fortapocalypse writes "Duke University in collaboration with Virtual Heroes (who created America's Army) has produced a game called Virtual Peace, the intention of which is to help the gamer develop disaster relief and conflict resolution skills. Virtual Peace also is the winner of the HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition according to an article published by the university."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was a Pownce user. (Ack it can't find my page -- and I was a premium, paying user! Oy. When did that happen?)

There were some things I liked about it, but I agree it was time to pull the plug.

I stopped using it when:

1. Twitter got its act together and stopped acting like a Norwegian parrot pining for the fjords.

2. FriendFeed occupied the space above Twitter, as the messaging system with more (than Twitter). FriendFeed has never had trouble staying up.

The biggest problem with Pownce was:

1. It couldn't handle even a modest load. It would get very very slow when anything interesting started happening, therefore keeping anything interesting from happening.

The one thing Pownce got right was:

1. It had payloads!

Three things that slowed adoption of Pownce beyond the inability to handle a load:

1. It was in private beta for a long, long time.

2. It took forever for it to get an API.

3. When the API finally came it wasn't compatible with anything.

Net-net, there were interesting things about Pownce, and we'll remember it with a certain amount of fondness.

Hopefully Leah can take what she's learned and turn out something great at SixApart.

I'd recommend: Twitter-Plus-Plus. (With lots of interop, and do the payloads thing again, they need a kick in the ass over there at Twitter to get it into their product.)

Pets.com's Sock Puppet asks Congress: "Why are you talking about bailing out the auto companies when you let all us tech companies just crash and burn?"

(Instead of giving taxpayer's money directly to the automakers, why not pass a law requiring every US citizen of driving age to buy a Hummer, Tahoe, or F250? Those unable to pay cash can get a pre-approved AIG-insured payment plan. That would keep Detroit busy, help the oil companies, and give AIG another excuse for a cash infusion down the road.)

Now Playing at Reason.tv: Where's Sock Puppet's Bailout?

The Mucky Wheel electronic instrument turns out the blips, bleeps, and bloops with a satisfyingly sea-going motif. Design and construction photos available here. [via Synthtopia]

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Two separate stories in the NY Times provide fodder for those who view Google as the new scary borg. The first, looks at Google's sometimes slippery slope role as a "gatekeeper" of information within certain countries. For example, it looks at Google's agreement to help block access to certain YouTube videos in Thailand and similar decisions in other countries. The article plays up Google's reluctance to be involved in making these sorts of decisions (and highlights how the company hopes that more countries learn to accept free speech a bit more), but it still leaves you with this questionable feeling of Google as quasi-government censor. No matter how well-meaning the people may be who are making the decisions, it still feels questionable.

The second article isn't just about Google, but talks about how, with various online services, many people are effectively giving up their privacy. This is hardly a new topic, and it's one that's been discussed repeatedly -- often with a nod to the famous Scott McNealy quote from almost a decade ago: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." The article touches on a lot more than just Google, but does mention the fact that Google seems to have access to all sorts of data that, when clumped together, could be seen as a violation of privacy for some.

Between the two stories, you can see why there's a growing sense of worry among some about how Google could become dangerous. It has access to all sorts of data about you -- and has the power to make decisions about what you can access, often with no explanation or recourse. Put that together, and you get this picture of Google as the benevolent dictator of the internet -- where it may be using its powers (mostly) for good, but there's plenty of potential that eventually it could turn evil. And, to some extent, it's worth highlighting these issues, so that people don't become complacent about Google's actions. But, there's an undercurrent to these stories that seem to miss out on a few things: if Google really does start abusing either of these "powers," unlike with a dictator, people have pretty easy choices to go elsewhere. Furthermore, as more concerns are raised about any potential abuse, people are rapidly working on technologies that solve both issues -- allowing people to surf the internet much more anonymously, while also routing around censorship. So, while it's not problematic to highlight these potential issues with Google, that doesn't mean that there aren't necessary checks and balances in place.

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The Book Design Review blog's top book covers for 2008 are up. This is one of my favorite annual features -- and this year's includes some drop-dead gorgeous designs. I'm insanely jealous of Austin Grossman for getting that brilliant cover for his excellent book Soon I Will Be Invincible. I've mentioned Jordan Crane's wonderful cover for Chabon's Maps and Legends and the new edition of Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, but why did no one tell me about the beauty that is the cover for Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me

My Favorite Book Covers of 2008 (via Kottke)

Dave Bullock (eecue) writes "Scientists at UCLA have accidentally created a material that will some day give us better, faster, cheaper, more flexible digital cameras. I toured their lab and shot a photo essay for Wired. Personally I'm looking forward to a quantum-dot embedded camera sensor someday soon. 'Graduate student Hsiang-Yu Chen was working on a new formula for solar cells when something went wrong. Instead of creating electricity when hit with light, the conductivity of the material she was working with changed. "The original purpose [was] to make a solar cell more efficient," says Chen. "However, during the research we found the solar cell phenomenon [had] disappeared." Instead, the test material showed high gain photoconductivity, indicating potential use as a photo sensor.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Monster trucks look even cooler when they are miniaturized via tilt-shift videography. Metal Heart by Keith Loutit (Via Telstar Logistics)

It's CYBER MONDAY MAKERS! So in that spirit we were able to do up a quick code/sale for all our robot kits for today. It starts at 12:01 am PST 12/1/2008 and ends today at 11:59 pm PST. Use code CYBERM at checkout at the Maker Shed.

I'm also going to do a contest. It's really simple, just post up your version of the "Three laws of robotics" in the comments, make it clever, funny, outrageous. At 11:59pm PST I'll post up a winner. You can post up multiple entries, contest is world-wide. The prize? The new Co-Robot kit we just got in from Japan! Here's a video!

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By way of the Make: Flickr pool comes these awesome junkbot sculptures made by Mario Caicedo Langer from Bogatá, Columbia.

Ecodiseño

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blackbearnh writes "Last week, the net was all abuzz with speculation that SCO was finally gone and done for. With the final judgment in SCO v. Novell in, and SCO millions of dollars in the hole to Novell, it seemed like the fat lady had finally sung. But like most things in the legal system, it isn't nearly that simple. O'Reilly Media sought out Groklaw's Pamela Jones, and got a rundown of what's still alive, and why a final end to the madness may be many years away. 'Summing up, it looks bleak for SCO at the moment, but let's enter the alternate realm of SCO's best-case scenario in its dreams: in that realm, SCO wins on appeal, which one of SCO's lawyers indicated might take a year and a half or five years, and the case is sent back to Utah for trial by jury, which is what SCO wanted (as opposed to trial by judge, which is what it got), then everything listed above (except for the IPO class action) comes alive again, presumably, depending on what the appellate court decides. Then SCO is in position once again to go after Linux end users, as well as IBM, et al.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With plenty of bad publicity showing up for law firm Davenport Lyons and its ongoing campaign to shake people down with "pre-settlement" letters threatening them with copyright infringement lawsuits if they don't pay up, it appears that things aren't going quite as planned. First, the press has found more people who were apparently falsely accused by the firm -- and this time, it's an elderly couple who are quite horrified that they're being accused of downloading gay porn (this would be the same gay porn where recent reports noted that the publishers were encouraging another company to upload it to many sites, so there would be more people to accuse of pirating it).

On top of that, it appears that Atari, which had hired Davenport Lyons (and whose games were part of the original story of falsely accused people) has now stopped the anti-piracy campaign, canceled requests for identification on various IP addresses and apparently dropped Davenport Lyons in the process. It seems Atari realized that the campaign was generating an awful lot of negative publicity. Shaking down innocent people can do that, apparently.

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In some parts of the US, there's been reports that trees aren't bearing acorns this year. "We're talking zero. Not a single acorn. It's really bizarre," said Greg Zell, a naturalist at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But [field botanist Rod] Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

Simmons thinks the reason could be that the unusually heavy rainfall in the spring washed the pollen out of the air before it had time to pollinate the acorn blossoms. But Ed Zimmer, a regional forester for the Virginia Department of Forestry, doesn't think that's possible. So far, no one knows for sure what's going on.

Where'd all the acorns go? (Via Neatorama)

( Image above by Peter Beste. You're welcome! ) The LA Weekly has a feature up about a new book with portraits of very serious Norwegian Black Metal dudes. In True Norwegian Black Metal, photographer Peter Beste captures the "blackest of the black: apolitical and anti-Christian separatist self-preservationists who’d sooner make a lampshade out of their own skin than to try to convert fans." Snip from Siran Babayan's piece:

Take, for example, Immortal singer-bassist Abbath strolling through the woods surrounded by moss-covered emerald trees (“That’s essentially his backyard”), or Gorgoroth singer Gaahl standing in front of a snow-capped log cabin. Every turn of the page is a moving postcard of brooks, lakes and forrests. Which begs the question: With all the serenity and breathtaking views, what’s to rebel against? Apparently, Mother Nature makes mean Vikings out of little boys. If Black Sabbath were a product of bleak, industrial Birmingham, it should be no surprise that music this extreme thrives in a country with such high precipitation and so many months of either uninterrupted daylight or darkness.

So don’t let the scenery fool you. These are some disturbed and disturbing fuckers, whether it’s guitarist Ymon of Perished with his arms covered in branding marks, or Nattefrost of Carpathian Forest smoking heroin off tin foil or a nude female model being painted in cow’s blood before she’s about to be hung from a cross for a Gorgoroth show in Krakow. Nearly everyone is wearing a scowl, corpse paint and spikes. And Beste’s grossest moment has him shooting Nattefrost smeared in his own shit.

