The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Six-year-old thrashing on a plank
• TSA airport signs, after the toner ban
• Testing infrasound thrills and chills with a double-blind randomized spook-house
• Shirky: Times paywall is pretty much like all the other paywalls
• What I've learned about wind carts
• Explosion in Web 2.0 Factory Leads to Rockmelt
• Appalling Stuffed Cat, and other Alibaba curiosities
• Fark hosts NES nostalgia game for "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" DVD release
• Steve Martin's gospel song for atheists
• Staircase storage: vertical shelving unit is its own stepladder
• Baa, Baa, BlackSheep, Have You Any w001?
• Why don't jellyfish sting each other?
• SnapWare Glasslock
• Charles Reynolds, inventor of magic, RIP
• SPECIAL FEATURE: Awesome Gallery of De-CGI Competition Winners
• Eight Days a Week
• Interview with Hamilton Morris, filmmaker behind NZAMBI: documentary on Haitian zombie phenomenon
• Rocket to Russia: "Feel 10 - Show 1"
• JFK's birthday cake for sale
• Noah's Ark seeker gone missing
• Words: amazing video poem
• Spot the fake smile
• Why Richard Feynman can't tell you how magnets work
• Virgin America and Google to offer free inflight WiFi over the holidays
• Pulp sci-fi book covers, scanned daily
• Turn Lemon Bars into Lemonade
• Danish sailors make insane harbor entry in high seas
• The high school with seven Nobel prize winners
• Evoting security researchers at U Michigan root DC's voting machines with ease
• Skateboarder impaled on own plank costume

Six-year-old thrashing on a plank Posted: 09 Nov 2010 05:43 AM PST Asher Bradshaw is a six-year old skateboard wizard: watch him thrash like a fiend at the Venice Beach skate-park and marvel. 6 year old skateboarder Asher Bradshaw at Venice Beach Skatepark Just look at this awesome banana skateboard. The Ripper skateboard art show Oil-painted nudes on skateboard decks Skateboard printing from Zazzle 1965 skateboard movie: Skaterdater Skateboard hating cop caught on video for 2nd temper tantrum ... Skateistan.org: A Skateboarding School in Afghanistan

TSA airport signs, after the toner ban Posted: 09 Nov 2010 05:41 AM PST B3ta user Chthonic has taken the TSA toner-cartridge ban to its logical end. Important Notice TSA to Ban Printer Cartridges Next Week

Testing infrasound thrills and chills with a double-blind randomized spook-house Posted: 08 Nov 2010 10:17 PM PST John Huntington and his friends decided to test the reported phenomenon of infrasound (very low-frequency sounds) causing people to feel spooky chills and thrills, a phenomenon blamed for ghost sightings and reports of hauntings. They created a spook-house with a double-blind randomized infrasound generator and used surveys to check for a correlation between infrasound and creepy feelings. John exhaustively documented the experimental setup (and the setbacks encountered in getting things up and running), and the results. Spoiler alert: they didn't find a correlation. We picked a 19 Hertz (Hz, or cycles per second) sine wave as our infrasound source, since that's the frequency Tandy and Lawrence had found in their initial investigation of a "haunted" space (see Part I of this series for details). For our initial tests last spring, we used an Audio Toolbox as our signal generator, and connected it up to our ancient Apogee P-10 subwoofer processor and a Crown K2 amp, which drove an Apogee AE-10 double 18" subwoofer (these units work just fine, but haven't been made in years.) We got the sound going, but after a minute or so, it would cut out. I figured out that the processor was apparently protecting the subs against the "bad" infrasound, and was cutting out. So, I bypassed the processor and its protection circuits, and (carefully) drove the subwoofers directly from the amp. This worked just fine, but I was a bit concerned about damaging the speakers themselves. Fortuitously, over the summer I managed to get for our department a massive, modern Meyer Sound 650-P powered subwoofer. And after some tests in late summer we determined that the unit could generate quite a bit of 19Hz without clipping, and we figured the level was pretty good because by the time we pushed the 650-P up to its limits, the effects of the infrasound would be obvious to anyone in the room, which wouldn't have been acceptable for our purposes. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 (Thanks, John!) Infrasound Experiment Researchers build "haunted" room Participants needed for synthetic "haunting" Super Sonic Nausea device

