The Latest from Boing Boing

Janet Klein plays "Tonight You Belong To Me" on ukulele Posted: 25 Mar 2009 11:05 PM PDT My friend Janet Klein made an instructional video to teach you how to play "Tonight You Belong To Me" on the ukulele. Previously: Zoe plays "Optional Accessory" on ukulele Clara Belle plays "Summer Face" on ukulele Danielle plays "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on ukulele Taimane plays "Eleanor Rigby" on ukulele Ukuleleaya plays "Crazy G" on customized cake ukulele Kate Micucci plays "Dear Deer" on the ukulele Shelley Rickey plays "Tonight, You Belong to Me" on her handmade cigar-box ukulele Charley sings a song and plays her ukulele Sophie Madeleine plays "The Beard Song" on ukulele Megan plays "You and I" on ukulele Misanthrope Jackalope plays "The Maker" on ukulele Diane Rubio plays "Lulu's Back in Town" on ukulele Brittni Paiva plays "Glass Ball Slack Key" on ukulele

Linda Stone profiled for Ada Lovelace Day Posted: 25 Mar 2009 08:55 PM PDT Eileen sez, "For Lovelace Day, I chatted with geek-grrl guru and virtual-worlds visionary Linda Stone, who tells how she introduced Apple-like compassion to Microsoft's rough-and-ready corporate culture. Wish I'd been there to see that!" Linda's one of my favorite people of all time -- what a great appreciation of a deserving subject! I brought in interesting speakers when I was in Microsoft Research, and then started the Visiting Speaker Series in 2000, which is still around today. I brought in thought leaders and critics like Eric Raymond, Larry Lessig, and David Farber, to talk and meet with people. I brought in Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, and John Lasseter. These are people who inspire all of us, who open our minds and stimulate our thinking. The series gave employees access to these people and their ideas, and that proved to be a very powerful way of keeping dialog flowing. Many other companies have now instituted their own series, and Kim Ricketts, a bookseller in Seattle who supported my efforts at Microsoft when she was at the University Bookstore, has now created a business around organizing and hosting book signings and author tours in corporations. While I worked for Ballmer, I managed and significantly improved Microsoft's relationship with the World Economic Forum. At conferences, in the Valley, in NYC and elsewhere, I was visible and accessible, so that people could talk to me and I would be aware, as much as possible, of problems as they arose and before they became serious. I also helped nurture dialogs on important topics like open source, and followed up on them. I wanted to encourage a general curiosity in the Microsoft community, and to encourage Microsoft employees to develop relationships with the larger community outside of the company. Welcome to Ada Lovelace Day! :: An interview with Linda Stone (Thanks, Eileen!) Previously: Linda Stone on time management - Boing Boing Email apnea: holding your breath while you answer mail - Boing Boing NYT on multitasking myth - Boing Boing Continuous Partial Attention wiki - Boing Boing Notes from yesterday's Emerging Tech sessions - Boing Boing Ada Lovelace Day needs your support! - Boing Boing Lisa Randall on the origin of the universe -- Happy Ada Lovelace ...

G20 Welcoming Committee Gets Ready Posted: 25 Mar 2009 09:42 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger It's sure gonna be a long, hot FUN summer... G20 Meltdown Class War G20 issue Summit police fear attacks on hotels used by the G20 leaders G20 to be most expensive police operation in British history Storm the Banks Britain at risk of serious social unrest, report warns G20 Protests Twitter Feed UK IndyMedia Mahalo G20 Protests round-up (frequently updated)

Upside of squatters Posted: 25 Mar 2009 08:43 PM PDT Slate's got an article on the upside -- to a city -- of having squatters move into empty buildings. The beautiful, gigantic Victorian brick office-building next to my flat in east London was recently squatted by what seem like nice enough people (except for that one Sunday morning they got drunk, stood on the roof, and had a shouted coversation with someone on the street below, right outside the bedroom window!). I tell myself that at least they're not junkies or arsonists -- and it's better than living on a street with no neighbors. Squatting, or unlawfully occupying and making use of land that belongs to someone else, tends to emerge when poverty and homelessness intersect with absentee ownership. It was widespread on the frontier of the 19th-century West, where settlers who couldn't afford to purchase land at market prices often simply occupied land owned by Eastern speculators (as well as land owned by the federal government and by Native American tribes). From the point of view of local officials, this was a win-win, of a sort. Far-away owners were more interested in free-riding on rising property values, and flipping their land, than in developing it productively. So they resisted paying property taxes or investing in infrastructure. As a result, governments in the West were happy to lend squatters a hand in their efforts to get property out of the speculators' hands. Local governments frequently made it easier for squatters to obtain title through the legal doctrine of adverse possession (sometimes colloquially called "squatters rights")—for example, by shortening the time period required for squatting to mature into ownership. Ultimately, even the federal government joined in. After years of using the Army to chase squatters off its lands, Congress decided to create a legal avenue for settlers without money to become landowners: the 1862 Homestead Act. Homesteaders in the Hood (Thanks, Eduardo!)

