Articles by BoingBoing from May 2012

A Toronto internal police disciplinary ruling found that Constable Andrew Vanderburgh was "harassed and berated" by other cops because he insisted on booking an off-duty cop whom he'd caught driving d...

Video link (shironekoshiro)...

Authorities in Canada are searching for 29-year-old Luka Rocco Magnotta, an adult film actor who appears on various websites featuring hardcore gay male porn. Magnotta is beleived to be the man respon...

Authorities in Canada are searching for 29-year-old Luka Rocco Magnotta, an adult film actor who appears on various websites featuring hardcore gay male porn. Magnotta is beleived to be the man respon...

Krillbrite Studio offers a preview of "Among the Sleep," a first-person horror game viewed from the point of view of a toddling two-year-old: Among The Sleep invites you into the mind and body of a tw...

A woman identified as Rikyo, said to be 33 years old and the mother of three young children, burned herself to death today in what is believed to have been another desperate act of protest against Chi...

The SpaceX Dragon, having successfully berthed with the International Space Station, is on its way back home. Last week the space vehicle became the first privately-built and operated spacecraft to re...

There's a new petition drive on the White House website, inspired by the New York Times story about a so-called "kill list" the President uses to decide which war on terror enemy should be taken out b...

An All Things Considered segment (MP3) with Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel looks at the circumstances that lead to people cheating and committing other frauds. They frame it with the true story of ...

The Federal Aviation Administration today cleared SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's six-passenger commercial space vehicle, to begin rocket-powered suborbital test flights. More on the experimental laun...

A blind Sumatran orangutan named Leuser was poached, sold as a gift, rescueed by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, and returned to the wild. Then, villagers seeking entertainment shot him 6...

I'm running from the police. The irony is not lost on me.— Sharp-dressed pig (@Sharpdressedpig) May 30, 2012 Just hoofin' it down the highway. Like you wouldn't want to get the hell out of Pitts...

In Bloomberg, Chris Christoff reports on the city of Detroit's plan to switch off up to half of its municipal streetlights, reducing or eliminating public lighting in "distressed" areas, noting that o...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane...

Los Angeles MC and beatmaker Jonwayne chopped and screwed the soundtracks to Disney classics for his new free EP aptly titled "Jonwayne Fucks Disney." He made the whole shebang using a Roland SP-404 p...

InstaCRT sends your iPhone photo to a tiny CRT in Sweden where the displayed image is photographed and sent back to you. The CRT is actually a scavenged viewfinder from a 1980s VHS camcorder. Gotta lo...

Karswell picked up this 1966 Remco product at a toy show last year and has lots of photos. Pussy Meow is the loveable kitty friend to a poodle named TV Jones, and each stand about 9-inches tall with m...

Do you dig the sounds of old Italian spaghetti westerns, 1970s british thrillers, New Wave French horror flicks, blacksploitation classics, or juvenile delinquent flicks? I do. And that's why I dig th...

For four years, photographer Joseph Holmes documented a variety of compelling workspaces, from the workbench at NYC's Phototech Camera Repair (above) to the cash register at the late, great CBGB. You ...

[Video Link] Here's a fun short film about a couple who are very excited to meet Daniel Clowes at an event at Meltdown in Los Angeles last month. Daniel Clowes spent a very special night at Meltdown C...

[Video Link] My pal Craig Yoe (Listen to my Gweek podcast interview with him) has a new book out: Zombies: The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics Vol. 3 From the banned 1950s horror comics that Dr. Fr...

My friend Lessley Anderson has a piece on The Verge about testing out SceneTap, an "app that lets you see what bars are full, and what percentage of the patrons are female." She invited along a profes...

Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive untold BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the brand new INNER HIVE right now! "$9.99 every six months to support one of my all-time favorite comics. Boom, done....

A German woman, annoyed by telemarketers who called her frequently, blew a whistle into the phone to discourage further calls. The telemarketer who received the blast claims to have suffered hearing p...

In the New York Times, a feature on how President Obama personally decides who to target with US drone strikes: How old are these people? he asked, according to two officials present. If they are star...

[Video Link] The man with the pen represents a totalitarian government. The pen markings represent the populace's diminishing freedom under totalitarian rule. The spider represents a repressed people ...

Jose R. Gonzalez was issued a patent in 1989 for his punishment wheel. An apparatus for choosing a punishment for a child, and a method of its use, are disclosed. An assortment of adhesive-backed deca...

The highest UK court has ruled that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to face accusations of rape and sexual assault. The decision is the result of a legal battle spanning a...

We've got a new shirt in our fabulous series of Boing Boing artist series T-shirts. It's by illustrator Kevin Dart, the creator of Yuki 7. It's $16.95 in the Boing Boing Shop! Boing Boing Ship Demolis...

Tofugu has a short article on this unusual and beautiful Japanese island: Aogashima. Aogashima (“blue island”) is a tropical, volcanic island in the Phillipine Sea. Despite being over 200 ...

[Video Link] TV news reporter: "The wind blows with incredible power, there are moments when it is impossible to stand up here. The wind blows the sand at over 60 km per hour. The wind blew away the b...

Lloyd Kahn, author of Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter, posted this photo of a 120-square-foot house built on a trailer chassis. The house will feature a full kitchen, composting toilet, outdoor shower, sle...

A Miami police officer spotted a naked man chewing off another man's face on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp at 2pm on Saturday. When the naked cannibal ignored the officer's commands to stop, the off...

[Video Link] I like the band Best Coast because listening to them makes it feel like a California summer no matter what season it is. They have a great new album out, called The Only Place. Last week ...

My old pal John Curley is on tour with his reunited band The Afghan Whigs and he snapped this beautiful photo at (Temple of Athena Nike) on the Acropolis of Athens. The building in the background ...

Jim Henson's 1965 experimental short Time Piece, nominated for an Academy Award, was unique because, for one thing, it doesn't feature any puppetry! The surreal film stars Henson and includes cameos f...

An oil-exploration team in Egypt stumbled upon a crashed World War II fighter plane that's apparently been sitting in the Sahara desert for 70 years. Apparently, the Royal Air Force P-40 Kittyhawk is ...

The current volume of The New Yorker is the "Science Fiction issue." In it, a previously unpublished 1973 essay by Anthony Burgess about his novel, A Clockwork Orange. In “The Clockwork Conditio...

The Sex Pistols have reissued "God Save The Queen" on a limited-edition 7" picture disc to celebrate the song's 35th anniversary. From the official Sex Pistols site: Originally released on May 27th 19...

Last week, Gary Connery, wearing a wingsuit, jumped from a helicopter at an altitude of 2,400 feet and landed safely. "Stuntman Takes a Superhero Plunge" (New York Times)...

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!...

BIPP: French Synth-Wave 1979/85 compiles cold wave and Casio-dominated robot music that emerged from the unholy matrimony of post-punk and the nascent electro-pop scene of Europe. Above, Act's "Ping P...

BIPP: French Synth-Wave 1979/85 compiles cold wave and Casio-dominated robot music that emerged from the unholy matrimony of post-punk and the nascent electro-pop scene of Europe. Above, Act's "Ping P...

[Video Link] When I was at TED earlier this year, I happened to sit down next to film maker Louie Schwartzberg. He makes gorgeous nature films. I recently watched the videos on his YouTube channel. Th...

The Firefly Gathering is one of several "rewinding" or "primitivism" camps for learning self-sufficiency and wilderness skills and crafts like fire-making, mushroom hunting, canning, diaper-free paren...

Ken Doyle a professional safecracker who's been practicing his trade since 1978, explains the ins and outs of safecracking to McSweeney's Suzanne Yeagley: Q: How often do people get locked in vaults? ...

[Video Link] The newest video from Joe Sabia's CDZA project....

In the New York Times today, Brian Lam (formerly of Gizmodo, now the creator of Scuttlefish and Wirecutter) writes about OpenROV, a low-cost submarine designed to be an affordable tool for "curious st...

The key difference, writes blogger Jason Bittel, is in the biting. Venomous animals internally create a toxin and then inject it into prey or foes. Poisonous animals usually secrete their toxins on th...

Step 1, naturally, is to be in Manhattan. I'm in New York City today and Scientific American contributing editor Steven Ashley was kind enough to reminded me that my visit is coinciding with Manhattan...

Chris Sims, Laura Hudson and Colleen Coover have executed as series of "Great Comics That Never Happened" for Comics Alliance, and they're fabulous. Exhibits A and B: Great Comics that Never Happened:...

Alexandra sez, "I'm writing to tell you about Modkit, a new interface for microcontrollers like Arduino. Modkit uses a graphical programming language based on the kids' programming language, Scratch. ...

Mike sez, "Photographed a wedding reception in upstate NY this weekend -- the cake was awesome! The couple are both geeks and have three geeky teenaged daughters who helped design it.... Take a look a...

Andr Kuipers, a Dutch physician and astronaut with the European Space Agency, was on board the ISS when the SpaceX Dragon vehicle berthed. He took this photograph, and wrote, Inside of the Dragon modu...

The Moscow-based security firm credited with solving various mysteries around Stuxnet and Duqu today announced the discovery of Flame, a data-stealing virus said to have lurked on thousands of compute...

Gayle from the School of Visual Arts in NYC sez, "Acclaimed multimedia artist Laurie Anderson gave the commencement address this year at the School of Visual Arts' (SVA) graduation ceremony, held at N...

Sergei Skorobogatov, a postdoc in the Security Group at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge has written up claims that reprogammable microchips from China contained secret back-door...

Suxamethonium chloride is a common hospital anesthetic that has, off and on, moonlighted as murder weapon. Used to paralyze patients so that doctors can more easily put insert a breathing tube, the dr...

Artist Peter Madden builds these cool collages out of photos he cuts from back issues of National Geographic, vintage encyclopedias, and old nature books. They're really lovely! Via Thisiscollossal, t...

It takes an average of 66 moves to win a game of Battleship. But that's only if you stick to random guessing. With the help of a computer algorithm, the tech consultant at a data mining company was ab...

Performed by Kimiko Ishizaka on a Bsendorfer 290 Imperial in Berlin's Teldex Studio, there's already plenty to love about a new cut of Bach's Goldberg Variations. But this one is also the first fan-fu...

Scientists measure trees for a wide variety of reasons. When I visited the Harvard Forest last week, I measured them as part of studying carbon sequestration by plants. But you can't just go out into ...

Marine biologists think they can identify this strange, blobby creature that floated up out of the ocean depths and was captured on an oil drill video. That, alone, is not terribly surprising. Marine ...

Its a funny thing, those who begrudge others the modern privilege of simultaneous participation. Fans of Game of Thrones waited for the epic Battle of the Blackwater for weeks its one of the few occ...

A reader writes, The Canadian government is slowly doing away with Canada's ability to access its own history. Library and Archives Canada's collection is being decentralized and scattered across the ...

Here are Montrealers engaged in charivari, a form of protest involving beating pots and pans in the streets. They're out protesting the new law 78, which prohibits public gatherings without police app...

Last week saw the latest installment of David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, DC. One of the keynotes came from Eben Moglen, formerly chief counsel of the Free Software Foundat...

CPU Wars is a Top-Trumps-style game whose play-tokens are cards bearing the likeness and specifications of various CPUs (what else?) through the ages, from 8088s up to contemporary 64-bit multicores. ...

Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, challenged Bruce Schneier to a debate on whether Muslims should be singled out for additional screening at airports. Schneier patiently, and repeatedly, explains why (apa...

The redoubtable Miss Insomnia Tulip has created a calorific tribute to the Levenson Inquiry, in which Lord Justice Levenson is interrogating the state of the nation's newspapers, phone hacking, and un...

The redoubtable Miss Insomnia Tulip has created a calorific tribute to the Leveson Inquiry, in which Lord Justice Leveson is interrogating the state of the nation's newspapers, phone hacking, and undu...

Today I found myself at a street-market in Soho (the one in London), at a stall belonging to Amelia Parker, a jewelry maker who salvages fragments of century-old clay pipes from the banks of the Thame...

Here's a collection of humorous, futuristic magazines displayed in the background of the news-stand scene in Blade Runner -- documented in Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon: Tu...

The UK press has been alive with talk of the Prime Minister calling Ed Balls, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, a "muttering idiot" during a session of Parliament. The the Speaker of the House forced him ...

Loreen of Sweden performs her song, "Euphoria", after winning the Eurovision song contest in Baku. Photo: David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters You know the Ameri-centricism Europeans make fun of? I might ha...

VatiLeaks is pretty much what it sounds like: leaks from the Vatican, which culminated in, "Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI," a blockbusting book from journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who ...

Andy Baio and Andy McMillan have announced XOXO, a SXSW-like "disruptive creativity" conference in Portland. They're pre-selling the tickets on Kickstarter, and if they don't sell enough, they're not ...

The BBC reports that top UK politician Baroness Warsi failed to declare substantial rental income from property she owned. The baroness had declared the property on the register of ministerial interes...

From the BBC: "A stray dog has completed a 1700km journey across China after joining a cycle race from Sichuan province to Tibet. ... He ran with them for 20 days, covering up to 60km a day, and climb...

There's something weirdly atemporal about this isometric Masonite ad, like a secret society of time-travelling Sims players. Masonite...

Benjamin G. Levy Boing Boing reader Benjamin G. Levy shares this image in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool and says, Today's Kitten of the Day is Helen, named for Helen Keller because she's had troubles wi...

REUTERS/Thomas Peter Revellers attend the Wave and Goth festival in Leipzig, on May 25, 2012. The annual festival, known in Germany as Wave-Gotik Treffen, features up to 150 bands and musicians playin...

Boing Boing reader Michael Smith-Welch shares this image, and says, Why did I see so many binders (presumably filled with paper) on the desks of the engineers at NASA's Mission control yesterday when ...

NTK was once the greatest weekly tech newsletter in the universe -- snarky and funny and informative and just great. It's been dead for a good long while now, and this being the fifteenth anniversary ...

On Deviant Art, BAwesome-BAcon has crafted a pork-product pony to die for: "I have recently taken my love of My Little Pony and combined it with my love of bacon. The result, something that is borderl...

Isaac wanted to propose to his girlfriend, so he enlisted over 60 friends to stage a Busby Berkeley street-show lip-dub extravaganza ambush. What follows is five minutes of heart-stoppingly sweet and ...

Confectioner Alexandre Dubosc made this Tim Burton themed zoetrope cake, which animates to display iconic imagery from many of Burton's best-loved films. There's even a sneaky Jack Skellington up top....

Chris writes, "The Anthromod Mk2 hand is a robotic hand where everything, apart from the tendons, are 3D printed. Unlike other printed hands the Mk2 requires minimal assembly, and is also available fr...

An enterprising young fellow named Eric Simons secretly lived at AOL headquarter for two months. He was given a badge while working a short stint at AOL's Imagine K12 incubator event for young educati...

CMGW Photography snapped this beautiful shot, "First Contact," in which a young girl and a manatee share a moment through a pane of glass. First Contact...

James sez, "The Bowler Press is taking on printing a letterpress, three-volume edition of Pride & Prejudice, and they are trying to fund the costs of getting the materials to do so with crowd sou...

Hugh sez, "San Francisco muralista Mona Caron has created a stunning to poster to mark the 20th anniversary of Critical Mass in San Francisco this September." Critical Mass 20th Anniversary Bike Angel...

Muslim women hold posters during a protest objecting to U.S. singer Lady Gaga's Indonesian concert, at Jakarta's business district May 24, 2012. Pop star Lady Gaga has been refused a permit to perform...

This week, YouTube announced the launch of a new Human Rights channel in partnership with advocacy nonprofit WITNESS, and social news-gathering service Storyful. The new channel is "dedicated to curat...

[Video Link] Above, a new video from Father John Mistys "Fear Fun" album on Sub Pop Records. Video directed by Grant James. Richard Metzger first turned me on to Father John Misty (the new project by ...

In the New York Times, John Schwartz writes about audiobook performers, who may be "little known outside of the community of devoted listeners," but serve an important role. "If somebodys going to spe...

The latest from Roger Wood of Klockwerks: "I was asked to make a kinetic Steampunk sculpture for a show in New York; here it is."...

[Video link] Fiber artist Jo Hamilton says, This is a stop motion video I made to document my process of crocheting one of my larger than life portraits in yarn from start to finish. In my work I use ...

Earlier this week, I showed you how scientists can use a simple, hand-operated tool to collect stratified core samples of mud at the bottom of a swamp. The deeper the samples go down, the older the mu...

Tron: Uprising premiers on June 7 on Disney XD. They've posted the first episode, titled "Beck's Beginning, in its entirety to YouTube. I think Alberto Mieglo's fantastic art direction is in the tradi...

Warialasky's trailer for a big-budg apocalyptic science fiction movie based on Tetris is all too plausible in the era of Battleship: the Movie: "Official Tetris Teaser Trailer. The invasion is beginni...

It's perhaps the most famous story in the history of the blues: In the 1920s, a mediocre guitarist named Robert Johnson went to a Mississippi crossroads at midnight where the Devil "tuned" his guitar ...

The Philip K. Dick Festival, scheduled for September 22-23 in San Francisco, is sure to be a heady, reality-bending time. Organizer and Total Dick-Head blogger David Gill informs us that he's lined up...

For many years, Google has published a "Transparency Report" with the number of non-copyright-related takedown notices it receives from governments, police, courts, individuals and corporations. Now, ...

I recently spent a couple of days catching up on my absolutely favorite podcast: Boars Gore and Swords. San Francisco based comedians and hosts Ivan Hernandez and Red Scott are back at making getting ...

I recently spent a couple of days catching up on my absolutely favorite podcast: Boars Gore and Swords. San Francisco based comedians and hosts Ivan Hernandez and Red Scott are back at making getting ...

Stewart Brand sums up Susan Freinkel's Long Now talk: "What Common Objects Used to Be Made Of," a history of the world before plastic: Bakelite was invented in 1907 to replace the beetle excretion cal...

Quebec is in the throes of mass protests. A prolonged student strike over tuition hikes triggered a law placing broad restrictions on the freedom to protest, and giving the police the power to arbitra...

The Modern Poland Foundation held a future of copyright contest, which invited short stories about copyright's future. They've published the winners in a free ebook....

[Video Link] Penn's excellent rant against Obama's ruinous drug policy that keeps 750,000 non-violent people in prison. He points out that if Obama had been imprisoned for his admitted drug use, his l...

[Video Link] A young celebrity lives four houses away from us, and our street is often filled with paparazzi. Two days ago, the cops came twice to deal with these jackasses. Vice made a video about th...

The Cussing Channel has produced a Dark Knight Joker supercut, featuring all the on-camera Heath Ledger scenes. It rather stopped me in my tracks -- Ledger really put in an astounding performance, som...

[Video Link] An interview with Jimmy Corrigan creator, Chris Ware. (Via Drawn & Quarterly)...

[Video Link] She obviously didn't want to jump. I wonder if the skydiving company charged extra for the extra thrill. (Via Geekolgie)...

Here's an undated ad from "Sugar Information, Inc" (our old friends), warning mothers that if they include their kids in their sugar-free, dieting lifestyles, they will be depriving the poor kiddlees ...

I'm at Blip Festival in New York this weekend checking out all the bleeps and bloops people are making. Blip Festival itself starts tonight, but last night NY Pulsewave had an open mic night and I dec...

Robert sez, "Azerbaijan is hosting the final of this Saturday's Eurovision song contest. Amidst the absurdity and kitsch, human rights groups are worried that Azerbaijan's autocratic government will u...

Here's Paul Joachim's 80 oz. monster cake from 2007, as featured on Evil Cakes: Made for a halloween party, this cake came out quite scary and realistic! I used 4 deliciously moist chocolate cakes alo...

Dish Networks, the satellite TV provider, is being sued by Fox over its "AutoHop" feature, which automatically skips commercials. Fox alleges copyright infringement, which is a repeat of the claims ov...

Tor.com reports on Pulitzer Winning novelist Jennifer Egan's latest project: a tweeted science fiction story in the New Yorker's fiction feed: This is part of the launch of the forthcoming first-ever ...

Richard Katz, a NYC lawyer, has lost his breach-of-contract lawsuit against a pricey healthclub that changed its breakfast menu. Katz was a member of The Setai Wall Street Club and Spa, and he was ups...

Jeffrey Stephenson made a beautiful Mondrian PC enclosure. Mondrian is a fanless mini-ITX case design made from wood and hand-cut acrylic tiles. Fresh air is drawn into the case after passing through ...

If you've got a major-brand camera with a built-in GPS, don't plan on taking any geotagged photos in China. Chinese law prohibits mapmaking without a license, and most of the large camera manufacturer...

Anniina ("Scholar, Writer, Mother, Dreamer. Editor of Luminarium, an online library for English Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance") produced these delicious-looking and awfully lovely illu...

"A hedgehog is recovering in an RSPCA hospital after being found by the side of a road with its head wedged in an empty carrot tin." [BBC]...

Ben Cosgrove of Life says: As the prospect of nuclear weapons testing by nations like North Korea and Iran once again makes headlines, LIFE.com presents rare and (mostly) unpublished pictures from the...

The other day I noticed that on the back of the one dollar bill, there is a phrase: The Great Seal of the United States. It is split into two circles. When you fold the dollar so that the two half cir...

From Archive.org's wonderful Classic TV archive, an hour long video of old toy commercials. Batteries Not Included...

I hope this was a clever student's attempt to answer a question that he or she didn't know the answer to. (Via Bit & Pieces)...

James Losey from the New America Foundation writes, "I wanted to share New America Foundation's president Steve Coll's reasoning as to why he is leaving the Facebook. He analyzes a range of concerns i...

[Video Link] Getty Images hired BBDO Brazil to produce a short movie made entirely of still images from its collection. (Via This is Colossal)...

[Video Link] This is as entertaining as it is disconcerting. Related: Pastor proposes 100 mile fence to house homosexuals...

Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse A Solar Impulse aircraft takes off at Payerne airport May 24, 2012, piloted by Andr Borschberg. The Solar Impulse HB-SIA prototype aircraft, which has 12,000 solar cells...

Last October, I blogged about a Kickstarter to create "a video game with no graphics, played entirely using audio." The game is Blindside, and it's finished! Now available through the App Store for iP...

Sculptor Jim Rosenau's "Reading Chair" is a 6" high piece made from volumes from an old Funk & Wagnall's and some blunt pencils. It's the perfect chair for a bookish gnome. I've featured Jim's wo...

Photo: Chris Arnade Chris Arnade is a photographer based in New York City. I've blogged his urban photography before. Check out these fantastic shots of young men in Hunts Point Bronx, doing crazy gra...

Are you a designer or architect who would like to work within the unique constraints of zero gravity? Spaceship designer Susmita Mohanty, who worked on the International Space Station and Shuttle-Mir ...

[Video Link] "MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith and his team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group … came up with LiquiGlide, a 'super-slippery' coating which ...

Nachos NY -- a site celebrating the nacho in all its glory -- has produced three temporary nacho-related tattoos for your delectation. Nacho Tattoos (via Craft)...

I haven't watched television since I was fifteen years old, but up until then my entire world view was shaped by shows like Nova and Nature. I guess there was other stuff on, but nothing else gave me ...

Jamie at The Mary Sue looks at costume jewelry brand 1928's fun line of Marvel Comics Jewelry. "SHINY THINGS ASSEMBLE: MARVEL-THEMED JEWELRY (THAT YOU CAN TOTALLY AFFORD)"...

In the Globe and Mail a Canadian Press report by Nelson Wyatt on the mass-kettling and arrest of protesters in Montreal last night. A long-running and hard-fought student strike over tuition hikes led...

Dutch artist fantastic Koen Hauser's Modische Atlas der Anatomie series of digitally manipulated photos brings to mind the classic "Visible Woman" kit. "Anatomy Revealed by Koen Hauser" (Juxtapoz)...

[Video Link] There are probably easier ways to cause a column to buckle, but this way looks like fun. (Via Cynical-C)...

Ian Wilding's clever "Red Shirt" is available from FSC Tees....

Abraham Piper of 22 Words says: "To commemorate Bob Dylan’s 71st birthday, here’s a Peanuts strip from this day in 1971."...

A 20-year-old photo spread from pioneering cyberculture zine Mondo 2000 asks the musical question: "R U a cyberpunk?" Bruce Sterling, who was, in fact, a cyberpunk, answers: "Since 20 years have passe...

[Video Link] It was so great to see Adam Savage at Maker Faire again this year. Thousands of people crammed into the the giant Fiesta Hall for Adam's presentation. Adam started by talking about his fe...

[Video Link] It was so great to see Adam Savage at Maker Faire again this year. Thousands of people crammed into the the giant Fiesta Hall for Adam's presentation. Adam started by talking about his fe...

In June 2010 Denver police officer Derrick Saunders was sentenced to 5 days in jail for driving 143 mph while drunk. The manager of safety fired Saunders, but yesterday the Civil Service Commission ov...

Henry Farrell (George Washington University) and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (Carnegie-Mellon/The Santa Fe Institute) have just posted a paper, "Cognitive Democracy," to Crooked Timber. Farrell and Shalizi ...

Ted Kaczynski updated his own entry in the Harvard alumni directory, just in time for his class's 50th reunion: While many of his classmates sent in lengthy updates on their lives for the 2 -inch-thic...

Our thanks go to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email. Much like the iconic double decker buses in the UK, this British-designed limited edition St...

The Space Hijackers' Twitter account for their Official Protesters of the London 2012 Games has been suspended, following a complaint from the London Olympic committee: Twitter. That harbour of free s...

Artist (and Boing Boing favorite) Molly Crabapple is just as clever with crowdfunding as she is with a Sharpie. For her 28th birthday, she Kickstartered the budget for a week locked in a NYC hotel sui...

I guess the flag of Cornwall is not an official sponsor of the Olympic Games....

My wife Alice quit her job a year ago to found Makies with some friends in London and Helsinki. Makies is a 3D printing startup. The company's mission is to create toys and dolls from "playful" digita...

Abzde set a slinky upon an inclined treadmill and the brave spring proceeded to slink its way down that machine for 3 heart-pounding minutes and 20 unbeatable seconds. Watch as the slinky moves from s...

"Three huts and a house were flattened last Sunday, while people are occasionally being pelted with stones by unseen things, believed to be goblins at a Chisumbanje homestead in Chipinge South where ...

Miss Cakehead sends us these "Incredible and gross chicken feet cake pops created for the Evil Cake Shop by Miss Insomnia Tulip." The feet are made from vanilla & raspberry cake, triple dipped in...

Etsy seller FaustX2 made this Star Wars fig display table out of printing-press trays and other salvage items, topped with tempered glass. This mixed media custom coffee table was made from reworked v...

DeviantArt's Ashleyisthebomb shows off a Starburst chewies castle whose individual bricks were melted together with a glue-less hot glue gun: "because there was no glue or anything, it was completely ...

These meat-shaped balloons were created as a storefront display by Object Design League, who will sell you a steak or sausage model for $8. DesignBoom has tons more pics and notes on the production: a...

Back in April, chemist Ronald Breslow published a fairly routine research paper on the topic of molecular evolution. His paper concluded with a left turn into dire warnings about the possibility of di...

Here's a story that combines two favorite bits of volcano news into one interesting discovery. You know those great, freaky photos of volcanic lightning? (In case you don't, I've got one posted above....

Seventy-one feet above the Harvard Forest, you can stand on a plywood platform attached to a slightly swaying tower of metal scaffolding, and look out over miles of hemlock groves. On the ground, the ...

Mozilla's new Webmaker project is a global initiative to "move people from using the Web to making the Web." They're running a series of events, including an upcoming Summer Code Party with interactiv...

Neither I nor Dean Putney—BoingBoing's intrepid web developer—live in New York City. But we realized recently that we're both going to be visiting at the same time. So we're planning on me...

Courts around the world have instituted censorship regimes that require ISPs to block the Pirate Bay. In response, TPB has added a new IP address (194.71.107.80) by which it can be reached. It also ha...

The Back to the Future hover skateboard is on its way! (Via Photoshop Disasters)...

As a graduate student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, I’m constantly surrounded with astounding creativity from my fellow students, who come from a wide array of disciplin...

Celeste Kidd from the University of Rochester writes in with news of a new study on PLoS One, which attempts to quantify the amount of stimulus that is optimal for amusing and engaging babies: This vi...

Jonathan Chait takes to New York Magazine to explain how a revisionist version of American civil rights history paints the Republicans as the party of racial equality: The civil rights movement, once ...

Joaquin Baldwin, whose animated films and 3D-printed sculptures we've featured here before a number of times, has completed a new work. I love these. Joaquin explains: I created the skeleton of a skel...

Jack Hitt is the author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, and a contributing editor to the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and public radio’s This American Life...

Jack Hitt is the author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, and a contributing editor to the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and public radio’s This American Life...

One the highlights of Maker Faire for me was meeting Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of the Arduino project. He's very friendly and we had a nice time talking about design. I also enjoyed meeting Luisa ...

I'm in New York this week and today I dropped in on Boing Boing pal Joe Sabia. Joe's in the middle of directing a series of short musical thank you note videos for people who request them online. They...

Scott Matthews shared a photograph with me, and I'm sharing it with all of you, with his permission. His daughter Sasha handed him this note yesterday. Sasha is a pretty special girl, in no small part...

This badass chopper was (apparently) hand-built by Emile, a Frenchman whose Citroen car broke down in the middle of the northwestern African desert, and who built himself a motorcycle out of the parts...

This badass chopper was (apparently) hand-built by Emile, a Frenchman whose Citroen car broke down in the middle of the northwestern African desert, and who built himself a motorcycle out of the parts...

Today would have been the 78th birthday of electronic music pioneer Robert Moog (1934-2005.) Please celebrate with this clip of ELP's Keith Emerson playing the "Lucky Man" solo live on his monstrous M...

Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless TV remote control, has died. The former engineer for Zenith was 96. The first TV with the technology, called Flash-Matic tuning, hit stores in 1955. From the AP...

Musician Amanda Palmer, whose Kickstarter project for an all-singing, all-dancing tour plus album plus art book plus videos extravaganza is heading for the $1,000,000 mark, explains where all the mone...

Denise Balkisoon, who did a great job covering the Byron Sonne trial writes, "If you're not tired of G20 hacker/accused bomber Byron Sonne yet, the details of his pre-trial are now no longer under pub...

[Video Link] My friend Andrea James sent me this video. She said, " I thought it was nicely shot, and I like the music!" I agree. The song is called "Ding Ding Dong," and it is by Waipod Phetsuphan (T...

A Redditor posts photos of a jar of American gods, hole-punched out of the US dollar bills that an atheist friend receives as tips in his job as a valet. My atheist friend has worked as a Valet for ov...

Generally I think QR codes are a lame stopgap technology. But this application by the Korean retailer Emart is fairly clever. They deployed 3D "Shadow QR codes" that only work during certain sunlight ...

Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future (standard-bearers in the fight against SOPA) sez, Congressional hero of the SOPA wars, Senator Wyden, said about cyber security legislation (CISPA and Lieberman-Coll...

Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future (standard-bearers in the fight against SOPA) sez, Congressional hero of the SOPA wars, Senator Wyden, said about cyber security legislation (CISPA and Lieberman-Coll...

Artist Bruce Lowell recreated Limor Fried's Adafruit workshop in Lego and submitted it to LEGO CUUSOO. I hope it gets the 10,000 votes needed for Lego to manufacture it as a set! Ladyada's workshop is...

Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive untold BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the brand new INNER HIVE right now! "I signed up the second I read about it. It's a lot of fun. I enjoy hearing Ruben ...

Hank Chapot sez, "You've published two links to my research about the 1937 police corruption scandals in San Francisco, November and February, 'the long lost Atherton Report.' After all the research, ...

Jason K has reimagined a series of Studio Ghibli movie posters as covers of vintage Penguin paperbacks. He sells them as posters, postcards, and assorted other etsybits. Studio Ghibli 4x6" postcard se...

AKMA Adam sez, "After three years of living in Glasgow, we couldn't miss the opportunity to return to Cozy Noodle in Evanston -- our favourite restaurant here, where we used to live. We love the food ...

In case the Epic Poop post has you reaching for a unicorn chaser, I bring you...unicorn poop. Specifically, DIY unicorn poop from Instructables user kristylynn84. The secret ingredient is love. And po...

A stapler with a USB hub in it? Why not? USB ALL THE OFFICE SUPPLIES. Usb hub auto Stapler (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)...

Kusa makes flip flops with a footbed of faux grass. They seem like an imaginary product in the background at an invention fair on The Simpsons. KUSA Grass Flip Flops...

The RedPower Minecraft project, which has built a programmable 8-bit computer for Minecraft, has done a new release. Engadget's Mat Smith sums up the new features: "The system is made from three separ...

A Reddit thread called "Did you ever think you were going to die from a shit?" sparked a lyrical/scatological series of reminisces of epic dumps, including a two part series by ErikPDX recalling a sto...

The NY Daily News reports that Actor Michael McKean, of Spinal Tap fame, has been struck by a car on Manhattan today. NY Daily News: McKean, 64, who played Lenny on the hit television show (Laverne an...

Bits & Pieces has a fun collection of "double take" photos. Each one caused a fun moment of "huh?" in my mind, until reality snapped into place....

A Zimbabwean senator named Morgan Femai from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has given a bizarre, misogynist speech at an African HIV/AIDS conference in which he proposes that his county...

A dad says: "My son has a long to do list today!"...

A creative agency called Murmure is kitting out its employees with concrete business cards that come with their own miniature shipping palettes. There's a scene in a William Gibson novel (I could swea...

[Video Link] Follow the instructions on this video and prepare to be freaked out. (Via Doobybrain)...

Tadao Cern's portrait series is called "Blow Job."...

Instructables user Jetpack5 created a series of Star Wars space vehicles out of floppy-disk parts and office supplies. There's even a rubber-band-ball Death Star! Also in the set: a Millennium Falcon ...

The late actor James Doohan, best known for his role as "Scotty" on the original Star Trek series, left instructions in his will that he wished to be buried in space. His family worked hard to fulfill...

Australia is in the future, where it is already Robert Moog's birthday and you can play this fantastic Moog Google Doodle, complete with a record feature. Google Australia...

[Video Link] I saw these glasses in action at the Maker Faire 2012 wrap dinner. The gents from macetech LLC who were wearing them were the life of the party. We at macetech LLC are proud of our existe...

Netherlands artist Suzanne Jongmans has created a series of portraits in the style of the Dutch Masters, creating the costumes out of soft packing foam sheets. She needs to team up with the artist who...

Objectivist C: a programming language wherein each object "must live for its own sake, neither sacrificing itself to others nor sacrificing others to itself." @implementation HelloWorld - (void)printH...

Artist Annie Vought produces remarkable pieces by carefully handwriting texts on huge sheets of paper and then painstakingly carving away all the non-inked parts with a very, very sharp knife. I work ...

Today is World Goth Day. Celebrate with the Sisters of Mercy....

Here's a visual treat: photos that kids have taken of their projects on DIY.org. Explore Projects on DIY.org...

Just in case you were wondering, the Battleship movie is as stupid as it seems: "I was floored by just what new levels of stupidity in cinema the film achieves. The premise is insultingly stupid, the ...

Holmes sez, "A crowd-funded, Texan-themed billboard for Lamar Smith (R-TX) is currently emblazoned across the Texas sky. The billboard says 'Don't Mess with the Internet', and it just took flight this...

[Video Link]Excellent video by Bill Hammock that looks at the accelerometer in a mobile phone, and how it's made. Bill takes apart a smartphone and explains how its accelerometer works. He also shares...

Conservative "Christian" groups are voicing opposition to anti-bullying legislation in Illinois because they say that it is part of a "homosexual agenda" and will infringe upon their right to deride g...

Richard Birkett, who I first posted about in 2010, creates bizarre clock assemblages. "Magnifying flaws is one of the main things that these clocks do."...

This is not a painting, it's a photograph. "Camel Thorn Trees, Namibia" by Frans Lanting/National Geographic. (via Juxtapoz)...

A number of civil rights groups including PEN, will be represented by the ACLU in a Supreme Court case on the legality of the US government's program of mass, warrantless surveillance. The groups went...

"Fifteen people were killed or injured in tribal fighting in Yemen after a male donkey chased an ass and raped it just near the house of its owner." -- Emirates 24/7...

Back in 2007, I posted about sculptor Tom Sachs's recreation/reimagination of the moon landing in a Beverly Hills gallery. He's now created a line of space mission-inspired gear for Nike. For example,...

Jess Thorne says: "This week's culture recommendations on Bullseye come to us care of Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing and the Gweek podcast, who joins us to share a pair of his top picks: The Diction...

In case you need an antidote to commencement speeches that tell you to follow your dream to attain success, here's Bobcat Goldthwaite's 2009 Commencement address to Hampshire College, in which he exho...

And only $35!...

Jazz/hip hop fusionist Robert Glasper is a deeply talented pianist and producer who has worked with everyone from Q-Tip to Mos Def to Erykah Badu. The Robert Glasper Experiment is, well, his more expe...

Joel Anaya, a Hospitality Business Management student from Washington State University, studied entries from Web sites like dinnersfromhell.com, flightsfromhell.com, and notalwaysright.com to identify...

A great short video from a CalTech gas-sensing lab explains the science of gas-detection and analysis. The Electronic Nose: Sniffing Out the Dangerous Stuff to Keep Our Noses Safe (Thanks, Scanadu)...

I haven't read much by science fiction author Jack Vance, but the one or two books I read, long ago, I enjoyed greatly. One thing that stood out about Vance's writing was the way he occasionally used ...

It was fun to see people expressing themselves at Maker Faire with colorful clothes and accessories. (See Part 1) Cool Clothes and Styles of Maker Faire Attendees (Part 2)...

Michael Geist sez, Canada's proposed Internet surveillance was back in the news last week after speculation grew that government intends to keep the bill in legislative limbo until it dies on the orde...

Cartoonist Lars Martinson submitted the first installment of the Kameoka Diaries to Reddit. As a result, his website, which gets about 100 visitors a day, had 48,342 visitors in a single day. He thoug...

Spoiler is an independently produced 17-minute horror/science fiction movie that illuminates the kinds of cold equations that have to be solved in pandemic outbreaks. In this case, it's the story of t...

Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation sez, The U.S. Congress speaks at nearly a full grade level lower than it did seven years ago, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis. Using the CapitolWords...

In this cellphone video, NYPD sergeant Lesly Charles threatens a group of men with his gun and threatens to rape them, while simultaneously condoning their criminal behavior of "hustling." The New Yor...

Legally, it's a run of the mill trademark dispute; discussion threads around the net, however, reveal it as a Rorschach test separating lovers of situational irony from sarcastic morons. [Threat Level...

At the PBS Newshour site, an analysis of what today's historic SpaceX launch means for the future of space flight, by veteran space journalist Miles O'Brien. Space is hard and unforgiving and there is...

The Falcon 9 rocket's engines ignite on the SpaceX launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, May 22, 2012. Photo: SpaceX Before dawn today at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, SpaceX ...

The San Jose Mercury news reports that a vial of 40th US President Ronald Reagan's blood is up for auction. Reputedly, the blood was taken from a lab in Maryland, with permission, after the infamous 1...

"Two workers who claimed they were forced to urinate in a bucket have been awarded $332,000 after a jury found they were fired for complaining to Oregon regulators about the lack of an onsite toilet."...

Kodak's Hail Mary business plan isn't working out. [NYT]...

[Video Link] "I figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. Build a great, big, large fence -- 50 or 100 mile long -- put all the lesbians in there, drop some food down. Do the same thing...

[Video Link] These parents thought it would be fun to give junior a short ride in a dryer at the laundromat. But the door had an auto lock (to prevent people from stealing the clothes?) and panic ensu...

[Video Link] These parents thought it would be fun to give junior a short ride in a washer at the laundromat. But the door had an auto lock and panic ensued....

Here's a worthy petition on the WhiteHouse.Gov site: Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. We believe in the power of the Internet...

Here's some lovely news: DC is bringing out an all-ten-volumes-in-one-slipcase edition of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Gaiman writes, "Im thrilled. You have no idea how long Ive been asking DC to do one of ...

Quinton Sung created full-album chiptune covers of Radiohead's OK Computer and Kid A. [via Pitchfork, Killscreen, Waxy]...

Otherwise unremarkable rocks, collected on a California beach, began spewing fire, acrid smoke and an oily residue. Leaving some in a pocket sent one woman to hospital and rendered her home a temporar...

Ponds can be used for swimming, wildlife magnets, irrigation, iceskating, fire protection, water gardening, landscaping, and fishing. You can build your own pond in your backyard, farm, or wherever. T...

Legendary hardware hacker Jeri Ellsworth (world's most awesome C64 hacker and all round happy mutant), entertained attendees at the Maker Faire with her brilliant Commodore 64 bass keytar, which she p...

Hilla Shamia creates beautiful, weird furniture by placing logs inside molds and filling them with molten aluminum: "The negative factor of burnt wood is transformed into aesthetic and emotional value...

[Video Link] Gator doesn't take kindly to having a towel placed over its head and being straddled by a bipedal mammal. (Via Arbroath)...

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!...

Budapest designer Petra Nikoletti bought eight Ikea Forsa lamps and a salad bowl and had a locksmith precision fit them into a "spider lamp": "I bought 8 Ikea FORS table lamp, and only used the arms a...

[Video Link] Mucca Pazza says: "from our new full-length album, Safety Fifth, available on CD and 12" vinyl from Electric Cowbell Records on June 12, 2012." (Via Filled with Chocolate Pudding!)...

"Suddenly, I felt like a punch in my thigh. I saw a needle in my leg and the second time in my stomach," said one of three people who were shot by a blow-dart sniper on Sunday. One 15-year-old boy was...

Matt Simmons, who writes the Standalone Sysadmin blog, has been wondering why there are ashtrays in airplane toilets, even though you aren't allowed to smoke anywhere on or near an airplane, and you h...

Trader Sam's, the (fab) Trader Vic's knockoff tiki bar at the Disneyland Hotel, has rolled out its own line of souvenir tiki mugs, which are reminiscent of the old Trader Vic's mugs, but with rather g...

Cecil Castellucci -- indie-rock star, young adult author, and all round cool-ass polymath -- has joined forces with illustrator Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) to produce The Year of the Beasts, an ext...

Photo:Eric Niller I spent last weekend in the Harvard Forest, participating in hands-on science experiments as part of the Marine Biological Laboratory's science journalism fellowship. The goal was to...

A long line of climbers follow each other up Mt. Everest. Image: Ralf Dujmovits. 1996 was the deadliest year in the history of modern climbing on Mt. Everest. In one May weekend, eight people died whe...

The Village presents a video design fiction (?) for "Parking Douche," an app that lets you photograph the number plates of crappily parked cars in your neighborhood (in Russia) and submit them to a da...

Well this is rich. Thomas Langenbach, who identifies himself on LinkedIn as SAP's VP at the German technology company's Palo Alto Integration and Certification Center, has been charged with four felon...

Well this is rich. NBC Bay Area reports that Thomas Langenbach, identified as a VP at SAP's Palo Alto Integration and Certification Center, has been charged with four felony counts of burglary over il...

Richard Metzger says: This 1978 clip features the eternally popular Raffaella Carr (now pushing 70) singing Cole Porters Night and Day as bald. mustachioed eye-patch wearing sci-fi weirdos, um, assist...

