Selasa, 26 April 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Chemistry kit with no chemicals

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 10:39 PM PDT

The liability-phobic dilution of kids' science has reached its apotheosis with "CHEMISTRY 60": a chemistry kit that promises "60 fun activities with no chemicals." Kids are expected to supply the chemicals from their parents' kitchen cupboards. As Sean at Make points out, this is a moderately clever move on the part of the manufacturer, as most of their competition have such inoffensive materials that this is a kind of end-run around the overlawyers, bubblewrapped status-quo for kids' science kits.
I'm certain many Newscripts readers learned to love chemistry during childhood as they experimented with science kits in tin boxes that contained real chemicals. The Chemical Heritage Foundation, in Philadelphia, has a wonderful collection of those kits. A recent article by Rosie Cook in the group's spring 2010 Chemical Heritage Magazine mentions a number of such chemistry sets for kids, including Gilbert, Skil Craft, Handy Andy, and the Porter Chemcraft kits.

Like reader Paul Johns of Washington, D.C., who pointed out the "chemical-free" chemical kit to Newscripts, I had a chemistry set growing up, too. It had an alcohol lamp for heating up solutions. Imagine giving that to a nine year old today.

Chemistry Kit Chemophobia, Goof-proof Golf Balls

Russian corruption: crooked officials steal multi-billion-dollar company, $230M tax refund, then murder campaigning lawyer

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 10:33 PM PDT

Foreign Policy's got a chilling tell-all account of the crooked Russian tax-cops who engineered a law-office raid that ended with their criminal pals forging documents transferring a company to them, stealing a $230 million tax rebate, and murdering a partner at the firm who complained about it.

The piece is written by Jamison Firestone, who founded the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan. Firestone Duncan represented an investment firm called Hermitage Fund. In 2007, Russian Interior Ministry officers conducted a warrantless raid on the firm and stole Hermitage's corporate seals and internal documents, severely beating a lawyer who objected and landing him in hospital. The cops turned the seals and docs over to a criminal gang, who used them to forge documents that transferred title in Hermitage to them. They also forged $1 billion in fake liabilities, entitling them to a $230M tax rebate, which then also stole.

When Firestone's partner Sergei Magnitsky refused to back off and insisted on complaining to all levels of Russian officialdom, he was arrested by members of conspiracy, tortured and murdered in jail.

The more Sergei insisted on his testimony in sworn statements and in court, the more pressure Silchenko applied to him. He was put in a cell with eight inmates and only four beds so the detainees had to sleep in shifts. In December 2008, he was put in a cell with no heat and no windowpanes -- he nearly froze to death. Later, he was moved to another cell with no toilet, just a hole in the floor where the sewage overflowed.

After six months of this treatment, Sergei -- who went into detention a healthy 36-year-old man -- had lost 40 pounds. He developed pancreatitis and gallstones and needed medical attention. In July 2009, Sergei was moved to Butyrka, a maximum-security facility that had no medical facilities. At Butyrka, Silchenko repeatedly denied medical care to Sergei, hoping that it would break him. Sergei remained defiant and continued to write complaints about his innocence and the pressure applied to him. But nearly one year after his arrest, on the night of Nov. 16, 2009, he became gravely ill. He was transferred to the intensive-care wing of Matrosskaya Tishina detention center, but instead of receiving medical attention, he was put in a straitjacket, chained to a bed, and left by himself in an isolation cell for one hour and 18 minutes while doctors waited right outside the door until they were certain he was dead.

Russia's Crime of the Century

Unbeaten by Rain: charitable poster to raise money for Japan's new orphans

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 01:29 AM PDT


My friend Yasuko is a Japanese woman living in London. She was haunted and moved by the recent disasters in Japan, and decided to undertake a fundraiser for the people who were hurt and displaced by the tsunami, quake, and nuclear disaster. She translated Miyazawa Kenji's beautiful poem "Unbeaten By Rain" into English, and produced a beautiful poster with a lovely typographic treatment of the poem. She's selling the poster as a fundraiser for £20; all net proceeds go to Ashinaga, a 40-year-old Tokyo nonprofit that provides "education-focused financial and emotional support to children who have a parent/guardian with a serious disability, or who have lost one or both parents/guardians due to illness, accident, disaster, or suicide."

