The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: explaining quantum physics through discussions with a German shepherd
- Soviet kids'-book robots
- Knitted plankton
- EFF's ebook-buyer's guide to privacy
- Octo-chandelier
- Botnet runners start their own ISPs
- Kick-Ass comic movie adaptation, with adolescent ninja girl
- Monkey knife-fighting with octopus tattoo
- 60 satellite images of Earth
- 3 hour limit imposed on grounded airplane lockups
- Home made holidays
- Girl makes call on a telephone pole
- Stolen Auschwitz sign found
- Terry Gilliam interview
- Why flies were chosen as urinal targets
- Serious News from a Serious News Source
- "The Power of Time Off" + 9 other TED Talks to watch between now and New Years
- Man lifts car off girl
- Video: woman caught stealing a wreath
- Good Ol' Gregor Brown comic from Masterpiece Comics
- Jonathan Lethem talks with Erik Davis
- Care Bears made of rice, carrots, and hot dogs
- Christmas tree made out of Heineken bottles
- Hunters kill man in animal disguise
- Toaster looks and acts like a printer
- A mother's letter to her hemphead child
- Slate asks readers to vote on favorite unanswered Explainer question
- Design for pencil set made from cremated human reamains
- Psych professor wants to ban "nerd" and "geek"
- Contemporary African Art Since 1980: exclusive image gallery
| Posted: 22 Dec 2009 03:58 AM PST  Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill. I find quantum physics very difficult to hold in my head. I can understand it while it's being explained, and sometimes for a day or two longer, but then it fizzles away (I find calculus to be of similar character). However, the essentials I've grasped have always come embedded in stories -- first in Greg Egan's magnificent debut novel Quarantine and now in How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The going isn't always smooth or easy, but for me, it has never been less hard! How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (official site) How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (Amazon)   |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:35 PM PST  Will from the Journey Round My Skull blog has been scanning vintage, Soviet-era robot illustrations from Eastern European science fictional kids books -- the pictures are just lovely. A Journey Round My Skull: Mummy Was A Robot, Daddy Was A Small Non-Stick Kitchen Utensil (Thanks, Dr. Monkey!) Previously:
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| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:10 PM PST  A reader writes, "I just discovered this British artist, Anita Bruce, who knits Ernst Haeckel-esque sea-forms: plankton, corals, starfishes, etc." Previously:
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| EFF's ebook-buyer's guide to privacy Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:54 PM PST  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has pored over the terms of service for several popular ebook services and devices and come up with "An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy," a handy chart that tells you what information about your reading habits you "agree" to send to these companies by simply standing in the vicinity of the device, clicking a link, or, in some cases, breathing. In other words, your Kindle will periodically send information about you to Amazon. But exactly what information is sent? Amazon's wording -- "information related to the content on your Device and your use of it" -- reads so broadly that it appears to allow Amazon to track all content that users put on the device, regardless of whether that content is purchased from Amazon. Some security researchers have indicated that the Kindle may even be tracking its users' GPS locations. Is this the future of reading?An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy Previously:
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| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:46 PM PST  Etsy seller lanternfly has made a stupendous octo-chandelier: "This octopus chandelier is made from sculpted arms and head, she has pink albino taxidermy glass eyes, pearl encrusted body covered with vintage and new pearls, scallop shells, pink pearl candles and painted with pearlized paint." Our Girl Pearl Octopus Chandelier (via Craft) Previously:
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| Botnet runners start their own ISPs Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:15 PM PST Botnet and malware creeps are setting up their own ISPs, with their own IP blocks, so that spamfighters don't have anyone to complain to when they run them to ground: Attackers Buying Own Data Centers for Botnets, Spam (via /.) Previously:
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| Kick-Ass comic movie adaptation, with adolescent ninja girl Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:03 PM PST In this trailer for the film adaptation of the comic Kick-Ass (about a kid who decides to become a vigilante and hooks up with a superhero-crime-fighter Dad and his adolescent ninja daughter), the most balletic martial-arts gunplay is enacted by a small child. It's pretty odd watching, but the up-beat cover of the Banana Splits theme really makes it, if you ask me. Kick-Ass-Red Band Hit Girl Teaser Trailer (via JWZ) Previously:
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| Monkey knife-fighting with octopus tattoo Posted: 21 Dec 2009 09:55 PM PST  Nik writes in about his new tattoo: "This started out as a joke with friends at Sideshow Studios in Sacramento and the more I thought about it the more I had to get it. As a fan of Monkey Knife Fights we one-upped it with an octopus." Monkey knife-fighting octopus tattoo (Thanks, Nik!) Previously:
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| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 06:21 PM PST  Webdesigner depot has 60 beautiful satellite photos of Earth. The Dasht-e Kevir, or valley of desert, is the largest desert in Iran. It is a primarily uninhabited wasteland, composed of mud and salt marshes covered with crusts of salt that protect the meager moisture from completely evaporating.(Via The Presurfer)   |
