The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Pornoscan Santa xmas card
- Julian Assange demonstration today in London 1330h Westminster Magistrate's Court
- Denver bomb squad defeats 8" toy robot after hours-long standoff
- UK govt demands an end to evidence-based drug policy
- Geeky wreath
- Tintypes and ambrotypes of Civil War soldiers
- Santastic 5: more holiday mashups
- Mystery chocolate piece in advent calendar
- Microbiologist turns a skeptical eye on Mono Lake arsenic eaters
- World map of lightning strikes
- Tumblr takes a tumbl
- You know what science funding really needs? Its own reality show ...
- Pedantry of the Day: A "parsec" is a unit of distance, not time
- SPECIAL FEATURE: The Avengers: A Celebration -- photo gallery
- Sarah Palin, moose hunter?
- Google 404 errors finally getting an update?
- Oh, Qrap
- Awesome fan-poster for Green Lantern movie
- Nexus S smartphone
- Horrific medical booklet from 1939: living human fetal experimentation
- Home bomb factory to be exploded
- Every Billy Joel hit played simultanously
- Binishells domed structures
- Emeralds: minimalist synth drone band
- Balls
- Mean Monkey Monday 9
- Cthulhu playing cards
- Clay Shirky's Nuanced Position on WikiLeaks
- Swiss bank freezes Assange defense fund account as UK arrest warrant imminent
- Always Look on the Bright Side of the Fence
| Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:27 AM PST  This funny xmas card was in my PO Box this morning, courtesy of Eric Mueller! Rapiscan Santa and reindeer, Xmas Card from Eric Mueller and Ramona Ponce |
| Julian Assange demonstration today in London 1330h Westminster Magistrate's Court Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:05 AM PST  A group calling itself "Justice for Assange" has called for a public protest at the Westminster Magistrate's Court in London at 1330h, in time for Julian Assange's hearing on the Swedish arrest warrant that may see him extradited. PROTEST Today Westminster Magistrate's Court meet 13:30
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| Denver bomb squad defeats 8" toy robot after hours-long standoff Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:32 AM PST Denver police stopped rushhour traffic near Coors Field for hours Toy robot detours traffic near Coors Field (Thanks, LostMachine, via Submitterator) (Image: thumbnail of larger photo by RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
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| UK govt demands an end to evidence-based drug policy Posted: 06 Dec 2010 10:27 PM PST A new proposal from the UK government will remove scientists from the advisory council that analyzes and makes recommendations on drug policy, and allow the home secretary to ignore the committee altogether and ban any substance for a year regardless of scientific evidence or advice. Ministers will not be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy in future, under new government proposals.Government proposes to scrap need for scientific advice on drugs policy
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| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 10:20 PM PST  From Reddit: a lovely, geeky wreath for an unnamed company's IT department. My good friend made this wreath for her IT department. (via Neatorama)   |
| Tintypes and ambrotypes of Civil War soldiers Posted: 06 Dec 2010 10:16 PM PST  The Library of Congress's Flickr collection includes 700+ high-res scans of ambrotype and tintype photos of US Civil War soldiers -- they're looking for help from the public with identification for many of the anonymous images: "These fascinating photographs represent the impact of the war, which involved many young enlisted men and the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. The photos feature details that enhance their interest, including horses, drums, muskets, rifles, revolvers, hats and caps, canteens, and a guitar. Among the rarest images are African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits with families, women, and girls and boys." Civil War Faces (Thanks, Gmoke, via Submitterator)   |
| Santastic 5: more holiday mashups Posted: 06 Dec 2010 10:07 PM PST Mashup impressario dj BC and friends have just released the fifth installment in their much-anticipated annual Santastic series of totally illegal, totally wonderful, totally unauthorized Christmas mashups -- this year with videos. They're all groovy, of course, but if I were you, I'd start with the last track, mojochronic's Motown Christmas. SANTASTIC V: Snow, Man! (Thanks, dj BC!)   |
