The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Tray full of tracknubs
- Wikileaks and Julian Assange hire a PR firm
- US orders Twitter to hand over account data on Wikileaks and multiple Wikileaks supporters
- Best Booth of CES 2011
- CES 2011: Kitara synth-guitar
- Go fly a kite in Minneapolis!
- Little Lulu anthologies (and other comics by John Stanley)
- CES 2011: The makers of rubber keypads
- CES 2011: Next year in blinged out cellphone cosies
- Memory Palace: William James Sidis, prodigy
- 10,000th item posted to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool!
- Renaissance painter Arcimboldo's fruit and vegetable portraits
- NYT on the controversial ESP paper
- Poster series: Art of Dissent
- Photo documentation of a precise cigarette-tosser in Prague
- Ultimate Cavalcade of Sad Guys
- How to make sea glass
- Can sitting too much kill you?
- Scott Blake's September 11th Flipbook
- A rumor: Verizon iPhone to launch first week of February
- TV-B-Gone jacket by Becky Stern
- Viva la Revolución: Tara Donovan (BB Flickr Pool)
- Burning With Pride: How I Gave Up Spatulas and Learned to Embrace Pain
- Gentleman arrested for building and attempting to deliver "vibrator bomb" to ex-girlfriend
- Deep Lard Horizon: 250,000 gallons of beef fat spill in Houston Ship Channel
- Cute French-speaking kids try to make sense of gaming technology from the 1980s
- Have you hugged a space shuttle today?
- Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler's custom bass guitar stolen
- Stop motion Lego movie by Andrew Jive
- Scientists, science journalists, and a horde of giant mosquitoes dance to "Thriller"
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:17 PM PST  At CES in Vegas, PC maker Lenovo's weirdest installation was its 'ThinkLab,' a room full of computers and mad-scientist oddities. Alongside bubbling retorts and a stuffed jackalope was a glowing red tray full to the brim with the little red tracknubs used on ThinkPads as pointing devices. Yep, pocketed forty.
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| Wikileaks and Julian Assange hire a PR firm Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:01 PM PST WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has secured the services of a public relations firm "after a series of damaging blows to his image," reports the SMH. "He's appointed London public relations firm Borkowski, owned by master publicist Mark Borkowski—which has a four-member team dealing with media enquiries about him—and an online weekly media conference to deliver messages from him and WikiLeaks." Here are some of the firm's clients. Borkowski's personal blog is here, ("Improperganda!") and he's on Twitter. He wrote a book called The Fame Formula |
| US orders Twitter to hand over account data on Wikileaks and multiple Wikileaks supporters Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:11 PM PST  The U.S. Justice Department has ordered Twitter to hand over data associated with multiple user accounts, in preparation for legal action related to Wikileaks. "There are many WikiLeaks supporters listed in the US Twitter subpoena," Wikileaks stated over Twitter tonight.
UPDATE, 9:01pm PT: A copy of the order is here, and a copy of the court's unsealing order is here, via Salon's Glenn Greenwald. The order was signed by federal Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan, in the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to Birgitta Jonsdottir and Jacob Appelbaum reported here earlier this evening, others named include Rop Gonggrijp (whose name is misspelled), Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and all accounts associated with Wikileaks itself. The information demanded includes all postal mailing addresses, billing data, connection records, session times, IP addresses used to connect with Twitter, all email addresses, and "means and source of payment," such as bank account information and credit cards. Notably, the order does not demand the content of the accounts: public tweets or private "direct messages." Among those targeted: Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament who has worked with WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Also named, Wikileaks volunteer Jake Appelbaum. Both stated over Twitter that they are contesting any orders, and do not consent. Rop Gonggrijp responds on his blog, here.
A Twitter spokesperson tells Boing Boing the company will not comment on specific legal requests, "But, to help users protect their rights, it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so. We outline this policy in our law enforcement guidelines."
I got the letter from Twitter a couple of hours ago, saying I got 10 days to stop it," wrote Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament, in an e-mail. "Looking for legal ways to do it. Will be talking to lawyers from EFF tonight."
