The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- David Byrne's live show: the highlight of the year
- Video from EFF panel/audience discussion on using technology in repressive regimes
- Senator's campaign website suffers search-engine death penalty for embedding invisible homophobic slur against opponent
- HOWTO Present a poster session at a science meeting
- Today at Boing Boing Gadgets
- Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
- Long-lost video of John Philips' lunar-themed musical play produced by Andy Warhol (1975)
- @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
- "Smart Parking Meters" not as smart as the hackers who pwn them
- Black-market stem-cell clinic raided
- "Snow Day," by Emma: 8-year-old girl rocks out massively.
- Iran: Canadian-Iranian filmmaker, journalist Maziar Bahari among 100 dissidents on trial
- US Military May Ban Twitter, Facebook as "Security Headaches"
- Living in a massive high-rise with no neighbors
- Downloading student must pay $675K for 30 songs to 4 record labels.
- Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" finds out what kind of doomsayer you are
- Visiting the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch
- Birthers glom on to fake Kenyan birth certificate.
- Mark Dery: My Roman Holiday
- Mark Dery guestblogging on Boing Boing
- Chief energy economist says oil reserves are drying up more quickly than previously thought
- John Waters on his friendship with Manson Family murderer Leslie Van Houten
- Recently on Offworld: a double dose of Indie Spirit, glitched-out planetscapes, brave invaders
- Documentary on the Church of Satan from 1970
- Architects Journal on "comic book cities"
- Self-healing surfaces
- Car used to design font
- Grey Gardens coloring books
| David Byrne's live show: the highlight of the year Posted: 04 Aug 2009 12:49 AM PDT  Last night I saw David Byrne's "Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno" tour at London's Barbican Centre and was absolutely blown off my feet, through the seat, out the door, and six miles into the sky. I've been a Talking Heads fan since I was 13, and I've seen Byrne perform four times before, but nothing to top last night's show, which featured a huge number of performers -- three backup singers, three dancers, two percussionists, various guitar players, a keyboard, a bass -- and the sweetest, goofiest, most lovely choreography since Stop Making Sense. Byrne and co performed a mix of tracks from the fantastic new disc Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, made in collaboration with Brian Eno, along with an eclectic mix of earlier Eno collaborations, including songs from My Life in a Bush of Ghosts, and a ton of old Talking Heads songs (including some non-Eno tracks like Burning Down the House). But there is one unequivocal favorite in my pantheon: my all-time favorite performer and musician is David Byrne. From Talking Heads to his remarkable solo career, I have never heard a Byrne project I didn't like (for a real treat, go hunting in the treasurehouse of Luaka Bop, the world music label he curated, through which I first discovered Tom Ze, Gilberto Gil, Fifi, Tete Y Popo, Gal Costa and many the other musicians whose work never fails to move me). So last night's show was a fabulous treat. From the opening -- Byrne giving his benediction to photographers, despite the dire warnings on the programs -- to the closing -- three encores, each sweeter, more fun, and more wonderful than the last -- it was nearly two hours' worth of absolute musical joy. I got up and danced -- along with the entire audience -- despite the fact that I never dance. I wasn't the only non-dancer moving in the crowd. It was a proper nerdstock, full of people proving out the aphorism that the best dancer is the one who's having the most fun (I recently re-watched Stop Making Sense and realized that virtually all of the ridiculous things I do when I dance come straight from that movie). The old Byrne and Talking Heads standards are as familiar to me as daydreams, songs that have worn grooves in my brain through repetition, but nevertheless, each performance brought out some nuance, some new interpretation I'd missed until now. And, of course, "Heaven" made me tear up as it never fails to do. Byrne and co have just a few dates left here in the UK. I have no idea if they're sold out or not, but if you can get a ticket, go. Last night was the highlight of a year full of highlights. Previously:
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| Video from EFF panel/audience discussion on using technology in repressive regimes Posted: 04 Aug 2009 12:58 AM PDT The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien sez, Video from tonight's EFF talk on Iranian Protests And Digital Media (Thanks, Danny!) Previously:
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| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 11:35 PM PDT Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) is running for Hutchison's campaign initially told the Austin American-Statesman that "a vendor sold them on a tool that generates the phrases hourly or less in an attempt to divine the most frequent Web searches made by individuals who search online using one or all of the terms 'Rick Perry,' 'Kay Bailey Hutchison' and 'Texas'"--and plenty of people search for "rick perry gay."Hidden gay slur, search terms, get campaign site blacklisted   |
| HOWTO Present a poster session at a science meeting Posted: 03 Aug 2009 10:35 PM PDT Here's some comprehensive and entertaining advice for people contemplating giving a poster session at a scientific meeting; much of this applies to any situation in which you hope to catch and hold the attention of passers-by: Advice on designing scientific posters (via Hack the Planet) (Image: Poster Session, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Nucho's Flickr stream) |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:27 PM PDT  There's amazing time-lapse video of a giant LEGO light bulb being constructed. Lisa warns against letting social networking ruin your social skills. We announced the winners of our Gadget Fiction competition. Guest reviewer David Wertheimer tested Klipsch's Image X5S headphones. We gaped at Frank Buchwald's beautiful hand-made light fittings. A dancing humanoid robot has an iPhone 3GS instead of a head. Rob reviewed the Loop Pointer, a very odd controller indeed; and Steven reviewed Nokia's N97. Find out why it's no good.  |
| Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life Posted: 03 Aug 2009 04:20 PM PDT 
I came across Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life when I took my kids to the California Science Center in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and found it in the gift store. It was written by philosopher Roger-Pol Droit, a researcher at the Centre de Recherche Scientifique and, as the title indicates, contains 101 mental and perceptual exercises you can perform on yourself. In his introduction, Droit says the purpose of the experiments is to "provoke tiny moments of awareness," and to "shake a certainty we had taken for granted: our own identity, say, or the stability of the outside world, or even the meanings of words." Most of the experiments require about 20 minutes to complete, and often involve nothing more than merely thinking about something.Some of the experiments you'll probably want to try when you are alone at home (like calling your name repeatedly for 20 minutes, or repeating some other word to drain it of its meaning), but others can be performed anywhere (like imagining that the world was "created from nothing, just an instant ago" and will vanish "like a light going out" in 20 minutes). Some of the experiments you can't really plan in advance; they'll happen by accident, like when you wake up without knowing where you are -- a magical experience I love having, but Droit explains how to make the best use of this five-second-long "delicious lightness of a mystery without menace" the next time it happens: "What you do not know, for a tiny interval of time, is what the place is called, where it is, and you you are doing there. But you're certain that you are somewhere, and will find out very soon... try not to lose hold of this rare moment of perfect suspension between doubt and confidence, certitude and ignorance, anxiety and satisfaction." One of the things I've learned from doing just a few of the exercises in this book is how hard it to stop being so busy and slow down enough to do the experiments. I don't want to stop sitting in front of my computer, playing games, reading a book, tending to chickens, tidying the house, or a million other things that tug at me, but a few minutes after getting started with one of Droit's exercises, I feel good about taking a break from those habitual behaviors. Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life |
| Long-lost video of John Philips' lunar-themed musical play produced by Andy Warhol (1975) Posted: 03 Aug 2009 04:10 PM PDT BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space." The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff. The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip: LONG LOST FOOTAGE OF MUSICAL PLAY BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PRODUCED BY ANDY WARHOL (1975) (Dangerous Minds, photo courtesy Ken Regan / Camera S) Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" |
| @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com) Posted: 03 Aug 2009 03:20 PM 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   |
