Friday, July 17, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

HOWTO bake dashboard cookies while you're working

Posted: 17 Jul 2009 01:07 AM PDT

Beat the heat this summer by setting a tray of raw cookies on your dashboard to bake in the stifling heat inside your car while you work -- you get a tray of warm, fresh-baked cookies to eat on the return commute!
It took about 2 1/2 hours for the cookies to bake completely. I ended up opening the car door shortly before the end of the baking period to check for doneness. This check has to be done manually, as there are no color indicators (such as brownness) to judge by because the sugar in the car cookies does not caramelize and brown like that of oven-baked cookies. So, I gently pressed the edges of the cookies to feel that they were firm and even more gently touched the center of one of the cookies to see that it held together and was not gooey (the center of the cookie should not be entirely firm, unless you are shooting for a crispy cookie). Finally, I slid one of the cookies around on the parchment paper - a good test for this type of baking because a baked cookie will release easily from the paper, while an unbaked cookie will stick in place. If your cookies are not done, add more baking time in 15 or 30 minute increments, as opposed to the 30 second or 1 minute increments you might add to an oven-baked cookie.
Car-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies, step by step September 4 (via Making Light

Britain will subject everyone who works with kids to multiple, repeated police-checks

Posted: 17 Jul 2009 01:03 AM PDT

Britain's pedophile-phobia has reached new heights of insanity -- now everyone who comes into contact with a child at school has to have a police background check and get certified as genuine non-pedophiles. But not just once -- over and over again; a different certificate for teaching karate, escorting field trips, or giving a presentation on careers day. Because, you know, you might not be a karate-teaching pedo, but you might be a field-trip pedo. Everyone's included from Members of Parliament to authors giving a reading. Charlie Stross has some good commentary on the potential dangers all this background checking creates:
As you can imagine, the authors are upset. As Philip Pullman puts it, "It seems to be fuelled by the same combination of prurience, sexual fear and cold political calculation," the author of the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy said today. "When you go into a school as an author or an illustrator you talk to a class at a time or else to the whole school. How on earth -- how on earth -- how in the world is anybody going to rape or assault a child in those circumstances? It's preposterous..."

Even the simplest of databases have been found to contain error rates of 10%. (The HMRC database in this study contains merely first, second and surname, title, sex, data of birth, address and National Insurance number -- nevertheless 10% of the records contain errors.) Other agencies are even more prone to mistakes. For example: my wife recently discovered that our GP's medical records showed her as having been born outside the UK rather than in an NHS hospital in Manchester. We don't know why that error's in the system, and we've got the birth certificate and witnesses to prove that it is an error, but imagine the fun that might ensue if the control freaks in Whitehall decided to enforce record sharing between the NHS and the Immigration Agency ...! (Hopefully they're not that stupid, but who can tell?)

The point is, if 10% of government database records contain an error, than the probability of a sweep of databases coming up with an error rises as you consult more sources. And there are a whole bundle of wonderful ways for errors to show up. If your name and date of birth are the same as someone with heavy criminal record, a CRB check could label you as a bad guy. If your social security number is one digit transposition away from $BAD_GUY, see above. If the previous owner of your house was a child abuser, see above. If your street address is one letter/digit away from a street address occupied by a criminal and some bored clerk mis-typed it, you can end up being conflated with somebody else. And the more sources the CRB checks, the higher the probability of a false positive result -- that is, of them obtaining a positive result (subject is a criminal) when in fact the subject is a negative.

This is not a hypothetical worry. As of last November, the CRB had falsely identified more than 12,000 people as criminals, according to the Home Office. (Raw parliamentary answer here.) These are the disputes that were upheld, that is, ones where the falsely mis-identified were able to convince the CRB that their record was incorrect. These are false positives which have been conclusively identified as such. While the identified false positive rate is around 0.1%, the true figure is certainly much higher: because there will be a proportion of individuals identified as false positives who are in the unfortunate position of lacking the documentation to prove their innocence.

False Positives and the Database State

Twitter's security breach: a reminder to choose and use web passwords wisely.

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 06:18 PM PDT

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Someone who goes by the name of "Hacker Croll" breached the cloud computing accounts of one or more Twitter employees, and obtained access to extremely sensitive personal and corporate documents. I won't link to the documents, but they're floating around. I first read about the breach on the New York Times "Bits" blog.

