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Articles by BoingBoing from February 2011

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08:09 pm PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Update from Wisconsin
I'm watching the live feed from the Wisconsin Capitol Building, and getting messages from friends inside. No arrests so far, the police are hanging back. Despite orders to close the doors, 100 new peo...
05:14 pm PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Articulated cardboard Cthulhu
Eddbagenal sez, "Students at Strode College in the UK staged a 'cardboard costume' catwalk show including this awesome articulated Cthulhu headpiece made entirely from old box cartons." Technically, ...
05:13 pm PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Charlie Brooker on Gadaffi
Charlie Brooker's commentary on Gadaffi's erratic atrocities -- and the western leaders who've kissed up to him over the years -- from last week's Ten O'Clock Live is some of the most nose-milk-spurt...
01:17 pm PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Wisconsin update: More to come later today
My friends in Madison say they've been told that the Capitol Building will be cleared of protesters today around 4:00 pm. Passive resistance—"Gandhi-style"—is planned. It's my hope that th...
09:57 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing HOWTO make a disappearing prank gallium teaspoon
Disappearing Spoons sells kits to make your own gallium prank-teaspoons. Gallium spoons weigh nearly as much as stainless steel ones, and have a similar finish, but they dissolve in hot liquids like ...
09:51 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Kinect as 3D scanner: Fabricate Yourself
A new project uses the Microsoft Kinect as a crude 3D scanner. Joris from i.materialise sez, "Fabricate Yourself is a tool by Karl Willis of Interactive Fabrication. Released at the Tangible, Embedde...
05:17 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Freeman Dyson reviews Gleick's book on information theory
"How We Know" is Freeman Dyson's essay on information theory in next month's New York Review of Books, inspired by James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Dyson's thoughts on Cl...
05:04 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Captain Beefheart's "10 Commandments of Guitar Playing"
I haven't played a stringed instrument since high school, but "Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing" sounds like damned good advice for whatever you're passionate about. ...2. Your gu...
04:57 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Telephone ad extolling the virtues of interrupted suppers
An early ad for extra landlines pimps the miracle of talking on the phone during the family dinner, and advises that Junior will love a "portable" phone that he can carry down to the living room when ...
04:54 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Busted: English-speaking "call center" fronted for overseas identity thieves
Belarusian fraudster Dmitry M. Naskovets has been pled guilty to charges that he set up a boiler-room full of English- and German-speaking con-artists who worked with identity thieves to defraud bank...
04:44 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Why are America's largest corporations paying no tax?
Inspired by the UK Uncut movement, Americans are taking to the street, asking why they're being asked to tighten their belts when the largest corporations in the country are paying no tax at all: - B...
04:36 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Infographic on the relationship between the Koch Bros and Scott Walker
SalJake sez, "Nifty infographic outlining the money path from the Koch brothers to Wisconsin's 'never negotiate, never surrender' governor and Tea Party darling Scott Walker. The blogger who successf...
04:31 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Charlie Brooker on Gadaffi
Charlie Brooker's commentary on Gadaffi's erratic atrocities -- and the western leaders who've kissed up to him over the years -- from last week's Ten O'Clock Live is some of the most nose-milk-spurt...
04:26 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing 3D printing with mashed potatatoes
The people at Bits From Bytes, who sell 3D printer kits, fed some mashed potatoes to a RapMan printer and used it to print some quite credible prototype 3D food. But it's not without some issues. In ...
04:22 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Tolk_en estate versus the Streisand Effect
Zazzle user Harpocrates has a thoroughgoing response to the Tolkien estate's insistence that a badge reading "While You Were Reading Tolkien, I Was Watching Evangelion" infringes on its rights -- a s...
02:26 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Bigfoot t-shirts from Three Wolf Moon folks (and a Bigfoot ski mask)!
Over at Cryptomundo, Craig points us to a handsome Big Foot Costume Ski Mask and Mountain Sasquatch t-shirt. The latter is from The Mountain Corporation, the esteemed clothier behind the iconic Three ...
12:32 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Charlie Sheen's rant, the LOLcat edition
"Cats Quote Charlie Sheen." (via Gina Bianchini)......
12:29 am PST - Sun, February 27, 2011
BoingBoing Charlie Sheen's rant, the xtranormal edition
[Video Link, by YouTube user slatester]......
06:05 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Brickless laptop chargers ahoy
Transphorm, a startup backed by Google (among others) has a cool-sounding gallium nitride technology to improve AC/DC transformers. They say they might be able to completely eliminate laptop charging ...
05:59 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Game Boy Mystery (video)
[Video Link] My money's on well-done hoax, but who knows... (Thanks, Doug Lussenhop!)......
04:13 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing 14-month-old baby spends 4 hours locked inside bank vault
A 14-month-old girl who somehow toddled away from her mom and grandma managed to get trapped inside a time-locked bank vault in Georgia. Cops pumped fresh air through vents to the crying baby until a ...
04:11 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Libya: Eyes on Benghazi
A young man attends a protest against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Libya's rebel-held city of Benghazi. The opposition-controlled city has filled a political void with a coalition which is cleaning u...
03:59 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing China's internet censors don't like the smell of "Jasmine"
China's state Internet censors have ratcheted up web filters, and security officers are harassing and detaining bloggers and activists as an online appeal for a "Jasmine Revolution" spreads in China. ...
03:43 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing thebestpictureontheinternet.com
thebestpictureontheinternet.com (thanks, Robert!).......
03:41 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing 14-month-old baby spends 4 hours locked inside bank vault
A 14-month-old girl who somehow toddled away from her mom and grandma managed to get trapped inside a time-locked bank vault in Georgia. Cops pumped fresh air through vents to the crying baby until a ...
03:33 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing What does a Space Shuttle launch look like when viewed from an airplane? (video)
[Video Link] "Flying from Orlando, FL I had the rare opportunity to be able to watch Discovery's final launch as it embarks on STS-133," explains software developer Neil Monday, who shot this incredib...
02:28 pm PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Mysterious fluid rendered 1930s intestines immune to broken glass
A secret fluid reported on in the pages of the June, 1931 ish of Modern Mechanix had the property of rendering your intestines "immune" to cuts from glass, allowing you to ingest any amount of broken ...
10:49 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing The original Hubble Telescope
Yesterday, I spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as part of a Physics Department speaker series. Dawn Erb, one of my hosts in the department, was kind enough to send me this awesome photo ...
10:32 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Wisconsin cops for the win
Yesterday afternoon, hundreds of cops marched into the Wisconsin Capitol Building, where Wisconsinites have spent more than a week protesting their governor's plan to eliminate collective bargaining f...
04:18 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing TVOntario's online archive, including Prisoners of Gravity!
TVOntario, a public broadcaster in Ontario, Canada, has released an enormous archive of its programming online. There's even some very funny and awkward video of me with bad hair in the mid-1990s, be...
04:11 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Wearable lockpicks
Lockpick maker Ray Connors sells beautiful hand-turned little numbers and offers this tip for storing them with a safety pin, turning them into an esoteric (and literal) badge of honor. Custom Handma...
