[Sponsor] Three new Limited Edition Mondaine Giant Watches of Switzerland were introduced at Watchismo this week. Check out the perfectly minimal raw steel and anthracite dial follow-ups to the popular 'Giant' collection use the instantly recognizable Swiss Railways clock dial, emulating a time-honored design present in every Swiss train station. The distinct Mondaine design is so easy to read that it serves its purpose at any size, but there is something majestic about these larger, domed-dial giants.
Toronto neighbours turn their laneway into a garage-door art-gallery Conclusions from studying 20 file-sharing papers Proposed US law makes domestic propaganda legal Upside Comics: UK charity that uses comics to promote literacy Free edu-comic about genomics and stem cells, written by Ken Macleod Did the Kansas legislature just accidentally prevent itself from banning gay marriage? Overjoyed frog gives unicorn chaser a run for its money Inside the world's most-studied forest How past land use affects the current landscape The history of the U.S. electric grid Scientific research in a forest Game of Thrones S2E8: It's family stuff The Dictator Marine nomad kid hitches a ride on a shark Rolling Stone: "Ed Piskor is the Next Big Thing in Books" Robin Gibb, 1/3 of the Bee Gees, has died of cancer at 62 Live indie web video coverage of NATO protest in Chicago: many streams, one post Tracking the arrest and harassment of journalists at US protests Child delivers balloon-inspired call for empathy to father Earthquake and bombs in Italy: An eyewitness report from Jasmina Tesanovic Toronto neighbours turn their laneway into a garage-door art-gallery
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 01:00 pm A pair of Toronto neighbours, Elly Dowson and Christine Liber, set out to cover the coach-house doors in their laneway with awesome murals. This was in the context of an edict from Toronto's dipshit mayor, Rob Ford, who has instituted fines for property owners who don't remove graffiti from their premises. Dowson and Liber figured ...
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By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 12:18 pm Zeropaid's Drew Wilson has wrapped up his series examining 20 studies that looked at the impact of filesharing on the sales of entertainment products (previously). He's summed up his conclusions based on the project, comparing the entire corpus to the notorious "Phoenix study" that was used as "evidence" for SOPA: Claim: One of the claims ...
Read in browser Proposed US law makes domestic propaganda legal
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 11:00 am Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings reports on a revision to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987, which prohibit the use of government disinformation and propaganda campaigns within the USA. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State, would allow the US government to ...
Read in browser Upside Comics: UK charity that uses comics to promote literacy
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 10:14 am This weekend, I took my daughter to the Kapow! comics fair in Islington, London, and happened on the Upside Comics booth. Upside is a charitable trust that promotes literacy using comics. They run comics-creation workshops for kids, produce pro-literacy comics, and bibliographies of great kids' comics. They're looking for donations of comics and graphic novels, ...
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By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 10:09 am Ken Macleod and the European stem cell research consortium OptiStem have produced a CC-licensed educational comic about genomics called "Hope Beyond Hype." It's available as a free download, or as a &gbp;1 hardcopy, with translations to follow in many languages. 'starts with the true life story of two badly burned boys being treated with stem ...
Read in browser Did the Kansas legislature just accidentally prevent itself from banning gay marriage?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 09:51 am Read the text of the "anti-Sharia" bill that passed in the Kansas state legislature last week. I'm no legal scholar, but it sure does seem like you could use this to make a case that it's now illegal to ban gay marriage in the state of Kansas. If so, that would be an amusing bit ...
Read in browser Overjoyed frog gives unicorn chaser a run for its money
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 09:41 am Photographer Joel Sartore has been shooting nature for 20 years—long enough to amass a great collection of images you can check out at the New York Times. "The whole point of this project is to really be able to look these creatures in the eye and get to know them," he said. The animals are ...
Read in browser Inside the world's most-studied forest
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 09:00 am I'm currently attending the Marine Biological Laboratory's 10-day science journalism fellowship. As part of that, I get to do some hands-on science experiments and get a better perspective on how the work of science is done and how data is collected. Along with five other fellows, I spent last weekend collecting A LOT of data ...
Read in browser How past land use affects the current landscape
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 08:35 am Do you see how the ground level is higher on the left-hand side of this photo? To the right of the stone wall, the ground distinctly drops by a foot or more. That wall is more than 200 years old. It marks the border between what was once a plowed field (on the left) and ...
