The Latest from Boing Boing

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• TED 2010 program guide
• The most awesome end-of-the-year top 10
• Stir natural peanut butter easily
• Micro-Fluff: "Truly the most amazing material you ever saw"
• Creepy old print ad for cleanser
• USB Hourglass random number generator
• 2009 in transit
• A Christmas Gift for you from Phil Spector
• Duck Sex: Competition between sexes leads to crazy anatomy
• Grimmer Tales: twisted fairy tale comics
• Sex, science and statistics

TED 2010 program guide Posted: 23 Dec 2009 09:47 PM PST The program guide for TED 2010 is up and, as usual, the speakers are interesting. Highlights, for me, include ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro (do yourself a favor and watch some of Jake's YouTube videos), neuroscientist Sam Harris, 4chan founder Christopher "moot" Poole, David Byrne, spider silk scientist Cheryl Hayashi, and Wisdom of Whores author Elizabeth Pisani. TED 2010 Program Guide

The most awesome end-of-the-year top 10 Posted: 23 Dec 2009 02:15 PM PST From swarms of ginormous trilobites to Ida-the-over-hyped-ancient-lemur, National Geographic counts down the Top 10 Dinosaur and Fossil Finds of 2009.

Stir natural peanut butter easily Posted: 23 Dec 2009 11:53 AM PST You know how a jar of natural peanut butter separates into two layers: a rock hard layer of solid peanut particles on the bottom, and a liquid layer of oil that splashes onto the kitchen counter and your clothes when you try to stir the two layers together? John Falk Kelly didn't like it when that happened, so he came up with a way to mix peanut butter easily. From Wired's How-To Wiki: When you buy a jar of all-natural peanut butter, don't stick it in the pantry. Park it on top of the refrigerator, upside down. Once a day, when you walk by it, say "hello peanut butter", and flip it over. When you're ready to open it and stir it up, it will be half mixed for you (and not hardened into a frustrating marble block). He says he was so pleased with the results, that filed a patent on it: U.S. Patent # 6,325,533. I'm thinking someone could make a version of this that used some of the same circuitry and components in the hourglass random number generator project I posted earlier today. The jar of peanut butter would go where the hourglass is. The gadget could either sense the opacity of the oil and flip it when it was no longer translucent, or it could just flip it once or twice a day. Stir natural peanut butter easily

Micro-Fluff: "Truly the most amazing material you ever saw" Posted: 23 Dec 2009 11:55 AM PST This man owes his livelihood to Micro-Fluff. Shouldn't you consider a career in Micro-Fluff, too? (Via Mostly Forbidden Zone)

Creepy old print ad for cleanser Posted: 23 Dec 2009 11:57 AM PST A disturbing ad from days of yore. (Via Vintage Ads)

USB Hourglass random number generator Posted: 23 Dec 2009 11:58 AM PST USB Hourglass from alwynallan on Vimeo. Over at Make: Online, John Park posted this video of a gadget that generates random numbers by watching sand fall through an hourglass. It watches falling sand in an hourglass with an optical sensor. That data is sent via the Arduino USB output to the PC where it's analyzed. This entropy is useful for all your random number needs. My favorite part: when the hourglass runs dry a servo motor flips it over and it starts again. USB Hourglass random number generator

2009 in transit Posted: 23 Dec 2009 09:48 AM PST Treehugger has a slideshow of the best and worst ideas in sustainable transportation from 2009. But, instead of debating the varying merits of this or that electric car, they've left cars out entirely, in favor of planes, trains, bikes and boats. Bikes get the most play here, and there are some innovative ideas—like cargo bikes and bike highways. Treehugger is mostly talking about their use in places like Copenhagen, but I love how Minneapolis' system of limited-access bike trails makes bike travel and commuting faster, easier and more enjoyable. (They're even plowed in winter!) I do with the slideshow had focused less on the bikes, and more on mass transit and shipping. Mass transportation is a key component in just about every plan for lowering greenhouse gas emissions, but it doesn't get nearly as much attention as every random attempt to revamp the personal car. There is, however, some interesting stuff about high-speed trains and early developments in alternative-fuel aviation. Treehugger: Best and Worst of 2009: The Year in Bikes, Trains, Planes and Boats

