WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is Everything...
Om Malik reflects on a decade of blogging Podcast: "Another Time, Another Place," mixing space like time with Harris Burdick in a YA story 23.5-tonne Marmite traffic-jam Voynich Manuscript online Daria cosplay VIDEO: Porcupine really into corn on the cob Steven Heller reviews Zippy Goes to School A visit to an unusual bookstore in Quartzsite, Arizona Secret records of US bank bailout released, over howls of protest Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle One percenter asks: "Have You Ever Heard of Anybody Great That's Come Out of the 99 Percent?" Elvis Costello to fans: my label is gouging you on my new box set; don't buy it. Buy Louis Armstrong music instead, and download my stuff by "unconventional means" Little Brother II naming rights up for bid Representative from Burzynski Clinic sends aggressive legal threats to skeptics who question "antineoplaston" cancer therapy Parkour-style urban skiing Why you should be skeptical of evolutionary psychology New sports stadiums don't improve local economies Split-second high-speed photos of dogs shaking their jowls CIA threat-tracking technology is fascinating, creepy Teenager won't be punished for saying mean things about state governor Beautiful 1940s rail ads How the tax code works for billionaires Fish House parade WWII "gremlins" safety posters Twitter buys secure communications company that helped hack the Arab Spring Gweek 028: The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones HP Offers a New Movie and Music Experience in Time for the Holidays UK warns of riots if Euro fails If Ghostbusters was a Dr Seuss book Boing Boing Gift Guide 2011 Om Malik reflects on a decade of blogging
By Rob Beschizza on Nov 29, 2011 12:52 pm "Blogging is not about opinion but it is about viewing the world in a certain way and sharing it with others how you look at things."
Read in browser Podcast: "Another Time, Another Place," mixing space like time with Harris Burdick in a YA story
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 29, 2011 12:46 pm In my podcast this week, I read my story "Another Time, Another Place," recently published in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, a companion volume to Chris Van Allsburg's classic Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a collection of illustrations and titles from a lost (imaginary) short story collection. I was commissioned to produce a story for the ...
Read in browser 23.5-tonne Marmite traffic-jam
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 29, 2011 06:57 am Traffic in Yorkshire is snarled this morning after an overturned lorry dumped 23.5 tonnes of yeast extract on the motorway.
Read in browser Voynich Manuscript online
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 29, 2011 04:44 am Avi sez, "Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has put complete high resolution scans of the enigmatic, undeciphered Voynich Manuscript online." Written in Central Europe at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, the origin, language, and date of the Voynich Manuscript—named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who ...
Read in browser Daria cosplay
By David Pescovitz on Nov 29, 2011 04:10 am Over at deviantART, SoDespair shares a small gallery of excellent Daria cosplay! Above, Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane. SoDespair's deviantART Gallery (via Neatorama)
Read in browser VIDEO: Porcupine really into corn on the cob
By David Pescovitz on Nov 29, 2011 03:41 am [video link] This porcupine, named Teddy Bear, enjoys corn on the cob. A LOT. (Thanks, UPSO!)
Read in browser Steven Heller reviews Zippy Goes to School
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 29, 2011 01:43 am In Print online, Steven Heller reviews Zippy Goes to School: Born in Africa, the real Zippy lived the better part of his life with Bonnie and Lee Ecuyer. Adopted when he was just three months old, he was trained to eat at the dining room table with a spoon and fork (no knives, thank you). ...
Read in browser A visit to an unusual bookstore in Quartzsite, Arizona
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 28, 2011 09:39 pm Quartzsite is a town of 3,000 people in western Arizona. It calls itself the Rock Capital of the World and is also known for its spirited police/citizen relations (example 2). But I didn't come to this fine town to meet the police or look for interesting rocks. I came to visit Reader's Oasis, an excellent ...
