The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Montage: Non-pornographic scenes from pornographic movies
• More incompetence revealed on the part of France's "three-strikes" copyright enforcer
• Translating Ulysses into Twitter
• Gold-farming in a Chinese forced-labor camp
• Head in a jar costume at Maker Faire 2011
• Mike Tyson's tattoo artist may get cash from Warner Bros. over "Hangover Part II" ink
• Patriot Act is worse than you think, senator says
• Thug cop chokeholds CBS reporter: "I hate the press and I can do whatever I want."
• The best Oprah emails to Opera (the browser)
• Dinosaur exhibition disappoints
• ColecoVision 1983 TV ad for George Plimpton's "Video Falconry" game
• NASA to launch new robotic science mission to asteroid in 2016
• Apple acknowledges "Mac Defender" malware, promises fix
• Mars: NASA gives up on attempts to contact Spirit rover
• Ask Cool Tools
• Chewbacca bento box
• 50 years since Kennedy's "moon shot" speech
• Research paper on heroism published
• Digital media literacy for kids
• Documentary about life of Jeffrey Catherine Jones
• DIY efforts to prevent Mississippi River flood damage
• New Todd Schorr lithograph: "Amphibian Frontier"
• Impossible physics: Why My Little Pony can't really fly
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: Who Captured Seal Team Six After Their Mission?!
• Senior citizen jailed for growing pot for sick wife
• California prison overcrowding, in photos
• Converting pixel art to vectors
• Sony Vaio S comes in brown and gold
• Kansas City Star: Tornado response shows it's time to re-think the way we run America
• Westinghouse 1939 World's Fair ad

Montage: Non-pornographic scenes from pornographic movies Posted: 25 May 2011 10:41 PM PDT This fan-made YouTube music video is composed of non-pornographic introductory scenes from pornographic movies. It's all shirtless, hunky gardeners, smouldering looks, lingering touches and suchlike. Bad Lamps - Never Know the Difference (via Reddit)

More incompetence revealed on the part of France's "three-strikes" copyright enforcer Posted: 25 May 2011 11:24 PM PDT Last week, the private company responsible for enforcing France's "three strikes" copyright law was found to be massively insecure, prompting France to suspend the program. Under France's HADOPI copyright law, households lost their Internet connection if they received three accusations of copyright infringement committed on their network. TMG, the private contractor that maintained the system, suffered a massive breach when hackers showed that they hadn't taken even the most rudimentary steps to secure their servers. Now, Ars Technica reports that it's not just TMG's security that's flawed -- the breach has also revealed that its data-gathering system is as untrustworthy as its perimeter security: TMG's server was running a custom-written administration program coded in Delphi. It had the unusual security feature of not requiring any authentication at all, allowing anyone connecting to port 8500 to send commands to the server. The commands it supports are limited--shutdown or reboot the computer, stop or start a peer-to-peer client, and update the software on the server--but due to their shoddy design these commands are sufficient to allow hackers to do whatever they want. The update command connects to an FTP server, retrieves a file, and then executes it--all without authentication--and rather than connecting to a specific FTP server, it allows the server to be specified when the update command is given. This allows an attacker to set up their own FTP server, put their malicious program onto the server, and then tell the TMG system to update from the hacker-controlled server. In this way, they can make the TMG server run whatever software they want. If all of TMG's anti-piracy servers are running the same administrative program, then they are all susceptible to being attacked in this same, trivial way. French "three strikes" anti-piracy software riddled with flaws (Image: Drapeau Hadopi, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 17962689@N08's photostream)