At The Nation, Mitchell notes:
Birgitta Jonsdottir was one of those WikiLeaks backers who -- it's been widely reported -- allegedly had a falling out with Assange. She was particularly active in the Collateral Murder video action. She even took him as her guest to a U.S. Embassy party in Iceland. But she later was upset over Assange's handling of the Afghan war logs which emerged with some key names not redacted. She has since been interviewed by the BBC and U.S. news outlets as a WIkiLeaks dissident. On ABC last month she said she had argued for Assange to step aside as WikiLeaks leader while the sex crime case was ongoing.
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 04:06 PM PST  Gizmodo's Sam Biddle declares Barho Ventilation Facilities' booth at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the worst booth of the show. But you know what? It's the only one with even a shot at next year's Turner Prize.   |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 03:37 PM PST  Michael Zarimis offers an unassailable logic for developing his synth-guitar: it is the last band instrument to get the proper treatment. "I'm a big fan of electronica," Zarimis said, "but the band format is missing. It's usually people sitting at desks or tweaking knobs behind the scenes."Unlike keytars, which remain keyboards, or MIDI guitars, which are "too temperamental," his Kitara keeps the frets but replaces the strings with an 8-inch multi-touch display. Inside is a polyphonic synthesizer, with 100 default sounds and 6 effect, each of which can be assigned to different 'strings.' Zarimis, an engineer, created his prototype and put it on YouTube. Within a week, his video received a million views and the attention of a business partner. But the Linux-based guitar was the end result of many months of work. "The first prototype I built literally in my house in my spare time," Zarimis said. "It took me two years." It also works as a MIDI controller for use with a digital audio workstation or other equipment, and will be $849 when it is released in April. A $2,900 special edition, made of aluminum, is also on offer, and they're taking nothing-down pre-orders at the homepage. Kitara [Miso Digital]   |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 03:22 PM PST Tomorrow, starting at noon, the iced-over surface of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis will be dotted with dozens of well-bundled Happy Mutants, out for the annual Winter Kite Festival. You can bring a kite, or buy one on site. Expect everything from the classic triangle, to house-sized monstrosities which look disconcertingly like PedoBear. There's also ice fishing, snow-shoeing, a marshmallow roast, and horse-drawn carriage rides. Finally, to answer the question all non-Minnesotans are currently asking themselves: The temperature will be -5 degrees Fahrenheit.   |
| Little Lulu anthologies (and other comics by John Stanley) Posted: 07 Jan 2011 03:00 PM PST  Tubby comic from Tubby Volume One, published by Dark Horse Comics. Read a full-length Tubby story here (PDF). Sometime in the early 1980s I read an interview with Robert Crumb where he said that John Stanley's comic books, especially Little Lulu, were some of the finest and most influential comics he read as a child. I can't find that interview, but here is an excerpt from the Summer 2010 issue of The Paris Review's interview with Crumb where he mentions Little Lulu: INTERVIEWERI tried to buy some Little Lulu comics in the 1980s, but they were too expensive. I eventually shelled out $130 for a 4-volume anthology of Little Lulu, published by Bruce Hamilton's Another Rainbow Publishing (There are a total of six 4-volume sets in the Little Lulu Library, and some of them are still available), and understood what all the fuss was about. These timeless comics reveal and revel in the secret world of kids: clubhouses, campouts, tall tales, jealousy, rich kids vs. poor kids, outwitting bullies, vacant lot adventures, and all the intriguing schemes and rivalries that kids cook up. I started reading Little Lulu to my daughters when they were old enough to comprehend them, and my 13-year-old daughter still enjoys them. My 7-year-old tears through them in the morning while the rest of the family is asleep (she's an early riser). Even my wife, who never read many comics besides Love and Rockets, likes Little Lulu. There are a couple of ways to buy Little Lulu comics affordably. The cheapest way is Dark Horse's paperback anthologies.They cost between $10 and $15 for each 200-page volume, which is a great bargain (some are out of print and you'll have to pay more to buy second-hand copies).
