The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Bradley Manning in person
- Illicit stunt on Williamsburg Bridge grounds NYC aerialists in jail
- Documentary about the bricks of St. Louis
- Crew of the final Space Shuttle salutes shuttle workforce for "30 years of adventure"
- Wiretapping and crypto: those who snoop can still snoop
- The Majesty of the Great Sword
- US law enforcement group to ISPs: you must keep user logs for 18 months
- Recreating the Dock Ellis "tripping balls" no-hitter on XBox on LSD
- Cuba's first-ever zombie/horror film, "Juan of the Dead"
- Gizmodo's Mat Honan submits to a "social media background check"
- Video of hunter-gatherer tribe's first contact with people from outside world
- Killer black bear owner chokes to death on sex toy
- Accidental western scene
- Android posing as politician malfunctions on live TV
- Wired publishes Manning chat logs in full
- Video trailer for Tonoharu graphic novel
- Live webchat about energy, past and future, tomorrow afternoon
- How to deactivate a cat
- TOM THE DANCING BUG, In Which Fat Earl and Judge Scalia Have a First Amendment Throwdown Over a Nipple
- Hitler's talking dogs
- AP: US nuclear power plant safety isn't being tightly regulated
- Monkbot, an automaton from the 16th century
- No HD video without DRM for new PS3s
- HOWTO eat sardines
- Inside Haitian Vodou (LIFE.com photo essay)
- Owl leaves ghostly imprint on window
- Woman not named Lorena cuts off husband's penis
- Pastafarian can wear a colander hat in his driver's license photo
- Terrible taxidermy
- Used bike ad is slightly militant
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 05:14 PM PDT Alexis Madrigal just published an excellent and timely profile of Bradley Manning. He was the conscience that sparked these international controversies. He was the human being who felt he had to speak out. And he was a very confused young man in an incredible amount of psychological pain. I want to flesh him out, to unghost him a little for you. If we, as a country, are going to imprison Manning for what he's done, we owe it to him to understand him. If we, as a country, are going to hold him in conditions that the United Nations wants to investigate, we owe it to him to try to figure out why he did what he did.Bradley Manning, the Person: The Making of the World's Most Notorious Leaker   |
| Illicit stunt on Williamsburg Bridge grounds NYC aerialists in jail Posted: 13 Jul 2011 04:16 PM PDT Video artist Ronen V (who had nothing to do with the video embedded in this post) alerts us to news that fellow New Yorkers Seanna Sharpe (in the photo below) and Thomas "Savage" Skinner are in jail today. Apparently inspired by Phillip Petit of Man on Wire movie fame, Seanna climbed the Williamsburg bridge and performed a 15-minute aerial show hanging 350 feet from the bridge surface by silk. The duo spent the night in jail at Rikers Island, and remain there at the time of this blog post. Sounds like they'll be facing some pretty serious felony charges, with two days to find a lawyer interested in taking this unusual sort of case on. I'm told internet supporters helped them raise bail last night within just 3 hours. News coverage: New York Post, Village Voice, WSJ, nybuff, grist, CBS News. |
| Documentary about the bricks of St. Louis Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:35 PM PDT [Video Link] The people of St. Louis sure love their bricks, and rightfully so. Unfortunately, poachers from other Louisiana and Mississippi love St. Louis bricks, too, and are stealing them. |
| Crew of the final Space Shuttle salutes shuttle workforce for "30 years of adventure" Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:35 PM PDT The STS-135 space shuttle crew transmits a video thank-you message to the workers who made their voyage, and the 134 missions before it, possible. "Basically, 10,000 people have to do everything right all the time, and you have, constantly. (...) You are the best of the best."   |
| Wiretapping and crypto: those who snoop can still snoop Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:30 PM PDT Matt Blaze analyzes the contents of The 2010 U.S. Wiretap Report: "Despite dire predictions to the contrary, the open availability of cryptography has done little to hinder law enforcement's ability to conduct investigations." (crypto.com)   |
| The Majesty of the Great Sword Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:02 PM PDT Thanks Brian! |
| US law enforcement group to ISPs: you must keep user logs for 18 months Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:59 PM PDT "Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months," Declan McCullagh at CNET News.com reports.   |