Shirky: Times paywall is pretty much like all the other paywalls Posted: 08 Nov 2010 10:11 PM PST Clay Shirky's latest essay, "The Times' Paywall and Newsletter Economics," examines all the ways in which Rupert Murdoch's Times paywall is pretty much like all the other paywalls, and failed like pretty much all the other paywalls. The classic description of a commodity market uses milk. If you own the only cow for 50 miles, you can charge usurious rates, because no one can undercut you. If you own only one of a hundred such cows, though, then everyone can undercut you, so you can't charge such rates. In a competitive environment like that, milk becomes a commodity, something whose price is set by the market as a whole. Owning a newspaper used to be like owning the only cow, especially for regional papers. Even in urban markets, there was enough segmentation-the business paper, the tabloid, the alternative weekly-and high enough costs to keep competition at bay. No longer. The internet commodifies the business of newspapers. Newspapers compete with other newspapers, but newspaper websites compete with other websites. As Nicholas Carr pointed out during the 2009 pirate kidnapping, Google News found 11,264 different sources for the story, all equally accessible.* The web puts newspapers in competition with radio and TV stations, magazines, and new entrants, both professional and amateur. It is the war of each against all. None of this is new. The potential disruptive effects of the internet on newspapers have been observable since ClariNet in 1989.* Nor has the business case for paywalls changed. The advantage of paywalls is that they raise revenue from users. The disadvantages are that they reduce readership, increase customer acquistion and retention costs, and eliminate ad revenue from user-forwarded content. In most cases, the disadvantages have outweighed the advantages. The Times' Paywall and Newsletter Economics Times Online claims 200K paid users: but where's the detailed ... Financial Times chief sees paywalls as 'morally' necessary to ... Regwall cuts The Times's online readership in half Winds howl over the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch's UK ... NYTimes kills its paywall: "Google visitors make more dough than ... Local newspaper boasts ultimate passive-aggressive paywall policy ... Report: NYT will soon kill TimesSelect online paywall Nytimes.com to start charging for some site access: your thoughts ...

What I've learned about wind carts Posted: 08 Nov 2010 08:10 PM PST As a follow-up to Rick Cavallaro's article on Make: Online about designing and making a wind-powered cart that can outrun a tailwind, I wrote a piece about wind cart enthusiasts and skeptics. Is it possible to for a wind-powered vehicle to travel directly downwind faster than the wind? The intuitive answer to this question is "of course not." Imagine tossing a balloon into a steady breeze. It will go along at the speed of the wind (or slightly less, due to drag) but it's inconceivable that it could go faster than the wind. How could it? If it were to go faster than the wind, it would be outrunning its source of power and move into a headwind, which would slow it down. Think of a sailboat moving downwind. Once it gains enough speed to be moving at the speed of the wind, the sail will go slack, because the wind speed relative to the boat is zero. With no wind in the sails, how in the world could the sailboat go any faster? To claim that it could go faster than the wind is the same as claiming it could move forward with no wind at all! People immediately began attacking Goodman's video, saying it was a fake. The video doesn't have a clear shot of the road ahead, so many commenters accused Goodman of towing the cart behind a car or bike with a piece of fishing line. Some said the cart was moving downhill; others said Goodman was deluding himself — the windsock changed direction because of propwash, not because it was moving faster than the wind. Make Online: What I've Learned About Wind Carts

Explosion in Web 2.0 Factory Leads to Rockmelt Posted: 08 Nov 2010 08:06 PM PST Tragic news today from the browser mines. An explosion rocked the Chromium operations, resulting in the death of good taste, simplicity, and utility. The resulting slag mixed together social networking, a form of RSS, and browsing into one giant, still smoking blob. Web 2.0 teams were immediately dispatched, but recovery is unlikely. We're going to have to live with Rockmelt. Rockmelt is a social-networking and most-visited site dashboard wrapped around a browser. The notion is that instead of performing separate tasks in separate places, such as different tabs, windows, or programs, we're going to want to see what the hell all our friends are up to constantly, while watching streaming crap flow up both sides of the screen along with updates to Web sites we frequently view. Yeah, that's how I like to roll, yo. I can see why the idea behind Rockmelt is appealing. It's why Flock was released over five years ago. As the number of social networks to which we belong grows, and the kind of activities we can perform is ever more tightly tied into Web behaviors, there's an obvious conclusion to draw: perhaps all of this could be in one place, making it more efficient and seamless. But that assumes that multitasking isn't a myth, and that people are incessantly in need of communication. I'm probably well outside the target demographic for this kind of software, but the target demographic is already using apps on smartphones, so they're not going to be interested in this browser, anyway. Rockmelt may be too hip for its waistline. Should I point out that Marc Andreessen is an investor? I haven't used Flock, for the same reason Rockmelt isn't appealing: I actually have work to get done, and I'm not sitting constantly in front of a browser during my soi disant "idle time." (Idle time needs air quotes and double quotes around it, since I have two small children.) Earlier in the year, I became fascinated with tools like Freedom, software for Mac and Windows that lets you save yourself from yourself. Freedom disables network access for a period of time you set. Other tools remove distractions by clearing the screen of apps except the one you're working on; several word-processing programs give you a blank sheet of paper and wipe the slate clean. The iPad has the same effect writ medium-large: whatever you're doing fills the screen, and it takes a conscious act to shift to another activity; you can't casually swap. (I wrote this up for the Economist in June as "Stay on target," complete with some neat comments from Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.) If you don't have a prescription for Adderall already, just show Rockmelt to your physician, and he or she will be happy to oblige. I'll be in my unlit basement, viewing pages with lynx. NASA image by Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 team via Creative Commons.

