Embedded here, a little teaser video for The Story of Bottled Water, created by the same people behind "The Story of Stuff" (Wikipedia). Looks neat. I'm a big fan of tap water. I spend a fair amount of time in very poor communities in poor countries, with people who don't have access to safe drinking water. For them, like us, water is life—but it's also scarce or intermittent, contanimated, and a source of disease and death. I always come home feeling totally WTF'd at our obsession with bottled water, when our tap water is so accessible and among the world's purest.
(via Glen E. Friedman)
Note the conspicuous lack of smut! Frame from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer gallery of Playboy founder hugh Hefner's teenage doodles, sent to his high school sweetheart friend Jane Sellers in the early 1940s. The full collection is for sale at $250,000, from rare book dealer Lux Mentis (who will send you a PDF listing collection contents upon request).
Update: Ian J. Kahn of Lux Mentis Booksellers tells Boing Boing,
I should point out that Hugh and Jane did not date. He dated her best friend and she his...the four were the core of what they called "The Gang". The really interesting element is that as he evolved into "HH", this group of high school friends served as a touchstone...they were the ones who loved him *before*...and he turned them off and on for many, many years. My favorite story out of this is that Jane and the other girls would go over to Hugh's to read "School Daze" to see which of their boyfriends were "stepping out"...Hugh did not edit *anything*. He took notes during the day as to what people were wearing so he could sketch them accurately that evening. It is a remarkable visual diary.(Via Roger Ebert)
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Love this whimsical iPhone stand made out of forks and spoons. [via ManMade]
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This barnacle Nano Gigapan is really cool. Take your time, really zoom in and explore this one. The barnacle was found washed up on the back of a crab shell at Mendocino's big river beach. In this Nano Gigapan you can see the crab shell around the base of the barnacle.The penny is really neat, too. Rich said he will soon write a post explaining how he takes these photos.
This image is composed of 384 pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope, which took me around 5-6 hours to capture. The barnacle is magnified 800x.
He lent a helping hand to a legendary incarcerated pedestrian lone gunman (the perpetrator who over in a neighboring state, perished in a perfect storm of no brainers and things that went terribly wrong, and was plagued by killing sprees in which he gave 110% only to have his senseless murders marred by the untimely deaths of guys and folks whose fatal deaths came in the wake of auto accidents....
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The adorable little boy in this video, whose name is Calen, is sorting out what it means when two fellas get married to one another.
At one point, while face-palming, he says pensively: "I always see husbands and wifes, but this is the very first time I saw husbands and husbands! That's so funny. So—so you love each other! [...] I'm gonna go play now."
Video: Husbands and Husbands. Flip-cammed and uploaded by YouTube user TheColonelFrog.
Alternate video url 1, and Alternate video url 2.
(Dangerous Minds via Oh Have You Seen This, thanks Tara McGinley!).
"Nonetheless, the positive actions of one company are no substitute for a government policy that protects openness and benefits consumers. We're all looking forward to further developments that will let people use Skype on any device, on any network."or when he said this from a September lobby trip to DC:
"We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to phone calls delivered over data networks and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. And as many members of the Internet community and key congressional leaders have noted, there are compelling reasons to be concerned about the future of openness."Compelling reasons, indeed. It seems that in this case, AT&T actually followed through with their promises to be more "open" while Skype and Verizon have just painted a big "open" sign on the gates of the walled garden. Enter at your own risk.
From ManMade comes this video about how to create a quick n' dirty no-sew toolbelt from recycled fabric and duct tape. I don't think you're going to rock the construction site in this thing, but for light tools and crafting supplies, it's an easy way to cobble something together.
ManMade Video How-To: Make a Custom, No-Sew Tool Belt from Repurposed Fabric
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Now in the Boing Boing Bazaar: chunks of aerogel! $50 buys you a pair of aerogel discs.
Silica aerogel, the infamous and ethereal material comprised of up to 99.98% air, can be yours at last. Known for its superinsulating abilities, ultralow density, and its use on the Mars rovers, silica aerogel is just one member of the amazing class of materials known as aerogels, which promise to revolutionize everything from buildings to electric energy storage to hydrogen to lightweight structures.These discs here are the old-fashioned "Classic Silica" flavor of aerogel and are composed of 96% air. While in principle capable of supporting 2000 times their weight in applied force, remember that 2000 times almost nothing is a small number, and that in its classic form, silica aerogel is fragile. This form factor of aerogel, what we call "monolithic" aerogel, is best for curiosity, display, shooting lasers through, etc.