Read in browser Secret records of US bank bailout released, over howls of protest
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 08:54 pm Bloomberg has won a lengthy Freedom of Inforn battle to get the details of a secretive, no-strings-attached multi-trillion-dollar payout from the Bush administration (continued by the Obama administration) to banks, the details of which were not available to Congress. The documents make it clear that the banks' posture that they were only borrowing the money ...
Read in browser Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle
By David Pescovitz on Nov 28, 2011 08:01 pm In 1920, Harry Houdini, famed illusionist, met Arthur Conan Doyle, famed creator of Sherlock Holmes. The two became friends even as their complex views on spiritualism and the paranormal often put them on opposite sides of the Skeptic/Fortean coin. Christopher Sandford, biographer of Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain, and Roman Polanski, is the author of a ...
Read in browser One percenter asks: "Have You Ever Heard of Anybody Great That's Come Out of the 99 Percent?"
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 07:51 pm A gentleman in a nice suit who's disgustedly watching an Occupy LA protest proudly identifies himself as "part of the one percent" and asks, "Have you ever heard of anybody great that's come out of the 99 percent?" Proud One Percenter: "Have You Ever Heard of Anybody Great That's Come Out of the 99 Percent?" ...
Read in browser Elvis Costello to fans: my label is gouging you on my new box set; don't buy it. Buy Louis Armstrong music instead, and download my stuff by "unconventional means"
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 07:17 pm Elvis Costello addresses his fans in an editorial called "Steal This Record," in which he notes the absurdity of the price set by his label on "The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook," a live CD and DVD combination priced at $262.46 ("either a misprint or a satire"). He laments that his label has refused ...
Read in browser Little Brother II naming rights up for bid
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 07:12 pm Fantasy literature doyenne Terri Windling is in the midst of a serious financial and health crisis and her friends are pitching in to run a fundraising auction for her benefit. My contribution: naming rights for a character in the sequel to Little Brother, to be published by Tor Teen in late 2012/early 2013.
Read in browser Representative from Burzynski Clinic sends aggressive legal threats to skeptics who question "antineoplaston" cancer therapy
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 06:59 pm Houston's Burzynski Clinic is a cancer-treatment facility specializing in "antineoplaston therapy," a treatment involving urine developed 34 years ago by the clinic's founder, Stanislaw Burzynski. Mr Burzynski characterizes his treatments as "clinical trials." After 34 years' worth of these trials, I can find no record of randomized double-blind studies demonstrating this treatment's efficacy being published. ...
Read in browser Parkour-style urban skiing
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 06:48 pm Here's a "street skiing" video that crosses street-skating with parkour, driving a long-suffering pair of skis over a series of urban obstacles from stone stairs to snowy hills. Just watching this daredevil makes my heart pound in sympathy. JP Auclair street.avi (via Kottke)
Read in browser Why you should be skeptical of evolutionary psychology
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Nov 28, 2011 06:39 pm Using the attractiveness of waist-to-hip ratio as an example, psychologist and blogger Sabrina Golonka explains why you have to be skeptical when someone declares a psychological finding to be a universal human truth. It's not universal if it doesn't cross cultures. But we don't have great cross-cultural psychology data, and, where the data does exist, ...
Read in browser New sports stadiums don't improve local economies
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Nov 28, 2011 06:23 pm As a person whose state is currently embroiled in a debate over whether (and, more likely, how) the public should pay for a private company to build its new facilities, I found this quote from a 2000 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives to be particularly interesting: Few fields of empirical economic research offer ...
Read in browser Split-second high-speed photos of dogs shaking their jowls
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 05:44 pm Photographer Carli Davidson catches high-speed frames of dogs shaking their jowls. Insane landscapes of weird and cute. Shake (via Making Light) (Image: downsized thumbnail from Shake6.jpg, by Carli Davidson)
Read in browser CIA threat-tracking technology is fascinating, creepy
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Nov 28, 2011 05:29 pm Palantir is security software that helps CIA analysts take innocuous events (man comes to U.S. on temporary visa, man takes flight training classes, man buys one-way ticket from Boston to California) and put them into a context where potential threats can become more apparent (the one man is actually several, and they're all on the ...