Unbeaten by Rain

Circular carbon fiber loom

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 10:24 PM PDT

Lexus has developed a circular loom for weaving 3D objects out of carbon fiber. It's a pretty mesmerizing process.

Video of Lexus' 360-Degree Carbon Fiber Loom (Thanks, Alpacaman!)

First peek at Sony's new twin Android tablets, coming in Fall, 2011

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 10:05 PM PDT

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As noted earlier, at a press event in Japan today, Sony announced two new tablets: S1 (codename), "optimized for rich media entertainment," and S2 (codename), "ideal for mobile communication and entertainment." The devices will be offered for sale this fall, and will run on Android 3.0 with WiFi and WAN (3G/4G) compatibility. From the press release:

S1 has a 9.4-inch display for enjoying the web and rich content on a large screen. Its off-center of gravity design realizes stability and ease of grip as well as a sense of stability and lightness, offering comfortable use for hours.

S2 has two 5.5-inch displays that can be folded for easy portability. In contrast to existing tablets, its unprecedented dual screen presentation and usability allows its displays to be combined and used as a large screen or for different functions such as playing video on one screen while showing control buttons on the other.

More details and a preview video at the Sony blog. And more images provided by Sony of the S1 and S2 below in this Boing Boing post. Click any image to view larger size.

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Sony mobile event: two Android 3.0 tablets on the way

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 09:20 PM PDT

Among the revelations at a Sony press event in Japan today, news that the electronics giant will launch two new Android 3.0-based tablets: a media tablet, "S1"; and a dual-screen, foldable "S2." There's a liveblog at the WSJ. And Martyn Williams in Tokyo is live-tweeting.

Wikileaked Gitmo files: Al-Qaeda assassin "worked for MI6"

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 09:23 PM PDT

The Guardian, digging into Guantánamo-related documents released by Wikileaks, reports that an Algerian al-Qaeda operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence. His Gitmo "assessment file" shows that his CIA captors knew he'd worked as an informant for MI6 and Canada's Secret Intelligence Service for more than three years, "and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers."

Japan: TEPCO floods containment vessels of 3 reactors at Fukushima No. 1

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT

In Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers have begun "the unprecedented and potentially risky measure" of flooding the containment vessels of three troubled Fukushima nuclear reactors with water. The Asahi Shimbun reports that this is the first known attempt ever in the world to saturate an entire containment vessel with water in order to cool the pressure vessels inside, and in turn, cool the reactor cores within.

In related news, TEPCO has released to the public for the first time a map of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant detailing radiation levels throughout the site.

The map released Sunday shows high levels of radiation in different parts of the site, including 300 millisieverts per hour from debris near the No. 3 reactor, the outer building of which was damaged in a hydrogen explosion more than a month ago. The map, which shows radiation levels at about 230 locations within the nuclear plant complex, indicates the dangers of working at the plant for long periods.

A TEPCO spokesperson said the information revealed by the map would not affect the timetable for stabilizing the reactors that was released by the firm this month.

"It'll take more than six months to remove all the debris from the site. Data included in the survey map were taken into consideration when the timetable [for stabilizing the reactors] was compiled," the spokesperson said.

(Daily Yomiuri)

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Chernobyl disaster, 25 year later: commemoration around the world

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:52 PM PDT

It's early morning on April 26 in Kiev, Ukraine, where the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened exactly a quarter century ago. On this day in 1986, reactor number four at the plant exploded, setting off a catastrophe that still reverberates far beyond the 30-kilometer exclusion zone.

