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- Happy Chanuko!
- Advisor: Was it cruel to let poor kids in India play with my iPod?
- Mobile data mining and your privacy rights
- Uighur refugees deported back to China
- Xmaspunk raygun
- Media Meltdown: a media literacy comic for kids
- Phreak/hacker history comic now a free download
- America can't make things because managers all learn finance instead of production
- World's worst endangered animal smuggling kingpin
- Toys R Us puts elf toys in the science section
- Avatar earns $232.2m in opening weekend
- Two-thirds of cocaine in US is cut with veterinary deworming drug
- Times Square snowball fight: #snOMG 2009
- EFF lawsuit reveals US improperly collected data on citizens
- Eliot Spitzer proposes open-source investigation of AIG emails
- Ornate, laser-cut birchwood Victorian dollhouse
- WSJ: National Enquirer squelched 2007 Woods affair story
- Nuclear reactor cutaway diagrams
- The Year Before The Flood: The Ponderosa Stomp
- "rRan" by Pronto. Video by Michael Lascarides.
- Steampunk Music: Guest art-dispatch from Kristen Philipkoski
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 05:12 AM PST  Glenn Fleishman says, "My aunt saved this from her childhood, a book that was allegedly attempting to inform children about Hannukah. It's a little odd." Glenn adds that the book was published in 1943. Chanuko Book (Flickr photo set)  |
| Advisor: Was it cruel to let poor kids in India play with my iPod? Posted: 20 Dec 2009 05:07 PM PST  A few years ago, I went on a trip to northern India to see the Dalai Lama. I traveled with a lawyer, a politician, a publicist, and a translator. One of the places we visited on the way up from Delhi was called Jalandhar — it's in the Punjab region and is home to a lot of sweatshops. While we were there, we met a bunch of kids who lived with no electricity but told us that, when they grew up, they all wanted to be computer scientists. So we whipped out our cameras and iPods — the closest things we had on hand to real computers — and showed them how technology works. We figured they would enjoy it, and thought it could be a valuable experience that would stay etched in their minds as something to aspire to as they continued their studies. Later, I found out that one of my travel mates thought what we had done was cruel. We had seduced these poor kids with luxuries they will probably never be able to afford, and sullied their pure, technology-free lives with the temptation of electronics. So who's right? Did we ruin these kids for life or give them hopes for a better future? Does it not matter? Is there even a right answer to this question? What do you guys think? Advisor is a column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email me at lisa [at] boingboing [dot] net.
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| Mobile data mining and your privacy rights Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:16 AM PST The US public radio program Science Friday recently produced an interesting episode about the benefits and perils of collecting data from cellphones and other mobile electronic devices. That data could aid research in many different fields, but the personal privacy implications of mobile data mining are worrisome. (via Oxblood)   |
| Uighur refugees deported back to China Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:17 AM PST Cambodia will deport 20 refugees of Uighur minority descent back to China, where human rights groups say they may be tortured or executed upon return. Hundreds of Uighurs were detained by Chinese authorities after a civil uprising, with official reports that 17 have been sentenced to death, but independent reports point to widespread use of torture extrajudicial killings, and grave human rights violations. (via Oxblood)   |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 02:35 AM PST  Andrew Colunga's X-maspunk Ray Gun is a whimsical and wonderful device for conquering the universe and defending Santa's sleigh from marauding Martians. Previously:
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| Media Meltdown: a media literacy comic for kids Posted: 21 Dec 2009 01:48 AM PST  Orca Books sent me a review copy of Media Meltdown, a graphic novel about media literacy for kids, written by Liam O'Donnell and illustrated by Mike Deas. The premise of Media Meltdown is to teach kids how to question the media they get, and to make their own. It follows the adventures of a group of kids who have discovered that the local monster-home developer is up to no good, and is getting away with it because he's a heavy advertiser with the town's only media company, which owns the newspaper, stadium, and TV station. Working together, they break the story on their own, using the Web, and along the way they learn to analyze the media they receive, to use that analysis in making their own media, and to work with others to get their message across (there's also a surprise appearance of this blog, which had me laughing aloud). Media Meltdown is a good mix of instructional and narrative comic, using the medium's strengths to illustrate how media is made, and giving kids the tools they need to research media-making for themselves. The mystery plot is simple, but has some good tension and twists, and the resolution is really sweet. Understanding how media gets made and learning to make your own media are critical skills for kids, and this is a great starting-point. MediaMeltdown.net -- more resources Previously:   |