04:08 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Ivory Soap asks: are you younger-looking than a 3-year-old?
This creepy 1969 Ivory Soap ad pits young mothers against their tiny daughters in a battle to see who has the most youthful complexion. Evidently this ad was part of the same campaign, at although it'...
03:01 am PST - Sat, February 26, 2011
BoingBoing Tolkien estate censors badge that contains the word "Tolkien"
Not content to censor a book that combines literary criticism and fiction by including JRR Tolkien as a character, the Tolkien estate has shut down Adam Rakunas, who makes and gives away buttons that...
10:48 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: CA '70s'80s punkhardcore photography + art
Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys with his home made anti-Reagan t-shirt, circa 1980, shot at the backstage toilet at The Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Hollywood, California, by Glen E. Friedman. Opening tonight a...
10:38 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing LCD Soundsystem + Muppets: "Dance Yrself Clean"
[Video Link] (thanks, Tara McGinley)......
10:22 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Bob Knetzger's gross food-making toys
I was very excited last week at Toy Fair (the toy industry trade show) in NYC to see a classic toy I invented being relaunched. Boing Boing readers (or their younger brothers) may remember having this...
10:14 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Rothfuss pledges to buy Firefly from Fox and give it away
Bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss has pledged to help actor Nathan Fillion buy the rights to Firefly from Fox. Fillion, who starred in the series, has publicly said that if he had the money to get ...
09:37 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Sword of Fargoal -- addictive dungeon crawler for iOS
A while back, Rob posted an essay by John Brownlee about "roguelikes," which are simple adventure games that take place in multilevel dungeons filled with monsters and treasures. I first came across R...
08:45 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Shard fox evicted
A fox was found living at the top of the Shard, a supertall skyscraper under construction in central London. He was taken to an animal center for rehabilitation. Ted Burden, the centre's founder, said...
08:04 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing The right way to cook bacon in a pan
Excuse me while I cook some bacon now. CHOW - You're Doing It All Wrong: How to Cook Bacon......
06:12 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Blacksmithing tutorial - make a paper towel holder
I enjoyed this basic blacksmithing tutorial from Craft that shows you how to shape hot iron into a paper towel holder. Blacksmithing With Meg......
05:59 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing HarperCollins to libraries: we will nuke your ebooks after 26 checkouts
LibraryGoblin sez, "HarperCollins has decided to change their agreement with e-book distributor OverDrive. They forced OverDrive, which is a main e-book distributor for libraries, to agree to terms so...
05:57 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing 2011 Cigar Box Nation recycled material contest results
My friends at Cigar Box Nation have announced the winner of the Recycled Material Contest. The challenge was to build a stringed instrument out of 100% recycled materials. As Shane Speal put it, "If M...
05:37 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing LA Magazine asks me about my favorite places in LA
Photo of Vanalden Cave. See my other photos of the Vanalden Cave. The inimitable Chris Nichols of Los Angeles magazine interviewed me about some of my favorite places in Los Angeles. I told him about ...
05:28 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Irish Minister denies new sneaky copyright law
Irish Enterprise Minister Mary Hanafin denies that she will sneak in a three-strikes-and-you're-off-the-net censorship law without debate, using a statutory instrument: "'The Government cannot perform...
04:36 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Madison police chief wants to know why governor considered using agents provocateur
Madison, WI police chief Noble Wray has asked Governor Scott Walker to explain his statement to a phone prankster impersonating billionaire arch-conservative David Koch, in which Walker stated that h...
03:51 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Report: Feds spying on NYT's James Risen in CIA leak probe
From Politico: "Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran's nuclear program obtained a New York Times reporter's three private credit reports,...
03:36 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Artist vs. eBay bootleg artist from China
Paul Richmond is an artist who paints amazing homoerotic paintings as part of his "Cheesecake Boys" series, based on classic pinup girl art from the 1940s and 1950s. In this video, Paul explains how h...
02:54 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Quotable Charlie Sheen
"Look what I'm dealing with, man, I'm dealing with fools and trolls."—The one thing Charlie Sheen has ever said that I can relate to. This internet link includes 18 more Oblique Sheen-isms. (tha...
02:50 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Gadaffi jams satellite phones and TV, mobile phones
The desperate Gadaffi regime in Libya has deployed powerful radio jammers that are blocking satellite-based TV networks and satellite phones around the region, as well as screwing up mobile phones ac...
02:49 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Gadaffi sends text-spam offering bribes to counter-revolutionaries
Middle-Eastern media source @MAQAM reports that Gadaffi has SMS-spammed Libyans, offering 100 dinar mobile phone credit bribes to people who send out messages asking their friends to stop protesting a...
02:48 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Slowly fuming used bookstore clerk seethings
Take it from a former used bookseller, Michael Leaverton's "This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You" is gospel truth. You Stole All Our Bukowski It's hard to keep Bukowski on the shelf when h...
02:28 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Dead Island trailer mashed up with Shaun of the Dead
Dan Bull (best known as the British copyfighting rapper behind such ditties as Dear Lily) was inspired by the wrenching trailer for zombie game Dead Island, and so he re-created it using footage from...
01:38 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing StyleKouncil: new "closet curation" consultancy in SF
photos by Peter Samuels Since I was 14, I've dressed like, well, I'm 14. My uniform has been t-shirt, hoodie, jeans, and sneakers or boots. Thing is, I actually like to dress up. But I don't really kn...
01:37 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Voices and pictures from Madison, Wisconsin, protests
We Are Wisconsin from Finn Ryan on Vimeo. Last night, I joined the scattered groups of people walking down Madison, Wisconsin's State Street towards the State Capitol Building. There weren't the might...
12:16 pm PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Oddly infantalizing breakfast cereal ad
In this strange ad for a cereal called Muffets, a woman helps her husband get the benefit of the milk in his coffee by giving him a cereal whose benefits are seemingly aimed at children. Either they w...
11:39 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing XKCD's nerdy nanotech humor
What's funnier than grey-goo nanotech humor? XKCD knows: it's nanogoo humor that hinges on hubris about the appropriate order of magnitude in network address space! Nanobots  IPv4 is exhaust...
11:39 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing 6 things scientists can learn from science journalists: The video
Yesterday, I spoke in Madison, WI, about the 6 Things Scientists Can Learn from Science Journalists. I'll be giving the same speech today in Milwaukee. Can't make it to Wisconsin? The University o...
11:37 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Google tweaks algorithm; content farms and splogs wail and rend their spammy garments
Google this week launched a significant change in search algorithm intended to push down low-quality, SEO'd-out-the-ass content farms in favor of less spammy sites with more useful information. NYT ar...
11:35 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Rothfuss pledges to buy Firefly from Fox and give it away
Bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss has pledged to help actor Nathan Fillon buy the rights to Firefly from Fox. Fillon, who starred in the series, has publicly said that if he had the money to get Fi...