Translating Ulysses into Twitter Posted: 25 May 2011 10:37 PM PDT A Bloomsday project calls on James Joyce fans to translate Ulysses into Twitter-native text that will then be tweeted at 15-minute intervals through June 16. Just no one tell Stephen Joyce, the notoriously litigious Joyce heir who has previously threatened to sue pubs for allowing readings of Ulysses on Bloomsday: This is not an attempt to tweet mindlessly the entire contents of Ulysses, word-for-word, 140 characters at a time. That would be dull and impossible. What is proposed here is a recasting or a reimagining of the reading experience of this novel, start to finish, within the confines of a day-long series of tweets from a global volunteer army of Joyce-sodden tweeps. Can you imagine such a thing? Would it be horrific, a train wreck? Or would it be beatific? Who knows. Hence this experiment. The experiment will be shaped thusly. The @11ysses Twitter account is the stage for this "tweading" of Ulysses. The Bloomsday tweaders are you, anyone in the world who would like to volunteer to take a section of the novel and condense/congeal/cajole it into a string of 4-6 tweets that will be broadcast as a quick burst on @11ysses. "Bloomsday bursts" will be posted every quarter hour starting at 8 o'clock in the morning (Dublin time) on 16 June and continue for the next 24 hours. A Master Plan (Version 2.0) (via MeFi)

Gold-farming in a Chinese forced-labor camp Posted: 25 May 2011 10:06 PM PDT The Guardian reports that prisoners in a Chinese forced-labor camp were required to "gold-farm" in multiplayer games, amassing credits and virtual objects that the guards could sell to other players. Prisoners allege that they were required to gold farm for 12 hours a day and were physically abused if they failed to make their quotas. It's alleged that many Chinese forced-labor prisons make their inmates gold farm. "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off." Memories from his detention at Jixi re-education-through-labour camp in Heilongjiang province from 2004 still haunt Liu. As well as backbreaking mining toil, he carved chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood until his hands were raw and assembled car seat covers that the prison exported to South Korea and Japan. He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society. But it was the forced online gaming that was the most surreal part of his imprisonment. The hard slog may have been virtual, but the punishment for falling behind was real. "If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," he said. China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work

Head in a jar costume at Maker Faire 2011 Posted: 25 May 2011 09:45 PM PDT One of the most awesomely creepy things I saw at Maker Faire was this "head in a jar" project by artist Marque Cornblatt. From the project literature: A decapitated human head can be observed floating in a liquid-filled jar carried by a person in head-to-toe hazmat protection. The living head moves, makes eye contact and seems to struggle to escape it's water-tight vessel. According to the "handler" the head was discovered by a CDC cleanup crew after a zombie outbreak near detroit, moaning and gnashing long after it was separated from the body. Quick-thinking personnel placed the head in a slurry of plasma, protein supplement and a top-secret organic antifreeze agent. The head has been maintained in this state of animation for several weeks with no apparent degradation or decomposition. A hopeful CDC spokesperson was quoted as stating that this breakthrough may be the first step to understanding or even curing the zombie outbreak. Video Link. More of Marque's zombie explorations here.

Mike Tyson's tattoo artist may get cash from Warner Bros. over "Hangover Part II" ink Posted: 25 May 2011 06:18 PM PDT The tattoo artist who inked Mike Tyson' face may get payment from Warner Bros. over the tattoo on Ed Helms's face in Hangover Part II. (via Chas Edwards)

Patriot Act is worse than you think, senator says Posted: 25 May 2011 06:13 PM PDT In an interview with Wired's Danger Room, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon, photo above) said the Patriot Act is worse than you've probably heard. Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself -- entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a "dragnet" for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently. "We're getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says," Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. "When you've got that kind of a gap, you're going to have a problem on your hands." What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can't precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called "business records provision," which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any "tangible things" it deems relevant to a security investigation. There's a Secret Patriot Act (Danger Room) Also: At Steven Aftergood's Secrecy News site, a related item. And security researcher Christopher Soghoian has a related post here.

Thug cop chokeholds CBS reporter: "I hate the press and I can do whatever I want." Posted: 25 May 2011 06:10 PM PDT The police in Newark don't like it when reporters film them at public events. The event happened a couple of years ago and the officer suspended; the inevitable lawsuit[PDF] was unresolved as of 2010. Update: BB reader Wetdog2 says the case was dismissed following a settlement just days ago, which may account for the video doing the rounds now, so long after the incident.

