WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Magic, juggling and variety: Mat Ricardo's East London spectacular The President's challenge: What more does government want — or deserve — from the tech world? Vortex, a USB keytar Inside SpaceX's Dragon NYT Pony Correction revisited Elfquest too much like The Hobbit, says Warner Brothers Trailer for Die Antwoord's upcoming "TEN$ION" album Ornate Victorian typewriter A.D.D. comic book: Exclusive essay and excerpt by author Douglas Rushkoff Make: Talk 002 - Bob Knetzger, Toy Inventor Secret history of the SOPA/PIPA fight Marx Brothers history Gweek 036: Grab bag of comics, book, gadgets, apps, and websites we love Notes towards a practice of responsive comics New Righthaven offers hosting service "with a spine" US record labels trying to sneak SOPA's provisions into Canada's pending copyright legislation Vermin Supreme: strong teeth for a strong America Preppers: suburban survivalists Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory Room 237: documentary about The Shining Museum photos: Mummified Ice-Age bison Testing suborbital rocket navigation on Earth Inside a malware company's trouble-ticket system John Cale on "I've Got A Secret" (1963) Local snow does not disprove global climate change Supremes to GPS-snooping cops: come back with a warrant I will not put a pun in this headline Good news: Whale and dolphins are friends Funny titles mask serious science Petition: investigate Chris Dodd for fraud Magic, juggling and variety: Mat Ricardo's East London spectacular
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 24, 2012 09:00 am I've featured the work of net-savvy, happily mutated juggler and magician Mat Ricardo here before. Now he's planning quite an astounding show in east London. He sez, Further to the tale of how I soul-searched, and crowd-sourced to revitalise my career - I'm launching a unique new monthly variety show in London. The best performers ...
Read in browser The President's challenge: What more does government want — or deserve — from the tech world?
By Nat Torkington on Jan 24, 2012 05:16 am There's an old joke. Heavy rains start and a neighbour pulls up in his truck. "Hey Bob, I'm leaving for high ground. Want a lift?" Bob says, "No, I'm putting my faith in God." Well, waters rise and pretty soon the bottom floor of his house is under water. Bob looks out the second story ...
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By Rob Beschizza on Jan 24, 2012 04:51 am A $250 USB keytar with DAW automapping, MIDI-assignable motion sensitivity and an internal battery for optional use with an iPad? Yes. [Alesis]
Read in browser Inside SpaceX's Dragon
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 24, 2012 04:35 am When it heads into orbit this year, SpaceX's Dragon will be the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. It won't be carrying tourists, but you can explore it now thanks to a panoramic view published by the company. [SpaceX]
Read in browser NYT Pony Correction revisited
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 24, 2012 04:20 am I'm a little late back to the party, but here's even more coverage of the now-infamous NYT My Little Pony Correction. [Romenesko] Previously.
Read in browser Elfquest too much like The Hobbit, says Warner Brothers
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 24, 2012 02:19 am Warner Brothers has canceled production of Elfquest, a movie about the feral descendants of space-faring shape-shifters and their quest to uncover the truth about their ancestors' crash-landing on a primitive planet, because that sounds rather too much like The Hobbit. These guys need to watch today's Die Antwoord video tailer and get a clue about ...
Read in browser Trailer for Die Antwoord's upcoming "TEN$ION" album
By Xeni Jardin on Jan 24, 2012 02:01 am [Video Link] This just hit the internet today. TEN$ION, the South African band's new album scheduled out February 7, will be their first release since breaking up with Interscope. Die Antwoord leave Interscope, will release "TEN$ION" on their own ... Die Antwoord: "Fok Julle Naaiers" (music video) - Boing Boing A farewell to Leon Botha ...
Read in browser Ornate Victorian typewriter
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 24, 2012 01:13 am AntiqueTypewriters.com has a great section on the Crandall New Model, "one of the most beautiful typewriters ever made." It has a wonderful curved and ornate Victorian design and is lavishly decorated with hand painted roses, accented with inlaid mother-of-pearl! Lucien S. Crandall was born in Broome County New York in 1844. He would become one ...