A second launch attempt for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled for 3:44am EDT, Tuesday May 22. Weather is currently 80% go. Watch it live here. For background, watch Miles O'Brien's PBS NewsHou...

[Video Link] Above: "Night and Day," from Hot Chip's forthcoming album "In Our Heads" (June 11th, Domino). This music video was directed by Peter Serafinowicz, best known to most Boing Boing readers a...

On How to Be a Retronaut, an invigorating, 1910s-1920s gallery of winsome, partially unclothed lasses posed with typewriters. Hummina. 23 and/or skiddoo! They're ganked from marvellous Virtual Antique...

[Video Link] Boing Boing reader Cory Poole is a 33-year-old math and science teacher at University Preparatory School in Redding, CA. He sends in this beautiful video of yesterday's annular solar ecli...

Todd Bieber says: "I directed a video for Nerdist and Broadway Video. It's a fun series that takes you inside the world of Cos Play. There were so many videos out there poking fun at Cos Players that ...

Phil Brown was the real protagonist in Star Wars. Thecussingchannel has a bunch more new Star Wars super cuts. (via Wired)...

Kyle of the website Los Angeles I'm Yours profiled me and took a bunch of photos of my office. I had a great time chatting with him. Mark is based in Studio City, where he lives with his family in the...

[Video Link] What is this I don't even. The artist is HGich.T, the song "Tutenchamun." Original video sans subtitles and explanations is here. It's several years old, but new to me. (HT: @treyka)...

I've been blogging and tweeting about my experience in treatment for breast cancer, including what it's like to go through chemotherapy. The chemo drugs I received made all my hair fall out (not all k...

I've been blogging and tweeting about my experience in treatment for breast cancer, including what it's like to go through chemotherapy. The chemo drugs I received made all my hair fall out (not all k...

Law & Order & Food is a Tumblr with nothing but stills of the Law & Order cast eating, which is something they seem to do a lot of, because the're in NYC, which has some pretty badass t...

[Video Link] What is this I don't even. The artist is HGich.T, the song "Tutenchamun." Original video sans subtitles and explanations are here. It's several years old, but new to me. (HT: @treyka)...

My friend Sean Bonner just pointed me to a wonderful music history project, put together by Brian Stefans: at lapostpunk.blogspot.com, an MP3 compilation of post-punk and experimental pop music in the...

Larger size here. And, Amazon link, if you're so inclined. (Thanks, Joe Sabia, via Reddit)...

This is the ultimate in aspirational automotive paintjobs, surely. It's more unsourced net.stuff -- anyone know where it originated? (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)...

In Wired, Robert McMillan profiles Rockstar, a world-class patent troll based in Canada, which was capitalized to buy up Nortel's "defensive" patent portfolio for billions of dollars and now does noth...

Remember AT&T's "You Will" campaign from the early 1990s? Here's its predecessor, from 1961. Starring: * The wireless Bellboy Pager, which was introduced commercially in 1962 * The Data-phone, wh...

Here's Neil Gaiman's commencement address to Philadelphia's University of the Arts, who awarded him an honorary doctorate. It's a wonderful talk on being an artists and pursuing a career in the arts. ...

There Are No Ghosts is a delightful and creepy children's book written by my niece Amanda Pescovitz, a high school senior, and illustrated by her classmate Ellen Wang. The book was born from an award-...

From 1957, "Private Dreams and Public Nightmares," an incredibly weird and fantastic BBC sound experiment by writer Frederick Bradnum, pioneering electronic music composer Daphne Oram, and producer Do...

Above, an ad that recently ran in The Guardian newspaper. The government of a Middle Eastern state is recruiting a senior torturer to work in a well-equipped prison. Our ideal candidate would be prepa...

We've posted before about researchers exploring slime molds as a kind of bio-computer capable of some amazing accomplishments in information processing. Recently, computer scientist Andrew Adamtzky of...

On Twitter, former Warner Music CTO Ethan Kaplan greets the "surprising" news that file sharing of pre-release albums drives demand with acerbic and admirable sarcasm: "Let me simplify this answer: YE...

London's Hayward Gallery is mounting an exhibition of Invisible Art. The exhibition includes pieces such as Andy Warhol's Invisible Sculpture, essentially an empty pedestal, and, seen above, Tom Fried...

OK, they're not brass, they're aluminum. Knuckle Case for iPhone (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)...

A pair of Toronto neighbours, Elly Dowson and Christine Liber, set out to cover the coach-house doors in their laneway with awesome murals. This was in the context of an edict from Toronto's dipshit m...

Zeropaid's Drew Wilson has wrapped up his series examining 20 studies that looked at the impact of filesharing on the sales of entertainment products (previously). He's summed up his conclusions based...

Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings reports on a revision to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987, which prohibit the use of government disinformation and propaganda cam...

This weekend, I took my daughter to the Kapow! comics fair in Islington, London, and happened on the Upside Comics booth. Upside is a charitable trust that promotes literacy using comics. They run com...

Ken Macleod and the European stem cell research consortium OptiStem have produced a CC-licensed educational comic about genomics called "Hope Beyond Hype." It's available as a free download, or as a &...

Read the text of the "anti-Sharia" bill that passed in the Kansas state legislature last week. I'm no legal scholar, but it sure does seem like you could use this to make a case that it's now illegal ...

Photographer Joel Sartore has been shooting nature for 20 years—long enough to amass a great collection of images you can check out at the New York Times. The whole point of this project is to r...

I'm currently attending the Marine Biological Laboratory's 10-day science journalism fellowship. As part of that, I get to do some hands-on science experiments and get a better perspective on how the ...

Do you see how the ground level is higher on the left-hand side of this photo? To the right of the stone wall, the ground distinctly drops by a foot or more. That wall is more than 200 years old. It m...

Where did our electric grid come from? It's a complicated question to answer. That's because the grid we have today didn't come from any single place. Instead, its origins are scattered, distributed g...

I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the Harvard Forest—the most-studied forest in the world. It's an interesting place, with a complicated history. Originally forest, it was clear-cut in the...

Ravens are a big deal in the Game of Thrones universe. Theyre used to transmit information from one place to another, and often seem to be portents of death. This weeks episode begins with a whole dea...

Unless you've recently had a bag on your head to be specially renditioned, are related to murdered Israeli athletes, don't like lesbian kisses, cock, dildo or pussy jokes, and unless you think that ca...

In National Geographic, a rare moment of marine nomadism, as a sea nomad child called Enal hitches a ride by holding onto the tail of his friend, a tawny nurse shark. The picture is by James Morgan, s...

Rolling Stone just announced something that we have known for a long time: Ed Piskor (our own Brain Rot cartoonist) is a hell of a talented cartoonist. I have an advance copy of his upcoming book, Wiz...

From multiple sources today: One of the three Bee Gees has died. Robin Gibb was 62 years old, and was diagnosed two years ago with colon and liver cancer that responded to treatment, then returned and...

Photo: Robin Gibb. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor, 2008. From multiple sources today: One of the three Bee Gees has died. Robin Gibb was 62 years old, and was diagnosed two years ago with colon and liver canc...

[Tim Pool: @timcast on Twitter, Ustream video feed.] UPDATE, 4pm PT: Reports from Chicago of police attacking protesters and journalists, chemical weapons being readied for use, and possibile imminent...

Josh Stearns has an update on police harassment, detention, and arrest incidents involving journalists at protests this weekend. He says, "I have been tracking, confirming and verifying reports of jou...

Simonhac sez, "Today I armed my kids with unrolled paperclips and asked them to pop the two-week-old helium balloons that have been kicking around our house at ground level since my daughter's birthda...

[Video Link.] A weekend of fear and mourning in Italy. Early this Sunday morning, an earthquake struck near Bologna: at least six killed (ceramic workers, and a hundred year old person), and big mater...

[Tim Pool: @timcast on Twitter, Ustream video feed.] In this post, embeds for some of the known live independent web video streams covering the NATO protests in Chicago today. Community Media Workshop...

Photo: C.S. Muncy "Occupy" movement participants and an array of protest groups are among those gathering in Chicago this wekeend to demonstrate outside the NATO summit. Sunday, protesters are ramping...

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Nebula Awards, especially to Jo Walton, who won for her magnificent novel, Among Others (see my review, here). Also congrats to Delia Sherman for her best YA...

Last summer, Hifijohn successfully turned a giant jawbreaker on his lathe, making a beautiful, striped and striated shot glass (or egg cup) out of it: "My third attempt at turn a giant jawbreaker. I p...

Earlier today Gareth Branwyn had the idea that we should run an image gallery of the great clothes worn by people who come to Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 (taking place now). So Gar and I went out and sn...

These delightful boxing felines were equipped with miniature boxing gloves and set to brawling by none other than legendary douchebag Thomas Edison, as a means of promoting his newfangled moving pictu...

Here's Ella Smith at Maker Faire with her Zevrino, an Arduino-powered automatic cat feeder....

I'm here at Maker Faire in San Mateo. If you aren't one of the 100,000 people here to celebrate The Greatest Show (and tell) on Earth, you can still experience it through our Maker Faire Live site, wi...

The Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning has posted an hour-long investigative journalism piece establishing the link between the giant Swedish telcoms company Teliasonera and oppressive regimes aroun...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Rights Group will co-host a speakeasy event -- a kind of pub night -- in east London on June 14. I'll be there, with several ORG employees, supporters a...

A clever bit of advertising gimmickry from Guinness: these pint glasses bear QR codes than can't be read when the glass is empty, nor when it is filled with amber-colored beers. But when filled with b...

Henry Kissinger's wheelchair considered harmful: "Kissinger was taken to the search area, was required to stand, and was given the 'full Monty.'"...

In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he'd done with his life to mer...

Unsourced net.awesomeness: an Alien Pez dispenser. I'd buy that for (several) dollars. alien pez (via Wil Wheaton)...

Last weekend I went to Shag the Store in Palm Springs, California. A variety of art pieces by Shag were for sale, along with paintings up for a charity auction by artists who painted live at Coachella...

Here's a blooper reel of Ricky Gervais and Sesame Street's Elmo cracking wise and crossing the line. Gervais + Elmo = Hilarity on 'Sesame Street' (via Metafilter)...

Matthew Epley's Grand Old Party project takes the approval-rating curves of GOP presidential hopefuls and turns them into 3D solids, then turns those into buttplugs. Grand Old Party demonstrates that ...

Redditor Surprisemailbox posted this image of a note left by a seven year old for her parents, regarding security policies at home: "If you put a pasword on that I will make your life a nitmare." The ...

Were I anatomically capable of having a boner, Gilbert Gottfried's reading of the best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey would kill it dead. Forever. (collegehumor.com)...

Starbucks generates 4 billion paper cups a year, or 12 cups for every man, woman and child in America. The coffee giant knocks ten cents off beverage price for customers who bring in their own mugs, b...

Jamais Cascio meditates on complexity, culminating with: "In other words, the opposite of 'complex' is not 'simple,' the opposite of 'complex' is 'isolated.'" See also Kathryn Myronuk's "All complex e...

The joint JAXA/NASA Hinode mission captured this image of the January 6, 2011 solar eclipse. On May 20-21, sky-watchers in Asia and much of the U.S. will be able to view a ring of fire eclipse or a pa...

The joint JAXA/NASA Hinode mission captured this image of the January 6, 2011 solar eclipse. On May 20-21 (this coming Sunday night through this coming Monday morning), sky-watchers in Asia and much o...

The NYT's Nick Bilton compares Facebook and Twitter to the tortoise and the hare. "Facebook exploded because it slurped up endless amounts of data about its users," writes Bilton. "This race is not ju...

An excellent long read in the new Wired magazine: Jamming Tripoli: Inside Moammar Gadhafi's Secret Surveillance Network. Matthieu Aikins examines how activists suffered "greatly at the hands of Gadhaf...

Shutterstock In a new Ill Doctrine video, Jay Smooth advises white Americans on "this baby thing"—the recent news that white births are now a minority in the US. Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed...

Wired's David Kravets reports from the Copyright Office's triennial hearings on exceptions to the DMCA's rules against breaking DRM. Every three years, public interest groups supplicate themselves bef...

Earlier today, a mysterious report from Thailand simply noted that a man was arrested for "possession of a foetus." The Telegraph has more: Six human foetuses which had been roasted and covered in gol...

Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen on a screen televised from their headquarters in Menlo Park moments after their IPO launch in New York. (REUTERS) Shares of Facebook (FB) opened at $42.05 on ...

Indie band Here We Go Magic is driving across America on tour. Earlier this week, they spotted legendary director John Waters hitchhiking by the side of the road with a hat that said "Scum of the Eart...

What happens when you stuff sausage casings with cupcake-batter? That's what Stef from the Cupcake Project set out to discover. Short answer: sheer, heart-stopping deliciousness. Stef's produced a det...

Nick Rallo of the Dallas Observer alerted me to this report, written by Eric Nicholson, about someone who has sent nearly 400 packets of white powder to organizations in Texas. The FBI is offering a r...

Jeremy Mayer, the titan of typewriter-part sculptures, has sacrificed some more old beasts for a good cause, producing this wonderful 9"x12"x15" skull. Skull I (Thanks, Jeremy)...

Gweek podcast guest Kevin Mack and Snow Mack have an art opening this Saturday at the Barbara Mendes Gallery in Los Angeles. I love their work. Snow was in the 25th Anniversary show of La Luz de Jesus...

If all goes according to plan, tomorrow, Saturday, May 19th, SpaceX will become the first commercial space flight company in history to head for the International Space Station. You can watch online, ...

The infamous art collective / brand, LA-GO has a show at Known Gallery in LA opening on May 26. It's called Legolize it, and features marijuana plants made from plastic hobby construction bricks....

"Someone is causing a lot of trouble." Josh Stearns, a reporter who has covered the Occupy movement extensively, asks, "Why is this children's book teaching my kid about SWAT vehicles and Riot Control...

Winston Hide, is an associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was also -- until recently -- the associate editor of the prestigious (an...

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest has issued a preliminary injunction against the clause in the National Defense Authorization Act that gave the administration the power to arrest people and hold ...

What was is like to be gay during the 1960s on Madison Avenue? David Leddick (who was worldwide creative director for Revlon at Grey Advertising and international creative director for L'Oreal at McCa...

Rob Flickenger made a handheld Tesla coil gun. It's amazing and amazingly dangerous. Don't do this. Live vicariously through Flickenger instead. "The Tesla Gun" (d/dt)...

Here is Terry Gilliam in 1970 explaining how he made the classic "fig leaf" stop-motion animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus, in a spare bedroom at his apartment. (via Dangerous Minds)...

Andrew Leonard of Salon interviewed Charles Ferguson (director of Inside Job, the documentary about the unpunished criminals who caused the current financial collapse) about his new book, Predator Nat...

Spider Robinson writes: I just received word that Jay Kay Klein, THE photographer of science fiction and fantasy, passed away on Sunday morning, May 13, in a Catholic hospice (a "Francis House") in Sy...

A dead bird found in a southeastern Turkey village caused a stir when it was found to have a metal ring labeled "Israel" around its leg. Apparently, some were suspicious that the European Bee-eater ma...

Jewelrydesignsformen.com's Nine Planets ring is made of gold and meteoric iron, set with gemstones representing all the planets of the solar system, including Pluto*. And it's a fidget ring, which is ...

Zack sez, "If you've ever seen the sociopathically-detailed artwork of James Stokoe, you'll want to support his new graphic novel written by Mark Andrew Smith, SULLIVAN'S SLUGGERS, which pits a baseba...

A campaign on Unglue.it is seeking to raise $7,500 to pay for a Creative Commons Attribution-only licensed edition of Oral Literature in Africa, an out-of-print classic on the subject that is widely s...

Rob Flickenger made a handheld Tesla coil gun. It's amazing and amazingly dangerous. Don't do this. Live vicariously through Flickenger instead. "The Tesla Gun" (d/dt)...

"It is not known why the arrested man was in possession of the foetuses." [BBC]...

A dead bird found in a southeastern Turkey village caused a stir when it was found to have a metal ring labeled "Israel" around its leg. Apparently, some were suspicious that the European Bee-eater ma...

Leah sez, Bespoke troublemakers, the Space Hijackers, have announced that they are the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games. To this end, they've launched a site where you can register...

People who cannot stand The Detested Herb are beneficiaries of a genetic mutation. [MSNBC via The Awl]...

Sam Biddle rounds up the most appalling, terribly-made cellphones money can buy. Pictured right is the Pantech Jest (as in "surely you"). Why are these awful phones for salesome for very much money!wh...

Jed Henry paints Nintendo heroes in Ukiyo-e style. Here's Link about to find out that arrows are futile against enenra. [via Gamovr]...

Ultra high-end $22,000 routers were bought in huge quantities by the government in West Virginia, many destined for rural offices with minimal IT footprints. [Ars Technica]...

At the New York Times, Quentin Hardy writes that HP CEO Meg Whitman is to cut at least 30,000 jobs Her goal, they said Thursday, is to spend the money she saves on increasing the efficiency of the com...

Our thanks go to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email. Three new Limited Edition Mondaine Giant Watches of Switzerland were introduced at Watchismo...

A dead bird found in a southeastern Turkey village caused a stir when it was noticed that the bird was wearing a metal ring labeled "Israel" around its leg. Apparently, some were suspicious that the E...

Disclosures made by the UK Department of Work and Pensions in response Freedom of Information requests show that over 1,000 civil servants illegally snooped on private citizens' data over a 13-month p...

Alexandra Lange sends us her "Living in Lego City," from Print Magazine: "An essay that asks and answers the question: If you built all the Lego City sets, what kind of city would you get? The city yo...

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My co-hosts for ep...

"Sexy girl in coffee beans," by Marcel Jancovic, via Shutterstock. A large prospective study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that "coffee consumption was inversely associ...

Make is knocking out some fabulous "3D Printer Trading Cards (From the Future!)" -- lovely contractual design fictions from a world gone made for additive manufacturing. I had a dream that I found a b...

Marvin Ammori's recently-bestowed freedom bling. Note the Nyan Cat. Constitutional law expert Marvin Ammori, one of the First Amendment scholars along with Larry Tribe who explained how SOPA would vio...

A new, two-week long daily podcast called Journey to Planet JoCo consists of a series of dialogues between John Scalzi and Jonathan Coulton -- like my two favorite flavors of ice-cream in one deliciou...

When Canada's Lemon Bucket Orkestra -- a swinging klezmer act -- got stuck on Air Canada flight 876 at the start of their Balkan Station Romanian Tour 2012, they treated the fliers to a fabulous impro...

Writing on Warren Ellis's site, Justin Pickard presents "Action and Decision-Making for the Professional Weirdo," part of a longer, inspiring "Gonzo Futurist manifesto (PDF)" that opens with my most-f...

Wired's David Kravets reports from the Copyright Office's triennial hearings on exceptions to the DMCA's rules against breaking DRM. Every three years, public interest groups supplicate themselves bef...

The next installment of San Francisco's SF in SF science fiction reading series is this Saturday, May 19: Ysabeau Wilce, Marie Brennan & Erin Hoffman. Doors open at 6, event kicks off at 7. Free,...

Hedge funds in America have backed several dental practices, and Medicaid and parents allege that this has led to a rash of "dental abuse" of poor children, who are seen by dentists at school, without...

Rachel Hobson says: "Who needs to watch a web cam of baby pandas when you can watch Venus live? Welcome to the Public Observatory channel, where you can see live video of the Sun, moon, or the planets...

REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach German riot police carry a demonstrator fully covered in paint as police clears the camp of occupy protestors in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, May 16, ...

My pal Anthony Citrano points to this outrageous story, and says: "The State Department says their staff should blog about 'individual stories', but this bullshit about your new nipple is just too muc...

Ethan sez, Me and my colleague, Alexandra Keller, gave up our day jobs as web geeks to write this game, and almost two years later we finally have it: Sky Alchemist - a puzzle game about transforming ...

A styrofoam-and-acrylic model of Osama bin Laden's compound that was used to plan the May 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader has been declassified by the Pentagon. CNN reports that the model of...

Admittedly, I am biased, but New York state supreme court judge Gustin L. Reichbach speaks for me when he writes in a New York Times op-ed today that medical marijuana "is not a law-and-order issue; i...

I had no idea that neurons came in such a beautiful diversity of shapes. Each of these neurons has a different function, too: A. Purkinje cell B. Granule cell C. Motor neuron D. Tripolar neuron E. Pyr...

One of the greats is gone. Donna Summer died of cancer this morning in Florida, according to reports. The Queen of Disco was 63. About "I Feel Love," the synth-driven club anthem she recorded with Gio...

Answersquestions sez, "These shirts designed by an Architecture professor friend of mine at Carnegie Mellon depend on perspective and distance in order to be seen. Check out that SKULL!" Most tees are...

Last year, at the Twin Cities branch of the BoingBoing Meetup Day event, musician Jeremy Messersmith brought the lyrics to a song he was working on—a song intended to be as terrible a song as he...

Tom Quinn sez, "A gecko struggles with the low van der Waals forces encountered when climbing a non-stick pan." Here's a Google Translate of the French description on the video: We conducted an experi...

Julian Cash's The People of Burning Man is a beautifully produced photo-portrait book shot over many consecutive years at Burning Man, the giant, weird, delightful art and culture festival that takes ...

Mariah Bear created an amusing infographic explaining the book proposal process. [via Mediabistro. Thanks, John Biggs]...

James Morrow writes, "As part of the 2012 Nebula Awards Weekend, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America will hold a mass autographing session at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, 2799 Jeffer...

[Video Link] Steve Haddock, a research scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (as well as a MAKE contributor, and co-author of a great book called Practical Computing for Biologists...

The Met, London's police force, is buying "mobile device data extraction" devices that can suck all the data out of your phone "in minutes" -- that's where you've been, who you know, what you've said ...