A Christmas Gift for you from Phil Spector Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:22 PM PST I found this awesome CD at my uncle's house, and had to blog it. It was released in 1963, and still holds up great. Here's a Wikipedia article about it. You can still buy used copies. Link to snapshots. Previously: Phil Spector and his spectacular hair convicted of murder. Mugshot of Phil Spector Without His Spectacular Wig Phil Spector's spectacular hairdo Holiday / Christmas Music: An Open Thread.

Duck Sex: Competition between sexes leads to crazy anatomy Posted: 23 Dec 2009 07:20 AM PST Eversion in air: from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a duck penis. Science blogger Ed Yong has a great article up today about these freaky, corkscrew behemoths and the equally freaky, labyrinthine duck vaginas. A researcher from Yale has been studying both, and thinks these rather baroque naughty bits evolved in competition with one another, as female ducks tried to evade rape (or, rather, impregnation by a rapist) and male ducks tried to get around those barriers. The shape of the female duck's vagina is a physical barrier that prevents the male from launching forth his ballistic penis to its fullest extent. It won't stop a drake from ejaculating (and those in Brennan's trials always did), but it does limit how far the semen is deposited along the vaginal tract. Not all males are hit equally hard by these defences. Those that the female actually wants to mate with have an easier time. If she's into a male, she strikes a pose that signals her receptiveness, keeping her body level and lifting her tail feathers high. She repeatedly contracts the walls of her genital tract, relaxing them for long enough for favoured suitors to achieve full penetration. Males who try to force themselves upon her receive no such help and have to cope with vigorous struggling. The female may not be able to resist such advances, but her convoluted vagina gives her ultimate control over where the sperm of her current partner ends up. The fact that only 3% of duck offspring are born of forced matings suggests that females are indeed winning this battle of the sexes. Not Exactly Rocket Science: Ballistic Penises and Corkscrew Vaginas (There's more video!)

Grimmer Tales: twisted fairy tale comics Posted: 21 Dec 2009 06:51 AM PST The publishers of Erik Bergstrom's Grimmer Tales: A Wicked Collection of Happily Never After Stories were kind enough to send me a review copy, which I've just had a very entertaining half-hour chuckling over. The book consists of a series of extremely nasty comic-strips telling the aftermath of the classic folkloric fairy tales. For example, one running gag has Pinnocchio telling polite social lies in panel 1, while panel 2 depicts his sprouted nose gouging out the eye of some innocent (i.e., "Cute baby! -- stab"). These running gags are pretty funny, but the really standout moments are the longer strips, especially the "What a Witch" strip, in which two witches standing over a cauldron extol the virtues of Kiddee Flakes, which are much more convenient for kidnapped-child-fattening than candy-houses. This is good, wicked humor at its finest -- if you loved Fractured Fairy Tales... Grimmer Tales: A Wicked Collection of Happily Never After Stories Previously: Steampunk fairy-tales CGI -- Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing Changeling, a fairy tale of contemporary New York - Boing Boing Marxist fairy tales - Boing Boing Jack of Fables versus Sun Tzu - Boing Boing Notional list of Klingon fairy tales - Boing Boing Watch What You Say About Welsh - Boing Boing Peter & Max: the Fables comics jump to novel - Boing Boing