Aerogel chunks in Boing Boing Bazaar
If you've ever wished you could get an insider's look at the daily activities of NASA Goddard's largest clean room, you're in luck. Web cams are now providing live coverage of work on the components of the upcoming James Web Space Telescope. The cameras snap and display one picture per minute from the pristine workspace of the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The advantage to the Webb-cam is that the average person doesn't need to do a micron-type clean up and spend time donning protective gear. Anyone can sit at their computer and see what's going on, no matter what they're wearing.
[via @NASA_Langley]
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This visualization of the way colors in Flickr images change over the course of the year was created by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of IBM's Visual Communication Lab. It's called "Flickr Flow."
The two of us see the world as a stream of color, and in 2009 we finally had a chance to draw the river in our heads. We began with a collection of photographs of the Boston Common taken from Flickr. Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. The image [above] is an early sketch from the piece. Summer is at the top, with time proceeding clockwise.
The finished infographic, complete with seasonal labels and callouts of representative images, appeared in the Metric section of Boston magazine in March of 2009. You can view a low-res version of it here.
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"There's nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it -- we just want to make sure that it's licensed, and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately," Obama said. "That's why [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."Except, of course, ACTA goes way, way, way beyond that. It's disappointing that Obama, who keeps insisting he's in favor of greater transparency in government seems to be ignoring the fact that the USTR has been anything but transparent on ACTA, and that the whole effort has really been a blatant push by the entertainment industry and pharma to engage in legislative laundering to push through all sorts of restrictive rules that have nothing, whatsoever, to do with protecting against counterfeiting.
Holga, © Stavro Papadopoulos, from an image gallery curated by Sean Bonner of work by various photographers using toy cameras, over at Magnesium Agency.
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I don't know where this came from, or if it is from a real choose-your-own-adventure book, but as Margaret Wise Brown might say, the important thing is that it is funny.
Josh at imsolidstate came across an extra battery charger, so he decided to turn it into a spot welder. We've seen spot welder projects in the past, however his goes the extra mile, adding a digital control circuit and current monitoring capabilities, to give precise control over the welding operation. Schematic and source code are available on his site.
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Boing Boing readers are interested in Edgar Allan Poe (examples 1, 2, 3, and 4), so I suspect you'll want to be the first to know about 4 by Poe, an upcoming collection of four Poe stories designed and illustrated by Eric Mongeon.
Mongeon is best-known 'round these corners as a fabulous magazine designer and art director (and as the man behind the look of a record that's particularly close to me), and this is a new project for him, although one that has haunted him since design school. Each story will be published quarterly as an individually-bound limited-edition softcover volume. Mongeon promises surprises:
"4 by Poe isn't going to be yet another cinderblock tome, printed on crummy paper, typeset by a designer who dares you to actually read the text, and embellished by an illustrator who operates from a safely detached position of irony. This is going to be an illustrated collection for us grown-ups. One that approaches Poe's stories of murder, mystery, and mayhem on their own beautiful, sensationalistic terms. One that highlights the black humor, celebrates the philosophical insights, and yes, revels in the violence ... Poe's deviants lived in the real world, and that's how I'm going to show them."Subscribe. I just did. 4 by Poe: A collection of four short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
"The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun and other people jumped into the fray," said Gordon Bassham with the Wichita Police Department."Wichita man pays crack dealer with Monopoly money"The victim was able to get away and escape serious injury.
At this point police say he's being uncooperative.
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The Final Cut saw blade packs sandpaper on the sides for a smoother cut.
The latest in saw blade technology. Fully patented and proven successful in cutting and sanding your work piece all at one time. Use with table saw and power miter boxes for the perfect joint or finished edge. No edge sanding is required after passing your work piece through the table saw and when making miters the joints virtually disappear. Make minor length adjustments by simply sliding the work piece towards the rotating blade (just like a disc sander). One operation produces two functions. Try it and see for yourself how easy it is to become a professional wood craftsman.
[via Core77]
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Victor doesn't think that this is a copyright violation (I think he's right), but it does smack of plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. It's possible that CNN was inspired to write the extremely similar piece at the same time, but the more likely explanation is that CNN just ripped Victor off. Victor couldn't find any contact info for the author and when he posted a question about it to the article's comment thread, it was rejected.
