WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Stop-motion video shows books at play after the bookshop owner has gone Researcher: T-Mobile UK is secretly disrupting secure communications, leaving customers vulnerable to spying Ellsberg on Manning Totally amazing painter is totally amazing Twinkie future threatened amid Hostess woes Gweek 034: Giant Jenga! Congressman drops support for SOPA A Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants Fantastic organized crime comic book, Blue Estate: Vol 2 trade paperback EPA to fracking-polluted village: here's some clean water! 24 hours later: Oh hey, nevermind. Building covered in coats The coming year in space exploration The best account on Twitter What metrics-driven games have a hard time measuring The world, as mapped by frequency of cholera cases Kindergartner breaks leg and gets concussion, teacher makes him crawl over 200 ft of icy ground back to classroom News reporter's on-camera mammogram results in breast cancer diagnosis A scientific conference presentation no one will ever forget Map of pig nicknames from 1884 Capital headphones from AIAIAI Optical illusions The story of the Apollo 11 moon landing, as told through data (video) Wide awake during brain cancer surgery The crab-cam: Charming video of father-daughter science project MakerBot Replicator new 3D printer Why you shouldn't take Nexium Accessorizing with cats Time-lapse video of lab-grown snowflakes Virtual sweatshops versus CAPTCHAs Tallest mountains in the solar system Stop-motion video shows books at play after the bookshop owner has gone
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 10, 2012 01:04 pm The good folks at Toronto's Type Books have made this smashing stop-motion animation of their shelves mysteriously and mischievously reorganizing themselves after everyone has gone home. They position the video as a case for printed books, which it is, but it's also a great case for Type Books, which is an absolutely marvellous bookshop with ...
Read in browser Researcher: T-Mobile UK is secretly disrupting secure communications, leaving customers vulnerable to spying
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 10, 2012 09:00 am Mike Cardwell claims that T-Mobile UK are silently disrupting VPNs and secure connections to mail-servers, using packet-injection techniques more often found in the Great Firewall of China. He documents his findings in detail, and has found someone on the T-Mobile customer forums who claims that a senior technician there stated that it was a deliberate ...
Read in browser Ellsberg on Manning
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 10, 2012 03:38 am "[President Obama] is involved in a war against leakers, against whistle-blowers."
Read in browser Totally amazing painter is totally amazing
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 10, 2012 03:06 am ...And what's amazing is the process. Joe Sabia shares this YouTube video featuring Chilean artist Fabian Gaete Maureira of arte100cia (Arte Sciencia, or "Art Science") that's making the internet rounds today. Via Reddit, here's the artist's blog, and his Flickr stream with finished works. Dude is like Bob Ross on crack. The one below looks ...
Read in browser Twinkie future threatened amid Hostess woes
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 10, 2012 01:45 am Hostess Brands, maker of sugary snacks renowned for their immunity to the laws of thermodynamics, and some of which are filled with indeterminate creams, is preparing to declare bankruptcy for the second time in a decade. [AP]
Read in browser Gweek 034: Giant Jenga!
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 10, 2012 01:17 am Our guest for Gweek podcast 034 is fashion designer Diana Eng, who blends technology with clothing in interesting ways. My cohost is our own Boing Boing science editor, Maggie Koerth-Baker. We sure talked about a lot of things in this episode! Here are the links: Diana's Bioluminescent jellyfish dress Diana's laser cut T-shirts Collab in ...
Read in browser Congressman drops support for SOPA
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 09, 2012 09:58 pm A sustained campaign coordinated by redditors has evidently convinced Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Budget Chair, to drop his support for the Stop Online Piracy Act: "The internet is one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history. It should stay that way. While H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy ...
Read in browser A Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 09, 2012 09:48 pm Boing Boing reader Kenneth is a weird-and-rare book lover who is painstakingly scanning and posting online some of his favorite obscurities. Among the Golden Guides he's posted (dig the iconic visual style!) is the exceedingly hard-to-find and out of print "Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants" from 1976. I haven't seen it in the wild in ...