Demonstrations are taking place throughout Europe. In Tokyo, anti-TEPCO protests mark the occasion and its parallel to the still-unfolding disaster at Fukushima. The "liquidators" who were sent in to clean up the radioactive mess at Chernobyl back in 1986 received medals Monday from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, but controversy still surrounds the health impact of the dangerous work they performed. The so-called "sarcophagus" surrounding the disaster site in Kiev is leaking, and world leaders have pledged "to provide $780 million for the construction of a shelter designed to house the toxic remains for another century." But even if and when that new container is finally in place, the radioactive mess will remain active—and hazardous—for many thousands of years more.

Maggie pointed to this recent report from Chernobyl for PBS NewsHour by Miles O'Brien— it's embedded above in this post, and worth another view on this day. [video link, or watch on PBS.org, photo gallery].

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Photo above by Miles O'Brien, who explains: "Scene from the former day care facility in the town of Pripyat — the company town for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The gas mask in this shot was there as we found it but I suspect it was placed there by a journalist or activist at some point over the years to make an obvious point even more obvious."

 


Buy your own Al Qaeda-approved OFFICIAL terrorist watch

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:53 PM PDT

casio_F91w-ana.jpegDon't forget, folks, that you too can own the Casio F91W, the wristwatch considered by America's crack anti-terrorist experts as a sure sign of terrorist affiliations. Just $12! They are also available in a range of classic terrorist colors such as lavender and pumpkin. (Don't worry if they're sold out: you can always go on the terrorist watch list.)

A Native American woman in Iceland

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:39 PM PDT

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Researchers at the University of Iceland have discovered genetic evidence that suggests at least one woman from North America may have traveled to Europe 1000 years ago.

Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland's deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders -- roughly 350 in total -- carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans. "We figured it was a recent arrival from Asia," says Helgason. "But we discovered a much deeper story than we expected."

Helgason's graduate student, Sigridur Sunna Ebenesersdottir, found that she could trace the matrilineal sequence to a date far earlier than when the first Asians began arriving in Iceland. In fact, she found that all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.

For now, the story of the lone American Indian woman taken on a Viking ship to Iceland remains a hypothesis. To prove it will require finding the same genetic sequence in older Amerindian remains elsewhere in the world -- family members, as it were, of that 1,000-year-old woman who ended up so far from home.

Via Indian Country

Class action lawsuit filed against Apple in US over location tracking issue

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:13 PM PDT

Bloomberg was first to report today that two iPad/iPhone users have filed a class action lawsuit accusing Apple of invasion of privacy and computer fraud, and of "secretly recording movements of iPhone and iPad users."

Vikram Ajjampur, an iPhone user in Florida, and William Devito, a New York iPad customer, sued April 22 in federal court in Tampa, Florida, seeking a judge's order barring the alleged data collection.

The complaint cited a report last week by two computer programmers claiming that Apple's iOS4 operating system is logging latitude-longitude coordinates along with the time a spot is visited. The programmers said Apple devices are collecting about a year's worth of location data. Apple hasn't commented on the matter since the April 20 report was released.

The case is Ajjampur v. Apple Inc., 11-cv-00895, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida (Tampa).

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Here's a copy of the lawsuit (PDF), via this post by Brian Chen at Wired's Gadget Lab.

CNET has a roundup of posts on the iOS location tracking freakout.

 


New Zealand's rammed-through copyright law includes mass warrantless surveillance and publication of accused's browsing habits

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 01:37 AM PDT

Juha sez, "It looks like the 'watered-down' new New Zealand copyright law will lead to Internet users' browsing habits being covertly monitored for infringement. Ignorance that a work was copyright is no defence according to the story and accidental infringers may find their web surfing habits exposed for all to see as the copyright tribunal rulings will be made public."
Mr [Vikram Kumar, chief executive of lobby group InternetNZ] says people who view copyright material on YouTube and other websites that don't distribute content between members might be harder to trace. But he says copyright owners can seek IP addresses from website owners.

