Senin, 22 November 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

1,000 sqft secret chamber discovered in Indian National Library

Posted: 22 Nov 2010 05:02 AM PST

NeilWalker sez, "The the Archaeological Survey of India discovered a mysterious hidden room while restoring the Indian National Library in Alipore. They know the room is large, around 1000 square feet, but can't find a way in. What's inside? Theories so far include skeletons (it was common practice among the British to 'wall up' offenders in 'death chambers' - lovely) or hidden treasures (the British were known to hide treasures in so called 'blind chambers'). My guess? Dust and stuff!"
"We've searched every inch of the first floor area that forms the ceiling of this enclosure for a possible trap door. But found nothing. Restoration of the building will remain incomplete if we are not able to assess what lies inside this enclosure," said deputy superintending archaeologist of ASI, Tapan Bhattacharya. "We've come across an arch on one side of the enclosure that had been walled up. Naturally speculations are rife," said another archaeologist.

Was it used as a punishment room by Hastings or one of the Lt Governors who succeeded him? It was common practice among the British to "wall up" offenders in "death chambers". Some sources say this enclosure has exactly the same look and feel. The British were also known to hide riches in blind chambers as this.

"It could be just about anything. Skeletons and treasure chests are the two things that top our speculations because it is not natural for a building to have such a huge enclosure that has no opening. We cannot break down a wall, considering the importance of the building. So we have decided to bore a hole through the wall to peer inside with a searchlight," said D V Sharma, regional director, ASI.

Secret chamber in National Library (Thanks, NeilWalker, via Submitterator!)

(Image: Google Maps)

 


HOWTO make a stupendous, ceiling-height kid's-room marble-run

Posted: 22 Nov 2010 03:58 AM PST

George sez, "This looks like the work of the world's greatest dad: a ceiling level, custom-built kinetic marble run - complete with Instructables info to make your own."

Kinetic Marble Track Around The Top Of A Room (Instructables) (Thanks, George!)

 


Tuba Skinny: Old timey blues and jazz street act from New Orleans

Posted: 22 Nov 2010 03:07 AM PST

Last week, I caught Tuba Skinny opening for the Dresden Dolls in New Orleans -- Amanda Palmer heard them busking in the French Quarter and invited them out to the show. I got both of their CDs and have been enjoying the hell out of them ever since: this is old timey blues and jazz with an emphasis on standards, arranged with a prominent horn section (as the name implies) and mostly sung by Erika Lewis, who belts it out like Mae West. The band was adorable -- extras from The Little Rascals, and they were as fine to hear live as they are on their CDs, Six Feet Down and Tuba Skinny. The former contains an original track, also called "Six Feet Down," credited to Erika Lewis, that is a really fine song that sounds as good as any of the tried-and-true standards like "At the Jazz Band Ball" and "Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll" that fill out the rest of the disc.

Tuba Skinny

 


Lovecraftian Tintin adventures

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 11:08 PM PST

cc5203223fe766c426332abee9c40d02.jpg I'd love to read the H.P. Lovecraft-Tintin crossovers behind the covers expertly painted by Murray Groat.

Pornoscanner advisory flier

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:42 PM PST

Here's a PDF flier on the dangers of pornoscanners to print and alarm your fellow aviation sufferers with. (Thanks, Meredith!)

3D printed glass vase

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:41 PM PST

This beautiful vase was 3D printed in glass through 3D printing shop Shapeways, then finished with leaded glass enamels: "When designing hollow parts accommodations must be made to allow the support powder to completely fill all empty spaces. The support powder acts as a mold during firing. The glass becomes like soft toffee during firing and without support it will move in unexpected (usually disastrous) ways. These are things we know for fact."

Amazing 3D Printed Glass

 


California Wine Advisory Board ad, 1950s

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:37 PM PST


This 1950s California Wine Advisory Board ad is pretty much the apotheosis of what I love about old advertising art: the line-control, the demented facial expressions, the tantalizingly odd clothing choices, and the veneration of the Almighty Product -- with a bonus pastoral scene out the window, yet. Magnifique.