Of all the bands featured, Beste focuses on the Tolkien-inspired Gorgoroth and its lead troublemaker Gaahl, who’s been arrested twice for alleged assault and torture, and whose face, with its sunken cheeks, looks even creepier without makeup. And that Krakow gig in 2004 not only included human crucifixes but sheep heads mounted on sticks. (Dude, one photo of decapitated sheep heads would’ve been enough.)

Images of Satan (LA Weekly), and there's a terrific slideshow here (NSFW). Here's the Amazon link if you'd like to buy the book. (Thanks Richard Metzger)

We've posted before about the "Wilhelm scream," the singular screech heard in hundreds of movies and TV shows since it was recorded in 1951. Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon notes the scream's transition into the video game world.
"The gamer's guide to the Wilhelm Scream"

stoolpigeon writes "MySQL is frequently touted as the world's most widely used relational database management system. Many of the best known web applications and web sites use MySQL as their data repository. The popularity of MySQL has continued to grow while at the same time many were concerned by the lack of many features considered essential to a 'real' rdbms. Such naysayers have done little to impede the growth or development of MySQL. The first edition of MySQL in a Nutshell, published in 2005, gave users a handy reference to using MySQL. The second edition, published in 2008, covers many new features that MySQL fans proudly proclaim as an answer to all those critics clamoring for a better-rounded rdbms." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John links to a fantastic Crave piece about master Vietnamese phone-unlockers, virtuosos of desoldering who manage the painstaking business of unlocking your iPhone so that you can choose which network you run it on.

First, a technician opened up the phone and stripped it to the motherboard. In his skillful hands, the device seemed much easier to dismantle than I expected.

The technician then extracted the baseband chip, the component that controls the connection between the phone and the mobile network, from the motherboard. (This is a painstaking task as the chip is strongly glued to the phone's motherboard. A mistake during this process could brick the phone completely.)

Once the chip was extracted, it was Tuan Anh's turn. He used a chip reader to read information into a file. He then used a Hex editor to remove the locking data from the file, and after that, the chip got reprogrammed with the newly altered file. Now it was no longer programmed to work with only a specific provider.

The chip then got reassembled into the motherboard, another painstaking process.

As a last step, the technician put the phone back together, and it looked like nothing had been done to it.

Unlocking an iPhone 3G the Vietnamese way Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Alex Weber, of Tinkerlog, who's brought us such wonderful projects as the programmable LED (featured in The Best of Instructables) and synchronizing fireflies, now offers kits for both of these projects in his new Tinkerstore. Synchronizing Firefly kit sells for 11.50 Euros (about $14.40) and simulates a firefly with a tiny microcontroller. If put together with other fireflies, they will flash randomly. After some time they will start to interact with each other and the flashes will start synchronize until all fireflies flash at once. The kit contains the Firefly PCB, ATtiny13V microcontroller, bright RGB LED (~4000mcd), phototransistor, capacitors and resistors, sockets and header. Not included are a power supply and the ping pong ball. The programmable LED kit sells for 6.50 Euros (about $8.25) and has a blinking sequence that can be programmed with a flashlight. It detects changes in the lighting, records them, and plays them back. The kit includes everything you need to build the circuit, including the 3V coin cell battery. It requires freeform soldered (no PCB).

Tinkerstore

More:

The Best of Instructables Volume I

Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, editors of MAKE, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of technology, craft and food hacking how-to's from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photographs, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won't find anywhere else. Cool electronics projects such as Alex Weber's programmable LED are included in over 120 projects.
Price: $29.99

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Over at the parsarts.com blog, Sepideh Saremi* has a post up about Colorado-based artist Tom Loughlin. His portraits of Iranians inside Iran are featured in an installation project currently traveling across the US, "Pictures of You: Images from Iran." Snip:

PA: The photos in Pictures of You are printed on translucent silk. You’ve written that the silk is intended to allow viewers to see each other as well as the photographs, and to remind them that “something beautiful is in jeopardy.” How have viewers reacted to Pictures of You?

TL: There have been a wide variety of reactions. In fact, the one commonality seems to be that no one is indifferent. Everyone seems to have a powerful response to the show.

So far, the overwhelming majority of responses have been positive. Viewers thank us for putting a human face on Iran, and many of them have powerful emotional responses. It’s quite amazing for me as an artist to see people emerging from the installation in tears, or emptying their pockets into our donation boxes because they want to see the show travel to other venues.

We have had a variety of negative responses as well. At our installation in Denver, we were picketed by a Christian group that wanted to express the view that Muslims were going to hell. Interestingly, they all agreed that the subjects of my photographs looked like very nice people. At the same installation, we had a visitor tell us that he wanted to go and get dynamite and destroy the artwork. One of our staff members engaged him in conversation about the show, and within ten minutes he had changed his mind completely.

Pictures of You: Images from Iran (Pars Arts)

* Diclosure: By day, Sepideh works with DECA, the company with whom Boing Boing partnered to launch Boing Boing tv.

We've already talked about how the Lori Drew case represents a dangerous slippery slope, in that it effectively turns just about everyone into an internet criminal who can face years in jail for "criminal computer fraud," simply because they disobeyed a website's terms of service -- even if they didn't read the terms or even approve them. With the initial verdict in, Orin Kerr -- who is involved with the case as a part of Drew's legal team -- demonstrates how awful this case is by changing the terms of service on the blog he writes for in order to demonstrate how easy it is for any website to turn pretty much everyone into a criminal:

New Terms of Use for the Volokh Conspiracy: In light of the verdict in the Lori Drew case, I have decided to promulgate new Terms of Use for the Volokh Conspiracy. You are only permitted to visit the Volokh Conspiracy if you are in compliance with the Terms of Use. Any accessing the Volokh Conspiracy in a way that violates these terms is unauthorized, and according to the Justice Department is a federal crime that can lead to your arrest and imprisonment for up to one year for every visit to the blog.

By visiting this blog, you promise that:

1. You will not post comments that are abusive, profane, or irrelevant. Civil and relevant comments only, as indicated by our comment policy.
2. You are not an employee of the U.S. government. Yes, that includes postal service employees, law clerks, judges, and interns. We're a libertarian-leaning blog, and we're for the private sector only. Government types, keep out.
3. Your middle name is not "Ralph." I've always thought Ralph was a funny name, and even odder as a middle name. No one with the middle name "Ralph" is welcome here.
4. You're super nice. We have strict civility rules here, and this blog is only for people who are super nice. If you are not super nice, as judged by me, your visit to this blog is unauthorized.
5. You have never visited Alaska. Okay, this one is totally arbitrary, but it's our blog and we can keep out who we want. Alaska visitors are out, too.

If you post an abusive comment; you are an employee of the U.S. government; your middle name is Ralph; you're not super nice, as judged by me; or you have visited Alaska, I have kinda bad news for you: You are a criminal, as you have just violated 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) by accessing the Volokh Conspiracy's service without authorization or in excess of authorization. You are only authorized to visit the blog in compliance with the Terms of Use, and by violating these terms you have become a criminal by essentially "hacking in" to the Volokh Conspiracy.

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I love the band Styx in a non-ironic way. That's why I was delighted to stumble upon this curious ukulele cover of Styx's "Come Sail Away" by Uke enthusiast Sirant who lives in China. He looks like quite a character.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A 2006 paper by Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds and Duncan Watts, about the patterns that users follow in choosing and recommending songs to each other on a music download site, may be the key to understanding the most effective form of "censorship" that still exists in mostly-free countries like the US It also explains why your great ideas haven't made you famous, while lower-wattage bulbs always seem to find a platform to spout off their ideas (and you can keep your smart remarks to yourself)." Read on for the rest of Bennett's take on why the effects of peer ratings on a music download site go a long way towards explaining how good ideas can effectively be "censored" even in a country with no formal political censorship.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The man known most widely for Radiohead-related artwork (album covers, posters, t-shirt and merch designs, and lovely stuff that lives on the web) is launching an independent record label. Stanley Donwood explains:

'SIX INCH RECORDS' is a project that may take a little explaining. The story begins around the time of Christmas 2006, when I drunkenly decided to become a record label boss. Every man needs a hobby, or so the cliché has it, and if I was going to make a late-stage attempt at normality then that was one of the things that I should do. So, still reeling from red wine, I typed out a email to three musicians that I knew, suggesting that I release their music on my as-yet-unnamed record label.

Do read the entirety of Donwood's introduction here. Like everything he does, it's complicated, a little crazy, most intricately conceived, and very interesting. I'm a big fan, and I can't wait to hear the music he's curated here. The Six Inch Records launch party takes place in London on January 30th; tickets are £6.66. (via the excellent Radiohead fan-blog GreenPlastic, and Rex -- thanks!)

One of my favorite spots in San Francisco is the Musée Mécanique, a magnificent penny arcade filled with dozens of old timey arcade machines, mechanical music instruments, bizarre automatons, and, of course, a photobooth. It's a truly wonderful place to visit. Proprietor Dan Zelinsky is a terrific guy who restores and maintains the machines himself. The Musée's David Gallagher just emailed to update me that one of Dan's pet project, a book titled Lost And Found At The Musée Mécanique, is now complete:

Over the last 30 years Dan has been collecting and saving photobooth strips left around the Musee in hopes that the owner would try to retrieve them… of course the large majority of them (ok, all of them) never get picked up.