The best Oprah emails to Opera (the browser) Posted: 25 May 2011 02:44 PM PDT Espen André Øverdahl at the browser company Opera writes, Today is the last Oprah show in the history of television. To us in Opera this is really sad news. This show has brought us great joy throughout the years. We've been receiving lots of mail from Oprah fans, asking us questions, complaining or simply just opening up, telling us about their lives. We've tried to answer these emails the best we can. As a tribute to Oprah and her fans, we've been digging in our mailbox in order to give you Opera's 'Best of Oprah mails to Opera" best of. Oprah Winfrey: We will miss you (thanks, Andrea James).

Dinosaur exhibition disappoints Posted: 25 May 2011 02:17 PM PDT At The Awl is a blistering attack on the American Museum of Natural History's World's Largest Dinosaurs exhibition, which is largely disappointing: "'Too Big to Veil', reads the signage--at an exhibition whose sole named sponsor is Bank of America. (And whose collaborating organizer is an outfit called 'Coolture Marketing.') The wall text is inane; the 'interactivity' is ludicrous; the exhibits are minor and fiberglass. It is also, at $16, nuttily priced." Noted. I add only that I have since the age of 5 wanted a pet Ankylosaurus. No other dinosaur will suffice.

ColecoVision 1983 TV ad for George Plimpton's "Video Falconry" game Posted: 25 May 2011 02:04 PM PDT [Video Link, from NewGrounds via Jesse Thorn]

NASA to launch new robotic science mission to asteroid in 2016 Posted: 25 May 2011 02:13 PM PDT Conceptual image of OSIRIS-REx. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona NASA today announced a new space exploration mission: to launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016, and "use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began." The mission will be titled Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, and will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth. There's an animation here, illustrating how this will work. Boing Boing's science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker and I are on a NASA conference call as I type this post; look for a longer report by Maggie on this news. Lockheed Martin will build the craft; the launches will take place at Kennedy Space Center. The cost of the mission is estimated around 1 billion dollars. A copy of the NASA press release announcing the mission follows. "This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. "It's robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations." NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept study reports for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the moon and a mission to the surface of Venus. Asteroids are leftovers formed from the cloud of gas and dust -- the solar nebula -- that collapsed to form our sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. As such, they contain the original material from the solar nebula, which can tell us about the conditions of our solar system's birth. After traveling four years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2020. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023. The mission, excluding the launch vehicle, is expected to cost approximately $800 million. The sample will be stored in a capsule that will land at Utah's Test and Training Range in 2023. The capsule's design will be similar to that used by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned the world's first comet particles from comet Wild 2 in 2006. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The material will be removed and delivered to a dedicated research facility following stringent planetary protection protocol. Precise analysis will be performed that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments. RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36. "This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration," said Jim Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids." The mission will accurately measure the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The effect is a small push caused by the sun on an asteroid, as it absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. The small push adds up over time, but it is uneven due to an asteroid's shape, wobble, surface composition and rotation. For scientists to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's path, they must understand how the effect will change its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will help refine RQ36's orbit to ascertain its trajectory and devise future strategies to mitigate possible Earth impacts from celestial objects. Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments from the University of Arizona, Goddard, Arizona State University in Tempe and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., also are involved. The science team is composed of numerous researchers from universities, private and government agencies. This is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006. It will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in July 2015, then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, Juno, will launch in August to become the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole and study the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. # # #

Apple acknowledges "Mac Defender" malware, promises fix Posted: 25 May 2011 01:18 PM PDT Nearly a month after reports of an Apple-targeted malware called "Mac Defender" surfaced, Apple is addressing the issue.

Mars: NASA gives up on attempts to contact Spirit rover Posted: 25 May 2011 01:03 PM PDT Above, one of the last images taken by the Mars rover Spirit (NASA/JPL/Cornell). NASA this week announced it will cease attempts to re-establish contact with the Mars Exploration Rover "Spirit," which last communicated on March 22, 2010. From an item on the Space Coalition website: The stuck in the sand Mars rover reached a point where there was inadequate energy to run its survival heaters. That being the case, the rover likely experienced colder internal temperatures last year than in any of its prior six years on Mars. Many critical components and connections would have been susceptible to damage from the cold. Today, a transmission from Earth will be the last in a series of attempts to reawaken the robot. From the NASA announcement: Spirit drove 4.8 miles (7.73 kilometers), more than 12 times the goal set for the mission. The drives crossed a plain to reach a distant range of hills that appeared as mere bumps on the horizon from the landing site; climbed slopes up to 30 degrees as Spirit became the first robot to summit a hill on another planet; and covered more than half a mile (nearly a kilometer) after Spirit's right-front wheel became immobile in 2006. The rover returned more than 124,000 images. It ground the surfaces off 15 rock targets and scoured 92 targets with a brush to prepare the targets for inspection with spectrometers and a microscopic imager. (Via Miles O'Brien)