He says they also have access to "more covert methods" for getting those now all-important IP addresses. "

Copyright change about more than idle threats

Visit to '80s animatronic rock band warehouse

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:47 PM PDT

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Casey Paquet says:

My buddy Allen and I had the opportunity last week to visit Creative Engineering, Inc. in Orlando -- better known as the birthplace of the Rock-afire Explosion, the animatronic band you may remember from Showbiz Pizza Place in the '80s. In an unassuming (and unmarked) warehouse smack in the middle of downtown sits a huge time capsule, once home to over 300 employees and now a relic of rotting robots and shattered dreams. The owner, Aaron Fechter, is the only remaining "employee" and a walk through the main floor and basement of the warehouse is like walking through a ghost town that was vacated in 1984, everything left just as it was the day the doors were closed.

Aaron was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the enormous warehouse, which was equal parts entertaining and depressing. The highlight of the visit was getting to see the Rock-afire Explosion (the very one that all of the original show tapes were programmed on) perform -- Aaron handed us a huge document containing all of the show tapes, letting us choose what we wanted to hear and playing us some of his favorites. I can't quite explain the surreal nature of the visit, seeing a robot band that I haven't seen in 20 years up close and personal is a bit unsettling, not to mention seeing parts of said band strewn about in various states of disrepair across thousands of square feet of dark warehouse.

For your viewing pleasure, I have provided links to a Flickr set of nearly 100 photos throughout both levels of the warehouse and a series of videos. I've done my best to let you know what you're looking at in the captions, so enjoy!


Visit to 80s animatronic rock band warehouse

Small prize, big reward

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:33 PM PDT

Win a prize! Impress your friends! A recent study suggests that even small, monetarily worthless rewards can inspire big competition when those rewards are highly visible within a group of potential competitors. Your grade-school teacher figured this out—think about the stickers you earned for good behavior. It also turns up in college football, where hard work on the field earns players stickers to put on their helmets.

BP Oil Spill: Scientists question seafood safety

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:28 PM PDT

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service says seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe to eat. And they aren't just making that up—there's test results that back up the decision. But a story at Scientific American explains that there's a lot of nuance and unanswered questions lingering. What unfolds is a great example of how the same data can look very different, depending on your perspective, and what you know about research methodology.

In the Sci Am story, several scientists outside NOAA explain why they continue to be skeptical of the safety of Gulf seafood. Some of their reasons are fairly obvious—there's still oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf waters, so a toxicology test from last month doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the shrimp you eat two months from now. But other problems are less apparent to the average American. Chief among these are the complications of interpreting safety of oil-exposed seafood. There's a lot in common here with the dose-to-risk comparisons that have people tied up in mental knots over nuclear energy. Worse, though, with oil exposure, it seems that there have been a lot of recent changes to the way we calculate acceptable risk—changes that tend to make us underestimate the threat.

To assess the risk posed by seafood containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are known carcinogens, most seafood risk assessments conducted after oil spills in the United States have followed an approach used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The acceptable risk level of cancer from seafood consumption is determined by the quantity of seafood the average individual consumes, the body weight of the average consumer, the average human lifespan, the length of exposure, and the concentration of the PAH benzopyrene. Using this approach, the lifetime cancer risk should be no greater than 1 in 1,000,000.

However, the FDA is now using a less rigorous standard than it did in 1990 - one that tends to underestimate how much seafood Gulf residents actually eat.

"For the Exxon Valdez, there was more awareness of high levels of seafood consumption in local populations," says Solomon. "They used local fish consumption rates to estimate what levels of contaminants were safe or would be excessive. In contrast, with the Gulf oil spill, FDA used national seafood consumption rates that don't reflect what people on the Gulf Coast are eating."

"The assumption that they're using [...] is not as protective of human health as the one that they used for the Exxon Valdez," says Solomon.