So in addition to the large collection of machines in the Musee, he’s a got a huge collection of orphaned photobooth strips, the best of which he’s collected into a book called “Lost and Found at the Musée Mécanique”. the book is pretty cool, the pages are the size of strips themselves and the whole thing is bound at one corner so it can be fanned out like a pinwheel.

Musée Mécanique's Lost And Found book

Here are 3 different designs for bicycle-powered buses:

1. The Buscycle

(image via Ecofriend)

2. Eindhoven University's human-powered bus (also see our previous coverage):

3. The Velodisco:

On one hand, these all look pretty inefficient. On another, shouldn't you have less wind, drivetrain, and surface resistance to overcome per person on a well-designed setup like this compared to single-person bicycles?

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Michael Geist sez,"One year after launching the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, I've just released a new film that explores why copyright emerged as such a high profile issue. Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law, which I produced together with Daniel Albahary, features a wide range of Canadian voices - artists like Gordon Duggan of Appropriation Art; writers like award winning science fiction author Karl Schroeder; musicians like Wide Mouth Mason's Safwan Javed; business people like Nettwerk Record's Terry McBride, Lulu.com's Bob Young, and Skylink Technologies' Philip Tsui; government appointees like Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and Ian E. Wilson, the Chief Librarian of Canada; and many, many more. Given the emphasis on the benefits of the Internet as a distribution channel for creators, the film is available in multiple ways online at newly designed page."

Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law (Thanks, Michael!)

A captivating, internet-inspired music video for "Yellow Fever," from the band Levelload. Directed by Babanuki ( = Tom Palliser and Ian Anderson). According to the YouTube summary, "Both song and video are about men who are obsessed with japanese/asian girls. The video also features robots, flamethrowers, credit verification systems & web browsing, all hand drawn." (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory have developed a novel microscopy technique to generate "digital embryos," 3D visualizations of early embryonic development down to the position of individual cells and the division of those cells. Their first big success, published recently in the journal Science, is a reconstruction of the first 24 hours of a Zebrafish embryo's development. The resulting movies are quite spectacular. From an EMBL press release:

Two newly developed technologies were key to the scientists' interdisciplinary approach to tracking a living zebrafish embryo from the single cell stage to 20,000 cells: a Digital Scanned Laser Light Sheet Microscope that scans a living organism with a sheet of light along many different directions so that the computer can assemble a complete 3D image, and a large-scale computing pipeline operated at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology...

"The digital embryo is like Google Earth for embryonic development. It gives an overview of everything that happens in the first 24 hours and allows you to zoom in on all cellular and even subcellular details," says Jochen Wittbrodt, who has recently moved from EMBL to the University of Heidelberg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

The Zebrafish digital embryo(European Molecular Biology Laboratory), "Digital zebrafish embryo" press release (EMBL), "Reconstruction of Zebrafish Early Embryonic Development by Scanned Light Sheet Microscopy" (Science, thanks Mark Pescovitz!)

Mad Merlin writes "It's no secret that MySQL 5.1 has been a long time in the making, with the first beta release being in Nov 2005, but MySQL 5.1.30 has finally been released as GA. MySQL users can expect new features such as table/index partitioning, row based replication, a new plugin architecture, an event scheduler and a host of performance improvements from 5.1." Monty also had a blog post outlining some of the challenges faced in 5.1, including crashing bugs and a beta quality to most new features.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I collect antique medical illustrations from the 18th and 19th century. My collection is small, mostly because the really beautiful pieces are usually quite pricey. For a more affordable option, Transmission Atelier is a fine art printer in Chicago that also reissues antique medical, religious, mythology, and natural history illustrations. They've picked some fantastic pieces to reprint. I haven't seen Transmission Atelier's work in person, but they describe their products as "extremely detailed limited edition digital pigment prints." Small prints (8" x 10") are $49.99 and the large ones (16" x 20") are $119.99.
Transmission Atelier Editions

Apparently, intellectual property issues can show up even in the middle of a warzone. It seems that some Finnish officials, reviewing images and videos of the Russian invasion of Georgia earlier this year were somewhat upset to note that Russian military uniforms appeared to have copied Finnish military camouflage design -- which, yes, the Finnish government has legally protected in Europe (found via Open IT Strategies). Finland has decided not to pursue the issue, and Russian officials deny the copying, but it still shows how weird a world we live in when governments are using intellectual property rights to try to protect military camouflage designs.

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JBooks has an audio interview with pioneering underground comix writer Harvey Pekar, author of American Splendor. In discussion with Brown University cultural historian Paul Buhle, Pekar talks about being a secular Jew, speaking Yiddish, and Studs Terkel. Buhle is the editor of Jews And American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form, and is currently working on a biography of Pekar.
Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle in Conversation

This is a pretty interesting idea, taking the word chemical "back" as something good... or at least not "poisonous"... I agree!

The Royal Society of Chemistry is today reclaiming the word chemical from the advertising and marketing industries.

It has been misappropriated and maligned as synonymous with "poison". The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently defended an advert which perpetuated the myth that natural compounds are free of chemicals.

The truth, as any right-minded person will say, is that everything we eat, drink, drive, play with and live in is made of chemicals - both natural and synthetic chemicals are essential for life as we know it.

If, as the ASA says, the public believes materials can be "100% chemical free", the RSC will soon be inundated with examples from people wishing to claim the £1 million pound bounty announced today by the RSC.

Dr Neville Reed, a director of the RSC, said today: "I'd be happy to give a million pounds to the first member of the public who could place in my hands any material I consider 100% chemical free.

"Should anyone do this, we will see thousands of years' worth of knowledge evaporate before our eyes. We would have to tear up the textbooks, burn the degree certificates and retrain the teachers."

The manufacturers of a popular "organic" fertiliser recently drew the attention of the public when it claimed in promotional materials the product contained no chemicals whatsoever.

The product's manufacturer makes the fantastic claim to be "100% chemical free" in its advertising and on its packaging. The back of the packaging lists its chemical-free ingredients, which include phosphorus pentoxide and potassium oxide.

More:

The Chemistry gift guide - Celebrating chemistry and inspiring the next generation of chemists!

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How to Build an Igloo (book review) by Kevin Kelly @ Cool Tools - the book is available at Amazon.

A wonderfully illustrated guide to making snow shelters. How to build with snow, how to work with snow rather than against it, and what not to do. Amazingly informative, succinct and fun. This book is the kind of expert you dream of.

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jbolden writes "According to the Wall Street Journal the FCC is considering a plan to provide free wireless internet. The plan would involve some level of filtering but might allow adults to opt out. CTIA has argued that this business model has traditionally failed (see Slate magazine analysis as to why)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Obama's Change.gov site has dropped its "All Rights Reserved" notice and switched to the Creative Commons Attribution license, the most liberal of the CC licenses. change.gov set free (Thanks, Simon!)

House Industries continues to serve up ampersanded goods. Who knew a maple cutting board could be so stylish? #

Multi-tool... is a font via NOTCOT. Marcus writes -

My neighbour forgot his multi function tool in our kitchen. I started playing around with it and (surprise, surprise) tried to create a whole alphabet with the sentence “typography can be a multi function tool” in mind. I did not yet find the time to create a real font but if you want to play with it, feel free to download the high resolution versions of the colored (5MB) and the black(0.5MB) characterset as PNG.

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Martyr4BK writes "Businessweek has a slew of special reports today on open source software discussing the benefits for buyers who are cost conscious and open source being the silver lining for the economic slump. They even have a slideshow of "OSS alternatives" like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Firefox,Xen, Pentaho, OpenOffice.org, Drupal, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Asterisk. These are all good examples (we use a bunch of them already), what other open source software can I use to drop my companies IT costs, and maybe get a decent bonus for the year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The heart of Charles Nessons' case against the RIAA is that the copyright law cited to attack file-sharers is unconstitutional due to the ridiculous statutory fines put on copyright infringement. The original fines were really meant for commercial copyright counterfeiters -- and the law was never intended to be used against random internet users sharing some songs off of their computer with no profit motive at all. The law also didn't anticipate songs being sold for less than $1. So, with statutory fines for each act of infringement sitting between $750 and $150,000, there are some big problems. Luckily, it appears some judges are beginning to agree with the idea that these fines are ridiculous. Ray Beckerman highlights a recent ruling by District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin in the Southern District of New York, where Schendlin stated:

"At the end of the day, 'statutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'... and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'"

Beckerman notes that a more reasonable standard would be somewhere between zero and nine times the actual damages -- with the lost profit on a single download being approximately $0.35 -- meaning damages per song should range from $0 to $3.15 per song file. Somehow, I'm guessing the RIAA will disagree.

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Gimble writes "Richard Bennett has an article at the Register claiming that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for file transfers to avoid ISP "traffic management" restrictions will cause a meltdown of the internet reducing everybody's bandwidth to a quarter of their current value. Other folks have also expressed concern that this may not be the best thing for the internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Peter Dilworth of MIT's Leg Lab made this bipedal walking robot based on a Troodon dinosaur.

His objective was straightforward: "It was for the robot to stand up from a sitting position, to walk and possibly run, go back to walking and stop and then sit down and be stable, and not fall over in any phase," Dilworth explains. But as he found out, making a robot walk is a lot more challenging than it seems. "It has proven extremely difficult to make bipedal robots," says Gregory Paul, an independent dinosaur paleontologist who collaborated with Dilworth on the project. "People assume that flight is hard to do while walking is easy; actually it's the reverse."

Build your own robots with robotics from the Maker Shed! Use the code CYBERM to get 10% off, today only (12:01am pst 12/1 to 11:59pm pst 12/1).

