WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Clarion Workshop accepting applications from aspiring sf/f writers Dutch court gives rightsholder group unchecked power to block IPs and domains in the Netherlands Toaster made from cinderblock RAW quote: disobedience was man's original virtue Thin Lizzy vs. The Pixies Powell's 2 store in Portland: Maker heaven Soapy: an even better anti-SOPA browser plugin Open Source PID Controller Leaked DHS internet watchlist "mistakes" msthirteen.com, skeevy German site about 13yo girls for MS-13 gang news RAW Week: a letter from Robert Anton Wilson (1991) Crocheted cyclops Homeland Security Internet Watch List leaked; Boing Boing sadly omitted from list of must-read sites for domestic spying Iraqi restaurant window smashed. Veterans hold "eat-in" to show support for Iraqi refugees. Astronomers see more planets than stars in galaxy Sunflower geometry inspires better solar power plant design "Martian Chronicles" reading RAW Week: Mindfucking Since 1976, by Gareth Branwyn Muslim student claims sexual harrassment, school ignores, she's falsely reported as a terrorist, FBI shows up at her door CES vs SOPA Study raises new concerns about safety of genetically modified food Utah AG publishes pro-SOPA op-ed with uncited quotations from MPAA promotional materials Videogame for pigs and people Last year's list of evil clowns Liquid-piston-driven concept watch Handmade TARDIS purse Vintage aluminum label-embosser kicks your labelwriter's ass The Midnight Archive: Occult NYC, part 2 TOM THE DANCING BUG: Use Your Republican Decoder Badge To Find Out Their SECRET MESSAGES! HOWTO move a makerspace RAW Week: Keep the Lasagna Flying, by Paul Krassner Clarion Workshop accepting applications from aspiring sf/f writers
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 12, 2012 12:56 pm The Clarion Writers' Workshop is a sort of bootcamp for science fiction and fantasy writers. You write something like six stories in six weeks, critique your fellow students' stories for several hours every day, and get a new instructor every week who combines lectures, workshops and one-on-one meetings. It's all held on UC San Diego's ...
Read in browser Dutch court gives rightsholder group unchecked power to block IPs and domains in the Netherlands
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 12, 2012 11:13 am Niels sez, "Yesterday, the Court of The Hague ordered Dutch ISPs XS4ALL and Ziggo to block access to 3 IPs and 24 domains of The Pirate Bay. On top of that, it granted the entertainment industry's lobby organisation BREIN the power to order extra addresses to be added the blacklist, without having to go to ...
Read in browser Toaster made from cinderblock
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 12, 2012 09:02 am Adi Zaffran's "Pita bread toaster" is a super-minimalist, possibly incendiary, rather heavy brutalist rethink of the design of a toaster: "The pita bread as a staple food led me to the use of simple and basic building materials. Here is a brick oven which is elementary while taking advantage of the cement block's morphology" Pita ...
Read in browser RAW quote: disobedience was man's original virtue
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 12, 2012 06:23 am "Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and 'progress,' everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of ...
Read in browser Thin Lizzy vs. The Pixies
By David Pescovitz on Jan 12, 2012 02:37 am Thin Lizzy vs The Pixies, "The Boys Are Back In Heaven," courtesy Phil Retro Spector. (via Greg Dulli)
Read in browser Powell's 2 store in Portland: Maker heaven
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 11, 2012 11:30 pm Bob Knetzger, who writes the Toy Inventor's Notebook column for MAKE says: In Portland yesterday I wandered in to Powell's Books. No, not the big, main Powell's Books, but the small satellite Powell's 2 store across the street. Ever been? It's just the technical book selection and, boy, is it Maker heaven in there! Computer ...
Read in browser Soapy: an even better anti-SOPA browser plugin
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 11:13 pm Kate sez, "Soapy is a new web browser plug-in that allows users to visit websites blocked by SOPA by automatically redirecting them to the site's IP address. The Firefox version of the plugin is downloadable now; the Google Chrome version will be finished shortly. This free software makes the practical implementation of SOPA impossible, since ...
