Watchismo Vintage & Modern Horology - Our watches will improve your self esteem by 7% Power On Self Test (analog edition) Gadaffi captured, claims official U.S. used to have awesome money Accelerometer-based keylogger in your phone guesses your PC keyboard typing from your body's motions Visualizing Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich Farmer doesn't like Halloween pranksters (1907) The Typewriter (In The 21st Century) documentary How do we know that the moon isn't cheese? Hagfish ties itself in a knot Footage from test runs of Google driverless cars Oil fields of Catan Energy policy is leaving the middle class behind I Live in the Future and Here's How it Works, by Nick Bilton: an exclusive Boing Boing excerpt Free Bieber: campaign to kill proposed law that would send you to prison for 5 years for singing copyrighted music on YouTube Obama campaign asks graphic designers to work for free on Jobs poster Marie Curie: 100-year anniversary of a Nobel Prize Belarusian central bank auctions off its sugar bowls Meet Frankie Doodle Dandy Enclose small styrofoam cube in your letters to qualify for parcel-rate discounts on confirmed delivery service Devo commercial for Honda scooters Jane Birkin sings Di Doo Dah Man intentionally eats high-carb junk food to gain weight before trying to lose it again Blindside: quest to create a great audio-only video game Restaurant of Soviet Time Occupy Wall Street: How much does the First Amendment guarantee your right to protest? Chicks in space: Baby quail floating in zero gravity (video) The Biosphere 2 "starvation diet" Ceci Bastida: "Narco, Narco, have you heard?" 3D printed shoelace toggle lets kindergartener tighten his own shoes Frozen armadillo as weapon Power On Self Test (analog edition)
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 20, 2011 11:49 am Submitted to the Boing Boing flickr pool by Dan Swenson.
Read in browser Gadaffi captured, claims official
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 20, 2011 11:42 am According to an NTC leader quoted by Reuters, Colonel Gadaffi was shot and captured today.
Read in browser U.S. used to have awesome money
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 20, 2011 11:34 am On the 1896 five dollar bill, "the entire obverse was covered with artwork representing electricity"
Read in browser Accelerometer-based keylogger in your phone guesses your PC keyboard typing from your body's motions
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 20, 2011 11:29 am A Georgia Tech team has built a working app for latest-generation mobile phones that uses the built-in accelerometer to guess which words you're typing on your PC's keyboard, by measuring the movements of your body as you type. The technique works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual keys (which still ...
Read in browser Visualizing Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 20, 2011 05:02 am Maybe you've heard about Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan for America: 9% sales tax, 9% income tax, and 9% corporate tax, and wondered how it would play out in the real world. Here's a chart that illustrates the answer neatly (click for full, farcically long-ass version): the poor will pay a little more (or a lot ...
Read in browser Farmer doesn't like Halloween pranksters (1907)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 20, 2011 04:31 am Here's the full text, courtesy Kitschy Kitschy Coo: Farmer Beaton's Sons Treated To A Warm Reception By Irate Farmer On Hallowe'en Night -- A Double Barreled Shot Gun Did The Business Two small boys, the sons of a farmer named Beaton, who lives just outside the west part of Fargo, were shot at by an ...
Read in browser The Typewriter (In The 21st Century) documentary
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 20, 2011 04:22 am [Video Link] Christopher Lockett, a director/cinematographer in Los Angeles, began working on a documentary called The Typewriter (In The 21st Century) after visiting Boing Boing and following Cory's link to a Wired.com article about "The Last Generation Of Typewriter Repairmen." Christoper says: We're down to our final [7] days in the Kickstarter.com fundraising... and we ...
Read in browser How do we know that the moon isn't cheese?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 20, 2011 03:24 am Sean Carrol explains why there are some ideas science doesn't have to test in order to know that they're ridiculous. (Via Bora Zivkovic.)
Read in browser Hagfish ties itself in a knot
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 20, 2011 03:04 am Apparently, October 19 was Hagfish Day. I nearly missed it. But please enjoy this video and celebrate for the next hour. Also recommended: This song about hagfish. Video Link Video via Creaturecast
Read in browser Footage from test runs of Google driverless cars
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 20, 2011 02:50 am Google has been testing out its self-driving cars on real roads. This is still a long way from being available for you to purchase, but it's clear that it's working surprisingly well on a technological level. You can watch some footage, recorded in the driverless cars during their test runs, in the video above. IEEE ...
Read in browser Oil fields of Catan
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 20, 2011 02:38 am If you play Settlers of Catan and/or if you're interested in the hard decisions we have to make about energy, you'll likely be as excited as I am about this new (free!) scenario for the classic board game. Catan: Oil Springs allows you to develop faster by collecting black gold—at the expense of short-term and ...
Read in browser Energy policy is leaving the middle class behind
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 20, 2011 02:30 am If you've paid much attention to policy in general, you won't be too surprised by what I'm about to tell you about energy policy. Many of our well-meaning public programs use tax dollars for the near-exclusive benefit of the wealthy—the group of people who need those shared funds the least. Today I spoke at "What ...
Read in browser I Live in the Future and Here's How it Works, by Nick Bilton: an exclusive Boing Boing excerpt
By Nick Bilton on Oct 19, 2011 11:36 pm Excerpted from I Live in the Future and Here's How it Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain are Being Creatively Disrupted @ 2011 by Nick Bilton. Reprinted by Permission of Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Does Your Surgeon Play Video Games? The ...