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An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek's Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It argues that the 17-year-old open-source operating system still has problems. Leading the list is author Serdar Yegulap's complaint that the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target. He writes: "The sheer breadth of kernel interfaces means it's entirely possible for something to break in a way that might not even show up in a fairly rigorous code review." Also on his list of needed fixes are: a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution; native file versioning; audio APIs; and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although we're not really sure what the purpose of this mashup is, we like it's ghetto style. Someone crammed an N64 console into the body of a Nintendo Wii. For those of you who want to play N64 games on your Wii, you can avoid the destruction and simply use the Virtual Console from the Wii menu which works like a charm.

via DVICE

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Built by the British Royal Society of Arts to bring waste and recycling issues to the public eye - Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment(aka WEEE) Man weighs in @ 3.3 metric tons -

What is he made of? Firstly, large household appliances, such as washing machines and television sets make up a large part of his structure. Then there are smaller objects, such as toaster, irons, and other electrical tools. There is lighting equipment and automatic dispensers, IT and telecoms equipment and toys and leisure items, all making up this latter-day Frankenstein's monster of Brobdingnagian proportions. This guy is big! Waste is no longer out of sight, out of mind. The hope is that his birth will make people think about their behavior when it comes to disposing of the electrical equipment they no longer want.

- The Wanderings of the WEEE Man [via Neatorama]

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Ben S. writes in to let us know that the lawyer for Guns N' Roses is now accusing Dr. Pepper of fraud for its well publicized give-away of free bottles of the soft drink along with the release of GNR's Chinese Democracy album. As you're probably aware, the album has been delayed for years, and a Dr. Pepper exec announced earlier this year that if the album actually came out in 2008, the company would give free Dr. Pepper to everyone. The complaint from GNR's lawyer seems to pick up on two points -- which somewhat contradict each other. First, he's upset about the giveaway in that it suggests some sort of endorsement by the band of Dr. Pepper. In some ways, this is similar to the recent dispute between 50 Cent and Taco Bell. Like that case, it's difficult to see the damage done here, as there's no explicit endorsement. However, the second part of the "fraud" complaint seems to be that, given that the promotion went forward, GNR is upset that Dr. Pepper screwed it up. There were apparently problems with the Dr. Pepper website on the day of the promotion, meaning that many people who expected to get a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper might not have gotten one.

The fear, then, is that since Dr. Pepper executed poorly on the giveaway (and people might think that the band was behind the promotion), consumers would be pissed off at the band about not receiving a free Dr. Pepper. I can sort of see the logic, though it's difficult to believe that a GNR fan is suddenly going to hate the band because they didn't get a free can of Dr. Pepper. Also, the claim about GNR being upset about Dr. Pepper's use of GNR in its promotion is undermined by the fact that Axl Rose seemed quite happy by the promotion when it was first announced, writing on the band's site at the time:

"We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr. Pepper with our album Chinese Democracy as for us this came totally out of the blue. If there is any involvement with this promotion by our record company or others we are unaware of such at this time. And as some of Buckethead's performances are on our album I'll share my Dr. Pepper with him."

To later claim to be upset that this promotion somehow was a "commercial exploitation" of the bands' rights, seems undermined by that statement.

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theodp writes "Nine years ago Monday, Amazon kicked off the Holiday Season by slapping Barnes and Noble with a court injunction barring BN from using a checkout feature that Amazon said represented illegal copying of its patented 1-Click technology. 'We're pleased that Judge Pechman recognized the innovation underlying our 1-Click feature,' said Jeff Bezos in a press release. But an Appellate Court wasn't quite as impressed with Amazon's innovation. Nor were USPTO Examiners who were asked to take another look at the merits of Amazon's 1-Click patent claims. Still, 1-Click lives on, although Amazon's lawyers are currently fighting two separate rejections by USPTO Examiners, burying USPTO Examiners in paper, and employing canceling-and-refiling tactics that some may find reminiscent of Eddie Haskell's chess end-game strategy. So much for Amazon-led patent reform."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FeedJournal and Tabbloid are two innovative web services that allow you to turn any RSS feed into a customized PDF newspaper. You can then either print out and read your newspaper, or consult it on your computer or mobile device when you're not connected to the Internet. The procedure is very easy: just grab the URL of any RSS feed you want, and paste it into the web page of the service. Then provide a valid e-mail address, and click "Generate". FeedJournal and Tabbloid will generate a customized PDF newspaper for you. Now you decide: you can print your newspaper to read it on your sofa, in the underground, at the bus stop, or in any occasion when you're not connected to the Internet, or you can just open the PDF with your default PDF viewer and enjoy your newspaper immediately. There's no limit to the number of newspapers you can create. Without spending a dime, you can generate a newspaper for each topic you're interested into. Curious? Want to know more on how to turn any RSS feed into a customized newspaper? Then go further and check these two web services I tried and tested for you: FeedJournal and Tabbloid. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Overview

Click the image above to go to the fullscreen version FeedJournal and Tabbloid are two web-based services that let you turn any RSS feed into a newspaper. Simply copy and paste the link of the feed you want to turn into a newspaper, and click the "Generate" button. The content of your RSS feed will be extracted and arranged into a newspaper-like outline. Whether you print your customized newspaper, or choose to read it on your computer screen, the immediate benefit of these services is you can save yourself from clicking back and forth through the whole list of feeds you got. Just gather and place your feeds in one place. You can also create as many newspapers as you want, each one dedicated to a specific topic. You're more into sport than foreign policy? Aggregate a list of feeds that deal with sport news, and enjoy just the content you like. And when you're done customizing your content, you can choose whether to generate your newspaper immediately, or rather schedule a delivery date to receive your news selection right in your mailbox. Your newspaper will be delivered in a PDF format. So, if you run out of paper you could also consider syncing your newspaper directly with your smart phone or iPod. Get the old-fashioned style of news reading in a 21st century way! And what if you have a blog, and you'd like to share your news selection with your readers? FeedJournal has a social feature which lets you distribute your newspaper through a widget, a direct download link, or by embedding a small piece of code inside your blog site.

Key Features

1) FeedJournal

• Reader and Publisher

  FeedJournal offers two choices to aggregate your news sources.
  1. If you want to have your list of RSS feeds turned into a newspaper to consult them more easily, Reader is the one that you need. Provide a valid email address, register, add your feed, and you're ready to go.
  2. But if you are a blogger, and you'd like to share the news you gathered, or you want to have greater control over the customization of your newspaper, you may want to consider switching to a more complete solution like Publisher. Publisher comes in two versions: one free of charge with limited features, and a second one, with enhanced customization possibilities, priced at $49 (apx. €38) per month.
  
  

• Feed Supported

  FeedJournal supports both RSS (1.0 and 2.0) and Atom feeds.



• Customize Your Newspaper

  You can customize the aspect of your newspaper by adjusting some layout options:
  • Column Count: Number of text columns you can have in your newspaper.
  • Page Size: The default size of the paper.
  • Margin: Amount of white space which separates the text from the border of the page.
  • Justified Columns: If checked text columns are justified, otherwise the text will be indented.
  • Language: Set of characters used in the text of the newspaper (still in beta testing).



• Available List of Feeds

  Choose from the RSS feed list of feeds available (subdivided in categories), or add a feed URL to start creating content for your newspaper.



• Share Your Newspaper

  FeedJournal Publisher allows you to embed a small piece of code inside your blog site to share your personal selection of news. Here is the complete list of social sites available, as specified on Feed Journal site:
  • Facebook
  • Bebo
  • Blogger
  • Typepad
  • Pageflakes
  • Netvibes
  • iGoogle
  • Piczo
  You can also use a customized widget provided by Widgetbox, or provide your users with a direct link to your PDF newspaper.

2) Tabbloid

• Start Immediately

  Tabbloid does not require any login nor registration. You can immediately start to add RSS feeds and generate your newspaper right away.



• Subscriptions List

  Add the RSS feed you want to turn into a newspaper, or choose from a list of available categories. You can provide as many feeds as you want.



• Scheduled Delivery

  If you prefer, you can set Tabbloid to delivery your newspaper directly to your mailbox at a specific time. Just set date and time, and provide a valid e-mail address.

How To Use FeedJournal and Tabbloid

1) FeedJournal

FeedJournal offers two different solutions: Reader and Publisher.

Reader

FeedJournal Reader generates a personal newspaper with a list of customized RSS or Atom feeds you submit. The service is free to use, but requires a registration process. Here's the procedure to follow: 1) Register for a free account. You will be asked to choose a nickname, a password, and a valid e-mail address. 2) Add some personal information that will appear on your customized newspaper. 3) Customize the layout of your newspaper. 3) Pick a feed from those included in the default list, or add your own. 4) (Optional) Select the feeds of your choice, and specify for each one which articles you want inside your newspaper. 5) Generate your newspaper and enjoy!.

Publisher

FeedJournal Publisher turns your RSS feeds into a branded and personalized selection of news that you can embed (via Widgetbox or other services like Issuu), or share with a direct download link on your blog site. Here's how: 1) Type the email address where you want to receive your newspaper. 2) Choose the feed to turn into a newspaper. The content of the feed must be owned by you. 3) Generate your newspaper and have it sent to your mailbox. 4) Check your mailbox, and find the email from FeedJournal. Your newspaper is in the attachment. Enjoy!