Read in browser Fantastic organized crime comic book, Blue Estate: Vol 2 trade paperback
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 09, 2012 09:31 pm One of my favorite comic book series of 2011 was Viktor Kalvachev's Blue Estate. I described it as "a hardboiled crime series that takes place in modern day Los Angeles. It’s got a sleazy action hero actor with a passing resemblance to Steven Seagal, the Russian Mafia, the Italian Mafia, a geeky fanboy private eye ...
Read in browser EPA to fracking-polluted village: here's some clean water! 24 hours later: Oh hey, nevermind.
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 09, 2012 09:20 pm Image: A Dimock, Pennsylvania resident who did not want to be identified pours a glass of water taken from his well after the start of natural gas drilling in Dimock, Pennsylvania, March 7, 2009. Dimock is one of hundreds of sites in Pennsylvania where energy companies have raced to tap the massive Marcellus Shale natural ...
Read in browser Building covered in coats
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 09, 2012 09:08 pm This undated photo from an unattributed newspaper shows the facade of a Danish clothier that advertised its overstock coats by covering the building from top to bottom with over a thousand coats. The display was so successful the police had to come and clear the crowd, but the merchant still cleared out his overstock. Coats ...
Read in browser The coming year in space exploration
By David Pescovitz on Jan 09, 2012 08:42 pm Ariel "Spacehack" Waldman points us to this survey of "the most anticipated space missions of 2012." Yes, the Space Shuttle has been retired but as Ariel has said, "I see it as more of a beginning of an era than the end of one. It's due time that NASA no longer has a monopoly on ...
Read in browser The best account on Twitter
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 09, 2012 08:37 pm Are you following @horse_ebooks? John Herrman explains why you must: "It isn't a parody account and it doesn't tell jokes. It's a spam bot that sells shitty ebooks about horses, and it might be the best Twitter account that has ever existed." [Splitsider]
Read in browser What metrics-driven games have a hard time measuring
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 09, 2012 08:07 pm Raph Koster's on a tear these days on the theory and practice of game design. Today, it's a fab little sermonette on why it's not right to sneer at data-driven, "free-to-play" games that use extensive instrumentation to make games that captivate players' attention without a lot of flair or imagination. But Koster has a codicil ...
Read in browser The world, as mapped by frequency of cholera cases
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 09, 2012 07:56 pm This really fascinating image comes from a Scientific American guest blog post about the appendix. What does the appendix have to do with cholera? Turns out, the more we study the appendix, the more it appears that this organ—once thought to be useless—is actually a storage system that allows your gut to repopulate itself with ...
Read in browser Kindergartner breaks leg and gets concussion, teacher makes him crawl over 200 ft of icy ground back to classroom
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 09, 2012 07:54 pm And doesn't call ambulance. "You're a big boy — I can't carry you." Skokie school board officials are remaining mum on the advice of their legal counsel. Of course, no one will be held accountable except the taxpayers, who will pay the settlement.
Read in browser News reporter's on-camera mammogram results in breast cancer diagnosis
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 09, 2012 07:49 pm This sure feels familiar.
Read in browser A scientific conference presentation no one will ever forget
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 09, 2012 07:38 pm "He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection." — You really, really, really must read the story of Professor G.S. Brindley, the 1983 Urodynamics Society meeting, and the first public demonstration of the first effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction. NSFW. ...
Read in browser Map of pig nicknames from 1884
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 09, 2012 07:38 pm H.W. Hill & Co. of Decatur Illinois, the sole manufacturer of Hill's hog ringers, produced this map called "Nicknames of the States." It is from 1884. The Library of Congress has it for free download in a variety of resolutions. I found my new desktop background! There is a pig for every state in the ...
