WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Time is valuable but it doesn't need to cost an arm & a leg.
We Robot conference: legal and policy issues related to robotics Petition to get a pardon for Turing's "gross indecency" conviction HOWTO make a scratch-built carbon-fiber violin SETI resumes at Allen Telescope Array Paul Di Filippo reviews Cult of Lego Apparatus to focus human body heat for the purposes of cooking potatoes, 1930 Melbourne cops made to look foolish by protesters in tent costumes get vindictive revenge by stripping protester to underwear in park Mark is a hypocritical chicken-eater Mountaineering refuge perched on a cliffside Faux Native American fashion Transparent speaker Eric Lumbleau on his Mutant Sounds download blog Lawsuits hit Carrier IQ and customers Portal bookends Vallee, Rucker, and Shirley at TedxBrussels Horrible gifts for gadget fans Facebook "flaw" lets anyone see your private photos Are 100% of astronomy majors employed? Weather warfare and the Cold War Sugru and Lego: turn anything into a mount for anything else Tourist trap dungeon's skeleton turns out to be real Brain Rot: Up The River... Let's play a game: Guess what's being patented! Life-sized brain sculptures made of food Scientists: How do ethics and culture shape your work? A limerick for the Higgs boson Potentially habitable exoplanet: The fine print Literary greats answer high-school student's survey on "symbolism," 1963 Leave your kids alone: a free-range parenting journey Cruel kids in A.B. Frost cartoon We Robot conference: legal and policy issues related to robotics
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 07, 2011 12:58 pm Lee sez, "The next generation of robots will be in homes, offices and hospitals, not to mention driving cars, flying around as drones, and, yes, working as prison wardens. Robots will be programmed to learn, and will exhibit emergent behavior not necessarily contemplated by their designers. What happens when good robots do bad things? Who ...
Read in browser Petition to get a pardon for Turing's "gross indecency" conviction
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 07, 2011 09:02 am The UK government has officially apologised to computing giant and war hero Alan Turing for forcing him to take hormone injections as "therapy" for being gay (driving him to suicide), but now a petition has been mounted to get an official pardon Turing's 1952 for "gross indecency." We ask the HM Government to grant a ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a scratch-built carbon-fiber violin
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 07, 2011 05:52 am Karen sez, "Instructables user AussieCFViolin has rigged up a carbon fiber violin. This tutorial is an early entry in Instructables' ShopBot Challenge, which is accepting all sorts of creative projects for the chance to win an their own ShopBot. This contest has only been running for a week, and has already seen a lot of ...
Read in browser SETI resumes at Allen Telescope Array
By David Pescovitz on Dec 07, 2011 12:18 am The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has resumed at the Allen Telescope Array in northern California. The ATA was in hibernation for months due to a lack of funding. But new cash came in from the public (yay, public support of science!) and also the US Air Force "as part of a formal assessment of ...
Read in browser Paul Di Filippo reviews Cult of Lego
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 06, 2011 11:45 pm Science Fiction author and bOING bOING contributor Paul Di Filippo reviewed The Cult of Lego, By John Baichtal and Joe Meno for the Barnes and Nobel Review. When I was a child, and well into my adolescent years, I played with LEGO blocks in a curious fashion I invented for myself, and which, for all ...
Read in browser Apparatus to focus human body heat for the purposes of cooking potatoes, 1930
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 10:42 pm I wonder if the "scientists" in this Feb, 1930 Modern Mechanix article ever actually built the potato-cooking apparatus shown here, or whether it was purely for illustration purposes. SCIENTISTS have learned that our bodies are living machines of the combustion type in which the burning of fuel (food) is accompanied by the consumption of oxygen, ...
Read in browser Melbourne cops made to look foolish by protesters in tent costumes get vindictive revenge by stripping protester to underwear in park
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 10:01 pm Occupy Melbourne surprised the local law by turning their tents into costumes; when police attempted to tear down the tents, they sprouted legs and heads and started running around the park. The cops turned and left, chased by tents. But the cops came back, and exacted petty vengeance on the costumed protesters. Several officers grabbed ...
