The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Fresh Greens: Better LEDs from Salmon (yep, the fish), Vegetarian Killer Robots, and More Green Oddities
- Merce Cunningham, avant-garde
- We're in the Future: Scientists Warn of Robot Overlords
- Centenarian Tango dancers in Argentina
- Virginia, the Blind Dog
- Firefighter allegedly shoots cyclist in head to teach him not to ride on a busy street
- Nicholson Baker on the Kindle
- Test compares the way humans and chimps learn
- Animated trailer for Jim Shepard's short story "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You"
- Secret Identity party at Meltdown Comics in LA, Wednesday, July 29
- Celebrate Sysadmin's Day on Wednesday at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco
- Crows Recognize Human Faces
- Reptilian Alien Tearing Through Fake Human Face Thermos
- Man of the Year Million
- Hollow spy coin
- Bees in my light fixture
- Settlers of tiny Pacific island go nuts
- Pretend cop pulls over real one
- Movie family portraits
- Storyville, New Orleans, and the 1947 film with Armstrong/Holiday
- What's wrong with Jamba Juice's Get Your War On plagiarism
- M.I.A. and Santogold in new N.A.S.A. Project video: "Whatchadoin?"
- Full-size lego house
- Carl Sagan on Flatland
- @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
- Jamba Juice accused of stealing "Get Your War On" artist's work - Update: Jamba responds, GYWO calls for boycott
- Recently on Offworld: Scott Pilgrim the game, Netflix streaming roundup, the essence of Noby
- What real piracy looks like: biopirate loses patent over century-old latinamerican staple crop
- American eugenics movement archives
- Free online archive of vintage TV commercials
| Posted: 28 Jul 2009 05:17 AM PDT  Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy! Fish are the Secret Sauce for Better LEDs What happens when you mix fluorescent dyes with salmon DNA? Awesome lighting! Killer (Veggie) Robots for the Military It can drive and feed itself, but veggie style. We aren't that ready to go Terminator yet. Australians + Bikes + Hip-Hop Videos = Hilarity Would you ditch the car and hop on a fixie after seeing this video? Ginormous Solar Flowers with Free Wi-Fi Taking Over US Cities Six lucky cities will get some ridiculous looking solar flowers for a little free wi-fi and rest time. Is your city on the list??  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:48 PM PDT  Merce Cunningham, avant-garde choreographer and pioneer of modern dance died yesterday at age 90. While his own career focused on dance, Cunningham influenced and collaborated with artists as diverse as John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bruce Nauman. For Here is Cunningham on the use of chance operations to create artistic works: John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the "I Ching," the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams. Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64—the number of the hexagrams —to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should follow—say a particular sound—what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance.Merce Cunningham (New York Times) Merce Cunningham Dance Company  |
| We're in the Future: Scientists Warn of Robot Overlords Posted: 27 Jul 2009 06:34 PM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.  This article from the NY Times is a great read for those of you who feel, what with the lack of jetpacks and pizzas-in-a-pill, the present just really isn't the future you'd been promised. This is an article in a major, established, old-school publication talking about established scientists hand-wringing about how the robots we're building may become smarter than us, and, um, take over. It's a fascinating thought, and one that a number of years ago still seemed well within the realm of science fiction. Autonomy has come very far in recent years, and the use of armed, semi-autonomous drones is now commonplace; it just makes sense for scientists and technologists to start thinking about some of these big issues now. So, don't kick your Roomba. ( Also, it's interesting to take a look at where this all really started.)  |
