Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:56 PM PST  Sean Hartter's large collection of "Alternate Universe Movie Posters" (which includes numerous book covers and other ephemera) are extremely well-done and present a tantalizing view of a better world than this one. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE MOVIE POSTERS (via Neatorama)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:47 PM PST  The Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World -- a beautiful and thoughtful safari park -- has just added a new attraction, the "Wild Africa Trek," which allows small groups of people to walk over and around the "African savannah" area of the park. The Trek includes a crazy, high-altitude, Indiana-Jones-style rope-bridge over a deep gorge. Wild Africa Trek Adventures Begin This Weekend at Disney's Animal Kingdom
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Posted: 14 Jan 2011 04:08 AM PST Registering death threats as domain names is the hot new thing in psychopathic anti-Wikileaks action! GoDaddy's Domains by Proxy service is apparently the go-to registrar if you've got a public figure of your own in mind. [Vivant leakers via Artificial Eyes]   |
Posted: 14 Jan 2011 12:03 AM PST Criminals in Johannesburg are raiding the city's traffic signals for the SIM chips that allow them to be monitored and reprogrammed using the phone network; the SIMs can be inserted into regular phones to make free, anonymous calls. T Robots theft 'a huge blow' (via Schneier) (Image: Commissioner Street, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mister-e's photostream)   |
Posted: 14 Jan 2011 02:13 AM PST For you early risers, I'll be discussing the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia with John Hockenberry on The Takeaway at 7:20 am Eastern time. Check your local listings or the live stream. I'll post a link when the show archive is online. The producers made a fun listener quiz for the occasion. Happy anniversary, Wikipedia!   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:13 PM PST Cartoonist Dan Clowes was interviewed last year at the Strand Book store in NYC last year, where he talked about Gilbert Ortiz' sad, striking photo of the great Wally Wood in his studio in 1978. In the first all-new graphic novel [Wilson] from one of the leading cartoonists of our time, Daniel Clowes (joined here by David Hadju, author of The Ten Cent Plague: the Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America) creates a thoroughly engaging, complex and fascinating portrait of the modern egoist--outspoken and oblivious to the world around him. Working in a single-page-gag format and drawing in a spectrum of styles, the cartoonist of GhostWorld, Ice Haven and David Boring gives us his funniest and most deeply affecting novel to date.Wood Chips 25: Daniel Clowes, David Hajdu, Gil Ortiz Video Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 10:35 PM PST  Christine of Feetlips writes: "This sits on top of my vanity. I found it at a flea market a few years ago, asked the guy how much he wanted, and he breathed, 'Just take it. Don't show it to my wife.'" Safety Certificate   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 10:28 PM PST  Isabelle Hayeur, an artist from Montreal, created "Fire with Fire," an artwork that simulates a fire in a "four-storey heritage building in the downtown eastside." Via Make: This building is not actually on fire   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 07:49 PM PST Every time I think Bill Murray is a perfect and unimprovable paragon of cool, he does something to get cooler. Like this, his speech introducing writer/director Sofia Coppola at last night's National Board of Review Awards. Murray was perfectly suited to the task of winging an introduction for Coppola: She directed him in a titanic performance in 2003's "Lost In Translation," and he has for many years engaged in eccentrically good-natured public appearances that have added up a unique kind of improvisational performance art. (My favorite was last year at SXSW, when Murray showed up at an Austin joint and began tending bar, sloshing out slugs of tequila to the clientele, no matter what they'd ordered.) Anyway, here's Murray at the NBR, chewing on Red Hots and, in a deceptively easygoing fashion, making some moving points about life, work and the places where they meet. ..why do you encourage these people? Because now she's had this success, she's had this work, she has this life, she has this family, she has this thing going, and now is when people like you have chosen well to say, 'Let's give this person another boost, let's give this person another boost to say keep going, because now life will come to you hard, like it's come to everyone that's lived long enough. It comes hard and it gets in the way of your career; it stops your career, it stunts your life -- not necessarily your life, but it definitely will make your career go left. You show me an actor doing a shit movie, I'll show you a guy with a bad divorce. [Audience laughs.] Right? Right? [Looking around the room.] You know who I'm talking about.Read the whole thing.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 07:46 PM PST  In the upcoming MAKE, Vol 25, we have an article by Scott Heimendinger that shows you how to make a sous vide immersion cooker. What is it? It's a machine to slow-cook food (sealed in a plastic bag) in a water bath at a precise temperature. We've put the complete article up at Make Projects. From the intro: Most sous vide (soo-veed) cooking machines are commercial models that cost north of $2,000, and the first "home" version, the countertop SousVide Supreme, is priced in the neighborhood of $450 (not including vacuum sealer), which is still a steep investment for something that essentially keeps water warm. I decided to build a better device on the cheap. Behold, the $75 DIY Sous Vide Heating Immersion Circulator! By scrapping together parts from eBay and Amazon, I created a portable device that heats and circulates water while maintaining a temperature accurate within 0.1°C. And unlike the SousVide Supreme, it mounts easily onto larger containers, up to about 15 gallons, for greater cooking capacity. The water is heated by three small immersion heaters and circulated by an aquarium pump to keep the temperature uniform. An industrial process temperature module controls the heaters, and an eye bolt lets you clamp the entire apparatus to the rim of a plastic tub or other container. To cook sous vide, you also need a vacuum sealer, which this project does