Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Edible Angry Birds cake toppers

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 04:09 AM PST


On Etsy, Artisancakecompany is selling these clever little edible Angry Birds cake toppers -- a full set of 24 for a mere $115. The cakeist writes: "I can't wait for someone to order more so I can make more!"

Edible Angry Birds Toppers (Thanks, Holyrobot, via Submitterator!)



SPECIAL FEATURE: Everybody loves cephalopods

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 07:31 PM PST

Everybody loves cephalopods—that class of animals containing octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. But why? What makes these non-fluffy, non-mammals so appealing?

Read the rest



ZeroPunctuation explains Minecraft: hilarious, insightful game-review

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 02:17 AM PST

The lewd, crude, insanely funny video game review podcast ZeroPunctuation finally has a take on Minecraft -- delayed due to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw being stuck in the Brisbane flood. It is everything you'd expect: vulgar, hilarious, and insightful, and explains the Minecraft phenomenon better than anything else I've seen so far. Plus it made me laugh hard enough that I needed to wipe the screen afterward.

Zero Punctuation: Minecraft (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)



Science fiction writers, editors, critics and publishers talk the future of publishing

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 02:26 AM PST

SFSignal, a website for the science fiction publishing industry, asks a number of writers, editors, critics and publishers "What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology?" The answers are a mix of honest forthrightness about the unreliability of long-term predictions, grim business reality, and fascinating insight about the complimentary nature and economics of print and electronic publishing. Here's writer Tim Pratt:
More authors will experiment with self-publishing, as the barrier to entry for doing so with e-books is comparatively low. Some will have success with that; lots of others won't. Amazon.com and perhaps other purveyors of online books will increasingly attempt to take on the role of publishers, "curating" e-book collections. I don't expect publishing as we know it to disappear, by any means, but the field is going to become crowded by self-publishing -- some of it quite good -- and weird hybrids, and new companies springing up to fill whatever inevitable gaps are left by the relatively slow-moving major publishers.

It will likely get harder for writers to make a living doing nothing but writing fiction... but most writers I know don't make a living exclusively writing fiction anyway. We'll have to explore new methods: direct appeals to readers, weird limited editions with interesting extras, patrons, corporate sponsorship, kickstarter fundraisers in lieu of novel advances -- who knows.

Those are pretty cautious guesses, I know, but hey, science fiction writers are generally crap at predicting the future. (And I'm mostly a fantasy writer!) In ten years, the world could be unimaginably weird. I certainly hope it will be. But I'm sure I'll still be reading books, even if they don't look much like the books I grew up with.

Q: What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology? (via Futurismic)

(Image: Government Printing Office Building Number Four Jackson Alley Cast Concrete Presswork Bas Relief (Washington, DC), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from takomabibelot's photostream)



McLuhan centennial site: non-quotable quips from an eminently quotable fellow

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:37 PM PST

David Weinberger sez, "As a gift on the centenary of his birth, a site has gone up featuring brief clips of Marshall McLuhan explaining his key ideas and catch phrases. Some are still pretty obscure, but some are on the nose 30 years ahead of when the nose appeared. For example, check out his confident assertion that books will become personalized services."

Alas, there's no obvious way to embed this video, which seems like a huge oversight if the intention of the site is to invigorate debate about McLuhan's ideas -- creating a site that has no way to directly include and quote McLuhan's words in those discussions!

MARSHALL McLUHAN SPEAKS (Thanks, DavidJoho, via Submitterator!)



Mexican drug smugglers catapult weed over border fence into US

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 10:59 PM PST

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A remote video surveillance system captured drug smugglers using a catapult to launch packages of pot over the Mexico/US border. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, US National Guard troops coordinated with Mexican authorities to halt the operation.

Video and story at local TV station KVOA, Tucson, Arizona.

I choose you, coca chew! (photo gallery)

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 05:22 PM PST

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In Bolivia, indigenous activists have been maintaining a massive coca-leaf-chewing vigil as part of a protest against an international ban on the traditional practice.

Hundreds of people chewed the leaf outside the US embassy in La Paz and in other cities across the country. Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes. But the US has said it will veto the amendment because coca is also the raw material for making cocaine.
BBC News.

