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Mysterious booms in Wisconsin Katniss has nothing on Iza Privezenceva Sparkle and grunt: The sounds of a solar flare The weird glowing millipedes of Alcatraz Meanwhile, in species-naming news Scientific calculator in Minecraft Grooming a baby sea otter The book reader of the future, 1935 "Little Boxes" performed on little boxes How To: Pack for a European Vacation Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen pay to save The Hobbit pub from trademark trolls Sponsor Shout-Out: Shanalogic and Watchismo Garden gnome dispatched to poles, equator, elsewhere, to measure gravitational variation The cool new thing with tweens? Sewing. Rocker Mike Doughty recounts travails in memoir How Rome Sweet Rome went from Reddit to Hollywood Just look at this mutant triple banana. HOWTO Make your own Lucky Charms marshmallows Aziz Ansari and others follow Louis CK's lead with $5, DRM-free comedy concert downloads Gross and tantalizing menu from the Explorer's Club dinner Hilarious memoirs from the HR department: chapter 15 of "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" Samsung's new TV will watch the people watching it Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin under way in NYC Ron Wyden (D-OR) wants Obama to submit ACTA to Congress Royce Reed, star of campy-bizarro viral videos: RIP Doc blasts mandatory transvaginal ultrasound laws Creepiest "fine art" portrait of President Obama you will see all day Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex" London thinktank has already lofted a fleet of swarming file-sharing drones Deep design analysis of Walt Disney World's lighting fixtures Mysterious booms in Wisconsin
By David Pescovitz on Mar 22, 2012 12:49 pm I've posted before about mysterious booming sounds from unidentified sources that have rattled people in California, New York, and elsewhere. Now, the small town of Clintonville, Wisconsin has been rocked the last few nights by weird booms. The city government has now hired an engineering firm to try to identify the cause of the noises. ...
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By Rob Beschizza on Mar 22, 2012 12:45 pm [Video Link] Compare this casual, everyday bodkin-plinkage with the glossy and lurid X-Factor equivalent.
Read in browser Sparkle and grunt: The sounds of a solar flare
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 22, 2012 12:37 pm I really dig science that makes the inaudible audible. Earlier this month, I posted a link where you could listen to seismic waves from the Tohoku earthquake converted into sound. A couple years ago, we had sounds from space—plasma waves converted into sound. This video, from Space.com and the University of Michigan, turns a coronal ...
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By David Pescovitz on Mar 22, 2012 12:30 pm National Park Service workers were using black lights to conduct a rat census (!) on Alcatraz last month when they accidentally discovered these strange glowing millipedes. From KQED QUEST: Some millipedes species are known to fluoresce under black light, but National Park Service officials say it is the first recorded evidence of such millipedes on ...
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By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 22, 2012 12:23 pm Rudyard Kipling has a crocodile. (Via Jacquelyn Gill)
Read in browser Scientific calculator in Minecraft
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 22, 2012 12:22 pm SgtGodswordBerserker has implemented a multi-function scientific calculator using Minecraft, a project that echoes the earlier projects to build a CPU and a 3D printer using the game engine and its primitives. Specs: 6 digit addition and subtraction, 3 digit multiplication, division and trigonometric/scientific functions. (The reason these are only 3 digits is because multiplication and ...
Read in browser Grooming a baby sea otter
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 22, 2012 12:21 pm It's not just adorable! Grooming is actually an incredibly important part of keeping this baby sea otter healthy. Joanne Manaster visited the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and came back with a whole post for the PsiVid blog about the science of cute baby animals. When an otter is raised by humans, there are many skills ...
Read in browser The book reader of the future, 1935
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 22, 2012 12:13 pm Gentlemanwith relaxes with his e-book reader and laudanum kit. From the April, 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics. (Via The Retronaut)
Read in browser "Little Boxes" performed on little boxes
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 22, 2012 11:43 am Robbo sez, "The band Walk Off The Earth performs Malvina Reynolds' song 'Little Boxes' - on boxes. In fact the whole set for this music video is made of cardboard. Really cool and a sweet rendition of the tune. Most people know the song now as the opening theme for 'Weeds" but when I was ...