We often hear big media companies talk about how bloggers rip them off by posting fragments of their articles, but there's a well-developed practice of linking and crediting in blogging that often doesn't go the other way, and it sucks that media companies don't play nice in link economy.
Copycat Articles Trample Bloggers: PWND By CNN (Thanks, Victor!)
Had the article I'd penned been something more general or topical, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But I'd researched the topic before writing the post, and found almost nothing on geek anthems- and no articles at all in the past few years. It was a niche I was excited to fill. The post I wrote did well, getting picked up by Veronica Belmont and BuzzFeed among others, and garnering close to 20,000 visits at last count. Not Gawker numbers, but for our young blog it was a nice spike that's resulted in substantially more regulars. CNN's article, however, stopped the post's momentum dead in its tracks.Talking over my discovery with a prominent journalist buddy, she told me it was a common occurrence. More and more she noticed big media borrowing unique topics and ideas from viral blog posts in the hopes that they'd go unnoticed. With all the recent search-term omniscience being developed, it's getting harder to hide that sort of thing. And what about the little guy?
The real issue here is search rank. For young blogs hoping for traction, SEO is king, and knock-off articles pose a much greater threat to scrappy bloggers than old media. We scramble to find topical/SEO niches and plant our flags with posts like "Top Ten Depressing Songs" or "How to Prepare For a Steampunk Prom", using each as a foothold to climb higher up Mt. Blogosphere. But a copycat article by one of the big guys immediately supplants that flag, and incinerates it with the ensuing ripple effect. In this case, CNN's article wrested the top "geek anthems" search spot from mine, and the flood of blogs linking to it filled up the rest of the first page.
Instructables user zieak upcycled some discarded keyboard circuit sheets into this attractively geeky document folder for his wife.
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As part of our spring-cleaning sale in the Maker Shed we're offering FREE shipping on orders over $125! (Contiguous US only) Just use the code "CLEARME" at checkout. But what about all of our international friends? No worries, we have a deal for you too! You'll get $10 off your international shipping, just use code "MAR-10" at check out.
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Indeed, by the time the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of reauthorization in early November, legislators of both parties were venting their frustration about the scant guidance they'd gotten from the administration.Sanchez's writeup goes into a lot more detail, but it's a depressing look at today's politics, media and the public as well. Politicians from both parties first belatedly tried to "legalize" blatantly illegal spying on Americans, and then, when they had an immediate opportunity to put in place the most basic safeguards because "that is not who we are," instead conspired with each other to renew the law and completely ignore the vast and blatant abuses of it. When you wonder why so few people trust politicians, this is why.
Behind closed doors, however, the administration was anything but silent. Instead of openly opposing civil-liberties reforms that had been under consideration in the Senate, The New York Times reported in October, the Obama administration opted for a kind of political ventriloquist's routine. The Justice Department wrote a series of amendments diluting or stripping away the new protections, then laundered them through Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, who offered them up verbatim.
It's worth taking a closer look at one such reform proposal -- again, predating the latest and most damning OIG report -- to get a sense of the disconnect between the administration's public and private stances. Some legislators had wanted to require the FBI to develop "minimization procedures" for NSLs, as they do when full-blown wiretaps are employed, to ensure that information about innocents is not circulated indiscriminately and that irrelevant records are ultimately discarded. This would only bring NSLs in line with other Patriot provisions compelling production of business records, where minimization is already required, and in principle, the Justice Department is already on board with this plan: As Inspector General Glenn Fine noted in his testimony before the Senate in September, the department's NSL working group was already laboring to develop such procedures in response to the abuses documented in previous OIG reports -- but the working group had been dragging their heels for more than two years.
The task of blocking any legal requirement that the Justice Department pick up the pace fell to Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican from California. At a House markup session in November, Lungren offered up an amendment that would strip away the minimization mandate and even argued, bizarrely, that the very concept of "minimization" was inapplicable in the NSL context. He was visibly confused when Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, after making a point of praising Lungren's "scrupulous study" of the issue, pointed out that the Justice Department itself had publicly accepted the need for such procedures.
"This is the first I had heard that the Justice Department was either considering it or had not raised any objections to this," a visibly perplexed Lungren stammered, "because it was my understanding they felt this was an inappropriate transfer of a process that is used in the electronic surveillance arena." The talking points with which Lundgren had been supplied, it seems, had not been checked against the official assurances the department had been providing.