Read in browser Mark is a hypocritical chicken-eater
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 06, 2011 09:58 pm Michael Schreiber, the editor-in-chief of Credit.com, interviewed me about my book, Made by Hand. Here's a short excerpt: Mike: Do you have a favorite project from the book? Mark: My favorite project was raising chickens. Every aspect was enjoyable: building a chicken coop, raising the baby chicks, watching my kids play with the chickens and ...
Read in browser Mountaineering refuge perched on a cliffside
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 09:54 pm This LEAPFactory Refuge Gervasutti is an alpine refuge commissioned by CAI Torino, the Italian Alpine Club. It perches, cantilevered, on a mountainside, offering accommodations and safety to mountain-climbers. It's got a clever prefab design, and is intended to reduce the amount of waste left on mountainsides by climbers. Each module is entirely prefabricated, from the ...
Read in browser Faux Native American fashion
By David Pescovitz on Dec 06, 2011 08:59 pm A few months ago, Urban Outfitters launched a "Navajo" line of clothing (including, er, Navjoa Hipster Panties). The Navajo Nation sent a C&D, claiming that the company violated the Federal Trade Commission Act and Federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 stating that "It is illegal to offer or display for sale, or sell ...
Read in browser Transparent speaker
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 08:57 pm Swedish design firm People People has prototyped a transparent speaker called "Speaker," which uses WiFi or a headphone jack to receive its signal. Being big is good for sound quality, but not so good for shipping. Any other speaker will ship a lot of air around the globe before ending up in your living room. ...
Read in browser Eric Lumbleau on his Mutant Sounds download blog
By David Pescovitz on Dec 06, 2011 07:32 pm Eric Lumbleau is the editor of my favorite music download blog Mutant Sounds, where he curates, presents, and contextualizes fine outré, obscure, and out-of-print recordings. For the most part, this music has has either been swept into the dustbin of audio history or are so painfully rare that only the most dogged (or wealthy) crate-diggers ...
Read in browser Lawsuits hit Carrier IQ and customers
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 06, 2011 06:54 pm Carrier IQ, makers of controversial and covert software recently found to track user activity on cellphones, is only one of the eight companies sued as a result. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Apple, HTC, Samsung and Motorola are also named in a class-action lawsuit filed in Delaware. [Computerworld]
Read in browser Portal bookends
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 06:49 pm ThinkGeek's Portal bookends are a wonderfully geeky way to keep your books from falling off the shelf. Great for the bookish gamers in your life. Portal Bookends (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Vallee, Rucker, and Shirley at TedxBrussels
By David Pescovitz on Dec 06, 2011 06:41 pm Three longtime Boing Boing friends/influences/contributors -- Jacques Vallee, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley -- delivered fascinating presentations at the recent TEDxBrussels event, themed around "A Day In The Deep Future." Jacques talked about possible new models in physics as we look 50 years out while Rudy shared his vision for "biological computing" of the year ...
Read in browser Horrible gifts for gadget fans
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 06, 2011 06:38 pm Gizmodo lists the worst gadget gifts this holiday season. Do not buy cheap cameras or Android tablets, the iPod Touch, "4G" cellphones, or anything with the phrase "Beats by Dre" on it. To these choices I add portable hard drives (prices are high), the iPad (good chance of a major upgrade soon), and "desktop replacement" ...
Read in browser Facebook "flaw" lets anyone see your private photos
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 06, 2011 06:19 pm From CNET's Zack Whittaker: "features in Facebook give users access to personal, private and hidden photos that would normally be hidden from view. The flaw, spotted by members of a body building forum, no less, allows Facebook users to access photos revealed by the report abuse tool."
Read in browser Are 100% of astronomy majors employed?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 06, 2011 05:58 pm On Submitterator, ecodeathmarch linked a news report about a new study that found that people with undergraduate degrees in astronomy and astrophysics had a 0% unemployment rate. Is that for real? First: The details. This fact came not from a recently published study, but from a Wall Street Journal interactive tool that allows you to ...