| Mystery chocolate piece in advent calendar Posted: 06 Dec 2010 09:26 PM PST  My wife bought advent calendars for my two daughters from Trader Joe's. The calendars cost ninety-nine cents apiece. Behind each of the 24 little doors is a piece of chocolate with a symbol representing the holidays on it. One piece of chocolate had a sleigh with presents in it, for instance. All of the symbols have been easily recognizable, if somewhat crude. But the pieces of chocolate my daughters got today is a mystery. None of us can tell what it is. It's not a squirrel; we already got a piece of chocolate that looked like a squirrel and this looks like nothing like that one. This looks vaguely skull-like, or an H.P. Lovecraft monster, maybe. I don't know if the picture above is upside down, sideways or right side up. I have a feeling the readers of Boing Boing will be able to figure out what it is pretty quickly, though. And then it will snap into clarity. Or maybe not. |
| Microbiologist turns a skeptical eye on Mono Lake arsenic eaters Posted: 06 Dec 2010 08:40 PM PST Microbiologist Rosie Redfield explains why she, and other researchers, are critical of the ostensible discovery of arsenic-loving bacteria in California's Lake Mono. This is a nice, technical explanation, which digs into some flaws in the research methodology. Short story: We know the now semi-infamous paper isn't about alien life. But Redfield says it doesn't show solid evidence of bacteria incorporating arsenic into their DNA, either.   |
| World map of lightning strikes Posted: 06 Dec 2010 08:34 PM PST  See that dark purple spot of heavy activity in North America? That's more or less centered over where I grew up. God, I miss thunderstorms. And, speaking of deities, what is up with this, anyway? How did Kansas and Missouri anger Thor so very badly? In reality, this picture is somewhat distorted. It only shows lighting strikes for the last six months. Look at NASA's documentation of all lightning strikes since 1998, and it becomes clear that the American Midwest, while an active spot, isn't quite the epicenter of the Lord's Righteous Wrath that it first appears. Instead, it's just one of several global hot spots. The place with the most lightning is actually in central Africa, specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, "near the small village of Kifuka." NASA's Hugh Christian, project leader for the National Space Science and Technology Center's lightning team, explains:
Image originally from the WeatherMatrix blog, via my friend Joe Jarvis. Although, it's worth noting that the WeatherMatrix blog makes some claims about lightning behavior—like, "it doesn't happen in the mountains"—that seem to be contradicted by the village of Kifuka's location .... in the mountains. Make of that what you will.   |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 09:01 PM PST  Tumblr CEO David Karp has (finally) posted an update on the two-day outage causing outrage among users of the short-form blogging platform. "Yesterday afternoon, during planned maintenance that was not intended to interrupt service, an issue arose that took down a critical database cluster," explains Karp. "This brought down our entire network while our engineers worked feverishly to restore these databases and bring your blogs back online." "Sorry we let you down today," the post ends. Even the hungover owls seem sadder than usual. But good news, Brooklyn: tumblogs are slowly coming back online tonight. All should be well in tumblandia by the morning, I'd wager. (thanks Chris) |
| You know what science funding really needs? Its own reality show ... Posted: 06 Dec 2010 08:07 PM PST |
| Pedantry of the Day: A "parsec" is a unit of distance, not time Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:46 PM PST Science comedian Brian Malow rags on what he sees as the most grating scientific error in Star Wars: A New Hope. I noticed the sketchy use of the word "parsec", too. But I'd always assumed the choice was part of Han Solo's characterization. After all, isn't he just the sort of lovable pirate scamp who'd try to scam a couple of yokels by exaggerating the slickness of his ride without, technically, lying about it? I'm sure the Millennium Falcon could make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs ... just like everybody else's ship. Han was just hoping his potential passengers were too uneducated to know that. Anyway, this is what I choose to believe.   |
| SPECIAL FEATURE: The Avengers: A Celebration -- photo gallery Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:24 PM PST An exclusive preview of the new photography book, The Avengers: A Celebration, by Marcus Hearn , with a foreword by Patrick Macnee. Published by Titan.