Ask Cool Tools Posted: 25 May 2011 12:21 PM PDT For the past ten years Cool Tools has recommended one cool tool per weekday. Despite the thousands of tools reviewed, we still move slowly relative to all the options that are out there. But what if you need a specific tool recommendation now and don't want to wait until we get around to it? Ask Cool Tools! That's the name of our reader-generated, crowd-sourced, community-based recommendation service. On the front page of the Cool Tools site you see a new column which will link you to the Ask Cool Tool section. Here you'll see the questions that folks have already asked, the answers to date, and the places where you can ask your questions. What kind of questions? Well, mostly along the lines of: I am trying to accomplish X, what's the best tool? Or I need this kind of tool Y, what's the best brand? Or, I have tool Z, are there any tips on using it? Or, simply, how do I accomplish X? Answers are supplied by you and the community. It's sort of like the comments section, but instead of being relegated to a published tool, anyone can start a request. More details are explained in the FAQ. This is a beta version. There will be some rough edges. Suggestions for ways to improve are requested. Send them to us, editor@cool-tools.org. We think Ask Cool Tools is itself a pretty cool tool. -- KK

Chewbacca bento box Posted: 25 May 2011 09:13 PM PDT This Chewbacca bento box looks delicious even if the noodles "look a little chewy." Update: This is the creation of Krista at Disposable Aardvark -- thanks s'claire!) (via Neatorama) (Image: Uncredited/unsourced)

50 years since Kennedy's "moon shot" speech Posted: 25 May 2011 11:12 AM PDT Fifty years ago today, a few weeks after the first American astronaut flew into space, President John F. Kennedy gave a now historic speech in which he outlined a mission for NASA: send a man to the moon by the end of that decade. On this date in 1961, Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress, with a worldwide television audience, and announced, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." This was seen as a bold mandate because America's experience up to this point was Alan Shepard's suborbital Freedom 7 mission, which launched just a few weeks earlier and lasted about 15 minutes. More at the NASA website. NASA also today alerted reporters to an announcement to come later today about a new science mission "that will usher in a new era in planetary exploration." More on that here on Boing Boing soon.

Research paper on heroism published Posted: 25 May 2011 10:49 AM PDT Matt Langdon says: "A couple of years ago you helped me get respondents to a survey on heroism that Phil Zimbardo [who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971] was putting together. Boing Boing basically enabled the research to get under way with thousands of people taking part. Well, the paper has finally been written after a long period of analyzing and rewriting. I've posted a pdf on my site. I know two years is about sixty-three years in internet time, so maybe your readers won't remember, but I figured I'd let you know in case you wanted to share the results." Abstract: Heroism represents the ideal of citizens transforming civic virtue into the highest form of civic action, accepting either physical peril or social sacrifice. While implicit theories of heroism abound, surprisingly little theoretical or empirical work has been done to better understand the phenomenon. Toward this goal, we summarize our efforts to systematically develop a taxonomy of heroic subtypes as a starting point for theory building. Next we explore three apparent paradoxes that surround heroism--the dueling impulses to elevate and negate heroic actors; the contrast between the public ascription of heroic status versus the interior decision to act heroically; and apparent similarities between altruism, bystander intervention and heroism that mask important differences between these phenomena. We assert that these seeming contradictions point to an unrecognized relationship between insufficient justification and the ascription of heroic status, providing more explanatory power than risk-type alone. The results of an empirical study are briefly presented to provide preliminary support to these arguments. Finally, several areas for future research and theoretical activity are briefly considered. These include the possibility that extension neglect may play a central role in public's view of nonprototypical heroes; a critique of the positive psychology view that heroism is always a virtuous, prosocial activity; problems associated with retrospective study of heroes; the suggestion that injury or death (particularly in social sacrifice heroes) serves to resolve dissonance in favor of the heroic actor; and a consideration of how to foster heroic imagination. Heroism: A Conceptual Analysis and Differentiation Between Heroic Action and Altruism (PDF)

