The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Speaking in Seattle tomorrow (Chicago tonight! Then PDX, SFO, AUS, RDU, NYC, YYZ)
- Radio Shack's 1986 electronic book
- Dad REALLY likes the razor, I mean, SQUEE
- Visualizing the course of the Mississippi over millennia
- Baroque Star Wars
- How moleskines should be filled
- Greatest and filthiest Muppet mashups
- Desperate man in electronics store toilet tweets for paper
- HOWTO Make a Admiral Ackbar paper-bag puppet
- What an underwater oil leak looks like
- Why Chinese women astronauts must be married before going to space
- Tom the Dancing Bug: Super-Fun-Pak-Comix
- Reverse engineering the perfect (or worst) TED talk
- A study in cow dynamics
- More on the sex lives of ancient humans
- Total Recall: The Musical
- A look at artist James Gurney's studio
- A geeked-out spice rack
- Confident dumb people
- Scott Thompson/Kids in the Hall podcast
- Web platform for neighbors to share with each other
- Vietnamese video of forthcoming iPhone 4G
- Valve release Steam for Mac, includes free Portal
- Canceling a TV show: The network's POV
- Tape of John Lennon's Jesus comments to be auctioned next month
- Vintage Japanese steamship posters
- CORRECTION: Net Neutrality astroturf plan -- wasn't
- Police torture methods questioned after "murdered" man reappears
- See you at Anderson's Books tonight, Chicago!
- “Complete the Danged Fence”
| Speaking in Seattle tomorrow (Chicago tonight! Then PDX, SFO, AUS, RDU, NYC, YYZ) Posted: 13 May 2010 04:11 AM PDT  Hey, Seattlites! I'm doing a talk at the Sunset Tavern tomorrow (Friday) night at 7PM. I'll do a reading from For the Win and be interviewed by Stranger editor Paul Constant. Live music by Pillow Army. And for those of you in Chicago, a reminder that I'll be at the Chicago Public Library Harold Washington Library Center tonight (Thurs) at 5PM. Coming up: Portland, at the Powell's Location in Beaverton on May 15, then San Francisco, Austin, Raleigh, NYC and Toronto. Hope to see you! |
| Radio Shack's 1986 electronic book Posted: 13 May 2010 04:02 AM PDT  Here's a 1986 ad for Radio Shack's "Electronic Book," which connected to your computer's joystick port, and the interacted with software supplied on a cassette or disk. The peripheral cost $24.95, and new titles were $19.95 to $24.95 -- so the hardware prices have increased tenfold (unadjusted for inflation) in 25 years, while media costs have actually decreased. Previously:
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| Dad REALLY likes the razor, I mean, SQUEE Posted: 13 May 2010 03:56 AM PDT    |
| Visualizing the course of the Mississippi over millennia Posted: 13 May 2010 03:56 AM PDT  From the 1944 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers geological survey: "600 miles of meandering river belts over tens of thousands of years...If you have any interest in getting your mind blown by creative data visualization, do yourself a favor and click here now to view the hi-res map in full." The hi-rez files are ginormous: 1. Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River - Fisk, 1944 Report (197MB) Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (Thanks, Marilyn!) Previously:   |
| Posted: 13 May 2010 03:48 AM PDT  Robert sez, "Swedish artist Mattias Adolfosson has a rather fantastic gallery of Baroque Star Wars. Star Wars as is it could have looked in the 17th century." Baroque Star Wars (Thanks, Robert!) Previously:   |
| How moleskines should be filled Posted: 12 May 2010 08:12 PM PDT  Check out the rest of Irina Vinnik's portfolio at Behance, and her website. You can apparently buy a book with her artwork in it (machtrans), but goodness knows how to find it outside of Russia! Me, I buy $10 notepads and then fill them with grocery lists and reminders to wash the dogs.  |