This seems as good a time as any to remind everyone about choosing and managing passwords wisely. The New York Times' Gadgetwise blog has a helpful post up today along those lines. Snip:

The lesson Twitter employees are learning the hard way is a lesson for us all. If you use cloud services for personal or work purposes, you need to:

* Use strong passwords
* Use a different password for each of your accounts
* Pick tough security questions
* Keep your passwords and answers to security questions to yourself.

If you use Gmail, here are tips on how to keep your account secure. There are also instructions on securely retrieving a forgotten password with a text message to your phone.)

If you find it difficult to remember multiple strong passwords, choose a secure way to store them.

Twitter Gets Hacked. Can It Happen to You? (NYT Gadgetwise)

Related: Much debate online today about the ethics involved in publishing the ill-gotten docs. Here is a blog post at Information Week arguing that this reflects recklessness, and here are two blog posts which defend the notion that this is a protected right (my linking these should not be interpreted as a personal blessing, I'm thinking all of it through, too): copyrightsandcampaigns, and citmedialaw.org.

Here is Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's blog post about the data theft:

About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked. From the personal account, we believe the hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to this employee's Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars, and other Google Apps Twitter relies on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and more within the company. Since then, we have performed a security audit and reminded everyone of the importance of personal security guidelines.

This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use. This is more about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets. In fact, around the same time, Evan's wife's personal email was hacked and from there, the hacker was able to gain access to some of Evan's personal accounts such as Amazon and PayPal but not email. This isn't about any flaw in web apps, it speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords.

And, a question many are asking: will Twitter sue the blog that published a number of these documents today?

The Valley

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 04:28 PM PDT

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

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I took these photos on the set of an adult movie in the San Fernando Valley this April. It was April 10th, to be exact. Which is my birthday. Why I was on the set of an adult movie on my birthday is another story altogether. The story of my life.

The location was a hideous brown building in Canoga Park, not far from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, where rocket engines are built and in front of which sits a giant rocket engine as if it has fallen out of the sky. Both sides of the soundstage were lined with themed rooms: a shower room, a weight room, a sex dungeon. That day's scene would take place on one of the ugliest adult movie sets that I have ever seen: pea soup-colored walls, a diarrhea-colored leather sofa, a faux wood floor. All the flowers were fake.

The name of the movie was "Interactive Sex with Tori Black." The director explained: "We were going to go with 'Existential Musings of a Porn Star,' but we thought we'd dumb it down. If you want to have sex with Tori Black and don't have chloroform, this is your next best option."

Tori is 20 and very pretty. She has long brown hair and long tan legs. When she came out of the dressing room for her scene, wearing pink lingerie and matching pink high-heels, she said: "And here we go." Then she said: "Off to work."

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Her co-star was James Deen, who is the hipster generation's answer to Dirk Diggler. He's 23 and has been doing porn since he was 18. When I asked him if he had had sex with 1,000 women in his lifetime thus far, he looked down, thought for a moment, and replied: "More than that."

While the director filmed, Tori and James went at it like dogs. Even when he stopped shooting, they kept going. It was impressive. It was Olympic. It was also Passover. In between shots, all the crew guys standing around and watching kept making jokes about Deen being Jewish and what they called his "Hobbit feet." Deen ignored them.

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When it was time for the money shot, which in the business is referred to as the "pop shot," somebody called out: "Actually, he can't pop until sundown." After that, everybody got very quiet and respectful while Deen delivered his closing shot. Then they burst into a rousing rendition of "Hava Nagila," and everybody clapped.

Afterward, Tori checked her face in the mirror. She told me that the heavy makeup makes her face break out. I thought it was the pop shot. But what do I know? I guess you learn something new every day.

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NYPD is spending $1 million in typewriters

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 03:32 PM PDT

New York City is spending a million bucks on typewriters over the next three years. Apparently the NYPD is working toward computerizing everything, but they're just not there yet. So Swintec office equipment is on contract to provide manual and electrics, and maintenance, for the foreseeable future. From UPI:
Most of the city's arrest forms have been computerized, but property and evidence vouchers printed on carbon-paper forms still require the use of typewriters.

"It just doesn't make sense that we can't enter these (vouchers) on computer," a police officer told the newspaper.