11:29 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Mental ads for London mentalist
Warren Ellis's readers have unearthed a pair of advertisements for a London psychic that deliver the pure vein of unadulterated crazy. Dr Uba's Clinic  "Psychic" cancels show due to &q...
11:22 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Tolkien estate censors badge that contains the word "Tolkien"
Not content to censor a book that combines literary criticism and fiction by including JRR Tolkien as a character, the Tolkien estate has shut down a guy who makes and gives away buttons that have th...
11:22 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Libya: Audio interview w man dodging gunfire as militias attack protestors
NPR's All Things Considered interviewed a man on the street near Tripoli, dodging bullets: "There's a lot of machine guns here. The opposition [are] ready for the Gadhafi's regime's people to come in....
11:18 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Night attacks in Afghanistan cause high civilian casualties
A Reuters report from Afghanistan begins with the heartbreaking story of a family of non-combatants in which multiple members were killed in a midnight NATO attack: "They were casualties of a night ra...
11:15 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Julian Assange vs. Mr. Humphries ("Are You Being Served")
(Via Reddit, via Dean Putney, but seriously, Rob and I stumbled upon this realization weeks ago)......
11:13 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Tips from a "prolific dumpster diver"
A self-described "prolific dumpster diver" in the UK was mass-interviewed on Reddit yesterday, and wrote some detailed, intriguing, and potentially useful descriptions of how he lives and thrives on ...
11:05 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Investigating accidents: a career for the inexperienced and uneducated
Uneducated? Inexperienced? Have a penis? You can investigate accidents! I don't see how anything wrong can go with this. "You Are Accepted As A Man With A Profession"......
10:00 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing McDonald's "oatmeal" has 11 weird ingredients, more sugar than a Snickers
Writing on the New York Times blog, Mark Bittman reviews McDonald's nightmarish attempt at making oatmeal (a foodstuff with one ingredient): Yet in typical McDonald's fashion, the company is doing ev...
09:46 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Brickless laptop chargers ahoy
Transphorm, a startup backed by Google (among others) has a cool-sounding gallium nitride technology to improve AC/DC transformers. They say they might be able to completely eliminate laptop charging ...
08:21 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Japan Airlines' CEO pays himself less than the pilots, takes the bus to work
When Japan Airlines hit hard times in 2009 and began to lay off its staff, JAL CEO Haruka Nishimatsu cut his own pay to less than that of his pilots and eliminated all his perks. He now rides public ...
08:15 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing 40,000 P2P lawsuits dismissed - bad week for copyright trolls
Judges in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have severed P2P lawsuits against unnamed John Does, effectively dismissing the cases against 40,000 American Internet users. Some users ...
08:10 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Breastmilk ice-cream
Icecreamists, an ice-cream parlour in London's Covent Garden, is selling human breast milk ice-cream for £14 a scoop. The breastmilk is purchased from lactating mothers, and the product (called...
07:59 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Weta collectibles auction to benefit Christchurch quake victims
New Zealand special effects house Weta has put a collection of its fine models up for auction on eBay, with proceeds going to benefit victims of the Christchurch earthquake. I own two of Weta's raygu...
07:46 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Mafia snitches overstated corpse-dissolving properties of sulfuric acid
A report at the Feb 23 meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences has determined that the mafia snitches' claims regarding the mob's ability to undetectably eradicate the remains of a murde...
07:34 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Googlebombers turn "Abortion" into second result for "Murder"
Someone has spoofed Google into making the Wikipedia entry for "abortion" into the second result in searches for "murder." However you feel about abortion, this Wikipedia page is pretty clearly not t...
07:31 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Dead Island trailer mashed up with Shaun of the Dead
Dan Bull (best known as the British copyfighting rapper behind such ditties as Dear Lily) was inspired by the wrenching trailer for zombie game Dead Island, and so he re-created it using footage from...
07:25 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Etching a mural into a wall with explosives
Aleandre Farto's explosive etching technique involves precision detonation of plaster and brick to make enormous, smoky murals. This video, with music by Orelha Negra, demonstrates the technique. Ore...
07:20 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Sony considered harmful to makers, innovators and hackers
Make magazine's Phil Torrone has had enough of Sony. Provoked by Sony's lawsuits and raids against makers who reverse engineered the Playstation 3, Phil has composed a top-seven list of Sony's most e...
07:05 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Get chased by zombies in Google Streetview!
Mike Lacher's "Streetview Zombie Apocalypse" is a great Google Streetview mashup: enter your location and then watch (and flee) as zombies converge upon you from all directions. I managed to get abou...
06:55 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust
A collection of Max Newman's hand-annotated offprints from sixteen of Alan Turing's eighteen books have been purchased by the Bletchley Park Trust with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund a...
12:08 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing Wii spanking game announced
Ubisoft's ad for "We Dare," its forthcoming Wii title, centers largely around the spanking subgame. [YouTube]......
12:01 am PST - Fri, February 25, 2011
BoingBoing PayPal freezes Manning defense fund operator's account (Update: account unfrozen)
PayPal has frozen the account being used to raise money for Pvt. Bradley Manning's legal defense, because its owners refuse to give PayPal access to its bank accounts. Asked why, if the Courage to Res...
10:56 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Headline of day: "Nebraska deputy stops pickup truck full of naked people"
"Lancaster County authorities say a deputy investigating a suspicious vehicle near Lincoln got a surprise when he stopped a pickup truck -- all four people inside were naked. (...) The sheriff's offic...
10:52 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Jewish man turned jihadist who threatened "South Park" gets 25 years in prison
21-year-old Zachary Chesser was today sentenced to 25 years in prison for trying to help a Somalia militant group and for making threats against Matt Stone and Trey Parker of "South Park," because of ...
10:40 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Qaddafi's son bankrolling Hollywood movies including "Mafia Contract Killer" with Mickey Rourke
Bloomberg reports on the Hollywood investment business of Al-Saadi Qaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi (and, before he failed a drug test, a rising soccer star). The company name is "Natural...
10:26 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Mudskippers. Check out this weird fish.
[Video link] This video from the BBC TV series "Life" (one of my favorites) shows these creepy, creepy fish crawling around in the mud and just looking weird. Rob thinks they look like a custom fleshl...
10:09 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Tracing the pill-trails to America from Russia's e-pharmacy underworld
Security reporter Brian Krebs has a fascinating piece up on Pavel Vrublevsky, founder of Russia's biggest online payment processor, ChronoPay. Krebs reports that this man also co-owns Rx-Promotion, an...
09:51 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Microhouses in the NYT
Boing Boing reader outerjenise says, "The New York Times has article on absurdly wonderful 'microhouses' built by former DJ and comic artist Derek Diedricksen. This guy is right in my neighborhood. I ...
09:20 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - great white shark
It's a funny thing about great white sharks (and that's not a contradiction in terms). They smile. Exactly the kind of smile you would expect to get if you crossed the Cheshire Cat with Dracula. Comin...
09:08 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - orb weaver spider
Humans are such visual creatures. Take away big eyes (baby seals) and fur (most mammals) and often what is left is the ick factor. Not many creatures have a bigger ick factor than the spider. It seems...