When we talk about energy, we often talk about it in very disconnected ways. By that, I mean we talk about new renewable generation projects, we talk about cleaning up dirty old power plants, and we t...

Humans' have exceptionally rounded rear ends compared to our primate relatives. Turns out, that beefed-up gluteus maximus helps stabilize our upper body when we run, keeping us from falling forward. R...

Good luck getting this song out of your head. Via Deep Sea News Video Link...

Every now and then, I get a glorious reminder of just how much the Internet has enriched my life. Fifteen years ago, if I had arrived at a conference center—as I did yesterday for my stint in th...

Remember Canada's Bill C-30, the sweeping surveillance bill proposed by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who declared that if you opposed unlimited, unaccountable, secret warrantless snooping on netw...

Chuck Brown performing at the 20th St. Lucia Jazz Festival, May 8, 2011. REUTERS/Andrea De Silva. The musician widely credited with founding the "go-go" music genre died today. Chuck Brown was 75. Lik...

Joanna from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes: If you plan on being in or around San Francisco May 30, come join EFF for a Geek Reading with Barbara Simons. An expert on electronic voting, Sim...

A paywalled paper in the Royal Society's journal Interface argues that the world's underground rail systems are all converging on an "ideal" form. The paper, "A long-time limit for world subway networ...

Watchismo's latest watch is the Mute, a solid-cast red or grey timepiece whose featureless face lights up based on touch or movement. I love all the usability thinking that went into this -- feels lik...

Michael Simmons of Fretboard Journal says: Today is the 59th anniversary of Django Reinhardt's death. To honor him, I posted images of a guitar that I had Robert Armstrong paint for me years ago. The ...

Your moment of Commie Zen for the day: a big-band lounge-style cover of "L'Internationale," the hymn of the Communist Second International. Assuming that's not to your taste, how about a trance remix ...

I happened upon this mini-library in my neighborhood and am so impressed with the movement that Little Free Library has started that I am getting one together for our street. The concept is simple: pu...

Iraq Veterans Against the War is bringing veterans to the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20 to ceremonially return the medals they were awarded for serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. The group's statemen...

Yesterday's Canadian Parliamentary session included a moment of dramatic idiocy, when the Tory Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dean Del Mastro climbed to his hind limbs to declare that wanting t...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode we t...

NASA's Image of the Day is always awesome, but I particularly love this image from behind-the-scenes of the Pretty Space Photography Industrial Complex. The Soyuz rocket is seen in the monitor of a vi...

For only 6 British Pounds, you can cure what ails you with Placebo maximum strength sugar pills. I'm a little sad that Etsy user spellingmistakes got to this idea before I could start marketing Placeb...

Earlier today, David told you about a news story that's everywhere right now: The fact that the Kodak company ran a small nuclear facility at its research lab in Rochester, New York. The facility clos...

Dog Vacay is like Airbnb for canines. This is brilliant because on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)...

In this video, a woman known as Cathy, who is unable to speak or move any of her limbs or torso, controls a robot arm with her mind to take a sip of coffee. This fantastic breakthrough is reported in ...

This week on the always excellent Command Line podcast, Thomas Gideon -- senior staff technologist for the New America Foundation -- describes his journey from programmer to technology wonk (MP3), exp...

Matt sez, "Hey, it's Matt at the Disinformation Company, and I thought that you'd enjoy the lengthy interview I did with Warren Ellis for the DisinfoCast. We talk about aliens, space travel, the singu...

Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the INNER HIVE right now! "My only argument with Ruben B. here is his apologetic tone for asking you to pay money for early a...

For three decades, camera company Kodak had a secret deep inside an underground lab in its Rochester, New York research facility: weapons-grade uranium and a californium neutron flux multiplier. (No, ...

Our own Ed Piskor's Wizzywig -- a graphic novel that is a fictionalized account of a Kevin Mitnick-type hacker and his run-ins with the law -- will shortly be available as a beautiful hardcover from t...

Photojournalist Alexander Arbuckle, arrested while covering Occupy Wall Street protests, was acquitted Tuesday after a short trial. Moreover, footage shown in court suggests that police lied about wha...

Jason and I were just revisiting the bizarrely fascinating story of Dan Rather getting assaulted in 1986 by an attacker who kept asking the newscaster "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" as he beat him....

Yesterday, Byron Sonne was acquitted of all charges against him. Sonne is the Toronto-area security researcher who pointedly demonstrated the inadequacy and incoherence of the heavy-handed, $1.2B secu...

A game development outfit took $75m from the state of Rhode Island to move there and hire 450 locals. Two years later, there's only half the jobs, questions over the company's solvency, and no game to...

Sony's tiny but powerful pocket game console has 3G, but no phone app. Skype to the rescue. [Ars]...

There are 11 Ways You're Annoying On Twitter, reports Buzzfeed's Katie Heaney. And not a single one more!...

Fract is a bizarre-looking game described as "Myst meets Rez meets Tron" in a world "inspired by synthesizers." Sold. Jim Rossignol interviews the creators. [Rock Paper Shotgun]...

Having just finished a year of math and science heavy coursework, I am confident in stating that the Cambrdige Quad Wirebound Notebook is one of the best tools I've used all year. Notebooks may seem l...

Photo: Jasmina in a former prison. "Despite the scale of the facility, it was densely crowded once." Shot by Bruce Sterling. This morning, The Hague tribunal commenced the trial of Ratko Mladic, ex co...

I'm amused and charmed by this theoretical public art project proposed by Minneapolis' Carmichael Lynch Creative. Urban Plant Tags explain the care, placement, and proper feeding of inanimate objects ...

The Jester, a vigilante hacker opposed to Anonymous and Wikileaks, was apparently exposed over the last few days. His blog, twitter account and other tracks were soon gone. Many, however, think he's j...

From the Boing Boing Flickr pool, Maia Weinstock's chart of gender in Lego minifig heads. There's an accompanying blog post, where Weinstock explains: So many of LEGOs sets today are made in conjuncti...

To commemorate the May 18, 1969 launch of Apollo 10, our friends at the Smithsonian are celebrating the launch by sharing this photo of a meal package from the Apollo 10 mission: The Apollo 10 spacecr...

I'm going to be in New York at the end of May, talking about my new book Before the Lights Go Out. There's two great events you should join me for. On May 29th at 6:00 pm, I'll be talking about the el...

In professor T. Mills Kelly's class, students act out clever public hoaxes. But while Wikipedians are easily fooled, Redditors exposed the latest jape—Do you think my 'Uncle' Joe was just weird ...

The United States Geological Survey is having a great big spring sale, with lots of maps, charts, and publications—some of them mid-century vintage—discounted to $1. Yes, $1. At that price...

John Scalzi attempts to explain privilege using a video-game metaphor in "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is." It's a good metaphor in that is illuminates more than it obscure...

Stereotypes abound of the political cartoonists found in so-called alternative papers: the weeklies full of escort ads in the back and snarky commentary in the front. Matt Bors, on the surface, seems ...

Uh-oh. A tweet from Toronto notes that weirdly, there are 4 cop cars outside #hacklabto as they are having a party for #freebyron. HackLabTo is the Kensington Market hackerspace that Byron Sonne (who ...

I really liked Clay Shirky's essay on the relationship between physical space and creativity. It's one of those classic, Shirkian riffs that includes a bunch of seemingly glib and merely clever ideas ...

On Sociological Images, David Pickett is tracing the history of gendering in Lego toys, from the early efforts to produce girl-sets and boy-sets before 1988, to the full-blown gendering watershed atte...

Artist Carrin Welch's first foray into sculpture is a marvellous set of "Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse," made from wood. They're nearly finished, and eminently ridable. My interpretation of th...

Tor.com has just posted an excerpt from Ian Tregillis's The Coldest War, a sequel to his smashing debut Nazi X-men vs English warlocks alternate history, Bitter Seeds. I've got a review queued up for ...

The out-of-this-world Space Shuttle Cafe can be yours for $150,000. It sure would make a far-out food truck. (Sweet old car not included.) From the eBay listing: This kitchen is built inside the only ...

Tomek sends us his claustrophobic short film "The View From the Closet" ("A disturbed, paranoid individual enters his apartment to find himself being watched by something hiding in the closet"), which...

REUTERS/Keith Bedford Tattoo artist Dave Hurban displays an iPod Nano which he has attached to his wrists through magnetic piercings in his wrist in New York, May 14, 2012....

An excellent long-read about Flickr and Yahoo by Mat Honan at Gizmodo today. Anyone who has loved and been let down by the once-great photo-sharing site now caught in the purple zombie's death spiral ...

Gazillionaire financier Mitt Romney is the latest "CEO President" offered up by the GOP, on a platform of "job creation." When Romney oversaw Bain capital, he supervised the takeover of American Pad a...

From Boing Boing reader MewDeep's stupendous collection of scanned ads from the 1960s and 1970s, "Doc Sendof's Turn On Kit, 1969: "Eleven far-out symbols!" with which one could upgrade one's "Bug, boa...

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors will soon stop advertising on Facebook "after the auto maker's executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers' car purchases." ...

Dancho Danchev reports an incident in which a friend pinged him at an odd hour on Skype "with a message pointing to what appeared to be a photo site with the message 'hahahahaha foto' and a link to hx...

A nice t-shirt mod from the folks at Hurley -- the rip-skull. I don't expect it would survive a lot of washings, though. DIY SKULL T-SHIRT (via Crazy Abalone)...

Here's a nice twist on the traditional vinyl-LP-as-a-clock craft: a cut-out AT-AT mod. From Etsy seller NotByLaser (which implies that this was not cut by a laser!). Star Wars AT-AT: Hand Crafted Viny...

[Video Link] SoyuzMultfilm's "Adventures of Winnie the Pooh," 1972, presents the iconic tale of Pooh and pals with a tone very different from more familiar adaptations. For starters, Pooh is an annoyi...

Just after a horrific week of news about mounting body counts in Mexico from the drug war, Danger Room points to news that at least one narco arsenal was found to include Claymore Mines. The mines can...

In Fort Worth, Texas, Elisa Castillo—a 56-year-old grandmother with no prior drug offenses— has been sentenced to life without parole. She maintains her innocence, and never "touched the d...

The entire current issue of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review is given over to the tragic wrongful execution of Carlos DeLuna, an almost certainly innocent man who was murdered by the state of Texa...

Lloyd Kahn is the editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications. His latest book is Tiny Homes: Scaling Back in the 21st Century. Avi Solomon: What do you see in your childhood that pointed you onto the pat...

A rather implausible report in Chinasmack (translated from the Chinese journal 163) says that a zookeeper saved a rare, born-in-captivity baby Francois Leaf Monkey from surgery by licking its anus unt...

On Engravers Cafe, Harpuahound shows off this kick-ass custom-engraved stfnal ring, which sports a TARDIS, a Starfleet insignia, and a Space Shuttle. Sci-Fi Ring (via The Mary Sue)...

The May 27, 1922 issue of The Evening Independent carried a story about moonshiners wearing "cow shoes" to trick revenuers -- rather than leaving suspicious footprints leading up to their secret still...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Maira Sutton has a long, engrossing account of the popular protest at the Dallas session of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive treaty negotiation that incl...

Marc Jacobs's SoHo boutique was graffitied by Kidult, who painted ART in giant pink letters across the storefront. Jacobs had the graffiti photographed, removed, and printed on a t-shirt, which he off...

Brian Shimkovitz was on a Fulbright scholarship in Ghana when he got hooked on the cassette culture of the region. Street vendors hawked West African recordings in myriad genres, from highlife to Afri...

Twitter's #freebyron hashtag is alive with the news that Byron Sonne, the Toronto-area security expert who was incarcerated and treated as a terrorist for pointing out and making fun of the security f...

Jeff Bezos ripped off the Kindle from the April 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics. (via Paleofuture)...

Filmmaker Dan Cohen is the guy behind "An Article of Hope," a feature film project seven years in the making. The documentary is done, but Dan's got a Kickstarter to raise funds to get it on televisio...

Ghassab Al-Bedoul, 42, offers up his cave in Petra, Jordan, for visitors on CouchSurfing.com. It looks like a fantastic experience. In the four years he's been registered on the site, Al-Bedoul says h...

The Avengers was both widely pirated ahead of release and the most successful opening in box-office history. As Forbes's Paul Tassi notes, this suggests that piracy and commercial success are not mutu...

For years, researchers have worked on fascinating methods to scavenge power from kinetic energy -- humming air conditioning ducts, roads that vibrate as cars pass over, etc. Now, engineers at Lawrence...

[Video Link] Above, "Disassembled," a wonderful, not-authorized-by-Marvel animated take on Avengers characters and other figures of the Marvel universe by Junaid Chundrigar. "I decided to make this sh...

This year is the 250th anniversary of the sandwich. According to the British Sandwich Association, John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, was playing cards when he requested meat between pieces of...

[Video Link] From Joe Sabia and the CDZA project, a new musical video experiment (they're doing one new video every other Tuesday): "Opus No. 3 - ZUCKERBERG: The Musical," described as "A trip down me...

  Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!...

Filmmaker (and comics creator and novelist and games developer) Jim Munroe is raising money to take his outstanding science fiction feature Ghosts With Shit Jobs on tour. Here's Jim's summary: "In the...

Just how hard is it to use quotes? How hard is it to provide attribution to sources? It is clearly very hard indeed! A writer at The Next Web copied a post from a relatively unknown blogger and got ca...

r0r0 sez, "Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction is a pneumatic delivery system for ping pong balls as part of an art environment that's actually on display in Lille, France." In Spring/Summer 2012 both...

The latest from Joey Roth, designer of minimalist teapots and speakers, is more down to earth: a compass pendant. Made with Shwood in Portland, the frame is laser-cut from maple and rosewood; the comp...

We can argue for days over which field of science is the booziest (I used to say archaeology, but have since switched my vote to ocean science). But we can all agree on the adorableness of this Thread...

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, On March 15, Boing Boing kindly allowed me to use this august forum to serve notice on 7 government officials and 10 of the CEOs of the $1-billion/year industry of st...

I'm not sure how, but I'd never seen any clips of young!Richard Feynman speaking until physicist Walid Younes posted this video to Google+. The talk itself is great and covers some important stuf...

What will the future of artificial intelligence actually look like? We're getting some clues already from projects like Hiroshi Ishiguro's Geminoid series with its incredibly realistic bodies, writes ...

The Leakey family is like the Kennedys, but for paleoanthropology instead of politics. Think about any hominin fossil or artifact you can name. Chances are, there was a Leakey involved in its discover...

Later this month, NASA will start talking publicly about a plan to put humans on an asteroid and bring them back to Earth again. The Telegraph has a preview....

Tom Watson and Martin Hickman's Dial M for Murdoch is a timely, informative, infuriating insider account of the News International phone-hacking scandal that has occupied the news-cycle, off and on, f...

A Finnish court has ruled that merely operating an open WiFi access point does not make you liable for copyright infringements committed on your network. From the defense attorney's press release: Thi...

Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole of Nigeria, a security supervisor at Newark airport, lived a double life for 20 years using the identity of the victim in an unsolved murder. Since 1992, the undocumented Afric...

Diablo III, one of the longest-awaited titles in gaming history, is to be released within minutes. The second game—released fully 12 years ago—sucked countless hundreds of my hours with it...

In this video, blogger Duane Lester confronts the editor of a newspaper which plagiarized something he wrote. The best part is when the editor tries to physically intimidate him, a moment so inexplica...

Annelise sez, "This is an episode of MakerBot TV which is all about making DIY Robots with MakerBots!" The MakerBot design team is building a Robot Petting Zoo to bring to this year's Maker Faire. In ...

The nerds finally beat the jocks. The historic Gold's Gym location in Venice Beach, "mecca of bodybuilding" where former governator and movie star Arnold Schwarzenneger once trained, will soon be occu...

The nerds finally beat the jocks. The historic Gold's Gym location in Venice Beach, "mecca of bodybuilding" where former governator and movie star Arnold Schwarzenneger once trained, will soon be occu...

This little feller is a "German Spermatorrhoea Ring," ca 1894. Spermatorrhoea ("involuntary loss of semen") was best fought with this toothy beast, which also doubled as a cure for Onanism ("voluntary...

[Video Link] From Neatorama: "FlippyCat assembled 60 walls, each consisting of 990 dominoes, and an additional field of 600 dominoes. The project took 65 hours over 8 days and some painful failures al...

Reuters: Man tries out a Canon EOS-1D X at a Tokyo showroom. Camera maker Canon is evolving toward "fully automating" production, to reduce costs. Japan, where the Canon plants in question are located...

I'm digging the look of this Occupy Wall Street khaki street jacket by EGOLOGICS on Etsy. (thanks, foslforever)...

My latest Guardian column is "The problem with nerd politics," and it discusses the twin evils of "nerd determinism" and "nerd fatalism" -- both convenient excuses for people who care about technology...

Boing Boing reader Parker Higgins shares this photograph, and explains: I took this picture of a nyan cat sticker on the map of the San Francisco bay area public transit system, BART. The cats right w...

A defense contractor called Pegasus Global Holdings is building a replica of Rock Hill, SC in the middle of the New Mexico desert, which will be used to prototype self-driving cars, green buildings an...

Shutterstock Two of my favorite people talk about one of my favorite topics, all on the same radio program. Our very own Maggie Koerth-Baker was interviewed by my friend (and former NPR colleague) Ale...

REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom Participants in a rocket competition cheer after their rocket was successfully launched during the rocket festival known as "Bun Bangfai" in Yasothon, northeast of Bangkok, M...

"Grand Old Party is data visualization project. It is also a set of butt plugs." (Thanks, Ben Goldacre. I think.)...

At Popperfont, the great David Ng discusses the biological and/or evolutionary steps necessary to produce a theoretical real-life unicorn. I find it delightfully ironic that his first possible route i...

Plinian eruptions are named after Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder, who wrote about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and died during said eruption, respectively. This is one of several dif...

A work of fiction doesn't have to be scientifically accurate. It just has to make sense. All it has to do is maintain an internal logic and consistency strong enough that you, the reader, aren't inadv...

A Russian startup called "Pirate Pay" has received seed funding from Microsoft. The company's technology is designed to attack BitTorrent swarms and trick clients into disconnecting. They've already b...

Gorgeous, choppy beat music ambience from Alphabets Heaven. The track is "Deartentonine" from their new EP "Boosh," available on King Deluxe. The video is cut from David Attenborough's documentary The...

My next YA novel is Pirate Cinema, which hits stands on Oct 2. The book has been complete for a long time, and now is the part in its lifecycle where it is in ballistic flight, having been launched fr...

According to Newsweek, US intelligence officials report that al Qaeda's explosives expert Ibrahim al-Asiri and medical doctors have been designing bombs to be surgically implanted into the bodies of s...

Tom Wilson, the actor who played the bully Biff in the Back to the Future moves, has produced a small card that provides answers to all the questions he is commonly asked by fans of the movies. I wond...

Yesterday was Mother's Day in the US. I spent the day at home in Los Angeles, still recuperating from chemo, gearing up for the next phase of my cancer treatment. After I called my mom on the East Coa...

Two dolphins at a Switzerland zoo died after they reportedly ingested a synthetic opiate during a weekend rave at the park. But the zoo owners claim they were killed by animal activists trying to make...

The Indian webcomic "Crocodile in Water Tiger On Land" has some trenchant commentary on India's Information Technologies Act 2011, a pro-censorship, pro-surveillance Internet regulation. Information T...

Instructables contributor Inition used a 3D printer to bring his pal Andy's MRI brain scan data into a much more tangible form: a chocolate taste treat. Above is Andy eating his own brain. "Edible Cho...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode we t...

Phil Johnson writes in Forbes about the unlikely (and quite wonderful) success of the Harvard Book Store, an absolutely terrific independent bookstore that was bought by Jeff Mayersohn, a high-tech en...

The New York Times has a fascinating (and, FYI, kind of disturbing) story about young kids who exhibit psychological symptoms similar to what you see in adult psychopaths. It's a complex subject becau...

I wandered into a temporary showroom for Trainspotters in London this weekend; they're a retailer specializing in salvaged industrial lighting, with a lot of crazy, chunk ex-Soviet numbers. Looks like...

[Video Link] From Jamie & Adam Tested: "Pixar's Oren Jacob and Galyn Susman recount how the files for Toy Story 2 were almost lost due to an accidental Linux command and bad backup. It's probably...

I'm going to be on the radio a couple of times today, talking about my book, Before the Lights Go Out, and the future of energy and climate. At 1:00 Eastern/Noon Central, you can listen to an hour-lon...

[Video Link] A two-humped camel would have kicked that bin's ass. (Via Cynical-C)...

Top: Detail from "Les Porteurs de Mauvaises Nouvelles," by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ. Bottom: Detail from "Conan the Destroyer," by Frank Frazetta. I'm not opposed to swipes. I like them...

[Video Link] Here's a quadcopter video tour of a treehouse somewhere in BC, Canada. (Via Llyod Kahn's blog)...

US Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk was in Dallas to kick off a corporate power-event to drum up support for the foundering, secretive Transpacific Partnership, a secret treaty that builds on the work of ACT...

When I wrote about Game of Thrones last week, I talked about how I someone generally averse to swords-and-dragons culture found myself fascinated with the way this particular fantasy universe and it...

Chris sez, "I'm helping to arrange a conference on 3D printing/additive manufacturing in South Africa. We have some world-renowned professors on the subject coming and its being held in a game reserve...

As long as secrecy and anonymity reign, public sector bureaucracies will be the hiding places for the incompetent, lazy and corrupt. Failures will be rewarded and successes stifled. Its easier to lie...

When we think of journalists' anonymous sources, we think of the proverbial whistleblower. Company insiders, or civil servants, ready to violate their nondisclosure agreements to expose some wrongdoi...

In this segment from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, Heather Brooke highlights the problems of anonymous sources in the UK media, where police spokespersons frequently mislead the public about suspects an...