| Recreating the Dock Ellis "tripping balls" no-hitter on XBox on LSD Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:03 PM PDT Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio attempted to re-create Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis' infamous no-hitter of June 12, 1970 against the San Diego Padres, pitched while tripping on acid. Daulerio did so by dropping LSD, and re-enacting the game on the Xbox version of MLB2K11. The resulting post is a great read. Only once did I feel a brief flicker of hallucinatory terror. We were in a pizza parlor, in the friendly Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, and I was having difficulty deciding which slice to purchase because even though my stomach said "plain slice" my mind begged for "chicken jalapeño with shredded garlic knots," which wasn't even available but, dammit, it should have been that day. It didn't feel like an unreasonable amount of time had passed. Then a slice of white pie was whooshed out of the giant oven by the pizzaman, and the gurgling cheese appeared angry with me. Maybe I was holding up the line. I ducked behind the soda fountain to refocus my fritzy thoughts for a couple extra minutes until that ricotta stopped messing with me. I ordered two plain slices quickly, then added on a slice of white because I felt the need to assert myself. Hey, white pizza. I eat you. You don't eat me. Video, NYO story, Deadspin post, and historical background. |
| Cuba's first-ever zombie/horror film, "Juan of the Dead" Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:38 PM PDT What do Cuban zombies want? SESOOOOOOOOOOOOS. Man, "Juan of the Dead" sure looks awesome. First horror movie AND first zombie movie ever out of Cuba. Video Link for trailer, and here's an article about the making of. Aaron Stewart-Ahn, whose tweets tipped me, says the feature was made with smuggled-in latex for zombie FX scenes. |
| Gizmodo's Mat Honan submits to a "social media background check" Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:18 PM PDT  Mat Honan of Gizmodo volunteered to submit to a "social media background check" along with a handful of fellow Gawker Media colleagues. What the heck does that mean? Well, first, the investigation by Social Intelligence doesn't pass on actual identifiable photos of you to a prospective employer. In other words, your drunken kegstand photos are probably fine as long as you're not wearing a T-shirt with a swastika or naked from the waist down. Basically, it just wants to know if you're the kind of asshole who will cause legal hassles for an employer. Which brings us back to my report. We ran background checks on six Gizmodo employees, including our editor in chief Joe Brown, and all but one came back clean.Yes, that's right. All of them except Mat's, because Mat wrote something about enjoying coke and acid once. That's our Mat!   |
| Video of hunter-gatherer tribe's first contact with people from outside world Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:50 PM PDT [Video Link] This is a fascinating 15-minute video that shows a hunter-gatherer tribe in Papua New Guinea meeting with people from the outside world for the first time. They are very cautious, but also very curious, about the man on the other side of the river. They eventually cross the river to meet Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the producer of Tribal Journeys: The Toulambi. When the men see Dutilleux's clothing, they then look at the clothes they are wearing, as if for the first time. When they stroke Dutilleux's hair, they then stroke their own hair. It looks like all five parts of the documentary are on YouTube. |
| Killer black bear owner chokes to death on sex toy Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:58 PM PDT  Coroners in Ohio have determined that exotic animal owner Sam Mazzola's recent death was an accidental choking, during a consensual sexual act. He was found dead with "an object in his throat," and a "leather mask with the eyes and mouth zipped shut and a two-piece metal sphere covering his head" while "handcuffed to chains that were attached to the bed and the floor." There were padlocks in the mix, too. He owned a black bear that mauled a 24-year-old woman to death last year at "Mazzola's World Animal Studios." The bear was then put to death. Mazzola had been making headlines for years for mistreating the wild creatures he kept captive: in 2009, the USDA fined him more than $13,000 and permanently cancelled his federal license to sell or exhibit exotic animals. Morningjournal.com and Cleveland P-D, via MSNBC. |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:04 PM PDT  Greg In The Desert found this cool "Western looking scene at sunset in the splashing of water against a pier." (Image: Accidental Western Scene, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from gregjsmith's photostream) |
| Android posing as politician malfunctions on live TV Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:52 PM PDT [Video Link] A lifelike robot, posing as Ed Miliband, Britain's Leader of the Labour party, has a faulty speech synthesizer that causes it to say the same thing over and over. |
| Wired publishes Manning chat logs in full Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:22 PM PDT Wired has published in full the chat logs it received of conversations between accused whistleblower Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, who turned him in. [Threat Level] An excerpt: I find it hard to accept that the last line there was "sensitive personal information with no bearing on WikiLeaks, [that] would serve no purpose to publish." It reads like a deliberated attempt to manipulate or even entrap Manning, on Lamo's part, and seems quite important to understanding what Manning thought he was doing by talking to him. Here is a remarkable exchange between Manning and Lamo, talking about Wikileaks chief Julian Assange: bradass87: assange offered me a position at wl... but im not interested right now... too much excess baggage...
