WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Distrust That Particular Flavor: William Gibson's long-overdue essay collection Behold! Vertu's $200 USB cable Photos from the first science fiction convention, 1937 FOIA haul covers a half-century of government telephone security phear The Botany of Bible Lands: An Interview with Prof. Avinoam Danin SF vs. SF Aerodyne, a compact hand-made Art Deco computer Steve Jobs action figure Who is Rick Santorum? Into the Zone: The Story of the Cacophony Society The Verge's best tech writing of 2011 Iowa Nice If Atari game-boxes had told the truth "More information about penguins than I care to have" Florida deputies cleared of wrongdoing in unusual death Gingerbread Girl: graphic novel of a woman missing her Penfield Homunculus LOLcats and the Arab Spring - human rights and the Internet Rupert Murdoch's first "deleted" tweet Iran tests new radar-evading missile Alan Turing commemorative stamp Spare parts for humans: tissue engineers develop lab-grown lungs and limbs Virulent, extremophile whiskey-drinking fungus Underlord with two minions, a pencil sculpture Ambient music inspired by Instagram images Iberian Peninsula aglow European railway commercial: Ash cloud animation Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto New Boing Boing T-shirt and baby snapsuit: Critter Pyramid design for the Lincoln Memorial Top ten top ten top ten lists Distrust That Particular Flavor: William Gibson's long-overdue essay collection
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 03, 2012 12:39 pm The remarkable thing about Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson's debut essay collection, is that it was so long in coming, collecting two-and-a-half decades' worth of nonfiction, opinion, travelogue, memoir, media theory, speeches, criticism, and miscellania. Because although Gibson disclaims any title to being an essayist -- he says in his introduction that writing nonfiction ...
Read in browser Behold! Vertu's $200 USB cable
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 03, 2012 05:56 am Did you know that Nokia has a "luxury" subsidiary that makes phones for stupid rich people? As the European cellular industry's supernumerary nipple, Vertu has long specialized in calculator-display brickphones that look like dragon poo rolled in gemstones. It lumbers along the dried slugtrail of progress, having just announced its first touchscreen Symbian handset--sure to ...
Read in browser Photos from the first science fiction convention, 1937
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 03, 2012 05:24 am Just in time for the 75th anniversary, some photos of the "first" science fiction convention, in Leeds (shown here, Walter Gillings, Arthur C. Clarke, Ted Carnell, in front of Theosophical Hall). Although the site pooh-poohs the idea that the first Philcon was the first-ever con, I'm somewhat loyal to the notion, for the completely ahistorical ...
Read in browser FOIA haul covers a half-century of government telephone security phear
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 03, 2012 04:36 am Government Attic's latest FOIA haul is a compilation of FBI documents concerning the security of telephone services, 1952-1995. The collection is posted as a single 66MB monster PDF. Get cracking! On reading the PDF, I mean.
Read in browser The Botany of Bible Lands: An Interview with Prof. Avinoam Danin
By Avi Solomon on Jan 03, 2012 04:12 am Avinoam Danin is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He curates Flora of Israel Online. His latest book is Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin. Avi Solomon: What first sparked your lifelong fascination with botany? Avinoam Danin: ...
Read in browser SF vs. SF
By Madeline Ashby on Jan 03, 2012 03:17 am Illustration: Kurt Caesar (?) Tell me the difference between these two pieces of text. Example 1 Even if Junior had understood enough English to answer her, he didn't get the chance. The RV swerved abruptly to the right, throwing them both against wall. Amy grabbed him and tucked him in close to her as the ...
Read in browser Aerodyne, a compact hand-made Art Deco computer
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 03, 2012 02:36 am Aerodyne is Jeffrey Stephenson's latest hand-made Art Deco PC. In keeping with the (modern) times, it's a compact Mini-ITX affair in mahogany and aluminum, with an Intel i3 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid state drive. Stephenson plans to make no more than a handful of them, to order.
Read in browser Steve Jobs action figure
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 03, 2012 01:17 am The Next Web predicts this unauthorized Steve Jobs action figure will get the kibosh before it goes on sale in February. (Thanks, Rachel!)
Read in browser Who is Rick Santorum?
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 03, 2012 12:30 am When [Rock] Santorum was in high school, "Everybody called him 'Rooster' because of a strand of hair on the back of his head which stood up, and because of his competitive, in-your-face attitude. 'He would debate anything and everything with you, mostly sports,' [a friend recalled]. 'He was like a rooster. He never backed down.'" ...
Read in browser Into the Zone: The Story of the Cacophony Society
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 11:53 pm [Video Link] I'm looking forward to Into the Zone, a documentary about the Cacophony Society, which was a pranksterish underground cultural movement from San Francisco that paved the way for Burning Man. There will be a screening on Saturday, February 4, 2012 in Santa Ana, CA, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker Jon ...
Read in browser The Verge's best tech writing of 2011
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 02, 2012 11:40 pm The Verge's Thomas Houston offers a roundup of the best tech stories from last year.
Read in browser Iowa Nice
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 11:11 pm [Video Link] Scott Siepker set me straight about Iowa! (NSFW) (Via Steve Silberman)
Read in browser If Atari game-boxes had told the truth
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 02, 2012 11:06 pm Mighty God King lives up to his handle with this fab series of truth-in-advertising shoops of old Atari game box-art, in which the true nature of the games is revealed in their titles. Fun From Yesterday!
Read in browser "More information about penguins than I care to have"
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 10:54 pm From Futility Closet: In 1944 a children's book club sent a volume about penguins to a 10-year-old girl, enclosing a card seeking her opinion. She wrote, "This book gives me more information about penguins than I care to have." American diplomat Hugh Gibson called it the finest piece of literary criticism he had ever read.