ADVERTISEMENT For Max Payne, the tragedies that took his loved ones years ago are wounds that refuse to heal. No longer a cop, close to washed up and addicted to pain killers, Max takes a job in So Pa...

Christiane Vejl writes about attending a Dell corporate event in Denmark which was hosted by Mads Christensen, a "lifestyle speaker" who sounds like Copenhagen's answer to Rush Limbaugh: a troll known...

UPDATE: Dell has issued an apology. Christiane Vejl writes about attending a Dell corporate event in Denmark which was hosted by Mads Christensen, a "lifestyle speaker" who sounds like Copenhagen's an...

[Video Link] Genius animator Joaquin Baldwin, whose 3D-printed projects I've featured here before, says: For the fans of the Portal games, this is the latest 3d-printed weirdness I made, a puzzle box....

Forming is Jesse Moynihan's ultra-weird graphic novel about the creation of the universe, filled with cursing, inexplicable violence, grotesque sexual acts, and primitive and strange illustrations. Se...

The German Pirate Party has taken seats in the fourth consecutive regional election, this time in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it received 7.5% of the vote, which will likely translate to 18 seats. T...

One more M-Day Vintage Ad: a Philip Morris piece from a 1956 Saturday Evening Post celebrating its new packaging by inviting an association between cuddling a newborn and smoking. There's a good case ...

This little feller is a "German Spermatorrhoea Ring," ca 1894. Spermatorrhoea ("involuntary loss of semen") was best fought with this toothy beast, which also doubled as a cure for Onanism ("voluntary...

The incomparably rhythmic bass player Donald "Duck" Dunn, who was the soul of Booker T's rhythm section and the heart of the Blues Brothers' band, is dead. He died on tour with Steve "The Colonel" Cro...

A defense contractor called Pegasus Global Holdings is building a replica of Rock Hill, SC in the middle of the New Mexico desert, which will be used to prototype self-driving cars, green buildings an...

Cards Against Humanity is the perennially sold out, CC-licensed card-game that turns madlibs into an anti-social exercise. They're sold out, but you can put your name down for future runs and expansio...

Another Vintage Ads gem for Mother's Day: this bit of corporate futurism from the energy sector. Mother's Day...

For $110, Etsy seller JamesBit will custom-paint a Zelda-themed faux fire to size for display in your decorative fireplace. Zelda Fireplace Art (via Wil Wheaton)...

Oh that scamp. Poor Mom. Check out that beatific expression. Mother's Day...

Oh that scamp. Poor Mom. Check out that beatific expression. Mother's Day...

A nice piece today from Bob Basset, the genius Ukrainian steampunk fetish mask-makers: "Rider." "Rider" Art leather mask...

Here's science fiction grand master Jack Williamson ruminating on what the future once meant, when he started working in the field, including a reading of an early essay on the future he wrote in the ...

Photo contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by MightyWomble....

Just look at it. Contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Laser Bread, who explains:. My kids were grumpy at breakfast this morning, so I had this idea to make a quick banana peel truck...

Here's Kitt and his delightful progeny cleverly disguised as a tauntaun and Han Solo on the frozen ice-world of Hoth: "His tauntaun even had removable guts to warm your hands with." Happy House Warmin...

Nancy Schaar at the Times Reporter: A 62-year-old Carrollton area man was found unconscious and unresponsive Thursday morning during an intense search overnight by Carroll County sheriff deputies, an ...

Laura sez, "Podcast nominations are open until June 1, 2012 for the Seventh Annual Parsec Awards which recognize excellence in speculative fiction podcasting. The awards were founded in 2005 by New Yo...

Interactive fiction is a thriving genre, but its commercial heyday is long gone. Here's Leigh Alexander on how Kickstarter could usher in text adventures' long-overdue renaissance: "There's more than ...

Harry Clarke's 1919 illustrations for Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" are absolutely wonderful, some of the best Poe interpretations this diehard Poefan has seen. 50Watts has them at super-hi...

Mike Schropp's "BioComputer" is a PC casemod that actually grows wheatgrass, using waste-heat from the computer to provide a hospitable hothouse environment. He's posted detailed build-logs from the p...

Here's some of Russell Brand's wonderful, thoughtful, funny, and ascerbic testimony to the UK Parliament on the subject of combatting addiction and setting sensible drug policy. Brand is a former heri...

The JSTK Blog has an eye-catching formula for making jello vodka shots in a waffle-iron, resulting in some awfully weird-looking booze-delivery biscuits. Anyway, we prepared two versions of our jelly ...

Cymon (AKA Joe) won the Tinkercad Chess Set Design contest with his design for Action #Chess, whose pieces can be assembled into a Chess Giant. He's documenting the 3D output of his darling on his Mak...

The Seattle Public Library system's annual Summer Reading Program is called Century 22: Read the Future, and is tied in with the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair. Young people are encourag...

A student going a little too heavy on a brand of spray-on stench popular with teens set off the fire alarm at a Connecticut high school: It was some kid in the locker room using body spray and it crea...

William Saturno, a Boston University archeologist, excavates a mural in a house in Xultun. Photo: Tyrone Turner 2012 National Geographic An archaeological expedition in the northeastern lowlands of G...

Amara, the free/open subtitling/dubbing project that used to be called Universal Subtitles, has just landed $1,000,000 in funding from the Knight Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. Amara is run by...

Comedian and former attorney Dean Obeidallah, co-director of the previously-Boinged documentary project, "The Muslims Are Coming!," is not a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie, "The Dictator." Regar...

Last week, scientists used ice caves in Austria as a stand-in for Martian caves, testing spacesuits and rovers in the freezing chambers. This week: We go to the desert near Baker, California, where NA...

A powerful piece at The Rumpusby Steve Almond about reports that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was a cruel homophobic bully in high school. "Its just bullshit, total fucking sociopathi...

Adam Serwer writes at Mother Jones about KSM's recent facial hair makeover. He grew a beard, but how did he get his hands on henna with which to dye it a ginger-red? Visiting friends? Home-brewed stai...

A new study, published in the journal Nature, provides evidence that the way people communicate with each other doesn't change very much between offline and different kinds of online situations, inclu...

DeviantArt's ~AgarthanGuide created this Maurice Sendak/Avengers mashup: "Two things on my mind today: RIP Maurice Sendak. Yay Avengers. Okay- I put together some wallpapers using the original- I trie...

This is Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our solar system's main asteroid belt. Specifically, this is a view of Vesta's south pole, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft last September. As it turns out...

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My co-hosts for ep...

On The Alyona Show, Jacob Appelbaum talks about the Tor Project and internet anonymity....

Word on the Apple blogs today: in development for iOS 6, a maps application developed entirely in-house, to replace the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007. "The application design is said t...

You've seen Steve Jobs as FDR. From the same era comes "Blue Busters," a Ghostbusters-spoofing rile-up-the-sales-folks-against-IBM 1984 internal conference video. Look for cameos from Steves Jobs and ...

How do engineers know that the pillars supporting a bridge can withstand the force of thousands of cars driving over them for decades? How do we know what would happen to that bridge during an earthqu...

Tom Scott's Welcome to Life is a clever and chilling short film about the EULA you will be asked to click through when you die. It paints a picture of an afterlife run on the kinds of shitty, non-nego...

Gwinna at anthropologist.livejournal.com writes: "Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and r...

At Grantland, a great piece by Andy Greenwald on comics, science fiction, "otherness," and Mad Men Season 5: "The Silver Surfer didnt come alone, and neither did Michael Ginsberg. Both served as harbi...

Jon Cotner from the Hairpin tells Boing Boing, "To celebrate Mother's Day, my fiance Claire Hamilton and I talked with 20 moms during an overcast, leafy walk through Brooklyn. We asked them to describ...

My Institute for the Future colleague Sheila Cabangangan, whose auto license plate is a variation on "TARDIS," recently acquired this fine Dalek handcrafted from screws, bolts, and other old metal bit...

Qwantz sends us "A shirt (done in consultation with medical professionals) that not only lists your nutritional information (including how many calories and Vitamin C you contain) but also your elemen...

Vibrating Grizzly Feeders modeled by attractive women...

Mmmm protagonist death. "Game of Thrones Cake Pops" (Not Your Momma's Cookie, thanks Greg Long!)...

Image: Chhiring Sherpa provides the lighting for a photograph of Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck. Photo by Grayson Schaffer, used with permission of Outside. Hint: It involves a lot of sherpas. Grayson S...

Don Preston's Moog magic was, er, instrumental in creating the iconically odd sound of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention from the groups formation all the way to 1974. Indeed, Bob Moog famously...

Dale Dougherty says: I'm excited about MAKE's Hardware Innovation Workshop, May 15-16, at PARC in Palo Alto. The workshop is an opportunity to explore what's shaping the newly emerging businesses that...

To create his unsettling, phantasmagoric paintings, Belgian artist Stephan Balleux allows inspiration from ghostly black and white photography and 3D computer graphics to seep from his canvases but in...

Michael Geist sez, "Earlier this year, I appeared at the European Parliament's INTA Committee Workshop on ACTA. While I previously posted my opening remarks and a video of comments, I was unable to po...

A good-tempered rebuke from The Pirate Bay to the Anons who staged a raid on Virgin Media in protest of the ISP's participation in blocking The Pirate Bay for its customers: Seems like some random Ano...

This playlist from YouTube user hideyasann features more than 100 short clips of trains and train restrooms in Japan. Most of the train videos are of trains pulling into a station, or changing tracks....

[Video Link] Why isn't this couple smiling in this eerily silent video? Because they are being videotaped by police after they were spotted arguing over a teddy bear stuffed with heroin. Now, neither ...

Wendy Tsao will take your child's drawing and turn it into a plush toy. Her gallery of work is amazing. Child's Own Studio (Via Twisted Sifter)...

This lovely ear of glass gem corn is featured at Seeds Trust. They will begin selling seeds for it in August. The story of glass gem corn. Seedsman Greg Schoen got the seed from Carl Barnes, a part-Ch...

This lovely ear of glass gem corn is featured at Seeds Trust. They will begin selling seeds for it in August. The story of glass gem corn. Seedsman Greg Schoen got the seed from Carl Barnes, a part-Ch...

[Video Link] It's a robotic butt. (Via Geekologie)...

From Real Fact Comics #2 (1946) - a Joe Simon and Jack Kirby 2-pager about robots who will undertake undesirable occupations such as secretary, housekeeper, and professional athlete. A World of Thinki...

From Real Fact Comics #2 (1946) - a Joe Simon and Jack Kirby 2-pager about robots who will undertake undesirable occupations such as secretary, housekeeper, and professional athlete. A World of Thinki...

The $90 WiFi Pineapple is now in its fourth iteration. The gadget does man-in-the-middle attacks on WiFi networks, allowing its owner to snoop on all the traffic, keylog password entries, and generall...

I became involved with the Game of Thrones TV series and books against all odds. After all, I dont think of myself as a geek or a nerd, even if I am a video game journalist. My interested is in unnatu...

For PBS NewsHour, Miles O'Brien reports on whether there are ever instances in which the scientific value of research should offset the moral cost of working with chimpanzees. The US government has mo...

Photo: Michelle Gray Kevin Kelly is a senior maverick for Wired magazine. Avi interviewed Kevin at his home in Pacifica. I The Technium Avi Solomon: Could you define the Technium? Kevin Kelly: We all ...

Photo: Michelle Gray Kevin Kelly is a senior maverick for Wired magazine. Avi interviewed Kevin at his home in Pacifica. I The Technium Avi Solomon: Could you define the Technium? Kevin Kelly: We all ...

Photo: Ranoush (cc) Illo: Rob Beschizza Recent trends in Hijab fashion modernize a form of modest dress once defined by local traditions. In seeking self-expression, however, Muslim women find themsel...

The Verge's Joseph L. Flatley delves into the world of Internet marketing scams (those stupid spam pitches you get for "lead generation" and such) in eye-watering detail. Fundamentally, these things a...

Darryl Cunningham's Science Tales is a fantastic nonfiction comic book about science, skepticism and denial. Divided into short chapters with simple layouts and graphics, Cunningham's book looks into ...

A Google-commissioned legal paper on the constitutionality of regulating search results concludes that the such a regulation would violate the First Amendment. "First Amendment Protection for Search E...

"I firmly believe that the crucifixion is not something you can do to yourself simply because you do not have enough hands." Glorious. Thanks Noah!...

Reb sez, "The Water Quality Forum in my hometown, Knoxville, TN has an annual contest/auction for custom designed rain barrels. This one really caught my eye!" R2D2 by Curtis Glover (Thanks, Reb!)...

REUTERS: Romney speaks at a campaign event in Wilmington, DE. In the Washington Post, testimonials by prep school classmates of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney paint the former Gove...

In an environmental impact statement covering future plans for U.S. Navy training and testing, an acknowledgement that the use of sonar and explosives "could potentially hurt more dolphins and whales ...

REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Models present lingerie maker Triumph's new concept bra, the "Super Cool Bra", during its unveiling in Tokyo on May 9, 2012. The bra, modeled after a miniature fishbowl, contain...

Law enforcement in Dekalb County, Georgia, is not finished with you today, citizen. Greg Bluestein with the AP: Three DeKalb County police officers were charged Thursday with beating four handcuffed t...

Bob Self says: Baby Tattoo Books is thrilled to be co-presenting a first of its kind art convention built around the Spectrum Fantastic Art community. For nearly two decades, the Spectrum juried compe...

Saipancakes, who normally makes astounding pancakes like the ones above, had a rather spectacular pancakefail (right), prompting him to inaugurate an ugly pancake contest: "Rules: 1. It must be mostly...

Mental Floss's Rob Lammle has researched an admirably thorough history of The Animaniacs, one of my all-time favorite cartoons. Of the Warners, the voice of Wakko was the most difficult to cast. Durin...

A waitress poses inside an egg-shaped dining booth at an A380 theme restaurant during a media event before its official opening in Chongqing municipality, April 25, 2012. Special Class, the name of th...

A beautiful note from Joss Whedon to the world, his admirers, and his past self, explaining what it feels like to have directed a movie that broke all box-office records for opening weekend: What does...

Jeff Vandermeer sez, "As part of our celebration of weird fiction, centered around the release this week of The Weird -- 800,000 words of weird fiction from the past century--we've posted weird writer...

Ridiculous subscription pricing policies at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Be prepared to headdesk so many times that you dent your furniture and/or give yourself a concussion ... esp...

[Video Link] The FreedomSleeve is an iPhone sleeve that connects a 3G iPhone to a "free" 4G network. It can be used as a wifi hotspot, and has a built-in battery to extend the iPhone's internal batter...

Tomorrow would have been the 94th birthday of one of the most influential physicists in American history. Tonight: We play the bongos. Video Link Via Paul Halpern...

The Tattoine Traders store at the Disney Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World will soon have a build-your-own-droid option, along with a cardback box so that you can package it up to look like one o...

The Hindenburg disaster happened 75 years ago this month. In this incredibly fascinating video, Cheryl Ganz, the chief curator for the National Postal Museum, talks about the photographs, letters, and...

Thank you to our sponsor ShanaLogic, sellers of handmade and independently designed jewelry, apparel, gifts, and other fine products. Newly available, the Squid Corkscrew and Tentacle Wine Stopper, a ...

This lobster, dubbed Calvin, was headed for the dinner plate—by way of a pot of boiling water—only to be saved because he looked nifty. Ahhh, the capricious nature of humans. According to ...

Put all the water on this planet into a single sphere and it would have a diameter of about 860 miles, says the United States Geological Survey. For reference, that's roughly the distance between Salt...

Genius science writer Ed Yong used to work for a cancer charity, so he's seen how the cancer research sausages get made. In a new post at Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed takes you on a brief tour of th...

StarShipSofa's Tony Smith sez, "StarShipSofa is holding a Online Narrators Workshop 10th June 2012 (4PM BST), carried out online by some of the best voice actors working today in the genre field. Gues...

[Video Link] Matt Richardson says: I love this machine from artist Benjamin Cowden, who has a beautiful portfolio of mechanical interactive sculpture. This cocktail shaking machine is based on a turn-...

The lede from a Miami Herald article that will beat all other ledes you reads this week: A Florida man stabbed his computer with a Samurai sword after being accused of downloading kiddie porn. He was ...

The lede from a Miami Herald article surely beats all other ledes you reads this week: A Florida man stabbed his computer with a Samurai sword after being accused of downloading kiddie porn. He was in...

[Video Link] Dan Colman of Open Culture has a post about The Beatle's “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which was featured on the most recent episode of Mad Men. On Sunday night, The Beatles made hi...

[Video Link] Dan Colman of Open Culture has a post about The Beatles' “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which was featured on the most recent episode of Mad Men. On Sunday night, The Beatles made hi...

Hewlett Packard's VP of industrial design Stacy Wolff bristles at the suggestion that his laptop design was perhaps informed by Apple's....

When Dekalb County, Ga., police officer Jerad Wheeler tased her brother, Raven Dozie started crying and demanding to know why. Wheeler kicked the heavily-pregnant woman in the stomach. While he is now...

[Video Link] The pop hit, as performed by patients and nurses in the Hematology/Oncology ward of Seattle Children's Hospital. Not a big fan of Kelly Clarkson myself, but I can't help feeling admiratio...

[Video Link] It was funny already, but this takes it over the top....

Yikes. (Via Photoshop Disasters)...

Here's a typically chewy, dense, thought-provoking essay from Venkatesh Rao, ruminating on the nature of the future and futurism. Rao describes the future as arriving through a "manufactured normalcy ...

[Video Link] Squirrel Monkey makes very funny and almost believable "what if?" videos that imagine what popular websites might have looked like if they were launched 20 or 25 years ago. YouTube |...

Mojang's massive explore-em-up is now available for Xbox 360....

And Akronyme Analogiker wrote the code. [Creative Applications]...

Our thanks go to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email.Watchismo says this is its biggest Swiss watch sale ever: 40 percent off select Tendence Watc...

Douglas County Libraries, in Colorado, is trying something new: buying eBooks directly from publishers and hosting them on its own platform. That platform is based on the purchase of content at discou...

I just got around to reading Endangered Species, the fourth volume of Jeff Lemire's outstanding, post-bio-apocalyptic graphic novel Sweet Tooth(here's reviews of the previous volumes). Damn, this is g...

I just got around to reading Endangered Species, the fourth volume of Jeff Lemire's outstanding, post-bio-apocalyptic graphic novel Sweet Tooth (here's reviews of the previous volumes). Damn, this is ...

BrewDog is a spunky craft brewer in Scotland. Diageo is a titanic owner of booze brands, a kind of Wal*Mart of booze. The British Institute of Innkeeping is their mutual trade association. Last Sunday...

A little work with a handsaw reveals that over the years, the amount of ink in a new, official HP refill cartridge has been in decline. Prices, of course, have not been in decline. I then removed the ...

An 18 month-old toddler was ordered off a plane Tuesday at Ft. Lauderdale airport, after TSA representatives told airline employees they wanted to "speak" to her. Rihanna's father was flabbergasted. "...

Itwilllbeok sez, "According to the German Police University police officers used exactly 85 bullets in 2011 - 49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed. Germany ha...

Scorchio75 sez, "Having just moved to NZ from the UK, I'd love to be able to access BBC iPlayer, 4 on Demand, etc., but unless I cough-up for a VPN I'm out of luck. 'Fyx' have just launched in NZ and ...

A sadly unsourced but utterly brilliant bento box of horror! Horrifying Bento (via Neatorama)...

Razen Cain sez, "David Hunter is a public school teacher who is trying to raise cash on Kickstarter to create a Standards Based curriculum that uses a zombie apocalypse to get kids invested in learnin...

Byran Boyce takes Robert Di Niro to Disneyland in "Walt Disney's Taxi Driver": According to Boyce this is a trailer for Walt Disneys re-imagineering of Martin Scorseses classic film Taxi Driver. It fo...

Some highlights from the House Oversight Committee's report on the TSA's finance, courtesy of TechDirt: * As of February 15, 2012, the total value of TSAs equipment in storage was, according to TSA of...

Emmanuel Goldstein from 2600 magazine writes, "We've begun work on the 2013 Hacker Calendar after a really good response to the 2012 edition. This time the theme is surveillance, something near and de...

There's a feature worth reading in the New York Times today by John Hanc on the role that meditation plays in brain development, and scientific studies to explore "the extent to which meditation may a...

Photo: At a bar in San Francisco, Horst Linsen of Germany watches TV as President Obama voices support to same-sex marriage. (Reuters) U.S. President Barack Obama said today he believes same-sex coupl...

[Video Link] Here's a video trailer for Jack Streat's Lego Heavy Weapons how-to book I mentioned last month. From LEGO guns mastermind and 17–year-old YouTube sensation Jack Streat comes LEGO He...

Thing-a-day guy Noah Scalin sez, "Artist Betsy VanDeusen created this wonderful Star Wars-ified version of a classic Elvgren pinup as part of her yearlong daily project! You can see the rest of her wo...

85-year-old Holland Cokeley found a turtle in his back yard. He picked it up, and recognized it as his son's turtle. “I picked it up, and I thought ‘Oh geez, this is Jeff’s turtle!&#...

Floydwebb sez, "I was covered by Boing Boing when I was challenged by the Black Dragon Fighting Society in a fight over my fair use right in making this film. I am in the final days of the Kickstarter...

In Slate, Lindy West has an engaging and intriguing review of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, a new book by Florence Williams on the science, history, and future of breasts. The review concl...

Wired's Geeta Dayal got a lovely remembrance of Maurice Sendak from Neil Gaiman. Sendak died yesterday. As a parent, I read Where the Wild Things Are to my children. But [my daughter] Hollys favorite ...

Here's a puzzle we talked about in the Gweek 050 podcast (we discuss it at the 1:07:26 mark). It's from a coin given to me on my visit to the Stupid Fun Club in Berkeley. What is the secret message?...