2) Tabbloid

Tabbloid has a very simple interface to create your personal news selection. And because you don't need to go through any registration process, you can immediately start creating and customizing your newspaper. Here's a quick step-by step guide: 1) Click on the big "Get Started" button. 2) Add the URL of the feed(s) you want to turn into a newspaper. You can also choose from a list of available subscriptions. 3) Use the "Delivery options" form if you want Tabbloid to sent you a scheduled e-mail with your newspaper. 4) Generate your free PDF newspaper and enjoy!

Summary Review

1) FeedJournal - Key Strengths

• Two different solutions for:
  • Individual users: FeedJournal Reader (Free).
  • Business users: FeedJournal Publisher (Free or $49/month).
• Highly customizable newspaper layout.
• No limit to the number of feeds you can add to every issue.
• Both RSS and Atom feed formats are supported.
• Forum and FAQ sections to receive help.
• Guide-newspaper with detailed instructions available.

Areas For Improvement

• No scheduled email delivery available.
• In FeedJournal Publisher your e-mail address should belong to an email provider (e.g. you cannot use your company one).
• Basic plan of FeedJournal Publisher has very few features.

2) Tabbloid - Key Strengths

• Simple and extremely easy-to-use interface.
• No limit to the number of feeds you can add to every issue of a newspaper.
• No login, or registration required.
• Highly customizable scheduled delivery via email.

Areas For Improvement

• Newspaper layout is not customizable.
• Atom feeds are not supported.
• No FAQ or forum section to receive support.

Additional Resources

FeedJournal

• FeedJournal Site
• FeedJournal Reader
• FeedJournal Publisher
• Forum
• Support
• About FeedJournal

Tabbloid

• Tabbloid site
• Tabbloid blog

Other Resources

• Issuu - a web-based service to embed your virtual newspaper inside your blog site
• FeedJournal Widget on WidgetBox
• Adobe Reader

Do you see any mistakes? Would you like to share your own experiences with FeedJournal and Tabbloid? Please feel free to use the comment area below.

Originally written by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 1st 2008 as "Turn Any RSS Feed Into A PDF Newspaper: FeedJournal And Tabbloid Reviewed".

FeedJournal and Tabbloid are two innovative web services that allow you to turn any RSS feed into a customized PDF newspaper. You can then either print out and read your newspaper, or consult it on your computer or mobile device when you're not connected to the Internet. The procedure is very easy: just grab the URL of any RSS feed you want, and paste it into the web page of the service. Then provide a valid e-mail address, and click "Generate". FeedJournal and Tabbloid will generate a customized PDF newspaper for you. Now you decide: you can print your newspaper to read it on your sofa, in the underground, at the bus stop, or in any occasion when you're not connected to the Internet, or you can just open the PDF with your default PDF viewer and enjoy your newspaper immediately. There's no limit to the number of newspapers you can create. Without spending a dime, you can generate a newspaper for each topic you're interested into. Curious? Want to know more on how to turn any RSS feed into a customized newspaper? Then go further and check these two web services I tried and tested for you: FeedJournal and Tabbloid. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Overview

Click the image above to go to the fullscreen version FeedJournal and Tabbloid are two web-based services that let you turn any RSS feed into a newspaper. Simply copy and paste the link of the feed you want to turn into a newspaper, and click the "Generate" button. The content of your RSS feed will be extracted and arranged into a newspaper-like outline. Whether you print your customized newspaper, or choose to read it on your computer screen, the immediate benefit of these services is you can save yourself from clicking back and forth through the whole list of feeds you got. Just gather and place your feeds in one place. You can also create as many newspapers as you want, each one dedicated to a specific topic. You're more into sport than foreign policy? Aggregate a list of feeds that deal with sport news, and enjoy just the content you like. And when you're done customizing your content, you can choose whether to generate your newspaper immediately, or rather schedule a delivery date to receive your news selection right in your mailbox. Your newspaper will be delivered in a PDF format. So, if you run out of paper you could also consider syncing your newspaper directly with your smart phone or iPod. Get the old-fashioned style of news reading in a 21st century way! And what if you have a blog, and you'd like to share your news selection with your readers? FeedJournal has a social feature which lets you distribute your newspaper through a widget, a direct download link, or by embedding a small piece of code inside your blog site.

Key Features

1) FeedJournal

• Reader and Publisher

  FeedJournal offers two choices to aggregate your news sources.
  1. If you want to have your list of RSS feeds turned into a newspaper to consult them more easily, Reader is the one that you need. Provide a valid email address, register, add your feed, and you're ready to go.
  2. But if you are a blogger, and you'd like to share the news you gathered, or you want to have greater control over the customization of your newspaper, you may want to consider switching to a more complete solution like Publisher. Publisher comes in two versions: one free of charge with limited features, and a second one, with enhanced customization possibilities, priced at $49 (apx. €38) per month.
  
  

• Feed Supported

  FeedJournal supports both RSS (1.0 and 2.0) and Atom feeds.



• Customize Your Newspaper

  You can customize the aspect of your newspaper by adjusting some layout options:
  • Column Count: Number of text columns you can have in your newspaper.
  • Page Size: The default size of the paper.
  • Margin: Amount of white space which separates the text from the border of the page.
  • Justified Columns: If checked text columns are justified, otherwise the text will be indented.
  • Language: Set of characters used in the text of the newspaper (still in beta testing).



• Available List of Feeds

  Choose from the RSS feed list of feeds available (subdivided in categories), or add a feed URL to start creating content for your newspaper.



• Share Your Newspaper

  FeedJournal Publisher allows you to embed a small piece of code inside your blog site to share your personal selection of news. Here is the complete list of social sites available, as specified on Feed Journal site:
  • Facebook
  • Bebo
  • Blogger
  • Typepad
  • Pageflakes
  • Netvibes
  • iGoogle
  • Piczo
  You can also use a customized widget provided by Widgetbox, or provide your users with a direct link to your PDF newspaper.

2) Tabbloid

• Start Immediately

  Tabbloid does not require any login nor registration. You can immediately start to add RSS feeds and generate your newspaper right away.



• Subscriptions List

  Add the RSS feed you want to turn into a newspaper, or choose from a list of available categories. You can provide as many feeds as you want.



• Scheduled Delivery

  If you prefer, you can set Tabbloid to delivery your newspaper directly to your mailbox at a specific time. Just set date and time, and provide a valid e-mail address.

How To Use FeedJournal and Tabbloid

1) FeedJournal

FeedJournal offers two different solutions: Reader and Publisher.

Reader

FeedJournal Reader generates a personal newspaper with a list of customized RSS or Atom feeds you submit. The service is free to use, but requires a registration process. Here's the procedure to follow: 1) Register for a free account. You will be asked to choose a nickname, a password, and a valid e-mail address. 2) Add some personal information that will appear on your customized newspaper. 3) Customize the layout of your newspaper. 3) Pick a feed from those included in the default list, or add your own. 4) (Optional) Select the feeds of your choice, and specify for each one which articles you want inside your newspaper. 5) Generate your newspaper and enjoy!.

Publisher

FeedJournal Publisher turns your RSS feeds into a branded and personalized selection of news that you can embed (via Widgetbox or other services like Issuu), or share with a direct download link on your blog site. Here's how: 1) Type the email address where you want to receive your newspaper. 2) Choose the feed to turn into a newspaper. The content of the feed must be owned by you. 3) Generate your newspaper and have it sent to your mailbox. 4) Check your mailbox, and find the email from FeedJournal. Your newspaper is in the attachment. Enjoy!

2) Tabbloid

Tabbloid has a very simple interface to create your personal news selection. And because you don't need to go through any registration process, you can immediately start creating and customizing your newspaper. Here's a quick step-by step guide: 1) Click on the big "Get Started" button. 2) Add the URL of the feed(s) you want to turn into a newspaper. You can also choose from a list of available subscriptions. 3) Use the "Delivery options" form if you want Tabbloid to sent you a scheduled e-mail with your newspaper. 4) Generate your free PDF newspaper and enjoy!

Summary Review

1) FeedJournal - Key Strengths

• Two different solutions for:
  • Individual users: FeedJournal Reader (Free).
  • Business users: FeedJournal Publisher (Free or $49/month).
• Highly customizable newspaper layout.
• No limit to the number of feeds you can add to every issue.
• Both RSS and Atom feed formats are supported.
• Forum and FAQ sections to receive help.
• Guide-newspaper with detailed instructions available.

Areas For Improvement

• No scheduled email delivery available.
• In FeedJournal Publisher your e-mail address should belong to an email provider (e.g. you cannot use your company one).
• Basic plan of FeedJournal Publisher has very few features.

2) Tabbloid - Key Strengths

• Simple and extremely easy-to-use interface.
• No limit to the number of feeds you can add to every issue of a newspaper.
• No login, or registration required.
• Highly customizable scheduled delivery via email.

Areas For Improvement

• Newspaper layout is not customizable.
• Atom feeds are not supported.
• No FAQ or forum section to receive support.

Additional Resources

FeedJournal

• FeedJournal Site
• FeedJournal Reader
• FeedJournal Publisher
• Forum
• Support
• About FeedJournal

Tabbloid

• Tabbloid site
• Tabbloid blog

Other Resources

• Issuu - a web-based service to embed your virtual newspaper inside your blog site
• FeedJournal Widget on WidgetBox
• Adobe Reader

Do you see any mistakes? Would you like to share your own experiences with FeedJournal and Tabbloid? Please feel free to use the comment area below.

Originally written by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 1st 2008 as "Turn Any RSS Feed Into A PDF Newspaper: FeedJournal And Tabbloid Reviewed".