| Greatest and filthiest Muppet mashups Posted: 12 May 2010 07:05 PM PDT Here's a collection of ten inappropriate and wonderful Muppet mashups -- I'm very fond of this Muppet Treasure Island/Sex Pistols "Frigging in the Rigging" mashup. Top 10 Muppet Mashups/Re-Cuts (Thanks, Brian!) Previously:   |
| Desperate man in electronics store toilet tweets for paper Posted: 12 May 2010 04:42 PM PDT  naika_tei is a Twitter user and anime song DJ in Tokyo. Last week, he found himself stranded in the third floor toilet of an electronics store in Akihabara with a soiled ass and no toilet paper. So he sent out this tweet: "[Urgently needed] toilet paper in the 3rd floor toilet of Akiba Yodobashi." Five minutes later, he sent another desperate tweet. 18 minutes later, he sends another tweet saying: "The toilet paper arrived safely! Thank you very much!" Hooray for helpful Twitter followers! via Foolish Gadgets |
| HOWTO Make a Admiral Ackbar paper-bag puppet Posted: 12 May 2010 04:03 PM PDT  Our pal Bonnie Burton has a new book out, the The Star Wars Craft Book. It includes this swell cephalodic puppet: "By reusing a paper lunch bag, you're recycling while making a cool puppet of Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi. Have fun making other character bag puppets from the Star Wars universe." Admiral Sackbar Puppet Craft (Thanks, Bonnie!) Previously:   |
| What an underwater oil leak looks like Posted: 12 May 2010 04:00 PM PDT This footage was taken at the Deepwater Horizon site on May 11. The Joint Investigation Committee says that you're looking at both oil and gas coming out of the broken pipe. Bit of conjecture on my part: I think what we might be seeing here is a methane gas bubble briefly interrupting the flow of oil, which is pretty eerie to watch, given that this was also the cause of the explosion that lead to the oil spill in the first place. |
| Why Chinese women astronauts must be married before going to space Posted: 12 May 2010 04:03 PM PDT China has a rule that all its space-going astronauts, male and female, must be married. The logic behind this — specifically for women — was explained in a March Time Magazine article: The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country's manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature.Why does China require that its astronauts be married? [CS Monitor]   |
| Tom the Dancing Bug: Super-Fun-Pak-Comix Posted: 12 May 2010 03:57 PM PDT  Another installment of Tom the Dancing Bug! The full strip is after the jump. And be sure to check out Ruben's work in print: Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories (Andrews McMeel, 2004); All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats (NBM Publishing, 1997); and Tom the Dancing Bug (HarperCollins, 1992). Previously:   |
| Reverse engineering the perfect (or worst) TED talk Posted: 12 May 2010 08:51 PM PDT Want to write a TED talk that everybody loves? Whatever you do, don't cite the New York Times—but feel free to fake intellectual capacity through liberal use of "Etc, etc", and do use lots of lavender in your slides. Sebastian Wernicke, an engagement manager at Oliver Wyman and former bioinformatics researcher, did a statistical analysis of all the publicly available TED talks and used it to create tedPAD—a TED talk generator that draws on the common phrases & keywords from popular talks to help you create the perfect TED presentation. Or, alternately, there's tedPAD Black, which does the opposite. Here's my tedPAD Black talk:
Via Flowing Data   |
| Posted: 12 May 2010 03:04 PM PDT  Why does a herd of cows stand or lay down at the same time? Researchers at Clarkson University in New York have worked out a mathematical model to explain the workings behind collective behavior in bovines. "OK, cool. But, seriously," you may ask, "is that really important?" Actually, yeah.