By means of insightful hand-drawn diagrams, Eric Sloane gives the best explanation Ive ever seen of how weather works. Originally created to help sailors 50 years ago, it works for pilots, outdoor exp...

Legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon died today. He was 84. (Los Angeles Times)...

Looking back on his life, Superman undoubtedly considers the high note to be his fight with the last moa on earth....

$90 million later, after a series of humiliating demonstrations, and critical analysis, an unclassified memo shows that the DHS suspects what everyone else knows: pornoscanners don't work. Here's Davi...

Back in 2003, pioneering weird news curator Chuck Shepherd made a list of stories that were once weird but became so common that they don't impress him anymore. I agree with most of his picks, but the...

This week, I saw several delightful headlines like "South Korea cracks down on baby flesh pills." Apparently, the pills, made in some parts of China, are sold as treatments for impotence and other con...

The New Yorker has invited Twitter hero @FILMCRITHILK to write a great, insightful, ALL-CAPS essay on the attraction of The Hulk in stories. SO PERHAPS THERE IS A MUCH BETTER QUESTION AT HAND: WHAT MA...

Here's an excerpt of the new book, Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire, by Eric Berkowitz. The raging frenzy of the sex drive, to use Platos phrase, has always defied control. Ho...

Microsoft Research's SoundWave is an experimental interface that detects gestures based on how movements of your hand interfere with an inaudible tone generated by the computer. It doesn't use the sam...

Hey, you guys. Last week, I started a subscription plan for my weekly comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug, which appears here on Boing Boing. Its called the INNER HIVE, and Im so grateful for the respons...

Our designer friends at House Industries are proud that Kaisa Leka, Finland’s Cyclist of the Year, wears a Giro Banjo H Helmet...

The latest addition to The Fox is Black's "Desktop Wallpaper Project" is this dreamlike image created by Timothy J. Reynolds....

Carl Pyrdum's 2010 essay on the internal logic of Gothic manuscript illuminations uses a delightful series of illustrations and sprites from Super Mario Brothers. History at its finest: If you look ca...

Guests at the Cottage Lodge green hotel in the New Forest, southern England, can use a bicycle-powered generator to power up the TV. The proprietors should hire Russell Johnson as the night manager. "...

Kyle McDonald and Aram Bartholl of fffff.at teach you how to avoid being "auto-recognized" in photographs: surveillance shots, party pictures on Facebook, you name it. The short version: tilt yer head...

Camden, NJ's City Coffee has managed to thrive, despite the retail mass-collapse in Camden's city center. The coffee shop's secret is to offer every conceivable service. So in addition to coffee and p...

Peter Galuszka writes in the Washington Post: "Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I heard a chopper noise I couldnt identify. I looked up and maybe 150 feet off the ground was a light grey helic...

LIFE.com has a beautiful gallery of Michael Rougier photographs from Japan in 1964: runaways, rock and rollers, biker gangs, "pill kids" and other Japanese teens. LIFE Magazine published some of these...

The MPAA and the DHS have teamed up to increase the punishment meted out to people who buy their DVDs instead of downloading the same movies for free from the Internet. Now when you buy a DVD, you'll ...

Photo: REUTERS A worker paints a single-seater submarine designed by Zhang Wuyi and his fellow engineers at a shipyard in Wuhan, Hubei province May 7, 2012. Zhang, a 37-year-old local farmer, who is i...

[Video Link]. Virgin America, the airline on which you can watch Boing Boing's very own television channel with our hand-picked videos, is producing the "first-ever film made at 35,000 feet," Departur...

Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the INNER HIVE right now!"I used to spend 20 dollars a year on TOM THE DANCING BUG collections Happy to support him and pass ...

Jeff sez: To qualify our initiative for the ballot in Seattle, we need the signatures of more than 20,600 registered city voters. This means we're going to have approximately 2,000 - 3,000 pages of ha...

James Gurney says: If I had to give a prize for the most delightfully weird romance cover, it would have to go to "The Hungry Ones" from 1966. Whatever his pickup line is, she seems to be taking him s...

[Video Link] This unusual ocean creature resembles a sheet of brown translucent rubber. It's a Deepstaria enigmatica, a cnidarian. Who needs to invent science fiction life forms, when we've got an oce...

Iranian newspaper cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraiyeh drew an Iranian Parliament Member wearing a soccer jersey. For that reason, he was sentenced to 25 lashes. Why would the government want to flog someone...

MovieWeb's alternate title sequence for The Walking Dead is set to the theme from Growing Pains and expertly edited/titled to give it the air of a 1980s sitcom, an effect that it achieves in spades. I...

Foreign Policy has a gallery of photos of Dubai before its economic boom. Shown above: Men gather in al-Naif souq, one of the oldest traditional markets in Dubai. It was partially damaged by a fire in...

Here's the puzzle of the month from the April 1960 issue of Popular Science Luckily someone told me the answer to this one at the same time as the puzzle. Otherwise –– like the wife of one...

A "scientific ghost town", equipped to research everything from traffic patterns to renewable energy, is to be built in the desert near Hobbs, N.M. The real-life Science Enrichment Center will create ...

Justin Griffith, an atheist in the US military, tells the story of how he ended up with ATHEIST/FSM on his dogtags. It all started when he enlisted as an atheist, only to have his recruiter record his...

Ot from the Dutch technology activist group Bits of Freedom writes, "Good news from The Netherlands: on 8 May 2012 The Netherlands adopted crucial legislation to safeguard an open and secure internet....

Rick Dakan sez, "Last fall, Mob Rules Games let voters choose their project, and they picked the turn-based haunted house game, Haunts: The Manse Macabre. The trio of indie developers, Geek Mafia auth...

The Guardian: Blueprint for Democratic Participation from The Guardian and The Paley Center for Media on FORA.tv Here's Yochai Benkler -- author of Wealth of Networks, one of the most important books ...

You probably thought we covered all possible scenarios of TSA stupidity in our recent round-up post. You thought wrong. Via MSNBC today, the story of Savannah Barry, a 16-year-old diabetic girl who sa...

[Video Link] "You have a shitty accent. You're not even being racist correctly. If you're gonna be racist, come correct with your racism."—Hasan Minhaj. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. Anil Dash, wh...

Erik Wecks has a thoughtful and smart analysis of my little book The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow in Wired's GeekDad today (spoilers ahoy!)...

"Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!" Art Spiegelman drew his experience of hanging out with Maurice Sendak in 1993 for the New Yorker, and the magazine has "unlocked" the ar...

Nicola Schiavone is the recently jailed Camorra mafioso. His Naples home was photographed by the Italian tax police who raided it. It's quite an eyefull of Mafia-chic strangeness. The Guardian has the...

[Video Link] Shira Lazar of What's Trending interviewed Eric Migicovsky, the creator of the Pebble Bluetooth watch, a Kickstarter project that's raised over $8 million. Meet Pebble Founder Eric Migico...

Elinor Mills at CNET digs into who leaked thousands of username/email/password sets yesterday, and what Twitter is doing about it. Here are the Pastebin leaks, in case you want to check to see if your...

Elinor Mills at CNET digs into who leaked thousands of username/email/password sets yesterday, and what Twitter is doing about it. Here are the Pastebin leaks, in case you want to check to see if your...

"I wish to address the most important policy question of the millennium: Should we build a Death Star?" Yes, I realize this Washington Post piece by Gregory Koger is big fat pile of flaming linkbait, ...

REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger Cat 'Luca' sleeps in his basket as a waitress serves some food to customers in Vienna's first cat cafe May 7, 2012. After three years of negotiations with city officials over h...

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! "We're from the family tree of old school Hip-Hop..." --Adam "MCA" Yauch...

Here's an eye-popping stat from Canonical's VP of sales and business development Chris Kenyon, speaking at the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit: the free operating system Ubuntu (a flavor of GNU/Linux) w...

Jack London’s 1912 science fiction novel The Scarlet Plague, which is part of HiLobrow's Radium Age library, is now available at Amazon.com. Jack London’s plague novel, in which the world&...

Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times dig deeper into yesterday's news of a new would-be Al Qaeda underwear bomber, "dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a Uni...

Ukranian steampunk/fetish leathercrafters Bob Basset have taken a crack at golden age comics with this 1920s "Batman" mask. Batman mask as it could be in 1920...

This insane (Russian?) theme-park thrill ride nauseates me even at 320x240 11fps. I think if I was actually in its presence, I'd boot so hard that I'd open a wormhole to another dimension. Amusement L...

Beef Products Inc. (BPI), manufacturer of "lean finely textured beef," aka "pink slime," announces it will shut down three of its four plants on May 25.The plants destined for closure are in Amarillo,...

Here's Hiné Mizushima's artwork created for the Supahcute Dream Team Show “Art Too Cute for Words” May 12 – June 24, 2012 at Leanna Lin's Wonderland in Los Angeles. I believe it...

Here's the 15th episode of MAKE's podcast, Make: Talk! Our maker this week is Matthew Borgatti. Matthew makes so many things it's hard to even begin to describe it all: musical instruments, science fi...

An "Intelligence Note" from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) today warns that "malicious actors are targeting travelers abroad through pop-up windows while establishing an Internet connection...

About a third of adults in the United States today are obese. By 2030, 42 percent will be, and about a quarter of that group will be severely obese, according to a forecast released this week at the W...

The Guardian (UK) has published a nifty information graphic breaking down gay rights in the US, state by state. Issues like marriage, adoption, employment discrimination protection, hate crime laws, a...

Today, the FTC announced a settlement with Myspace, involving charges that the social networking service misrepresented how it protects users' personal data. The settlement "bars Myspace from future p...

American universities -- whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks -- are increasingly engaging i...

[Video Link]. An excellent supercut memorial. (via Andy Baio)  1993 interview with Adam Yauch from bOING bOING #13 Adam "MCA" Yauch, RIP Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys, by p...

Writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Stacey Patton explores the stories of highly educated people who are jobless, broke, and on food stamps. In 2010, there were 22 million Americans with ma...

Malcom Harris's (former) Twitter avatar: @destructuremal The ACLU reports that Twitter has filed a motion in the New York state court to quash a court order that demands information about one of its u...

Twin brothers Chris and Jeff George ran "pill mills" in South Florida that helped people get bogus scrips for painkillers. They made so much cash doing this that their employees actually burned the $1...

In this video from Grenoble, France, two teams of people attempt to separate the halves of a metal ball. Spoiler: The ball wins. There are no magnets involved, nor are the two sides of the ball locked...

I grew up reading Mickey Spillane novels and, years later, was lucky enough to get to know the man behind Mike Hammer. Mickey and I did a number of projects together -- co-editing anthologies, creatin...

The video, made by Mae Ryan for Los Angeles public radio KPCC, traces trash from a burger lunch to its ultimate fate in a landfill. It reminds me of those great, old Sesame Street videos where you got...

screengrab: Fawlty Towers Resort website Cocoa Beach is a Florida town where the economy was for decades buoyed by the NASA Space Shuttle program. Astronauts, aerospace contractors, service workers, a...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode we t...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode we t...

Jason Pontin, editor of MIT's Tech Review, explains why his magazine deprecated its iPad app and went to "a simple RSS feed in a river of news," and why it's moving to "HTML5, so that a reader will se...

Image: Imperfect Publishing, with permission A magazine called WET is difficult to explain. Particularly when you have, as I do, a stack of them. When snickering friends dig into the brittle pages, th...

Blueseed is a proposed tech incubator that will float in the ocean near Silicon Valley. Because it will be located in international waters, it won't be subject to immigration laws (and other laws). Th...

England's Metro newspaper reports that parents may now hire an evil clown to stalk their children. Deville is not an escaped lunatic or some demonic monster. He is a birthday treat, hired by mum and d...

Here's a photo of the Jewel Caterpillar (Acraga coa), snapped by Gerardo Aizpuru near Cancun, and submitted to Project Noah. Be sure to click through for other views. Wow. Photo take in a mangrove are...

[Video Link] This fellow attached a train horn -- powered by compressed air in a scuba tank -- to his bicycle. Honk And I'll Kill You: Train Horn Attached To Bicycle...

George Brannon of Mesquite, Texas has posted a warning to would-be thieves contemplating taking another one of his pieces of "right wing yard art," which include an upside-down US flag with boot marks...

Martyn Crofts's appearance on Britain's Got Talent is the best thing I've ever seen on TV: he put a pot on his head and did a wicked Dalek impersonation while singing (shouting) a version of Roger Mil...

Lots of photos of Australian criminals in the 1920s. They look proud of themselves, don't they? Herbert Ellis circa 1920: The precise circumstances surrounding this picture are unknown, but Ellis is f...

A 23-year-old Nebraska man, previously named Tyler Gold, shall henceforth be known as Tyrannosaurus Rex Joseph Gold. In sworn testimony, Tyrannosaurus Gold explained that his new name was simply "cool...

All this week, The Chicago Tribune is posting a multi-part investigative report about the fire-retardant chemicals that turn up in everything from the foam in our couch cushions, to the plastic casing...

The German Pirate Party has won seats in a third federal district, taking 8.2% of the vote in Schleswig-Holstein; they're on track to win seats in a fourth state next week in Northrhine-Westphalia. Te...

Beloved children's author Maurice Sendak, creator of Where the Wild Things Are, is dead at 83. Here's some of what The Guardian's Michelle Pauli has to say about him. The wild things of Max's imaginat...

Kinetic junkbot sculptor Nemo Gould has completed two new, wonderful pieces. First, the Cycloptopus: Cycloptopus is a fearsome hybrid of two of my favorite monsters, one real, one mythical. This creat...

Jabberwocky writes, "Privacy policies are complicated, and we believe that you should know what's happening with your data when you use a service. In order to help, we've created a set of icons which ...

MallGoth emporium Hot Topic sells a $54.50 Princess Leia hoodie with integrated hair buns. I'm thinking mother's day. STAR WARS HER UNIVERSE PRINCESS LEIA GIRLS HOODIE (via Geekologie)...

Live Webcam of tourists and the drivers who hate them at the famed Abbey Road crossing. Abbey Road Studios - Crossing Webcam (via @chris_carter_)...

Running for office? Embarrassed by YouTube videos that make fun of you or show you looking like an ass? YouTube will give you up to 14 days' worth of censorship for free -- all you need to do is prete...

Ben Zimmer on the word "meta": "Michael Grunwald, writing for The Boston Globe in 1993, [saw a] trend toward meta-entertainment. ... Of course, it wasnt as meta as a Globe column about meta citing a G...

This short film was produced by the film unit of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the 1950s, and explains the principles behind the first accurate atomic clock, which was designed by Lou...

A post by Slashdot user Dangerous_Minds summarizes a series ZeroPaid's Drew Wilson, who has been examining 20 file-sharing studies from the decade-plus-long filesharing wars. Time and again, the studi...

Boing Boing reader Renee Rendler-Kaplan of Chicago, IL went to the National Restaurant Association's trade show, and shot this photograph of a terrified pizza pie. I don't really know what this is, ac...

Asymco's Horace Dediu and Dirk Schmidt, quoting Clayton Christensen: "The company has been slowly rolling its stores out across the world for [close to 50] years; and yet nobody has copied IKEA." It's...

For more than 10 years, Susann Bashir worked as a fiber optics network builder for AT&T in Missouri. The Kansas City Star reports that she was subjected to daily religious discrimination and hara...

Phil Torrone of Adafruit sent me a bag full of maker skill patches. When my 9-year-old daughter came home from school today, her eyes popped out like a Tex Avery wolf. I told her she could have them a...

An unsourced/unidentified photo of a man's (?) foot with a very good, detailed and shadowed Converse All-Stars tattooed upon it, in stylish red. No mention if he has the other foot done, nor why he le...

In the New York Times, Brian X. Chen reports on Amtrak's plans to use Apple iPhones as an electronic ticket scanner on several routes, including Boston, MA to Portland, ME, and San Jose, CA, to Sacram...

At the Billfold today, a wonderful and mathematically precise post that explains exactly how much money do I need to create giant floes of gold in a private vault and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck?...

Here's the 15th episode of MAKE's podcast, Make: Talk! Our maker this week is Matthew Borgatti. Matthew makes so many things it's hard to even begin to describe it all: musical instruments, science fi...

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a robotic bird that lands perched on someone's hand. Perching is routinely used by birds to land on objects such as tree bran...

The first-ever wedding sanctioned by the Church of Kopimism (an officially Swedish church that reifies copying and characterizes file-sharing as a sacred act) was convened last weekend. It was a beaut...

Space researchers are playing Mars on Earth in the giant ice caves at Vienna's Dachstein mountain. Many more amazing photographs at the Austiran Space Forum's Dachstein Mars Simulation blog. "Performi...

Chow rounds up some delicious alternative uses for waffle-irons, ice-cream makers, and slow cookers. The criteria are: "(1) the food should taste as good or better than when made in the conventional m...

In 1966, pioneering video artist Nam June Paik was an artist in residence at Boston's public broadcasting station WGBH. Paik and engineer Shuya Abe created the Paik-Abe video synthesizer, a fantastic ...

Video Link. How does this work? Your theories welcome in the comments. (via Arbroath, thanks Tara McGinley)...

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones writes about a trove of new photographs documenting the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which released nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexic...

I've posted many times about my favorite ambient DJ, Dylan Yanez (AKA DF Tram), who draws from electronica, far-out jazz, avant-garde classical, and myriad other genres to create his compelling mixes....

The cartoonist Lars Martinson, author of the outstanding Tonoharu graphic novel series that I reviewed on Boing Boing (book 1, book 2) has two ebooks available on the iTunes store. They are .99 each. ...

Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo at the Associated Press were first to report today that the CIA claims to have "thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen" to bomb a plane headed for the...

Mel from Dajaz1.com -- the hiphop blog that was seized for a year by the US government on the basis of a false and unsubstantiated copyright claim from the RIAA -- has posted the site's lawyer's memo,...

As a public speaker Dan Pink travels a lot. He's created a dozen travel tip videos that are entertaining and he actually shoots the videos while he is waiting in airports for his next flight. Tip #1 &...

This is a full-scale model of the Space Shutttle Constitution (eventually renamed Enterprise) from 1975. Flickr user Aaron Harvey was 5-years-old when his grandfather, who worked at Lockheed at the ti...

Don't do this. (via @ryanaraine + @kimzetter)...

Radley Balko says: The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police is looking to strip a retired captain of his union membership, because he had sex with a 14-year-old girl illegally raided immigrant-owned...

Noah Brewer just successfully defended his MA English thesis Re-Makers: The Novel in Digital Collaborative Space at the University of Georgia. As the title implies, the piece is about my novel Makers....

Concept for a much-needed safety pin with flash storage. The preliminary sketches are interesting. Pin your data close to your heart with the Bulavkus USB flash drive...

Former Disney artist Arthur Millican Jr., maker of "exciting fairy house manors" built this excellent storybook style playhouse from found materials. It reminds me of the "witch's house" on Carmelita ...

On Saturday I went to the My Little Pony Project event at Toy Art Gallery on Melrose, and it was very fun! Check out the art gallery. Many well-known and pop surrealist artists painted large-scale pon...

The UnWaste Bookcase was jointly created by Ben Milbourne, Leyla Acaroglu and David Waterworth to act as a loft apartment room-divider that could be opened and spun completely around, depending on the...

Margie Profet did not have a Ph.D. In fact, she didn't even have a bachelor's degree in evolutionary biology, the field that most of her work revolved around. But she won a McArthur Genius grant and p...

Nate Smith explains the right pronuncuations for all sorts of nerd words like "GIF" and "meme" -- if not the correct ones. [Slacktory]...

On Metafilter, Deathalicious rounds up links to some of the more interesting drinks mentioned in two videos by YouTube user 513755, explaining the various uniquely regional Russian and ex-Soviet soft-...

South Korean customs officials plan to increase customs inspections for powdered human baby flesh after 17,500 capsules were smuggled in less than a year. Powdered human baby flesh cures disease and b...

Last week, I mentioned The Open Laboratory—an annual anthology of the best science writing on the Internet. Now the 2012 edition is available for pre-order. This is a great place to start if you...

Watch this video and you'll better understand both some of the basics of Newtonian physics and how to ride a unicycle successfully. It's part of a new series of videos made by MIT and Khan Academy. Th...

The May 14, 2012, issue of The New Yorker is the "innovators" issue, with articles about the rise of drones in the United States, an artificial leaf that mimics the way plants convert solar energy, an...

The good news: A recent study of preserved museum specimens revealed that the Caribbean is home to 39 different species of skink, rather than the previously-accepted six. The bad news: Turns out that ...

Science blogger Lee Falin has a potentially useful analogy for putting radiation dose and risk into perspective—treat it like currency. Part of the problem with explaining radiation is that ther...

REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichle People sit in front of a house built upside-down by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozhanski, in the western Austrian village of Terfens May 5, 2012. The project ...

Russian democracy: protest Putin stealing your election, get the living shit beaten out of you by thugs. Meet the new boss, (literally) the same as the old boss. Check out the related videos at the en...

The eerie mystery of the vanishing honeybees has not been put to rest. In the last few weeks, three separate studies explored the effect of insecticides on honeybee and pollinator health. One paper li...

The LA Times's Ken Bensinger tells the fascinating, dirty story of American Airlines's AAirpass, a too-good-to-be-true lifetime first-class-ticket-to-anywhere-anytime pass that the airline debuted in ...

Guygadbois sez, "Two years in the making, this one-of-a-kind mechanized miniature Main Street Electrical Parade runs nighttime shows from a display the size of a coffee table." This guy is the poster ...

FeLion Studios, an ironmonger with style, has made a set of 48 interlocking "Made in America" skillets, in the shape of each of the continental states. Buy them one at a time or get the whole set (whi...