Read in browser How To: Pack for a European Vacation
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 22, 2012 11:41 am Back in high school, I purchased an old travel guide to Europe at a library book sale. It taught me some valuable lessons about inflation and changing social expectations. But I really only used it for ironic comedy value. My friend Doug Mack, on the other hand, took his interest in 1960s travel guides a ...
Read in browser Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen pay to save The Hobbit pub from trademark trolls
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 22, 2012 11:34 am You've probably heard that an old pub called The Hobbit in Southampton is under threat from the film company that controls the licensing for the Tolkien canon. After a public outcry, the company agreed to sell the pub a license to go on using the name it has had for decades. Stephen Fry and Ian ...
Read in browser Sponsor Shout-Out: Shanalogic and Watchismo
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 22, 2012 11:00 am Our thanks go to Watchismo, sponsors of Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email, and to Shanalogic. Destroyers, Restrictors, Crusaders, Surveyors, Observers and Gearheads aren't the job positions available at mercenary companies. They're some of the cool Vestal Watches on sale at Watchismo. And, for a limited time, the entire collection is ...
Read in browser Garden gnome dispatched to poles, equator, elsewhere, to measure gravitational variation
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 22, 2012 09:17 am Kern Precision Scales has dispatched a garden gnome around the world to be weighed, in order to test the hypothesis that things weigh less at the equator than they do at the poles, due to the "little bit potato shaped" imperfections in the Earth's sphericalness. They've reported that their gnome is 0.6% lighter at the ...
Read in browser The cool new thing with tweens? Sewing.
By Elisabeth Soep on Mar 22, 2012 09:00 am Fourteen-year-old Luna Ito-Fisher started making her own clothes and accessories when she was nine, after attending a friend's birthday party at a sewing studio in LA. "I remember at the beginning, threading was so hard and I could never get it through the needle," Luna tells me as she sets up her machine on her ...
Read in browser Rocker Mike Doughty recounts travails in memoir
By John Biggs on Mar 22, 2012 08:55 am We needle our cultural heroes and then are delighted when they dissolve in front of us. It happens again and again, in Whitney Houston and in Michael Jackson and in Don Cornelius. They show us the way and when the way becomes treacherous we wish nothing more than to see them fall. That is why ...
Read in browser How Rome Sweet Rome went from Reddit to Hollywood
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 22, 2012 01:35 am Wired's Jason Fagone talks to James Erwin, whose brilliant flash fiction about a modern military unit trapped in ancient Rome -- posted as comments on Reddit -- led to a movie deal. Previously.
Read in browser Just look at this mutant triple banana.
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 22, 2012 12:04 am Just look at it. I see your double banana, and raise you another banana... I introduce MUTANT TRIPLE BANANA! (i.imgur.com)
Read in browser HOWTO Make your own Lucky Charms marshmallows
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 11:01 pm If you can make homemade corn syrup, you can make homemade marshmallows. If you can make homemade marshmallows, you can make homemade Lucky Charms marshmallows. If you can do that, you are become death, destroyer of worlds. That said, making homemade Lucky Charms is not for everyone. You can read that sentence as a warning ...
Read in browser Aziz Ansari and others follow Louis CK's lead with $5, DRM-free comedy concert downloads
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 10:29 pm Aziz Ansari, an extremely funny standup comedian, has just released "Dangerously Delicious," a comedy special that follows Louis CK's Live at the Beacon Theater DIY, DRM-free concert video, which netted CK over a million dollars. Ansari, who was an outspoken critic of SOPA and PIPA, is also asking for $5 for his DRM-free download, and ...