Photographs, above and below: Indigenous (Aymara) coca growers chewing coca and offering it to armed soldiers during a "Dia Nacional del Pijcheo de hoja de Coca" (National Coca Leaf Chewing Day), a rally to promote the chewing of coca leaves and its industrialization. The event took place in front of the U.S. embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, on January 26, 2011. Bolivia is the third largest producer of coca leaves in the world. (REUTERS/David Mercado)

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Guestblogger signing off!

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:04 PM PST

diegodoppleganger.jpgI am signing off as a BB guest blogger. It has been a great deal of fun to post here occasionally and I was very happy to contribute to a site I have been reading for years. Thanks to all the BB editors who write articles provoking thoughts, laughter, and outrage. Particular thanks to Rob Beschizza for helping me craft my pieces and providing excellent layout work on a number of features. I will still be a not-so-mild-mannered professor and continue my work with CAPL to provide free, high quality, authentic images for the foreign language teaching community. Most of all, I would like to acknowledge to support of my family of three amazing kids and my smokin' hot wife Christy. She is also a foreign language professor and I have never met someone who is simultaneously so intelligent and kind hearted. Much of my work owes a great deal to her support and critical eye. Sláinte!

Announcing Make Live -- 6pm PST today, 1/26/2011

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 04:53 PM PST

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Don't miss the premiere of Make: Live, the new streaming show and tell from MAKE. Join hosts Becky Stern and Matt Richardson as we explore the Arduino revolution in this inaugural episode. Guests Steve Hoefer and Collin Cunningham will show us their Arduino projects and take your questions. Please join us in the UStream chat or mark tweets with #makelive to interact live with the show.

Announcing Make Live -- 6pm PST today, 1/26/2011

Gas mask ring

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 03:20 AM PST

Norway's Manillusion is has two of these sterling gas mask rings for sale, for NOK2499 (€317.44). The tether and slave ring make this a little impractical for everyday wear, but it's certainly a striking cocktail ring.

Gas! ring, sølv #4388 (via Craft)



Housekeeping: How to submit stuff to Boing Boing

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 03:44 PM PST

Boing_Boing_Portrait_by_Nick_Foster.jpg Found something awesome on the net? Made something awesome on the net? There are three ways to submit it to Boing Boing! 1: Add it to our Submitterator. This is the single best way to get our attention! It's the first place we look and public discussion and voting pushes items to the top of the queue. 2: If it's a photo or an image, you can add it to our Flickr pool. 3: You can submit things privately through this form. While stuff sent @boingboing on Twitter might get spotted, please do not send submissions via personal email or Twitter accounts! Every time you do this, a sniper takes out a unicorn. (Illustration by the awesomely talented Nick Foster.)

Ted Haggard: I'm Probably What The Kids Call "Bisexual"

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 03:54 PM PST

Megachurch founder Rev. Ted Haggard is profiled in the new GQ (read the full profile here). Talking Points Memo includes some of the more memorable quotes from the man who once chased our current guest blogger Richard Dawkins off his church grounds.
TedHaggard.jpgAbout former meth dealer and escort Mike Jones, Haggard says: "We never had sex sex. I bought drugs and a massage from him, and he masturbated me at the end of it. That's it."

He admitted to buying drugs "five or six times" from Jones, but adds: "Sometimes I'd throw it away. Other times, I'd go someplace and masturbate and use it. But it was for masturbation. And that's one of the reasons why I haven't been real clear. I don't want to stand up publicly and say, 'Hey, I'm a masturbation guy!"

"You know, that's really the core issue here," he added. "I bought the drugs to enhance masturbation. Because what crystal meth does--Mike taught me this--crystal meth makes it so you don't ejaculate soon. So you can watch porn and masturbate for a long time."

The Last Temptation of Ted (Thanks, Jason Tester!)

