[Sponsor] New watches from Barcelona at Watchismo this week: the "XXLED" series features exactly that - an enormous Light Emitting Diode display. and the "Concentric" watches encapsulate time disappearing in a thinning chaos of digits. The "NeoGeo" quite simply tells time with unexpected randomness and the ever popular "John Watch" collection has been revamped with new designs and colors, still the longest watch in the world!
Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health Hierarchical lists of Chinese snob-appeal in products, services and technology Imploding iceberg in Antarctica Sponsor Shout-Out: Watchismo DirecTV turns on DRM, breaks peoples' home theaters The science of the Cinnamon Challenge Behold the immortal chocolate whirlpools of the AP's Wire Services homepage Pot helps student athletes perform at high level Talk on the future of energy in Madison, Wisconsin Sugar Cube: a platformer with a refreshingly novel mechanic Norwich City soccer team demands teen's arrest for finding unannounced images on public website Win a signed galley copy of Greg Bear & Neal Stephenson's upcoming collaborative book: The Mongoliad! (plus excerpt) Taking a walk across Pitch Lake Welcome to the State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls Toronto's dingleberry mayor releases $2 graffiti-reporting app Cuban Pete, an appreciation Paul Gravett interviews R. Crumb Grid computing turns your idle cycles into a charity-supporting supercomputer Boneshaker author asks Kickstarter fans to fund novella Ubisoft sued over copyright infringement claim How to photograph International Space Station flyovers Searching for "Caballo Blanco," famed long-distance runner who died on the trail NYT on enjoying turntables without getting carried away Naked Portlandian man protests TSA screening injustice through nakedness Brian Wood's DMZ: a critical look back Pentagon tried to prevent publication of Afghanistan corpse abuse photos Crazy Decals: LSD for Lunch Bunch Elderly perv falsely diagnosed cancer in women so he could sexually assault, use weird gadgets on them 10 delightful practical jokes Working machine gun for kids! Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 19, 2012 01:01 pm I read a galley of Bruce Perry's new book, Fitness for Geeks, and found the advice and explanations about diet and fitness to be fascinating. His program of self-tracking, ancestral diet, and high-intensity exercise are right on target, at least for me! If you’re interested in how things work, this guide will help you experiment ...
Read in browser Hierarchical lists of Chinese snob-appeal in products, services and technology
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 01:00 pm ChinaSmack has published a translation of "Hierarchies of Snobbery and Contempt by Chinese Netizens" from Southern Metropolis Daily's City Weekly which describe "the multi-layered prejudices amongst Chinese when it comes to how the products, brands, sports, media, academic disciplines, music, movies, fashion, etc." It's a fascinating look at the valence and subtext of the familiar ...
Read in browser Imploding iceberg in Antarctica
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 19, 2012 12:36 pm I love this video of an iceberg collapsing in on itself in Wilhelmina Bay, Antarctica. (Word of warning, the people filming this loved the experience even more than I loved watching it, so much so that you may want to turn your speakers down.) There are two kinds of icebergs, tabular and non-tabular. The tabular ...
Read in browser Sponsor Shout-Out: Watchismo
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 12:00 pm Our thanks go to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email. Barcelona'a XXLED Oversize Digital Box Watch Collection have some the largest digits ever on a wristwatch—so large the hours are stacked above the minutes! Watchismo's founders discovered the creators at a hip little watch shop in Las Ramblas, ...
Read in browser DirecTV turns on DRM, breaks peoples' home theaters
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 11:55 am Dave sez, "Want to watch your HBO subscription on DirecTV over HDMI? Good luck with that. Without any proactive customer outreach, DirecTV rolled out a misguided anti-piracy update last week that now requires an encrypted connection between the set-top and television to view HBO. In theory only very old HDTVs lack this 'HDMI Copy Protection' ...
Read in browser The science of the Cinnamon Challenge
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 19, 2012 11:53 am Last week, lost in a haze of book tour, I found myself at brunch with several friends who were talking about a YouTube meme I'd entirely missed—people attempting to eat whole spoonfuls of cinnamon and failing miserably. (Warning, the video ends in tears and heaving.) While others wonder "why?" or, perhaps, "why not?", we here ...