Read in browser Florida deputies cleared of wrongdoing in unusual death
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 10:47 pm Radley Balko says: Maybe there's a legitimate law enforcement reason to strip a man naked, strap him to a chair, tie a "spit hood" around his mouth, put a hood over his head (see video at the link), and douse him with pepper spray until he dies. That's what sheriff's deputies in Lee County, Florida ...
Read in browser Gingerbread Girl: graphic novel of a woman missing her Penfield Homunculus
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 10:37 pm UPDATE: Leigh Walton of Top Shelf just let me know that Gingerbread Girl is available in its entirety as a free webcomic! In Gingerbread Girl, a graphic novel by Paul Tobin, and illustrated by Colleen Coover, Anna Billips is a outwardly-cheerful and carefree 27-year-old woman who is convinced that her Penfield Homunculus was surgically removed ...
Read in browser LOLcats and the Arab Spring - human rights and the Internet
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 02, 2012 10:15 pm On the CBC Ideas podcast, a lecture by Ethan Zuckerman on the connection between LOLcats, Internet activism and the Arab Spring: In the 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture, Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, looks at the "cute cat" theory of internet activism, and how it helps explain the Arab ...
Read in browser Rupert Murdoch's first "deleted" tweet
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 02, 2012 09:50 pm Here is someone who hates everyone. [SMH] Update: Though the deletion was widely reported, the tweet is evidently still live.
Read in browser Iran tests new radar-evading missile
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 02, 2012 09:36 pm A soldier carries ammunition on a naval ship during the Velayat-90 war game on Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz in southern Iran December 31, 2011. Iran test-fired a new medium-range missile, designed to evade radars, on Sunday during the last days of its naval drill in the Gulf, the official IRNA news ...
Read in browser Alan Turing commemorative stamp
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 02, 2012 09:00 pm Alan Turing will get his own UK commemorative stamp in 2012. It will be fun to use it on sealed envelopes, as a kind of cherry-on-the-top for the traditional crypto argument that scrambling messages is the same as putting them in an envelope, as opposed to writing them on postcards. The computer pioneer is one ...
Read in browser Spare parts for humans: tissue engineers develop lab-grown lungs and limbs
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 02, 2012 08:55 pm [Video Link] Above, a PBS NewsHour report by science correspondent Miles O'Brien which I helped shoot, on the subject of tissue engineering. The goal in this field: Grow tissue or even whole organs to repair damaged or diseased human bodies. The report focuses in part on Isaias Hernandez, a 26-year old Marine whose leg was ...
Read in browser Virulent, extremophile whiskey-drinking fungus
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 02, 2012 08:16 pm Writing in Wired, Adam Rogers tells the story of how Canadian mycologist James Scott started his career by tracking down an ancient fungus that had adapted to growing on whiskey fumes and had infested a town around a Hiram Walker warehouse. Relatives of the fungus had been found around Cognac distilleries in 1872, but it ...
Read in browser Underlord with two minions, a pencil sculpture
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 02, 2012 08:10 pm 5star's Lords of Graphite is a series of sculptures made from pencil segments: "The vision that haunts me still is a landscape of dark brooding mystic air - raw rough lines drawn forcefully throughout by the Lords of Graphite."
Read in browser Ambient music inspired by Instagram images
By David Pescovitz on Jan 02, 2012 07:35 pm BB pal and former guestblogger Marc Weidenbaum, of the excellent Disquiet site asked 25 ambient musicians "who also enjoy using Instagram to create original short pieces of music -- call them "sonic postcards" -- inspired by each other's Instagram photos." He's posted the entire lovely collection of tracks and also a 58-page PDF of the ...
Read in browser Iberian Peninsula aglow
By David Pescovitz on Jan 02, 2012 07:29 pm Above is the Iberian Peninsula as photographed from the International Space Station. Light pollution looks pretty from space. From National Geographic: This photograph from space also shows airglow, a faint green arc seen along the horizon that's caused by chemical reactions among the gas molecules of Earth's upper atmosphere. "Iberian Night"
Read in browser European railway commercial: Ash cloud animation
By David Pescovitz on Jan 02, 2012 07:25 pm My son and I were looking at volcano videos on YouTube and got a chuckle out of this (faux) "European Railways" commercial.
Read in browser Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto
By Glenn Fleishman on Jan 02, 2012 07:24 pm Roboto, the new "house" font for Android 4, was branded a haphazard mash of classic typefaces. The longer you look at it--and the technological constraints that it aims to transcend-
the clearer its virtues become.
Read in browser New Boing Boing T-shirt and baby snapsuit: Critter
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 02, 2012 07:22 pm We have a new T-shirt design! I drew this one, and it's called "Critter." It comes in a baby snapsuit size, too, for $8.95. Boing Boing Critter $14.95 Boing Boing Monkey $14.95 Boing Boing Beetle $14.95
Read in browser Pyramid design for the Lincoln Memorial
By David Pescovitz on Jan 02, 2012 07:20 pm Seen above is a proposed 1912 design for the Lincoln Memorial by John Russell Pope, who would go on to design the Jefferson Memorial. According to historians quoted in Smithsonian magazine, Pope didn't like the site for the memorial so he "created radical designs in a last-ditch effort to discourage the Lincoln Memorial Commission from ...
Read in browser Top ten top ten top ten lists
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 02, 2012 07:07 pm In celebration of the new year, David "Everything is Miscellaneous" Weinberger has written up his "Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten list" -- a list of ten great lists of top ten lists. He also includes seven articles about why we like top ten lists. The Top Ten Top Ten Lists of All Time TopTenz ...
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