| Centenarian Tango dancers in Argentina Posted: 27 Jul 2009 03:20 PM PDT Behold, Carmencita Calderón, rocking the tango at her 100 year birthday party. And here are more videos of famous tango dancers, dancing when they were older. Both via Manolo the shoeblogger. |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 03:43 PM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.  One of my dogs, Virginia, went blind late last year. I knew it was coming; she has glaucoma, and lost sight in one of her eyes a while before. We'd been keeping the other eye alive with lots and lots of medicine, but the vet told us it was just a matter of time. So, when the morning came and I found her running around crazily all over the house, nose to the ground, I shouldn't have been surprised. Still, I was pretty alarmed. And while I read lots on the internet about this, and even saw the articles that said not to panic, the dog will adapt, those articles were almost invariably written by the sort of hyper-caring earth-mother women who could say taking care of a limbless, eyeless, incontinent sea lion was an easy, rewarding experience anyone could do. I didn't really buy it. So, when she went blind, I did end up going a bit nuts. She's a profoundly sweet-natured and smart dog, and seeing her struggle, without benefit of understanding why, was wrenching. I looked into research into artificial vision, surgeries, other medications; everything was either a pipe dream, insanely expensive, and almost nothing guaranteed any vision retention. It was crazy, and while I was being an idiot, Virginia was out there, rewiring her little brain to make it work. It's really amazing. In far less time than you'd ever guess, she adapted-- far, far better than I ever realized would be possible. I made the usual mistake of anthropomorphizing the animal I live with. Her brain just works differently than ours do: I'm told when they go blind, dogs just think something along the lines of "It's nighttime always now. Huh. How about that." and they get on with it. Plus, they're much less avid readers than us, and, of course, their primary sense is smell, so they're in a much better position to give up sight than, say, me. Virginia learned how to navigate the yard and the house. She checks for open doors with her snout, she uses her ears far more than before it seems-- you can 'remote control' her through unfamiliar territory by clapping or yelling, and she'll make a straight vector to the recognized sound source. Plus, she got rid of her phobia of men who fit some mold from her past, because, apparently, the nose gives everyone a fair shake.  I knew she's really adapted when I saw her chasing squirrels. And doing a surprisingly good job of it. I made a little diagram here showing a bit of how I think she does it: the nose gives a general radar-like image of squirrel locations; the ears, each pivoting independently, are triangulating rapid movement and locations with some advanced unconscious dog-math; she has a good map of the yard in her brain, and I think she gets more information from her paws about the surface she's on, which must help pinpoint where she is in her mind's map. Granted, she still occasionally plops on a pillow already occupied by another dog or cat, and will bump into things. When she does, though, she's completely undaunted, and bolts off headlong without fear. I close my eyes and try to take a few timorous steps, and I'm flailing my arms around in front of me like one of those inflatable monsters that try to get me to buy a used car. None of this is really shocking information, I'm sure. But hopefully, another voice, one not really particularly skilled with animals, telling anyone going through something like this not to panic, and have some trust in your pet, will help put things in perspective. Good girl, Virginia.  |
| Firefighter allegedly shoots cyclist in head to teach him not to ride on a busy street Posted: 27 Jul 2009 02:43 PM PDT  Police say firefighter Charles Diez was upset that a man was riding a bike with his 3-year-old son on a busy street so shot the cyclist in the head. The bullet embedded itself in the rider's helmet. Diez was arrested on attempted first degree murder charges, but lucky for him the fire department in Asheville, NC is keeping him on paid investigative leave, so he will continue to draw a salary. Asheville Firefighter Shot Bicyclist -- Officers Say Pair Argued Over Child Safety |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 12:27 PM PDT One of my favorite authors, Nicholson Baker, reviewed the Kindle 2 in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Within, lying face up in a white-lined casket, was the device itself. It was pale, about the size of a hardcover novel, but much thinner, and it had a smallish screen and a QWERTY keyboard at the bottom made of tiny round pleasure-dot keys that resisted pressing. I gazed at the keys for a moment and thought of a restaurant accordion.Like Baker, I prefer reading Kindle books on my iPhone. He said switching from reading on an iPhone to reading on a Kindle was "like going from a Mini Cooper to a white 1982 Impala with blown shocks." |