| "Smart Parking Meters" not as smart as the hackers who pwn them Posted: 03 Aug 2009 02:56 PM PDT  A group of tinkerers and security researchers announced findings that prove it is possible to bypass the controls of "e-meter" parking meters -- which means it's possible to park for free where such meters are in use. The group announced their findings last week at the 2009 Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. Snip: Throughout the United States, cities are deploying "smart" electronic fare collection infrastructures. In 2003, San Francisco launched a $35 million pilot program to replace approximately 23,000 mechanical parking meters with electronic units that boasted tamper resistance, payment via smart card, auditing capabilities, and an estimated $30 million annually in fare collection revenue. Other major cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Diego, have made similar moves. This presentation details our evaluation of electronic parking meters, including hardware disassembly, smart card protocol emulation, and silicon die analysis.Slides and presentation: Smart Parking Meters: Grand Idea Studio. News coverage: CBS, PC World, Venturebeat, internetnews, infoworld, CNET (thanks, Jake Appelbaum). |
| Black-market stem-cell clinic raided Posted: 03 Aug 2009 02:44 PM PDT An underground Hungarian stem-cell clinic offering unspecified "therapies" to desperate members of the public has been the subject of a police raid. Reportedly, some 100 "stem cell tourists" have visited the clinic, paying "as much as $25,000 per person." Stem cell therapy is promising, but there are major hurdles to overcome, not least the risk of the cells causing cancer.'Guerrilla' stem cell clinic raided by police   |
| "Snow Day," by Emma: 8-year-old girl rocks out massively. Posted: 03 Aug 2009 02:13 PM PDT This is all kinds of awesome. "Snow Day," written and performed by a very cool 8-year-old girl named Emma at the 2009 Spring Coffee Shop Jam, at The Columbia City Theater in Seattle, WA. This is the same event, same teachers, same group of kids where that "Folsom Pwison Blues" video came from, last week. There are more videos here, and quite a lot of gems within the mix. Rob, from Hampton Guitars, who teaches Emma and the previously blogged Wesley, says: Emma announced during a guitar lesson one day that she felt like writing a song. I started playing some chords, and this is what she came up with. Amazing. The Jam's a chance for Heartwood Guitar Instruction students to showcase their talents. Enjoy!I'm pretty nuts about the original punk/hardcore/deathmetal jams written and performed by 9-year-old Connor, too -- 'specially DEATH NIGHTMARE. WTF with all these rockin' kids, Seattle, is it something in the water up there?   |
| Iran: Canadian-Iranian filmmaker, journalist Maziar Bahari among 100 dissidents on trial Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:53 PM PDT Journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari, who holds dual citizenship in Iran and Canada, was among more than 100 reporters, activists, and protesters who appeared in court this past Saturday, August 1, in Tehran, held on undefined crimes against the state. More in this NYT article. Entities campaigning for his release include Index on Censorship, Newsweek, the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN, and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. There is a support website for him here: freemaziarbahari.org. Mr. Bahari has not been allowed to see a lawyer since his arrest in June. Video above: an earlier conversation between Mr. Bahari and American television and radio news journalist Ted Koppel. |
| US Military May Ban Twitter, Facebook as "Security Headaches" Posted: 03 Aug 2009 02:19 PM PDT  Defense technology reporter Noah Shachtman has been covering conflicts over the use of social media within the US military ranks for years. This past week, he's been on top of the most recent news that the Pentagon may impose a very wide ban on Twitter and Facebook for security reasons. He first posted the news of a possible "near-total ban" on social media last week at Wired's Danger Room blog, and there's now an update. Snip from his most recent post: Military Times says discussions on what to do about the social media sites involve U.S. Strategic Command, "the Pentagon's chief information officer and its public affairs organization, and are being guided by Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn."Pentagon Wrestles with Possible Twitter, Facebook Ban (Updated) (Wired Danger Room; photo: USAF) Update: Danger Room contributor David Axe has an exclusive interview up today with the Pentagon's "Social Media Czar," who strongly advocates Web 2.0 access despite pressures to ban.