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| Video trailer for Tonoharu graphic novel Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:05 PM PDT [Video Link] I'm a huge fan of Tonoharu, Lars Martinson's graphic novel series about an American English teacher who lives in rural Japan (See my reviews: Book 1, Book 2). Here's a funny video he made about it. |
| Live webchat about energy, past and future, tomorrow afternoon Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:00 PM PDT The way we use and make energy is going to change, one way or another. Tomorrow afternoon, you can join me, along with The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal, author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology  , and Science magazine's Eli Kintisch, author of Hack the Planet: Science's Best Hope - or Worst Nightmare - for Averting Climate Catastrophe , for a live web chat as we talk about how Americans created the energy systems we live with today, and how we might build better ones for the future. "Green Energy's Forgotten Past, Uncertain Future" starts at 3:00 Eastern on ScienceLive. We'll be taking questions from the audience and talking about our respective books, including my upcoming book "Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before it Conquers Us," which is due out next March.   |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 11:38 AM PDT [Video Link] Mr. Spock replaced by a lowly binder clip! (Via Cynical-C) |
| Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:01 PM PDT   |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 10:59 AM PDT Jan Bondeson, physician/author of such excellent weird books as A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities and Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, has gone to the dogs. His new book is Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities, in which among other strange truths Bondeson recounts how Hitler was sponsoring efforts to teach dogs to talk. In yesterday's New York Times, Maureen Dowd quotes Bondeson's book in a fascinating op/ed about Hitler's strange ideas for secret weapons. From the NYT: Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities (Amazon) "Hitler's Talking Dogs" (NYT, thanks Bob Pescovitz!) |
| AP: US nuclear power plant safety isn't being tightly regulated Posted: 13 Jul 2011 10:35 AM PDT  As you may have noticed, I'm not against nuclear power. I'm not aggressively pro-nuclear power, either. It's just that I recognize that energy is complicated and I think that the very real risks of nuclear power have to be considered in tandem with the risks of other energy sources, and the risks of not having enough energy. From that perspective, we can't just immediately shut down all the nuclear power we currently have, and nuclear power still does some things that no other energy source can currently do—namely, provide a reliable, low-carbon, high-capacity factor source of electricity that can be located anywhere and doesn't vary its output with the seasons, the time of day, or the weather. That doesn't mean we must use nuclear. And it definitely doesn't mean we should go all nuclear. But it does mean that we have to make our choices about nuclear as part of a bigger picture. Of course, all of this comes with a big caveat. From my perspective, the benefits of nuclear power can outweigh the risks, as long as there's competent safety regulation in place that's being monitored by somebody independent of the people who are being regulated. There's two things you should have learned from the ongoing flood watch at Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant. First, regulation protects us. If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hadn't done its job here, the Fort Calhoun plant would not have been prepared for floods of the level that it has experienced this summer. Second, the nuclear industry can't be relied upon to make the necessary safety upgrades on its own, without outside prodding. It's not that they're evil. Nobody sits around cackling about the prospect of a radiation leak. It's just that businesses, like people, don't always behave in a logical way. Sure, logic says that it's worth it to upgrade your flood protection system because, if it fails, the outcome would be a lot worse for you and cost you a lot more money. But there are other pressures the owners of Fort