Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

HOWTO make a disappearing prank gallium teaspoon

Posted: 27 Feb 2011 04:57 AM PST

Disappearing Spoons sells kits to make your own gallium prank-teaspoons. Gallium spoons weigh nearly as much as stainless steel ones, and have a similar finish, but they dissolve in hot liquids like tea. When the tea cools, the gallium forms a lump in the cup, ready to be molded into a new prank-spoon!

Disappearing Spoons (via Make)



Kinect as 3D scanner: Fabricate Yourself

Posted: 27 Feb 2011 04:51 AM PST

A new project uses the Microsoft Kinect as a crude 3D scanner. Joris from i.materialise sez, "Fabricate Yourself is a tool by Karl Willis of Interactive Fabrication. Released at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference, the tool lets people strike a pose in front of a Microsoft Kinect. If they like the pose they can 3D print the result. The tool is not yet finished and improvements in resolution have to be made."

Fabricate Yourself: Using the Microsoft Kinnect to 3D print yourself (Thanks, Joris, via Submitterator!)



Charlie Brooker on Gadaffi

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:31 PM PST

Charlie Brooker's commentary on Gadaffi's erratic atrocities -- and the western leaders who've kissed up to him over the years -- from last week's Ten O'Clock Live is some of the most nose-milk-spurting material ever aired. I wish that all of Ten O'Clock Live's clips were on YouTube, as it would be amazing blogfodder -- the show is better than The Daily Show most weeks, IMO (I've asked, C4 say their lawyers won't let them because there are got clips of the BBC, Sky, etc, which is some pretty weird fair dealing analysis).

Ten O'Clock Live



Bigfoot t-shirts from Three Wolf Moon folks (and a Bigfoot ski mask)!

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 09:26 PM PST

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Over at Cryptomundo, Craig points us to a handsome Big Foot Costume Ski Mask and Mountain Sasquatch t-shirt. The latter is from The Mountain Corporation, the esteemed clothier behind the iconic Three Wolf Moon t-shirt. "Bigfoot T-shirts From the Folks Behind the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt"

Charlie Sheen's rant, the LOLcat edition

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 07:32 PM PST

Charlie Sheen's rant, the xtranormal edition

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 07:29 PM PST

[Video Link, by YouTube user slatester]

Ivory Soap asks: are you younger-looking than a 3-year-old?

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 11:08 PM PST


This creepy 1969 Ivory Soap ad pits young mothers against their tiny daughters in a battle to see who has the most youthful complexion. Evidently this ad was part of the same campaign, at although it's no less creepy ("I'm so young-looking I could screw my teenaged daughter's boyfriend!") at least it's marginally more attainable than "My skin is younger-looking than a three-year-old's."

Ivory Soap, 1969

Game Boy Mystery (video)

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 12:59 PM PST

[Video Link]

My money's on well-done hoax, but who knows...

(Thanks, Doug Lussenhop!)

Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - giant otter

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 04:06 PM PST

predators-i-have-known.jpg ottercap1.jpg

There are river otters, and clawless otters, and sea otters, and then there is the giant otter of South America. Six feet long and up to eighty pounds in weight, it is a denizen of the rainforest that is nobody's pool pet. I hold immense respect for any creature whose principal diet is piranha, and who munches solid bone with as much gusto as flesh. Once nearly hunted to extinction for their pelts, giant otters are making a limited but measureable comeback throughout their range, even returning to rivers from which they were originally exterminated.

Cross a seal with a river otter, brush on some canine features, and you have the giant otter. The result is every bit as cute and cuddly-looking as your average otter. It's just important to remember that this kind is the only one that is entirely capable of treating your forearm the way you would a fried chicken drumstick.

TVOntario's online archive, including Prisoners of Gravity!

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 11:18 PM PST

TVOntario, a public broadcaster in Ontario, Canada, has released an enormous archive of its programming online. There's even some very funny and awkward video of me with bad hair in the mid-1990s, before I cut processed carbs out of my diet and lost 80lbs (alas, the episodes of Bits and Bytes, a computer show that my dad appeared on in the early 1980s don't appear to have been archived). Best of all is the collection of Prisoners of Gravity clips -- this being just about the best TV show ever made about science fiction literature.

Welcome to TVO's Public Archive! (Thanks, InfoDocket, via Submitterator!)



Libya: Eyes on Benghazi

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:11 AM PST

A young man attends a protest against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Libya's rebel-held city of Benghazi. The opposition-controlled city has filled a political void with a coalition which is cleaning up, providing food, building defences, reassuring foreign oil firms and telling Tripoli it believes in one nation. (REUTERS/Suhaib Salem)

Below: A man plays with his son in front of a cartoon depicting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Benghazi. (REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic)



China's internet censors don't like the smell of "Jasmine"

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 10:59 AM PST

China's state Internet censors have ratcheted up web filters, and security officers are harassing and detaining bloggers and activists as an online appeal for a "Jasmine Revolution" spreads in China.
jasmine.jpg The apparent crackdown came in advance of two top legislative meetings, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, scheduled for March.