The current FDA risk assessment protocol is based on a 176-pound man eating four shrimp a week. That doesn't account for women or children, whose body weights are lower, let alone local seafood consumption along the Gulf Coast. "Nobody in the Gulf really eats four shrimp a week, so it's unrealistic the way they are assessing risk of consumption," says Shaw.

Reports of a new virus, "Stars," hitting Iran: son of Stuxnet?

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:31 PM PDT

The government of Iran said today it has been targeted by a new computer virus dubbed "Stars." From a blog post by Joris Evers for computer security firm Macafee:
Stars would be the second malware infestation targeted at Iran within a years time, following the discovery of Stuxnet in July last year.

Outside of the published news reports, McAfee has no information on "Stars" at this time. That's different from Stuxnet, where international cybersecurity companies knew of the malware and were able to investigate it through customary sharing of malware samples.

We currently have no way of verifying the attack the Iranian government is reporting, nor do we have any way of identifying who might be behind the attack or what the target could be.

(via Joseph Menn)

Evil ninjas terrorise Pittsburgh

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 05:10 PM PDT

pittsburghninjas.jpg A spate of mysterious crimes carried out by ninjas has left Pittsburghers annoyed and confused. In the latest event, a sword-wielding ninja smashed 11 cars in South Union Township, PA. and tried to stab a man who confronted him, say police. Santino Guzzo said he heard glass breaking, found the ninja hiding in a yard, and was cut in the hand during the ensuing ninja escape. "He was like a gazelle that just got attacked by a lion," Guzzo told the Pittsburgh Trib. "He got up and fell, and got up and fell. Then he jumped off a cliff."

Guzzo reported that he "did not move with the grace typically associated with a ninja" and that he therefore "will not live in fear of the ninja's return."

WTAE news, quoting neighbor Chelsey Cunningham, said the ninja also left behind "like, a fifth of liquor."

A few weeks ago in Scottdale, PA, a man was charged with child endangerment after leaving his 4-year old child at home alone. Police insist that Ross Hurst, 28, was dressed in ninja garb when approached. Hurst denies being a ninja and says it was all a misunderstanding.

"I wasn't playing ninja," Hurst told WPXI news. "I wasn't playing anything. I went out for a jog."

Not long ago, two sword-wielding ninjas robbed a gas station in Richland Township, PA, taking with them cash, cigarettes and lottery tickets.

"It did appear they were dressed like ninjas," said local police chief Robert Amman. Local businessman Rick Lekki reported that it happened just across from his bar.

"It's shocking. Things like that just don't happen out here. I just can't believe it happened," Lekki told a local news affilliate, narrowing his eyes as a menacing, discordant note escaped an unseen shakuhachi flute.

Max Mathews, electronic music pioneer, RIP

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 04:35 PM PDT


Electronic music pioneer Max V. Mathews died a few days ago at the age of 84. While at BELL Labs in the 1950s, Matthews developed MUSIC, the first popular computer program for generating sound. The multimedia visual programming language Max/MSP was named in part for Mathews. From Wikipedia:

-M 94715B7Ve Tbcayuxdami Aaaaaaacwtu Ohzu5Jwaad0 S400 Mathews84Violin In 1961, Mathews arranged the accompaniment of the song "Daisy Bell" for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others. Author Arthur C. Clarke was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce at the Bell Labs Murray Hill facility at the time of this remarkable speech synthesis demonstration and was so impressed that he later told Stanley Kubrick to use it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the climactic scene where the HAL 9000 computer sings while his cognitive functions are disabled.
Max Mathews, father of computer music and Stanford professor, dies at 84

Creepy handwritten notes of CIA psychologist who helped design US torture techniques for terror detainees

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:07 PM PDT

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Above: One of the items identified as notes produced by the infamous Dr. Bruce Jessen, a psychologist whose work was used to design the so-called "Enhanced interrogation techniques Program," which amounted to torture of "war on terror" detainees in custody of the CIA and Department of Defense. Truth-out.org published these a few weeks ago, but the Wikileaks dump of secret US documents on Guantánamo provide good reason to revisit. Dr. Jessen created this work as part of a US Air Force Survival Training study. You can download his handwritten and typed notes here in PDF, and a portion here in .zip.