09:06 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - giant otter
There are river otters, and clawless otters, and sea otters, and then there is the giant otter of South America. Six feet long and up to eighty pounds in weight, it is a denizen of the rainforest that...
09:06 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - tiger
So iconic and blatant is the tiger in its coloring, that to observe one close-up and in the wild is like seeing a cartoon come to life. There's a slight disconnect in the brain, as if this enormous ma...
09:03 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - Orinoco crocodile
Crocodiles. Even when someone tries to make them look funny, as in the Disney version of Peter Pan, they still come off as menacing. Nothing looks more like a carnivorous dinosaur than a crocodile. Th...
08:51 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Sideshow Al, circus historian
In 1958, Al W. Stencell, age 12, was hired by a traveling carnival. Since then, Stencell founded several circuses of his own and become a leading historian of his field. His most recent book -- Circus...
08:33 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single ever
If you loved Rob's post last year of "Every Billy Joel hit played simultaneously," this is sure to get you out of your chair and dancing: "Five Seconds of Every #1 Pop Single" ever. Five Seconds Of Ev...
07:47 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing With a successful launch, Discovery's final mission begins
Discovery and the six astronauts she is carrying are now in orbit, on a final mission to the International Space Station. And what a breathtaking and beautiful launch it was! I wasn't there, but watch...
05:37 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Sharing the power in Tahrir Square
How Tahrir Square's protestors shared their power: an exuberant spaghetti, wall-warts, and charging handiphones of all variety. cairofeb6_036  Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same opti...
05:04 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Men with prosthetic arms making prosthetic arms
Great, inspirational image from a Life magazine gallery of photos themed around the subject of prosthetic limbs. There's some other fascinating shots in here, as well. Including an artificial foot th...
04:44 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing "I wish I understood string theory": The song
It's the saddest song in the world, if you're a physicist. Musician Jonathan Mann offers a plaintive lament from the heart of a right-brained layperson.......
04:12 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing All-American brawl at Denny's
[Video Link] The entire world can enjoy this All-American Brawl over maple syrup at a Denny's in Chicopee, MA. When one woman in a US restaurant asked a fellow diner if she could borrow the maple syru...
03:44 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Cat rides ram
[Video Link] Via Arbroath......
03:31 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Sharing the power in Tarhir Square
How Tarhir Square's protestors shared their power: an exuberant spaghetti, wall-warts, and charging handiphones of all variety. cairofeb6_036  Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same opti...
03:18 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing UK court orders Assange extradited to Sweden
"A British court on Thursday ordered Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, to be extradited to Sweden to face accusations of sexual abuse. His lawyers have seven days to appeal the ruling and immedia...
03:16 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Anonymous hacks Westboro Baptist Church website during live confrontation
From The David Pakman Show: "A source from Anonymous confronts Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church, calling the supposed letter sent to Westboro by Anonymous a hoax." While he is tal...
03:15 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Report: Army deployed "psy-ops" on US Senators, for more war funding and troops
Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone: "The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops an...
03:08 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133: Ready for Launch
Video: STS-133 live coverage from SpaceFlightNow The space shuttle Discovery is set to launch today at 4:50pm EST, and there's an abundance of options for online coverage if, like me, you weren't able...
02:27 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing The importance of well-secured stage props: video
Video Link. Via Robert Popper, who rightly describes this as the best clip in the world of today.......
01:51 pm PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Maggie on how to talk about science
I'm speaking at two locations in Wisconsin, today and tomorrow. The topic: What scientists can learn from science journalists. This presentation is really aimed at professional scientists, but the le...
04:41 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Hollowed-out bug-sculptures
Scott Bain's "Micromachina" sculptures use hollowed-out beetles and other bugs with tiny dolls and doll-furniture to make a statement about humanity's relationship to the natural world: MICROMACHINA ...
04:41 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing 17-year-old Tim Burton's rejection from Walt Disney Productions
In 1976, a 17-year-old Tim Burton sent a hand-drawn manuscript for a children's book called "The Giant Zlig" to Walt Disney Productions, hoping for a publishing deal. They rejected the manuscript, bu...
04:33 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing MPAA: record-breaking box-office year is proof that piracy is killing movies
Once again, the motion picture industry has smashed all annual box-office records. According to the MPAA, this proves that we need more laws allowing them to censor and spy on the Internet to prevent ...
04:30 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Old Man's War bought by Paramount
John Scalzi's tremendous, Heinleinesque space opera Old Man's War has been greenlit by Paramount, and will be directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by David Self. From my review: Old Man's War is...
04:19 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Super-wealthy clothes horses and their sartorial habits
The WSJ profiles a group of super-rich clothes-horses who pay full price for designer frocks costing tens of thousands of dollars. One hedge fund manager's wife who bought a $12,000 Alexander McQueen...
03:28 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Rudy Rucker reads from his autobiography
RickKleffel sez, "Rudy Rucker reads a chapter from his forthcoming autobiography,'Nested Scrolls' as SF in SF (MP3). I think this may prove to be his best work. It is superbly written and he reads it ...
03:25 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Visualizing the wealth of America's super-rich ruling class
A series of 11 infographics from Mother Jones vividly illustrate the widening gap between America's rich and poor, and how skewed Americans' views of this inequality are. The myth of the American dre...
03:16 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Mutate or Die: spermy, bloody bioart made from preserved William S Burroughs turd
A preserved turd from the colon of William S Burroughs is at the center of a plan to create a piece of "cutting edge bioart." The turd was preserved by WSB's pals, and his estate have donated it to t...
12:00 am PST - Thu, February 24, 2011
BoingBoing Keeping abreast of photoshop horrors
Heather sent in this photo of an ad inside the current issue of Vogue. I imagine the designer's career will be a total bust after this one.......
10:21 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing BookArc laptop stand "speeds up" your computer
Twelvesouth makes the $39.99 BookArc, a MacBook Air stand that helps you keep your desk tidy when you want to hook it up to a keyboard, external display and so forth. The marketing literature makes an...
09:42 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Lorna: Relic Wrangler -- upcoming comic book preview
Here's a preview of the upcoming one-shot issue of Lorna: Relic Wrangler, coming on March 23 from Image comics. Fun fact: Washington D.C.'s occult architecture was configured to roll out the red carpe...
08:44 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing DJ Bei Ru: Crate-digging and vintage vinyl sampling, Armenian style
Liz Ohanesian of the LA Weekly (a onetime Boing Boing guestblogger) emailed me recently about a hip-hop DJ/producer in LA named Bei Ru. Liz did a story a few weeks ago about him and his new album, Lit...
08:34 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Fat Cookies shut down
San Francisco's Department of Fun Prevention has shut down Fat Cookies, the thing where some folks sold cookies by dangling them out of a high window for customers passing-by. The operators hope to so...
08:04 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Injustice Everywhere: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project
Injustice Everywhere is a newsfeed about heinous criminals who also happen to be police officers.......