| Test compares the way humans and chimps learn Posted: 27 Jul 2009 12:09 PM PDT Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. Here's an interesting clip from a National Geographic documentary that compares the way humans and chimpanzees learn. When asked to perform a series of motions in order to get a treat out of a box, the human child will copy the adult's motions exactly. The ape copies the motions as well, until the box is replaced with a translucent version. Once it is, the ape realizes that half of the motions are pointless and takes a shortcut to get the treat; children, on the other hand, continue to do the meaningless motions that they were taught. According to the filmmakers, this illustrates how both humans and chimps learn through copying, but children are "better" at it. That very well may be. But shouldn't the chimps should be given props for problem-solving here? Experiments like this always drive me a bit crazy because the social setup isn't exactly parallel. Children are being asked to copy other humans, whereas the apes are expected to follow a different species. Would children be as good at copying (or obeying) if chimps were the ones giving instructions? Of course, even if chimps were asked to imitate older chimps, they probably wouldn't copy as precisely as the children, and that's ultimately the filmmakers' point. The children are able to see rote repetition as the point of a game whereas the chimp might only be able to grasp "getting the treat."  |
| Animated trailer for Jim Shepard's short story "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You" Posted: 27 Jul 2009 11:42 AM PDT I enjoyed this three-minute trailer for Jim Shepard's short story "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You," which appears in the Electric Literature: #1 paperback anthology. |
| Secret Identity party at Meltdown Comics in LA, Wednesday, July 29 Posted: 27 Jul 2009 11:33 AM PDT  A fun time is in store for adult intellectuals who visit Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 29. Comic book historian Craig Yoe will be signing copies of his book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster. And the world-famous Suicide Girls have kindly offered to join in the festivities by donning fetish outfits and acting out scenes from the book. Secret Identity party at Meltdown Comics in LA, Wednesday, July 29 (Google Calendar link) |
| Celebrate Sysadmin's Day on Wednesday at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco Posted: 27 Jul 2009 11:26 AM PDT JWZ sez, "The event we have at DNA Lounge this Wednesday seems relevant to your interests: OpenDNS and Meraki are hosting a free party in honor of System Administrator Appreciation Day at DNA Lounge, Wed Jul 29 from 6pm to 10pm." This is pretty much my favorite holiday of the year -- the day when we celebrate the unsung heroes of the wiring closet and the server room and the admin interface. All hail the sysadmins, especially Our Ken, who is a freaking god. A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.Party like a SysAdmin in San Francisco July 29th (Thanks, JWZ!)  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 11:27 AM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap. This NPR story basically confirms what I've always suspected: crows are very smart, and I never should have said those terrible things to that crow a few years back. I really like crows, and occasionally I'll get a, well, murder of them in my backyard, where they all sit around and caw and cackle to each other, making a huge cacophony that sounds like some large family gatherings I've tried unsuccessfully to avoid. Maybe it's some sort of crow senate. Regardless, they're smart, and they know what you look like.  |
| Reptilian Alien Tearing Through Fake Human Face Thermos Posted: 27 Jul 2009 11:05 AM PDT Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.  Anyone remember the 1980s TV series V? I was a kid when they were on, and only barely remember it, but I do recall some reasonably creepy face-peeling by the reptilian aliens as they tore off their human masks to reveal their true, scaly selves. Honestly, that's about all I remember. But just based on that, I wouldn't have guessed it as a good candidate for a kid's lunchbox set. But then I saw this Thermos on display at a diner in the California desert, and I realized how much growing up I have to do.  