| 3 hour limit imposed on grounded airplane lockups Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:51 PM PST The Obama administration imposes a 3 hour maximum on airlines that strand passengers on the tarmac, after which they must be let free. Airlines must also provide water to stranded passengers and let them go to the lavatory. The airlines imply that they'll cancel flights to avoid the consequences. Yes, attack your customers! That's the spirit!   |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 06:14 PM PST  I wrote an opinion piece for CNN about making gifts for the holidays. For Christmas this year, I'm giving out homemade jars of sauerkraut (it costs me 50 cents a gallon and takes all of 15 minutes to shred the cabbage, mix in the salt and let it develop in a crock for a week), hand-whittled wooden spoons (these take a few hours each to make, but the therapeutic value of whittling on the porch is inestimable) and a couple of cigar box guitars I made. The other staffers at Make (and at our sister publication, Craftzine.com) have been busy elves this season as well. Here's a short list of the things they're making:Making merry with homemade gifts (Shown here: Shawn and Arlo Connally's snow globes)   |
| Girl makes call on a telephone pole Posted: 21 Dec 2009 02:45 PM PST  Mr. Bali Hai of Goofbutton says this photo of a cute female nerd on a telephone pole is the "best picture ever." He might have something there. UPDATE: Here's a picture of the ad with all the copy. It reads, in part: Alana MacFarlane is a 20 year old from San Rafael, California. She's one of our first women telephone installers. She won't be the last. (Do you think this is the same Alana MacFarlane? I do.) |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 01:01 PM PST The 16-ft.-long "Work Sets You Free" sign was found cut into three pieces and buried under debris and snow in a wooded area. The theft probably wasn't the work of the far Right, police say. Rather, they've detained five people described as "common criminals", and believe the group was hoping to sell the sign to a private collector.   |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:35 PM PST  Over at Mother Jones, Michael Mechanic chats with Terry Gilliam, whose new film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has just hit US cinemas. MJ: You also have a rep as a guy who fights with studios. I read an anecdote about how J.K. Rowling wanted you to direct the first Harry Potter film and Warner Bros. said no. I gather you were pissed?"Terry Gilliam's Three-Reel Circus"
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| Why flies were chosen as urinal targets Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:25 PM PST NPR has a story about why urinal manufacturers chose the fly as a target to reduce splashing. Keiboom in Amsterdam says the original fly idea was proposed almost 20 years ago by Dutch maintenance man Jos Van Bedoff, who had served in the Dutch army in the 1960s. As a soldier he noticed that someone had put small, discrete red dots in the barracks urinals, which dramatically cut back on "misdirected flow."There's A Fly In My Urinal (Via Nudge Blog)   |
| Serious News from a Serious News Source Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:20 PM PST The International Space Station crew that blasted off from Kazakhstan early this morning will be the first people to eat sushi in space. I join Popular Science blogger Paul Adams in lamenting the fact that this Reuters story neglected important details such as the menu, and how one goes about preparing sushi in zero-g. My money is on the final product being some sort of fake crab hand roll.   |
| "The Power of Time Off" + 9 other TED Talks to watch between now and New Years Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:12 PM PST As someone who plans on attempting to fly out of Minneapolis this Friday—in open defiance of the snow-filled forecast—these seem like a great way to pass the time while stranded at an airport.   |
| Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:36 PM PST  Last week, Nick Harris, 32, of Ottawa Kansas, managed to lift a Mercury sedan off the ground to save a 6-year-old girl trapped under it. (Paging Dr. Banner!) The girl, who apparently had been run over when the driver backed up, suffered a concussion and scrapes. From the Associated Press: The 5-foot-7, 185-pound Harris said he tried later that day to lift other cars and couldn't."Kansas dad somehow lifts car off 6-year-old girl" (via Fortean Times)   |
| Video: woman caught stealing a wreath Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:49 AM PST Laughing Squid has a fun, voyeuristic video of someone stealing a Christmas wreath from a home in San Francisco's fancy Pacific Heights neighborhood. It's about 2AM, and the woman walks up onto the front porch and examines the wreath for a minute. She then steps away, puts on a head wrap, and comes back to snatch it. |
| Good Ol' Gregor Brown comic from Masterpiece Comics Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:51 AM PST  Another great example of R. Sikoryak's admiration for the source material on which his Masterpiece Comics parodies are based. The lettering here really looks like Schulz'. |