Dr. Edith Linn, a retired New York police officer and professor of criminal justice at the city's Berkeley College, said many of the 500 police officers she interviewed for a study told her the outdated equipment makes them less likely to perform arrests for minor offenses.
"NYPD typewriter bill nearly $1 million" (via Orange Crate Art)

Previously:


Know Your Mushrooms documentary

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 03:01 PM PDT

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I'm looking forward to seeing Know Your Mushrooms, a documentary by Ron Mann (who also directed Comic Book Confidential).

KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS follows uber myco visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans (two of the more expert and unforgettably mercurial characters in the community) as they lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.

Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS opens the doors to perception, takes the audience on a longer, stranger trip and delivers them to a brave new world where the fungi might well guide humanity to a saner, safer place… with extra cheese…

When I was young my grandmother would take my family on mushroom hunting trips. She really knew her mushrooms. Once when we were in the woods, my mother and grandmother got into an argument about whether or not a mushroom they'd found was poisonous. My mother said it was poisonous and my grandmother said it wasn't. To make her point, my grandmother ate the mushroom on the spot. (I have to assume she was right, because she lived to be 107.)

Last week in Colorado, my mother (who knows her mushrooms too, just not as well as her mother did) found and dried some mushrooms. Photos here.

Know Your Mushrooms documentary

Previously:


Lou Beach show at Billy Shire Fine Arts

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 02:33 PM PDT

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Billy Shire Fine Arts in Culver City, CA is hosting an exhibition of Lou Beach's extraordinary collage work.

Shown here, World Of Men C, 15" x 19",$2800

Exhibition: July 11, 2009 - August 1, 2009

Lou Beach show at Billy Shire Fine Arts

Crudely streamlined Honda Civic reduces drag

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 01:24 PM PDT

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Clay Roe says:

While browsing for horn modifications for my '08 Honda Civic Hybrid, I came across this extreme body modification to a 1992 Honda Civic CX. It may look like an Aptera's older road-weary brother; but the builder claims to have increased his drag coefficient from 0.34 to 0.17! Resulting in over 90 mpg! Just like my expensive hybrid!*"

* - (With the wind. Downhill. With the AC off.)

Home-made super-aerodynamic Honda Civic

Insanely expensive unopened 1967 Star Trek paint-by-numbers

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 12:48 PM PDT

Ebay S J2400 This original, unopened 1967 Star Trek oil paint-by-numbers is for sale on eBay. It could be yours for just $1800! The seller has a slew of Star Trek memorabilia for sale.


Time-lapse sim of Earth's land mass movement

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 12:49 PM PDT



Here's a nice time-lapse video simulation depicting the probable past and possible future of the Earth's land masses, "650 Million Years In 1:20 Minutes." (via CT2)

Dude in Sbux watching black & white TV with converter box

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 12:35 PM PDT

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Aaron Barnhart of TV Barn shared this photo of a man who brought a small black & white television and a converter box into a Starbucks.

Dude in Starbucks watching black-and-white TV with converter box!

Achieving Happiness on just $800,000

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 12:15 PM PDT

Guestblogger Marina Gorbis is executive director at Institute for the Future.

I don't know about you but I am feeling kind of bad about those poor Goldman Sachs investment bankers. Just a few months ago they looked so sad (remember those sad guys on the trading floor?). And now, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, after taking money from American taxpayers, they earn huge profits as if the credit crunch never happened. The 29,400 Goldmanites are expected to take in on average around $800,000 in pay, bonuses, and benefit packages. I can only imagine what this means for the top 400. But I worry that this is just not going to make them happy. And this is because research on happiness reveals some surprising things:

• Wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but not thereafter (Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness.)

• The bewildering array of choices that wealth brings not only doesn't make us happier but actually erodes our psychological well-being. (Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice)

• Spending money on other people has a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. (Dunn et al., Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness)

So I want to humbly suggest that for the purposes of ensuring Goldmanites' happiness, they give large portions of their money to those impoverished by the recession, thus making themselves and others a bit happier. Spread a bit of that happiness contagion. What do you think?