Digital media literacy for kids Posted: 25 May 2011 10:34 AM PDT Matthew sez, "MyWorld aims to teach students essential digital literacy skills through simulating their favourite online experiences. The tutorial is divided into four chapters, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of digital literacy; topics covered include learning to be skeptical of online content, managing online privacy and reputation and using online content (such as Creative Commons and public domain material) to create media." MyWorld: A digital literacy tutorial for secondary students (Thanks, Matthew!)

Documentary about life of Jeffrey Catherine Jones Posted: 25 May 2011 10:38 AM PDT Ray says: Mark, it was through your posting that I realized that Jeff Jones had passed. I have been a fan of her work (as well as the other partners in The Studio) since the 70s. After reading the post, I linked around and found the blog of Maria Cabardo, who is creating a film mostly about Jeff but also about the identity of the artist, having interviewed many of today's top illustrators, most of whom are friends of Jeff. I noticed that Maria had had a Kickstart project going but failed to raise enough funds through that. I was hoping that maybe Boing Boing could help by publicizing this work and let people know that they can still contribute to this worthy documentary about a genius who's passed. As an incentive, she's offering a free Jeff Jones print with a $25 contribution Documentary about life of Jeffrey Catherine Jones

DIY efforts to prevent Mississippi River flood damage Posted: 25 May 2011 10:24 AM PDT Popular Science has a photo gallery of houses surrounded by DIY levees, making them look like tiny islands. DIY efforts to prevent Mississippi River flood damage

New Todd Schorr lithograph: "Amphibian Frontier" Posted: 25 May 2011 02:38 PM PDT Several years ago, painter Todd Schorr released his magnificent monograph American Surreal, designed by our pals at Pressure Printing and published by Last Gasp. Today, Pressure Printing has released a lithograph of American Surreal's cover painting, Amphibian Frontier. The print is 39" x 25" an edition of 100. From Pressure Printing: Todd writes in "American Surreal" that the image was born out of a free-associated mix of memories and artefacts from his 1950's childhood: frog hunting, toy indians and a plastic Zorro, N.C. Wyeth's illustrations in The Last of The Mohicans, and the traumatic experience of falling into a yellowjacket hive. Todd Schorr's Amphibian Frontier   Todd Schorr exhibition at San Jose Museum of Art - Boing Boing Todd Schorr's art book: American Surreal - Boing Boing Todd Schorr print by Pressure Printing - Boing Boing

Impossible physics: Why My Little Pony can't really fly Posted: 24 May 2011 10:07 PM PDT "Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" is a student physics presentation that examines three scenes from an animated My Little Pony show (it looks like a recent adaptation, not the original) and identifies the physics at work, explains (with equations!) why the scenes don't work, and offers suggestions ("dark matter!") to fix them. The student has posted his slides as well. He says he got 100% on the presentation, and I believe it was a well-deserved grade. Slides (PPT) (via JWZ)

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Who Captured Seal Team Six After Their Mission?! Posted: 25 May 2011 06:03 AM PDT

Senior citizen jailed for growing pot for sick wife Posted: 25 May 2011 09:33 AM PDT [Video Link] A 69-year-old husband in Ohio grew two backyard marijuana plants to help his wife, who has breast cancer. He was convicted of a felony and sent to jail. Medina County senior citizen is sentenced to jail time for cultivating marijuana that he says was medicinal for his wife with cancer

California prison overcrowding, in photos Posted: 25 May 2011 09:53 AM PDT Mmechanic sends us Mother Jones's "slideshow of some of the photos that convinced the Supreme Court to order the corrections department to unload some 30,000 of its prisoners." Writing on behalf of the court's five-vote majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that this unprecedented measure had become the only way to remedy the "serious" and "uncorrected" constiutional violations against inmates in the state's correctional facilities, particularly the sick and mentally ill. "For years the medical and mental health care provided by California's prisons has fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements and has failed to meet prisoners' basic health needs. Needless suffering and death have been the well-documented result," he wrote. "Short term gains in the provision of care have been eroded by the long-term effects of severe and pervasive overcrowding." His decision included vivid examples of the problem, from open dorms so packed they can't be effectively monitored, to suicidal inmates "held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets." California's Jam-Packed Prisons (Thanks, Mmechanic!)