Half of 2011's NYT issues contain stories sourced to Wikileaks

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:34 PM PDT

As we all know, there's been this thing going on for a while between the New York Times and Wikileaks. The NYT offers narrative and journalistic excellence, but existential issues have led it to a place of inordinate cosiness with official sources. On the other hand, Wikileaks uncovers facts no-one else seems to find, but is given to posting things on Twitter that are unbecoming of scientific journalists. So, how does one honor each of these institutions for their virtues, while making fun of their vices? The Atlantic's Caitlin Dickson shows that the best humor is latent, lurking in the numbers.

Joi Ito: new director of the MIT Media Lab

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:17 PM PDT

Congratulations to our pal Joi Ito who has just been named the new director of the MIT Media Lab! I can't wait to see how Joi's incredible vision, creativity, curiosity, and kindness impact the place. From John Markoff's article in the New York Times:
Images 2011 04 26 Science 26Lab Cnd 26Lab Cnd-Popup Mr. Ito... is neither a conventional Japanese technologist, nor your average college dropout.

Raised in both Tokyo and Silicon Valley, Mr. Ito was part of the first generation to grow up with the Internet. His career includes serving as a board member of Icann, the Internet's governance organization; becoming a "guild master" in the World of Warcraft online fantasy game; and more than a dozen investments in start-ups like Flickr, Last.fm and Twitter. In 1994 he helped establish the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan.

He was also an early participant in the open-source software movement and is a board member of the Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the development of the Firefox Web browse, as well as being the co-founder and chairman of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that has sought to create a middle ground to promote the sharing of digital information.

"The choice is radical, but brilliant," said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a University of California laboratory that pursues a similar research agenda to the Media Laboratory. "He can position the lab at the edge of change and propel it for a decade."

"Joichi Ito to Be Named Head of M.I.T. Media Lab"

Gitmo interrogators: Casio F-91W digital watch is back pocket hanky code for "I'm a terrorist"

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:51 PM PDT

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This item in the Guardian's coverage of the latest Wikileaks dump is not the first time I've heard that the Casio F-91W digital watch is thought to be "the sign of al-Qaida," and "a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantánamo Bay."

But like so much revealed by Wikileaks, when stuff like this is proven out in the State Department's own pen, the absurdity levels really spike:

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Briefing documents used to train staff in assessing the threat level of new detainees advise that possession of the F-91W - available online for as little as £4 - suggests the wearer has been trained in bomb making by al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

The report states: "The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bomb-making training courses in Afghanistan at which the students received instruction in the preparation of timing devices using the watch.

Actually, we've blogged about 'em right here at Boing Boing! Wait, twice! No, three times at least! Hello, Cuba.

Next: a global movement to show solidarity with detainees by wearing the F-91W?

Guantánamo Bay files: Casio wristwatch 'the sign of al-Qaida' (guardian.co.uk)

Slip N Snip Folding Scissors

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 09:45 AM PDT

botach_2154_425000815.gifI carry these little, folding scissors with me everywhere. They are very sharp, and fold and unfold very easily. They are also very powerful considering their size. Best of all they have a very slim (flat) profile in my pocket. I am an avid fisherman, and fish over lunch, on my way to work, etc and I always take these with me. I have found that they cut every type of line I use (according to my dentist, using your teeth is not advisable). They are also safer to hand to my kids to cut something, as opposed to having them fiddle with my Leatherman. As a daily carry item these are obviously not as versatile as a small multi-tool, but when cost is a factor (I often fish from a boat and have been known to lose items overboard) or you can't carry a knife, I highly recommend anyone consider these pocketable scissors. --Chris King Slip N Snip Folding Scissors $7 Don't forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!