Appalling Stuffed Cat, and other Alibaba curiosities Posted: 08 Nov 2010 06:19 PM PST If you would like 100,000 appalling stuffed cats every month, Shanghai Tony Handicrafts can take care of that. This modernist crockery is called "Grotesque Bowl," which is very true. Inflatable weird shape. The more you think about it, the more insightful it seems. In its favor, the supplier assures timely delivery of its terrible products. Its that fucking alarm again! A lovely present, you can send it to your loved ones in a fucking gift box. When in the market for a kerosene heater, don't forget the critical question. Is it lavishly slinky? Also: Shame Pig, Revolting Machine, and "This shitty product."

Fark hosts NES nostalgia game for "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" DVD release Posted: 08 Nov 2010 06:04 PM PST As a sponsored promotion for the DVD release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, our friends at Fark are hosting a web-based game you unlock by entering Konami code from '90s NES games (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter). In the game, you challenge Ramona's "seven evil exes -- the enemies from the movie" to a trivia contest. Fark's game is a paid ad campaign— a very clever one! (Thanks, Drew of Fark!)

Steve Martin's gospel song for atheists Posted: 08 Nov 2010 03:46 PM PST A reader writes, "From Austin City Limits (2010) Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers perform his original a capella 'gospel' tune for the non-believers among us." Steve Martin: Atheists Don't Have No Songs SNL: Laser Cats #4 with Steve Martin (KING LEAR) Steve Martin on being funny Steve Martin and the Muppets Steve Martin's script notes from The Passion Disneyland home movie from 1956 makes Library of Congress's ...

Staircase storage: vertical shelving unit is its own stepladder Posted: 08 Nov 2010 03:44 PM PST I love Danny Kuo's concept design for a "staircase" storage unit, which would be great in small (but high-ceilinged) rooms and homes -- it's a very tall shelving unit that uses its drawers as a stepladder to reach the highest compartments. I'm not clear on how that sucker is anchored/counterweighted to keep you from pitching over backwards and being crushed to death, but honestly, is that too high a price to pay for more tchotchke-space in a small flat? Staircase (via Cribcandy) Inside-out staircase Library built into a staircase Tiny footprint staircase Angular attic staircase -- cheap, steep, and does the trick ... Floating staircase Spiral staircase built around a 75' tree Wine-cellar encapsulated in a staircase Storage staircase -- genius!

Baa, Baa, BlackSheep, Have You Any w001? Posted: 08 Nov 2010 03:24 PM PST Firesheep, meet BlackSheep. The Firesheep Firefox extension makes it a simple point-and-click operation to hijack the unsecured Web session of anyone on the same unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot network using any of a couple dozen popular sites. It was created as a demonstration of poor user data protection, but can be used maliciously, too. BlackSheep is a strange rejoinder. While I recommended here at BoingBoing that people consider using a VPN, encrypting communications with specific services, or using a secure Web proxy, Zscaler's free BlackSheep uses jiu-jitsu. It creates fake tokens and transmits them over the live network in a manner that Firesheep scans for. Then it alerts you if another system on the same network attempts to resubmit the same credentials. What you do next, I don't know. Stand up, start pointing your finger around the coffeeshop, and yell, "J'accuse!"?

Why don't jellyfish sting each other? Posted: 08 Nov 2010 02:27 PM PST Along with this lovely jellyfish photo that she posted to the BoingBoing Flickr Pool, Kate Tomlinson asks, "How come they don't sting each other?" Not a bad question. How does a creature with no brain—but with long, venomous tentacles—manage to travel in dense packs without things getting really socially awkward? I took Kate's query to Southern Fried Scientist, a science blogger who doubles as a graduate student studying deep-sea biology. Jellyfish can and do sting other jellyfish, he says, but really only when they're hunting jellies of another species. They don't sting the other members of their same-species swarm. Neither (luckily) do they zap themselves. It works because jellyfish tentacles aren't inherently poisonous. Rather, it's the nematocytes—special cells that line the tentacles. When touched, nematocytes fire off microscopic quills that lodge in a victim and pump in the venom. But this weapon comes with a built-in safety switch. "Jellyfish have chemoreceptors that turn the nematocyte on or off," Southern Fried Scientist says. If the receptors pick up the chemical signature of the jellyfish's own species, nothing happens. Everything else is assumed to be potential prey (or, at least, a potential threat) and, thus, worth firing upon.

SnapWare Glasslock Posted: 08 Nov 2010 02:24 PM PST Storing food in plastic containers is an imperfect solution. Not only is there the risk of the plastic contaminating the food, but it also tends to stain and retain the taste and smell of whatever was last stored in it. After years of frustration with plastic containers I recently picked up an 18-piece kit of SnapWare Glasslock, a glass-based alternative to plastic food storage containers. As their name implies, the glass containers come with a rigid plastic top that snaps shut with four hinges. This coupled with a durable silicone seal renders the containers leak-proof. I have biked with one filled with soup and arrived at my destination without a drop missing (something I definitely couldn't do with my old plastic ones), and I didn't have to waste another bowl in order to microwave it. The biggest downsides to this container solution is the expense and added weight. Plastic containers are cheap, near-disposable, and almost weightless. But I'll happily tote the extra ounce or two of glass if it means I don't have to worry about plastics leeching into my now unspilled soup. The containers themselves are freezer, microwave, and dishwasher safe, but are not recommended for the oven. I have read many accounts of people successfully using them in the oven, but I do not believe they are made with the same borosilicate they use in Pyrex, bake with them at your own risk. The 18-piece set is enough for my partner and me, but may not be enough for a family of more than two or three (given how fast some people go through containers). I bought my set at a Costco warehouse where they are sold for quite a bit cheaper than elsewhere. I believe the Container Store has a near identical solution for comparable prices. Finally, for those not concerned about using plastics, SnapWare recently released a near identical product with BPA-free plastic. -- Oliver Hulland Snapware Glasslock 18 Piece Set $37 Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!

