WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Writing office for National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence" KILL ACTA: give the EU an earful about secret copyright treaties in Brussels tomorrow at 2PM (and more protests all over the world) The SCAR project: portraits of young breast cancer survivors Drive-thru funeral parlor: "It's a convenience thing." Two Tibetans shot dead, another self-immolation, as China's dissent crackdown continues Inside the Fukushima exclusion zone: the photography of Satoru Niwa The FBI file of Steven Paul Jobs Breaded Cats Monk and Tiger share a meal Martian watches Rudy Rucker, KW Jeter and Jay Lake: free reading in San Francisco this Sat Recursive UK petition Shu Sugamata's origami spaceships The hidden beauty of the bottom of toy cars Canadians speak out en masse against pro-censorship, pro-DRM copyright proposal; government ignores them The Pirate Bay will fit on a ZIP cartridge KILL ACTA Over 100 NGOs ask WIPO to postpone secretive South Africa meeting Make: Talk 004 - Steve Lodefink, Broad-Spectrum Hobbyist U Washington's best-of-breed 3D printing lab shuts down knowledge sharing after administration introduces sweeping patent-grab Insurer offers discounts to customers running in-car GPS telemetry Tool for finding out what information your apps are leaking Every Apple Design Ever in 30 seconds Video: when hip young technophiles become alter kakers William Gibson on aging futurism People in a bathroom sing "I Wanna Be Like You" Cyclists would rather ride a bike than have sex The song of a Jurassic cricket Nevada police beat the hell out of man immobilized with diabetic shock, screaming "Do not resist, motherfucker!" Water bubbles orbiting a knitting needle on the ISS Writing office for National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence"
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 12:23 pm Writing in Washington Life, Karin Tanabe describes the remarkable writing office designed by Travis Price architects for Wade Davis, National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence." It's one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen, the apotheosis of writing-caves. "Travis did a studio on M Street in Georgetown for me," Davis says, noting that in his ...
Read in browser KILL ACTA: give the EU an earful about secret copyright treaties in Brussels tomorrow at 2PM (and more protests all over the world)
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 12:02 pm Tomorrow marks a day of global protest against ACTA, the profoundly undemocratic copyright treaty that was negotiated in secret, and which governments are signing up for without democratic review and debate from elected representatives. In Brussels, thousands will mass at the Bourse De Bruxelles at 2PM to give the EU an earful. To send a ...
Read in browser The SCAR project: portraits of young breast cancer survivors
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 08:16 am Photographer David Jay's SCAR Project is described as "a series of large-scale portraits of young breast cancer survivors," intended to raise awareness about early onset breast cancer while "paying tribute to the courage and spirit of so many brave young women." Dedicated to the more than 10,000 women under the age of 40 who will ...
Read in browser Drive-thru funeral parlor: "It's a convenience thing."
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 07:53 am Here lies the late Robert Sanders, 58, at the Robert L. Adams drive-through funeral parlor in the Los Angeles area city of Compton. The funeral parlor has been in business since 1974, and is believed to be the only drive-through funeral home in southern California, according to office manager Denise Knowles-Bragg. She says the parlor ...
Read in browser Two Tibetans shot dead, another self-immolation, as China's dissent crackdown continues
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 07:09 am Radio Free Asia reports that a 40-year-old Tibetan monk and his 38-year-old brother in Sichuan province were shot by authorities today, after participating protests against Chinese rule and calling for the return of the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. "The two brothers had been on the run for more than two weeks, and had ...
Read in browser Inside the Fukushima exclusion zone: the photography of Satoru Niwa
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 06:43 am Among the recent projects of London/Tokyo-based photojournalist Satoru Niwa is this stunning series of images captured near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, just days after the March 11, 2011 quake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear disaster. Above: a policeman wearing protective gear to guard against radiation, 15 miles from the plant, on March 25, ...