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 10:55 AM PDT  The above 1893 newspaper drawing forecasts what humans may look like in the "year million." It accompanied an article on our possible evolutionary direction that appeared in The World on December 3, 1893. "The Man of the Year Million" was a notion that HG Wells also explored. (Loren Coleman reposted the 1893 article over at Cryptomundo because the drawing bears an uncanny resemblance to a 1977 sketch of a cryptid called the Dover Demon.) From the 1893 article in The World: In some of the most highly developed crustaceans, the whole alimentary canal has solidified into a useless cord, because the animal is nourished by the food in which it swims. The man of the year million will not be bothered with servants handing him things on plates which he will chew, and swallow and digest. He will bathe in amber liquid which will be pure food, no waste matter assimilated through the pores of the skin. The mouth will shrink to a rosebud thing; the teeth will disappear; the nose will disappear-it is not nearly as big now as it was in savage days-the ears will go away. They are already folded up from what they were, and only a little tip fast vanishing remains to show that ages ago they were long-pointed things which bent forward and backward to catch the sound of approaching enemies."1893 'Dover Demon' and the Man of the Year Million" (via Robert Schneck)  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 10:34 AM PDT  Brian Dereu sent me a sample of the hollow spy coins that he makes and sells. It came with a metal collar that makes it easy to open. I don't think I'll ever find a use for it, but I like having it anyway!  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 10:23 AM PDT  I thought a light bulb had burned out in the lighting fixture in the ceiling. The light bulb was fine -- dead bees in the glass cup were blocking out the light. (This photo shows only about 1/3 of the bees -- the rest fell on the floor when I took out the glass cup.) |
| Settlers of tiny Pacific island go nuts Posted: 27 Jul 2009 09:34 AM PDT  The Spratlys island chain consists of hundreds of tiny islands in the South Pacific. The LA Times calls it "the most disputed island chain on Earth." The Philippines government, in an attempt to bolster its claim to ownership of the Spratlys, has been sending civil employees to live on Pagasa, a 75-acre Spratlys island since 2002. But the forced settlers hate living on the tiny rock, which can be walked around in 30 minutes. In a nation where half the 90 million residents endure grinding poverty, Pagasa volunteers get free food and housing and guaranteed work. But there's also guaranteed boredom. Many who inhabit Pagasa consider the calendar their worst enemy. Others mark off time on the wall like stir-crazy convicts.Squatters in paradise say it's job from hell  |
| Pretend cop pulls over real one Posted: 27 Jul 2009 10:04 AM PDT Antonio Fernandez Martinez, driving a Ford Crown Victoria with flashing lights, attempted to pull over a car in Oakland last week. The problem is, Martinez isn't a police officer. But the man he tried to pull over is. From the Associated Press: Martinez, a convicted car thief, will have his felony probation revoked and could face a prison term."Police: Fake officer tries to stop real officer"  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:56 AM PDT   Kirk Demarais created a series of colored pencil portraits depicting some favorite families from Hollywood films. The latest pieces are on display until August 8 at Gallery1988 Los Angeles' Crazy 4 Cult: 3-D group art show. "Kirk Demarais's paintings of movie families" (via Dangerous Minds)  |
| Storyville, New Orleans, and the 1947 film with Armstrong/Holiday Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:45 AM PDT  During the early 20th century, Storyville was New Orleans' red light district. The 1947 film New Orleans is about the final days of the district and the fictionalized "birth of Jazz" out of its brothel scene. (No, it wasn't the white owner of a gambling joint who brought jazz to the masses.) The film features Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong in key roles and other jazz greats like Kid Ory, Budd Scott, and Meade "Lux" Lewis. Over at the "Clean Living In Difficult Circumstances" site, Stephen Grasso has clips of the film and some of the story behind Storyville. Image seen here by EJ Bellocq who photographed Storyville prostitutes."New Orleans, Storyville and Billie Holiday"  |