Hugh Pickens writes "Botanist Rod Simmons thought he was going crazy when couldn't find any acorns near his home in Arlington County, Virginia. 'I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe,' said Simmons. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill. Simmons and Naturalist Greg Zell began to do some research and found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called 'No acorns this year,' reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. 'We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird,' wrote one. 'None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser.' The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather and Simmons has a theory about the wet and dry cycles. But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. 'It's sort of a mystery,' Zell said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris reviewed "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments" as well as "Mr Wizard's 400 Experiments in Science", he writes -

"Mr Wizards 400 Experiments in Science". (Reno: "Emilio Lizardo is a top scientist, dummkopf." Perfect Tommy: "So was Mr. Wizard." -The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, now available on DVD!). Written by Mr Wizard himself, Don Herbert with Hy Ruchlis, this book is more about demonstrating scientific principles and phenomena in the home with less-sophisticated equipment. No beakers and Bunsen burners, this is all water glasses, pencils, string, tin cans and rubber bands. Just like the original Mr Wizard shows. This stuff is great. This book, thankfully, is a little more affordable! There seem to be several reprints of this with different covers, as you can see from the Amazon link. There's even one called "Soft Blu Bonnet Margarine Presents Mr. Wizard's 400 Easy Experiments in Science by Don Ruchlis, Hy Herbert". Because when I think of melting something on my toast, I want to think of chemistry! And who the heck are these Hy Herbert and Don Ruchlis guys?

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Chris reviewed "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments" as well as "Mr Wizard's 400 Experiments in Science", he writes -

"Mr Wizards 400 Experiments in Science". (Reno: "Emilio Lizardo is a top scientist, dummkopf." Perfect Tommy: "So was Mr. Wizard." -The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, now available on DVD!). Written by Mr Wizard himself, Don Herbert with Hy Ruchlis, this book is more about demonstrating scientific principles and phenomena in the home with less-sophisticated equipment. No beakers and Bunsen burners, this is all water glasses, pencils, string, tin cans and rubber bands. Just like the original Mr Wizard shows. This stuff is great. This book, thankfully, is a little more affordable! There seem to be several reprints of this with different covers, as you can see from the Amazon link. There's even one called "Soft Blu Bonnet Margarine Presents Mr. Wizard's 400 Easy Experiments in Science by Don Ruchlis, Hy Herbert". Because when I think of melting something on my toast, I want to think of chemistry! And who the heck are these Hy Herbert and Don Ruchlis guys?

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Bre visits Dam Stuhltrager gallery in Brooklyn to check out an exhibition of breathing books created by artist Edith Kollath. Each book's surreal movement is controlled via Lilypad Arduino, likely chosen for its thin easy-to-conceal profile which keeps the art looking properly book-like.

Unfortunately, the art's clever design proved a heap of trouble for the artist during travel. Thankfully, the books were finally retrieved after a 3-month stay in legal limbo. Get more of the story @ NYCResistor.

More:

Make a Secret Compartment Book - Weekend Projects PDFcast

LilyPad Pro Kit

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Bre visits Dam Stuhltrager gallery in Brooklyn to check out an exhibition of breathing books created by artist Edith Kollath. Each book's surreal movement is controlled via Lilypad Arduino, likely chosen for its thin easy-to-conceal profile which keeps the art looking properly book-like.

Unfortunately, the art's clever design proved a heap of trouble for the artist during travel. Thankfully, the books were finally retrieved after a 3-month stay in legal limbo. Get more of the story @ NYCResistor.

More:

Make a Secret Compartment Book - Weekend Projects PDFcast

LilyPad Pro Kit

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

This drippy door was spotted at the Hongik University, Jochiwon campus in Seoul, Korea. Nice way to integrate the physical space with the mental accident space of an art school.

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Al Farrow's ammunition art... Check out the complete gallery for some amazing works!

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These birdhouses built into the shape of CCTV cameras were spotted at the Design Biennale in Saint Etienne, France. Pretty cool idea to deter riminal activity while saving the wildlife.

via Pasta and Vinegar

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Frostedminipete kicked his PT-100 keyboard up quite a several dozen notches by adding the following very effective circuit-bends -

• Starve pot [simulates dying batteries...low pitch, etc]
  
• Lead distortion pot
  
• Snare/hihat/bass distortion pot
  
• Bass drum distortion pot
  
• Chord distortion pot
  
• Warbly/wahwah switch
  
• Pulse 1 (fast) switch
  
• Pulse 2 (warbly/slow) switch
  
• added 1/4" output w/ speaker on and off switch

Excellent additions, not to mention a pretty sweet paint job. [Thanks Marc ;)]

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Given the incredibly negative reaction that many video gamers have been giving any video game that uses the rather draconian SecuROM DRM system, you would think that most video game companies would think twice about using it. Yet, apparently, Rockstar has decided to move forward in using it on the PC release of Grand Theft Auto IV. It won't be quite as draconian as Spore in that there won't be a limit on the number of installs, but the whole thing makes very little sense. The DRM won't stop the game from being pirated -- and once a single copy is available, it will be available everywhere. While Rockstar also claims that cracked copies will have some hidden easter eggs that make the game somewhat unplayable, it's quite likely that folks will figure out ways around those changes as well. In other words, it's not actually going to stop any piracy, but it may serve to annoy legitimate purchasers. So why bother?

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Here is another DIY robot project. It's a lot slower than the Cockroach bot I posted earlier, but it can potentially do a lot more. I really like the drink cap wheels. They will not provide a lot of traction, but at these speeds it isn't an issue.

Now that the AVRonics board is in full swing it's time to start stretching it's legs. This is not the robot to do that but it's a start. I threw this together in about an hour (after many months of thinking) and spent about 10 minutes writing the code to control it. No, no, I'm not just that good - it's just that simple.

More about the Simple AVR Robot

Pololu 3pi Robot&ampClick=19209

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Several readers pointed out a ComputerWorld UK blog piece on the expanding ripples of the Vista fiasco. Glyn Moody quotes an earlier Inquirer piece about Vista, which he notes "has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system": "Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading. Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future." Moody continues: "What's really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realized that they do have a choice — that they can simply say 'no.' From there, it's but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a really cool robot made from an Arduino and a tin can. The best part about the project is a Father and his 3 & 6 year olds built it together. What a great way to spend the Thanksgiving weekend!

This blog post will show you how to build an autonomous robot that seeks out light based on a toy with a low power DC motor, an Arduino board, and a host of electronic components. Look at the pictures or go and check out a movie of the end product-- the robot on a flashlight "leash." I built it with my 6 and 3 year olds over Thanksgiving weekend in stages, and we had a blast doing it.

More about making an Arduino based tin can robot

In the Maker Shed:


Co-Robot Kit

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An ad for the iPhone 3G has been banned in the UK, after the country's advertising regulator decided that calling the device "really fast" four times in an ad was making deceptive claims about the speed with which it could access the internet. Earlier in the year, Apple had another iPhone ad banned after it said it could access "all parts of the internet." The regulator's action was prompted by 17 complaints from consumers about the ad, though at least one of those who complained after he'd received some poor customer service from Apple says revenge was a factor, and wonders if others had similar motivation. While plenty of complaints about Apple in online forums get ignored or shouted down by the legions of Mac fanboys, at least one guy found a way to make his stick.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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This is a video I found while surfing around on YouTube. I think a lot of our readers would have most of the parts needed to make it. If not, you can pick them up for a few bucks. It's a cool little bot.

Spotted on YouTube How-to make a cockroach robot

In the Maker Shed:

We've had several neat projects over the years, and we're proud that Solarbotics has created a cool bundle kit to provide parts for completing them. In this great bundle you'll find what you need to build the Mousey (Make Issue #02), Trimit (Issue #06), SolarRoller (Issue #06), and Beetlebot (#12). Get this bundle and save over $20 compared to buying these kits separately.

Please note: This kit includes the electronic components only, the build instructions and other parts needed for each project can be found in the corresponding Make issue (which are not included).

More about the Maker Bundle #1

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Ok, folks, I know not all of you approve of culture jamming shenanigans, but here are some gift ideas for that mischief maker in your life!

Peggy Kit
Create a light board with your own picture! You can make an LED sign for your window, a geeky valentine for your sweetie, one bad-ass birthday card, or freak the holy bejesus out of Boston. Your call. It's a versatile, high-brightness display. How you configure it and what you do with it is up to you. This first version can make any static design you can dream up. Version 2 adds simple animation capability and Arduino compatibility.
Price: Version 1: $79.95 Verion 2: $94.95

photo above by Flickr user smashtheqube

Read on for the complete list of awesome culture jamming gift ideas!
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Photography courtesy of Bill LeMaster

Bill LeMaster, a 44-year-old retired Air Force technician living in Montgomery, Ala., enjoys a great many hobbies, ranging from arts to electronics. He also enjoys his family, his most beloved passion. Although, if you ask his wife, she'd probably say collecting hobbies is his biggest passion.

Last Halloween, when he heard his grandkids were dressing up as Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm from the Flintstones, LeMaster volunteered to build them the Flintstone car to perfectly complete the look (and to make sure he got to join in the fun). "I just wanted my grandkids to have the most awesome costume in Montgomery," he recalls.

He started the build six weeks before Halloween, allowing himself plenty of time to get the project rock solid. Once the car was done, the kids were all set to shuffle their feet down the street -- Yabba-Dabba-Doo! His grandkids were happy, the neighbors were amazed, and LeMaster was satisfied with the outcome of the project.

People continue to ask him where he bought the car and if he'll bring it out of the house.