Read in browser Open Source PID Controller
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 11, 2012 11:13 pm I used a PID (proportional–integral–derivative) controller to regulate the temperature of my espresso maker. I wrote about it in my book, Made by Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself. (You can read an except from the chapter on Gizmodo.) PIDs are often used in Sous Vide cookers, too. (Here's how to make one). ...
Read in browser Leaked DHS internet watchlist "mistakes" msthirteen.com, skeevy German site about 13yo girls for MS-13 gang news
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 10:29 pm Um. Yeah. So I'm going to be charitable here and presume that whoever compiled that internet monitoring watchlist at the Department of Homeland Security thought that "Miss Thirteen," at www.msthirteen.com, was a site about the ultraviolent Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang, which originated in El Salvador and now operates in a number of US cities. ...
Read in browser RAW Week: a letter from Robert Anton Wilson (1991)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 11, 2012 10:23 pm I always liked getting letters from Robert Anton Wilson. He enjoyed playing with the fonts on his Mac. In this letter, he thanked me for sending him a copy of my self-published comic book, Toilet Devil (which was the name that Koko the Talking Ape called people she was upset with). Fnord
Read in browser Crocheted cyclops
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 10:01 pm Crochet costumer Veronica Knight has topped herself with this crocheted cyclops outfit. This puts the Z in ZOMG. Crocheted Cyclops Costume
Read in browser Homeland Security Internet Watch List leaked; Boing Boing sadly omitted from list of must-read sites for domestic spying
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 09:48 pm I am outraged that our blog didn't make it on to the list of websites the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors. The grandfather of all rogue leak sites, Cryptome, has published a copy of the government document (PDF link to document copy). There's a Reuters article summarizing its significance here: A ...
Read in browser Iraqi restaurant window smashed. Veterans hold "eat-in" to show support for Iraqi refugees.
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 09:31 pm [video link] Faith in humanity status: restored. They're from Veterans for Peace. There's an article about the incident in the local paper, here. Babylon Restaurant, the business targeted in the possible hate crime, was featured in this Boston Globe article just one month ago. If you're in Massachusetts, maybe go have a meal there sometime ...
Read in browser Astronomers see more planets than stars in galaxy
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 09:08 pm Associated Press: "We're finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn't even think could exist,' said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror Star Wars Luke Skywalker's home planet with twin suns."
Read in browser Sunflower geometry inspires better solar power plant design
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 08:55 pm MIT mechanical engineer Alexander Mitsos and colleagues were seeking an improved layout for solar power plants, and found inspiration in the concentric spirals of the sunflower. (via @pourmecoffee)
Read in browser "Martian Chronicles" reading
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 08:49 pm The Starship Sofa podcast has produced an excellent reading of my novella "The Martian Chronicles," which was originally published in Jonathan Strahan's YA anthology Life on Mars. The reading is by Jeff Lane, who's really talented. Here's the MP3 (the reading starts around 1:50).
Read in browser RAW Week: Mindfucking Since 1976, by Gareth Branwyn
By Gareth Branwyn on Jan 11, 2012 08:23 pm Above: Gareth's original copies of The Illuminatus Trilogy. "It's not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you weep." -- Illuminatus! I first discovered Robert Anton Wilson when I was 18 years old. I'd just moved to a commune in the tobacco fields of central Virginia and was ...
Read in browser Muslim student claims sexual harrassment, school ignores, she's falsely reported as a terrorist, FBI shows up at her door
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 08:19 pm Balayla Ahmad, an observant African-American Muslim student at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, has filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was sexually harassed by a male student in 2009 for months on end, but that university officials showed "deliberate indifference" to her repeated complaints—and that she was then reported to the FBI in revenge ...
Read in browser CES vs SOPA
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 07:58 pm Consumer Electronics Association president Gary Shapiro, at his CES keynote: "[SOPA is championed by] politicians who are proudly unfamiliar with how the internet works, but who are well familiar with favors from well-heeled copyright extremists." (via Reddit)
Read in browser Study raises new concerns about safety of genetically modified food
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 11, 2012 07:56 pm A study at Nanjing University in China found that ingested "microRNA" (very small pieces of ribonucleic acid, or RNA) from plants were able to survive digestion and influence the function of human cells. Food columnist Ari Levaux has a piece digging into the implications, in The Atlantic. The basic idea: if this research stands up ...
