready for this jelly? Posted: 09 Jun 2011 12:00 PM PDT You can't tell from the photo, but this jellyfish is huge. Nomura jellyfish, native to the waters off China and Japan, can grow to be the size of a refrigerator, and weigh up to 400 pounds. And, since the 1990s, there's a lot more of them. Swarms, 500 million jellies strong, have sunk ships, writes Brandon Keim in Wired. It's part of a global increase in jellyfish populations. Right now, nobody's sure whether this is a blip, or a new normal. But everybody would like to know how jellyfish affect ecosystems, and new research offers some sobering analysis. In what may be the most comprehensive jellyfish study to date, Condon's group spent nearly four years gathering data from Chesapeake Bay on Mnemiopsis leidyi and Chrysaora quinquecirrha, two species that have caused trouble elsewhere and are considered representative of jellyfish habits worldwide. The researchers counted them at sea, measured the nutrients in surrounding water, and calculated the composition of nearby bacterial communities. In the lab, they observed how bacteria in seawater reacted to jellyfish, and tracked chemicals flowing through their aquariums. They found that jellyfish, like many other marine species, excrete organic compounds as bodily wastes and as slime that covers their bodies. But whereas the excretions of other species are consumed by bacteria that form important parts of oceanic food webs, jellyfish excretions nourish gammaproteobacteria, a class of microbes that little else in the ocean likes to eat, and that produces little of further biological use. "Lots of marine creatures make this dissolved organic matter that bacteria use to live. But the point of this paper is that the organic matter produced by jellies doesn't make it back up the food web," said study co-author Deborah Steinberg, also a Virginia Institute of Marine Science biologist. "When jellies are around, they're shunting this energy into a form that's just not very usable. They're just shunting energy away from the rest of the food web." Nomura jellyfish photo by KENPEI, used via CC

Pondering the mathematics of Yog-Sothoth Posted: 09 Jun 2011 11:43 AM PDT We live in a 3-dimensional world. (At least, we're pretty sure we do.) But could worlds with more dimensions exist? And what would a 4- or 5-dimensional world look like? Naturally, Plus magazine turns to mathematics and H.P. Lovecraft to answer these burning questions. According to the early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, these higher dimensions do indeed exist, and are home to all manner of evil creatures. In Lovecraft's mythology, the most terrible of these beings goes by the name of Yog-Sothoth. Interestingly, on the rare occasions that Yog-Sothoth appears in the human realm, it takes the form of "a congeries of iridescent globes... stupendous in its malign suggestiveness". Lovecraft had some interest in mathematics, and indeed used ideas such as hyperbolic geometry to lend extra strangeness to his stories (as Thomas Hull has discussed in Math Horizons). But he could not have known how fortunate was the decision to represent Yog-Sothoth in this manner. Strange spheres really are the keys to higher dimensional worlds, and our understanding of them has increased greatly in recent years. Over the last 50 years a subject called differential topology has grown up, and revealed just how alien these places are. Via Cliff Pickover Tables with tentacles - Boing Boing Seamless ice-spheres for superior whiskey-rocks How To: Turn a sphere inside out (maybe) Spheres of Influence: A Collection of Spherical Sites Fixing the kilogram with the roundest objects in the world Visualizing up to ten dimensions Watching the world from other dimensions Guide to N Dimensions Illustration of Yog-Sothoth by Dominique Signoret, used via CC

Genetics and autism Posted: 09 Jun 2011 11:03 AM PDT Dr. Steven Novella on recent research into the genetics of autism. (Via Steve Silberman.)

Skydiving on Saturn Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:58 AM PDT The Oxford Science blog turns some recent research into a nifty thought experiment. If you could skydive on Saturn, what would you see? ... the first question when imagining a Saturn skydive is: where do you start? Like the Earth, Saturn's upper atmosphere - its stratosphere - is relatively stable. This stratosphere extends way above the troposphere and the visible cloud deck, radiating energy generated within the planet out into space. But whilst Earth's stratosphere starts around 10km above the surface of our planet (a few kilometres above the clouds) on Saturn the stratosphere extends hundreds of kilometres above the clouds. Saturn's stratosphere should be a 'weather-free' zone, relatively unaffected by the turmoil of storm clouds churning deep below, 'but this turns out to be completely wrong' Leigh explains. Instead, the new observations spotted 'beacons' in the stratosphere that, at 15-20 degrees Kelvin hotter than their surroundings (120-140 Kelvin), stand out like the beacons of a lighthouse. In fact, the spectacular effects of Saturn's giant storm were being felt in the stratosphere almost 300km above the visible clouds, 'that's almost as far as the International Space Station orbits above the surface of the Earth' Leigh adds. These beacons are thought to be created when 'air' (87% hydrogen, 12% helium, 1% other trace gases) wells up and then descends; becoming compressed and heating up like the air in a bicycle pump. It's the emission from the other 1%, gases such as methane, ethane, and acetylene, which makes the beacons visible. Our skydiver would have to plummet some 300kms from the stratospheric beacons to reach the troposphere where convection rules and energy is turned into powerful air currents. Via Phil Plait Image: Saturn and Earth, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from lunarandplanetaryinstitute's photostream