In response, LeMaster has posted a how-to, comprised of step-by-step instructions on making your own Flintstone car, on the Instructables website.

"I originally documented the construction to simply capture the memories of the build, but it just so happened that I came across Instructables shortly after I started so I decided to enter the contest. I figured people might be interested in some of the techniques I came up with," he explains.

LeMaster says it took him about three weeks to build the car, with most of the work done on Saturdays. The bulk of the material he used was scrap wood that he found lying around the house. Swim noodles and bondo glass both helped in the construction.

All in all, the project cost him about $100, and LeMaster says it was worth every penny. "This was nothing compared to the priceless expressions on my grandkids' faces when they saw the car."

>> Flintstones Car How-To: makezine.com/go/flintmobile

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 14, page 22 - Ed Troxell.

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Sarah sez, "BBC radio is doing a piece about the influence of Yiddish on American culture - they have a great clip describing the ways in which Yiddish songs made their way into jazz (see blurb below). My grandma - the last surviving member of my family who remembers hearing Yiddish spoken in the home - got a real kick out of it."

Hell, I get a kick out of it! My father's first language was Yiddish, and I grew up taking Sunday Yiddish classes at the secular Workman's Circle school in Toronto. It's still the language I use to communicate with my family in Russia (they don't speak English and I don't speak Russian). It's a fantastically expressive, ironic language made for joking and tummeling and kibbitzing. It's a kind of weak Sapir-Worf: it's nearly impossible to speak it without turning ironic and funny.

And of course, Yiddish jazz like Mickey Katz (brilliantly covered by Don Byron) and the Yiddishisms in Slim Gaillard's music (Matzoh Balls, anyone?) just plain kicks ass.

Yiddish - a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews - had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th Century.

It originated in central and eastern Europe - and spread to the United States when thousand of immigrants arrived in New York.

Zalmen Mlotek is the Artistic Director of the city's last surviving professional Yiddish theatre - the Folksbiene.

With the help of his piano, he has been telling Radio 3's Dennis Marks how the language influenced jazz music - and the likes of George and Ira Gershwin.

Audio slideshow: Inspired by Yiddish (Thanks, Sarah!)

adh0c writes "I have been lurking Slashdot for some time now without registering and I don't think this question has been answered yet. Is it possible to get a good IT job (assuming that there is such a thing), preferably a sysadmin position, without having a BS or other degree? From browsing the job postings on Monster and such, it would seem that everyone wants university papers. Is there hope for computer enthusiasts who didn't go to college?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently at Boing Boing Gadgets, we endured Black Friday (which turned out to be Gray Friday for gadgets) and mundane gadget spam to bring you delights like humping USB M.U.S.C.L.E men. John spotted Stephen Fry's laconic review of the BlackBerry Storm, a tiny computer that screws into your monitor's VESA mounts, and new wireless earbuds from Sennheiser. With netbooks threatening to cannibalise general computer sales, Intel would prefer you bought things with profitable hi-performance chips. TechCrunch hates 'em, too: or at least 7" ones with 256MB of RAM running Vista on Via Nano processors. Lori Drew, who taunted a youngster on MySpace, was convicted of computer hacking. Boing Boing Gadgets

Our pals at Watchismo have launched a new store to highlight their kick-ass line of reproductions of LIP diode watches -- replicas of Roger Tallon's 1973 timepieces that were among the first (and coolest) digital watches made. I bought my LIP back in September and I've been wearing it ever since.

Watchismo has offered to give away a LIP watch to one Boing Boing reader (and to offer a 20 percent discount to BB readers on the entire store, which includes dozens of superb vintage and new watches -- just use the discount code BBWATCHISMO) in a giveaway drawing that's scheduled for the 22nd of December.

I love watches -- my grandfather was a watchmaker and I grew up surrounded by them -- and I discovered Watchismo through a friend's recommendation. Since then, I've bought two watches from the site, and been given two more as gifts, and each one is an absolute treasure: beautiful, functional, and distinctive. There's an early digital that you adjust by rubbing a magnet (hidden in the bracelet) against the back of the case. There's another early digital whose numbers are actually printed in bright orange LED font on hidden cardboard wheels and then reflected on a disguised curved mirror that makes it appear that they are lit from within.

The craftsmanship and aesthetics of Watchismo's stocks really hit the sweet-spot for me: they're gizmos that are meant to last for the ages and be used every day.

Welcome to the BoingBoing LIP Diode Giveaway!

Here's a nice little variant on the traditional 419 scam letter that showed up in my inbox this morning:

THIS IS TO OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED AMONG THE 40 LUCKY VICTIM OF SCAMMED TO BE COMPENSATED WITH $500,000.00.FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS,THIS WAS CONCLUDED BY THE SENATE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA,SENATOR wALLIS KELLY WITH DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED NATION AND WORLD BANK AT THE AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT WHICH TOOK PLACE IN ADDIS ABABA IN (ETHIOPIA) AIMED AT REDEEMING THE COUNTRY'S IMAGE AND ALSO TO TRY TO PUT ANEND TO THE INCESSANT SCAM REPORTS BY FOREIGNER ESPECIALLY FROM USA AND AROUND THE GLOBE.YOU HAVE BEEN LISTED AND APPROVED FOR THIS PAYMENT AS ONE OF THE SCAMMED VICTIMS TO BE PAID THIS AMOUNT.

In David W. Maurer's classic 1940 book The Big Con (the basis for the movie The Sting), he describes how con-men would put their victims on the hook again and again, fleecing them, then convincing them to go home and borrow or steal everything their could from their friends in order to get their original money back. Like a desperate gambler doubling down, the poor marks would get deeper and deeper, and at every stage, it got easier for the grifter to con them again.

So here's the modern variant of it -- fleecing people who've been burned by scammers.

As we're approaching the end of what is a nice four-day holiday break for some of us, I want to talk about getting back to work. This will also be my final guestblog on Boing-Boing, for now. [Blogging here has been a welcome distraction and a delight; thanks for allowing me to share this wonderful space with so many of you.]

While traveling recently, I came upon "The 4-Hour Workweek" in paperback, prominently displayed in an airport bookstore. I started wondering how the book is selling today. (The hardback was released in 2007). Its subtitle says it all: "Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich." Author Timothy Ferriss, not to be confused with Timothy Ferris, the science writer, considers himself a "lifestyle designer." He reveals how to cut your time at work by 80% and spend more time doing things you really enjoy such as skiiing or scuba diving.

The book's title, "The 4-hour Workweek", suggests the least amount of work you could get away with. However, in this economy, I kept thinking the title might suggest the most work you're lucky to find. Ferris' pitch now seems out of tune with tough times, a bit like books that guide you to "Invest in Real Estate with No Money Down."

Ferriss promises to reveal the secrets of the "New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who have abandoned the "deferred-life plan" (aka "slave - save - retire") and create luxury lifestyles in the present." It seems like the book was written for NY investment bankers who don't enjoy what they do but they can't bring themselves to walk away from $500K salaries and seek a new lifestyle. Ferris notes that it's not the money of the millionaire that most people want; it's the freedom that it buys them. So what keeps us from being free and enjoying it? It's a valid question but I had to ask its opposite: what keeps us from enjoying work?

With the investment banking lifestyle fast disappearing, like a lot of good deals gone bad, this book might represent the apex of the boomer fantasy -- the self-absorbed vision of abundance and personal prosperity, and its pre-occupation with retiring early and leaving the work world behind.

Ferris does have good things to say, but times have changed. Most of his advice applies if you don't like what you do for a living. Ferris says that most people see their "job description as self-description". We get trapped answering the question "what do you do?" Yes, that happens but it's what you do, not what you say that defines you, and that's why work is important. Work is where you can do a lot of things that you can't do on your own. Work is where you can do something that matters, not just to you, but to others. We don't have the luxury of ignoring the problems that face us and the people around us. (The economy, education, health care, climate change, etcetera, etcetera).

Ferris writes that "the perfect job is one that takes the least time." I beg to differ. I love what I do because it demands more and more of me. So, the perfect job is one that requires the most of you -- more of your talent, more of your time and more of your will to make something happen. It challenges you to grow and learn more about yourself, often through the people you work with. I realize not everyone has a job they love and nowadays, a lot of people are happy just to have a job, even if they don't love it. Nonetheless, I feel fortunate not only to have a good job but to be in a position to make a difference in other people's lives. I want more hours, not fewer.

I like poet Frank Bidart's words in "Advice to the Players."

“The greatest luxury is to live a life in which the work that one does to earn a living, and what one has the appetite to make, coincide - by a kind of grace are the same, one.”

Here's to a full workweek ahead, not merely four hours but forty plus.

Itsumishi sez, "A few weeks ago it was mentioned that the Australian Labor Government will be trying to introduce mandatory internet filtering despite promises before the election that any filtering would be on a voluntary basis. The whole insane proposal has received very little mainstream media attention despite vocal opposition from the Opposition, some smaller parties, industry experts, ISPs, consumers and even Child Welfare Groups! With trials due to start December 24th (while everyone is distracted by the holiday season) the time to speak up and let Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy as well as the Labor Government know how Australian's feel about this very important issue. GetUp! Campaign Actions (who helped abolish Work Choices and free David Hicks) have set up a campaign to Save the Net in Australia. I urge all Australian's who care about free speech, the internet and our economy to sign up now and stop this insanity before it has real impact on our daily lives."

Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.

She said the filter scheme was "fundamentally flawed" because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources.

Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement.