| Phreak/hacker history comic now a free download Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:46 PM PST The first two volumes of Wizzywig, Ed Piskor's wonderful graphic memoir of the early days of the BBS/hacking/phreaking scene, have been posted online. Mark and I both reviewed Ed's comics last year, and we both really enjoyed them -- great to have them online now, and Ed tells me there's a third volume in the mail to me. I'll post a review here once I get a chance to read it. Wizzywig Volumes 1/2 (ZIP archive) (Mirror)
Wizzywig volume 1: PHREAK, WIZZYWIG VOLUME#2: HACKER (Thanks, Ed! Previously:   |
| America can't make things because managers all learn finance instead of production Posted: 20 Dec 2009 10:49 PM PST In a provocative New Republic article, Noam Scheiber proposes that the collapse of American manufacturing is due to a general shift in management to people who have MBAs, and to a shift in MBA programs to an emphasis on finance instead of production: Upper Mismanagement (via Making Light) (Image: Venn Diagram - Happiness in Business a Creative Commons Attribution image from budcaddell's photostream) Previously:   |
| World's worst endangered animal smuggling kingpin Posted: 20 Dec 2009 09:40 PM PST  Marilyn sez, "Bryan Christy writes in the Jan issue of National Geographic about a notorious animal smuggler. It took the undercover unit of the US Fish & Wildlife Service five years to track down Anson Wong, the world's most wanted smuggler of endangered species. But he got out of prison in 47 months, during which time his wife kept the business going full force. And when Wong got out of prison he set his sights on a 'new wildlife venture, a zoo that promises to be his most audacious enterprise yet' -- smuggling tigers. Christy tells the story of how the Fish & Wildlife Special Ops team set up a sting operation to capture Wong, who boasted of having horns of Sumatran and Javanese rhinoceroses, both forbidden Appendix I animals. He talked openly about getting shahtoosh, the 'king of wool,' from the Tibetan antelope. He had access to extraordinary birds, including the Rothschild's mynah, whose wild population was estimated to number fewer than 150. He bragged about his Spix's macaws, a bird now believed to be extinct in the wild, claiming he'd recently sold three. The black market rate for a Spix's macaw was $100,000. His expanding list of astonishing illegal rarities included panda skins and snow leopard pelts." While no one knows exactly how large the illegal wildlife trade is, this much is certain: It's extraordinarily lucrative. Profit margins are the kind drug kingpins would kill for. Smugglers evade detection by hiding illegal wildlife in legal shipments, they bribe wildlife and customs officials, and they alter trade documents. Few are ever caught, and penalties are usually no more severe than a parking ticket. Wildlife trafficking may very well be the world's most profitable form of illegal trade, bar none.Asia's Wildlife Trade (Thanks, Marilyn!) Previously:
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| Toys R Us puts elf toys in the science section Posted: 20 Dec 2009 09:20 PM PST  Madeline Ashby sends us this photo of "Elf" toys filed away in the Toys "R" Us "Science" section, noting, "My husband and I braved Toys R' Us on the final Sunday before Christmas to bring the happy mutants this FAIL. Our theory is that Toys R' Us committed a classic logic fallacy: science = nerdy; elves = nerdy; elves = science. It's the only explanation we can think of for what is an epic failure of toy taxonomy." Educational Toy FAIL (Thanks, Madeline!) Previously:
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| Avatar earns $232.2m in opening weekend Posted: 20 Dec 2009 08:11 PM PST  That's the biggest ever for a non-sequel. It earned $73m in the U.S, the rest abroad. The LA Times points out that many on the east coast were snowed in by the worst blizzard in a decade, and that it's yet to open in China and Japan. Subhead of the day, however, goes to Reuters: "BLUE PEOPLE WOW CRITICS."  |
| Two-thirds of cocaine in US is cut with veterinary deworming drug Posted: 20 Dec 2009 08:13 PM PST "Cocaine's a hell of a drug, and even more so when laced with another drug that's commonly used to deworm opossums." DEA agents report that some 69% of cocaine seized en route to US market is cut with levamisole, a veterinary drug believed to weaken the human immune system. In other news, wait: people commonly deworm opossums? (PopSci via Instapundit)   |
| Times Square snowball fight: #snOMG 2009 Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:00 AM PST  Photo of people having a massive snowball fight last night in NYC's Times Square, by James Sims. #snOMG! |
| EFF lawsuit reveals US improperly collected data on citizens Posted: 20 Dec 2009 10:40 AM PST This week, the US Homeland Security department, Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency released 162 pages of intelligence oversight reporting, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The reports provide new information on intelligence activities conducted under the Bush administration which are now believed to have been unlawful. According to reports, groups subjected to this improper intelligence-gathering include the Nation of Islam. Related NYT piece, and here's a related LAT piece. Comprehensive information and document copies are here at EFF.org. The ACLU filed a related action, details on that here. |