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:
Flickr user syano made this stylish clothtylophone, a functional cross-stitch Stylophone. Nice work! Here's what the insides look like:
In the Maker Shed:
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Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile (again). There've been a lot of earthquakes lately. But scientists say there haven't been more earthquakes lately. Tremors are, and have always been, common. On average, per year, you can expect one 8.0 or above quake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and 130-odd quakes between 6.0 and 6.9. One thing that has risen: Death tolls. But scientists say that increase has more to do with economic conditions that drive people to pack into mega-cities and live in cheaply built (and quick-to-collapse) homes.
Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does. Society knows how to react to scarcity.Indeed, if you look at all of human history, probably 99.999999% of it has been about dealing with the issues of scarcity. In fact, our entire original economic philosophy (which is really just two and a half centuries old) was based on "resource allocation in the presence of scarcity." Historically, abundance just hasn't been an issue that we've had to deal with very much. And the problem is that people try to apply the mental rules of scarcity to abundance and they basically kick out an error message. It's a "divide by zero" sort of problem. You get infinity as a result, and you think it's wrong.
It's easy to say "preserve the best of the old and combine it with the best of the new," but in revolution, the best of the new is incompatible with the best of the old. It's about doing things a whole new way.Indeed. This is a point that is brought up by our critics a lot. They claim that content creators and the like shouldn't even try to shift over to the new models while the old models still have some life in them or while the new models aren't really well proven. There's this belief that they can hang onto the old, and gradually add some elements of the new, and then eventually make the jump. But, what Shirky points out more eloquently than I ever could, is that much of the new stuff is really incompatible and very much in conflict with the old. If giving away your content increases new opportunities, how do you square that with an old business model that was built entirely around the scarcity of content?
Now, there are a jillion combination pocket/keychain tools on the market. I've owned, carried, and used a bunch of them, and I generally find that only the test of time effectively sorts wheat from chaff. I've never owned, carried, or used this so-called "screwpop" tool, so I have no way of knowing how it stands up to pocket wear. I'd be a bit nervous that the reversible hex bit would get lost somewhere along the way, although it looks like their bit features a ball detent to hold it in place. Also, for those of you are counting, the "fourth" tool--besides the bottle opener and the flat and phillips screwdrivers--is a 1/4" hex nut driver, which is a bit of a cheap marketing gimmick because what they're really talking about, of course, is the socket that holds the hex bit.
But I like the no-frills design and the price is certainly right at $5. If I see one on a counter by a cashwrap at a hardware store someday, I'll probably pick it up. [Thanks, Kurt!]
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If you're under 19 and want a free early look at the book for review on your blog/paper/whatever, send a note with your address to torpublicity@tor.com with "FTW" for the subject-line. Also include the name of your blog or school paper. For fun, also share a game you enjoyed recently and why.In the virtual future, you must organize to survive
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual "gold," jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world's poorest countries, where countless "gold farmers," bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of "General Robotwalla." In Shenzen, heart of China's industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power--including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister's people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once--a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.
Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation
We did this with Little Brother a couple years back, on the grounds that books for young people should be available for young reviewers to write about, rather than just adult reviewers who try to figure out whether young people will enjoy them. It was a real success and I'm happy to be repeating it.
This is being launched in honor of the American Library Association's Teen Tech Week, and is open to Canadians and Americans. I'm working on a similar offer for the UK edition, for Britons, Aussies, South Africans and Kiwis, and will post about it as soon as I have details.
Many years ago I wrote about an idea for simplifying hardware devices that scan stuff producing digital images. They shouldn't require any drivers and they should work effortlessly. But the architecture they use for these devices is still rooted in the 1980s, when it should have and easily could have made the transition to HTTP.
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Is there anything you can't build with an old blue barrel? Instructables user Kentucky-bum made this Frisbee golf target.
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In an agreement finalized this week, Disney acknowledges that the "current incarnation of a costumed character featured at the University of Oregon's athletic and promotional events (the 'Oregon Duck') is not substantially similar" to Disney's Donald Duck character.Kudos to Disney for apparently being willing to not just respect a decades old handshake agreement on this, but to recognize when it should no longer try to stretch the trademark and let a clearly distinct usage go free. Given that Disney has a history of being really aggressive over such things, this is a nice surprise.