Previously:


Cthuloid tee shirts

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 12:01 PM PDT

Scott Dennis is the science fiction world's gift to sartori, a wandering t-shirt salesman whom I've run into at conventions on three continents. He'd just expanded his line of Ctholoid tees, adding this Cthulhu vs. the White House Capitol design that I'm very fond of indeed.

Cthulhu And Friend Designs

Previously:


Nominations open for EFF's Pioneer Award

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 11:09 AM PDT

The Electronic Frontier Foundations has opened the nominations for its annual Pioneer Award, given to "leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology." Of all the awards I've ever received, the Pioneer is the one I'm proudest of. It's independently juried by a group of tech luminaries who take public nominations and then deliberate.
The EFF Pioneer Awards were established to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. Each year we field nominations from the EFF community -- now is your opportunity to nominate a deserving individual or group to receive a Pioneer Award for 2009!
Nominate a Pioneer for EFF's 2009 Pioneer Awards!

Homemade oatmeal stout and Heath Bar ice cream

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 10:27 AM PDT

Every single ingredient in this homemade oatmeal stout and Heath Bar ice cream is off my diet. Still, I want.

This was a total success, if I do say so myself. The ice cream base has a slight bitter flavor but also a bit of a toffee flavor from the stout. The sweetness of the Heath bar is a good foil to that bitterness while the toffee in it helps bring out more of that toffee flavor. The texture of the ice cream is beautifully creamy making a good base for the crunch of the Heath Bar. This is a flavor I'll definitely make again!
Oatmeal Stout and Heath Bar Ice Cream (via Craft)

Autism as an academic advantage

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 10:23 AM PDT

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education Tyler Cowen argues for autism as part of a "neurodiverse" world that has many kinds of normal, noting that "diagnosed autistics are very often those people who encounter major problems in life," while those for whom autism provides an advantage are rarely diagnosed.
Autism is often described as a disease or a plague, but when it comes to the American college or university, autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved. One reason American academe is so strong is because it mobilizes the strengths and talents of people on the autistic spectrum so effectively. In spite of some of the harmful rhetoric, the on-the-ground reality is that autistics have been very good for colleges, and colleges have been very good for autistics...

A partial list notes that autistics have, on average, superior pitch perception and other musical abilities, they are better at noticing details in patterns, they have better visual acuity, they are less likely to be fooled by optical illusions, they are more likely to fit some canons of economic rationality, they solve many puzzles at a much faster rate, and they are less likely to have false memories of particular kinds. Autistics also have, to varying degrees, strong or even extreme abilities to memorize, perform operations with codes and ciphers, perform calculations in their head, or excel in many other specialized cognitive tasks. The savants, while they are outliers, also reflect cognitive strengths found in autistics more generally. A recent investigation found, with conservative methods, that about one-third of autistics may have exceptional skills or savantlike abilities...

It turns out that the American university is an environment especially conducive to autistics. Many autistics are disadvantaged or overwhelmed by processing particular stimuli from the outside world and thus are subject to perceptual overload as a result. For some autistics, that is debilitating, but for many others it is either manageable or a problem they can work around. The result is that many autistics prefer stable environments, the ability to choose their own hours and work at home, and the ability to work on focused projects for long periods of time.

Autism as Academic Paradigm (via Kottke)
Previously:


NASA's new restored footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 09:56 AM PDT

To honor the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA has just released these brand new restored videos of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic first steps on the moon. The space agency is working with Lowry Digital in Burbank to restore tapes from the July 20, 1969 moonwalk &mdash the project in its entirety will be completed in the fall, but they're offering a sneak peek at some of the iconic moments, like Neil Armstrong (above) and Buzz Aldrin (below) taking their first steps on the moon, starting right now. These clips show side-by-side comparisons of the footage stored in the NASA archives vs. the never-seen-before newly restored footage. Stay tuned for more reporting about the "lost" Apollo 11 tapes and an interview with Buzz Aldrin on BBG on Monday. Below, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin raising the American flag on the moon's surface: Footage courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Rap Rap Chess (found art / DIY personals)

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 09:44 AM PDT

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I visited the home of BB pals Richard "Dangerous Minds" Metzger and Tara McGinley last week, and Richard showed me this gem, found on a telephone pole nearby. "I'm still peeing myself laughing about this guy," says Richard.