I have most, but not all of the Drawn & Quarterly books, and about half the Dark Horse books. I'll probably eventually get them all. But I would also like to be able to buy PDF versions of these comics, because I really like reading comics on my iPad.   |
| CES 2011: The makers of rubber keypads Posted: 07 Jan 2011 03:04 PM PST  Kingley Rubber of Taipei, Taiwan, specializes in the rubbery bits found in gadgets of every sort. Working with the primary manufacturers, it has production sites in Taipei; in Shanghai, China; and a newly-opened one in Hanoi, Vietnam. Founded in 1972, it now employs 2,000 people in five countries. "We make all kinds of keypad, for computers, phones, practically everything," said Ellen Chen, Kingley's representative at the CES trade show in Vegas.  |
| CES 2011: Next year in blinged out cellphone cosies Posted: 07 Jan 2011 02:43 PM PST  Away from the fancy booths in the main show floor at CES, smaller peripheral businesses vie for attention. Most specialize in stuff that's rarely seen by the consumer, but it's surprising how important others are--at least when it comes to what ends up in front of our eyeballs every day ... on white pegboard at the mall.
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| Memory Palace: William James Sidis, prodigy Posted: 07 Jan 2011 01:48 PM PST  Nate DiMeo's terrific Memory Palace podcast is back. In this edition, we meet William James Sidis (1898-1944), eccentric, mathematical genius, cosmologist, streetcar transfer ticket obsessive, linguist, and cum laude Harvard grad... at age 16."six scenes in the life of william james sidis, wonderful boy"   |
| 10,000th item posted to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool! Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:48 PM PST  Sometime back in November while surveying our digital acreage, we uncovered a few gems out in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool. We'd post one, and then more would show up and we'd just have to post those too. Well, the pool has grown considerably since then. The number of users has just about doubled and around eight thousand more photos and videos have been posted. Today we celebrate the 10,000th item added to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, this lovely photo of Ozarka dials added by user Little Baby Zorak. We're always impressed by the incredible quality of the items added to our pool. If you've got a great photo or video you want to show off, please don't hesitate to add it. All that we ask is that you give us your permission to repost it here. |
| Renaissance painter Arcimboldo's fruit and vegetable portraits Posted: 07 Jan 2011 01:30 PM PST  In the late 16th century, Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted witty, surreal portraits of people composed of fruit, vegetables, animals, and everyday objects. Right now, many of those paintings are on display at Washington, DC's National Gallery of Art. From Smithsonian: Part scientist, part sycophant, part visionary, Arcimboldo was born in 1526 in Milan. His father was an artist, and Giuseppe's early career suggests the standard Renaissance daily grind: he designed cathedral windows and tapestries rife with angels, saints and evangelists. Though apples and lemons appear in some scenes, the produce is, comparatively, unremarkable. Rudolf's father, Maximilian II, the Hapsburg archduke and soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor, welcomed the painter in his Vienna court in the early 1560s. Arcimboldo remained with the Hapsburgs until 1587 and continued to paint for them after his return to Italy..."Arcimboldo's Feast for the Eyes"   |
| NYT on the controversial ESP paper Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:49 PM PST  The New York Times sums up the controversy around respected psychologist Daryl J. Bem's new paper claiming evidence for precognition. The paper (linked to below) was accepted for publication by the respected Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Lots of other respected scientists are somewhat-respectfully pissed off about it. But you already knew that, didn't you. From the New York Times: The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects. Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences."Journal's Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage" (NYT) |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:33 PM PST  One of my favorite blogs, which goes by the no-nonsense name of "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats," has compiled a series of posters called Art of Dissent.  |
| Photo documentation of a precise cigarette-tosser in Prague Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:24 PM PST  Goenetix writes: "This older woman, who works in a healthy shoes store across the street, performs the same ritual dozens of times, every single day: she goes out, lights up a cigarette, smokes it quickly, extinguishes it in a small hole in the wall, and tosses the butt in nearby ventilation grates. After all the years of practice, she never misses the target." It looks like she is ambidextrous, to boot. See full-size photos here:Precise cigarette-tosser in Prague |