Last week, the UK LibDem party was thrown into scandal when two of its Lords proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship, particularly aimed at "web-lockers" like Google Docs and YouSendIt. Now a leaked document from the British Phonographic Institute suggests that the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the "party of liberty."
This weekend, LibDem members who attend the national convention in Birmingham will have the chance to vote on an emergency measure affirming the party's commitment to an open and just Internet, repudiating this disastrous measure. If you (or someone you know) is attending the convention, please support the "Save the Net" emergency measure and help rehabilitate the party's reputation on fundamental freedoms in the information society.
Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.BPI drafted the Lib Dem / Conservative web blocking amendmentIt is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the summer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.
I feel a great disturbance in the public utility, as if millions of bladders cried out, and were suddenly silenced.
Pats Papers: What If Everybody in Canada Flushed at Once?
(Thanks, Christina!)
Dick Burger has been hailed by fandom as the greatest comic book creator since Jack Kirby. Unlike Kirby, however, Burger retained ownership of his characters and became a media tycoon, complete with a private jet furnished with a hot tub and a mansion in Los Angeles. He is also an insufferable bastard.
Leonard Bates is a North American journalist who is conducting research for a biography of Burger. When he travels to Hicksville, New Zealand to visit Burger's childhood home, he discovers that no one in the village wants to talk to him about Burger. For reasons unknown to Bates, they are downright angry at him for even mentioning his name. They are delighted, however, to give Bates access to the town library, which contains the greatest comic book collection on the face of the earth (including several copies of Action #1 which they casually pull from the shelves). It turns out that everyone in the village is connoisseur of comics and they'd all read Bates' earlier biography of Kirby. What is going in here? wonders Bates, and what's the big mystery about Burger?
That's the setup for Hicksville, an absorbing 250-page graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks, and republished Drawn & Quarterly with a new introduction. Horrocks does a fine job of weaving the medium of comics into the comic without making it obviously self-referential. I grew up reading Kirby and later was involved in the minicomics scene, and this book resonated with me. Hicksville was awarded "Book of the Year" by The Comics Journal, which described it as "a sweetly told love letter to the comics medium." It was also was nominated for two Ignatz Awards, a Harvey Award, and two Alph'Art Awards.
An FAA guidebook says inflight video chat is to be discouraged because it can be annoying to seatmates, but that's very different than banning something because it's a terrorist weapon.So what's a curious guy to do? To the Internet! Which is exactly what I did. Responses starting pouring in. Including one from a pal at the State Department, who echoed my basic goal: To use video chat to tuck my kids into bed isn't a crime. Or at least, shouldn't be.
The flight attendant just showed me the United policy manual which prohibits "two way devices" from communicating with the ground. However, the PLANE HAS WIFI. To combat this, not unlike China, United and other airlines have blocked Skype and other known video chat offenders. Apparently, they missed Apple iChat. Oops.
Read: Video Chat on the plane illegal? (battellemedia.com)
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To coincide with South by Southwest, journalist Scott Kirsner is making his 2009 book Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age available free, in digital form, for the duration of the festival. You can download it here.
Lots of folks you've seen at SXSW are featured in the book, including artist Natasha Wescoat, pioneering videoblogger Ze Frank, singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, Burnie Burns of "Red vs. Blue," comedian Eugene Mirman, documentarian Curt Ellis, DJ Spooky, and plenty more. And, if you're at SXSW this year, Kirsner will be conducting a "fireside chat" with Ze Frank on Saturday.
Scott Kirsner's "Fans, Friends & Followers" (PDF)
mirror site if the link above is slow or cranky
The SynPad uses four corner-mounted piezo sensors to determine the pressure and relative location of a given hit. The project can easily be made on the cheap, and turns out a pretty sophisticated Arduino-based MIDI percussion controller. Gang1ion shares the relevant steps and source code for making one yourself. [via Matrixsynth]
In the Maker Shed:
The fine folks at All Hands Active, an Ann Arbor, MI hackerspace, are hosting a community-wide collective brainstorming session to explore what the Ann Arbor/Detroit hacker community can do at Maker Faire Detroit. They're calling on all makers in the area to come on Saturday, March 13th, at 3pm, to the AHA! Shop, at 525 East Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104. They thought it would be fun for people to bring "hacked" foods to share.