Converting pixel art to vectors Posted: 25 May 2011 09:02 AM PDT A new method of pixel art upscaling gets much better results than current methods, at least for certain types of sprite. But I still prefer the one on the left! [johanneskopf.de via Kotaku]

Sony Vaio S comes in brown and gold Posted: 25 May 2011 08:47 AM PDT I wasn't going to bother blogging the latest spec bump in Sony's Vaio S laptops, but then I noticed you could order it in brown and gold. The new model has a 13.3" display, a .95" thick magnesium alloy body, and an i7 processor. With the snap-on extended battery panel, it lasts "up to 15 hours" on a snort. Matching leather safari jacket and gradient sunglasses optional.

Kansas City Star: Tornado response shows it's time to re-think the way we run America Posted: 25 May 2011 08:38 AM PDT An editorial in the Kansas City Star yesterday makes some interesting points about responding to short-term disasters, preparing for long-term disasters, and problem of money. ... it hardly requires an expert to behold the devastation in Joplin and see that, while charitable resources are essential, private donors will not be able to fund all that is needed. Joplin needs new school buildings, a new power grid, massive work on its hospital. And that's only the beginning. This brings us to a rather shameful debate now taking place in, of course, Congress. To its credit, a key House panel has approved an additional $1 billion in federal relief money to respond to a spring of natural disasters. But as soon as cries for help were heard, lawmakers pounced on the chance to make partisan points. House Republicans are starting to demand that disaster relief funds be balanced with cuts in other areas of federal spending, essentially using human tragedy to advance their political agenda. One suggestion is that we should cut a program encouraging the production of more fuel efficient cars, a program brought about by economic and long-term national security concerns. Here's the big picture: If the United States is to the point at which helping disaster victims means cutting other needed programs, it's time to rethink the way we're running this country. Today, Americans have the lightest total tax burden they've had since 1958. One result of that low tax burden, and the resulting inadequate federal and state revenue, is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency faces a $3 billion shortfall. And that's before the Joplin bills arrive. Overly optimistic projections during good times brought us to this point. Pandering politicians agreed to tax cuts that this country could not afford. But that's the past. Going forward, we must be able to agree it is un-American to scramble and bicker over priorities every time nature strikes. Via SharkFu

Westinghouse 1939 World's Fair ad Posted: 24 May 2011 10:33 PM PDT Back in 2007, I blogged about The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair, Westinghouse's 55-minute feature promoting the the 1939 New York World's Fair as a great place to go learn about TV, robots, and the evils of Communism. Now, on the Vintage Ads group, an unfortunately low-rez version of one of the print ads that inspired the film, including some astounding ad copy: Here's a family of folks you know --- friends who live just around the corner from everyone. Doing the Fair -- because that's what everyone is doing this year. Thrilled by its beauty . . . amazed at its wonders . . . the Middleton Family, from Everywhere, U. S. A. ! There are Babs and Bud, overflowing with the exuberance of 18 and 14 . . . romping through Wonderland like two kittens across a rug. There are Father Tom and Mother Jane, trying unsuccessfully to be calm and judicious about it all. And there's Grandma, whose eyes, bright with the memories of other Fairs, grow brighter still with the vision of a new Tomorrow for her dear ones. Watch the pages of your favorite magazines for the diverting adventures of this lovable family. Better still, join them in person at the Great Court of the Westinghouse Building. A warm welcome awaits you --- and a fascinating exhibit of electricity's greatest marvels. (Click through at the jump to see the movie) The Middleton Family, from Everywhere, U. S. A. !

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