Read in browser A.D.D. comic book: Exclusive essay and excerpt by author Douglas Rushkoff
By Douglas Rushkoff on Jan 24, 2012 12:34 am Everyone seems to have A.D.D. these days. (In case you've been too distracted by your Twitter feed to remember, A.D.D. stands for Attention Deficit Disorder -- the inability to focus on any one thing for too long, the urge to do nine things at once, and the hyper, constantly shifting, unsettled feeling that goes along ...
Read in browser Make: Talk 002 - Bob Knetzger, Toy Inventor
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 24, 2012 12:01 am Here's the second episode of MAKE's new podcast, Make: Talk! In each episode, I'll interview one of the makers from the pages of the magazine. We created Make: Talk to find out about the people who write the how-to articles in MAKE. As you might guess, MAKE's authors are often as interesting as the projects ...
Read in browser Secret history of the SOPA/PIPA fight
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 11:48 pm Carl Franzen's history of the SOPA/PIPA fight on Talking Points Memo is a fascinating account of the behind-the-scenes stuff that created the series of ever-larger protests that resulted in the bills' demise. Of particular note is his credit to Tiffiniy Cheng, who, along with Nicholas Reville, and Holmes Wilson, forms a trio of Boston-bred activists ...
Read in browser Marx Brothers history
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 10:23 pm The latest installment from the great pop culture podcast Tank Riot is an in-depth look at the Marx Brothers. The lads cover the Marx's personal lives, their filmography, their place in the histories of Vaudeville, film and radio, and more besides. MP3
Read in browser Gweek 036: Grab bag of comics, book, gadgets, apps, and websites we love
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jan 23, 2012 09:32 pm Gweek is a weekly podcast where the editors and friends of Boing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My hosts on episode 36 are cartoonist Ruben Bolling, whose comic, Tom the Dancing Bug, premieres weekly on Boing Boing, and Dean Putney, ...
Read in browser Notes towards a practice of responsive comics
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 08:53 pm Here's the very talented Pablo Defendini -- developer, designer, artist, digital guy -- describing how "responsive" comics can be made using HTML and CSS that intelligently format themselves for a variety of devices, and addressing the writing and illustration challenges this gives rise to. He's not talking about "motion comics" -- he's talking about comics ...
Read in browser New Righthaven offers hosting service "with a spine"
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 23, 2012 08:40 pm After snatching a notorious copyright troll's name at auction, a Swiss company is turning Righthaven.com into a web hosting service. The intended customers? Publishers worried about the kind of abusive legal threats spewed out by the domain's previous owner. "The Swiss courts don't play games and registrars here cannot be scared," said Stefan Thalberg of ...
Read in browser US record labels trying to sneak SOPA's provisions into Canada's pending copyright legislation
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 07:59 pm Michael Geist sez, The Internet battle against SOPA and PIPA generated huge interest in Canada with many Canadians turning their sites dark (including Blogging Tories, Project Gutenberg Canada, and CIPPIC) in support of the protest. While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export ...
Read in browser Vermin Supreme: strong teeth for a strong America
By Dean Putney on Jan 23, 2012 07:21 pm Meet presidential candidate Vermin Supreme, the tyrant you should trust. He's wearing a boot as a hat and he knows what's best for you. If you let him control your life, you'll enjoy mandatory daily toothbrushing, free ponies for all Americans, fantastic wordplay and zombie energy generation. Stick around for the end when he glitterbombs ...
Read in browser Preppers: suburban survivalists
By David Pescovitz on Jan 23, 2012 05:52 pm Reuters profiles "Preppers" who are getting ready for total and complete societal breakdown due to natural disaster, terrorism, economic collapse, pandemic, or a good ol' fashioned apocalypse. Of course, they speak to Prepper patron saint James Wesley Rawles, author of How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It who also offers ...