Technology Review: First mathematical model of cow behavior   |
| More on the sex lives of ancient humans Posted: 12 May 2010 02:50 PM PDT  The saga continues. (Are you feeling like science is forcing you to think about your grandma and grandad doing it yet?) It looks like ancient humans were getting busy with more related species than just neanderthals, according to a story up on New Scientist. The evidence: A genetic study of modern humans that shows Indo-Pacific populations picked up a rather sudden windfall of genetic diversity about 40,000 years ago. Physical evidence—tools, bones, whathaveyou—points to neanderthals favoring more northerly latitudes, so the "donors" in this case are likely to be an entirely different species: Homo erectus, maybe, or the shorter (but less dirty-sounding) Homo floresiensis. As some of you have pointed out, there's a bit of a "duh" feeling surrounding the whole, "OMG humans got it on with other human-y beings!" thing. The excitement coming from these announcements isn't so much because nobody ever thought of it before, but more because we hadn't previously had such direct evidence. As any episode of "Cheaters" can demonstrate, it's one thing to think some hanky-panky probably happened, and quite another to have the results of a paternity test in hand (relatively speaking). Like you, I'm also pretty fascinated by the implications this has for speciation within the human family tree. The definition of species isn't a hard and bright line between closely related animals, and, while ability to have babies is a criteria, it's not the only one. I want to know how these new discoveries are reshaping who we think of as fully human. I also want to know why we've had such a spate of related stories (stories of the same species?) in the past couple of months. Before I go asking around, though, I wanted to see what other questions y'all had. What do you want to know about neanderthal-human relations, ancient human species, and the research thereof? Leave a comment here. I can't promise all your questions will be answered, but I will use some of them. You're a fine looking great ape, won't you back that ass up? Image courtesy Flickr user cliff1066, via CC.   |
| Posted: 12 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT Arnold Schwarzenegger performs "The Mountains of Mars" from "Total Recall: The Musical."(Thanks Sean!)   |
| A look at artist James Gurney's studio Posted: 12 May 2010 02:01 PM PDT  Dinotopia creator James Gurney was recently featured in ImagineFX magazine. He was asked to describe his studio. "I specialize in painting realistic images of things that can't be photographed. My imagination only takes me so far, so I sculpt 3D reference maquettes. In the foreground is a butterfly ornithopter, an elf alien, a BoarCroc, and a satyr.James Gurney Studio Shot in ImagineFX   |
| Posted: 12 May 2010 01:49 PM PDT  The Evil Mad Scientists designed an attractive, inexpensive, and useful way to keep spices. There are a few standard ways to acquire spices. The usual involves buying a new spice now or then when you need it for some new recipe. Or perhaps acquiring a "set of spices" with a built in organizer system. These obviously work, but are prone to being expensive, disorganized, or subject to artificial limits. Obviously, a more optimal solution exists. We set out to create a better, backwards compatible, scalable spice organization system so that you don't feel silly adding another 20 or 30 or 40 items to your palette.How to Kick Ass and Take Names in the Spice Aisle   |
| Posted: 12 May 2010 02:01 PM PDT Have you ever noticed how incompetent people are often incredibly confident? Meanwhile, highly-skilled folks underestimate their ability to perform. That's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect named for Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University who published their study of the cognitive bias in a 1999 scientific paper. ABC Radio National's The Science Show recently explored the Dunning-Kruger Effect. According to the scientists, "Overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." ABC Radio National's The Science Show recently explored the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1995. A local man, McArthur Wheeler, walks into two banks in the middle of the day and robs them both at gunpoint. Making away with the cash, he is arrested later that evening. Back at the station police sit him down and show him footage from the banks' security cameras. Wheeler can't believe it, the cameras had somehow seen through his disguise. He was seen mumbling to himself, 'But I wore the juice.' His was no ordinary disguise; no balaclava, mask or elaborate makeup, just lemon juice, liberally applied to the face. He was certain that the squirt of citrus would render him invisible to security cameras."The Dunning-Kruger effect" (ABC Radio National) "The research paper that first documented the Dunning-Kruger effect" (via @mgorbis)   |