Read in browser The FBI file of Steven Paul Jobs
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 06:12 am In 1991, the FBI began interviewing Steve Jobs and people he worked with, as the CEO of Next Inc. "began to be considered as a candidate for sensitive, presidential appointments." Here is Steve Jobs' FBI file, released under the Freedom of Information Act. "Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs' honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist ...
Read in browser Breaded Cats
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 05:42 am The Breaded Cats (or Breading Cats, or Cat Breading) website has been making the rounds for some weeks now. Like a fine wine, or a cat, but not a loaf of bread, it seems to improve with age. Cat Breading How To: 1) Take a piece of bread 2) Cut a hole approximately 1 inch ...
Read in browser Monk and Tiger share a meal
By Xeni Jardin on Feb 10, 2012 05:38 am Here is the most wonderful photograph you'll ever see of a Buddhist monk sharing food with a tiger. Shot by photographer Wojtek Kalka at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Worth noting: animal rights advocates do not think the temple itself is wonderful, as the afore-linked Wikipedia entry explains, because the big cats there are ...
Read in browser Martian watches
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 04:51 am CDR sez, "Watches that keep Martian time. Originally for a Mars Mission, now for anyone who needs something useless yet infinitely desirable." Mars Watches
Read in browser Rudy Rucker, KW Jeter and Jay Lake: free reading in San Francisco this Sat
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 03:50 am Rina from San Francisco's SF in SF reading series sez, "Join SF in SF for a very special evening with steampunk innovators K. W. Jeter, Jay Lake, and Rudy Rucker on Saturday, February 11th. Each author will read a selection, followed by Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson; booksigning and schmoozing follows. Books ...
Read in browser Recursive UK petition
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 12:59 am A UK e-petition: Public Hanging for those who propose public hanging: "The proposed punishments for some crimes are so horrific that the proper punishment for proposing this punishment is the death penalty..." If you ask me, hanging's too good for 'em. (Thanks, Alex)
Read in browser Shu Sugamata's origami spaceships
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 10, 2012 12:30 am Avi sez, "Shu Sugamata has been making origami spaceships since 1977 and has amassed quite a body of gorgeous work." ORIGAMI SPACESHIPS (Thanks, Avi!)
Read in browser The hidden beauty of the bottom of toy cars
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 09, 2012 11:14 pm At Jalopnik, Jason Torchinsky's interest in the bottoms of toy cars borders on the Nicholson Bakeresque. The bottoms of toy cars are fascinating because it's a revealing insight into the mind of the toy designer. Generally, you don't really have to do anything at all, but most toy cars have at least some attempt made ...
Read in browser Canadians speak out en masse against pro-censorship, pro-DRM copyright proposal; government ignores them
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 10:55 pm Michael Geist sez, Tens of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against proposed copyright reform in recent days that could combine the US DMCA with SOPA to create restrictive digital lock rules along with targeting of legitimate websites and website blocking. Canadians recognize that the bill will have an impact on the legitimate activities of ...
Read in browser The Pirate Bay will fit on a ZIP cartridge
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 09:59 pm The Pirate Bay is making good on its long-announced plan of moving from hosting a torrent-tracker to hosting "magnet links" that allow BitTorrent file-sharing without a centralized tracker. This will vastly reduce the amount of data that TPB needs to store and serve, so much so that the entire TPB index will only be 90MB ...
Read in browser KILL ACTA
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 09:48 pm Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country's officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it! Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana ...
Read in browser Over 100 NGOs ask WIPO to postpone secretive South Africa meeting
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 08:55 pm Over 100 NGOs have asked the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization to postpone a summit in South Africa on the grounds that notice of the meeting was not published, the agenda has been set without any transparency, and the speakers all favor a single, narrow view on copyright and patents. In a letter to the ...
Read in browser Make: Talk 004 - Steve Lodefink, Broad-Spectrum Hobbyist
By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb 09, 2012 08:50 pm Here's the fourth episode of MAKE's podcast, Make: Talk! In each episode, I'll interview one of the makers featured in the magazine. Our maker this week is Steve Lodefink. An inveterate tinkerer and "broad-spectrum hobbyist," Steve just can't say no to a cool project. At 3, he was already reverse-engineering the peanut butter and jelly ...