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| Living in a massive high-rise with no neighbors Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:03 PM PDT This 32-story condominium in Fort Myers, Florida has 200 units and only one is occupied. The Vangelakos purchased their unit four years ago and nobody else has ever moved in. The scene sounds like something from a JG Ballard novel, which is appropriate considering I heard about it from Simon Sellars's @Ballardian Twitter stream. From the Associated Press: "Fla. highrise has 32 stories, but just 1 tenant"   |
| Downloading student must pay $675K for 30 songs to 4 record labels. Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:12 PM PDT  A jury has decided that 25-year-old Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum must pay $675,000 to four record labels for downloading and sharing 30 digital music files. He admitted to having downloaded hundreds of songs, but the labels and the court nailed him for 30 specific tracks he dowloaded via Kazaa. This past June, a federal jury in Minneapolis ordered Jamie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year old Native American mother of four, to pay $1.92 million for copyright violations involving 24 downloaded songs. Snip from New York Times item: [He] testified Thursday in federal district court in Boston that he had downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by artists including Nirvana, Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins, and said he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said friends or siblings may have downloaded the songs to his computer. (...) Under federal law they were entitled to $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, but the jury was permitted to raise that to as much as $150,000 a track if it found the infringements were willful.There's a support website for Mr. Tennenbaum here: joelfightsback.com. AmLaw Litigation Daily, a legal trade publication, had an interesting piece up about the arguments in this case around fair use -- and about some of the courtroom drama, including defense attorney Charles Nesson posting an internet video of his wife calling one of the members of the defense team a "schmuck." Snip: On Monday, with jury selection about to begin, the judge knocked out one of Nesson's key legal theories, granting partial summary judgement to the five record companies suing Tenebaum on the question of Tenenbaum's fair use of the copyrighted songs. Though the judge said she will issue a full opinion later, her minute order is pretty stinging: "Tenebaum proposes a fair use defense so broad that it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created," she wrote.Fair Use Defense Gets KO'd at Boston Illegal Music Downloading Trial (law.com, thanks Rob Rader)
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| Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" finds out what kind of doomsayer you are Posted: 03 Aug 2009 01:01 PM PDT  If America comes to a catastrophic end, what will the causes be? Josh Levin of Slate wants to know. He's created a "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" web-based application that lets you select five causes from a collection of "144 potential causes of America's future death." Based on your choices, Slate will tell you what kind of a doomsayer you are. People who take the poll are also asked to supply age, gender, zip code. On Friday, Slate will publish the results. I picked Peak Oil, China Unloads U.S. Treasuries, Deficit Spending, Peak Water, and Megadrought, which makes me a "humanitarian internationalist." Compared to the average Slate reader, I believe more people will survive and that the disaster is more man's fault than nature's. If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.Choose Your Own Apocalypse   |
| Visiting the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch Posted: 03 Aug 2009 12:49 PM PDT This summer, two research expeditions are headed to the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii. Twice the size of Texas, the Garbage Patch is a massive dump of discarded plastic, much of which has deteriorated into tiny bits. Fish and birds eat the material, and die. With 70 percent of the Garbage Patch's plastic sunk under the surface, cleaning it up isn't a matter of skimming the surface of the vortex. From National Geographic: "We need to do the chemistry and see how much plastic is reaching the water and the ocean sediments, how much is being broken into [these] tiny particles and ingested by marine life at rates we can't imagine," said (Jim Dufour of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego)."Giant Ocean-Trash Vortex Attracts Explorers"   |