| What's wrong with Jamba Juice's Get Your War On plagiarism Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:30 AM PDT Below, Xeni posts about Jamba Juice's outrageous plagiarism of David Rees's brilliant Get Your War On webcomic. Like many of Rees's fans, I'm also pissed off by this, but not because of "theft" or "infringement" -- as Rees himself points out, he uses a bunch of public domain clipart to make his work; if the roles were reversed (funny webguy uses the same public domain art as big company to do something that subverts the original), we'd all be crying fair use, and rightly so. No, what pisses me off about this is that it's plagiarism. The unsigned Jamba Juice ads look like they're Rees's work. Even a sophisticated person who's familiar with both Rees and Jamba might mistake one for the other. This may or may not be illegal -- you could argue that Rees has a common-law trademark claim against Jamba -- but it is certainly unethical. It's sleazy. It fools the public into thinking that Jamba Juice has an endorsement that it just doesn't have. It's easy to get caught up in property talk here and declare that Rees owns clip art, or clip art with funny speech bubbles, or what-have-you, but Rees isn't doing that and we shouldn't either. We don't need to invent exotic new copyright laws that confer ownership over clipart to condemn Jamba Juice: we can make recourse to the tried-and-true principle of not tricking people into buying your products and not plagiarizing other people. Jamba Juice accused of stealing "Get Your War On" artist's work; GYWO calls for boycott |
| M.I.A. and Santogold in new N.A.S.A. Project video: "Whatchadoin?" Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:39 AM PDT We've debuted a number of these wonderful N.A.S.A. videos (not to be confused with NASA) on Boing Boing Video, and this latest release on YouTube is no less spectacular, starring Sri Lankan street diva M.I.A.. N.A.S.A. "Whachadoin?" feat. M.I.A., Spank Rock, Santogold, & Nick Zinner. (Squeak E. Clean Productions, Dir: Jimena Oddi & Jorge Jaramillo; Producers: Susan Applegate & Tito Melega. DP: Santiago Mellazini) N.A.S.A.'s debut album: "The Spirit of Apollo."
Previously:  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:22 AM PDT James "Top Gear" May is asking for volunteers to help construct a two-story lego house in Surrey, England. The project is part of his BBC program, Toy Stories. From Get Surrey: On Friday, more than three million Lego bricks were delivered to the vineyard in preparation for the task."Lego house attempt for James May's Toy Stories" (via Neatorama) Previously:  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:16 AM PDT Dig this vintage clip of the late Carl Sagan explaining the 4th dimension with a trip through "Flatland." And it is a trip. Of course, the weird realm of Flatland was first proposed by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. (via The Daily Grail)  |
| @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com) Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:08 AM PDT (Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)
More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com  |
| Posted: 27 Jul 2009 08:33 AM PDT "No Justice, No Juice" is the rallying cry of those joining the fight to support the popular webcomic "Get Your War On," after an aparrent ripoff in an ad campaign for the American juice franchise Jamba Juice. BB guestblogger Carrie McLaren blogged about the controversy here last week. More about the uh, creative similarities on GYWO artist David Rees' website here. Jamba Juice has issued a response, but it's pathetic: Jamba Juice would like to expressly communicate that the Summer Bliss promotion was not intended to imply any affiliation with Mr. Rees, Mr. Rees' endorsement of Jamba Juice and its products, or Jamba Juice's endorsement of Mr. Rees' work." Jambattorneys, if you're reading, here's why that's pathetic: what's at issue isn't that people think Rees "endorses Jamba Juice and its products" (he says he "prefers wine") but that to my non-lawyer eyes, Jamba Juice appears to have ripped of Rees' well-established body of work. I don't know if what Jamba did is illegal or not, I just know it seems unfair and uncool. Snip from Rees' step-by-step analysis of the Jamba campaign (a sample ad is inset, below): Look, IANAL, but it doesn't take a lawyer to smell something fishy in the wheatgrass. There's even a Get Your War On book, for cryin' out loud. Lazy ad agencies, if you're gonna copy someone's work without credit, at least pick on lesser-known, web-only artists whose work hasn't been online for 8 years. They're easier targets. I'd like to see Jamba Juice apologize and buy David Rees a box of chardonnay, then call it a day.(thanks, Sean Bonner)
Update: Cory weighs in on the controversy.