Read in browser U Washington's best-of-breed 3D printing lab shuts down knowledge sharing after administration introduces sweeping patent-grab
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 08:07 pm Michael sez, "The Open 3DP lab at UW has been doing some amazing things with 3D printing. More amazingly, they have prioritized sharing what they are learning with everyone else in order to make 3D printing better. A change to UW's intellectual property policy has essentially forced them to stop sharing what they are up ...
Read in browser Insurer offers discounts to customers running in-car GPS telemetry
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 07:51 pm Writing in PC Pro, Stewart Mitchell describes a partnership between GPS vendor TomTom and Fair Pay insurance, an auto insurer, to offer discounts to people whose GPS devices report low incidences of sudden stops and unsafe turns. I rather like this idea, the idea that your device could offer testimony on your behalf, but a ...
Read in browser Tool for finding out what information your apps are leaking
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 06:43 pm mitmproxy, "an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle proxy," is a useful little free software utility that can sniff the traffic between your computer or mobile device and its servers and determine what data the apps you're running are leaking to the mothership. mitmproxy is an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy. It provides a console interface that allows traffic flows ...
Read in browser Every Apple Design Ever in 30 seconds
By Rob Beschizza on Feb 09, 2012 06:36 pm I thought this week could do with some more "fanboy", so cobbled together this blast of Every Apple Design Ever (ish) in 30 seconds. I'm a Sony guy, at heart, but even if each of its products were given only a single frame of animation, such a video would not end before the heat death ...
Read in browser Video: when hip young technophiles become alter kakers
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 06:00 pm Social Media Week's "Future Hipsters" video imagines today's young technophilic changesurfers as old farts in 2062, wearing out-of-date fashion and telling rambling stories about being embarrassed by videos of themselves passing out at dubstep gigs. It's a nice illustration of the parenting advice Bruce Sterling once gave me: "No matter how outre and bohemian you ...
Read in browser William Gibson on aging futurism
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 05:00 pm In the latest Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast, William Gibson talks in depth about his terrific new essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and explains how he feels about doomsaying by elderly futurists: "Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality," Gibson says in the Wired ...
Read in browser People in a bathroom sing "I Wanna Be Like You"
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 04:00 pm Here's a perfectly delightful cover of I Wanna Be Like You from the Disney film "The Jungle Book," performed by a group of young people crowded into a bathroom. Good acoustics and fine choreography! JUNGLEBOOOK - I Wanna Be Like You (cover) (Thanks, Bethany!)
Read in browser Cyclists would rather ride a bike than have sex
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 09, 2012 03:53 pm In a recent survey of 5000 Bicycling magazine readers, 50% of men and 58% of women said that—if pressed to choose between sex or bikes—they'd pick the bikes.(Via Maria Popova)
Read in browser The song of a Jurassic cricket
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 09, 2012 03:43 pm Re-creation of Jurassic Cricket song, from Bristol University in the UK by qparker Listen to this recording. It sounds a little like Sputnik, but it's actually a noise that's not been heard in 165 million years. This is the song of an extinct species of bush cricket, the fossils of which have been found in ...
Read in browser Nevada police beat the hell out of man immobilized with diabetic shock, screaming "Do not resist, motherfucker!"
By Cory Doctorow on Feb 09, 2012 03:19 pm Here's footage of the police in Henderson, NV beating the crap out of Adam Greene, a man immobilized diabetic shock whom the police have mistaken for a drunk driver. The police point guns at him, pull him from the car, throw him to the ground, pile on him, and one officer, Sgt. Brett Seekatz begins ...
Read in browser Water bubbles orbiting a knitting needle on the ISS
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Feb 09, 2012 03:19 pm Astronaut Don Pettit is a national treasure. He's been to space three times—once for a six-month stay on the ISS. On every mission, he's found time to make huge contributions to the public communication of science, including making a series of amazing "Science Saturday" videos and inventing (from spare parts he found lying around the ...
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