| Ultimate Cavalcade of Sad Guys Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:27 PM PST  Can you identify them all? Here is the earlier post, and here is a related must-read story by my pal John Schwartz at the New York Times: "In Defense of Weepy Men." Thank you John Boehner for inspiring us all. (Crappy Photoshop by Xeni) |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:57 AM PST My wife, my kids, and I enjoy hunting for sea glass on the beach. Spotting a colorful bit of sand-polished glass provides the same kind of mini-thrill I got when I used to fish for trout as a kid in Colorado. I don't think it would be much fun to make my own sea glass, because the rarity of the glass is what makes it a joy to collect. But Rich Faulhaber at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories wanted to make a pathway out of sea glass, and having to collect it bit by bit on the beach would have been completely impractical. So he figured out how to make it using a cement mixer. The beach glass machine   |
| Can sitting too much kill you? Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:38 AM PST This article in Scientific American titled "Can sitting too much kill you?" is the boost I need to get off my butt and make a treadmill desk. [E]ven if you are meeting current physical activity guidelines by exercising for one hour per day (something few Americans manage on a consistent basis), that leaves 15 to 16 hours per day when you are not being active. Does it matter how you spend those hours, which account for more than 90% of your day? For example, does it matter whether you spend those 16 hours sitting on your butt, versus standing or walking at a leisurely pace? Fortunately or unfortunately, new evidence suggests that it does matter, and in a big way.   |
| Scott Blake's September 11th Flipbook Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:27 AM PST  Artist Scott Blake, best known for his Bar Code Art (featured previously on BB here and here), has been working on a new project inspired by the events of 9/11. From his site: Scott Blake's 9/11 Flipbook, which allows viewers to watch a continuous reenactment of the attack on the Twin Towers, is undoubtedly frivolous and provocative. But the artist's intention reaches beyond mere provocation by hurting peoples' sensitivities or debasing their memories. Rather, Blake is interested in conducting research on the disparity of opinions and attitudes towards terrorist acts - a fact that is never discussed in the mainstream media. By recording the polyphony of voices in a book, the artist aims to unravel the dominant narrative surrounding this dramatic event. Scott has provided the materials on his site for anyone to print out their own, but he's offering to send free copies to people who contribute essays or YouTube videos to the project. For people who don't want to contribute, he's also selling hand made, numbered and signed copies for $25 with a portion of the proceeds going to support Twin Towers Orphan Fund, Fire Department of New York, and International Red Cross. |
| A rumor: Verizon iPhone to launch first week of February Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:24 PM PST If the hunch at Boy Genius Report is to be believed, we'll have iPhones on Verizon as early as February 3. Please FSM please.   |
| TV-B-Gone jacket by Becky Stern Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:13 AM PST  Brooklyn based Becky Stern was invited to contribute to a fashion show at CES 2011, so she whipped up this jacket with a built in TV-B-Gone. Wearable tech is cool to begin with, but when that technology is performs a function you'd actually want to use, it's even better— and if that function is turning off TVs in public, that's like a high-tech hat trick. I'm going to try to make a version of this at the next eTextiles event at CRASHspace. More pics of Becky's jacket are on Flickr. |
| Viva la Revolución: Tara Donovan (BB Flickr Pool) Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:18 PM PST  A photograph of a work by Tara Donovan in the MCASD (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego) exhibit "Viva la Revolucion," contributed to the BB Flickr Pool by Boing Boing reader Nate Vandermeulen. Nate has more shots from the show here. |
| Burning With Pride: How I Gave Up Spatulas and Learned to Embrace Pain Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:16 AM PST Editor's note: Boing Boing's Radical Natural Living series continues. We brought you a year of bathing without soap, 18 months without shampoo, and the joy of alarm-clock-less living. Now, cooking without utensils! This guest post comes from weatherman, a Boing Boing commenter living in Brooklyn. His musings can be found on just about any gadget site and many a culture or politics blog. Because of his commitment to self improvement, he has few friends and no steady work.
About five years ago I was down on my luck; I had moved to a new apartment and between the increased rent and moving expenses, I didn't have much money to spare. To compound the problem, I had lost a box of kitchen utensils in the move. I found myself one early morning trying to make a couple of fried eggs, reaching for the spatula and finding only disappointment. But in a flash of inspiration, as I stared at my hand I realized that it is shaped very much like a spatula. Why, I thought to myself, have I succumbed to the pressures of the corporate kitchen culture all these years? Why do I need a spatula made of metal, or worse, plastic? I flipped my eggs that morning using only my bare hand, and while it hurt a bit, I consider that the pain of a "natural kitchen" rebirth. I gave up cooking utensils that day and never looked back.