| Scott Thompson/Kids in the Hall podcast Posted: 12 May 2010 01:22 PM PDT Tavie sez, "Comic actor and writer Scott Thompson of the Kids in the Hall has been branching out into the world of podcasts. This one is his second and I think he's hit his stride. He's joined by KITH writer Paul Bellini (one of his oldest friends) and hearing the two of them talk candidly about Scott's stomach cancer, working on the new KITH series Death Comes to Town together, and their dinner with Paul Reubens... it's one of the funniest half hours I've ever spent on the internet. Seriously good. If you're a KITH fan you need to listen to this (Thanks, Tavie!)   |
| Web platform for neighbors to share with each other Posted: 12 May 2010 12:54 PM PDT Cincinnati-based start-up Share Some Sugar created a Web platform to link up neighbors who need to borrow things, and the people who don't mind loaning them. I haven't tried it, but I very much like the idea of communities sharing tools and other things that are just impractical or too expensive for most people to purchase, but when you need one, you really need one. Here's the company story: Share Some Sugar (Thanks, Elizabeth Edwards!)   |
| Vietnamese video of forthcoming iPhone 4G Posted: 12 May 2010 12:45 PM PDT Here is a video, in Vietnamese, of what appears to be an iPhone 4G "in the wild." It seems to be a more recent version than the prototype Gizmodo recently purchased from a thief who stole it after an Apple engineer dropped it in a bar. According to this video, the phone contains the same A4 chip as the iPad. "Video: 4th-Gen iPhone 'Found' in Vietnam, Contains A4 iPad Chip" (Gadget Lab) Previously:   |
| Valve release Steam for Mac, includes free Portal Posted: 12 May 2010 12:32 PM PDT  As promised, Valve have just announced that the debut Mac version of their digital download game platform Steam is now available, alongside a batch of nearly 60 games, including a free download of Valve's own Portal (through May 24th). While the selection of AAA 3D titles is more limited than its Windows counterpart for now, it does include good representation from the adventure game set, like LucasArts and Telltale, and by the indies, including Braid and a discount 5-pack of World of Goo, And Yet It Moves, Galcon Fusion, Osmos and Machinarium. Also, "Steamplay" titles previously bought through the Windows version of the client are automatically activated in your new Mac account -- the company promises more of those every Wednesday through the coming months. Download the client here [.dmg link], and see Valve's Mac section here. Click through for the full list of launch titles. And Yet It Moves   |
| Canceling a TV show: The network's POV Posted: 12 May 2010 11:33 AM PDT  Canceled shows are one of the most aggravating aspects of TV. You check out a new series, watch for 5 or 10 or 13 episodes, fall in love with the characters and the story, and then suddenly some faceless jerk executive in a suit who never cared about the show cancels it. Argh! That's the general perception anyway. From my side of the table things tend to look a little different. Shows are never canceled blithely. Everyone working on them at every level has invested too much time, money and - most importantly - passion for that to happen. There is no one who wants a show to succeed more than we do. Take a new show that ran for 13 episodes. That's 13 hours of TV you watched if you include commercials, or around 9-10 without. Given how many options are out there, that's a huge commitment in viewing time for you to devote to one show, and it's about all we can ask of anyone. On our end, to get you those 13 hours, our commitment to that show has been thousands of human hours given by hundreds of people who've been working on that show for six months, a year, or more. It's not just making the show, which is a massive undertaking in itself -- it's all the things that go along with it: Devising and executing a marketing campaign, a press strategy, a Web/mobile/social approach, selling the show to advertisers, scheduling the show (which is way more complicated than most people think btw). Someone, somewhere spent time working on everything you see around the show. Like the Web site? That was weeks of work. Read a blog interview with your favorite actor? That was because of the PR team. See a great billboard? Designers came up with the ad, and someone somewhere figured out which billboard to buy when and for how long and for how much. It's not only human hours being devoted to that show. By the time you've seen it, we've already spent millions of dollars developing and making the show, and millions more on all the stuff that goes around the show. (Sidebar: Unless I miss my guess, at this point a BoingBoing commenter will chime in that