Sex, science and statistics Posted: 22 Dec 2009 11:01 AM PST A couple of weeks ago, I ran across yet another news story about how young people no longer date—they just have friends with benefits—and how those hookups are liable to lead to emotional and psychological damage. But recent research suggests that picture may be wrong. Published in the December issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the new research was based on surveys answered by a diverse group of more than 1300 Minnesotans in their late teens and early 20s. Not only were the majority of these people having sex within a relationship, but whether they were or not had no bearing on their mental health. The casual-sex havers were every bit as happy and healthy as the kids who were only doing it with a committed partner. So who's right? To find out, I turned to a couple of experts in teen sex and sex education. At the heart of this apparent discrepancy, they told me, are big differences between the way scientists study sexual behavior and the way that information gets presented to the general public. For instance, let's go back to that question of casual sex. An older paper that found 78% of young people had at least fooled around with a stranger or acquaintance during their college years. So it was surprising when the Minnesota study turned up just 8% of respondents who's last partner was a casual acquaintance, and another 12% who were in a relationship, but not an exclusive one. That's a big difference, but the reason behind it should be instantly apparent to any current or former teenager. At least, any who have been to a slumber party. It's as simple as the difference between of-the-moment gossip and a game of "Have You Ever". The Minnesota survey asked people to categorize their most recent sex partner. The earlier study asked whether they'd ever, at any time, got all up on someone they didn't know very well. Both are legitimate questions. The problem is that they're often reported by the media as being the same question. And neither "Have you ever?" nor "What are you doing right now?" is really a great stand-in for the far more important, "What do you normally do?" "I think people stereotype teenagers sometimes," said John Santelli, M.D., a pediatrician and adolescent health specialist who chairs the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "I don't think hookup situations are the norm for young people. Serial monogamy is very common among youth. The 20% in this study who weren't in committed relationships, I'd be willing to bet that many were between relationships, or in the process of forming one." Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful. That basic idea is stated as a fact in federally funded abstinence education programs, Dr. Santelli told me. But most scientists don't think it's so clear-cut. Dr. Santelli, as well as adolescent sexuality researcher Douglas Kirby, Ph.D., told me that teen sex and mental health are more of a chicken/egg conundrum—and which came first depends a lot on how old you are. Correlations between sex and poor mental health do turn up for very young teenagers—people younger than, say, 14—Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me. But you can't separate that from the fact that sex at that age, particularly for girls, is more likely to be coerced—and being pressured or forced into sex you really didn't want to have can cause mental health problems on its own. Dr. Santelli also pointed out that children who have been abused at home are more likely to start having sex early. Again, you can't look at any depression or addiction those kids have later and say that early sex was the clear cause. Kirby said the same holds true for slightly older teens—people who were younger than 17 when they started having sex. "Young people who are risk takers, more non-conventional, or challenging of social norms, they're more likely to have sex between the ages of 14 and 17. They're also more likely to smoke cigarettes, try alcohol, use drugs, be less attached to school, drop out, etc.," Kirby said. "Again, it's not the case that sex leads to all those things. It's that these people who are less connected to family and school are engaging in a wide variety of risk-taking behaviors and sex is just a part of that." The median age for when Americans lose their virginity is 17. After that, Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me, studies show there's no longer any real correlation between poor mental health and sex. Whether you have it or not, your psychology isn't effected. The Minnesota study backs that up, they said, and goes one step further by showing that who you have sex with doesn't really matter, either. Again, the problem is that media seldom make distinctions between situations that represent cause-and-effect and those that are simply correlated. The result is that we, as a society, aren't addressing the things older teenagers and young adults really need to know, Dr. Santelli said. Americans start having sex at 17 and get married around 27, he said, but abstinence-based programs are presented as though getting married right out of high school is still the norm. "We aren't providing realistic social models to young people. We need a healthy cohabitation program in America. And healthy relationship education," Dr. Santelli said. "We just say how wonderful marriage is. Abstinence programs are aimed toward getting you married at 20, not supporting you and helping you make healthy and smart choices as a single 20-something. We don't really support long-term, non-married monogamy. Which is a pretty good choice for many young people." Casual Sex and Psychological Health Among Young Adults: Is Having "Friends With Benefits" Emotionally Damaging? By Marla E. Eisenberg et al in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Image courtesy Flickr user [rom], via CC

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