[Video Link] Here's MAKE's latest weekend project - two solar-powered BEAM bots. BEAM stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics. From Wikipedia: "This is a term that refers to a style...

Photos posted on China's Sina Weibo microblogging platform reportedly depict a Hubei province high school classroom where student are cramming for exams while hooked up to IV drips of amino acids. I h...

REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon The full "super Moon", scientifically known as a "perigee moon", rises over Los Angeles, California May 5, 2012. A "super Moon" lit up Saturday's night sky in a once-a-year c...

The Kansas House of Reps passed one of the most draconian and awful abortion bills imaginable last week. Among other things, it allows doctors to lie to their patients to keep them from getting aborti...

A joint Disney Research and CMU team have produced a demo showing gesture controls on a variety of everyday, non-computer objects. The system, called Touch, uses capacitive coupling to infer things ab...

Photographer James Mollison took portraits of more than 50 apes. "I decided against photographing in zoos or using animal actors but traveled to Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Con...

TestPAC, the PAC founded on Reddit to carry on the momentum from the SOPA fight earlier this year, is in the midst of its inaugural campaign: seeking to oust long-term Texas congressman Lamar Smith, w...

Climate change deniers Heartland Institute funded this lovely billboard in Chicago and took it down after one day. They say it was "always intended to be an experiment. And after just 24 hours the res...

Sculptor Chris Bathgate writes, "I have just self-published my first book of sculptures that features all of my machined metal sculptures from 2007-2011 as well as technical drawings and process image...

Livestream video link. Do you know what I'm going to do this weekend? Sit here and watch ALL OF THE KITTENS, for ALL OF THE WEEKEND. Sometimes the mommy cat is there, sometimes not. The cute little sq...

"Modernist Cuisine," the six-volume, 2,438 page, 46 pound whopper of a culinary tome by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, snapped up top honors yesterday at the annual James Beard Foundation cookb...

Snip from a Globe and Mail article quoting HH the Dalai Lama: It is quite strange as non-believers, totally non-believers, atheists showing interest about reincarnation. I jokingly tell them: In ord...

Photographer Glen E. Friedman, widely known for his work chronicling the intersection between punk rock and hiphop in the 1980s, has posted some beautiful shots of MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mike D from that e...

144 people were burned at a political rally in the Armenian capital of Yerevan last Friday when bunches of hydrogen balloons bearing political slogans burst into flames. An Agence France-Presse story ...

The Long Forgotten blog -- the world's greatest source of informed critical speculation about the design thinking behind the Haunted Mansions at the Disney parks -- has just put up a smashing post abo...

What's more invasive than your dickhead employer demanding to go snooping in your Facebook account as a condition of employment? Jerky bouncers at clubs demanding the right to snoop in your Facebook a...

To celebrate Star Wars Day (May 4, as in "May the Fourth Be With You"), makeup artist Jangasara created a set of R2D2 eyelids to dote over. May the 4th (via Neatorama)...

Photo: Heather Beschizza Insuperably bad-arse. [Wiki]...

Redditor Laporkenstein created his own wedding ring out of meteorite and nickel, and documented it with a gallery of more than 40 images. Then he posted it with this headline: "I hand forged my own we...

Jonathan Lethem's latest is a book in the 33 1/3 series, Talking Heads' Fear of Music, a tribute to Talking Heads brilliant, seminal album, one of the greatest records of all time. In Wired, Geeta Day...

Tinkertinker sez, "I am proud to have just finished this mechanical cocktail shaker, called The Post-Imperial Shaker. It is loosely based on a turn-of-the-century machine (the 'Imperial Shaker' of cou...

Disneyland's "secret restroom" is an isolated, disabled-accessible bathroom tucked away to one side of the castle in the Carnation Plaza. Very easy to miss, it is a refuge when all around the park is ...

IO9's Cyriaque Lamar has dug through the Tulane University Louisiana Research Collection of Mardi Gras costume and float designs and uncovered an utterly bizarre float entered in 1873 by the Mistick K...

Pat Dorian sez, "Cory blogged about my t-shirts he saw at NYC Comic Con 2011. I took one of my characters from my t-shirts and made a web comic based on him. I thought you might dig it." The Face-Skul...

Ethan sez, "The personal archives of legendary Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson -- some 10,000 items -- were abandoned by his heirs and lost in storage facility in Minnesota. Now they'v...

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My co-hosts for ep...

Someone in the art department at the Pittsburgh Tribune is either dense or clever. (Via Photoshop Disasters)...

French-Algerian physicist Adlne Hicheur, 35, was today sentenced by a French court to five years in prison for criminal association with the intent to prepare terrorist acts. The court ruled that the ...

Elan Lee -- who has worked on several pioneering alternate reality games and similar media experiments, writes, "'Dirty Work' is a new online comedy that we just launched at Fourth Wall Studios. This ...

CNET's Emil Protalinski reports that Osama bin Laden did not encrypt the thousands of files stored in the Pakistani compound where he was killed, and "17 of the 6,000 documents have now been publicly ...

Image Link. Boing Boing reader MewDeep, who has an awesome Flickr stream of '60s-'70s ad scans, points to this YouTube clip of a notable television commercial from 1968: it's a promo for the Peace Cor...

A study at MIT involving mice fed a diet of vanilla yogurt with probiotics yielded interesting and unanticipated results: First, the scientists noticed that the yogurt-eating mice were incredibly shin...

John Brennan, who calmly took his clothes off at the Portland Airport to show TSA officers he was not carrying a bomb (he tested positive for explosives) told Fox News he is going to court to fight in...

Todd Stave from Voice of Choice (previously covered here) says, "This flyer was put on the doors of the homes in my wifes parents neighborhood. They are targeting me because I am the landlord to an ab...

Christopher sez, "We just released a 90 second animated video that explains why communities build their own broadband networks, often in competition with big cable. For those who want all the details,...

Christopher sez, "We just released a 90 second animated video that explains why communities build their own broadband networks, often in competition with big cable. For those who want all the details,...

Douglas Campbell says: Mindshare is a pioneering series of knowledge exchange forums created to inspire, educate and empower all participants. The lectures and demonstrations, many of which are intera...

This just in: racists remain racist. Local news, HuffPo, and MSNBC's The Ed Show have reported on the shocking roadside sign below, but the bar's website (above) includes a collection of past signs, a...

Three journalists were killed this week in the Mexican state of Veracruz, just a week after another reporter was murdered. More on the latest violence at SouthNotes. (via Shannon Young)...

My friend Tara is organizing a meeting at Crashspace this Sunday for interested parties to discuss the possibility of creating a child/family-friendly hackerspace in the greater Los Angeles area. They...

Georganne Deen - "Song of Myself" detail I never thought Id say this, but you are lucky if you live in the Dallas area. Georganne Deen is my favorite living artist and has a show at Webb Galle...

A man who claimed he could improve women's lives and "remove negative vibes" by rubbing raw eggs on them and pouring ammonia on their heads has been accused of raping two women who sought out spiritua...

A man who claimed he could improve women's lives and "remove negative vibes" by rubbing raw eggs on them and pouring ammonia on their heads has been accused of raping two women who sought out spiritua...

[Video Link] "Portraits from the Occupation is an artist project by Alex Abramovich and Lucy Raven. The project comprises a series of video interviews with sixteen individuals involved with or impacte...

Maximoriera, creators of the memorable Octopus Chair, have a new offering: an elephant chair. Pretty regal. Elephant (via OhGizmo)...

Says an ex-teammate of the NFL star who died this week of a self-inflicted gunshot wound: "Junior played for 20 years. That's five concussions a game, easily. How many in his career then? That's over ...

Gypsophonic Disko is a tasty gumbo of rousing New Orleans hip hop, Mardi Gras bounce, Louisiana Klezmer, and Balkan music. DJ Quickie Mart and Ben Ellman of NOLA superstars Galactic put together this ...

Gypsyphonic Disko is a tasty gumbo of rousing New Orleans hip hop, Mardi Gras bounce, Louisiana Klezmer, and Balkan music. DJ Quickie Mart and Ben Ellman of NOLA superstars Galactic put together this ...

Andrew writes, "A new designer chair from Andrew Miller at mSurfaces.com uses soap bubble physics to unlock their unique structural advantages. While architects have used the shape of a soap film to p...

Blake Boston, the young man who appears in the "Scumbag Steve" photo-meme (a picture of a teenager in a sort of "urban" outfit, captioned with various wry sayings that imply that "Steve" is kind of a ...

Here's an interview we ran with Adam Yauch (RIP) from bOING bOING #13 in 1993. Click images to enlarge....

Friday Freak-Out: Rolf Harris performing his 1962 hit "Sun Arise."  Friday Freak-Out: Os Mutantes perform "Caminhante Noturno ... Friday Freak-Out: The 13th Floor Elevators perform "You&#...

Today is Keith Haring's birthday! He would have been 54 years old. Google has honored him with a homepage Google Doodle. It reminded me that my cousin, who attended NYC's School of Visual Arts at the ...

Earlier this morning, Pesco posted the awful news that Adam "MCA" Yauch has died of cancer. Words here can't express how sad I am, reading that news. Hits home in part because I'm fighting the same di...

Earlier this morning, Pesco posted the awful news that Adam "MCA" Yauch died this morning at age 47. Words here can't express how sad I am, reading that news. Hits home in part because I'm fighting th...

Several major UK ISPs began blocking requests for The Pirate Bay this week, thanks to a court order coming into effect. The Pirate Bay reports that it saw an extra 12 million visitors on the first day...

As part of his Mondo 2000 History Project, Mondo founder RU Sirius is posting classic excerpts from the hugely influential cyberculture magazine of the 1990s. For example, David Byrne in conversation ...

Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died of cancer. He was 48. Yauch was a hip hop pioneer and a tireless supporter of the Tibetan people. We'll miss him. "Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead...

Please do not outbid Boing Boing on the Sea Shadow, a stealth ship that the US Navy is currently auctioning off. The General Services Administration is requiring that the buyer dismantle and scrap the...

My latest Locus column, "A Prose By Any Other Name," is a state-of-the-project report on my longrunning habit of writing science fiction stories with the same titles as famous books, and the interesti...

A couple weeks ago, Peter Mark of British Columbia found this Harley-Davidson buried in the sand on one of the islands of British Columbia. Tracking the license plate led Mark back to the bike's owner...

There are some who'll say that X-Ray Specs illos are the zenith of old-timey kid-targeted comics advertising. Those people are wrong. Cardboard spaceships, with their Voyage to the Mushroom Planet pro...

Pastor Sean Harris (motto: "Proclaiming Christ Through a Blog in the 21st Century) gave a sermon on Sunday at his church in Fayetteville NC in which he told parents to beat their children if they show...

[Video Link] Inspiring video of a disabled Gulf War paratrooper who lost 140 pounds and went from crutches to sprinting by practicing yoga. (Via Bits & Pieces)...

Ellen Kushner, co-editor of the multiple-award-nominated new Borderlands anthology Welcome to Bordertown, writes, "Have you dreamed of a Danceland T-shirt? Some Dancing Ferret beer mugs? A Khandroma (...

Riseup, a "progressive Internet organization" that operates an anonymous remailer had its servers seized by the FBI without notice two weeks ago. They installed a little CCTV camera after the seizure....

Remember the seizure of Dajaz1.com, a hiphop blog that posted all kinds of music clips that record company promoters (and even CEOs) begged them to post? The one that was shut down for a year on a tru...

Today, May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, the day in which the Free Software Foundation's "Defective By Design" campaign urges you to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM. There are plen...

Today, May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, the day in which the Free Software Foundation's "Defective By Design" campaign urges you to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM. There are plen...

Former senator Chis Dodd is now the CEO of the MPAA, and was the primary moving force behind SOPA. He's a bit weird. His latest act of performance art, or fabulism, or whatever, is to make up a comple...

My latest Guardian column, "Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers," looks at the wider consequences of Tor Books' dropping DRM on its ebooks, and what it would me...

Roland Sledge is a 66-year-old Houston energy lawyer running for a seat on the Texas state commission that regulates the oil and gas industries. In the YouTube ad above, the Republican candidate stare...

No criminal charges will be filed in the fatal police shooting of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old ex-Marine who was shot to death in his White Plains, NY apartment after his medical alert devi...

Joel sez, "'Wainwright for the People' is a young adult book for ages 10 and up that teaches basic civics, with a focus on our judicial system, in the form of a legal thriller, accompanied by Student ...

A Tumblog of greatness: Craig Kanalley decided that reading the entire Bible, cover to cover, would be interesting. He's committed to doing that within 100 days, and he's documenting interesting stuff...

That Neil Guy sez, "Writer Leah Petersen received a Cease and Desist notice. Seems the title of her debut novel, Fighting Gravity, is also the name of a live performance group that appeared on America...

Michael Scherer writes about President Obama's medical-marijuana policy and the increasing federal intervention on medical marijuana on TIME.com. For the online piece and a related magazine feature, S...

Say what you will about Shep Smith's politics and personality, he pretty much nailed the cognitive dissonance of Mitt Romney's reaction to Gingrich dropping out of the GOP race. Shep Smith reacts to M...

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) reports today that the US Justice Department made 1,745 requests last year to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) for permission to wi...

Devon sez, "Portland, OR is the next city to consider a plan to implement police surveillance cameras throughout the downtown area. The proposal is to have surveillance cameras that can be accessed an...

[Video Link] The way this woman tried to talk her way out of a speeding ticket (police video starts at 4:42), reminds me of people who say they don't have a legal obligation to pay taxes. I'm not sayi...

Today, I got to tour several particle accelerator research labs at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including an inside look at a working accelerator, something I'd never seen up close befor...

Between now and 2020, the greatest increases in population growth in the United States are projected to happen in the places that have the biggest problems with fresh water availability. This isn't ju...

One of my favorite parts about going on tours of laboratories are the signs and jokes that scientists post on office doors and lab walls. This gem comes from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory....

REUTERS/Daniel Becerrill Above, Alin Nava (C) stands in a checkout line at a supermarket in Monterrey April 5, 2012. Nava, 25, is dressed in the so-called "Lolita" fashion style ( Rorta fasshon), a fa...

Grant Cardone used his tablet to record a mid-flight bird-strike on a Delta flight from LFK to LAX. He disobeyed a crewmember who ordered him to stop recording. The FAA is very disappointed in Cardone...

Boing Boing reader Brock Davis (FB, Twitter, Tumblr) shares this wonderful illustration in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool: "He's Watching You," a mash-up of Star Wars and World War II propaganda art. "I'...

Mark blogged yesterday about Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old college student in San Diego who was detained by the Drug Enforcement Administration on "420 day" without charges, then abandoned in a holding ...

I love the Lego wigs used in this Elroy Klee campaign for Mindplay. They've got the perfect mix of impracticality and strikingness to qualify as gen-you-wine coo-choore. Mindplay: bricks on me (via Ge...

[Video Link] Here's how The Listserve works: you subscribe to the mailing list (13,667 people are subscribers so far). Once a day, a subscriber is chosen at random to share a self-written essay with t...

Eric Valli spent 3 years taking photos of people in the United States who have "decided to live light on the earth." The photographs are terrific. It looks like Valli spent time with two clans: a fron...

[Video Link] Judging from the trailer here, A Grain of Sand looks like a good documentary. You can watch it here for $3. On a whim in 1962, British newspaper editor Brendon Grimshaw bought the tiny de...

Courtesy of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a list of "things that government officials could do to an American citizen and still claim later that they didn't know they were "torturing" that citiz...

When Derek L My was a freshman at UC Berkeley, he kitted out his dorm-room with a variety of automation systems controlling the lights, drapes, and music (include a plastic-encased "Emergency Party Bu...

Bugs Galore is a kids' book written by Peter Stein and illustrated by Bob Staake, one of my favorite illustrators (see my review of Look! A Book!, a video of Bob's unusual drawing process, The making ...

[Video Link] Here's how to put a laser -- powerful enough to burn skin, light cigars, pop balloons, and cause blindness -- into a Zippo-style lighter. Flip-top laser lighter (Via Mike Outmesguine)...

The Disney Blog's John Frost captures one of my favorite sights: the interior of the Walt Disney World Space Mountain with the lights on, as seen from the silently retrofuturistic maglev safety of the...

Chip Kidd is one of my favorite book designers and, as I learned when I saw his talk at TED, he is also a funny and entertaining performer. (I have no idea what is going on with the broken eyeglasses;...

[Video Link] Early 2012, HEYHEYHEY had some time to spare and they felt the need to challenge themselves once again, so they set out to build another one of their chain reaction machines called Melvin...

Liu Wei, an artist from Beijing, is currently exhibiting a show called "Foreign" at the Almine Rech gallery in Paris. Wei's art plays with cityscapes, and "Foreign" features cityscapes made from schoo...

Paul Celentano's Atom Ukulele is available on his Etsy store for $650. (Thanks, Courtney!)...

Monster Brains has a massive gallery of Schell's work....

After we learned this week about how rotten the DEA and TSA are, we can also add Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the list of corrupt government entities: "James M. Woosley, former Immigra...

[video link] The Wipers were a Portland, Oregon punk band formed in 1977. By 1981's "Youth of America," they had evolved their style from short, sharp punk numbers to longer, more complex, intense, an...

The Eisriesenwelt—the "World of the Ice Giants"—is an Austrian cave that stays cold enough year-round to freeze any water that gets into it. As a result, the cave is full of massive ice fo...

Here's a clip from a 9-minute video produced to "fire up Apple's international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii." It stars Steve Job as Franklin Delano Roosevelt....

The Salon Professionnel du Chocolat's Fujisan is a candle made of chocolate. As it burns down, it oozes molten chocolate onto the cake in which it is mounted. I imagine this would require a lot of pat...

A reader writes, "Librivox [ed: a trove of free, volunteer-read audio adaptations of public domain books] has released the audio version of Tono-Bungay the classic semi-autobiographical novel by H. G....

The principal at Lincoln High, an "alternative" school in Walla Walla, WA that was used as a dumping ground for kids with "behavioral" problems, decided to ditch the "zero-tolerance" approach to schoo...

Video director and wonderfully funny guy Eric Spiegelman tells Boing Boing, The new season of Old Jews Telling Jokes begins today, featuring jokes we recorded in Boca Raton. We've been on hiatus for a...

Boing Boing pal and musical/video genius Joe Sabia (who collaborates with us on the Boing Boing in-flight TV channel on Virgin America) has launched a big new project with YouTube. It's a channel, and...

Microsoft is to drop the Windows Live branding with Windows 8 and Windows RT [CNET]...

Video link [via Buzzfeed]...

Courts are tired of copyright lawsuits choking their dockets. Consider, for example, the porno company with little to gain from the courts beyond an opportunity to personally identify downloaders--a d...

New York magistrate judge Gary Brown blasted copyright trolls Frederic Abramson and Aaron Kotzker, who were acting on behalf of pornographers Malibu Media and K-Beech, delivering a 26-page Order &...

Bruce Schneier comments on an NYT report on cybercrime that shows that there's just not much money to be had in being a ripoff artist. Dinei Florncio and Cormac Herley wrote: A cybercrime where profit...

Our thanks go to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email. Take a closer look at G-Shock Watches from Watchismo. These are limited and special editions...

The British Council has posted a fabulous trove of CC-licensed, downloadable "cultural propaganda" videos commissioned during WWII to "refute the idea that ours was a country stuck in the past." Durin...

Madcap science fiction paragon Paul Di Filippo's column in the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction takes the form of a short story demonstrating a new (to me) potential consequence of lifetime-based co...

Artist Mitch O'Connell created this online gallery of 100 disturbing clown images....

In the wake of a UK Parliamentary committee report that described Rupert Murdoch as "not fit" to run a major corporation, a powerful US senator has reached out to the judge presiding over an inquiry i...

The February 1960 issue of Popular Science has an article titled "Car-Hungry Poles Build 'Em from Junk." On the far side of the Iron Curtain, the smell and glitter of brand-new cars and auto showrooms...

Gareth says: Today was an exciting day at the MAKE offices as we cracked open the first case of “School’s Out, our next special issue. This issue is very special as it’s devoted to k...

You could bring this "party stopper" on a plane and break 3 rules at the same time! "Precision made by skilled German craftsmen... It looks like a $10 item, yet Thoresen's price is just $2.98...

You could bring this "party stopper" on a plane and break 3 rules at the same time! "Precision made by skilled German craftsmen... It looks like a $10 item, yet Thoresen's price is just $2.98. (Thanks...

I'm incredibly chuffed to learn that the Japanese edition of Little Brother is up for this year's Seiun award, along with Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, Mieville's The City & the City, Wilson's Chrono...

[Video Link] (Via Arbroath)...

[Video Link] The DEA promises "a full review" for forgetting that they had locked a man in a dark 5 x 5 x 10 holding cell for five days without food or water. The man survived by drinking his own urin...

[Video Link] The DEA promises "a full review" for forgetting that they had locked a man in a dark 5 x 5 x 10 holding cell for five days without food or water. The man survived by drinking his own urin...

Here's a video of professional whittler Chris Lubkemann, author of The Little Book of Whittling. He says, "I started carving these things in the summer of 1966 . and I can honestly say in 45-and-a-hal...

Barry sez, "How awesome is this treasure trove of emails, documents, files et. all placed online by the NY Fed? Some of the emails between Lehman execs are laughable naive, silly, hubristic, childish...

Winter the Artist's Link/Charlie Brown shirt design, entitled "A Hero named..." is up for vote on Threadless. A Hero named... (via Super Punch)...

From the Happy Accident Department: Last year, I received an email titled "found your wife's wallet on ventura walking." My heart skipped a beat because my wife and I didn't even know it was missing (...

In 2010, I posted an item about a family that built a 180-square-foot shack on a 5-acre property in British Columbia. Today, Tammy told me that they are selling the cabin and the property. The asking ...