Read in browser Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory
By David Pescovitz on Jan 23, 2012 05:08 pm When Apple fanboy Mike Daisey saw photos from someone's iPhone that were ostensibly from inside Foxconn and not wiped before shipment, he became deeply curious about the goings on in the factory that makes a lot of our high-tech crap. So he went to Shenzhen, stood outside the plant, and talked to the workers. His ...
Read in browser Room 237: documentary about The Shining
By David Pescovitz on Jan 23, 2012 04:46 pm Room 237 is my old friend Rodney Ascher's curious new documentary about the hidden (imagined?) meanings and metaphors in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It premiers today at the Sundance Film Festival! Above is a short video about the score to Room 237. As the vocoder-esque narration says, "Kubrick's film was scored in large part with ...
Read in browser Museum photos: Mummified Ice-Age bison
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 23, 2012 04:31 pm Kirk Johnson is a paleobotanist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He took this photo at the University of Alaska Museum during a recent trip to Fairbanks. What you're looking at is a mummified bison from the Ice Age. It was frozen in solid soil and uncovered by gold miners who were artificially ...
Read in browser Testing suborbital rocket navigation on Earth
By David Pescovitz on Jan 23, 2012 04:31 pm When planning a mission to another planet, or even the moon, a big challenge is testing the sensors and instruments that actually land the payloads on the planetary surface. In this video, Draper Laboratory demonstrates how their Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment (GENIE) -- a guidance, navigation, and control system -- can control a Xombie ...
Read in browser Inside a malware company's trouble-ticket system
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 04:25 pm Brian Krebs has been through the support forums for the "Citadel" trojan, a piece of commercial malicious software (spun out from the notorious ZeuS trojan) you can buy and use to take over other peoples' computers to make botnets for sending spam or taking down websites with traffic-floods. The fun-loving crooks running Citidel take their ...
Read in browser John Cale on "I've Got A Secret" (1963)
By David Pescovitz on Jan 23, 2012 04:09 pm While the amazing John Cale is best known as a founder of the Velvet Underground, his association with the group followed Cale's deep involvement with the avant-garde classical music scene. During the early 1960s, Cale performed with John Cage, La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and many others, and pioneered the drone/minimalist sound that continues to ...
Read in browser Local snow does not disprove global climate change
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 23, 2012 04:08 pm Even with all those Snowpocalypseses(?), NASA says that 2011 was still the ninth warmest year on record since 1880—and all but one of the top 10 warmest years have happened in the last 11 years. 1998 is third-hottest, although it's worth noting that the top six years are all close enough that they may as ...
Read in browser Supremes to GPS-snooping cops: come back with a warrant
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 04:01 pm The US Supreme Court has unanimously overturned several lower courts and ruled that police can't hide GPS trackers on your car without a warrant.
Read in browser I will not put a pun in this headline
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 23, 2012 03:46 pm You may be pleased to know that there is an International Forum for the Study of Itch. And it has a regular conference, which just leads to inevitable jokes.
Read in browser Good news: Whale and dolphins are friends
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 23, 2012 03:39 pm Sometimes, you need to start off your week with a dose of happy news. For instance, this video from the American Museum of Natural History details two recent instances where scientists have observed a whale and several dolphins interacting in ways that are something we might classify as "play". It's hard to talk about animal ...
Read in browser Funny titles mask serious science
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 23, 2012 02:54 pm Sabina Hossenfelder, an assistant professor of high-energy and nuclear physics at Sweden's Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, is collecting a list of scientific research papers with hilarious names. I've long known that humanities researchers have a good deal of freedom in titling their work—ever since running across the seminal work "Like a Thesis: A post-modern ...
Read in browser Petition: investigate Chris Dodd for fraud
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 23, 2012 01:21 pm A petition to the White House asks for an official investigation of former senator and now-MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, who strongly implied that he believes his members' contributions to election campaigns are bribes. "This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting ...
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