Charles Reynolds, inventor of magic, RIP Posted: 08 Nov 2010 01:23 PM PST Charles Reynolds, one of the world's greatest "backroom boy" magicians who advises other conjurors and invents illusions, has died. Reynolds's accomplishments included helping the likes of Doug Henning vanish a white horse and rider and Harry Blackstone Jr. buzzsaw his wife in half. Reynolds was 78. From the New York Times: He lived in a little house in Greenwich Village crammed with magic books, mummy cases and antique posters, including a dozen of the American magician who went under the Chinese name Chung Ling Soo and who became an instant legend in 1918 when he died by muffing the trick of catching a bullet in his teeth. Mr. Reynolds's knowledge of magical history was deep and quirky. He could tell you all about one Professor Lamberti, a vaudeville and burlesque performer who did magic tricks in addition to being the "world's daffiest xylophonist." As a stripper squirmed behind the professor, he welcomed the audience's applause as his own. Mr. Reynolds said that since Victorian times there have only been a dozen or so real tricks, with limitless variations. Magicians succeed, he said, by manipulating people's own assumptions — call it misdirection — and never by lying. "People don't particularly enjoy being made fools of," Mr. Reynolds said at a seminar on theatrical illusion in 2008. "Charles Reynolds, Magicians' Magician, Dies at 78" (Thanks, AnthroPunk!)

SPECIAL FEATURE: Awesome Gallery of De-CGI Competition Winners Posted: 08 Nov 2010 01:06 PM PST We challenged you to take something that is usually computerized and remake it with natural media. The incentive: great prizes from HP including a brand new laptop. Here are the entries we received, with the winners and runners-up announced below! Read the rest

Eight Days a Week Posted: 07 Nov 2010 07:26 PM PST A press release arrived in my inbox a couple days ago in which a CEO, facing a major change in his line of business, promised to continue to work for his customers 24x7x365. I was impressed. It's not every day that a company vows to accelerate its customers to a high fraction of the speed of light relative to the Earth to squeeze seven years into the space of one. What's more, many companies have the same capability. I worry about the fabric of reality, already stretched by firms impacting operations and effectuating paradigms. Our frame of reference will be stretched, snapped, and broken. For details on repair, consult How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