Read in browser Weather warfare and the Cold War
By David Pescovitz on Dec 06, 2011 05:50 pm For decades, the US military has experimented with weather warfare, controlling weather to make it a weapon. For example, the US's Operation Popeye seeded clouds over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to hopefully flood the enemy's logistical system. And while the official word is that proper weather warfare technologies never advanced much, some conspiracy theorists ...
Read in browser Sugru and Lego: turn anything into a mount for anything else
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 05:47 pm I love Sugru, the polymer clay that sticks anything to anything and dries to a durable, dishwasher-safe finish. In this little Sugru ad, they demonstrate how using Sugru to stick single Lego bricks to various surfaces turns anything into a mount for anything else. It's really fun, and reminds me of another great Sugru use: ...
Read in browser Tourist trap dungeon's skeleton turns out to be real
By David Pescovitz on Dec 06, 2011 05:35 pm For more than thirty years, the managers of the London Dungeon tourist attraction have assumed that a human skeleton they have on display must be fake. Turns out, it's genuine. A curator from Guy's Hospital medical museum thinks a second skeleton there may also be the real thing. From the BBC: London Dungeon operations manager ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: Up The River...
By Ed Piskor on Dec 06, 2011 05:00 pm 
Read in browser Let's play a game: Guess what's being patented!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 06, 2011 04:47 pm Reader iainmclean works in research and development, which means iainmclean reads a lot of patent-ese. Via the new, awesomer Submitterator, iainmclean sent us an excellent example of how the language used in a patent application can make it very difficult to tell what, exactly, is being patented. Here's how the game is played. First, read ...
Read in browser Life-sized brain sculptures made of food
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 04:43 pm Sculptor Sara Asnaghi has produced a series of sculptures of the human brain molded from various foodstuffs, called "What have you got in your head?" The series includes pieces made from barley, chilis, hemp seeds, candy balls, black rice, canary chow, bread crumbs, sugar, and hay. (via Neatorama)
Read in browser Scientists: How do ethics and culture shape your work?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 06, 2011 04:20 pm Recoding Innovation is a National Science Foundation-funded documentary that's basically about the anthropology of science and engineering. If you're a scientist or an engineer, you can participate. How does your culture, values, and beliefs make your work happen? The idea here is that ethics aren't something that hold science back. Instead, applying ethics helps scientists ...
Read in browser A limerick for the Higgs boson
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 06, 2011 04:06 pm "They said when the collider goes on Soon they'd see that elusive boson Very soon we shall hear Whether Cern finds it this year But it's something I won't bet very much on." — Shelly Glashow, Boston University. Nobel prize in physics, 1979 From a collection of physicists' statements on the Higgs boson in The ...
Read in browser Potentially habitable exoplanet: The fine print
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 06, 2011 03:58 pm Kepler-22b is a newly confirmed exoplanet, orbiting a Sun-like star 600 light years away from Earth. The exoplanet sits in the "habitable zone"—a range of orbits around a star that are, based on what we know about life on Earth, most likely to provide the right conditions for life to happen. That is pretty damn ...
Read in browser Literary greats answer high-school student's survey on "symbolism," 1963
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 03:39 pm When science fiction writer Bruce McAllister was 16, in 1963, he decided that his English teacher's insistence on seeking out symbolism in literature was a tedious exercise. McAllister, who had just sold his first story, was skeptical of the whole idea of symbolism in literature, so he typed out an ungrammatical, mimeographed questionnaire about symbolism ...
Read in browser Leave your kids alone: a free-range parenting journey
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 06, 2011 03:30 pm Writing in Boston Magazine, Katherine Ozment recounts how she went from hovering over her kids to keep them from harm to adopting a hands-off regime that let them take risks and play on their own. I had dinner last night with my writing-collaborator Benjamin Rosenbaum and he said he saw his duty as a parent ...
Read in browser Cruel kids in A.B. Frost cartoon
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 06, 2011 02:51 pm David Apatoff of Illustration Art writes about illustrator A.B. Frost (1851 - 1928). As an example of Frost's work, Apatoff included this series about "local scamps who torment a homeless man looking for food." The caption reads, "While the dog keeps him pinned down, the boys have fun pelting the man with their slingshots." I ...
Read in browser 
No comments:
Post a Comment