Read in browser Free Bieber: campaign to kill proposed law that would send you to prison for 5 years for singing copyrighted music on YouTube
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2011 10:13 pm S.978, a new bill in Congress, makes it a felony to post videos that contain copyright-infringing music, with up to five years in prison for violators. The clever folks at Fight for the Future have noticed that this law would have put Justin Bieber in jail, since he launched his career by posting videos of ...
Read in browser Obama campaign asks graphic designers to work for free on Jobs poster
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2011 09:28 pm Good thing there are no unemployed graphic designers in America. Because if there were, it would be really uncool for our president to have asked them to labor, without pay, for a poster about creating jobs for out-of-work Americans. (Rolling Stone)
Read in browser Marie Curie: 100-year anniversary of a Nobel Prize
By David Pescovitz on Oct 19, 2011 08:48 pm The United Nations named this year the Intenational year of Chemistry in honor of the amazing Marie Curie, who won her second Nobel Prize a century ago this month. She shared her first Nobel prize in 1903, the first ever awarded to a woman. That same year, she was the first woman to earn a ...
Read in browser Belarusian central bank auctions off its sugar bowls
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2011 08:04 pm The central bank of Belarus has auctioned off its office chairs, cardboard boxes, and sugar bowls, but they promise it's not an indication of any sort of trouble with the economy.
Read in browser Meet Frankie Doodle Dandy
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 19, 2011 07:51 pm The way he has been burned alive and is smiling about it, Frankie Doodle Dandy would make an ideal mascot for the Tea Party.
Read in browser Enclose small styrofoam cube in your letters to qualify for parcel-rate discounts on confirmed delivery service
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2011 07:33 pm The Indiana Election Division sends its notices out with a small styrofoam cube in the envelope; the cube increases the envelope's thickness to 3/4", so it qualifies for discounted parcel-rate shipping. The Styrofoam cube enclosed in this envelope is being included by the sender to meet a United States Postal Service regulation. This regulation requires ...
Read in browser Devo commercial for Honda scooters
By David Pescovitz on Oct 19, 2011 07:21 pm This c.1984 Honda commercial starring Devo makes me want to buy an original Elite instead of a vintage Vespa. But only if I can have a Devo visor for my helmet. (Thanks, Lux!)
Read in browser Jane Birkin sings Di Doo Dah
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 19, 2011 07:16 pm [Video Link] Here's Jane Birkin (the best part of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up NSFW link ) singing "Di Doo Dah." (Via Dangerous Minds)
Read in browser Man intentionally eats high-carb junk food to gain weight before trying to lose it again
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 19, 2011 06:58 pm Left: Before. Right: Now. For the last 23 weeks, personal trainer Drew Manning has been eating "sugary cereal, soda, chips, white bread, white pasta, pizza, cakes, cookies, muffins, etc." in order to gain weight. He's gained 70 pounds so far. In a few weeks, he plans to get back in shape by exercising and avoiding ...
Read in browser Blindside: quest to create a great audio-only video game
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2011 06:52 pm Aaron Rasmussen and Michael T. Astolfi have a project going called BlindSide, for which there's a Kickstarter, to create "a video game with no graphics, played entirely using audio." The idea is to create an interactive audio adventure, set in a fully three-dimensional world that you perceive only with sound. The idea to build a ...
Read in browser Restaurant of Soviet Time
By David Pescovitz on Oct 19, 2011 06:43 pm IFTF exec director Marina Gorbis visited her native Ukraine and was delighted by the signs for this inviting eatery in Kiev.
Read in browser Occupy Wall Street: How much does the First Amendment guarantee your right to protest?
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2011 06:40 pm The First Amendment guarantees the right to peaceable assembly. So why do peaceful protestors keep getting arrested, and sometimes pepper-sprayed and beaten up by police? Pro Publica looks at "Just How Much the State Can Restrict a Peaceful Protest."
Read in browser Chicks in space: Baby quail floating in zero gravity (video)
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2011 06:35 pm [Video Link]. Not sure of the origin of this footage, or the mission in question. The quail chicks on the space station apparently didn't live long. (via Heather Goss)
Read in browser The Biosphere 2 "starvation diet"
By David Pescovitz on Oct 19, 2011 06:33 pm In 1992, eight individuals entered the "Biosphere 2" in the Arizona desert where they lived for two years. The point was to study interactions inside a closed ecological system. The success of the "planet in a bottle" experiment was, er, debatable. But there are a slew of fascinating stories of what happened inside. Christopher Turner, ...
Read in browser Ceci Bastida: "Narco, Narco, have you heard?"
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2011 06:21 pm [Video Link] "Have you heard," the latest from LA-based, Tijuana-born artist Ceci Bastida (web, Amazon). "Narco, Narco, have you heard? Drugs and money gonna kill the world. Dollar's green and border's red, why so many gotta end up dead?" Ceci, from an interview earlier this year: "The so-called war against drugs in Mexico, the situation ...
Read in browser 3D printed shoelace toggle lets kindergartener tighten his own shoes
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2011 05:55 pm Larsie, a Thingiverse user and MakerBot owner, whipped up these 3D-printed shoelace-toggles for his kindergarten-aged son's sneakers, helping the lad tighten his own shoes: Tying knots in shoelaces has got to be one of the most ridiculous activities in the world. It's difficult to learn as a child,1 the laces always come undone at inconvenient ...
Read in browser Frozen armadillo as weapon
By David Pescovitz on Oct 19, 2011 05:53 pm Several weeks ago, a man attacked a woman in Dallas with a frozen armadillo. Apparently, the man was selling the armadillo to the woman, who intended to eat it. They argued, and he chucked the carcass at her twice. From the Herald Sun: The animal first struck the woman in the leg and then in ...
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