08:02 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Cherished Coca-Cola "ghost sign" must go, say Frisco bureaucrats
Todd Lappin says: "Instead of complaining about advertising, San Francisco's progressive Bernal Heights neighborhood is rallying to save a vintage Coca-Cola "ghost sign" from the 1940s. City bureaucra...
07:54 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Video: Trail of Dead's Conrad Keely on his comic art
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead singer Conrad Keely is also a talented comic artist. His lovely artwork adorns the band's Web site and a variety of their album packaging, including their ...
07:52 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Jam Hands plays "Modest Geologist" on ukulele
[Video Link] Here's Jam Hands playing "Modest Geologist" on the ukulele.......
07:27 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Transmetropolitan Graffiti on the streets of NYC
Boing Boing reader Giant Eye, aka Matthew Borgatti, says, "Here's a sneak peek of something I'm working on for the Transmetropolitan Art Book. It's on the corner of W 26th st and 8th in Manhattan. If ...
07:09 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Space Shuttle Discovery STS-133 on launchpad
A lovely photo by Tom Moler of NASA. Click here for the Twitpic'd full size image. The shuttle is due to launch tomorrow, Thursday February 24, at 4:50pm ET. The mission will be the 39th and final fli...
06:26 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Coin-op bread-making machine at late-night French convenience store
David Lebovitz, an American living in France, describes the automated French bread making coin-op machines at his local late-night convenience store, a shop whose clientle are said to be les clibatai...
06:22 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Order of Odd-Fish, a funny, mannered, hilariously weird epic romp
James Kennedy's debut young adult novel The Order of Odd-Fish is an extraordinary and delightfully weird romp that's one part China Mieville, one part Lemony Snicket, with trace amounts of Madeleine L...
05:50 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Indiana deputy attorney general tweets: "Use live ammunition" on demonstrators
Mother Jones: On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building--something that didn't end up happeni...
05:37 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Today on BoingBoing: Highlights from the world's largest general science conference
Last week, thousands of scientists gathered in Washington D.C. for the 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. While most science conferences are field-specific—a g...
05:22 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Highlights from AAAS: More great stuff from around the Web
The hills are alive with the sounds of science! I've found lots of fascinating stories based on the lectures and panel discussions from last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science...
05:06 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Youtube prankster is facing serious jailtime
Via Blame it on the Voices: "21-year-old Michigan resident Evan Emory faces 20 years in jail for 'manufacturing child sexual abusive material.' What he did: he tricked representatives of an elementary...
04:51 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Highlights from AAAS: When solar flares attack
When the Sun's atmosphere explodes, it can have explosive consequences on Earth. The X-rays and UV radiation released by these solar flares are capable of interfering with everything from radio commun...
04:46 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Attack of the Pink Armadillo
[Video Link] Blame it on the Voices presents this scene from a Japanese show called Kikaida, in which "Pink Armadillo transforms itself into a voluptuous woman to entice men and implant control device...
04:39 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Single mom sets herself on fire in Morocco
Fadwa Laroui, an unmarried 25-year-old mother of two, used flammable liquid to set herself on fire in front of the town hall of Souk Sebt, in central Morocco, this week. She did this after being exclu...
04:23 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Libyans gotta Lib
Image contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by jasonfiliatrault.......
04:20 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Highlights from AAAS: Plant-inspired robots
Animal biology is often used as an inspiration for robotics. Case in point: Cephalopods, whose distributed system of neural processing is being put to use in robotic arms. But plants can also play a r...
04:19 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Snowman Slide: insanely elaborate slide `
Some nameless, awesome individual named Ricky Reich undertook "80 hours of shovelling" and made this insanely fun, elaborate "Snowman Slide." The video is thrilling work, with lots of different angle...
04:15 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Apple looks set to unveil iPad 2 on March 2
iPad 2.0 to be launched on March 2. Your guess is as good as ours, but that's certainly what these invites, emailed out today by Apple to invited tech reporters, would suggest.......
04:09 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Erlang the Movie: just the calls
Erlang is a programming language developed in 1986 to improve telephone switching networks. For the non-programmer it's horribly dry stuff, but for those in the know it has some really interesting fea...
04:07 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Archive.org and 150 libraries create 80,000 lendable ebook library
Rick Prelinger sez, "Internet Archive (disclosure: I'm a board member) has joined with 150 US and Canada libraries to develop a cooperative collection of (mostly 20th-century) eBooks that library pat...
03:59 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Highlights from AAAS: Microbial spit in the Gulf of Mexico
What happens to an ocean after a massive oil spill? Media attention may have drifted away from the Gulf of Mexico, but scientists are still there, studying the long-term impacts of last year's BP ...
03:39 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Big problems for online porn credit card processor
Sanjiv Bhattacharya of Details profiled the rise and fall of online porn payment processor Chris Mallick. After earning a fortune processing online-porn payments, Chris Mallick spent $32million to mak...
03:36 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Irish government sneaks in Internet censorship law
A reader writes, "Ireland goes to the polls in the most important election since the creation of the Republic, the parliament is empty as TD's canvas. The govt. sneaks through secondary legislation in...
03:17 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Highlights from AAAS: The sign language of science
One of the most interesting stories I read about AAAS 2011 wasn't even about a presentation—or, anyway, it wasn't about the topic of a presentation. After watching sign language interpreters tra...
02:54 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing What The King's Speech and UK Naked Men porn have in common
Did the speech therapist's office in The King's Speech look oddly familiar to you? Perhaps you remember the location from UK Naked Men, a gay porn site. "Photos Leaked Of Gay Porn Past Of 'King's ...
02:30 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing The time I met Jack Kirby and pestered him for 3 days
My friends at Hilobrow are running a really fun series of posts about comic book legend Jack Kirby. It's called Kirb Your Enthusiasm, and each essay is by a different person analyzing a panel from a K...
02:20 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Scott Walker tricked into spilling his guts to fake Koch brother
The editor of The Buffalo Beast, Ian Murphy, called Wisconsin governor Scott Walker pretending to be billionaire financier David Koch, a major Tea Party financier. Murphy talked for 20 minutes with W...
01:37 pm PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Seeds: comic-book memoir of father's cancer is moving, sweet
Ross Mackintosh's debut graphic novel Seeds is a wrenching, first-person account of Mackintosh's father's last months as he died of lung cancer. It's not exactly upbeat, but it's also not merely an e...
03:25 am PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Haunted Mansion's hitchhiking ghosts replaced by CGI (for now)
There's some sort of major renovation underway at the Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World, and while the works are on, the Imagineers have covered up the Hitchhiking Ghosts of the grand finale with ...
03:18 am PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Travel guide for American invalids, 1887
1887's Appleton's illustrated hand-book of American winter resorts for tourists and invalids is a whirlwind tour through all the places you can go and die of consumption in the America of yesteryear:...
02:55 am PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing Right-left symmetry photos of Qaddafi
Muggum is a .99 iPhone app that generates two symmetrical side-by-side portraits -- one from the left side of the face, and one from the right. Here's both sides of ol' whatshisface. Make ran an artic...