Interview with Hamilton Morris, filmmaker behind NZAMBI: documentary on Haitian zombie phenomenon Posted: 08 Nov 2010 06:09 PM PST With his Herman Munster baritone and his spindly manorexic gams vacuum-sealed into a pair of black skinny jeans, writer and filmmaker Hamilton Morris is like some Edward Gorey character come to life. It's a look particularly suited to the protagonist's role in his new movie NZAMBI, a documentary on the legend of the Haitian zombie. It's been 30 years since the anthropologist Wade Davis wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, his investigation of the Haitian zombie phenomenon--human beings put into a state of suspended animation for months or years by a voodoo poison. In NZAMBI, Morris travels to Port Au Prince on a mission to substantiate Davis' research for his generation. Like the rest of his videos for Vice Magazine's "Hamilton's Pharmacopia" series, Hamilton does a little gonzo drug experimentation too, but this time the stuff turns out to be bunk. Absent a definitive climax, he's forced to carry the movie with his deadpan voice over--and he's definitely funny, but you're never really sure if he's making fun of these Haitian Bokurs or making fun of an American audience expecting him to find answers in this spooky, magical world. And that's probably the point. I sat down with him after his premiere party at New York's Tribeca Grand Hotel (of course they were serving a vodka punch called zombies) to talk to Hamilton about reanimation, his interest in braiiiiinns, and what his dad thinks about his chosen profession of hipster psychonaut. Steve Marsh/Boing Boing: When did you read Wade Davis' Serpent and the Rainbow? Hamilton Morris: I was always familiar with his book and his research, but I saw the Wes Craven adaptation first. It came out in '84 or '85 [ed note: Hamilton was born in '87]; I liked a lot when I was in middle school. BB: Wade Davis hated the movie version, right? HM: Hated it. There's a really interesting part in the interview with Max Beauvoir that didn't make it into the cut. Max Beauvoir [ed note: who worked as Wade Davis guide during his SATR research and has gone on to become the supreme spiritual leader of the voodoo religion in Haiti] thought the camera had been turned off and then he starts talking freely about the movie. And Max Beauvoir, who's a character in the Serpent in the Rainbow, his character starts vomiting blood and scorpions at the end of the movie. It's certainly thought to be a sensationalist, racist movie, that doesn't communicate anything about what voodoo is actually like. And Wade Davis says it's the worst movie every made in the history of Hollywood movies. But Max Beauvoir, the Pope of voodoo, loves it and thinks that Wes Craven is the only director who truly understands the Haitian people and that it's a masterpiece. He went on to sort of trance while he was talking about it, looking off into the distance as if enraptured--just filled with pure love for the movie. He really loves it. But then I was like, "Well you know Wade Davis hated the movie don't you?" And he just looked so pissed off and was like, "Wade has no right to hate that movie. That movie made Wade a rich man. He profited while the Haitian people starved and he has no right to complain." BB: I'm reading Wade's One River. He seems to be much more into the indigenous culture than the pharmacology. HM: Yeah. He's certainly not primarily a biochemist, he's more of an anthropologist. And that's one of the things he's criticized for. There was a chemist, CY Cao, who at one point was the world's leading expert on TTX. And he did some analysis for Wade Davis on some of the potions he brought back and found that they actually did not contain enough TTX to produce any sort of toxic effect or paralysis, and it turned into this huge controversial debate in these different scientific journals. And if you see what this guy CY Cao wrote, it's really mean and in some ways stupid. He does all this tut tutting. Like, "you should've have paid for these potions...this wasn't real anthropology...you were just bribing them...like you shouldn't have dug up these bodies from the grave, that was unethical." And all these things like that. I mean, it's stupid and it's irrelevant in many respects, but... BB: How much did you pay for these potions? What was your budget like? HM: It's VBS. Everything is low budget. This was high budget for a company that doesn't spend a lot of money on these types of projects. BB: Why do you think the zombie is such a potent artistic metaphor? HM: I don't think it is, really. There's some interest in zombies--it seems to linger--but I don't have any interest in the new zombie movies. Well, the Will Smith movie was alright. It had its moments. The only Haitian zombie movies are Serpent and the Rainbow and all the ones that were made in the 40s and 50s. After the 50s, George Romero changed the entire concept of the zombie to this like new, non-Haitian zombie that's produced by extraterrestrial radiation. Or whatever his explanation is. BB: So how does this zombie movie fit in with the rest of your gonzo, experiential journalism showcased in Hamilton's Phamacopia. You were able to eat pufferfish but that was about it this time. Not that scary. HM: Well that was one of the issues when we were doing it. We wanted to include some kind of a drug experience in the project. And initially I was willing to take a low measured dose of pure synthetic TTX., which is reasonably safe if you measure the dose correctly. It's used clinically for all sorts of different things: including opioid withdrawal and cancer pain. It's been used for hundreds of years for all sorts of different things. Poison is only a matter of the dose. It's not intrinsically toxic, it's just that if you take too much of it, it will prevent you from breathing. BB: You seemed to understand pharmacologically how the toxin works with the Haitian psychedelic cucumbers, but you couldn't find it the real zombie powder. HM: There's so much of the story that we couldn't tell, and I'm trying to use it in this article for Harpers. But we collected additional poison samples. Some were lost--seriously--while we were in Haiti. BB: Stolen? HM: Disappeared? BB: Wow. That's part of every voodoo story: the voodoo doll or other tools of witchcraft disappearing mysteriously. That's part of voodoo magic. HM: Oh yeah. Once you're there, you really do understand. There's no way you could possibly make any judgment on Wade Davis' research if you haven't been to Haiti. That is something I can say with total certainty. So if you are that guy CY Cau, that chemist who said he was fraud and all that stuff, you have to see what's it's like there. Because there's no way you could possibly imagine how deep the magical thinking runs. It's like a legitimate threat in Haiti. We would get out of the car, and everyone would start crowding around us and ask us for money and Alex would say, "Stop, stop! I'm going to turn all of you into a goat!" And that was like a serious threat that scared people and made them back away because that did not want to be turned into a goat. And you'd think well wouldn't you eventually ignore it because nobody has ever turned anyone into a goat? (whispers) But that's just not how they think. BB: So you studied brain chemistry at the University of Chicago and you just finished a chem final at the New School this afternoon. HM: At the engineering school at Cooper Union. BB: How did you get so interested in psychoactive and psychedelic drugs in the first place? HM: Well, it's an interesting topic. It's the human mind, it's consciousness, it's all interlinked with mental illness, and all these sorts of interesting things and I've always been interested in science and chemistry and I just hadn't...I've always been interested in science and chemistry. BB: You've written that you're don't trust and that you dislike shamans. Why is that? HM: I don't dislike shamans, I dislike the idea that we are somehow not equipped to take the drug on our own, that we need to refer to a guy who is, like, primitive from a poor country who will then tell us how to do drugs because our tainted American minds are somehow incapable of conceptualizing the psychedelic experience. And you have to have some guy who doesn't know anything about us, or our culture, or who we are, tell us how to experience a drug. It makes no sense at all. I understand it's appealing to a new age sensibility--especially because the psychedelic experience is so incredibly difficult to conceptualize. Everyone is looking for a framework to interpret what is happening psychologically. So you can try to do it through various religions--through whatever, kabbalah, Christianity--but it's always difficult. The really difficult truth of the matter is that there is no framework at all. At all. And that nobody has any answer. But it seems appealing to people who are unwilling to take responsibility for their own experience. It's appealing to say, "Oh, I'll go to this ancient shaman. He's an ancient man. He comes from an ancient primitive culture that understands these metaphysical things." But of course they don't, anymore than you or I do. They're just people. They don't possess any sacred knowledge that you or I don't have. I've spoken to so many shamans and I find that most of this stuff is platitudes. It's all you know, the planet is the ambassador, it is our teacher and our mother and our father. But that doesn't really help you all that much in the end. BB: Have you had anything that could be called a spiritual experience on any of these substances? HM: I think they're inherently spiritual. I think it's difficult not to have a spiritual experience. BB: What are the ones that have been the most dramatic paradigm shifts for you? HM: There's so many. There are a few very interesting substances that I've had the opportunity to try. There's a chemical called diisopropyltryptamine. DIPT. It has the unusual effect of selectively distorting hearing. So that your vision remains relatively intact, but you're totally immersed in this world of profound auditory hallucinations. And I had tripped a few times before ever trying DIPT, and that was the first time I fully understood the sorts of weirdness that the human mind is capable of. That you could just walk down the street and hear these sounds that seemed utterly impossible to be generated without a computer and they were coming from your own ears. BB: Have you contacted anything that you think is external to the human mind on these substances? HM: No. Absolutely not. BB: Terrence McKenna talked about the futuristic elves. HM: I've seen "things." Sort of? The human brain is evolved to recognize movement to recognize patterns to recognize faces in everything. That is what the brain does, among many other things. So of course you will see faces and things and movement. But I don't want to assign any values to those things and say that they are for somehow an extraterrestrial being that's trying to teach me lessons about telling everyone to drink ayahuasca before 2012 or something like that. BB: What does your father think of your work? HM: Uhhhh...well, I have a very good relationship with my dad. Initially he was sort of against it because I always forget that in the 70s, that all this stuff was probably horrifying and cheesy and overdone in a way. Like I remember him talking about how much he hated Jodorowsky and then watching Jodorowsky movies and thinking, "Like oh my god, how could you hate this? This is the like the most interesting thing." I have no idea, but I can imagine everyone in the 70s talking about how awesome Jodorowsky movies were. It was probably tiring and stupid after awhile and he didn't want to have anything to do with all this psychedelic culture when it became stupid and self-indulgent and boring. So I sympathize. And he's not a stoner. He's not that kind of a guy. So he doesn't like stoner stuff. BB: Does he like your stoner stuff? HM: My stuff isn't. I actually don't even smoke weed. BB: (Laughs) Except on camera in your new zombie movie? HM: Okay. On camera, on occasion, in Haiti, to relieve a little bit of the stress, I might toke a j every once in a while. But it definitely messes with my sleep and I don't smoke that much weed. But anyway he likes it, he's supportive. I'm genuinely close with my dad. He's a legitimate human being which is rare. But it's difficult to make movies. I like writing more than documentary. Because there's so much tension to make it digestible and simple and of course it's never simple in any way at all. It's incredibly complicated and difficult to explain to everyone. BB: I just re-watched your dad's little Academy Award movie because you were in it as a 15-year-old. And there's one guy who said "film might have more to do with poetry than prose." HM: That guy is incredible. He's Dennis Jakob. I went on a road trip with him. He's a paranoid schizophrenic who helped edit Apocalypse Now. He's a fascinating character. He's like best friends with Francis Ford Coppola and then he was in an insane asylum for a decade and now he's living in a trailer, but he was on of the most brilliant minds in Hollywood but was too schizophrenic to do anything. He's recently regained his sanity. BB: Are you on anything right now? You mentioned your interest in mental illness earlier--have you ever struggled with mental issues? HM: No, not really. I didn't even take a psychedelic drug until I was in college. I was never like a big drug guy. I'm interested in science mostly. I'm on a small amount of Ritalin because I had an exam and I had to take a little bit to make sure I was on the ball. No shame in that. I have a pre-script-tion. I have a disease called ADHD. Watch NZAMBI here. Polaroids from Hamilton's Haiti documentary trip here.