| Eliot Spitzer proposes open-source investigation of AIG emails Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:18 AM PST Former New York AG Eliot Spitzer, in a NYT op-ed on what should be done with the emails backlogged on AIG's servers: "Before releasing its regulatory clutches, the government should insist that the company immediately make these materials public. By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of 'open source' investigation."   |
| Ornate, laser-cut birchwood Victorian dollhouse Posted: 20 Dec 2009 09:04 AM PST  Etsy seller VictorianDollhouse makes insanely detailed laser-cut Victorian Doll House Birch plywood Laser Cut Kit 2 (via Wonderland) Previously:
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| WSJ: National Enquirer squelched 2007 Woods affair story Posted: 20 Dec 2009 08:56 AM PST The Wall Street Journal reports that The National Enquirer acquired photos of Tiger Woods meeting another woman as long ago as 2007. It also claims that they won an unprecedented interview with Woods for sister publication Men's Fitness in return for not publishing them. Owner American Media denies it.   |
| Nuclear reactor cutaway diagrams Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:53 AM PST  Salim sez, "If only I had some of these amazing cut-away diagram wall-charts of nuclear reactors when I was a kid. BibliOdyssey, curator of the Internet's finest collection of archival artwork has found this amazing trove of Atomic-era goodness. Please enjoy these fascinating diagrams of a bunch of 1970s nuclear reactors." These images are derived from pdf files [UNM CSEL Nuclear Engineering Wall Chart Collection] hosted on New Mexico's Digital Collections portal for the Centennial Science and Engineering Library at the University of New Mexico on behalf of NEI. Something a bit different, to be sure.Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts (Thanks, Sal!) Previously:
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| The Year Before The Flood: The Ponderosa Stomp Posted: 20 Dec 2009 09:50 AM PST  How can my two weeks of guest boinging be over already? I was just starting to get my blog on, and now it's time to bail. Thanks to Rob, and big big thanks to Xeni. I'll drop one last excerpt of the book on my way out the door. The Year Before The Flood replays the last year the city of New Orleans was whole, 2004-05. As such, it's about the way time passes in the city. (My previous book, The World that Made New Orleans, was about the unique space of the "Crescent City"; constrained from expanding by the swamp, New Orleans was dense and urban from early on.) The party schedule gets intense. I write elsewhere in the book that New Orleans is "ruled by the year-long cyclical rhythm of festivals, saints' days, parties, and holidays. To relax in between, and to pay for everything, you have a job. It's a relief to go back to work after a big weekend." There's always another Sunday parade coming up. The whole year is modulated by the crescendo toward Mardi Gras, but then come what I heard a WWOZ announcer refer to as "the high holy days between Mardi Gras and Jazzfest." It's something of a cliché that the past is always present in New Orleans. I used to think that was an overly romantic notion, even as I could feel its truth. Then I learned that cultural historians have a word for this: chronotope, which refers (among other things) to a community's concept of time. Late in my writing project, I read a book that unexpectedly helped me get a handle on how time passes in New Orleans: Jan Assmann's The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharoahs, a cultural history that for the first time made the contours of ancient Egyptian history comprehensible to me. Come to think of it, it might not seem so surprising that Nilotic civilization should shed light on the Mississippi delta if you've been through Mardi Gras. After reading Jan Assmann, I starting thinking about New Orleans in terms of cyclical time versus linear time. By that I mean: linear time is the time history takes place in, that progression of numbered years that's about to get to 2010. It's the scale of Christian philosophy, where there is a beginning, middle, and end. But cyclical time, in which each year is the same as the last, is pagan, and local; it's the time myth takes place in. And here's where I'm going with this: cyclical time relies on an elaborate schedule of festivals associated with the calendar to reinforce its timelessness, creating a rhythm that propels the year. This excerpt from The Year Before The Flood samples the mythical year-wheel of New Orleans at the point known as the Ponderosa Stomp. (Note: in 2005 the Stomp took place in April, between the two weekends of Jazzfest, but in 2010 it will break out of its spot in the calendar rhythm, moving to an as-yet-undetermined date in the fall. Another note: the Mid-City Rock 'n' Bowl, seen above as it was in April 2005, re-opened after the flood but subsequently moved to a new location at 3000 Carrollton.) Thanking you kindly, I remain Postmamboistically yours. We now join the 2005 Ponderosa Stomp in progress...