01:45 am PST - Wed, February 23, 2011
BoingBoing SPECIAL FEATURE: James Gurney: What's in my bag
James Gurney is the author and illustrator of the Dinotopia book series. His most recent books are called Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (2009) and Color and Light: A Guide for t...
11:03 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Right-left symmetry photos of Qaddafi
Muggum is a .99 iPhone app that generates two symmetrical side-by-side portraits -- one from the left side of the face, and one from the right. Here's both sides of ol' whathsiface. Make ran an articl...
08:51 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Window Alert
I have tried many different methods to stop birds from striking my windows including sticking white label dots all over the window. I found these UV decals that go on the exterior of your window to be...
08:47 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Hunter S. Thompson comic bio
Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith have just published a graphic novel-style biography of Hunter St. Thompson, titled Gonzo. I haven't read it yet, but Don't Panic posted an interview with the author...
08:47 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing MusicArt exhibition at NY MoMA
New York's Museum of Modern Art is hosting their third exhibition on the intersection of music and art. Titled "Looking at Music 3.0," this show presents the New York scene of the 1980s and 1990s, a r...
08:37 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Work in progress: Pig Lady drawing
Tara Helfer, a friend of mine from a comic book drawing class I took about a year ago, is in the process of inking and coloring a really cool illustration of a pig-lady-thing holding a rooster. I real...
07:41 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing These are not the clones you're looking for
Photo: Kalexanderson via the BB Flickr pool.......
06:49 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Bug eating in the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal gets on the bug-eating bandwagon with an article titled "The Six-Legged Meat of the Future." Edible insects are becoming trendy, with London's Archipelago restaurant topping th...
06:20 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Photos of kids waiting at Disneyland
Hugh sez, "Designer Arin Fishkin took some delightful photos on a recent trip to Disneylad -- all of kids waiting for rides." The Waiting Is the Hardest Part (Thanks, HughElectronic, via Submitterator...
06:17 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Capitol Defense: tower defense game illustrates lobbying pressure on Congress
Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez, "This morning, like much of the country, Washingtonians woke up to snow outside their windows. Sure, there wasn't enough to shut down the Capitol the way that ...
04:45 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Mexican Border Tribal Tron: "Glowing at the OK Corral"
[Video Link] In this short video piece from Spanish-language network mun2, we meet a young man named Xavier in Dallas, Texas, who has modded his border-cool nightclubbing outfit with el-wire and vario...
03:58 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Discretion please, not rulebooks
("One Nation under CCTV," an illustration contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Tom Blackwell) I'm writing this on a plane, having just passed through Security at Heathrow airport. An obviousl...
03:28 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Identifying the victims of a 100-year-old tragedy
The final unidentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a 1911 tragedy that had a huge impact on the creation of American labor laws and building codes—have finally been ma...
03:20 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Spoek Mathambo, "Control" (Joy Division cover), dir. Pieter Hugo
Spoek Mathambo, "Control." A reinterpretation of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control ," directed by Pieter Hugo in Cape Town, South Africa. Via Clayton Cubitt, More at Dazed.......
03:04 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Phasers, Stargates, and Alien Legs: The Science Fiction Collector's Collector
Alec Peters has one of the finest collections of Star Trek props and costumes in the galaxy. From Romulan Disruptors to classic Tricorders to the various styles of Vulcan robes, Peters either has one ...
02:59 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Nebula nominees announced
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the 2010 Nebula Award nominees! Congrats all round.......
02:38 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Playable "Angry Birds" birthday cake
Mike Cooper's son Ben is the luckiest little boy in the entire world. And you can make moppets, or whimsical adults, just as deliriously happy with the help of Cooper's Angry Bird cake tutorial. Now I...
02:22 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Interview with a deep-sea submarine pilot
Marine biologist Al Dove recently went on an expedition to Brazil's Abrolhos reef, where he was part of a team that studied life in the depths where light begins to fade—an area called the meso...
01:44 pm PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Why was the Christchurch Earthquake so destructive?
Image: Simon Baker / Reuters New Zealand is no stranger to the results of plate tectonics. The country sits almost directly on top of the boundary between two chunks of the Earth's crust, the Pacific...
08:55 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Free dial-up ISP for Libyans
XS4ALL, a fantastic, hacker-friendly ISP in the Netherlands, has thrown open all its modem lines for free use by people in Libya when and if their network access gets blocked by the government. DPCos...
08:25 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Saif Gadaffhi, plagiarist - UPDATED
Saif Gadaffhi's not just the scion of a lunatic dictatorial legacy, and not just the ironic recipient of a PhD from the London School of Economics in 'The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation...
05:57 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Embattled PS3 hacker raises big bank to fight Sony
George "geohot" Hotz is the Playstation 3 hacker whom Sony is suing for unlocking his own PS3 so that he can run his own software on it. Hotz calls himself "pro-DRM" but he also believes in the right...
05:48 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing How Anonymous decides: inside the lulz-sausage factory
On the heels of the news that the Westoboro Baptist Church attempted to lure sympathizers of the Anonymous movement into attacking it comes this excellent Ars Technica feature by Nate Anderson into t...
05:11 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing America's Chief Apocalypse Officer, a Fed job ad from 1956
In 1956, the US Office of Emergency Preparedness advertised a job opening for someone to plan and oversee the recovery of America after an all-out nuclear exchange, a kind of Chief Apocalypse Officer...
05:06 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator
Here's the fascinating story of Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, the only person to have stuck his head into a particle accelerator. His head accidentally strayed into the path of the proton beam at the I...
04:56 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Westboro Baptist Church attempts to lure Anonymous into attacking it?
Last week, many news sources reported that the Anonymous movement had issued a threat against the notorious real-world trolls at the Westboro Baptist Church, comprised mainly of the extended family of...
04:36 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Alaska state rep refuses TSA grope of her mastectomy scars, drives home from Seattle
Alaska State Rep Sharon Cissna, a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy, was barred from flying home to Juneau from Seattle by the TSA when she refused to allow a screener to touch the scars...
03:46 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Egyptian orders a pizza for the Wisconsin demonstrators
Ian's, a pizzeria near the Wisconsin state capitol that is sympathetic to the demonstrators, has been facilitating the process of supporters around the world who want to send pizza to the protest. Th...
03:31 am PST - Tue, February 22, 2011
BoingBoing Imagineer Rolly Crump remembers his early years with Disney
Legendary Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump has kicked off a weekly column describing his early years with the company. This week: How Walt Disney's incapacity to remember his name turned "Roland" into "R...
11:20 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing EFF takes on trademarkers of term "Urban Homestead"
The Dervaes Family of Pasadena trademarked the terms "Urban Homestead" and Urban Homesteading" and then sent DCMA takedown notices to Google and Facebook, which resulted in the shut down of many Faceb...
07:46 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Coffee Common Launches
(photos by Kyle Glanville) I take my coffee pretty seriously. So the idea of some of the most respected names in the coffee business—who, under normal circumstances, consider one another compet...