We love what these folks are doing and hope they get a good turnout and dream up some great ways of getting involved with the Faire.
More details and directions on their website.
Collective Brainstorming for Detroit Maker Faire
Saturday, March 13th at 3pm
All Hands Active
525 East Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104
"While litigation appears to be an increasingly common cost of doing business," he concludes, "we view Apple's willingness to aggressively defend its patent portfolio favorably and welcome the defense of its IP."Historically, this is generally not a good sign. It's usually a sign that a company has run into an innovation stumbling block, and doesn't think it can really continue to innovate at the pace the market is expecting, so it seeks to hold back competitors and pump up revenue through litigation, rather than innovation. A smart research report would note that breaking out the offensive patent lawsuits is generally a warning sign. But, then again, this is a research report that thinks the overall number of patents a tech company has is a meaningful metric.
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Miss. school prom off after lesbian's date request"A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation," McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered...
The ACLU said McMillen approached school officials shortly before the memo went out because she knew same-sex dates had been banned in the past. The ACLU said district officials told McMillen she and her girlfriend wouldn't be allowed to arrive together, that she would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo, and that she and her girlfriend might be asked to leave if their presence made any other students "uncomfortable."
McMillen said she feared she would be thrown out of the prom because "we do live in the Bible Belt."
ACLU Demands Mississippi School Allow Lesbian Student To Attend Prom With Girlfriend
(Thanks, Steve!)
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The late '90s Internet love fest was crazy enough, driven by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt's misguided telecom reform that had the effect of keeping data rates artificially high. This created a gold rush to install fiber and build applications that didn't make economic sense (though electronic commerce, online banking, as well as wireless and broadband deployment would eventually prove productive over the next decade). Bad policy meant capital got overallocated and too quickly, as momentum mutual funds (momos) and day traders furiously drove up stock prices of every company with dot-com in its name for no fundamental reasons. Wall Street trading was broken.But, he notes, there was a core of a good idea in there. What made the investment in the internet and new technologies make sense was that it actually did drive productivity. The proper use of such tools increased productivity, decreased costs and opened up new markets. But with the flood of misallocated money, a lot of that got obscured in chasing sock puppets selling pet food.
Instead of finishing what the dot-com era started to deliver--a productive, wealth-producing economy--capital was seduced into the financial lair of private equity and real-estate mortgages. Trillions were pumped into unneeded housing stock. Fannie and Freddie fanned the flames, and then fizzled and failed. And leveraged buyouts reigned. Even in 2007, one Blackstone private equity fund raised almost as much money as all of the venture capital industry.The key point here is that venture capital tends to (though, certainly not always...) invest in real innovation, nurturing concepts from idea to market and beyond. Private equity, however, is more about just moving money around and looking for quick hit opportunities to get increasing returns. One grows the economy. The other does not. But, by punishing the capital markets that fund real innovation and company growth via Sarbanes Oxley, money that used to go to venture investment went towards the east coast private equity world, where it was shuffled around, rather than invested productively. And, tragically, it doesn't look like anything the government is doing is designed to fix this:
Today, we are still left with almost no initial public offerings. While private equity fund-raising was down 68% in 2009 to $96 billion, venture capital barely raised $13 billion.Reaching back to our economic parables, it's a question of whether or not our government has been making a giant broken window fallacy. It's not working on plans that fund actual productivity and economic growth. The government is focused, instead, on getting money moving around again, and all that means is it will move into another unproductive bubble, until we align the incentives properly again.
Capital gains taxes are set to return to 20% on Jan. 1, 2011. And worse, investing is as uncertain as ever. No one wants to fund health care, medical devices or even much biotech if they can't figure out how they are going to be paid via reimbursements from ObamaCare. Energy investing is also a mess. And while "green" investing is booming, with few exceptions that is about efficiency rather than productivity. There's a big difference: You can make the Post Office more efficient while email makes us more productive and wealthier.
Big regulated oligopolists control our communications infrastructure. Startups are nowhere to be found. Few are willing to take the risk of true venture investing.
It's been 10 long years since the economy has created real wealth, as opposed to easy-credit induced real-estate or paper wealth. Amidst all the current confusion over health care and tax rates and energy and banking reforms, maybe it's time that the market transitions back to investments that drive productivity and increase living standards rather than just paper profits.