The fourth annual Ponderosa Stomp took place at the Mid-City Rock 'n' Bowl, a two-level bowling alley that shared a strip mall with Family Beauty Supply and Thrift City in a low-lying part of town. With a bandstand on the second floor, as well as a short-order kitchen and a bar, you could bowl, dance zydeco, eat an alligator po'boy, and drink beer all at the same time. In an overwhelming two nights going from five p.m. to five a.m. each night, on the main upstairs stage and another simultaneous one downstairs, the Ponderosa Stomp presented an astonishing array of still-surviving sexagenarian-or-more legends of the regional first-generation rock 'n' roll scene, including swamp-pop, old-school New Orleans R & B, and rockabilly, with no small presence from Memphis. The downstairs area boasted perhaps the densest nicotine cloud I had encountered in New Orleans. The music was so much fun that I tried to ignore the air quality, but I wound up taking frequent oxygen breaks to join the considerable party of fellow airheads accumulating out in the Rock 'n' Bowl's spacious parking lot. Which is how I found myself talking to a tall, skinny, bearded guy who turned out to be Paul Cebar, the Milwaukee singer-songwriter. He comes down every year for Jazzfest. We hit it off immediately. We checked out Dale Hawkins (Mr. "Suzie Q") from Shreveport. There was Ace Cannon--how great is that?--down from Memphis with a darn good little combo. The surviving members of Elvis's band--Scotty Moore on guitar and D. J. Fontana on drums--played the early Elvis repertoire, with Memphian Billy Swan ("I Can Help") filling in on the Elvis parts, though it's understood with a thankless task like this that the voice is only a cipher. The real point was to watch Scotty Moore, the guy who played the guitar part on "Blue Moon of Kentucky," cut #1 on A Date with Elvis, playing the part live in front of me. Behind him, D. J. Fontana showed you exactly what kind of drummer Elvis had: a solid one. Up till now, the music hadn't even been very loud. But that changed. Cebar and I were hanging out downstairs when Link Wraycame on. One of the most influential electric guitarists for the later loud-rock generation, Link Wray and his Ray Men had an all-time hit in 1958 with the crunchy, distorted, proto-psychedelic guitar instrumental "Rumble." Wray was about to turn seventy-six, making him the oldest bona fide punk I'd ever seen. He wore a leather jacket, looking like a '50s juvenile delinquent turned denture-wearer. His only facial expression was a scowl. Part Shawnee Indian, he'd been living in Denmark for twenty years or so, and he sounded for all the world like a loud European art-guitar band, though of course the influence ran the other way round. Most people tune their guitars silently now with electronic tuners, right? Not Link Wray. He had his much younger second guitarist--his son, it turned out--play through the amp while he tuned out loud to it, with the amp wide open. He didn't even get it close to in tune before he kicked off the first number, which was a timbral excursion into the harmonics generated by thick-gauge metal strings at high volumes. "He's like your ornery grandpa who won't turn his amp down!" laughed Cebar, who by now I seemed to have known for years. Despite rocking out, Wray brought his domestic drama onto the stage with him in the form of his chunky, longhaired Danish wife, Olive, who stood onstage with him, bizarrely holding a plastic tambourine in the air and whacking it amusically against the heel of her hand the entire time, like something out of This Is Spinal Tap.She had been doing this since 1997, when she debuted as a tambourine nonplayer alongside Wray on The Conan O'Brien Show. I'd known "Rumble" forever, but I'd never seen Link Wray play before. Nor would I again; he died a little more than six months later. He went out distorting. I hadn't had this much fun in . . . well, maybe since Mardi Gras. Upstairs in front of the bowling lanes, I saw Classie Ballou, from Baton Rouge and now living in Waco, playing a Gibson SG just like mine. I'd never heard of him before, but I recognized the riff he played when he started doing "Just a Little Bit," It was the guitar lick the Beatles used at the beginning of "Birthday." Classie Ballou was the guy who came up with that lick, playing with Rosco Gordon on "Just a Little Bit." Herbert Hardesty, best known as Fats Domino's longtime sax man, was onstage with him. And up came Rudy Ray Moore, better known as Dolemite, the dirty-talking comedian from party records and, later, blaxploitation films. He came onstage looking like a pimp from one of the lesser