DSM wars: the battle to define mental illness

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 08:49 AM PST

Gary Greenberg's feature in this month's Wired, "Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness," is a captivating look at the controversy attending the creation of the next edition of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Editors of previous volumes have joined with skeptics from within the profession to protest the very idea of the DSM, saying that its "diseases" bear no relation to any particular neuropathology, and instead represent (at best), handy categories to put on insurance forms, and (at worst), a bonanza for the pharma industry, who get to produce pills that "cure" any disease that's defined in the DSM. Greenberg captures the mental health field at the cusp of an enormous transformation driven by better genomics, better imaging, and hence a better understanding of what connections various symptoms have to one another, to physical problems, to genetics, and to health. The DSM has always been controversial -- it's the document that turned homosexuality into a mental illness for years -- but never moreso than now.
At the party, Frances and Carpenter began to talk about "psychosis risk syndrome," a diagnosis that Carpenter's group was considering for the new edition. It would apply mostly to adolescents who occasionally have jumbled thoughts, hear voices, or experience delusions. Since these kids never fully lose contact with reality, they don't qualify for any of the existing psychotic disorders. But "throughout medicine, there's a presumption that early identification and intervention is better than late," Carpenter says, citing the monitoring of cholesterol as an example. If adolescents on the brink of psychosis can be treated before a full-blown psychosis develops, he adds, "it could make a huge difference in their life story."

This new disease reminded Frances of one of his keenest regrets about the DSM-IV: its role, as he perceives it, in the epidemic of bipolar diagnoses in children over the past decade. Shortly after the book came out, doctors began to declare children bipolar even if they had never had a manic episode and were too young to have shown the pattern of mood change associated with the disease. Within a dozen years, bipolar diagnoses among children had increased 40-fold. Many of these kids were put on antipsychotic drugs, whose effects on the developing brain are poorly understood but which are known to cause obesity and diabetes. In 2007, a series of investigative reports revealed that an influential advocate for diagnosing bipolar disorder in kids, the Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, failed to disclose money he'd received from Johnson & Johnson, makers of the bipolar drug Risperdal, or risperidone. (The New York Times reported that Biederman told the company his proposed trial of Risperdal in young children "will support the safety and effectiveness of risperidone in this age group.") Frances believes this bipolar "fad" would not have occurred had the DSM-IV committee not rejected a move to limit the diagnosis to adults.

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

(Image: Wired/Garry Mcleod/Robert Lang)



Free MP3 from Paul Collins' new album

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 02:36 PM PST

52h4_PaulCollins12Inchweb.jpg Paul Collins (from The Beat) has a new album out (with a cover by William Stout!) called King of Power Pop! and you can download an MP3 of one of the songs ("Do You Wanna Love me?".

Paul Collins Beat | Buy King of Power Pop! on Amazon

Excellent Steampunk Cat Helmet is Excellent

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 02:20 PM PST

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"Hugo Helmet by *Diarment," on DeviantArt. (Thanks, Tara McGinley)

Georgia pastor supports carrying guns in places of worship

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 01:47 PM PST

Dear member of the media,

Today, Georgia Gun Owners received a video from Pastor James Brown, Jr., of Barnesville, Georgia, expressing his support for, and calling on others to support H.B. 54, a bill that would restore the right of individuals to defend themselves and their families in places of worship in Georgia.

I have uploaded the video for your convenience.

Best regards,

Ashley Rodriguez
Press Secretary
Georgia Gun Owners



Video of weapons from Badass Lego Guns

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 01:44 PM PST


Here's a video showing how the weapons from the Badass Lego Guns book (mentioned here) work.

Beware Dangerism! book by Geyver Tulley about hazards of mollycoddling kids

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 01:11 PM PST

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TED (Technology Entertainment Design) announced that they have launched TED books. One of the first books is Beware Dangerism! by my friend and Make magazine contributor Gever Tully.
If you're over 30, you probably walked to school, played on the monkeybars, learned to high-dive at the public pool. If you're younger, it's unlikely you did any of these things. Has the world become that much more dangerous? Statistically, not at all. But our society has created pervasive fears around letting kids be independent and take risks -- and the consequences for our kids are serious. Gever Tulley, the co-author of 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do, takes on these media-inflated fears -- which he calls "dangerism" -- with surprising statistics and insights into the nature of fear and risk.

Beware Dangerism! | Introducing TED Books

Video tour of Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 01:04 PM PST


KQED-PBS's QUEST visited San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge, co-founded by virtual reality pioneer Mitch Altman, who is best known today as the brain behind TV-B-Gone. "Science on the SPOT: Open Source Creativity - Hackerspaces"

MAKE presents: The Multimeter

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:55 PM PST


Make's inimitable Collin Cunningham made this video to show how to use a digital multimeter.
The ability to test resistance, voltage, current & continuity are vital to any electronics maker - even the freshest of newbies. In fact, having a reliable multimeter on hand is a huge help when learning the basics. Even before understanding what each value means, you'll be able to establish reference points for applying each new concepts and troubleshooting experiments.
MAKE presents: The Multimeter

Video about all the cool stuff House Industries does

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:38 PM PST

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The geniuses at House Industries, known primarily for their sublime type design, created this video to show everything else they do: graphic design, illustration, product design, and furniture design.