The last snow in St. Paul Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:39 AM PDT In the middle of an record-breakingly hot Summer week, The Uptake Blog found snow left over from a record-breakingly snowy Winter.

BoingBoing Meetup: Twin Cities edition Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:29 AM PDT The temperature climbed over 100 on Tuesday, but the Twin Cities BoingBoing Meetup was still a lot of fun. (I refuse to give in to urge to make a "cool" pun.) We had probably close to 25 people who met up at one of Minneapolis' best parks—Minnehaha Falls. On a patio overlooking the waterfall, we drank good beer, had some great conversations, and shared some seriously nifty objects and ideas. In the photo above (taken by Michael Lee, who was kind enough to take some iPhone shots, as my camera is in France with my husband.) you can see Katrina Mundinger demonstrating a drop spindle—the technology that preceded the more-recognizable spinning wheel. Some other cool items: Emily Lloyd brought some local very, very short memoirs that she's collecting as part of the 6 Words Twin Cities project; Scott brought some steampunk goggles he'd made using materials from Ax-Man (The most awesome stores in the Twin Cities. Seriously. The St. Paul location has an iron lung for sale.); musician Jeremy Messersmith brought an intentionally bad poem that he successfully submitted to a vanity music label; and Will brought a 3D film camera. Hopefully, he'll figure out a place to get it developed and we'll have some 3D photos of the Meetup, too! Links to a couple more photos: These shots were taken by Scott, the gentleman who brought the goggles.

Seedbomb vending machine Posted: 09 Jun 2011 03:06 PM PDT I recently spotted this Seedbombs vending machine in Marin. Each bomb -- a little nugget of clay, compost, and seeds -- was 50 cents. It led me to look into the interesting history of "seed bombing." From Wikipedia: The term "seed grenade" was first used by Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the "Green Guerrillas". The first seed grenades were made from condoms filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer. They were tossed over fences onto empty lots in New York City in order to make the neighborhoods look better. It was the start of the guerrilla gardening movement... The earliest records of aerial reforestation date back from 1930. In this period, planes were used to distribute seeds over certain inaccessible mountains in Honolulu after forest fires.[2] Seed bombing is also widely used in Africa; where they are put in barren or simply grassy areas. With technology expanding, it is now placed in a biodegradable container and "bombed" grenade-style onto the land. As the sprout grows, the container biodegrades and the plant grows. It is usually done as a large-scale project with hundreds dropped in a single area at any one time. Therefore, a barren land can be turned into a garden in a little over a month. Seedbombs by Greenaid Seed bombing (Wikipedia) "On Seedballs" "On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries" by Richard Reynolds (Amazon) "How to Make a Seed Bomb" (Instructables)

Rob Walker on "Dedigitization" Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:02 AM PDT Supersharp design/culture critic Rob Walker, author of Buying In (and also last year's profile of BB in Fast Company), is now writing regularly for the excellent Design Observer site. His first piece is titled "Dedigitization," about iconic digital "things" that have become physicalized. From Design Observer: The specific instances that got me onto this were the Emoticon Ring and the Cursor Pin (both via Book of Joe). The ring is from a collection called "Signs," by Chao & Eero Jewel in Finland, which aims to respond to and embody digital communication and connection. The cursor pin (designed by Melle Hamer) was evidently inspired by watching a television show on a Mac, and noticing the cursor arrow ending up, by chance, resembling a pin on some character in the program... On a purely visual level, none of these shapes strike me as intrinsically beautiful or even pleasing, so what's the appeal? There's something jokey about bringing a cursor arrow, emoticon, or the all-powerful "like" symbol into the physical world. But there's something else going on here too, and it's not the opposite of immaterialism at all. Rather, it's the inevitable flipside of the same phenomenon. Because like all jokes, these contain a truth: a de facto acknowledgement that the border between the worlds often called "virtual" and "real" is extremely porous. "Dedigitization"

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