You see, the human body was designed to be adaptable. If you use kitchen tools to do things, like grab hot roasts from the oven, stir your curry, or flip hamburgers on the grill, you're only fighting nature and making yourself soft in the process. That's not what nature intended; we evolved these paddles at the ends of our arms for a reason! If you use your hands for these tasks, there will be pain at first, and you will blister (sometimes horribly) but eventually you will find that you are developing callouses and that your hands become inured to the pain. Eventually they'll be completely numb and essentially be just large blackened lumps that you'll be able to use for just about anything - not just in the kitchen, but even for hammering nails or breaking small rocks. This is the human body refined and evolved. And that's exactly what the Kitchen Industrial Complex doesn't want. Sure, I still use a whisk or even tongs on occasion, but only when I'm feeling festive. For the most part my kitchen is bare of unnecessary utensils and my friends admire and envy me for my dedication to the cause of self improvement. I recommend you become part of the Natural Kitchen Movement; I think that you'll find that you feel better about yourself and even come to realize that you are better than everyone else because of it. (IMAGE: drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci, spatula from random Google image search results, shooped by Xeni) |
| Gentleman arrested for building and attempting to deliver "vibrator bomb" to ex-girlfriend Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:34 AM PST This is the Boing Boing post that introduces you to the phrase vibrator bomb: "A Minnesota man is facing felony charges after police discovered that he had retrofitted a vibrator, turning the sex toy into a homemade explosive device. [...] Waseca Police Department officers also found two other sex toys (a pink vibrator had 'Merry X-mas Bitch' written on it in black ink) among [his] belongings. " [TSG]   |
| Deep Lard Horizon: 250,000 gallons of beef fat spill in Houston Ship Channel Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:26 AM PST  Over at Good.is: "Early Tuesday evening, approximately 250,000 gallons of beef fat spilled out of a shore-based storage tank owned by Jacob Stern & Sons, an agri-products company specializing in the resale of 'value-added oleochemicals.' Fifteen thousand gallons of the fat then found its way into the Houston Ship Channel through a storm drain." |
| Cute French-speaking kids try to make sense of gaming technology from the 1980s Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:25 AM PST [Video Link]. Not sure who produced this, but it's super cute and it's making the rounds. [via Flavorwire, also seen on MeFi, Le Monde, Cyberpresse] (thanks, Russ Marshalek) |
| Have you hugged a space shuttle today? Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:59 AM PST  NASA's space shuttle program will be retired sometime this year. Not quite ready to let go? Neither are the people behind Shuttle Huggers—a line of T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers dedicated to that sweet, sweet shuttle lovin'. Via Jeremy Hsu   |
| Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler's custom bass guitar stolen Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:51 AM PST  The Studio City, CA home of legendary bassist Kira Roessler (Black Flag, Dos) was broken into yesterday. Among the belongings reported stolen: her custom bass guitar. While losing any of one's possessions to theft is a huge bummer, this is *really* sad. According to The Groove Music Life: The bass is a three-quarter-scale instrument custom-made by California-based luthier Mark Garza with a Rickenbacker-style body and Telecaster-style headstock with the name "Garz" on it; according to Kira there is also a small nick in the headstock. It is the only model of its kind in existence; it has been Roessler's main instrument for the past several years. Hopefully, the uniqueness of this instrument will aid in identifying it if it turns up somewhere, and the odds of its return to Roessler are greater. If any Boing Boing readers happen to see it or have any leads, they're welcome in the comments. |
| Stop motion Lego movie by Andrew Jive Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:51 AM PST [Video Link] I dislike seeing holiday stuff after New Year's as much as anybody, but I'm making an exception for Andrew Jive's charming movie starring 8-bit video game characters made from Lego pieces. |
| Scientists, science journalists, and a horde of giant mosquitoes dance to "Thriller" Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:48 AM PST Ladies and gentlemen, the Northernmost performance of Thriller choreography ever caught on film. Action starts about 3:30 into the video. Notice that all the dancers seem to be wearing some kind of bug net over their faces.   |
. (via 
All you need is some glass, some sand, sea water and some way of mimicking the ocean and (bam!) you get sea glass. 
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