Insane "Tim and Eric" moment Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:36 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger The new series of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show --great job!" has been, well, awesome, as this far out clip shows... Thanks Tara McGinley!

Antony and the Johnsons: Epilepsy is Dancing Posted: 25 Mar 2009 05:09 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger Gorgeous music video for "Epilepsy is Dancing" (<-- larger version) by the wonderful Antony and the Johnsons.

Boing Boing Video live at GDC, Boingers and Special Guests in the Live Video Stream All Day! Posted: 25 Mar 2009 11:42 AM PDT Above, Boing Boing Video and Offworld's live streaming channel for 2009 Game Developers Conference. The entire Boing Boing Video crew (Xeni Jardin, Wes Varghese, Derek Bledsoe, and Jolon Bankey) is in San Francisco this week, along with a number of the bloggers from Offworld, BB Gadgets, and Boing Boing, to cover the 2009 Game Developers Conference. And this time, for the first time ever, we're doing it with live video broadcasts on our new Ustream channel. Tune in for conversations in our BBV@GDC studio with hosts including Matty Kirsch from Killscreen TV,  Xeni and Joel from Boing Boing, visits from Brandon, Cory, and Pesco, and lots of game biz guests and happy mutants throughout the world, all week long! Also: Dani from Costa Rica, playing Guitar Hero and generally looking cute. For BB + Offworld's complete video and blog coverage of GDC09, visit offworld.com/gdc09. (Special thanks to our live stream host Ustream TV, to Wayneco Heavy Industries, and to our transportation provider at Virgin America.)

The Big Takeover: A Must-Read from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi Posted: 25 Mar 2009 04:42 PM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger I've always admired Matt Taibbi's writing and I've followed his byline from his hilarious early efforts at The eXile, a Moscow-based free paper for ex-pat Americans to his stint at The NY Press, and now at Rolling Stone, where he's been published for some time. Jann Wenner's smart patronage of a fine writer like Taibbi is ample proof of Rolling Stone's continuing relevance in a world of 24/7 news cycles and instant internet publishing. This article is Taibbi at his best. It takes no prisoners! It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire. The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses). So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream." The Big Takeover: How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution. Thanks, Mike Backes!

Congress considers inventory of spectrum use in America Posted: 25 Mar 2009 01:44 PM PDT A new bill before Congress calls on the NTIA and FCC to inventory the spectrum use in America. Previous work on this by the likes of the New America Foundation found that the vast majority of US broadcast spectrum was sitting fallow -- either squatted on by members of the National Association of Broadcasters (who get their spectrum for free but are theoretically required to put programming in it and use it in the public interest) or reserved from allocation to keep from interfering with licensed users (many of whom were not using their spectrum at all). Three tiny slices of open spectrum, at 900Mhz, 2.5Ghz and 5.7Ghz, have created a massive economic and technological revolution through WiFi and other unlicensed uses of the public airwaves. The potential for new economic and technological gains from more open spectrum is unimaginable. Getting that spectrum into use is damned good policy, and long overdue. My only concern is that the FCC will look for short-term cash gains by auctioning off all or most of the fallow spectrum for exclusive use, as has been done with 3G licenses. But this short-sighted approach trades the immediate gains from an auction for the perpetual income stream that arises from the commerce and activity that's enabled by open spectrum. Think, for example, of the total economic benefits that the nation and the world have derived from WiFi -- from cards and base-stations to hotspots to all the gains in efficiency and new opportunities created by wireless networking, and compare this to the paltry sums extracted by a few phone companies selling crippled, metered, filtered 3G network access. The bill, entitled the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, was introduced last week by John Kerry (D-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). It amends part of the Communications Act by adding a requirement for a national survey of what's being broadcast into our radio airwaves. The survey will cover everything from 200MHz to 3.5GHz, and will be run by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, with input as needed from the Office of Science and Technology. New bill calls for inventory of US spectrum Previously: Five perspectives on spectrum allocation - Boing Boing Farber and Faulhaber's argument for commons spectrum allocation ... Panel discussion: Commons versus property for spectrum allocation ... Moot court on property versus commons for spectrum allocation ... Werbach's kick-ass spectrum paper - Boing Boing Giant spectrum poster for the masses - Boing Boing London Open Spectrum debate, June 24 - Boing Boing Bush charters govt spectrum use task-force - Boing Boing "Easement commons" isn't enough - Boing Boing "Easement commons" isn't enough - Boing Boing Broadcasters fight hard against public use of blank spectrum ... How HDTV killed firefighters, birthed the Broadcast Flag, and ...