this is the whole problem with the system...it's huge and bloated with way too many layers of middle-men. And yes, it certainly seems that way. So far every attempt by anyone to not do all of this stuff hasn't worked. No one's found a way for indie TV to be successful the way indie films can be. I'd love to see it happen. If you can figure it out, give me a call.) After we've spent all these months and millions on the show, the people working on it have usually become friends. Actually, we're often already friends because we've worked together on other shows. But if we weren't before, we are now. Other people have relocated for months on end, finding temporary apartments and leaving their families for long stretches at a time to try to make the show a success. If the show doesn't work, it's pretty devastating on our side of the fence. All those great ideas, all that time and all that money was for nothing. A lot of our friends will have to find new jobs (fortunately there will be new opportunities on other shows, which is why you often see familiar faces in our industry). All those great plans we had for the next episode or the next season will never materialize. That's not to say you should feel sorry for anyone working in TV. You shouldn't. It's a ridiculously fun industry to work in, and the pay is pretty good. It's the nature of the business that most shows fail, and everyone knows that going in. PS You know those faceless jerk executives in a suit I mentioned? Not really true. We don't actually wear suits anymore. Just thought I'd clear that up. Apologies for reusing the "canceled TV" graphic. Couldn't find anything that worked better.   |
| Tape of John Lennon's Jesus comments to be auctioned next month Posted: 12 May 2010 11:15 AM PDT On auction next month: a circa 1966 tape of a Beatles press conference in which John Lennon defends his controversial comments about Jesus. This is what he said: Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.The recording is expected to sell for about $25K. |
| Vintage Japanese steamship posters Posted: 12 May 2010 10:33 AM PDT  Pink Tentacle has revived a series of early 20th century steamship travel posters and is selling them as prints. Hoo-ah! Japanese steamship travel posters (via Neatorama) Previously:   |
| CORRECTION: Net Neutrality astroturf plan -- wasn't Posted: 12 May 2010 10:26 AM PDT Simon sez, "On its Think Progress blog, the liberal advocacy group announced it had "obtained" a PowerPoint document "which reveals how the telecom industry is orchestrating the latest campaign against Net neutrality" through a pseudo-grassroots effort. The story was echoed on Slashdot, Boing Boing, and innumerable pro-regulation blogs. There's just one problem with Think Progress' claim: It's not, well, accurate. In a case of truth being stranger than astroturf, it turns out that the PowerPoint document was prepared as a class project for a competition in Florida last month. It cost the six students a grand total of $173.95, including $18 for clip art." 'Secret' telecom anti-Net neutrality plan isn't (Thanks, Simon!)   |
| Police torture methods questioned after "murdered" man reappears Posted: 12 May 2010 11:16 AM PDT A man whom everyone thought had been murdered in a hatchet fight ten years ago appeared in his village in Henan, China last week seeking welfare. The assumed killer, Zhao Zuohai, had admitted to the crime and already served 10 years of his 29-year sentence. The Chinese court system must now question whether their methods for obtaining confessions are a bit over the top. Zhao Zuohai, for one, lost pretty much everything when he was forced to make his: The imprisoned Zhao's brother told the local Dahe Newspaper that police had forced him to drink chili water and set off fireworks over his head to force the confession.Murdered Chinese man reappears after 10 years [Reuters]   |
| See you at Anderson's Books tonight, Chicago! Posted: 12 May 2010 02:11 AM PDT Reminder: I'm speaking at Anderson's Books in Naperville (Chicago) tonight at 7PM, and the Chicago Public Library Harold Washington Library Center tomorrow at 5PM. (Seattle: you're next: Sunset Tavern on Friday at 7PM). Full schedule: PDX, SFO, AUS, RDU, NYC, YYZ.   |
| Posted: 12 May 2010 02:10 PM PDT McCain stars as a tough guy who can make things happen in this thrilling 30-second drama. Or maybe it was a comedy because I burst out laughing. UPDATE: Don't miss Milo's post in the comments, which includes tips on how this commercial could have been much more effective, and a script for another "illegal" immigrant commercial. |
3 years ago I moved out of an apartment into my first home. Moving into your first home is not only a big, scary deal, but once you move in, you realize that you don't have 'house things' like a set of tools, a lawnmower, a ladder.
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