Read in browser Behold the immortal chocolate whirlpools of the AP's Wire Services homepage
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 11:53 am I was looking into wire services today and found what appears to be the AP's main wire services site. All but vestigial, every link at it is broken, redirecting to the group's more modern homepage. And yet there it remains, badly-tiling bronze swirl GIFs and all, a mainstream media answer to Hollywood's deathless Space Jam ...
Read in browser Pot helps student athletes perform at high level
By Jason Weisberger on Apr 19, 2012 11:37 am The Oregon Ducks won the Rose Bowl. This article says about half the team was smoking marijuana. From ESPN: The Ducks are savoring their win over Wisconsin, Oregon's first victory in a Rose Bowl since 1917 and Chip Kelly's first postseason triumph as head coach. Earlier today, the school buzzed as the team made its ...
Read in browser Talk on the future of energy in Madison, Wisconsin
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 19, 2012 11:33 am I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin on April 25th, talking about the history of electricity, our current electric infrastructure, and the future of energy. Come check it out!
Read in browser Sugar Cube: a platformer with a refreshingly novel mechanic
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 11:01 am Another great game review from Greg Costikyan and his Play This Thing! blog: this time, it's the 2010 IGF China Best Game winner Sugar Cube, a platformer with a novel and ingenious (and addictive!) mechanic: At various points on the level are hidden items -- often platforms -- that are revealed, and switch "on," only ...
Read in browser Norwich City soccer team demands teen's arrest for finding unannounced images on public website
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 10:41 am A 17 year-old soccer fan in Britain faces criminal investigation after finding unannounced PR images at his favorite team's public website. When he shared his findings with other fans—thereby "leaking" Norwich City's forthcoming kit redesign—the football club called the police. From the BBC: Chris has apologised to the club, which said it would protect its ...
Read in browser Win a signed galley copy of Greg Bear & Neal Stephenson's upcoming collaborative book: The Mongoliad! (plus excerpt)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 19, 2012 10:00 am All seven authors of the first novel of The Mongoliad have signed a galley copy to be given to one lucky Boing Boing reader! The trailer above stars Neal "Mr. Excitement" Stephenson describing the book in his usual bombastic style. See below for the contest rules, and the exclusive excerpt from the novel. On April ...
Read in browser Taking a walk across Pitch Lake
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Apr 19, 2012 10:00 am This post presented by PLANET EARTH Uncut. All Earth Day Weekend, April 21-22nd. On BBC America. There are lots of places, all around the world, where oil and natural gas seep up out of the ground on their own, with no help from human beings. In fact, these places are probably how our ancestors first ...
Read in browser Welcome to the State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 09:42 am [Video link: Natural Disastronauts via Metafilter] Previously, at The Onion.
Read in browser Toronto's dingleberry mayor releases $2 graffiti-reporting app
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 09:00 am Ess G writes, "Much as I don't want to encourage anyone to laugh at us here in Toronto, this is really just too ridiculous to share. Our Mayor has just launched his $1.99 app that makes it easy for people to report graffiti in need of cleaning up simply by taking a picture. For this ...
Read in browser Cuban Pete, an appreciation
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 02:35 am My daughter and I share a trick memory for lyrics. Part of our bed-time ritual is singing three songs -- two "new" songs (that she hasn't heard before) and one "old" one (from a previous night). It's really challenging to come up with two new songs whose lyrics I can remember (or fake) well enough ...
Read in browser Paul Gravett interviews R. Crumb
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 19, 2012 01:48 am Amy Crehore says: "There's a great new interview with R. Crumb by Paul Gravett. Crumb with be the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France opening April 13, 2012." You have been living in France since 1993. Do you feel remote from America and US pop culture, which were ...
Read in browser Grid computing turns your idle cycles into a charity-supporting supercomputer
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 01:40 am Mark sez, "Charity Engine has a new twist on volunteer computing: using surplus, wasted PC resources to raise money for major charities including Oxfam, Amnesty, MSF and CARE - and also for huge prize draws for everyone running it. Based on UC Berkeley's famous BOINC software, the Charity Engine grid is hired to science and ...