Cue up a kaleidoscope of House Industries techniques, substrates, disciplines and muscle memory compressed into high-definition pixels and actively matrixed through modulated electroluminescence with an audio lesson from The Bird and The Bee. Many thanks to Inara George and Greg Kurstin for loaning us their Polite Dance Song (under license from EMI). The House Industries trailer is directed by Andy Cruz and filmed by Carlos Alejandro.
House Industries: The Trailer

Boy uses Creed to fend off wolves

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:41 AM PST

Walter Ekrem, 13, was confronted by a pack of wolves on the way home from school in Rakkestad, Norway. Remembering that one should try to scare the animals rather than run, he yelled, waved his arms, and cranked up some Creed on his mobile phone. From Spiegel Online:
 Images Image-171783-Galleryv9-Rkje "The worst thing you can do is run away because doing so just invites the wolves to chase you down," Walter told TV2. "But I was so afraid that I couldn't even run away if I'd wanted to."

Eikrem said he was able to drive away the wolves by playing the song "Overcome" by the American hard-rock band Creed. "They didn't really get scared," Walter said. "They just turned around and simply trotted away."

"Norwegian Boy Fends Off Wolf Pack with Heavy Metal"

Also worth noting is that Bang Showbiz reports the same story, but in their version the boy's last name is Acre and the band he played is (the much better) Megadeth.

London Shard spire nearing completion

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:13 PM PST

londonshard.jpg The tallest skyscraper in London (and all the République fédérale de l'Europe) is taking shape and turning heads. Shard London Bridge will have 72 floors, be clad entirely in glass, and be finished by 2012. Though not yet topped out, it already dwarfs London's previously-tallest building, One Canada Square. Also being built in London is the Bishopsgate Tower, which eschews the "Science Fiction Pyramid" style for a weirder "Helter Skelter of Doom" motif, though it is still not as weird as the small but perfectly-formed "Space Gherkin" it overlooks. Official site [via Gizmodo and Core77]

Does the SunChips bag really break down in a compost pile?

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:45 AM PST

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Citizen scientist Rob Cockerham decided to test SunChips' claim that its bag disintegrates in a compost pile. His conclusion:

The SunChips bag didn't disintegrate in my compost pile, and I doubt they will disintegrate in any home compost pile. In 25 weeks, most of the other material in the pile had completely broken down, which might actually halt what little decomp was occurring on the bag itself.
Does the SunChips Bag Really Break Down in a Compost Pile?

Arsonist left behind fingertip

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:23 AM PST

The gentleman at right is Ismael Ortiz, 24, who was arrested in Titusville, Florida for arson. Apparently, Ortiz left a tip behind for police. Literally. The cops found a piece of latex glove with a dismembered fingertip inside. From the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel:
 News Specials Weirdflorida Blog Mug Arson Police said they found their suspect at a local hospital. They matched the tip to 24-year-old Ismael Ortiz, who detectives said quickly confessed.

But how did the suspect clip his tip? Detective Jessica Edens explained: Trying to flee after setting the fire, "he slammed his finger in the door," Edens said, "and it cut the tip of his finger off."

Police said Ortiz told detectives he was hired by a resident of the home, Samuel "Sammy" Davis (bald guy seen here). Investigators said Davis hired Ortiz to burn down the house so he could collect on a renters insurance policy.

"Report: Arson suspect left 'tip' for police"

Monster specimens in jars

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 03:15 AM PST


London artist Carim Nahaboo was inspired to make these fantastical modelling clay monsters-in-jars by a visit to the remarkable Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons: "They are all modelled with Fimo, and coloured slightly with ink, before being baked to harden. Then sealed into their new homes. They are all quite small, the two in the smallest jars are around 25mm. i am hoping to make a larger specimen soon...." Specimens (via Super Punch)

Tom the Dancing Bug: Super-Fun-Pak Comix

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:10 AM PST



Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash sued for copyright infringement over Run DMC image

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 11:05 AM PST

Run-DMC.jpg mbwinvite.jpg Above Top: Photo of Run DMC, taken by Glen E. Friedman
Above Bottom: Invitation Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash used for his debut exhibition 'Life Is Beautiful'

Earlier this month I noted that Banksy had finally spoken about the artist Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash) profiled in his now Oscar nominated film Exit Through the Gift Shop . Still, suspicions run fairly rampant that he either doesn't exist or is merely the latest prank creation by Banksy. Guetta has now given sworn statements that the artwork is his own, as he's the subject of a copyright lawsuit initiated by photographer Glen E. Friedman. The two Run DMC images above should make that fairly obvious (as well as several others after the jump).