Tim Heidecker Endorses Trumps

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:25 PM PDT

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Tim Heidecker, doing stand-up in LA: "You know that expression, 'don't sweat the small stuff?' Life is too short. You gotta worry about the big stuff. Government."

Video Link, and you can watch his full set here: part 1, part 2.

FBI raids home of actor accused of uploading "King's Speech," "Black Swan" to BitTorrent

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:18 PM PDT

David Kravets at Wired.com reports that FBI agents today raided the Los Angeles apartment of a Screen Actors Guild member suspected of being the first to upload to The Pirate Bay the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech, as well as Black Swan and other movies that were still in theaters.

Timothy Leary's 1985 software Mind Mirror

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:01 PM PDT


Images Covers Large 935800461-00 Here is bOING bOING patron saint Dr. Timothy Leary explaining Mind Mirror, the software he created in 1985 with Bob Dietz and Peter Van den Beemt. Published by Electronic Arts, Mind Mirror was a pop psychology role playing game where you could "try on" different personalities. The program was based on Tim's Harvard PhD thesis, "Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality." You can download the software for free from various places and run it using a DOS emulator, or check out the "Mind Mirror Profiler" variation for Facebook.

BuyEmails.org: Indian site services Internet scam artists

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 01:37 AM PDT

Brian Krebs has a good investigative piece on BuyEmails.org, an India-based website servicing Nigerian fraudsters and other Internet scam artists. They offer curiously targetted email lists ("6 million prospective work-at-home USA residents for just $99"), untraceable bulk email, and direct payment schemes from Nigerian banks, and (hilariously) they don't accept credit cards or Paypal because of all the fraud they've suffered. They also hold US patents on sending spam, but they lost one the first time they tried to use it against a competitor in a US court (the judge said that "sending and re-sending of spam until all of the mail is delivered" was "obvious"). The parent company of BuyEmails.org is Perfect Web Technologies Inc.
The site sells dozens of country-specific email lists. Other lists are for oddly specific groups. For example, you can buy a list of one million insurance agent emails for $250. 300 beans will let you reach 1.5 million farmers; $400 closes on 4 million real estate agents. Need to recruit a whole mess of money mules right away? No problem: You can buy the email addresses of 6 million prospective work-at-home USA residents for just $99. A list of 1,041,977 USA Seniors (45-70 years old) is selling for $325.

If you don't care much about who gets your emails, or if you want to target recipients based on their email provider, the price per address goes way down. Consider these offerings:

50 million AOL addresses: $500
30 million Hotmail addresses: $450
30 million Yahoo addresses: $400
5 million Gmail addresses: $350

Where Did That Scammer Get Your Email Address?

Topless teen terpsichore in Thailand turns into truly terrible "Taliban!" Twitter taunts

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 01:02 PM PDT

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Authorities in Thailand are freaking out over viral videos and photos of young women dancing without shirts at a traditional festival honoring Thai goddesses who are often depicted dancing without shirts.

Global Voices breaks it down.

The photos and videos of the three girls dancing bare breasted in Silom, Bangkok immediately went viral and generated intense debates on Thai culture and morality. The girls were slapped with a 500 Baht ($17) fine while the person who uploaded the video received a 100,000 Baht ($3,320) fine and a possible prison term for up to five years in violation of the Computer Crimes Act.

The Thai Ministry of Culture condemned the girls for "destroying the image" of Thailand and because of this issue, the Ministry will be issuing handbooks to educate the youth about Thai culture.

But opinions among civilian observers online varied:

Thailand's Twitter-based observers did not appear bothered about three near-naked school girls dancing in front of a huge crowd of drunk men.

And one blogger in the region went so far as to characterize over-reacting bureaucrats as "a bunch of Thai cultural Taliban." Them's fightin' words!

Thailand: Outrage Over Topless Teen Dancing (Global Voices, Mong Palatino)

Man dies in failed "human cannonball" stunt

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 12:04 PM PDT

The headline: "Human Cannonball Dies."
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