Pressure Printing has posted pictures of the creation of Coop's new Memento Mori print, which is limited to 25 copies. The metal printing plate is beautiful!...

An epic four-part documentary on the global financial crisis from PBS Frontline is now available to view in entirety online....

Astrobetter: It's like Lifehacker, but for astronomers. Although, frankly, I think a lot of the tips and tricks would apply just as well to other branches of science. Learn how to talk about your rese...

Mike from Mother Jones sends us a link to the magazine's coverage of yesterday's May Day protests: "Mother Jones reporter was close at hand, and got disturbing photos and video of Oakland Police offic...

REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov A Russian communist holds placards with portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin during a rally to celebrate International Workers' Day, or Labor Day, in Moscow on May 1, 2...

Personally, I'm about to sprain something from rolling my eyes so hard at all the hand-wringing news stories about how the Internet is disconnecting us from other people and making us more lonely. So ...

Cue up the Yakity Sax! In case you missed it, there have been a number of Boing Boing posts of late documenting outrageous TSA incidents: • A terminal in Newark airport was evacuated because the...

ROFLcon, the biennial extravaganza of deranged internet culture, takes place this weekend in Cambridge, Mass. The third such event, there'll be panels about memes, microfame, gaming and art, with a ke...

Earlier this week, the Smithsonian National Zoo live-tweeted their most recent attempt to knock up a giant panda. You can read the whole thing at Storify. And, seriously people, you should read it. I ...

Jake Von Slatt tells Boing Boing, "I got an email this morning from Flaminio Bovino, a young Italian designer who though I might like this amazing blimp lamp he made. He was correct!"...

Etsy seller Steampunk101's GOLIATHON is a truly shitkicking steampunk Nerfgun mod, though that craftspersonship doesn't come cheap: $350! What happens when you weaponize all the horsepower of a full-s...

Martin Howard sent us the latest addition to his stupendous antique typewriter collection, an 1895 Ford: The Ford typewriter is a striking machine with its beautiful ornate grill and gracefully integr...

Former Boing Boing guestblogger and all-round* happy mutant Craig Engler sez, Weighthacker.com is a new site for geeks who want to lose weight and get fit. It takes the latest science and research abo...

[Video Link] A student modified this gym machine's CPU to play the theme song from Portal. Modding unlikely machines to play Portal is kind of a thing! (thanks, jennybean42!)...

Video Link (thanks, Tara McGinley!)...

Information design wizard Jess Bachman has an epic infographic out today on the history of the Wu-Tang Clan. "It's so large (14,000 px) i had to break it into three parts," Jess explains. "The vital s...

Nikki Araguz of Wharton, Texas (population 9,000) is suing the town where she and her husband lived over workers compensation benefits she was denied because is transgender. Her husband Thomas Araguz,...

Former prosecutor turned novelist Allison Leotta has a blog where she reviews recent episodes of Law and Order: SVU, rating them for their technical accuracy based on her own experience prosecuting se...

Via the BB Submitterator, BB reader rbrammer says: The Sikh Coalition just released the FlyRights app. Its a smart phone app that gives travelers who believe theyve been the victim of discrimination b...

One of my fondest memories of the early days of bOING bOING (the print zine) was handing a bOING bOING Kata Sutra T-Shirt (no longer available but you can see it here) to board game designer Steve Jac...

One of my fondest memories of the early days of bOING bOING (the print zine) was handing a bOING bOING Kata Sutra T-Shirt (no longer available but you can see it here) to board game designer Steve Jac...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane...

This video shows Shapeways user EYEDEA with his prototype hand-cranked programmable, 3D printed kalimba sequencer: "Pegs can be set to produce different 16-step sequences of 5 tones." 3D Printed K5 Pr...

Over at our sponsor Intel's MyLifeScoop site, I wrote about my favorite mobile games like Dungeon Raid and Kingdom Rush! I played a lot of video games when I was in my 20s. When I had kids I no longer...

[Video Link] A sign mounted on a gondola ride in Henan Province in China warns people born in the 1990s to refrain from having sex in the cars. "Following numerous complaints, authorities were apparen...

Patricia Krentcil, shown here, was arrested after she brought her 5-year-old daughter along with her to a tanning salon. Ms. Krentcil says she did not put the girl into a tanning booth. Her daughter r...

Ken Macleod writes, "Over two hundred years ago, reformer Jeremy Bentham tried to design a prison he called the Panopticon - where wardens could at all times observe prisoners, while unobserved themse...

Photo: WHO/Jim Holmes  On May 31st, the World Health Organization marks World No Tobacco Day. This years theme: tobacco industry interference. For evidence of that interference, we need look no f...

Today in brilliant ideas one is sure one had first (but didn't, obviously): text-only Instragram. [via Daring Fireball]...

An aggressive dog's death sentence was commuted by the sentencing judge to life imprisonment Tuesday: wolf hybrid Chief will spend the rest of his days guarding Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Fe...

Locus Magazine has announced the winners of its annual Locus Award poll, a popular choice award for science fiction and fantasy. As always, it's a great guide to some of the best genre material from t...

AP: "An elephant named Shanthi at the Smithsonian's National Zoo is developing her musical talents by playing a harmonica with her trunk."...

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Join Tom the Dancing Bug's new exclusive INNER HIVE and get exclusive access, stuff, and other stuff! Click HERE for information, on the Tom the Dancing Bug website. Do this!...

Heritage Auctions' Natural History & Fine Minerals Signature Auction will take place in New York on May 20. The items include a number of beautiful fossils, casts, and other natural artifacts. See...

Congrats to Lenore and Windell of Evil Mad Science Labs on quitting their dayjobs to pursue Evil Mad Science on a fulltime basis. You are an inspiration to us all....

The Artisans Asylum in Somerville Massachusetts is holding a class called Project Hexapod. Their mission is to build this car-sized two-person hexapod robot and ride it through town in about four mont...

Laptops issued to students by the Portland, Maine school boards will come with censorware that watches all their clicks and attempts to prevent them from visiting social media sites, even when working...

CaptainValor gives Jonathan Coulton's delightfully filthy "First of May" song an enthusiastic American sign language interpretation with two backup signers. This is the gesture-set that JoCo's materia...

Watch the Price is Right today! Boing Boing pal Drew Carey very kindly invited me to attend a taping of The Price is Right while I was going through chemo, because the experience of attending a TPIR t...

An update to the saga of Marty's dad's collection of handmade wild west whisky bottles: they've been acquired by the Autry National Center. They'll be part of a 2013 special exhibition on the wild wes...

Stuart Millard on the demented fantasy world of Hulk Hogan. [Frantic Planet via Charles Wheeler] Old wrestlers come from a world where theres no such thing as a lie, just a work, where the faces and h...

Thanks to Endotoxin's comment on...

On May 1, 2012, at 10:51 PM, Matthew XXXXXX wrote: Hey. Love your site. The sentiment of the "Demolish Serious Culture" image appearing on your site is repulsive; it's worse if it's intended to be iro...

David Melson writes that police arrested and jailed a man Friday for using real money. A clerk at Quik Mart, South Cannon Boulevard, notified police after the marker used to detect counterfeit bills d...

Facebook will launch an initial public offering on May 18, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal (and summarized here at the AP, for those who aren't registered WSJ users). Some of th...

Filet mignon served in restaurants is often, in fact, an agglomeration of scraps of lesser beef, welded together with Meat Glue. [ABC] Terje took powder and dusted it liberally over the meat pieces. T...

LOL, kinda. Video Link (thanks, John Battelle)...

"Delta is the first airline to try its hand at refining oil," reports Heidi Moore at the public radio program Marketplace. An indicator of things to come?...

Facebook announced today that the social network's 161 million members in the United States will be encouraged to begin displaying "organ donor status" on their pages, along with birth dates and schoo...

At Oakland North, John C. Osborn has created a series of graphics that visually explain the policies of the Oakland Police Department and the California Penal Code that are supposed to guide how polic...

Henry Wolf filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court against BMW North American and Corbin-Pacific, Inc., claiming that the "ridged seat" on his bike gave him priapism, a medical consisted in which t...

Virgin Atlantic first class passengers may soon find the frozen head of Sir Richard Branson floating in their cold drinks....

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane...

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane...

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters A protester holds a Guy Fawkes masked teddy bear during May Day demonstrations in Los Angeles. Below, more photos from demonstrations around the world today in support of worker...

My friend Kevin Kelly (co-founder of Wired and founder of Cool Tools) is currently touring Asia and posting lots of wonderful photos of his travels. You have not lived till you've had this Chinese des...

This 2008 Kid Koala turntable performance of "Drunk Trumpet" in San Antonio's Revolution Room isn't just a kick ass piece of music (though it is that), it's also some kind of awesome hand-ballet. I co...

Samaritan Magazine has a fun article here about Henna Heals, a charity based in Toronto, Canada that offers a free service to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy: beautiful henna designs applied t...

[Video Link] Brendon Grimshaw lives alone (with some giant turtles) on the island of Moyenne in the Indian Ocean. The spry gent reminds me of Tom Neale, who wrote a book I love called an Island to One...

Two weeks after historical fiction writer Anne Clinard Barnhill's debut novel was released, she was diagnosed with stage 3 endometrial cancer. She writes about how the diagnosis changed her, and about...

Françoise Mouly is one of my heroes. She and her husband Art Spiegelman published RAW, an astounding large-format comic book that was a big inspiration to me when I started bOING bOING as a print...

Almost as much fun as the "Unicorn Chaser" plane Boing Boing named for Virgin America airlines! A passenger looks out of an Airbus A330-300 aircraft of Taiwan's Eva Airlines, decorated with Hello Kitt...

Ted sez, "The recent Charles Dickens bicentenary was widely celebrated, and the 100th anniversaries of the births of John Cage and Woody Guthrie promise to be major events in 2012. But last week, pion...

Stanley Krippner, 79, is a parapsychologist loved by believers and skeptics alike. He's been honored with lifetime achievement awards from the mainstream American Psychological Association yet ESP res...

Cycling Hipsters, if you were truly worth your ironic sideburns and artisanal grease stains, you'd abandon that fixie and mount one of these bad boys. The Smithsonian honors National Bike Month with a...

Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!...

Amateur astrophotographers are hacking together sophisticated telescopes enabling them to track and document orbiting satellites, including spy satellites. For example, they recently recorded the Nati...

There is to be an Alan Partridge movie. Alan, for those not in the know, is the vain, mean-spirited, emotionally broken protagonist of a pitch-black British comedy series--think David Brent with notes...

Amanda Fucking Palmer's next album is a big, super-duper extravanganza, with lots of bells and whistles funded by Kickstarter. She wants $100K. She's at 258K as of this morning. And I just kicked in: ...

Wow. From the 1970 book "ABC Science Experiments" by Harry Milgrom and Donald Crews. You can pick up a copy used on Amazon or ABE. More scans at Toys and Techniques....

Here's an excerpt from a book released today, called Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion: The TV Series, the Movies, the Comic Books and More. Joss Whedons importance in contemporary pop culture can h...

Michael Geist sez, The U.S. Trade Representative released its annual Special 301 Report [an annual enemies list of countries judged not to be doing enough to police US copyrights] yesterday, unsurpris...

God was arrested in Montgomery County, Ohio. Apparently, God, aka Jamie Calloway, 33, allegedly stalked a corrections officer she knew from a previous period in jail. For more of Calloway, check out h...

DDB Brazil's poster campaign for the art school at the Museu de Arte de So Paulo displays famous painters who appear to have been dissected, revealing organs depicted in their iconic painting styles. ...

[Video Link] The YouTube comments are interesting: "Japanese TV station would like to use your video. Please contact.." "Swedish Webb TV-channel would like to use your video." "Please contact ...

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reports that his 79-year-old mother-in-law triggered a TSA pornoscanner at Washington Reagan airport last week, and was then asked by a TSA officer to explain what was...

8 Bit Spaghetti documents Kyle's project to scratchbuild an 8-bit transistor-transistor logic computer. He's embarked on the project to teach himself more about how computers work. Judging from the im...

Cartoonist Mark Anderson has a neat tutorial that shows you how to draw a cartoon version of R2D2....

[Video Link] Lori Cuthbert, editor-in-chief of Discovery News, shot a video of her recent ride on the Shanghai maglev train, which has a top speed of 270 mph. You can't really tell how fast it's going...

Meet proto-hipster LeRoy Jackson (Airman 2/C), father of the art movement that lead to yarn-bombing, lego-building repair, space invader tile mosaics, and other forms of guerrilla urban art. How to us...

Media coverage of successfully Kickstarted projects sometimes makes it look like an easy source of funds for any old half-baked idea. Nope. [Buzzfeed]...

The long-running UK Parliamentary investigation into the NewsCorp newspapers' practice of hacking emails and voicemails has wound down, and delivered a final, damning report. In it, the cross-party Pa...

Ian Austen at the NYT: "Research in Motion unveiled Tuesday morning the new BlackBerry 10 phone and operating system that the company hopes will be its salvation, in a form that looked quite rough aro...

"Tax Me, for F@%&s Sake!," Stephen King's op-ed in The Daily Beast was published on April 30, but it's perfect for May Day: The Koch brothers are right-wing creepazoids, but theyre giving right-w...

Paul Hiebert on a state-sanctioned injection center that reduces the harm caused by drug addiction. [The Awl] Located in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastsideoften called Canada's poorest postal cod...

Video link. But avoid the latest one for Prometheus, which gives too much away....

Alexis Madrigal and BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti discuss the copyright issues surrounding cute animal pictures: "Users of [other] sites surface photos that in some cases have been shared around the Intern...

David Ng is a geneticist, writer, and creator of The Candy Hierarchy. Read more by him at McSweeneys and right here. Lately, Ive been writing about the philosophy of science and thereby finding myself...

This 3D printed electromechanical punchcard reader is but one component of an ambitious project to build a whole, functional 3D printed computer. It's the brainchild of Chris Fenton from the NYC Resis...

Last September, Moosie made a kick-ass soda-bottle toy jetpack for a flight-obsessed toddler: Step 1: Spray plastic bottles with plastic primer (I used Krylon Fusion). Let dry. Step 2: Spray bottles w...

If you like electronic music, there's a great listening party for Kubbi's new album "Sleet" going on right now. The album drops after the listen through finishes at Kubbi's BandCamp pagewhere you can ...

The aptly named Productiveslacker (with a kick-ass bio! "a seasonal cast member at WDW and I aspire to become an Imagineer. I am a painter and a t-shirt designer") made these boss R2D2 shorts herself....

Franceso sez, "Rick Hamel, an American RC airplanes builder, created the Mythical Beast, a radio controlled fire-breathing dragon. It's powered by a Jetcat P80 Kerostart turbine, is over 7 feet long a...

On her wonderful page of "Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers" the game developer and recreational code-cracker Elonka Dunin describes the Voynich Manuscript, which is written in an as-yet uncrackable c...

A New Aesthetic eruption I caught yesterday off Brick Lane in east London: this LCD adverscreen displaying rotating, chiding public safety messages beneath a CCTV camera, nestled among the graffiti-da...

I hope Bernard wasn't upset by the addendum to his grave marker....

Phil Torrone interviewed Andrew (bunnie) Huang about the end of his company Chumby, and what he's working on now. What are you currently working on? I recently saw an open-source hardware radiation de...

Impromptu tanning salonTwo 13-year-old girls sunbathing in a rural road were struck by a car Sunday. Police in Beaver County, PA., said that the pair were in fair condition at Pittsburgh's Children's ...

The Guardian's Deborah Orr is probably right that the Marks and Spencer "shwopping" initiative is "an ugly word for a dubious enterprise", but I am rather taken with this promotion for the program. M&...

[Video Link] Special effects are used here in an attempt to artificially enhance the credibility of candidate Mitt Romney. I hope the public isn't fooled into taking him more seriously because of this...

The Olympics are still months away, the surface-to-air missiles are still tucked safely in their beds, but already our talented signwriters are practicing night and day for the 100m passive-aggressive...

"When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things, except for my Kitchen Kong Gorilla Whisk." -- 1 Corinthians ...

A British court ordered that internet service providers must block access to link-sharing site The Pirate Bay. [BBC]...

Anil Dash on why you can't trust the tech press to tell you about the tech industry. The primary example: rumors of a Google-based blog commenting system as if such a thing had not already lived and d...

Julie L. Mellby posts on Princeton University Library's Graphic Arts Collection blog about the Victorian "Change Packet," a little paper envelope that Victorian shopkeepers used to present customers' ...

Thank you for our sponsor ShanaLogic, sellers of handmade and independently designed durable goods, apparel, delightful gifts, and other fine products. Mother's Day in the US is coming up on May 13 an...

Thank you for our sponsor ShanaLogic, sellers of handmade and independently designed durable goods, apparel, delightful gifts, and other fine products. Mother's Day in the US is coming up on May 13 an...

Thomas Haller Buchanan shared this stunning illustration by the great Roy Krenkel: "The Golden Age of Pâtaliputra of the Gupta Empire." Krenkel drew science fiction and fantasy for EC Comics, and...

Some WiFi-connected Samsung TVs can be put into an endless restart loop by sending invalid new-remote-added messages to them. Best part: the researcher who discovered this couldn't report it, because ...

I was on a panel with the amazing multimedia artist Jeff Lieberman at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month. His latest work (which he created in collaboration with a...

Transmitted from the "Just Say No" 1980s, this delightfully psychedelic anti-pot public service message....

Here's an excerpt from the new book Learning from the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease by Rafe Sagarin. Despite the billions of doll...

LIFE has posted a powerful series of rare and unpublished photographs shot by William Vandivert, 33, the first Western photographer inside Adolph Hilter's Fhrerbunker. Vandivert was on the scene short...

On April 19 we announced a competition in conjunction with the release of The Mongoliad Trilogy, by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and five other authors. The rules were simple: write a short story in wh...

The new issue of Wax Poetics magazine is all about Prince and his extended family. Inspired by that regal blast, electrofunk label Citinite put together this fantastic "Minnseapolis Special" mix. It f...

In Sunday's NYT, EL Doctorow (no relation) with a remarkable polemic on how the USA has spent the past 12 years dismantling any justification for "American Execptionalism" with a series of domestic an...

Rose Kallal is a New York-based artist/musician who creates immersive 16mm film installation using multiple projectors. This entrancing video is a recording of "Implicate, Explicate," a film for three...

Rose Kallal is a New York-based artist/musician who creates immersive 16mm film installation using multiple projectors. This entrancing video is a recording of "Implicate, Explicate," a film for three...

Above left is 62-year-old Bianca Riveron's lung x-ray showing a block spot that physicians told her was likely cancer. For decades, she had suffered from a constant cough and difficulty breathing. A f...

In the US, it's not uncommon for thieves to steal copper wire and plumbing from homes. But in Slavkov, Czech Republic, a gang made off with a ten ton metal footbridge. This beats the 4 ton bridge stol...

From "A Wearable Sensor for Unobtrusive, Long-term Assessment of Electrodermal Activity" (by Poh, M.Z., Swenson, N.C., Picard, R.W. in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol.57, no.5), a cha...

Carnegie Mellon University's Auditory Lab has a huge collection of high-quality audio recordings of random sounds—from a marble dropped onto sheet metal, to bubble wrap being popped, to crumplin...

[Video Link] A terrific trailer for Portal 2 DLC: Perpetual Testing Initiative, coming May 2, 2012. (Via What the Christ)...

Electricity is generated at power plants. You know that already. But to really understand how it gets to your house—and why you can count on it getting there reliably—you have to understan...

Heather Sitarzewski says: I decided during this past summer that I wanted to make a fun bento every day for my son's lunches this school year. I dug around online for a bit to see ideas and found some...

[Video Link] Young Ezra saw Nirvan Mullick's Caine's Arcade video and was inspired to make this neat cardboard pinball machine, using Makedo cardboard fasteners. Ezra's cardboard pinball machine...

Events like this make an excellent case study for palaeozoologist Darren Naish's argument that we need to find a new nickname for dromaeosaurids—one that is not already being used by a significa...

The heavy metal band All Shall Perish and the president of their label, Nuclear Blast, were horrified to discover that a copyright troll called World Digital Rights had filed a suit against 180 music ...

Jenny Hart, proprietor of Sublime Stitching, likes to collect books about embroidery. In this recent essay on her blog, Jenny writes about Constance Howard, one of her favorite embroiderers. Jenny has...

At the Brain Pickings blog, Maria Popova has some amazing images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during its 22 years of operation. I love this one. It's such a great reminder of the time scales o...

How you read matters as much as what you read. That's because nothing is written in a vacuum. Every news story or blog post has a perspective behind it, a perspective that shapes what you are told and...

Southlandification and his brood perform a high-Wayne's-World orthodox Bohemian Rhapsody ceremony every day on the way to school: It has become a morning habit to sing Bohemian Rhapsody on the way to ...

A characteristically great Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal installment explores the hidden pitfalls of extreme utilitarianism. I just re-read Starship Troopers and was once again struck by Heinlein'...

Gone to Amerikay is a masterfully told tear-jerker of a graphic novel that tells the stories of multiple generations of Irish immigrants to New York, skilfully braided together. There's a storyline fr...

Stephen Thompson's nonfiction project—publishing his 1976 high school journal as a blog and book—soon attracted the attention of a novelty book publisher. But he is instead kickstarting it...

The ShopBot is a low-cost CNC, or computer controlled router. Think of it as a large-scale milling machine. It is great for small-scale production runs of machine parts in wood or metal. A friend of m...

Sometimes enough is enough, and memoirist Paul Carr exemplifies this maxim. His previous books - Bringing Nothing To The Party and The Upgrade - were tales told from the bottom of a champagne glass. T...

The UK Border Authority has ordered Heathrow Airport's management to stop handing out leaflets apologising for the gigantic customs queues at its terminals and advising them to contact UKBA to complai...