Read in browser Boneshaker author asks Kickstarter fans to fund novella
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 01:00 am Kate Milford, author of the wonderful YA novel Boneshaker, sez, "This is the link to my Kickstarter campaign, in which I'm raising funds to self-publish a novella companion to my second traditionally-published YA fantasy, The Broken Lands. This is the first installment in what I hope will be an ongoing project with two goals: to ...
Read in browser Ubisoft sued over copyright infringement claim
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 12:50 am Science fiction writer John L. Beiswenger is suing Ubisoft for copyright infringement, claiming that its Assassin's Creed game series is lifted from his self-published work. In Ubisoft's saga, the contemporary protagonist must revisit the inherited memories of his ancestors, locked deep within his genetic code. Beiswenger's 2003 novel, Link, has a similar premise. Ars Technica's ...
Read in browser How to photograph International Space Station flyovers
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 19, 2012 12:34 am Photographer Shane Murphy has published a helpful step-by-step tutorial on how to best capture ISS flyover shots like the fantastic one he took, above. Snip: First things first, the most important thing to do is to plan well. Forward planning is vital to any night sky shot, along with a steady tripod and a warm ...
Read in browser Searching for "Caballo Blanco," famed long-distance runner who died on the trail
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 19, 2012 12:22 am At Outside magazine, a beautifully-written and skillfully-reported story on the search for Micah True, aka "Caballo Blanco." The long-distance runner who became famous by way of the book "Born to Run" died last month, after setting out on a 12-mile hike in the Gila National Forest. Related: this 2010 profile of True (PDF) in Arizona ...
Read in browser NYT on enjoying turntables without getting carried away
By Rob Beschizza on Apr 19, 2012 12:20 am You don't need to get carried away by vinyl culture to appreciate a good turntable, writes Roy Furchgott in the New York Times: Getting the most from a turntable requires careful setup, although maybe not as careful as people who sell calibration equipment would have you believe. "Setting up the turntable doesn't have to be ...
Read in browser Naked Portlandian man protests TSA screening injustice through nakedness
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 19, 2012 12:04 am A bearded gentleman in Portland, Oregon who was upset about being "harassed by airport security" took off all of his clothes while in the TSA screening lane Tuesday evening. He was arrested, taken to jail, and held on $4,000 bail. According to Portland police, John E. Brennan took off his clothes while going through airport ...
Read in browser Brian Wood's DMZ: a critical look back
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 19, 2012 12:00 am As the final volume of Brian Wood's brilliant anti-war graphic novel DMZ nears publication, Dominic Umile looks back on the series' 72 issue run of political allegory and all the ways that it used the device of fiction to make trenchant comic on the real world. DMZ is a story about the "State of Exception" ...
Read in browser Pentagon tried to prevent publication of Afghanistan corpse abuse photos
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 18, 2012 11:45 pm The Los Angeles Times this week published photographs of US soldiers in Afghanistan posing with the mangled bodies of Afghan men believed to be suicide bombers. Government officials were quick to condemn the behavior. But today, news that the Pentagon sought to prevent the publication of these images, in a dispute that stretched on for ...
Read in browser Crazy Decals: LSD for Lunch Bunch
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2012 11:27 pm If we made a Boing Boing T-shirt with this image, would you buy it?
Read in browser Elderly perv falsely diagnosed cancer in women so he could sexually assault, use weird gadgets on them
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 18, 2012 11:24 pm In Wales, 77 year old Reginald Gill has been sent to prison for 8 years after falsely "diagnosing" cancer for women who sought health aid. Gill, who is not a doctor, gave the women phony homeopathic treatment for their phonily-diagnosed cancer, including the use of these bogus healing machines and a form of electroshock therapy. ...
Read in browser 10 delightful practical jokes
By Mark Frauenfelder on Apr 18, 2012 11:17 pm [Video Link] Mostly harmless. (Via biotv)
Read in browser Working machine gun for kids!
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 18, 2012 11:11 pm From the Dec 1941 ish of Mechanix Illustrated, a jim-dandy shop project to make Junior his own dowel-firing machine-gun! ANY small boy will want, and be delighted with this toy submachine gun, which holds fifteen shots in the magazine and fires them continuously, until empty, as the "tromboning" action is worked. Made entirely from wood, ...
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