Wine Advisory Board, 1950s

HOWTO make a Jenga pistol

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:34 PM PST

Matthias Wandel's rubber-band-powered Jenga Pistol brings an entirely new, nerdy delight to the staid old game of Jenga by using the rapid transfer of kinetic force to achieve seemingly impossible Jenga moves. He'll tell you how to make one (he also sells 'em).

Jenga pistol (via Reddit)

 


Furrygirl's sexy stripdown protest in Seattle airport mocking TSA security theater (NSFW video)

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:15 PM PST

furrygirl.jpg

Self-described pornographer, sex worker, and sex blogger Furrygirl (Twitter, blog) opted for a patdown instead of the pornoscanners at the TSA checkpoint at the airport in Seattle, citing health concerns about radiation emitted by new devices.

To protest the TSA's invasive new "enhanced" screening procedures, she stripped down to see-thru, sexy underwear prior to her "grope-up," and videoblogged the whole thing (well, what the camera could capture from its vantage point on the little tray traveling down the conveyor belt).

"Instead of being scared and humiliated like the TSA wants me to be, I'm going to try and enjoy this experience the best I can," she says before she enters the screening area. "I'm just sorry the TSA doesn't work like a brothel, where you get to pick the one that's hottest."

I'd say what's most interesting about the video is what it doesn't show: the facial expressions of the TSA workers, the reactions of other passengers. At any rate, I applaud her efforts to stick it to The Man.

Video Link: My TSA Stripdown: Nov 21 at Seatac (vimeo)

Read more about it on her blog (NSFW)

Photos of the protester wearing the slinky undergarments at issue (NSFW)

Turkey groupthink

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 12:46 PM PST

Video link. I was very impressed as a child when the owner of a local turkey farm showed our class that he could make all the turkeys talk at once. He made a loud sound, and an enormous barn full of turkeys all replied in unison, a chorus of gobbles, much like the video above. Works with free range and suburban wild turkeys, too.

Florida's dirty "rocket docket" courts are a gift to fraudulent lenders

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 10:24 AM PST

Writing in next week's Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi is incandescent on the fraud-riddled, corrupt, closed-door "Rocket Docket" courts set up in Florida to expedite the process of dirtbag lenders kicking people out of their homes without having to provide any real evidence that the banks own the note or that the homeowners are delinquent. Taibbi smuggles himself into the court and documents in ghastly, clinical detail the dirty process by which banks use (badly) forged documents and judges who don't give a damn about justice to steal peoples' houses, all the while making indignant noises about "people who don't pay their mortgages shouldn't be in those houses."
Now, months after its first pass at foreclosure was dismissed, the bank has refiled the case -- and what do you know, it suddenly found the note. And this time, somehow, the note has the proper stamps. "There's a stamp that did not appear on the note that was originally filed," Kowalski tells the judge. (This business about the stamps is hilarious. "You can get them very cheap online," says Chip Parker, an attorney who defends homeowners in Jacksonville.)

The bank's new set of papers also traces ownership of the loan from the original lender, Novastar, to JP Morgan and then to Bank of New York. The bank, in other words, is trying to push through a completely new set of documents in its attempts to foreclose on Kowalski's clients.

There's only one problem: The dates of the transfers are completely fucked. According to the documents, JP Morgan transferred the mortgage to Bank of New York on December 9th, 2008. But according to the same documents, JP Morgan didn't even receive the mortgage from Novastar until February 2nd, 2009 -- two months after it had supposedly passed the note along to Bank of New York. Such rank incompetence at doctoring legal paperwork is typical of foreclosure actions, where the fraud is laid out in ink in ways that make it impossible for anyone but an overburdened, half-asleep judge to miss. "That's my point about all of this," Kowalski tells me later. "If you're going to lie to me, at least lie well."

The dates aren't the only thing screwy about the new documents submitted by Bank of New York. Having failed in its earlier attempt to claim that it actually had the mortgage note, the bank now tries an all-of-the-above tactic. "Plaintiff owns and holds the note," it claims, "or is a person entitled to enforce the note."

Soud sighs. For Kessler, the plaintiff's lawyer, to come before him with such sloppy documents and make this preposterous argument -- that his client either is or is not the note-holder -- well, that puts His Honor in a tough spot. The entire concept is a legal absurdity, and he can't sign off on it. With an expression of something very like regret, the judge tells Kessler, "I'm going to have to go ahead and accept [Kowalski's] argument."

Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners

(Image: no equity, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from thetruthabout's photostream)

 


Microsoft promises not to sue Kinect hackers

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:57 AM PST

A Microsoft spokesman told Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday that despite earlier threats, they wouldn't sue people who made and shared their own Kinect drivers.

Buzz Lightyear With a Huge Erection sippycup

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:53 AM PST

While I'm guessing that there are probably ways of positioning the straw on this Buzz Lightyear sippycup such that it doesn't look like Buzz has an enormous, mutant green bendy-straw boner for your child to wrap her/his lips around, it seems inevitable that a sippycup capable of being configured this would inevitably end up so configured.

Really, Toy Designer? Really?

Who owns your mortgage, the mind-croggling flowchart edition

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:41 AM PST


This insanely complex chart represents securitization auditor Dan Edstrom's best attempt to figure out who actually owns his mortgage: "The following flow chart reverse engineers the mortgage on the Ekstrom family residence. It took Dan over one year to take it this far and it clearly demonstrates what happens when there are too many lawyers being manufactured."

Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations (Thanks, Mr. Tough!)

TSA roundup: pilots get exception, Obama response, Clinton "wouldn't submit," Al Qaeda moves on

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:37 AM PST

[Video Link: SNL's phone sex TSA ad, while it lasts on YouTube.]

• On Friday, the TSA announced it would exempt airline pilots from the invasive screening procedures everyone's so upset about. The rest of us are still screwed.

• Barack Obama to everyone pissed about the TSA: Suck it up, buttercup. (msnbc.msn.com)

• Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has moved on to target parcels and freight cargo, in low-cost, low-impact attacks. (aljazeera.net)

• Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" if she would submit to a pat-down: "Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?" (cbsnews.com)

• What happens when an ex-cop asks the TSA screeners, "Do I have a right to refuse this search?" (hlswatch.com)

• Ralph Nader calls it "Naked Insecurity." And I call that the name of my next band. (usatoday.com)

• TSA fails to separate myth from truth. (elliott.org)

Amputee forced to remove prosthesis, expose residual limb, be separated from 4yo son

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:41 AM PST

These stories just keep getting worse and worse. And this incident apparently took place earlier this year, before the "enhanced" procedures went into place:
"I had just been put in the Plexiglas screening booth," said Peggy. "My 4-year-old son was made to sit across from me, crying because they would not let him touch me. Everyone was looking at us. Then the TSA agent asked for my prosthetic leg. I knew they could wand my leg, but he insisted on taking it from me. And if that wasn't humiliating enough, he asked for the liner sock that covers my residual limb, saying I had to give it to him. I felt pressured to give him my liner even though it is critical to keep it sanitary. I was embarrassed to have my residual limb exposed in public."
Amputee Coalition of America Calls for Improved Screening Procedures for TSA

When did you choose to be straight?

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:24 AM PST

Dear airlines: goodbye

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:10 AM PST

Writing in The Atlantic, Megan McArdle bids adieu to the airlines: "If I have to let someone else see me naked in order to be with you--well, I'm just not that kinky. And deep down, I don't think you are either. I think it's the TSA making you act like this. Frankly, you haven't been the same since you started running around together." She'll pass along your "Dear John" letters, too. (Thanks, Alan!)

How TSA screeners feel about junk-touching

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 09:07 AM PST

Here's a survey of 17 anonymous TSA Transportation Security Officers, discussing their discomfort with being required to touch strangers' genitals to earn a living:
"It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man's private parts, their butt, their inner thigh. Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!"

"Do you think I want to go to work and place my hands between women's legs and touch their breasts for a few hours? For starters, I am attracted to men, not women and if I was attracted to women, it would not be the large number of passengers I handle daily that have a problem understanding what personal hygiene is."

"Yesterday a passenger told me to keep my hands off his penis or he'd scream. Is this how a 40 year old man in business attire acts? He'll scream? My 3 year old can get away with saying he'll scream, but a 40 something business man? I am a professional doing my job, whether I agree with this current policy or not, I am doing my job. I do not want to be here all day touching penises."

TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View
 


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