Read in browser Gross and tantalizing menu from the Explorer's Club dinner
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 09:19 pm Last week's 108th annual Explorer's Club dinner at NYC's Waldorf-Astoria featured the customary assortment of weird, gross and tantalizing food, starting with cow eyeball martinis (see Paul Adams's photo, below, of the eyeballs). Popular Science has the whole menu. Here's what the canapes were like: Pineapple towers with scorpion, pea pods, strawberry slices, melon balls ...
Read in browser Hilarious memoirs from the HR department: chapter 15 of "Let's Pretend This Never Happened"
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 08:10 pm Jenny Lawson, creator of the Bloggess blog, has posted a long and extremely funny excerpt from her forthcoming book Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir). The excerpt, from chapter 15, details Lawson's bizarre experiences working in a corporate HR department, coping with the terrible behavior of the employees, the awfulness of the ...
Read in browser Samsung's new TV will watch the people watching it
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 21, 2012 08:09 pm "Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the Samsung 8000ES-series LED TV. "6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me."
Read in browser Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin under way in NYC
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 21, 2012 07:26 pm A large crowd of protesters, between 2,000 and 5,000 by various estimates, are marching through the streets of New York right now to draw attention to the killing of Trayvon Martin. The Florida teen was shot to death last month, in a case that has generated widespread outrage online. Tim Pool has been running a ...
Read in browser Ron Wyden (D-OR) wants Obama to submit ACTA to Congress
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 07:03 pm Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has demanded that the Obama administration receive Congressional assent before signing the USA up to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a wide-reaching international copyright treaty that was negotiated in secret (even Congress and the European Parliament weren't allowed to read the treaty drafts as they were negotiated). Wyden argues that the ...
Read in browser Royce Reed, star of campy-bizarro viral videos: RIP
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 21, 2012 05:59 pm At Dangerous Minds, our friend and former (frequent) guestblogger Richard Metzger writes about the death of Royce Reed, co-star of the "Royce and Marilyn" viral videos. She passed away last night. "In 2009, when I was guest-blogger at Boing Boing," he writes, "I helped get the ball rolling on the Royce and Marilyn craze." Indeed ...
Read in browser Doc blasts mandatory transvaginal ultrasound laws
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 05:53 pm An anonymous MD has a guest-post on John Scalzi's blog describing her/his medical outrage at being asked to perform medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds on women seeking abortion, in accordance with laws proposed and passed by several Republican-dominated state legislatures. As the doctor writes, "If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it ...
Read in browser Creepiest "fine art" portrait of President Obama you will see all day
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 21, 2012 05:34 pm McNaughton Fine Art is selling "One Nation Under Socialism" by Jon Naughton starting at just $345 for framed, signed, numbered Giclée prints. I was going to link to this artist's statement generator, but realized his *actual* artist statement is even better: "When I paint a patriotic painting...its like throwing a stick of dynamite in the ...
Read in browser Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 21, 2012 05:15 pm In The Atlantic today, a must-read piece by Teju Cole on some of the cultural issues raised by Kony 2012, and reactions to it in the media-blog-Twitter-opinion-sphere. I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good ...
Read in browser London thinktank has already lofted a fleet of swarming file-sharing drones
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 04:46 pm Earlier this week, I blogged the Pirate Bay's announcement of a plan to set up mirrors of its servers in high-altitude aerial drones with wireless Internet links. TorrentFreak has a discussion of Electronic Countermeasures, a project from Tomorrow's Thoughts Today, a London thinktank. Electronic Countermeasures does much of what TPB proposes, creating an "aerial napster" ...
Read in browser Deep design analysis of Walt Disney World's lighting fixtures
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 21, 2012 04:00 pm FoxxFur, the brilliant, pseudonymous design critic and scholar of Disney themeparks, is back again, with the first post in a series of long analyses of the use of lighting fixtures in the design of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom park. FoxxFur matches the attention-to-detail of the original Imagineers, unearthing a design sensibility that is incredibly ...
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