Live notes and streams from the FTC's hearing on DRM in Seattle Posted: 25 Mar 2009 01:43 PM PDT Chris sez, "I'm following the live video stream, and the live #ftcdrm twitter coverage of the FTC DRM town hall meeting in Seattle. Very fascinating stuff, with people discussing the harms and benefits of DRM. In the link I've submitted, I've aggregated such links to live coverage and video streams of it that I can, including a direct link to the video stream (some people, such as me, have problems getting by the wrapper that the FTC has on the video feed)." FTC DRM town hall meeting now in session (Thanks, Chris!)

Boing Boing on GOOD: "DIY Funerals and the Quest for Authenticity" Posted: 25 Mar 2009 11:38 AM PDT Two weeks ago, I posted about people who are bringing the DIY ethic to funerals. For my latest essay over at GOOD, I thought a bit more about this concept and how it might be part of a larger quest for authenticity. From GOOD: As cyberspace becomes a "layer" on top of the physical world and we spend more of our lives online, a new-found appreciation emerges for authentic experiences, interactions, and goods. I think that's part of why so many people are embracing the "maker mindset" of DIY culture, from Stitch and Bitch to Maker Faire... Last year, my colleagues and I at Institute for the Future spent a day brainstorming with James Gilmore and Joe Pine, authors of the famous business book Experience Economy. Their latest book, Authenticity, is about what the demand for truly "real" things means for business strategy. It was fascinating to think with them about the myriad contexts in which questions of authenticity arise. What does "authentic" mean on a Bourbon Chicken Grill'N Dip label that boasts of "authentic food court flavor"? Or in Las Vegas, where the fakeness itself is authentic? Or in death? DIY Funerals and the Quest for Authenticity Previously: Boing Boing on GOOD: "All the Web's A Stage" - Boing Boing Boing Boing on GOOD: You Are Your Data - Boing Boing Boing Boing on GOOD: "My Ecologically Correct Move." - Boing Boing Boing Boing on GOOD: A Mayan Village Reacts to Obama - Boing Boing Boing Boing on GOOD: Digital TV Now! - Boing Boing Boing Boing posts on GOOD! - Boing Boing

Anti-capitalists Attack Banker's Home and Mercedes: "This is Just the Beginning." Posted: 25 Mar 2009 10:53 AM PDT Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger Anti-capitalists today claimed responsibility for vandalising the home of disgraced former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin. Several windows in the ex-RBS chief executive's luxury villa in Edinburgh were smashed and a Mercedes in the driveway damaged early this morning. Sir Fred, who is at the centre of a huge row over his £16million pension, was said to be 'shaken' by the vandalism but was not thought to be at the house at the time. A group calling themselves Bank Bosses Are Criminals later claimed responsibility and ominously warned the attack was only the start of a campaign against executives. Daily Mail article: Anti-capitalists admit attacking Fred the Shred's home and warn other bankers: 'This is just the beginning'