Calhoun were dealing with, and they chose not to make those upgrades until the NRC essentially forced them to do it. That's why I think you absolutely need to read the 4-part Associated Press series on nuclear industry regulation, written by AP reporter Jeff Donn. It will make you angry. It made me angry. Donn presents an effective case showing that the NRC does not always act as independently as it needs to, and that it has frequently made choices that favor the needs of industry over the needs of the public. That's bad. So far, nothing that's happened has been particularly dangerous for the public. But the more you let small problems slide, the faster you find yourself facing a larger problem. At the heart of Donn's series is a serious set of issues that every American needs to consider: Our electric demand is too high to simply shut off nuclear power plants and not replace them. Public opinion won't allow for old nuclear plants to be replaced by new, safer ones. Other replacement options (namely, coal, our other widely available source of base load electricity) aren't particularly popular, either, for good reasons. And so social and economic pressures have given the nuclear industry an incentive to keep aging power plants online decades longer than their original licenses envisioned. There is not an easy ultimate answer to this problem. At least, not one that can be implemented quickly. But while we work to add more renewables and (most importantly) more storage to the electric grid, we need to know that regulators are watching our backs. From what Donn has written, that doesn't seem to be the case. I can't excerpt anything from Donn's stories here, because the Associated Press is notoriously ridiculous about preventing people from sharing the fine work it does do. (Even finding a full set of links to all the parts of Donn's feature was frustratingly complicated. AP: When you publish a series as important as this, it needs to be easily accessible on your website.) Frankly, if your local newspaper didn't run this series (or didn't run it in its entirety) or if you don't read the paper, there's a good chance you missed this entire report when it first came out around the end of June and first week of July. But you do need to read this report. And you can, at the links below: Part 1—AP IMPACT: US Nuke Regulators Weaken Safety Rules Part 2—AP IMPACT: Tritium Leaks Found at Many Nuke Sites Part 3—AP IMPACT: Populations Around US Nuke Plants Soar Part 4—AP IMPACT: NRC and Industry Rewrite Nuke History   |
| Monkbot, an automaton from the 16th century Posted: 13 Jul 2011 10:22 AM PDT  This is the "monkbot," an exquisite 16th century automaton who now resides at the Smithsonian Institution. Photo by the talented Rosamond Purcell. Watch the Monkbot move in the video below. From the Blackbird journal: Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order. Tradition attributes his manufacture to one Juanelo Turriano, mechanician to Emperor Charles V. The story is told that the emperor's son King Philip II, praying at the bedside of a dying son of his own, promised a miracle for a miracle, if his child be spared. And when the child did indeed recover, Philip kept his bargain by having Turriano construct a miniature penitent homunculus."Clockwork Prayer: A Sixteenth-Century Mechanical Monk" (Blackbird) "A Clockwork Miracle" (Radiolab, thanks Jennifer Lum!) |
| No HD video without DRM for new PS3s Posted: 13 Jul 2011 10:34 AM PDT After the last few months, you'd think Sony would be avoiding this kind of petty, pointless move: "Sony [is] disabling high-definition [video] content via component cables ... an annoyance for consumers with older high-definition televisions or those of us who use the component cables because we don't have enough HDMI connections for all the devices we want to plug in".   |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 09:53 AM PDT [video link] Dustin "UPSO" Hostetler sent me this instructional video on eating sardines. All he wrote in the email was "FYI." Thanks, Dustin! |
| Inside Haitian Vodou (LIFE.com photo essay) Posted: 13 Jul 2011 09:40 AM PDT  Ben Cosgrove at LIFE.com points us to new work from photographer Anthony Karen, who recently returned from a trip to Haiti, where for years he has documented Vodou ceremonies and pilgrimages. "This most recent trip, in June 2011, produced some of the most powerful, intimate, and unsettling images of faith and ritual that we've seen in some time," says Ben. Photo gallery here, some graphic images show an animal being sacrificed. |