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| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 04:04 PM PST Sarah Palin, alleged moose hunter, doesn't sight in her inappropriately-chosen rifle, can't load her own shells, and couldn't hit the side of a bus from inside the bus. Abe Sauer at The Awl: "While Palin's hunting-for-TV jamboree certainly impressed the hockey moms, it seriously eroded her base of genuine hunters ... Palin's inexperience with guns is in no way more obvious than when she is handed the rifle and she asks, "Does it kick?"   |
| Google 404 errors finally getting an update? Posted: 06 Dec 2010 03:13 PM PST  For reasons unknown, Google still uses a mid-1990s 404 error, but at least Google Books has a 404 with a literary riff on Twitter's Fail Whale. (via Business Insider)  |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 03:12 PM PST  I've been obsessed with QR Codes, those 2D tags that encode URLs and other information, for the last 18 months, having penned a couple of Economist pieces, and this item about bookmarkleting QR Codes here at BoingBoing. The inflection point in Seattle, at least, appears to have hit: I spotted six at a burger joint this lunchtime. My friend Ren Caldwell knows my horrible interest in this matter, and she IM'd me a link (via several intermediate sources) to QRapping Paper. $19.95 buys you two 20-by-30-inch sheets of paper with codes that link to 50 different online videos. This includes videos like Harry Truman in Heaven, and one in which a gingerbread man torches his foreclosed gingerbread house. It's a pricey novelty gift, but clever. I'm going to co-opt this idea. This sanctioned holiday period, every one of my gift recipients is going to get an empty but suspiciously heavy box wrapped in plain white paper with a QR Code pasted on top. The code will link to Never Gunna Give You Up. That's right: I'm gunna rickroll Christmas, all y'all! (Ren's officemate Dan asked, "All I want to know is: is it pronounced 'crapping paper'?") And with that, I...am...outta here on my guestblog gig! Thanks for the love, BoingBoing readers.  |
| Awesome fan-poster for Green Lantern movie Posted: 06 Dec 2010 02:11 PM PST  The Green Lantern happens to be my favorite hero, and out of disappointment for the official film poster release (can't even see his damn ring!) I took it upon myself to create my own poster the way I would like to see it ... The process behind this poster was extremely different then what I'm used to, but it was an excellent journey to nail down the effect I wanted. Having to create that hand from scratch was a strange one, but I'm happy to say it's ME wearing that Green Lantern ring.Read the extremely detailed and useful how-to guide.   |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 01:58 PM PST  Chew: You Nexus S, huh? I design your SD Card slot. Batty: Chew, if only you could see wh... wait, I don't have an SD Card slot. Google Unveils Nexus S Smartphone, Gingerbread OS [Gadget Lab]  |
| Horrific medical booklet from 1939: living human fetal experimentation Posted: 06 Dec 2010 01:56 PM PST John Ptak, a scientific book dealer who has written many pieces for Boing Boing in the past, says: "And so I came to this book. It's one of the worst things that I have here, and I think it's time for it to go. But in the meantime I posted this about it. "It's an atlas of fetal movement -- stills taken from movies made of poking fetuses with needles in surgically removed placentas. It is concentration camp stuff, only done under the direction of the American Philosophical Society at the Medical School of the University of Pittsburgh in 1939. "I think that this needs to be shared." Wisely, John chose not to include any of the images from the booklet. I sure don't want to see them. Here's an excerpt from John's post on his blog: Horrific medical booklet from 1939: living human fetal experimentation   |
| Home bomb factory to be exploded Posted: 06 Dec 2010 01:55 PM PST Remember the Escondido, California home that police found filled with "crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals" belonging to accused bankrobber/hoarder George Jakubec? It's so packed with junk that authorities can't take the risk of emptying it out by hand, and a robot apparently can't maneuver inside. So on Wednesday they're going to torch the place and hope for the best. Meanwhile, Jakubec has pled not guilty and is being held without bail. From the AP: "Explosive-laden Calif. home to be destroyed" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)   |