I make a bunch of stuff out of plywood. A lot of it is utilitarian furniture--bookshelves, workbenches, occasional chairs and stools. I've been wishing for a long time that I could find a plastic substitute material, like the synthetic decking and lumber I see for sale in the hardware stores these days, to use instead, not only for the eco-friendly aspect, but because I'd like to have a material that was naturally water-resistant and did not require finishing.
That's why I was excited to learn, a few months ago, about EcoSheet, which is a "plywood replacement" panel material manufactured by British firm Environmental Recycling Technologies. I hit them up for a sample and they sent me a 4" x 4" x 3/4" piece of the stuff, which is pictured above. It does not weigh as much as plywood, but seems just as rigid, and drills and cuts easily. And although their initial market seems to be the construction industry, specifically temporary structures erected as barriers and pouring forms, I'm looking forward to experimenting with "off-label" uses when and if it becomes available in small quantities in the US.
EcoSheet is manufactured from 75% recycled material, mostly waste electrical and electronic equipment, and can itself be recycled at the end of its useful life.
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Recently out of Virginia's public school system, youngster James Stephenson writes in to say that being a kid sucks. So what's new? A gauntlet of cameras, invasive searches and authoritarian security theatrics that don't make schools feel safer—but do tempt administrators into privacy abuses such as Lower Merion's recent webcam-spying scandal.
Special feature: "Seen Not Heard: How obscure security makes school suck."
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The Original Dungeons & Dragons
Magician Mat Ricardo writes in regarding this morning's post showing a motorcycle (seemingly) pulling the tablecloth out from beneath a very long table's-worth of place settings: "Here's what I do - for 20 years-ish I've been finishing nmy cabaret act by putting the tablecloth back on the table, underneath all the stuff. Took me years to invent, and I'm the only person in the world performing this trick. Maybe I need to get out more, but what can I say - it's a living!"
You can see the gag around 2:15 in the video, but it's well worth watching the whole thing. I was gutted to learn that I missed Mat last weekend when I took the kid down to Covent Garden in London to see the performers, but I'm looking forward to catching his act next time we head down.
Mat Ricardo showreel (Thanks, Mat!)
People can shoot pretty decent video using smartphones. There's even been some interesting hardware solutions to improve the fact that you're still shooting video with a smartphone. When I ran across this iPhone image stabilizer (original Japanese) I was impressed with how well it seems to perform. (warning: overly long demo)
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People in seven European countries have expressed willingness to try "NoMix" toilets that keep crap and urine separate, allowing for more efficient waste processing and less seepage of urine-borne pharmaceuticals into the water supply. The study was conducted with 2700 people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, with 80 percent supporting the toilets. Even higher numbers were willing to use urine as fertilizer.
The article doesn't discuss infrastructural issues, though: would you need a second black-water sewer for the yellow gold?
NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in 7 European countries
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Given the fact that:These are pretty serious questions -- because under copyright law today, this book is trouble, and that's unfortunate, because it looks like a lovely book. My guess would be that Devries actually had to get permission from the parents, but do parents have the right to sign away the copyright on a child's work? And do those children then have the right to terminate that agreement at a later date? Perhaps people think the likelihood of kids later terminating the agreement is quite low -- and maybe they're right. But what would happen if a kid no longer wanted to be associated with that artwork?Do you believe that Devries should be forced to get formal copyright releases from each and every one of the kids in question? Do you think he has done so? If so, should they be able to repudiate their copyright agreement when they turn 18 since many jurisdictions allow minors to repudiate contracts signed before they reach 18? If so, should they be able to take Devries's work out of circulation?
- There is no doubt that the children's original doodles are protected by copyright for their entire life, plus 70 additional years.
- There is no doubt that Devries' paintings of the doodles are 'derivative works' stemming from the original creations of the children.
Do you think that the children should all share in the royalties from books, art and showcases that Devries produces for the rest of their lives (and beyond - for 7 decades)? Do you think that is in fact the case of what is going on? If Devries hasn't gotten a copyright release and/or isn't paying royalties, do you feel that he is somehow "exploiting" these kids or "stealing" from them?
CP+ 2010: Ricoh has exhibited prototypes of its A12 and P10 lens modules for the GXR system at the CP+ photographic trade show. According to the show report by Japanese website DC Watch, the company has also shown mock-ups of future modules, where lenses can be detached from the camera body to mount third-party lenses and bellows from manufacturers such as Hasselblad and Leica.