Read in browser Capital headphones from AIAIAI
By David Pescovitz on Jan 09, 2012 07:35 pm The coolest-looking new headphones announced this week aren't at CES. My friend Jens Martin Skibsted and Lars Larsen from KiBiSi designed the Capital headphones from AIAIAI. Jens says that the adjustment system was inspired by snowboard bindings. Capital headphones
Read in browser Optical illusions
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 09, 2012 07:35 pm The Optillusions blog appears to be a collection of optical illusions, but there's something not quite right about it.
Read in browser The story of the Apollo 11 moon landing, as told through data (video)
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 09, 2012 07:34 pm [video link] This data visualization of the Apollo 11 moon mission gathers social and technical data from the 1969 lunar landing in video form. The horizontal axis is an interactive timeline. The horizontal axis is an interactive timeline. The vertical axis is divided into several sections, each corresponding to a data source. At the top, ...
Read in browser Wide awake during brain cancer surgery
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 09, 2012 07:13 pm This fascinating video from the Mayo Clinic explains how 28-year-old Mary Meixner went through "awake surgery" during which surgeons used an intra-operative MRI to target her brain tumor. At the end of the operation, she slept. Then, she says, "I woke up and I was so excited, and I was like, yes! I'm not dead! ...
Read in browser The crab-cam: Charming video of father-daughter science project
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 09, 2012 07:12 pm I love both the idea and the lessons behind this project writer Mike Adamick took on with his daughter during her winter break from kindergarten. Emmeline wanted to know what life was like underwater for the crabs she and her dad caught in San Francisco Bay. So the two of them brainstormed and figured out ...
Read in browser MakerBot Replicator new 3D printer
By David Pescovitz on Jan 09, 2012 07:03 pm Our friend Bre Pettis has introduced the MakerBot Replicator, his company's latest open source 3D printer. It can print much larger objects than the cupcake-sized creations spewed by previous models, and with the optional Dualstrusion feature, it does two colors. The fully-loaded Replicator is $2k. Congrats, Bre! "Introducing The MakerBot Replicator"
Read in browser Why you shouldn't take Nexium
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 09, 2012 06:42 pm The sciencebloggers are abuzz after a WSJ editorial mentioned Nexium, a heartburn medication, repeatedly by name, implying that it is some kind of wonder drug. Nexium was developed by AstraZeneca because its flagship anti-heartburn med, omeprazole (sold under brand names like Prilosec or Losec) was going off-patent. I take omeprazole for reflux, and it works ...
Read in browser Accessorizing with cats
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 09, 2012 06:36 pm Photos of famous people with cats thrown jauntily over their shoulders: It's my new favorite cat meme. Visit Heather Archuletta's Facebook collection for more shots like this. Besides Frank Zappa, she's got David Bowie, Freddy Mercury, and more. Thanks, Joanne Manaster!
Read in browser Time-lapse video of lab-grown snowflakes
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 09, 2012 06:29 pm Back in December, researchers at Caltech posted a research paper to arXiv that attempts to explain why the shape and structure of snowflakes change significantly depending on relatively small shifts in temperature. In order to study this, they had to grow snowflakes in laboratory conditions. It was not an easy thing to figure out how ...
Read in browser Virtual sweatshops versus CAPTCHAs
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 09, 2012 05:53 pm KolotiBablo, a Russian service, pays workers in China, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam to crack CAPTCHAs -- it's a favorite of industrial scale spammers. This company's fortunes represent an interesting economic indicator of the relative cost of labor (plus Internet access and junk PCs) in the poorest countries in the world, versus skilled programmer labor to ...
Read in browser Tallest mountains in the solar system
By David Pescovitz on Jan 09, 2012 05:34 pm Mount Everest's got nothing on Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. At 15.5 miles high, it's also the largest volcano on Mars, covering the size of Arizona. Smithsonian listed the the top ten tallest mountains in the solar system. Earth barely made the list with Mauna Loa. And you thought Everest was ...
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