southern cities, resplendent in rhinestone-studded shades and ceremonially encrusted walking cane. ( Photo: Dolemite at the Stomp ) "I ain't gonna get no pussy tonight!" he shouted. Now there's an icebreaker for you. "You know why I ain't gonna get no pussy tonight?" Pause. He pointed out a guy in the front of the audience. "Cause you done ate it all up!" He sold Dolemite souvenir walking canes from the stage for ten bucks. You know I bought one, handed the money right up to the man onstage. It's been a personal power object for me ever since. And then it was time for the surprise hit of the evening. "How do you perform solo when all your hits are based on overdubbing your own voice in octaves?" asked Cebar, still laughing, as I cracked open another beer. Brenton Wood went for the higher octave when he came out to sing "The Oogum Boogum Song," "Gimme Little Sign," and "Baby, You Got It." I had always thought of Brenton Wood as being from Los Angeles, but no, it turns out he was born in Shreveport before moving to Compton as a child--the LA-to-L.A. migration that so many New Orleanians made during the years of white supremacy. He was great, plus he played his album tracks. Brenton Wood's hits were on an independent label called Double Shot, which had only one other hit group, and a one-hit wonder at that: Count Five. Presumably because the label owned the publishing, Brenton Wood recorded a version of the Count Five's hit. Which is how it happened that a sixty-three-year-old black man from Shreveport in a brown pinstriped zoot suit came to sing "Psychotic Reaction" in a bowling alley in New Orleans, complete with double-time freakout break. On guitar was Alex Chilton, a Memphian living in New Orleans, whose brush with permanent-rotation supermarket immortality was singing "The Letter" and "Cry Like a Baby" with the Boxtops), and on keyboards was Mr. Quintron. Cebar and I were howling. When Brenton Wood finally left the stage, we shouted, "Do 'Oogum Boogum' again! Do 'Oogum Boogum' again!" in unison at the top of our voices. He did "Oogum Boogum" again. I was getting hoarse. My bronchs were on fire from the intense tobacco haze. Lady Bo was starting up--Bo Diddley's female second guitarist for many years, she was the first woman to be regularly hired as a musician by a major rock 'n' roll group--but I was done. I pointed the Saturn back to the Irish Channel and wheezed my way home. I would have to miss Blowfly.
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| "rRan" by Pronto. Video by Michael Lascarides. Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:09 AM PST Video by generative video artist Michael Lascarides for "rRan" by Pronto, from their digitally-released album "The Cheetah." (via Mikael Jorgensen) |
| Steampunk Music: Guest art-dispatch from Kristen Philipkoski Posted: 20 Dec 2009 08:18 PM PST  A guest dispatch on cool things spotted at Art | Basel in Miami, from Kristen Philipkoski: People often ask Seattle band Latitude x Longitude (YouTube link) to describe their unique sound, because as vocalist Rebeqa Rivers can attest, it's not exactly categorizable. But after giving it much thought, Rivers says Steampunk seemed perfect. No doubt once giving them a listen that seems pretty accurate. Rivers' gorgeous voice is layered over mandolin and toy piano sounds, as well as Spencer Smith's guitar and sometimes drums. They even have a visual artist as an official member of the band: Michelle Anders. From the bands press page: "Paired with LxL's inquisitive lyrics, Anderst examines the patterns and elegance of the machinery, anatomy, flora, and fauna that surround everyday life."[Photos: (c) Lanae Rivers-Woods, 2009]
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Wizzywig is the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a fictional hacker who's part Mitnick, part Poulsen, and part mythological. Boingthump is a preternaturally bright, badly socialized kid who discovers a facility for technology that's egged on by his only pal, "Winston Smith," a would-be Abbie Hoffman who is obsessed with the potential to use Boingthump's discoveries to monkeywrench the machine. 
Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that's the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM's top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background. (Outgoing GM CEO Fritz Henderson and his failed predecessor, Rick Wagoner, both worked their way up from the company's vaunted Treasurer's office.) But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, "That's how you end up with GM rather than Toyota." 
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