Chadwick Tyler's decadence on film Posted: 25 Mar 2009 12:27 PM PDT Photographer Chadwick Tyler creates magnificent, decadent photographs. I saw a reference that his latest exhibition, titled Tiberius, has been extended at New York City's Honey Space Gallery for a few more days. No telephone number listed for the gallery to confirm though. Chadwick Tyler's Tiberius and Tiberius II (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Komodo dragons kill man Posted: 25 Mar 2009 10:16 AM PDT A man picking fruit on an island in eastern Indonesia fell out of a tree where he was then mauled to death by two Komodo dragons. From The Guardian (photo by Dezidor/Wikimedia Commmons): The man, Muhamad Anwar, 31, was found bleeding from bites to his hands, body, legs and neck within minutes of falling out of a sugar-apple tree on the island of Komodo and died later at a clinic on neighbouring Flores. The giant lizards had been waiting for him under the tree, according to a neighbour, Theresia Tawa... The carnivorous Komodos, which live for up to 50 years, can grow to 10ft in length and weigh up to 200lbs. Though they rarely attack humans – and had not previously killed an adult for more than 30 years – an eight-year-old boy died after being mauled in 2007 and attacks are said to be increasing as their habitat becomes restricted. Their diet usually consists of smaller animals, including other members of their own species. "Komodo dragons maul man to death" Previously: Virgin komodo dragon birth: the miracle of Christmas - Boing Boing

Mapparium: walk-through globe Posted: 25 Mar 2009 09:43 AM PDT The intrepid travelers at Curious Expeditions recently visited Boston's Mapparium, a three-stories-tall glass globe that you can walk through. Built in 1935, the dome was designed so that visitors could examine a model of the Earth without the distortion of perspective that accompanies looking at a globe's exterior. Interestingly, the Mapparium is housed at the Christian Science Publishing Society's headquarters. From Curious Expeditions: The Christian Science Monitor was a serious and respected publication, and every newspaper worth its snuff had to have an impressive headquarters. The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston is just that. In 1930, Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill was commissioned to design the new Christian Science Publishing Society headquarters. A beautiful lobby, dubbed "The Hall of Ideas", is complete with a grand water fountain, marble floors, and one-of-a-kind globe lamps (one showing constellations and the other showing the ocean's currents). But a grand entrance wasn't enough. After all, the New York Daily News building had that famous first class gigantic spinning globe. How could the Christian Science Monitor compete with such cosmopolitan worldliness? With an even better globe, of course. A World Frozen in Time

Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities Posted: 25 Mar 2009 09:29 AM PDT Earlier this month, I posted about the Science Museum of London's fantastic online exhibition "Brought To Life: Exploring the History of Medicine." In Fortean Times this month, Jen Ogilvie visits Blythe House, the physical home to many more of the strange artifacts not on public display. From Fortean Times: Most of the medical history objects crammed into Blythe House's cupboards and jostling for space on its shelves come from the collection of the pharmacist and philanthropist Henry Wellcome (1853-1936), and the air of barely contained chaos seems somehow to bear the echo of his exuberant, omnivorous delight in things. In the surgery room, lines of near-identical scalpels and tonsil guillotines are marshalled in drawerfuls of menace; nestling nearby are materials and skull fragments used in experiments by an English doctor interested in Neolithic trepenation; German WWI cotton wool is bundled in corners; surgeons' ornate walking sticks hang over high shelves, lasting testimony to the status anxiety of their owners. Locked up in the drugs room are the antidote cases and medicine chests sent by the publicity-savvy and lionizing Wellcome on famous adventurers' expeditions to Everest or Brazil or the Antarctic, and thousands of jars of exotically strange natural medicines collected from around the world and inscribed with apothecary-evoking legends like 'East Indian Blistering Fly' or 'Dragon's Blood'. The room of x-ray machines crosses an eccentric inventor's workshop with a torture chamber, and contains oddities like the Pedoscope, left-over from the days when irradiation seemed a fun way to fit shoes... Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities

Inspiration for Super Friends' Hall of Justice Posted: 25 Mar 2009 09:05 AM PDT The exterior of the Justice League of America's "Hall of Justice," seen on the Super Friends cartoon, was based on Union Terminal, a gorgeous Art Deco railroad built in 1933 in my hometown of Cincinnati. Hanna-Barbera, creators of Super Friends, was sold in 1967 to Cincinnati-based Taft Broadcasting Co. Apparently, Hanna-Barbera folks would visit the city where they would have seen Union Terminal. From the Cincinnati Enquirer: When creating "Super Friends," the producers wanted a grand headquarters for their heroes. The job was given to Al Gmuer, background supervisor for Hanna-Barbera for more than 30 years. Using his knowledge of architecture, he sketched out a building that almost resembled the finished product. "Mine had more windows," Gmuer said. The drawing was then given to the network, including Joe Barbera, where it was turned into the Union Terminal look-a-like that's known today, he said. Gmuer isn't sure why they redesigned his building to look like Union Terminal. He doesn't give the Hall of Justice much thought today. "In the long run, I hated that building," he said. "The way it's designed, it was not easy to draw. I had nightmares about that damn building." "Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice ..." (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