Rocket to Russia: "Feel 10 - Show 1" Posted: 08 Nov 2010 11:52 AM PST Encore (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) As bassist for electric guitar icon (and extremely nice person) Joe Satriani on a European tour I thought to regale you, dear Boing Boing reader, with the exploits of an American rock band touring in Russia. (Dateline: St. Petersburg. Local time: 11pm. Weather: raining and cold.) Despite (or possibly because of) a soundcheck rife with technical challenges, the show in St. Petersburg comes off swimmingly. Though stiffly seated for the first several songs of the set the crowd maniacally rushes the stage as soon as the block-shouldered and packing security agents (complete with tiny coiled earbuds) usher the photographers out of the way. The rest of the set (a total of two hours and twenty five minutes) is a joy, with audience members singing along to well memorized guitar melodies, head-banging furiously or doing the dark Russian poet thing: standing motionless with a maniacal intensity, a sort of "Feel 10 - Show 1" approach to existentialism. After the show the promoter, resplendent in groovy bling, treats us to dinner at his Italian restaurant nearby, and I marvel as our waitress (there is no other word that can most accurately be used to describe her) and our cook bicker animatedly but quietly into the face of each other about opening wine bottles and the timing of serving our meals. The food is very good but I can't finish the mountain of spaghetti carbonara on the plate. It's 1am. During the day prior to soundcheck a group of us walk to The Hermitage, a world destination museum with over 1000 rooms and 3,000,000 paintings (not all of which are open or on display at any given time) but, as it's a holiday of some kind here (the name of which we're unable to divine) the lines across the wind-swept central square are pushing the length of three football fields. Russians apparently are very good at queuing and not always for a good purpose. Naturally we walk right up and offer tickets to those in front* to let us take their place, to no avail. We return to the hotel only slightly disappointed. Like traveling to Paris, having one day for the Louvre and, it being a Tuesday, the museum is closed, I name the experience of not getting in to The Hermitage as proof that I will return. For a transcendent cinematic experience of this place see the movie, Russian Ark with the subtitles on. The cook (L) and the waitress (social archetypes of a Higher Order) are obviously interpreting a request with different levels of understanding which they will argue about momentarily. (Sardinia Restaurant - St. Petersburg) Our voluable St. Petersburg promoter (L) w/ his friend and his cook. "Slade? Uriah Heep? Elton John? Those are all my shows!" (Sardinia Restaurant - St. Petersburg) Lindsay Long (chief logistician and tour humanist) displays her fabulous Russian tchoches Catering is uniformed! Arthur Rosato (R) - (former ass't. to Bob Dylan for ten years and now our overqualified drum tech) chooses wisely. Thank the Maker for these signs posted by our crew. We'd still be wandering the halls, Spinal Tap style, otherwise (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) Tech room graffiti, St. Petersburg style (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) Mike Keneally (L) keyboardist extraordinaire and Mike Manning, Joe's longtime stage right guitar tech suss out yet more audio anomalies during soundcheck. (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) Galen Henson (L), rhythm guitar & tour manager and Jason Cook, stage left tech, attempt to root out sonic gremlins from the Kremlin during soundcheck. (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) The red phone, backstage (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) Old school backstage control panel (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) Do not get lost in this building (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) One last shot from St. Petersburg -- walking down the street we notice this advert which we immediately examine for anatomical accuracy. Rocket to Russia: Day 0 Rocket to Russia: Russian Airlines lunch!