Read in browser Teenager won't be punished for saying mean things about state governor
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Nov 28, 2011 04:55 pm Last week, Kansas teenager Emma Sullivan posted a snarky tweet about the state's governor Sam Brownback, which, naturally, led to Brownback's staffers pressuring her principal to make her apologize on threat of punishment. Apparently, at some point during the holiday weekend, the school district noticed this would violate Sullivan's free speech rights. They've announced that ...
Read in browser Beautiful 1940s rail ads
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 04:40 pm From Vintage Ads participant write_light, a triptych of 1940s illustrated rail ads of surpassing loveliness. Sunday Surplus: The Luxury of Rail Travel in the Forties
Read in browser How the tax code works for billionaires
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 04:36 pm The NYT has a long investigative piece explaining the procedures deployed by the Estee Lauder heirs to "shelter" their income from tax, such as donating millions of dollars' worth of art to their own charitable trusts, then taking a gigantic tax write-off. Estée Lauder Companies went public in 1995, and Ronald Lauder and his mother ...
Read in browser Fish House parade
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Nov 28, 2011 04:17 pm The Aitkin, Minnesota, Fish House Parade is a post-Thanksgiving tradition. People dress up their snowmobiles, Sno-Cats, and fish houses—portable cabins used for ice fishing—in silly costumes and roll them down Aitkin's Main Street to cheering throngs. It's meant to mark the kick-off of the ice fishing season on Mille Lacs, a particularly large lake in ...
Read in browser WWII "gremlins" safety posters
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 03:27 pm Vintage Ads poster Write_light rounds up a collection of WWII "gremlins" safety posters, beauties every one. Sunday Surplus: Back Up Our Battleskies!
Read in browser Twitter buys secure communications company that helped hack the Arab Spring
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 03:07 pm Twitter has bought a company called Whisper Systems, who make a secure version of the Android operating system as well as suites of privacy tools that are intended to protect demonstrators, especially participants in the Arab Spring. Many speculate that the acquisition was driven by the desire to hire CTO Moxie Marlinspike, a somewhat legendary ...
Read in browser Gweek 028: The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones
By Mark Frauenfelder on Nov 28, 2011 03:04 pm In this episode of Gweek, David and I speak with Jon Ronson, a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and the author of the bestselling books, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry and The Men Who Stare at Goats. Jon's latest work is a very short book, or long article, available as an ebook, called ...
Read in browser HP Offers a New Movie and Music Experience in Time for the Holidays
By Advertiser on Nov 28, 2011 03:03 pm ADVERTISEMENT A new laptop for Christmas sounds pretty awesome, right? What if it could play Blu-ray discs and output flawless audio, too? HP can make all of your dreams come true with its new dv6t, the perfect gift for yourself -- or someone else, if you're feeling generous -- this holiday season. As if a ...
Read in browser UK warns of riots if Euro fails
By Xeni Jardin on Nov 28, 2011 02:42 pm Ottawa Citizen: "British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expatriates through the collapse of the single currency, amid renewed fears for Italy and Spain."
Read in browser If Ghostbusters was a Dr Seuss book
By Cory Doctorow on Nov 28, 2011 02:24 pm DrFaustusAU, whom you'll remember from this autumn's Dr Seuss meets Cthulhu mashup, is back at the drawing table, with There Goes A Gozerian, Ghostbuster: a reimagining of Ghostbusters as a Dr Seuss book. There Goes A Gozerian, Ghostbuster (via Super Punch)
Read in browser Boing Boing Gift Guide 2011
By Boing Boing on Nov 28, 2011 02:20 pm 
Though we're delighted to have our own online toystore up this holiday season, there are a thousand things we could recommend from elsewhere. Cutting it down to a couple of hundred, for our fourth annual gift guide, wasn't easy; this year was a fantastic one for books, games, gadgets and much else besides. From stocking stuffers to silly cars, take yer pick.
Boing Boing Gift Guide 2011
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