| Owl leaves ghostly imprint on window Posted: 13 Jul 2011 09:33 AM PDT  This ghostly image of an owl is actually an imprint the bird's "feather dust" left on the window of a home in the Cumbria, UK town of Kendal. The dust is actually particles of keratin from disintegrating powder down feathers. From the BBC: Experts from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) confirmed the bird was most likely a tawny owl because of its size and shape and the fact that they appear in gardens more regularly than others."Owl leaves imprint on Kendal woman's window" (via Fortean Times)   |
| Woman not named Lorena cuts off husband's penis Posted: 13 Jul 2011 09:18 AM PDT Catherine Kieu Becker, 48, of Garden Grove, California called 911 to report a medical emergency with her husband. Turns out, she had drugged him, tied him to the bed, and cut off his penis. Then she tossed it into the garbage disposal. And switched it on. From KTLA: Investigators say the couple was married, but going through a divorce. The initial investigation determined that Becker made dinner for her husband. He told detectives that he thought there was something wrong with his food. He went to lie down and woke up tied to his bed. His wife then grabbed the victim's penis and cut it off. She called 911 and told responding officers that he "deserved it.""Police: Wife Cuts off Husband's Penis, Tosses it in Garbage Disposal"   |
| Pastafarian can wear a colander hat in his driver's license photo Posted: 13 Jul 2011 09:03 AM PDT An Austrian atheist will be allowed to wear a colander on his head in his driver's license photo after successfully arguing that it counts as "religious headgear" for Pastafarians. I'm torn. On the one hand, there's a lot of religious people I respect and mocking the stuff about religion that doesn't matter (the outfits other people choose to wear do not affect me) is not something I'd prefer atheism be known for—especially since this particular incident has some cultural/racial overtones as well, given the issues Europe has had with respecting Muslim women's right to wear a head scarf. On the other hand, I kind of love the Flying Spaghetti Monster and enjoy the idea of a colander hat. (Via Simon Singh)   |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 08:50 AM PDT  Of the many incompetently stuffed animals at the Badly Stuffed Animals Page at Facebook, this doubly-unfortunate donkey stands out. [via The Daily Mail]  |
| Used bike ad is slightly militant Posted: 13 Jul 2011 08:43 AM PDT |
(10:20:53 AM) bradass87: yes... questioned my gender for several years... sexual orientation was easy to figure out... but i started to come to terms with it during the first few months of my deployment (10:21:09 AM) info@adrianlamo.com: May I ask the particulars? (10:21:34 AM) info@adrianlamo.com: I'm bi myself, and my ex is MTF. (10:21:34 AM) bradass87: im fairly open... but careful, so yes.. (10:22:00 AM) bradass87: im aware of your bi part (10:22:24 AM) bradass87: uhm, trying to keep a low profile for now though, just a warning (10:23:34 AM) info@adrianlamo.com: I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection. 
"There were some very strange experiments going on in wartime Germany, with regard to dog-human communication," Bondeson writes, wondering: "Were the Nazis trying to develop a breed of super-intelligent canine storm troopers, capable of communicating with their human masters of the Herrenvolk?" 
Few religions are as misunderstood and as steeped in often-cartoonish misapprehension as Haitian Vodou. Countless people around the globe, shown images of a ceremony, might confidently say, "Yes, THAT is Vodou." But very few, when pressed, could coherently discuss the core tenets of the belief. For photographer Anthony Karen, who has traveled extensively in Haiti over the years, Vodou is at once a fascinating subject and -- in a very real sense -- the gateway to his vocation. "About 13 years ago," he told LIFE.com, "I was in a difficult, transitional point in my life. Out of nowhere, I felt Haiti calling to me. I traveled there, and saw two Vodou ceremonies in person. On the same trip, I discovered my passion for photojournalism." 
"Anyone 
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