JFK's birthday cake for sale Posted: 08 Nov 2010 11:38 AM PST Call J. Peterman! This unappetizing piece of cake is up for auction right now with a current bid of $2,500. Why? It's from JFK's 45th birthday party in 1962, the one where Marilyn Monroe seductively sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." From Collectors Weekly: The piece of cake up for auction is actually a sugar-frosted decoration on cardboard—it was spirited away from the ceremony by a police officer who was part of the event's security staff. Along with a program from the event, the piece is expected to bring between $5,000 and $10,000. "Let Them Eat JFK's Birthday Cake"

Noah's Ark seeker gone missing Posted: 08 Nov 2010 11:27 AM PST In May, I posted about a Christian group's expedition to find the real Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. One of the seekers is now missing after a solo trek on the mountain. According to the BBC, Donald Mackenzie was last in touch with his family more than a month ago. "Noah's Ark site search man goes missing"

Words: amazing video poem Posted: 08 Nov 2010 10:54 AM PST Production company Everynone created a terrific video poem linking words and images together in a lovely flow. Directed by Daniel Mercadante and Will Hoffman, it's a collaboration with Radio Lab and NPR. Also, watch their remix of it, using YouTube clips, at the Everynone site. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

Spot the fake smile Posted: 08 Nov 2010 10:21 AM PST The BBC has a fun experiment where you're challenged to "Spot the Fake Smile" on 20 individuals. I didn't do much better than 50 percent. Good thing I don't play poker. The experiment is based on the amazing work of retired University of California psychology professor Paul Ekman, who spent a career studying emotion and facial expressions. Most famously, Ekman researched "microexpressions," subtle "tells" that reveal when someone is lying. He's the author of Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage and Emotions Revealed, among other books, and the inspiration behind the TV drama Lie To Me. "Spot the Fake Smile" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

Why Richard Feynman can't tell you how magnets work Posted: 08 Nov 2010 10:15 AM PST But seriously, f*ckin' magnets, how do they work? It's a very good question, but the truth, according to none other than Richard Feynman, is that it's also a very hard question to give non-scientists an answer on. The trouble: Magnetism is one of those things that's just damn difficult to understand in terms of analogy to stuff the average person already knows. The only way to answer this kind of reductive "why" question, Feynman says, is to put the questioner through an elaborate education in physics, at which point they will emerge—like a hobbled butterfly—equally unable to answer the question in a simple way. Basically, ICP is doomed to receive nothing but unsatisfying answers on this topic until they enroll themselves in an evil clown Ph.D. program. Submitterated by millrick, from a post at The Atlantic.