Friedman is arguing that Guetta used, without credit or permission, his iconic photo of Run DMC on invitations, artworks, merchandise and promotional materials. The Hollywood Reporter broke this story, connected some of the dots between many of the people involved, and then suggested it's basically the same situation as the Associated Press vs. Shepard Fairey case surrounding the Obama 'Hope' image. It's not, and for number of reasons which I'll get to in a second.

First, those dots: Shepard Fairey appeared in Banksy's film about Thierry Guetta, in fact he was the person who introduced Guetta to Banksy. Shepard Fairey and Glen E. Friedman have collaborated on many projects together in the past. And to disclose my connection to this, I previously co ran an art gallery that worked closely with Fairey, Friedman and Guetta's cousin, Space Invader. I met Guetta many times via the gallery, long before he became Mr. Brainwash. Glen and I were both deposed in relation to Shepard's dispute with the Associated press, and I consider both he and Shepard personal friends.

Now that that is out of the way - the major difference between the two cases is the use of an iconic image. In the Fairey v. AP case, Shepard used a random press image that was not iconic in anyway and changed it significantly. In fact the photographer who took the original image, Mannie Garcia, has stated that he didn't even recognize that the 'HOPE' image which he had seen for months while covering the Obama campaign was based on his photo which says quite a bit about both how much Shepard changed it, and how unremarkable of a photo it was in the first place.

In the Friedman v Guetta case, not only is the photo already famous and iconic, it's arguably *the most* famous photo of Run DMC that exists. In fact it was used as the cover image on a 20 year retrospective of photos of the group. The argument could easily be made that Guetta used the photo specifically for this reason, it was already iconic, very well known and he used it in his artwork because of that. He wasn't just referencing Run DMC, he was referencing the most famous photo of them. Additionally he used it in several instances throughout his exhibition, never once crediting Friedman as the creator of the original photo.

Shepard has argued that he believes what he did was covered by Fair Use laws, and references many instances of artwork he's created non-fair use works based on iconic images where he's worked with, and credited the photographer involve (such as the collaborations with Friedman). The photo of Obama by Garcia *became* iconic after Shepard used it, prior to that it was not noteworthy. In the Guetta case, there's no question the photo was iconic long before Guetta ever stepped onto the scene - and had been registered and sold as artwork on it's own right by Friedman for years.

At face value the cases might seem similar and contradictory, but those are in fact extremely important differences.

All that aside this case is interesting for many reasons. It should put to rest the speculation that Mr. Brainwash is just a creation of Banksy's. Should Friedman win the case, expect other artists and copyright holders to come out of the woodwork as basically every piece of artwork by Guetta is just a twist on an already well known image created, and uncredited, by someone else. What will happen to the values of the Guetta/MBW works that were sold at, as some have suggested, incredibly inflated prices to begin with? I think this story is long from over, and can't wait to see what happens in Exit Through The Gift Shop 2.

Below: 20th Anniversary Run DMC image, with image by Friedman, followed by several other works by Guetta using Friedman's image.

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Grand piano appears on sandbar

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 02:44 PM PST

This grand piano mysteriously turned up on a sandbar in Miami's Biscayne Bay, about 600 feet from shore. I wonder if it will be used for a performance of John Cage's "4′33". From the AP:
 A P Ap 20110125 Capt.Ea082E4F891C40Ac96451Efef34307A2-Ea082E4F891C40Ac96451Efef34307A2-0 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino says the agency is not responsible for moving such items. And, he adds, unless it becomes a navigational hazard, the U.S. Coast Guard won't get involved.
"Grand piano found on sandbar in Miami bay" (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Man with food gets instantly covered in monkeys

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 09:57 AM PST


[Video Link] A dream / nightmare (take your pick). (Via Blame it on the voices)

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