06:13 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Materials, Structures, Standards
This book, also known as MSS, is an outstanding work of architecture reference. It is 264 pages of impeccably drafted architectural and design elements with a wonderfully accessible style. It is full ...
06:07 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Armed Services Edition books: abridgements and pocket-editions for doughboys
Enoch_Root sez, "The blog The Art of Manliness has a great post about Armed Services Edition (ASE) books produced during World War II. The idea was to print as many books as cheaply as possible and g...
04:28 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Libya's UN mission asks world to defend Libyans from Gadaffi
Libya's UN ambassadors have joined the ranks of Libyan diplomats around the world to denounce Gadhafi's brutal crackdown on the popular uprising across the country. The entire Libyan UN diplomatic ha...
04:04 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Operation "Libya White Fax"
After observing the growing unrest and correspondingly violent crackdown in Libya, a group of hackers conceived and launched Operation Libya White Fax: while the internet and data connections are bein...
03:54 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Music download analysis reveals mood of Bahrain 'Triumphant,' 'Warlike,' 'Metal'
"The most popular song in Bahrain within the past hour or so according to Last.fm is Fates Warning's 'The Ivory Gate of Dreams pt. 3,' a heavy metal song that appears quite indicative of the mood in t...
03:32 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Rheingold U: higher ed for happy mutants
Howard Rheingold sez, "Rheingold U. is a totally online learning community, offering courses that usually run for five weeks, with five live sessions and ongoing asynchronous discussions through forum...
03:30 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Pakistan: American arrested after shootings worked for CIA
From The New York Times: "The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant gro...
03:26 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing WTF cartoon: I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You
Dean spotted this remarkable 1932 Max Fleisher cartoon in which Betty Boop and pals are menaced by African savages, who morph into Louis Armstrong and members of his band.......
03:25 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Report: military aircraft are firing at protestors in Libya
Reuters, on the violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrators in Libya: "Military aircraft fired live ammunition at crowds of anti-government protesters in Tripoli, Al Jazeera television sai...
03:24 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Mystery behind two Libyan fighter jets landing in Malta, revealed
AP reports that two Libyan air force jets arrived in Malta today. Military officials say their pilots have asked for political asylum amid a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters in Libya, in...
03:22 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Iran: crackdown on anti-government protesters grows more violent
In Iran, tens of thousands of opposition demonstrators took to the streets Sunday calling for the end to the Islamic Republic's rule. "In response, the government unleashed what witnesses said was an ...
03:02 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Anti-government protests around the world (big photo gallery)
A girl attends Friday prayers in front of an army tank in Tahrir Square. Egyptians held a nationwide "Victory March" on Friday to celebrate the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule one week ago, ...
02:13 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Take Me to Jamaica -- infectiously fun mento compilation revels in skareggae's roots
My three year old loves to sing, and so do I -- and she shares my trick memory for silly lyrics. So every day, I rack my brains for a new ridiculous song to teach to her. Last week, I scored a major ...
01:53 pm PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Fgsfds.ly
Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and operator of an unhinged Twitter account, gestures as he speaks during an address on state television in Tripoli, in this still image taken from ...
08:26 am PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Metaphotos of landmarks made from hundreds of superimposed tourist snaps
Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet plunders online image searches for hundreds of similar tourist shots of the same landmarks, then layers them on top of one another to create metaportraits of well-known b...
08:22 am PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Following the Libyan uprising
The Guardian's liveblog of the news coming from Libya is fantastic, in a gripping and sickly horrible way. From the troops and mercenaries massacring demonstrators to the weird, rambling speech of Sa...
07:58 am PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing Bahraini army murders peaceful demonstrators
This gut-wrenching video (after the jump) shows peaceful protestors being fired on with automatic weapons by Bahrain's military. The comment thread on the YouTube video attains a new peak in awfulnes...
05:11 am PST - Mon, February 21, 2011
BoingBoing 3D printing's first copyright complaint goes away, but things are just getting started
More news on the first-ever DMCA threat for violating a copyright in a 3D object -- Ulrich Schwanitz has rescinded his complaint and will release his shape into the public domain today. Here's a summ...
03:14 pm PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing Mideast protests: real-time tweet mapping
Developer Virender Ajmani created this interesting Google Maps/Twitter mashup that allows you to scan "protest tweets" from Iran, Bahrain, Egypt, and Libya, as they go live. He explains the project he...
12:28 pm PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing An informative video about the Honey Badger
I found this video about the Honey Badger to be very educational. (NSFW)......
12:02 pm PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing Althea Mae Koerth (1923-2011)
Early Thursday morning, while my Dad held her hand, the best Grammy in the entire world passed away. I made it to Kansas just in time to see her, and talk with her, before she died. I wasn't sure whet...
02:55 am PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing Odd, anthropomorphized animal illustrations of the 18th century
Bof sez, "Slightly warped illustrations of familiar animals during the Enlightenment by a forerunner of Darwin. The animals are put in contrived settings and their faces are made to look like they ha...
02:51 am PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing California congresswoman: a vendetta against Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with creating jobs or reducing the deficit
Eileen Gunn sez, "Rep. Jackie Speier (D, CA) spoke passionately in opposition to stripping Planned Parenthood of any US funding. Compare and contrast with smarmy Rep. Chris Smith (R, NJ)." Speier's p...
02:44 am PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing Imperial Scott Walker, the worker-hating AT-AT Destroyer
Some disgruntled Wisconsonites have produced this handy visual guide to understanding the imperious approach of Tea Party governor Scott Walker, who handed $137M in tax breaks to the wealthy, declare...
02:32 am PST - Sun, February 20, 2011
BoingBoing Ant anatomy, set to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance
This ant anatomy video joins in the proud comedic/mnemonic tradition of imparting knowledge by setting it to the tune of Jarabe Tapato, AKA The Mexican Hat Dance -- elevating YouTuber AntsCanada and ...
07:15 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Vote in the Bloggies!
Reminder: polls close tomorrow in the Bloggie awards, in which Boing Boing is nominated in the Science category--thanks in large part to the excellent work of our new Science Editor, Maggie Koerth-Bak...
06:48 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Unusual crochet necklace
Julianata on Etsy created this unique and feminine freeform crochet bib/necklace. [via]......
06:41 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Muammar Gaddafi had a posse
A woman with her face painted in the colors of the Libyan flag joins a demonstration against the rule of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi, in front of the White House in Washington today. (REUTERS/Jonat...
06:40 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Hyperreal photoreal painting
On the Saturday arts and crafts market in San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza, there is an artist who paints and sells his work from inside a small cart. His specialty is making "photorealistic" repro...
04:12 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Hyperreal photoreal painting
On the Saturday arts and crafts market in San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza, there is an artist who paints and sells his work from inside a small cart. His specialty is making "photorealistic" repro...
04:09 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Glued to events in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain
Events in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain are moving fast, but the Guardian's moment-to-moment coverage has me glued to my screen today: View Mapping Pro-Democracy Protests in Libya in a larger map " L...