| Every Billy Joel hit played simultanously Posted: 06 Dec 2010 02:01 PM PST |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 01:35 PM PST  Above is an architectural model of the Happy Mutant Retreat and Preschool we are currently building at an undisclosed location. Once the dome is in place to fend off the gamma rays, we will begin construction in earnest. The structures are called Binishells. Mike Mechanic says: This is my old friend Nic Bini's company... His dad, Dante Bini, invented them as an architecture graduate student in Italy. As I recall, he had to borrow money from his aunt in order to prove the basic concept, which is that you sandwich wet concrete between layers of a neoprene-like material and pump the whole thing up with air to create these domes, which have been used to build homes, and malls and swimming pools in Australia... Binishell lay fallow for many years before Nic revived it in recent years, realizing the green potential—the building sector, as you may know, is a huge greenhouse-gas emitter, and these things are relatively low impact (plus you can put lawns on their roofs, apparently.) Anyway, Nic has big dreams these days — LEED-certified eco-resorts, futuristic condos...airport terminals!?Binishells   |
| Emeralds: minimalist synth drone band Posted: 06 Dec 2010 12:40 PM PST |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:37 PM PST |
| Posted: 18 Oct 2010 10:54 AM PDT |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2010 12:51 PM PST  Paul sez, "The gentlemen of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (who did the Call of Cthulhu film a few years ago) have produced a little something for the Holiday season: Lovecraftian Playing Cards. It's a 52 card deck (plus 2 jokers) of standard playing cards, but the face cards depict Cthulhu, Shub Niggurath and Nyarlathotep; the ace of spades has an Elder Sign and Lovecraft himself is the joker. All of them backed with a a suitable sigil of protection so you don't accidentally summon up something you can't put down. (Thanks, Paul!)   |
| Clay Shirky's Nuanced Position on WikiLeaks Posted: 06 Dec 2010 09:54 AM PST  I've been unable to nail down precisely why I don't like how WikiLeaks is releasing hidden, secret, classified, and other categories of U.S. government information. I don't believe the United States deserves the shroud of secrecy that protects incompetent, illegal, and malicious acts; neither do I trust Julian Assange's motives, presentation, or redaction. Every time I try to talk about the issue, it's like a life-or-death game of "paper or plastic bags" at the supermarket. Thankfully, Clay Shirky has laid bare the cognitive dissonance and teased apart distinctly different ideas that are being lumped into single categories: As Tom Slee puts it, "Your answer to 'what data should the government make public?' depends not so much on what you think about data, but what you think about the government." My personal view is that there is too much secrecy in the current system, and that a corrective towards transparency is a good idea. I don't, however, believe in pure transparency, and even more importantly, I don't think that independent actors who are subject to no checks or balances is a good idea in the long haul. I am conflicted about the right balance between the visibility required for counter-democracy and the need for private speech among international actors. Here's what I'm not conflicted about: When a government can't get what it wants by working within the law, the right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is to accept that it can't get what it wants.Photo by Joi Ito via Creative Commons.   |
| Swiss bank freezes Assange defense fund account as UK arrest warrant imminent Posted: 06 Dec 2010 09:33 AM PST A Swiss bank reportedly froze Julian Assange's defense fund today, and authorities in the U.K. have 'received the paperwork' needed to issue their own arrest warrant for Wikileaks' founder. Wikileaks posted a blog item this morning claiming Swiss Bank Post Finance froze the account because Assange used his lawyer's address for correspondence. Referring also to last week's decision by PayPal to shut off Wikileaks, the posting reports that €100,000 in donations is tied up in the two accounts. The paperwork for a U.K. arrest warrant for Julian Assange was received by the Met this morning, according to the UK Press Association. Assange is generally believed to be in London, where local police were apparently reluctant to arrest him on the basis of an international warrant issued last week. If you're tired of hearing about Wikileaks' woes, here's Umberto Eco's thoughts on the matter.   |
| Always Look on the Bright Side of the Fence Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:29 AM PST A routine peeping-tom/self-pleasuring report in a hyperlocal blog in Seattle is enlivened by the following detail: According to witnesses, the man looked like he was in his 30's, white, with slicked-back dark-blond hair and was said to resemble Eric Idle.Lemon curry?   |
"Are you serious?" asked Denver resident Justin Kent, 26, when police stopped him from proceeding down 20th Street. Kent said that he lived just past the closed area, but was told he would have to go around via Park Avenue. 
I can think of no other more disgusting atlas than this -- not for the activities of the fetuses, but how they were made to be "active." 
San Marcos Fire Chief Todd Newman acknowledges it is no small feat: Authorities have never dealt with destroying such a large quantity of dangerous material in the middle of a populated area, bordered by a busy eight-lane freeway... 
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