"Children are exposed to the abusive behaviours of adults often and we need to be preventing the causes of violence against children in the community, rather than blocking it from people's view," she said.

"The constant change of cyberspace means that a filter is going to be able to be circumvented and it's going to throw up false positives - many innocent websites, maybe even our own, will be blacklisted because we reference a lot of our work that we do with children in fighting commercial sexual exploitation."

Children's welfare groups slam net filters, Save The Net petition

Wired's Joshua A Davis has a great profile of my pal Dan Kaminsky's work on discovering and then helping to fix a net-crashing DNS bug earlier this year. Davis really captures the excitement of discovering a major security flaw and the complex web of personal, professional and technical complications that come to bear when you're trying to disclose the research in a way that minimizes harm to the net.

Dan does a lot of fun security-related stuff that doesn't get talked about in public. There's this one thing he does --

But that would be telling.

The next morning, Kaminsky strode to the front of the conference room at Microsoft headquarters before Vixie could introduce him or even welcome the assembled heavy hitters. The 16 people in the room represented Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and the most important designers of modern DNS software.

Vixie was prepared to say a few words, but Kaminsky assumed that everyone was there to hear what he had to say. After all, he'd earned the spotlight. He hadn't sold the discovery to the Russian mob. He hadn't used it to take over banks. He hadn't destroyed the Internet. He was actually losing money on the whole thing: As a freelance computer consultant, he had taken time off work to save the world. In return, he deserved to bask in the glory of discovery. Maybe his name would be heralded around the world.

Kaminsky started by laying out the timeline. He had discovered a devastating flaw in DNS and would explain the details in a moment. But first he wanted the group to know that they didn't have much time. On August 6, he was going to a hacker convention in Las Vegas, where he would stand before the world and unveil his amazing discovery. If there was a solution, they'd better figure it out by then.

But did Kaminsky have the goods? DNS attacks were nothing new and were considered difficult to execute. The most practical attack—widely known as cache poisoning—required a hacker to submit data to a DNS server at the exact moment that it updated its records. If he succeeded, he could change the records. But, like sperm swimming toward an egg, whichever packet got there first—legitimate or malicious—locked everything else out. If the attacker lost the race, he would have to wait until the server updated again, a moment that might not come for days. And even if he timed it just right, the server required a 16-bit ID number. The hacker had a 1-in-65,536 chance of guessing it correctly. It could take years to successfully compromise just one domain.

The experts watched as Kaminsky opened his laptop and connected the overhead projector. He had created a "weaponized" version of his attack on this vulnerability to demonstrate its power. A mass of data flashed onscreen and told the story. In less than 10 seconds, Kaminsky had compromised a server running BIND 9, Vixie's DNS routing software, which controls 80 percent of Internet traffic. It was undeniable proof that Kaminsky had the power to take down large swaths of the Internet.

Secret Geek A-Team Hacks Back, Defends Worldwide Web

(Photo: John Keatley)

A study published today in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology concludes that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is as effective as anti-depressants in controlling long-term depression.

I've had personal experience with MBCT. About ten years ago, my personal life hit a very low point that left me more than sad -- I was paralyzed, weepy, unable to see the bright side of anything, listless, always tired. I recognized the symptoms of depression and spoke to a psychiatrist I knew. He recommended MBCT in the form of David D Burns's The Feeling Good Handbook. Despite its cheesy title, the book was just what I needed: a series of simple exercises that used empiricism (writing down what happened around you and how it made you feel, and what alternative explanations you could think of for others' behavior) to help change the habits of thought that led to the downward spiral. It wasn't long before the depression lifted, never to return (so far -- and if it does, I know what I'll do).

I've never spoken in public about this before, but I have quietly passed on the book to many of my friends when it seemed needed, always with good results. So I'm not surprised to hear that this research ("led by Professor Willem Kuyken at the Mood Disorders Centre, University of Exeter, in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Economics of Mental Health (CEMH) at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Peninsula Medical School, Devon Primary Care Trust and the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit") shows that MBCT works in cases of chronic, long-term depression. This is especially good news, since chronic depression (which runs in my family) is especially hard on the person experiencing it as well as those around her or him.

The holidays are prime-time for difficult emotions. If you or someone you know is experiencing depression, know that it's not a sign of weakness or personal inadequacy. Help is simple, widely available and effective.

Professor Willem Kuyken of the University of Exeter said: "Anti-depressants are widely used by people who suffer from depression and that's because they tend to work. But, while they're very effective in helping reduce the symptoms of depression, when people come off them they are particularly vulnerable to relapse. MBCT takes a different approach – it teaches people skills for life. What we have shown is that when people work at it, these skills for life help keep people well."

Professor Kuyken continues: "Our results suggest MBCT may be a viable alternative for some of the 3.5 million people in the UK known to be suffering from this debilitating condition. People who suffer depression have long asked for psychological approaches to help them recover in the long-term and MBCT is a very promising approach. I think we have the basis for offering patients and GPs an alternative to long-term anti-depressant medication. We are planning to conduct a larger trial to put these results to the test and to examine how MBCT works."

Depression Treatment: Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy As Effective As Anti-depressant Medication, Study Suggests

It's a been a while since we had our last roundup of projects from our Flickr photo pool, so here's a big ol' collection of recent highlights -

• 3D printed business card holder
  
• LED concrete furniture
  
• ThingaMunny Goblinator
  
• Lyrics box for practice/gigging
  
• Tree ornaments via laser
  
• Trumpet Hero!
  
• Classic handset gets bluetooth-ed
  
• Coffee cup speaker set
  
• NES cart sleeve pen-cup
  
• Apparatus for High Voltage Treatment of Alcoholic Beverage
  
• Light + charger for flip cams
  
• Prepaid Number reminder as iPhone wallpaper
  
• Mac mini cube
  
• 9V Tragedy
  
• Father & son as Eve & Wall-e
  
• The painting that watches you

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Police officers in Scotland were disappointed to learn that the people they intended to arrest for growing marijuana were growing an equally innocuous, but unfortunately legal, plant -- tomatoes.

Uniformed officers burst into Lulu Matheson's house in the village of Shieldaig, Wester Ross, kept her son Gus in his bedroom for two hours, handcuffed her grandson Stephen, and turned the house upside down.

The high-profile afternoon raid involved three squad cars, seven officers and sniffer dogs. They told the family they were looking for cannabis, but after searching for several hours had to concede the green plants visible in the window from the roadside were tomatoes.

Naturally, the cops didn't apologize. They were just doing their job.

UPDATE: The best bit? At taxpayers' expense, "the officers insisted on sending samples of the plants to be analysed."

Police raid 79-year-old woman for pot, find tomato plants

Nikon has announced the D3x, its latest high-resultion professional DSLR. Sporting an imaging sensor with double the resolution of the popular D3, the 24.5 megapixel D3x includes similar features such as a 3.0", 920,000 dot LCD monitor with Live View, 51-point autofocus, EXPEED image processing and HDMI output. To keep up with the demands of stock photography the camera produces 50MB 14-bit RAW files that can be processed to produce 140MB TIFFs. It also supports Nikon’s wireless system and is compatible with Nikon’s new GP-1 GPS unit.

Nikon has announced the D3x, its latest high-resultion professional DSLR. Sporting an imaging sensor with double the resolution of the popular D3, the 24.5 megapixel D3x includes similar features such as a 3.0", 920,000 dot LCD monitor with Live View, 51-point autofocus, EXPEED image processing and HDMI output. To keep up with the demands of stock photography the camera produces 50MB 14-bit RAW files that can be processed to produce 140MB TIFFs. It also supports Nikon’s wireless system and is compatible with Nikon’s new GP-1 GPS unit.

An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle has released his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Prses) under a Creative Commons License. It can be downloaded free or read online. There are chapters on Thomas Jefferson's views of IP, musical borrowing and the birth of soul, free software, and synthetic biology. Lessig is impressed. Doctorow says he is a law prof who writes like a comedian (is this a good thing?), and credits Boyle's first book for getting him involved in online rights."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Science News has a fascinating look at an under-appreciated corner of the career of Florence Nightingale — as an innovator in the use of statistical graphics to argue for social change. Nightingale returned from the Crimean War a heroine in the eyes of the British citizenry, for the soldiers' lives she had saved. But she came to appreciate that the way to save far more lives was to reform attitudes in the military about sanitation. Under the tutelage of William Farr, who had just invented the field of medical statistics, she compiled overwhelming evidence (in the form of an 830-page report) of the need for change. "As impressive as her statistics were, Nightingale worried that Queen Victoria's eyes would glaze over as she scanned the tables. So Nightingale devised clever ways of presenting the information in charts. Statistics had been presented using graphics only a few times previously, and perhaps never to persuade people of the need for social change."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Science News has a fascinating look at an under-appreciated corner of the career of Florence Nightengale — as an innovator in the use of statistical graphics to argue for social change. Nightengale returned from the Crimean War a heroine in the eyes of the British citizenry, for the soldiers' lives she had saved. But she came to appreciate that the way to save far more lives was to reform attitudes in the military about sanitation. Under the tutelage of William Farr, who had just invented the field of medical statistics, she compiled overwhelming evidence (in the form of an 830-page report) of the need for change. "As impressive as her statistics were, Nightingale worried that Queen Victoria's eyes would glaze over as she scanned the tables. So Nightingale devised clever ways of presenting the information in charts. Statistics had been presented using graphics only a few times previously, and perhaps never to persuade people of the need for social change."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amy Crehore found this video of Eddie Thomas and Carl Scott playing "My Ohio Home." Hokum Music on YouTube