Read in browser The history of the U.S. electric grid
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 08:08 am Where did our electric grid come from? It's a complicated question to answer. That's because the grid we have today didn't come from any single place. Instead, its origins are scattered, distributed geographically, technologically, and philosophically. Different people built different parts of the grid in different ways and for different reasons. For many years—up until ...
Read in browser Scientific research in a forest
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on May 21, 2012 07:54 am I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the Harvard Forest—the most-studied forest in the world. It's an interesting place, with a complicated history. Originally forest, it was clear-cut in the decades following European settlement. By 1830, less than 90% of this part of Massachusetts had any forest left. But that trend had already begun to ...
Read in browser Game of Thrones S2E8: It's family stuff
By Leigh Alexander on May 21, 2012 07:00 am Ravens are a big deal in the Game of Thrones universe. They're used to transmit information from one place to another, and often seem to be portents of death. This week's episode begins with a whole dead basket of 'em, as Prince Theon, in his latest act of swaggering idiocy, has killed all of Winterfell's ...
Read in browser The Dictator
By Wystan Mayes on May 21, 2012 03:42 am Unless you've recently had a bag on your head to be specially renditioned, are related to murdered Israeli athletes, don't like lesbian kisses, cock, dildo or pussy jokes, and unless you think that cancer, torture, dwarves, Jews, Arabs, infanticide, paedophilia, prostitution, incest, rape, anti-Semitism, casual racism or misogyny are inappropriate subjects for jokes, then it ...
Read in browser Marine nomad kid hitches a ride on a shark
By Cory Doctorow on May 21, 2012 01:09 am In National Geographic, a rare moment of marine nomadism, as a sea nomad child called Enal hitches a ride by holding onto the tail of his friend, a tawny nurse shark. The picture is by James Morgan, submitted to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest (Top prize: Photo expedition for two to the Galapagos with ...
Read in browser Rolling Stone: "Ed Piskor is the Next Big Thing in Books"
By Mark Frauenfelder on May 20, 2012 10:37 pm Rolling Stone just announced something that we have known for a long time: Ed Piskor (our own Brain Rot cartoonist) is a hell of a talented cartoonist. I have an advance copy of his upcoming book, Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker, and it is a masterpiece. I'm going to be interviewing Ed on Gweek ...
Read in browser Robin Gibb, 1/3 of the Bee Gees, has died of cancer at 62
By Xeni Jardin on May 20, 2012 06:48 pm Photo: Robin Gibb. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor, 2008. From multiple sources today: One of the three Bee Gees has died. Robin Gibb was 62 years old, and was diagnosed two years ago with colon and liver cancer that responded to treatment, then returned and spread. "The family of Robin Gibb, of the Bee Gees, announce with great ...
Read in browser Live indie web video coverage of NATO protest in Chicago: many streams, one post
By Xeni Jardin on May 20, 2012 06:42 pm [Tim Pool: @timcast on Twitter, Ustream video feed.] UPDATE, 4pm PT: Reports from Chicago of police attacking protesters and journalists, chemical weapons being readied for use, and possibile imminent "weaponized" use of LRAD. In this post, embeds for some of the known live independent web video streams covering the NATO protests in Chicago today. Community ...
Read in browser Tracking the arrest and harassment of journalists at US protests
By Xeni Jardin on May 20, 2012 03:27 pm Josh Stearns has an update on police harassment, detention, and arrest incidents involving journalists at protests this weekend. He says, "I have been tracking, confirming and verifying reports of journalist arrests at Occupy protests all over the country since September. Help me by sending tips and tweets to @jcstearns and tagging reports of press suppression ...
Read in browser Child delivers balloon-inspired call for empathy to father
By Cory Doctorow on May 20, 2012 03:09 pm Simonhac sez, "Today I armed my kids with unrolled paperclips and asked them to pop the two-week-old helium balloons that have been kicking around our house at ground level since my daughter's birthday. I was not aware that my 8 year old daughter had given the balloons personalities and was really not happy with my ...
Read in browser Earthquake and bombs in Italy: An eyewitness report from Jasmina Tesanovic
By Jasmina Tesanovic on May 20, 2012 02:36 pm [Video Link.] A weekend of fear and mourning in Italy. Early this Sunday morning, an earthquake struck near Bologna: at least six killed (ceramic workers, and a hundred year old person), and big material damage in the region. The US Geological Survey heard the tremor: a magnitude-6.0 quake struck at 4:04 a.m. Sunday between Modena ...
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