Ankle weights save tippy strollers from forgetful parents (like me) Posted: 25 Mar 2009 07:13 AM PDT Here's a stroller hack from Parenthacks reader Noelle: "To keep your umbrella stroller from tipping over from the weight of the diaper bag on the back, we bought a pair of ankle weights and put them on just above the front wheels. This keeps the stroller from tipping over especially when the child gets out." I tip over the stroller ten zillion times a day. This is smart. Add ankle weights to umbrella strollers to keep them from tipping

Game-themed Finnish Music Video: "Return of the Ninja Droids," by Desert Planet. Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:48 AM PDT Above, a music video for "Return of the Ninja Droids," by Desert Planet. Produced in 2005 by director Jari Mikkola. (Thanks, Matti Laakso!)

Remixing the London police's insane, paranoid terrorism scare posters Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:03 AM PDT Apropos of yesterday's blog post about the insane, paranoia-inducing "anti-terrorism" posters the London cops have put up, Peter Mahoney offers this remix of the "A bomb won't go off because weeks before, a shopper reported someone for studying the CCTV cameras. Don't rely on others: if you suspect it, report it." poster. His reads "A bomb won't go off here because people tend to be quite nice, really. Fear everything. Then, tell us about it." Got your own remix? Post a link in the comments! sheet_road_cctv (Thanks, Peter!) Previously: London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity ...

Basil Wolverton's Culture Corner -- HOWTOs for modern living from the past Posted: 25 Mar 2009 05:57 AM PDT Kim sez, "In the 1940s and 1950s, comic great Basil Wolverton's half-page strip 'Culture Corner' ran in the back of 'Whiz Comics' (home of Captain Marvel). Each strip featured Croucher K. Conk, Q.O.C. (Queer Old Coot) explaining the 'cultured' way of doing such tasks as 'How to Go Soak Your Head', 'How to Snore Without Being a Bore', and 'How to Kick a Person in the Teeth'. Dinosaur Gardens has dug up most of these old strips and made them available for download." Basil Wolverton's Culture Corner (Thanks, Kim!) Previously: Exhibit of cartoonist Basil Wolverton's work - Boing Boing Powerhouse Pepper comic book stories, by Basil Wolverton - Boing Boing Basil Wolverton was a comic - Boing Boing Last Gasp on My Doorstep - Boing Boing

Mario takes the Metropolis Posted: 25 Mar 2009 06:53 AM PDT Warp Whistle by MatthewDominick Rob sez, "This is a video of Mario blowing the warp whistle and being sent to Chicago. Well done and overall very fun. Great ending!" Lovely work indeed. Warp Whistle (Thanks, Rob!)

Wikileaks.de domain-owner's house raided over publication of secret government censorship lists Posted: 25 Mar 2009 05:46 AM PDT The home of Theodor Reppe, who owns the wikileaks.de domain, was raided by German police in retaliation for Wikileaks' publication of the secret government blocklists from around the world, like the Australian list of forbidden sites. The "ACMA" list is supposed to be a list of child porn and other illegal sites, and it is the backbone of a proposal to censor the entire Australian Internet. Publication of the ACMA list showed that the bureaucrats charged with secretly building a list of forbidden material had shoved in enormous amounts of legitimate stuff that they just happened to disagree with -- straight-ahead porn sites, gambling sites, and other material. Unsurprisingly, people who are given absolute power over their neighbors' intellectual curiosity without any accountability end up misbehaving. A statement on Wikileaks's website claims police were investigating the "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence". Wikileaks claims Mr Reppe is not involved in the website other than "sponsoring the German domain name and mirroring a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports"... "The raid is over the censorship lists, but which particular list, we can not be certain, although the Australian lists are the most recent and the most prominent due to their non-voluntary status." In the past week, Wikileaks published three lists all purporting to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA's) blacklist of websites. While ACMA and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last week denied the list belonged to ACMA, they both warned that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate its distribution. The lists contained apparent links to child pornography websites, gambling sites, as well as relatively innocuous sites including those of a dentist and canteen manager. Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe's home over 'censorship lists' (Thanks, Tom!)

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