| Birthers glom on to fake Kenyan birth certificate. Posted: 03 Aug 2009 11:36 AM PDT  Birthers, who refuse to accept Obama's actual Hawaiian birth certificate as proof that he was born in the United States, are holding up a copy of a laughably shoddy, error-filled, forged Kenyan birth certificate as incontrovertible proof that Obama was born in Kenya. Daily Kos and other sites are having fun debunking this poorly-executed forgery. First, the hospital is Coast Provincial General Hospital (sometimes said to be Coast Province General Hospital), not Coast General Hospital.Debunking the unbearably stupid   |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 10:44 AM PDT Mark Dery is guest blogger du jour until August 17. He is the author of Culture Jamming, Flame Wars, Escape Velocity, and The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He's at work on The Pathological Sublime, a philosophical investigation into the paradox of horrible beauty and the politics of "just looking."  When the American Academy in Rome appointed me a scholar in residence for two weeks this summer, an evil gleam kindled in my eye. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: worship Italian cooking in its birthplace like some foodie penitent, a gastro-fundamentalist version of those frighteningly devout pilgrims who earn plenary indulgences by ascending, on their knees, the steep marble stairs of the Piazza di Porta San Giovanni in Rome. (Pontius Pilate's staircase, allegedly, lugged all the way to from the Holy Land to the Holy City in the year 326. A wood casing protects the venerated steps; strategically cut openings reveal what are purported to be Christ's bloodstains. Believer beware...) That was my first, albeit covert, order of business. My Official Reason for Being in Italy was to research my book-in-progress, The Pathological Sublime, a philosophical investigation of the paradox of awful beauty---beheld things whose retinal seductions are irresistible yet whose content is morally horrific, politically incorrect, or at the very least, viscerally repulsive. (About which, more shortly, in my next post.) The second item on my hidden agenda was to convince the editors of Boing Boing to let me blog my Grand Tour, which I hoped would be of interest to like-minded Mutants. With the editors' blessing, I would chronicle my encounters with Wonderful Things&trade in a style that, in my dreams, crossed the scholarly fastidiousness of Charles Willson Peale with the deadpan urbanity Rod Serling, whose brand of suave always hit that sweet spot between Mad Men and the mortician's prep table. I'm not being glib, here. In his famous natural-history museum, Peale was one of the first to embrace the logic of the Linnean taxonomy, a paradigm-shift away from the jumbled cabinets of curiosity, or "wonder closets," of the 17th century, whose intent was not to rationalize and secularize/de-sacralize the world, but to inspire wonder and horror at wild nature and exotic cultures in a time when fact and fable were conjoined twins. Boing Boing's insistence that it is a "directory" implies a certain Enlightenment epistemology, an ordering impulse, the same desire to Explain the Mystery of It All that flickers through the pop sociology and scientific edutainment of TED videos, WIRED articles, and Gladwell lectures. At the same time, Boing Boing is all about "wonderful" things---tagged by category, to be sure, yet experienced by the reader as a free-associated stream of images and ideas and events. The site is a wunderkammer of the Web, where a post about Jack Kirby's comic-book retellings of readers' dreams might follow an item about a summer camp for atheist kids or a link to a photo that does (or does not) bear an uncanny resemblance to the famous image of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald. The implicit logic, here, is less that of the diligently taxonomized archive than that of the madcap cabinet of curiosities, where the prehistoric insect embedded in a piece of amber sits next to the bona fide unicorn's horn, the anencephalic fetus in a vitrine full of brandy keeps company with the mummified mermaid on the shelf beside it. Later today, and over the next two weeks, I hope