Censors blocked the word "jasmine" after overseas dissident-run news website Boxun and Chinese Twitter users broadcast calls on February 19 to mobilize street protests modeled on recent unrest in the Middle East, according to international news reports. (Twitter is generally blocked in China but accessible to users of proxy networks based overseas.) Only a handful of protesters appeared, although calls continued for government protests characterized as "strolls" to continue every Sunday around China, according to The Associated Press.

China detains, censors bloggers on 'Jasmine Revolution' (Committee to Protect Journalists)

thebestpictureontheinternet.com

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 10:43 AM PST

thebestpictureontheinternet.com (thanks, Robert!).

14-month-old baby spends 4 hours locked inside bank vault

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:13 AM PST

A 14-month-old girl who somehow toddled away from her mom and grandma managed to get trapped inside a time-locked bank vault in Georgia. Cops pumped fresh air through vents to the crying baby until a locksmith freed her, four hours later.

What does a Space Shuttle launch look like when viewed from an airplane? (video)

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 10:33 AM PST

[Video Link]

"Flying from Orlando, FL I had the rare opportunity to be able to watch Discovery's final launch as it embarks on STS-133," explains software developer Neil Monday, who shot this incredible video. Also spotted on MSNBC's Cosmic Log blog, with links to other great alternative shots.

Mysterious fluid rendered 1930s intestines immune to broken glass

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 09:28 AM PST

A secret fluid reported on in the pages of the June, 1931 ish of Modern Mechanix had the property of rendering your intestines "immune" to cuts from glass, allowing you to ingest any amount of broken crystalware with impunity.
EATING light bulbs, bottles and tumblers with relish is the amazing feat performed by "Professor" Paul Owen, of New York City. The secret of his performance lies in a fluid which he swallows to render his intestines immune to cuts by the glass.
Glass Eaten With Secret Fluid (Jun, 1931)

Busted: English-speaking "call center" fronted for overseas identity thieves

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:54 PM PST

Belarusian fraudster Dmitry M. Naskovets has been pled guilty to charges that he set up a boiler-room full of English- and German-speaking con-artists who worked with identity thieves to defraud banks and their depositors. I often think that broken English is actually a serious advantage in blog-spam; my personal sites get hammered by this stuff, but I also get a fair bit of non-native English speakers posting, and it's a lot harder to figure out whether the stilted post is someone's goofy SEO scheme or just a Bulgarian who's using Google Translate to help post something rather nice.
Identity Theft Support CenterIn June 2007, Naskovet, and coconspirator Sergey Semasko, also a Belarusian national, created CallService.biz to counteract security measures put in place by financial institutions to prevent fraud when account holders try to make transfers or withdrawals from their accounts. In exchange for a fee, the two men provided the services of English- and German-speaking individuals to persons who had stolen account and biographical information to defeat the security screening processes. Using information provided by the identity thieves over the site, the callers would confirm unauthorized withdrawals or transfers from bank accounts, unblock accounts, or change the address or phone number associated with an account, thereby giving the thieves access.
Operator of 'Support Center' Assisting over 2,000 Identity Thieves Pleads Guilty (via /.)

(Image: Identity Thief, Incognito, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from carbonnyc's photostream)



Wearable lockpicks

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 11:11 PM PST

The original Hubble Telescope

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 05:49 AM PST

TheHubbleTelescope.jpg

Yesterday, I spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as part of a Physics Department speaker series. Dawn Erb, one of my hosts in the department, was kind enough to send me this awesome photo of Edwin Hubble's personal telescope, from before he finished his Ph.D. The photo came from, Todd Bensenhaver, a friend of a friend of Dawn's, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and owns the telescope today. How did he end up with it?

Edwin Hubble grew up in Louisville, and later worked there for a year as a high-school Spanish teacher and basketball coach. When he left for graduate school at the University of Chicago, he gave his telescope to a fellow teacher, and it has been passed down through his family.



Wisconsin cops for the win

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 05:32 AM PST

Yesterday afternoon, hundreds of cops marched into the Wisconsin Capitol Building, where Wisconsinites have spent more than a week protesting their governor's plan to eliminate collective bargaining for most public employees. They were there to join the protest. Musician Ryan Harvey posted this report to Facebook:

"Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside."

"Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: 'We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what's right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!' Unreal."

My friend Chris Hayden, one of the people running the protest's volunteer first-aid station, also told me that, despite an order to remove the station, he was able to negotiate a compromise with on-site law enforcement (when I was there on Thursday, state troopers were standing guard at the capital, rather than police) that allowed the service to continue.

If I understand correctly, police are one of the groups that would be exempt from an elimination of collective bargaining rights. They don't personally stand to lose anything. But they came anyway, to support the people who do have something to lose. Protect and serve!

Via Chris Hayden and The Understory



3D printing with mashed potatatoes

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:26 PM PST

The people at Bits From Bytes, who sell 3D printer kits, fed some mashed potatoes to a RapMan printer and used it to print some quite credible prototype 3D food.

But it's not without some issues. In the video they indicate the syringe-like extruder is running at a slow 16mm/sec rate, perhaps the slowest typical setting for printing plastic. They are unsure whether this can be increased, meaning food prints (of at least potatoes) are destined for slow production.
3D Printing Potatoes With The RapMan (Thanks, Kerry!)

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