MAN CLAIMS TO LOOK LIKE MICHAEL FROM "GOOD TIMES" (Dangerous Minds)

Update: A savvy BB commenter points out that the guy's a) prolific b) known.

Mystery blob devouring Alaska coastline

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 08:44 AM PDT

Kyle sez "An unidentified blob is making its way through the Arctic ocean, engulfing wildlife (only feathers and bones were left of a goose that was caught in it), and no one knows what it is."
Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism..."

"It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.

"It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it," he said.

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities (Thanks, Kyle!)

BB Video: The 1944 "soundie" that inspired Devo's "Whip It" (Oddball Film + Video)

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 09:38 AM PDT


(Download MP4, or watch on YouTube)

Boing Boing Video proudly presents this newly rediscovered gem: The Texas Strip, a 1944 "Soundie" which inspired the Devo song and video "Whip It." Watch as a singing cowboy flirts with cowgirls sitting on a a fence, then strips one of them with his whip (oh my).

The WWII-era down-home striptease comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: boingboingvideo.com. RSS feed for new episodes here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

Fresh Green: Worst Packaging, Human Shrub Attacks English Town, and More

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 06:35 AM PDT

alanfreshgreen.jpg Photo credit: scrapthispack @ Flickr Note: Each week we'll be bringing you a roundup of fresh green topics from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy! Poor packaging design and ridiculous examples of over-packaging come in all shapes and sizes, but it doesn't get much worse than these individually-wrapped bananas. Packaging Design At Its Worst Citizens of Colchester beware! Take to your houses. A creature from the swamps has been filling empty planters and baskets with brightly-coloured marigolds and begonias, last seen wandering the streets carrying a sign saying "Save the Roses." Human Shrub Attacks Town Thinking of buying sustainably harvested wood from Brazil? Check the label, could be illegal wood passed off as eco-certified. Your Eco-Wood Might Be Illegal If you are a cyclist and the victim of Auto Road Rage, there are a number of things you can do to keep the peace. I like #5, don your best plumage. 6 Ways To Defuse Anti-Cyclist Road Rage

Kathe Koja's KISSING THE BEE audiobook: betrayal and emotional whirlwinds told with originality and subtlety

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 01:59 AM PDT

The audiobook of Kissing the Bee combines two of my favorite things: Kathe Koja's young adult fiction and Full Cast Audio's use of skilled actors to bring fiction to life.

Kathe Koja's young adult novels are masterpieces of subtlety, understatement, and the sneaky, skillful use of everyday situations to illustrate large, difficult emotional truths about growing up. Full Cast Audio -- you may know them from their great adaptation of Heinlein's Have Space Suit, Will Travel -- have brought in as talented a team of voice actors as I've heard, and their narration does great things for an already strong narrative.

Kissing the Bee tells the story of Dana and Avra, two small-town high school seniors about to graduate. They're best friends, but brainy, shy Dana is always in egocentric, beautiful Avra's shadow. Dana is incredibly smart about people and her natural empathy lets her love her best friend, despite all her failings, and despite the fact that Dana is secretly in love with Avra's long-suffering boyfriend, Emil.

That's the setup, your basic adolescent love-triangle. But oh, does Koja ever do amazing things with it. Koja's special gift is empathizing with the wrenching drama of adolescent emotions, the looming, all-eclipsing feelings that suffuse every tissue, raising the stakes of your problems to infinity. Dana is smart and reflexive enough to know this, but she can't avoid or explain away her feelings. She is a genuinely good person trapped in a situation in which there is no genuinely good course of action that avoids one kind of betrayal or another. Her dilemma -- whom to betray, and how -- plays out with the crushing inevitability of an avalanche, but her reflexivity and thoughtfulness means that the reader never descends into helplessness, no matter how bad things get for Dana.

The three primary actors -- voices of Dana, Avra and Emil -- play it just perfect, with the nuance that conveys smart young people who are in two minds: the dramatic emotional whirlwind and the rational knowledge of its true scale as measured against the whole wide world.

Koja's admirable people-smarts have guided her through two different careers, first as a writer of lush, lavish horror and now as a writer of spare, whittled-down, understated young adult novels. She is proof that there are no tired or unoriginal situations, only tired or unoriginal writers. Thankfully, she is neither.

Kissing the Bee (CD)

Kissing the Bee (Hardcover)

Previously:



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