you'll join me on a guided tour of some of Italy's most spectacular manifestations of the Pathological Sublime (with occasional corner-of-the-mouth asides inspired by more conventional tourist destinations, as well). In Rome, we'll prowl the Museo Storico Nazionale dell'Arte Sanitaria in Rome, and of course the Crypt of the Capuchin Monks, and we'll contemplate the sanctified eroticism of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, too. In Florence, we'll succumb to the uncanny seductions of the 18th-century wax medical models, especially the obstetric mannequins known as "Anatomical Venuses," in the stunning museum La Specola. In the same city, we'll visit the by-invitation-only museums at the Careggi hospital, where we'll marvel at the bizarre, Dr. Phibes-ian anatomical preparations of Girolamo Segato (1792-1836), whose exact nature remains a mystery to this day, and at the breathtakingly hyperrealistic wax models of pathological conditions, and at the unforgettable teratological specimens preserved in formalin. In Ozzano Emilia, outside Bologna, we'll wander the Museum of Veterinary Pathology and Teratology, also by invitation only, a surrealist bestiary of congenital mash-ups, most of them stillborn; back in Bologna, we'll pay homage to the exquisite medical waxes of the incomparable Ercole Lelli, in the Palazzo Poggi, nor will we neglect the dimly lit, unloved Museum of Zoology of the University of Bologna, an unintentional monument to the Taxidermic Grotesque, its stuffed animals in their final, melancholy stages of decay.I'm thrilled by the prospect of submitting these sights, and my insights, for your sharp-witted consideration. In my experience as a reader and a writer, the bb multitudes are smarter by an order of magnitude than nearly any avant-pop, mass/cult audience I've encountered. As important, you've earned your weirdness stripes through frequent exposure to the unkillable GOATSE meme. Over breakfast. As I go, I'll be test-driving arguments for my book-in-progress; any Mutant whose comments sharpen my analysis or inspire previously unconsidered angles of intellectual attack will of course be cited in my acknowledgements. Is all of this a bit much for a Monday morning? If so, my apologies. But I never promised you a unicorn chaser. Image: "The Artist in His Museum," Charles Willson Peale, self-portrait, 1822. Collection: Philadelphia Museum of Art, the George W. Elkins Collection. Used under the Fair Use provision.   |
| Mark Dery guestblogging on Boing Boing Posted: 03 Aug 2009 10:36 AM PDT I'm delighted to welcome Mark Dery as our guestblogger for the next two weeks. Mark is a cultural critic and author whose work I've enjoyed for almost twenty years. In my library, his books share a shelf with the best nonfiction by Ballard, Burroughs, and Eco. As I've written on BB before, "Mark and I have overlapping interests in subjects that, as once defined by Mark Frauenfelder's young daughter Sarina, are 'creepy, interesting, and real.' Mark Dery's take on such matters is often filled with wonderfully obscure references to history, culture, and philosophy that, more often than not, are news to me. That's one of the reasons I like reading his essays and books so much. When I finish one, I always have a great list of links and juxtapositions to follow up on." Here's Mark's "official" bio: Mark Dery   |
| Chief energy economist says oil reserves are drying up more quickly than previously thought Posted: 03 Aug 2009 09:59 AM PDT Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), says his agency's recent study of 800 oil fields around the world (representing three quarter's of the world's oil reserves) reveal that we are facing a global energy catastrophe even sooner than researchers thought. The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.This means the pressure will be on to start using enivonmentally-disastrous tar sands in Canada. Catastrophic oil shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist |
| John Waters on his friendship with Manson Family murderer Leslie Van Houten Posted: 03 Aug 2009 11:18 PM PDT (Above, trailer for upcoming movie, "Leslie, My Name Is Evil") Here's Part 1 of a 5-part excerpt from John Waters' forthcoming book, Role Models (2010) running in the The Huffington Post. Waters writes about his friendship with Leslie Van Houten, the Manson Family member who is serving a life sentence for murdering Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969.