Read in browser Utah AG publishes pro-SOPA op-ed with uncited quotations from MPAA promotional materials
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 07:00 pm Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's recent op-ed in the Salt Lake City Tribune is full of quotes and paraphrases from promotional materials produced by the MPAA and execs from its member-companies in support of SOPA. This uncited quotation is the kind of thing that academics call cheating, and that the MPAA (incorrectly) calls "copyright theft." ...
Read in browser Videogame for pigs and people
By David Pescovitz on Jan 11, 2012 06:58 pm This is Pig Chase, a concept for an interspecies video game for pigs to play with humans. Researchers at Wageningen University and the Utrecht School of the Arts designed the game to make farm life more stimulating for swine. "Playing With Pigs project page" "Pigs Playing Video Games = Ethical Farming?" (Mother Jones)
Read in browser Last year's list of evil clowns
By David Pescovitz on Jan 11, 2012 06:48 pm Over at Copycat Effect, Loren Coleman shares his list of "Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011." Seen here is Andrew Joseph Davis, 20, who was arrested in May for running down a person with his car. Police were called after eyewitnesses saw a driver wearing the distinctive face paint swerve across the road near Bartlesville, ...
Read in browser Liquid-piston-driven concept watch
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 06:24 pm Watchismo gives us an early look at Vincent Perriard & Co's HYT H1, a concept watch starting at $45,000 that will debut at the Baselworld 2012 show. It uses liquid-driven pistons as well as gears to tell the time. I am agog. Pistons in the movement move the bellows. As one expands the other one ...
Read in browser Handmade TARDIS purse
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 05:18 pm Etsy seller LIMOchi makes these killer "poly leather" TARDIS purses to order for all your time-travelling bits and bobs. The seller claims that they are, indeed, bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. ( Not an official Doctor Who product , made by fan, to fan )... Measures: 28 x 16 x16 ...
Read in browser Vintage aluminum label-embosser kicks your labelwriter's ass
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 04:14 pm Make's Sean Michael Ragan reviews an old-school Dymo Metal Embossing Tapewriter he found cheap on eBay and finds it to be an eminently satisfying piece of kit. There are modern versions but they'll cost you lots more, and this thing is pretty much indestructible so there's no reason not to buy a cheapo one on ...
Read in browser The Midnight Archive: Occult NYC, part 2
By David Pescovitz on Jan 11, 2012 04:12 pm Part two of the mini-documentary on the historical occult underbelly of NYC is now online at The Midnight Archive. In this episode, former BB guestblogger Mitch Horowitz, author of the terrific Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, hips us to Theosophical Society founder Madame Blavatsky's midtown Salon and the mystic ...
Read in browser TOM THE DANCING BUG: Use Your Republican Decoder Badge To Find Out Their SECRET MESSAGES!
By Ruben Bolling on Jan 11, 2012 03:50 pm RECOMMEND: Visit the Tom the Dancing Bug website, and follow Ruben Bolling on Twitter.
Read in browser HOWTO move a makerspace
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 11, 2012 03:04 pm Makerspaces are pretty gnarly, filled with unwieldy equipment, fragile projects-in-progress, glorious fire hazards, and delicate instruments. Moving a makerspace sounds like a nightmare. MAKE's guide to moving a makerspace, penned by the Jigsaw Renaissance members after their last move, is a great place to start when your hackspace loses its lease or outgrows its boundaries. ...
Read in browser RAW Week: Keep the Lasagna Flying, by Paul Krassner
By Paul Krassner on Jan 11, 2012 02:23 pm Wilson and Krassner Display Maturity . . . Maybe Most likely your daily newspaper didn't acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson on January 11, 2007. He was 74. The prolific author and countercultural icon had been suffering from post-polio syndrome. Caregivers read all of his late wife Arlen's poetry to him at his bedside ...
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