Previously:
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| Recently on Offworld: Scott Pilgrim the game, Netflix streaming roundup, the essence of Noby Posted: 27 Jul 2009 07:07 AM PDT  The most exciting development to come out of Comic-Con this year? Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley dropping news that Ubisoft Montreal is currently developing a PS3/Xbox 360 downloadable game based on his comic series Scott Pilgrim (above), to be released alongside Edgar Wright's film adaptation -- news of a magnitude that almost nearly canceled out the disappointment of EA's contest calling for systematic and institutionalized harassment of SDCC booth babes for prizes. Elsewhere on Offworld, we rounded up more of the best films Netflix's Xbox 360 streaming service has to offer, with Zach Galifanakis' dystopian cult comedy Visioneers and more multilayered time-warping and epic human-drama documentary films than you could ever want, and a bonus comedic British invasion. We also figured out how to get a taste of the PS3 Katamari Damacy remake on display at Comic-Con from the comfort of our living rooms, saw new footage of the giant crab battles and near-avoidance baby violence of 'conjure anything' DS game Scribblenauts and of Gearbox's Mad-Max-ian post-apocalyptic co-op open world shooter Borderlands (which promises '87 bazillion' procedurally generated weapons). Finally, we saw chiptune punk stars Anamanaguchi plan their U.S. domination summer tour, got the first look at UK indie Mode7's abstract tactical strategy game Frozen Synapse, and our 'one shot's for the day: No More Heroes in 3D 2D pixels, and Noby Noby Boy's essence in just nine words. |
| What real piracy looks like: biopirate loses patent over century-old latinamerican staple crop Posted: 27 Jul 2009 06:30 AM PDT You hear a lot of talk about piracy in the developing world, about Nigerian markets filled with bootleg DVDs or Chinese iPod knockoffs. But if you want to see what real piracy looks like, look at the bio-pirates, people and corporations who receive patents on common life-forms from the developing world (abetted by the sleepy and lackadaisical US Patent and Trademark Office) and then use their might and muscle to tax people for growing, consuming and exporting the plants they've lived with for centuries, on the grounds that these plants are now some rich person's property. One such injustice is finally drawing to a close. US Patent Number 5,894,079, belonging Colorado's Larry Proctor, has been struck down. Proctor brought home some yellow beans from a Mexican market and filed for a patent on them in the 1990s, neglecting to tell the USPTO that the beans had been a dietary staple in latinamerica for over a century. Proctor called them "Enola beans" and began to receive a toll on every Enola bean imported into the US from latinamerica. He used this money to fund a series of defenses to challenges on his patent. Because the patent system continues to enforce challenged patents while the gears of litigation turn, for every year that went by, Proctor found himself richer and better-able to fund his defense, while the people who had grown and eaten the beans for a century got poorer. Proctor still has the right to appeal his patent up to the Supreme Court, of course. US Patent Office rejects US company's patent protection for bean commonly grown by Latin American farmers' (Thanks, Carolina!)  |
| American eugenics movement archives Posted: 27 Jul 2009 12:04 PM PDT Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. Should you ever care to delve into America's history with eugenics, the Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement is a handy thing indeed. It's hard to believe eugenics was as popular here as it in fact was without seeing the visual evidence. The images here include Fitter Family contests, where white Americans competed at state fairs--much like cattle--to determine who had the best breeding. (Make sure to check out this traveling exhibit.) Also, lots of documents and flyers linking criminality to immigrants and heredity. (Oh, the irony of using the swastika to indicate the racial inferiority of Germans!) The interface is pretty clunky but it's worth pecking around. For background on the early 20th century American eugenics movement, you could do worse than my interview with historian Daniel Kevles.   |
| Free online archive of vintage TV commercials Posted: 27 Jul 2009 06:01 AM PDT Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.
Unfortunately, the videos aren't nearly as accessible as the print ads in the other Duke/Hartman archives--they're on an iTunes channel, which allows for downloading but not much else. The archive is still a work in progress, though, and greater accessibility is planned for the future. (Thanks, Skip!)  |
CIAT officials said that, while they were concerned about the immediate economic impact of the Enola patent, more broadly, they worried that the patent would establish a precedent threatening public access to plant germplasm-the genetic material that comprises the inherited qualities of an organism-held in trust by CIAT and research centers worldwide. 
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