I'm looking forward to reading the other four parts of this excerpt, though I seriously doubt it'll change my opinion that Van Houten should spend the rest of her life in prison. Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 1 of 5, by John Waters |
| Recently on Offworld: a double dose of Indie Spirit, glitched-out planetscapes, brave invaders Posted: 03 Aug 2009 08:35 AM PDT  Recently on Offworld we saw heartening tales of Indie Spirit leading to two cross-promotional cross-overs: Crackerblocks' Enviro-bear -- ursine motorist star of the indie PC favorite and recently-launched iPhone port of the same name -- coming as an unlockable character to Mountain Sheep's just-launched iPhone shooter Minigore (above), and bunny battleships coming to Positech's Gratuitous Space Battles to help promote Wolfire's leporine/lupine battler Overgrowth. We also saw the first footage of an entirely new game from Knytt and Night Game creator Nifflas -- the fantastically ambient and atmospheric platformer project title Q -- and it's every bit as gorgeous as his earlier games above. Elsewhere, we got the latest update on homegrown voxel-deforming puzzler Flipper as it makes its way to DSiWare, purchased one ticket to mouth-foaming seizures and glitched-out landscapes in a video for chiptune artists Chromelodeon, saw papercraft artist Harlancore do an 8-bit console Speakerdog, and read an interview with the founder of abandonware repository Home of the Underdogs, who, as it turns out, is Harvard alum and investment bank exec Sarinee Achavanuntakul. Finally, our one shot's for the day: making love, not Wor, and the tale of the bravest invader.   |
| Documentary on the Church of Satan from 1970 Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:57 AM PDT Gareth Branwyn conjured up this fun 1970 documentary on the Church of Satan and its founder Anton Szandor LaVey. According to many friends of mine who knew LaVey, the "black pope" was, er, wicked smart, insightful, witty, and had the charisma of a great showman. Which of course he was. He also played a mean organ. I wish I'd met him! Satanis: The Devil's Mass Previously:   |
| Architects Journal on "comic book cities" Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:31 AM PDT   The Architects Journal compiled a top 10 list of "the greatest illustrated urban spaces" from comic books. Above, panels from Moebius' The Long Tomorrow and Herge's Tintin. Also featured: Radiant City, Metropolis, Ubicand, Gotham City, Daredevil's New York, From Hell's London, Chris Ware's Chicago, and Mega City One. Top 10 Comic Book Cities (via Drawn!)   |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 10:23 AM PDT  Researchers are developing a new nanotech process to create a self-healing material that repairs itself if damaged The scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute and Duisburg-Essen University peppered a layer of electroplating with fluid-filled nanocapsules. If the electroplating is scratched, the nanocapsules burst open to fill the damage. From Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft: Mechanical bearings are one example of possible applications – the materials of the bearings usually have a electroplated coating, in which the capsules can be embedded. If there is a temporary shortage of lubricant, part of the bearing's coating is lost, the capsules at the top of the layer burst and release lubricant. The bearing is not therefore damaged if it temporarily runs dry. The researchers have produced the first copper, nickel and zinc coatings with the new capsules, although surface coverage does not extend beyond the centimeter scale. Experts estimate that it will be another one and a half to two years before whole components can be coated. In a further step the team worked on more complex systems – involving differently filled capsules, for example, whose fluids react with one another like a two component adhesive."Self-healing surfaces"   |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:07 AM PDT |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2009 07:02 AM PDT   This Grey Gardens Coloring Book is the best curious collectible for the day. There are three volumes, signed by the artist, in the $30 set. Grey Gardens Collectibles Coloring Books (via Bust)   |
Speaking of dance, the dancers on-stage were stupendous. The choreogr aphy, like that in Stop Making Sense, was at once graceful, playful, beautiful and informal, accessible even to philistines like me. After a year on tour, the entire ensemble meshed perfectly, and the dancers, singers and musicians traded off vocals, movement and instruments with ease. 
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Most of the other tenants in the 200-unit condo didn't close on their contracts, and the few that did have transferred to an adjacent building owned by the same company because more people live there. 
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. Way back in the day, he edited Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (1994), an academic anthology that kick-started scholarly interest in techno-feminism and black technoculture (through Dery's trailblazing essay "Black to the Future," in which he coined the term "Afrofuturism"). His 1993 pamphlet "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs" popularized the term "culture jamming" and helped launch the movement of the same name. In 1996, Dery established himself, with Suck essays such as "
I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious "Manson girls" who shaved their heads, carved X's in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row without the slightest trace of remorse forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a "Manson girl" today. Sixty years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it's time to parole her. 
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