Virgin America and Google to offer free inflight WiFi over the holidays Posted: 08 Nov 2010 09:41 AM PST For the second year in a row, Virgin America and Google are teaming up to offer free Gogo in-flight wireless internet for passengers during the holiday season, as a promotion for Google's Chrome browser. (Disclaimer: Virgin America carries our Boing Boing video episodes on its in-flight entertainment system—in fact, I heartily recommend you watch while you tweet or catch up on email!)

Pulp sci-fi book covers, scanned daily Posted: 08 Nov 2010 09:33 AM PST Via the BB Submitterator, Boing Boing reader calebkraft says, "I was given several large containers of pulp Sci-Fi publications from the 50s-70s. I've been scanning them and posting at least one a day to the pulp archive. The art is fantastic!" No kidding. My favorite, among the ones posted so far, is above. Analog, September 1968, Vol. LXXXII, No. 1. It looks like Analog had a decent budget for art. Their cover paintings are usually fairly detailed and high quality. I'm not really sure what is going on here, but the fantasy fan of me approves of giant marmots that play horn instruments. More: pulparchive.com

Turn Lemon Bars into Lemonade Posted: 08 Nov 2010 09:32 AM PST The Cooks Source brouhaha has turned into at least one positive outcome. One advertiser in the publication, 2nd Street Bakery in Turners Falls, Mass., quickly contacted Cooks Source to pull its ads. Kudos poured in on Facebook on the bakery's page and the Cooks Source discussion area. Several people suggested sending cash to or placing orders with 2nd Street to offset the loss in business due to people calling them and emailing them to complain about Cooks Source, and the potential loss in business from halting these ads. Owner Laura Puchalski suggested redirecting the effort via a Facebook reply to those wanting to help her business out: Ok Ok! If you are all set on showing some love for our local charities, my recommendation would be The Food Bank of Western MA. They serve over 7 million pounds of food PER YEAR to hungry families and elders in my county and surrounding areas. Pay it forward and fight hunger! We really are not looking to benefit directly from any of this, so do please just send your good will to a charitable cause!! Image by Janet Hudson via Creative Commons.

Danish sailors make insane harbor entry in high seas Posted: 08 Nov 2010 09:24 AM PST This is what luck looks like. Luck, combined with a whole lot of skill. Notice the person at the front. I'm sure they're locked in with a harness, but that would still be a wild ride. The harbor is Svaneke, a town on an island in the Baltic Sea. According to this thread at the Wooden Boat Forum, local guides say you shouldn't even attempt entering Svaneke harbor during strong onshore winds. I have no idea what prompted this crew to take a shot, but I'm guessing they decided the alternatives were worse. Thanks to Happy Mutant role model Marti Siebert for the video!

The high school with seven Nobel prize winners Posted: 08 Nov 2010 08:56 AM PST Inside the Bronx high school that produced seven Nobel-winning physicists—despite having sub-standard physics education while most of them were in school. According to this article, what the Bronx High School of Science lacked in specific-subject resources, it made up by creating an engaging environment that got kids excited about science, in general, both in and out of the classroom.

Evoting security researchers at U Michigan root DC's voting machines with ease Posted: 08 Nov 2010 08:23 AM PST Oldsma sez, "DC election officials put a test version of their voting system up in a mock primary and invited white hat attacks. U. Michigan broke it completely within 36 hours. DC officials reply, in a nutshell, 'Well, that's why we asked people to test it.'" D.C. voting officials knew there might be openings in the upload procedure, said Paul Stenbjorn, director of information services at the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. "It was disappointing that it was as easy as it was for them," he said, "and that we hadn't been more proactive about closing down these known issues." In the end, Stenbjorn considers the experiment a success. "This was why we had the public examination period," he said. "Obviously, we would have liked a smooth noncontroversial deployment of our new system, but this was a known potential outcome..." Halderman expected the system to be fairly easy to compromise. "Web security is a very difficult problem," he said. "Major web sites like Facebook and Twitter regularly suffer from vulnerabilities, and banks lose millions of dollars to online fraud every year. These high-profile sites have greater resources and far more security experience than the municipalities that run elections, and yet they are still constantly having problems. It may someday be possible to build a secure method for voting over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today's security technology." Michigan researchers hack Washington DC computer voting system EFF E-Voting (Thanks, Oldsma, via Submitterator!) Hari Prasad, India's evoting researcher, working to save Indian ... India's e-voting machines vulnerable to fraud Evoting researchers buy used "secure" voting machines ... EFF announces Pioneer Award winners: Stephen Aftergood, James ... Alex Halderman's totally epic hack of the DC internet voting ... Tracking e-voting dangers: I VOTED? Will e-Voting work?

Skateboarder impaled on own plank costume Posted: 08 Nov 2010 08:11 AM PST This swell "skateborder-impaled-on-his-own-plank" costume can also be used as a handy drinks table -- the images were captured by the talented @Toastkid. Impaled Zombie Skateboarder DIY Halloween Costume (Thanks, Jim!) Banksy stencil-art Hallowe'en costume Adorable Jawa Costume Mecha Walker Hallowe'en costume 8-bit costume DIY Hallowe'en: Robocop Kid Costume Kid-made Stormtrooper Hallowe'en costume, 1977 Open thread: your DIY Hallowe'en costumes?

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