02:13 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Todd McLellan's disassembled gadgets
Todd McLellan takes photos of disassembled vintage gadgets—some laid out in perfect array, others as if in mid-explosion.......
01:42 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Free Pre-Paid Cremation!
How could anyone pass up such a thoughtful offer from the Neptune Society? [Thanks, Richard]......
01:32 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Minecraft is pointless
Minecraft: indie gaming phenomenon or existential daydream?......
01:09 pm PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Unusual painting of teeth
My new dentist has this on the office wall by the chair, to set patients' minds at ease.......
04:31 am PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Producing a book, the analog way
Here's a nostalgic look at what a pain in the ass it was to produce a book in the era before digital typesetting, lo those many years ago. Making books is fun! (to watch) (Thanks, Techbuzz, via Submi...
04:30 am PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing TSA cheat sheet: know your rights!
The TSA Rights (PDF) bust-card is a handy single-sheet list of all your rights at a TSA checkpoint; on the reverse is an airport-by-airport list of TSA supervisors and their direct numbers, along with...
04:26 am PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing Houston hackspace's open-house month, with BBQ!
Calling all Houstonites! The Tx/Rx Labs hackspace is hosting a series of BBQ-infused open houses through the month of March: What's a Hack-B-Q? Think free B-B-Q with the added bonus of getting to ...
04:19 am PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing XKCD's productivity tip: reboot your computer every time you get bored
In the punchline of the most recent XKCD, creator Randall Munroe says that he avoids falling into a procrastinatory clicktrance by setting "simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I co...
04:14 am PST - Sat, February 19, 2011
BoingBoing What does Libyan revolution mean for bit.ly?
DomainWire asks what will happen to the popular bit.ly URL shortener if Libya shuts down its Internet service (.ly is the country code for Libya). Several people have noted that no matter how cute the...
09:54 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing What Watson might do after crushing humankind on Jeopardy
Now that Watson has predictably used his inhuman buzzer skills to romp on non-inhumankind, what does the big lug do for a follow-up?Stephen Baker, who has written a whole book and this blog about ...
09:52 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Skull cups
"The next time you're in a museum, keep a sharp eye out for skull cups," Gadling advises brightly today, following up on a BBC report about the discovery of three ancient skulls that were carved into ...
09:38 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing The Dumbest Thing Ever Said!...by Hillary Clinton, about the Drug War
ReasonTV explains black market economics to Hillary Clinton. Recently, during an interview with Mexico's Televisa, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the United States can't legalize dru...
08:49 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing EFF is representing publisher of Urban Homestead book against Dervaes Institute trademark claim
Breaking news: Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is now representing the authors and publisher of The Urban Homestead in the Dervaes Institute "Ur...
08:20 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing The Wrinkles of the City: French street artist JR hits Venice, CA
Liz Ohanesian of the LA Weekly points us to news that The French street artist JR, who is receiving the TED prize this year, is in LA working on a city-wide art project, "The Wrinkles of the City." Hi...
07:41 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Cartoonist plays trick on homophobes
The repugnant homophobes at the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) hotlinked one of Zach Weinersmith's webcomics, and Zach changed the image to the rainbow flag and an appropriate Thomas Jeffers...
07:38 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing An informative video about the Honey Badger
I found this video about the Honey Badger to be very educational. (NSFW)......
06:57 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Funny 1969 short film by Matt Groening's father Homer
Amy Crehore alerted me to this funny short film by Homer Groening, "Basic Brown, Basic Blue" (1969). Ever wonder how Matt Groening of The Simpsons got his quirky sense of humor? Probably from his ...
06:47 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Sultan Berlusconi on Trial
[video link] Silvio Berlusconi will be the first head of a G-7 state to be arraigned in court on charges of paid sex with a minor. A few days ago, the court from Milan issued a subpoena for the Italia...
06:32 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Identify these outrageous false teeth and get $500
An estate sales expert needs your help identifying these false teeth, and is willing to pay for it: Do you know who owned these Antique False Teeth? If you do, and can credibly prove it, we will r...
05:34 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing HBGary's high-volume astroturfing technology and the Feds who requested it
The enormous corpus of email leaked from federal security contractor HB Gary following Anonymous's hacking of the company's servers continues to deliver compromising payloads. This time, it's interna...
04:55 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing OC Weekly: "Dervaes family sends out ridiculous press release claiming they're not trying to shut up urban homesteaders
Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly has been staying on top of the story about the Dervaeses of Pasadena, California, a family of urban farmers who have trademarked the term "Urban Homestead." (See prev...
04:22 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Optical illusion inventor goes on to invent copyright threats against 3D printing company
Yesterday, I blogged about Artur Tchoukanov, who figured out how to make a 3D printed "impossible" Penrose triangle. Turned out I didn't have the details quite right. The guy who came up with the 3D ...
04:12 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Is this how the Escher Waterfall machine works?
Yesterday, I blogged about an anonymous YouTuber who appeared to have built a machine that could make Escher's impossible self-replenishing waterfall a concrete reality. David Goldman thinks he knows...
04:06 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Crappy themepark operators convicted of "engaging in a commercial practice which was a misleading action"
The operators of an insanely crappy Christmas themepark in Hampshire, England have finally been convicted of various fraud charges. They charged 30 a head to visit an empty field with a painting of a...
03:43 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Fight Back! A radical primer from Britain's winter of discontent
Fight Back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest collects 340-some pages' worth of the best writing on the wave of anti-cut demonstrations that have rocked Britain this winter; writing from radicals and...
02:52 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Robotic hummingbird spy plane
Drone manufacturer AeroVironment has demonstrated their "Nano-Hummingbird" tiny spy plane. The prototype is approximately the size of a real hummingbird, weighs the same as an AA battery, and is outfi...
02:30 pm PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing 1960s Acid Test posters up for auction
This fantastic c.1965 handbill advertising Merry Prankster Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, and signed by Kesey himself, is up for bid right now in "The HeART of Rock and Roll Poster Auction." It's already up ...
04:10 am PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Straight line traced by 500 individuals: mutation in action
A strange little piece of crowdsorcery called "A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals" provides a sharp illustration of the magnification of transcription errors and the...
04:07 am PST - Fri, February 18, 2011
BoingBoing Whirling vortex of angry, dismissive Judge Judy animations
The FourFour blog has collected an amazing assortment of animated Judge Judy GIFs, a kind of juddering array of dismissive gestures; angry, pinched expressions; and ferocious scowls. You really shoul...
08:39 am PST - Mon, January 31, 2011
BoingBoing Cory coming to Toronto for talk and reading Mar 5-6
This March, the University of Toronto's Faculty for Information is bringing me to Toronto to give a keynote at its Boundaries, Frontiers and Gatekeepers conference. Admission is free for U of T iSchoo...
08:39 am PST - Mon, January 31, 2011
BoingBoing Reminder: Cory's events in Toronto this weekend
This weekend, the University of Toronto's Faculty for Information is bringing me to Toronto to give a keynote at its Boundaries, Frontiers and Gatekeepers conference. Admission is free for U of T iSch...