Animator/composer Cyriak just posted this surreal video featuring infinite giant teddy bears climbing out of the sea at the Worthing shore and crossing the road. You'd think that this would be thin gruel for three minutes' worth of animation, but you'd be wrong: it turns out that the number of variations on the themes of pigeons, people, teddies, cars and shore is a lot greater (and weirder and funnier) than instinct would suggest.
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The gods of Random.org have crowned Rebecca Karger, a student at Horace Greeley High School, winner of our Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set. This is what Rebecca had to say about what she'd do with the set:
If I had this kit, I'd take it with me to college next year, and build a robot that could go down the hall of my dorm to deliver a note to a friend. And probably 500 different other things. I was on an FLL team in middle school that went to the international competition, but it was the year BEFORE the NXT kits came out! I remember seeing a demo and being highly impressed, but my parents say the kits are too expensive.
Rebecca: so yeah, your FB settings are kinda restrictive. You're going to have to get in touch with me if you want the prize. I'm at facebook.com/nerd1.
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I believe that this is true -- and that fat can offset bitterness the same way that sweet can. For example, raw cacao nibs mixed with cashew nuts taste sweet and chocolatey.
Australian researchers say fat is 'sixth taste' (via Kottke)"We know that the human tongue can detect five tastes -- sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury, protein-rich taste contained in foods such as soy sauce and chicken stock)," Russell Keast, from Deakin University, said Monday.
"Through our study we can conclude that humans have a sixth taste -- fat."
Researchers tested 30 people's ability to taste a range of fatty acids in otherwise plain solutions and found that all were able to determine the taste -- though some required higher concentrations than others.
(Image: Beale's Open Kettle Rendered Pure Lard, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Steve Snodgrass' photostream)
Douglas James Duchak, 46, was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday with two counts of damaging protected computers. According to a federal indictment, Duchak tried to compromise computers at the TSA's Colorado Springs Operations Center (CSOC) on Oct. 22, 2009, seven days after he'd being given two weeks notice that he was being dismissed. He was also charged with tampering with a TSA server that contained data from the U.S. Marshal's Service Warrant Information Network.Former TSA analyst charged with computer tampering (via /.)He "knowingly transmitted code into the CSOC server that contained the Terrorist Screening Database, and thereby attempted intentionally to cause damage to the CSOC computer and database," prosecutors said Wednesday in a press release.
Aestetix sez, "Traditionally HOPE [ed: Hackers on Planet Earth, the annual NYC conference put on by 2600 Magazine] conferences have been more about the talks than the physical projects, but with the 2008 conference that started to change, and this time organizers are pushing for an even stronger showing of projects and tech art. This call for projects goes out to hackers, makers, technologists, artists, and free thinkers around the world. Come share your passions and ideas with 3,000+ of your soon-to-be closest friends."
Fun-loving hackers and improbable tech-art: what a match made in heaven! HOPE is probably my top conference that I've never been to (I almost made it in 1999 but the flight was cancelled!). I continue to miss it every year, despite my best efforts (it usually overlaps my birthday, which is family time, for obvious reasons!), but I vow to go someday.
I mean, just have a look at that call for proposals: games to be played by thousands of hackers over three floors of a massive hotel; midnight to 9AM sessions; hardware hacking village... Talk about nerdvana.
Call for Projects and Tech Art (Thanks, aestetix!)
This is a very clever way to promote your performance motorcycle: BMW chains a very, very long tablecloth with a very, very elaborate cluster of place-settings to a S 1000 RR "superbike" and has a driver roar off, taking the cloth away and leaving the dinner setup intact. Impressive acceleration!
Video: BMW S 1000 RR pulls off the old tablecloth trick (Thanks, Alan!)
The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to create story-telling openings for films like "Psycho," "North by Northwest" and, later, "Goodfellas" and "The Age of Innocence.""New Honor for the Designs That Get Movies Moving" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)(Among the entries at South by Southwest, "Cigarette Girl," an independent film about a world in which smoking restrictions have murderous consequences, is one that recalls the Bass oeuvre: guns, cigarettes and people flicker between the real and the abstract, over a cool-toned soundtrack.)
Before his death in 1996, Bass had been nominated for Oscars three times, winning once, for his short films. But his work on the titles fell through the cracks of a film industry awards system that has given far more recognition to directors
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