| Jonathan Lethem talks with Erik Davis Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:39 AM PST   I just finished reading Jonathan Lethem's fantastic new novel Chronic City, a trippy, reality-questioning tale of strange Manhattan that falls right into the genre of fiction that I gravitate to -- that of Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, Don DeLillo's White Noise, Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein, and of course old-school noir. Indeed, Lethem just edited the stately Philip K. Dick Collection box set for Library of America. (In fact, if you have suggestions of other books in that realm, please post in the comments! I'm always asking people to complete the phrase, "If you love JG Ballard and PKD, you might like...") BB pal Erik Davis interviewed Lethem for the new issue of h+ Magazine. In the discussion, they talk of PKD, pot, and the novel as technology. From h+: ED: Part of the experience I have of novels these days is that it seems like the more awake and aware and acute they are, the more they are aware of their own fragility in the face of other kinds of narrative technologies. The most obvious example is simulation -- immersive worlds that we can go into and reproduce behaviors that are more or less storylike. The fundamental character of a massive, open-ended, multi-player role-playing game is utterly different at this point than the character in a novel. How will novels stand up? We're all walking down the street conducting our self-Turning exams everytime we pass a homeless person, or greet our spouse at the breakfast table."Chronic Citizen: Jonathan Lethem on P.K. Dick, Why Novels are a Weird Technology, and Constructed Realities" (h+) Chronic City (Amazon) "Philip K. Dick Collection" (Amazon) Previously:   |
| Care Bears made of rice, carrots, and hot dogs Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:13 AM PST  Want to make a special edible Care Bears lunch for your kid (or yourself)? This is just one of many fun cartoon-themed bento box recipes in a new book by Face Food author Christopher Salyers called Face Food Recipes. Making neat, creative bentos is a Japanese tradition that has recently taken off as a web phenomenon; there are lots of blogs that showcase lunch boxes themed after everything from video games to traditional woodblock print art. Visit the author's blog |
| Christmas tree made out of Heineken bottles Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:13 AM PST  This giant artificial Christmas tree can be found on Nanjing Road in Shanghai. It's made out of 1,000 [via Inhabitat] |
| Hunters kill man in animal disguise Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:13 AM PST A group in the Greek town of Nemea, Chalkidiki were out hunting wild boar for their holiday supper. The hunters saw an animal moving in the brush, took aim, and fired away. Unfortunately, their target was actually another hunter camouflaged in goat skin. From The Telegraph: The groups had fanned out in pairs of two to track down an animal for the traditional festive dinner when the accident happened..."Man dressed in animal skin shot dead during hunt"   |
| Toaster looks and acts like a printer Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:13 AM PST  Here's a neat kitchen gadget — a toaster that "prints out" toast. It allows you to feed multiple slices at once from the feeder at top, and spits out finished products from the bottom. It's a concept by Othmar Muehlebach, and it won second place at a design contest in Switzerland last month. |
| A mother's letter to her hemphead child Posted: 21 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST |
| Slate asks readers to vote on favorite unanswered Explainer question Posted: 21 Dec 2009 09:56 AM PST One of my favorite Slate features is the Explainer, which answers reader-submitted questions about topical subjects (Are pigs dying of swine flu?, Why Is Microsoft Fighting So Hard Over Internet Explorer?, Why Do Rappers Hold Their Guns Sideways?). A couple of days ago, Slate published a list of questions it received but didn't answer (because its researchers "felt either ill-equipped or unwilling to answer" them). Readers have been invited to vote for the question they feel is most deserving of an answer. Here are a few of my favorite unanswered questions: I have always wondered who played the characters of the Wicked Witch of the West's monkey army in Wizard of Oz. Were they the same little people who played the munchkins or am I missing something here?The Questions We Never Answered in 2009 -- Digging through the bottom of the Explainer mailbag.   |
| Design for pencil set made from cremated human reamains Posted: 21 Dec 2009 09:41 AM PST  Here's product designer Nadine Jarvis' concept for a set of pencils made from the carbon of a cremated human body. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.Design for pencil set made from cremated human reamains   |
| Psych professor wants to ban "nerd" and "geek" Posted: 21 Dec 2009 09:21 AM PST A psychology professor at Bennington College thinks terms like "nerd" and "geek" are damaging, like racial epithets, and need to be banned. Ironically, Dr. David Anderegg is also the author of a book called Nerds: who they are and why we need more of them.   |
| Contemporary African Art Since 1980: exclusive image gallery Posted: 21 Dec 2009 05:13 AM PST  (Image above: Nandipha Mntambo, "Europa," 2008) A disclaimer first: my mother, Monica Rumsey, was the book's copy editor, and that's how I learned about it. I kept pestering her to share photos and details as the project took shape, and am now very excited to blog that we've obtained permission from the publisher and distributor (Damiani Editore, and DAP) to publish a large, exclusive gallery of wide-format images here on Boing Boing— these spectacular works are shown after the jump. The book explores how political, social, and cultural changes over the past thirty years have shaped urban, indigenous, and globalized "diasporic" art forms. Contemporary African Art is a roadmap of change and of evolving identities.
About the book's co-authors: Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor is Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and editor and founding publisher of the African art journal Nka. And Chika Okeke-Agulu is Assistant Professor of Art and Archeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, and editor of Nka.
Willem Boschoff, "Kykafrikaans" (1980)
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"It's gotten completely out of hand. The bad guys are going to some local registries in Europe and getting massive amounts of IP space and then they just go to a hosting provider and set up their own data centers," said Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, an antimalware and anti-botnet vendor. "It takes one more level out of it: You own your own IP space and you're your own ISP at that point. 
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