not include. I bought a good one new for about $112.From the "Kitchen Tests" section:  To reveal the power of sous vide, cook an egg in the shell (no plastic needed) at 64.5°C for 1 hour. This yields an amazing transformation: perfectly soft whites, not runny or rubbery, and a yolk with the consistency of a rich pudding. It's impossible to achieve this through any other cooking method, and it's spectacular the first time you experience it. I expanded on this amazing transformation by breading the yolks and quickly deep-frying them to add a crunchy shell. See my recipe here. Make Projects: Sous Vide Immersion Cooker   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:28 PM PST  "A joint chart and public service announcement from two comic artists who are sick of having their work miss- or unattributed to them. Here's the right way to show your artists some love." What you see above is but a snippet. View the whole chart in its full mindboggling and ROFL-rofling beauty here. (notquitewrong.com, thanks Rosscott via BB Submitterator)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 06:18 PM PST David Coombs, the attorney representing suspected Wikileaks source Bradley Manning, has filed demands related to the lack of a speedy trial and the reportedly harsh conditions of Manning's confinement. More at Greg Mitchell's liveblog of all things Wikileaks, now at day 47.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 05:55 PM PST If you don't follow the pirate sites that make screenplays available for download, Nikki Finke at Deadline.com has just made Aaron Sorkin's script for The Social Network  available online. It's an excellent example of an adapted screenplay if you want to compare it to Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. Biopics and "ripped from the headlines" stories are among the hardest to write, and this is a good example of both. Her article also has a good Q&A with Sorkin: EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Sorkin's Full Screenplay For 'The Social Network' - Plus Q&A   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 01:13 PM PST Arthur sez, "This video is what I felt like when I moved to Austin, home at last. I stop motion animated my brother in law for three weeks and then rotoscoped him and added in animation through Flash. I used some time-lapse photography at the end as well. Ben from Radical Face was cool enough to give me his blessing in using his song 'Welcome Home' for it." Stop Motion Animated film with Radical Face Music   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:42 PM PST [Video Link]. "It's like OUR Law & Order—just more British." Created for BBC America by Joe Sabia, whose work we've featured on Boing Boing, and on Boing Boing Video's Virgin America in-flight channel.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:40 PM PST  Martina from Austria hacked an Ikea 5x5 Expedit into her "dream hamster cage." From Ikea Hacker: I used a set of white Dioder strip lights for the cage illumination plus a red LED christmas light chain so I can choose between white and red light. Hamsters are red blind so you can watch them under red light without disturbing them."Expedit hamster home" (via fp)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:04 PM PST  Heavy equipment sits submerged in flood waters in an industrial area of Brisbane, Australia, on January 13, 2011. Flood water in Australia's third-biggest city peaked below feared catastrophic levels on Thursday but Brisbane and other devastated regions face years of rebuilding and even the threat of fresh floods in the weeks ahead. (REUTERS/Tim Wimborne) More photographs below.  A snake crosses the Capricorn Highway which is under floodwaters 6km south of Rockhampton, January 3, 2011. Military aircraft flew supplies to an Australian town slowly disappearing beneath floodwaters on Monday, as record flooding in the country's northeast continues to cut coal exports and devastate wheat production. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  A tiger yard ornament is partially submerged in the front garden of a house at Depot Hill in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, January 5, 2011. Floodwaters eased in Australia's major coal mining region on Tuesday to allow some mines to slowly resume production, although most remain idle as devastating floods affect some 200,000 people and force towns to be evacuated. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  Roofs of houses are visible above flood waters west of Brisbane January 13, 2011. (REUTERS/Tim Wimborne)  A flooding sign is seen partially submerged in floodwaters in Rockhampton, Queensland, January 4, 2011. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  Sunlight descends over flooded waters near Rockhampton, Queensland, January 6, 2011. Australia's record floods are causing catastrophic damage to infrastructure in the state of Queensland and have forced 75 percent of its coal mines, which fuel Asia's steel mills, to grind to a halt, Queensland's premier said on Wednesday. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  Farm crops are seen flooded near the town of Theodore in Queensland, Australia January 2, 2011. Large parts of Australia's coastal northeast were flooded on Sunday in a spreading environmental disaster as thousands of residents fled their homes to avoid the runoff from a Christmas deluge. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  Workers of a hardware store start to clean up after being affected by flooded waters in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia January 1, 2011. Flood water rose across Australia's northeast on Friday, covering an area bigger than France and Germany combined, inundating 22 towns and stranding 200,000 people, and closing one of the country's major sugar export ports. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)  A man drinks beer as he sits in the entrance to a flooded car repair workshop in Brisbane January 13, 2011. Flood water in Australia's third-biggest city peaked below feared catastrophic levels on Thursday but Brisbane and other devastated regions faced years of rebuilding as a fresh flood threat loomed with a cyclonic storm building off the coast. (REUTERS/Tim Wimborne)  A fish is seen on the Capricorn Highway, which is partially submerged under floodwaters, 6 km (3.7 miles) south of Rockhampton, January 3, 2011. (REUTERS/Daniel Munoz)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:31 AM PST   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:07 AM PST It was snowing pretty much all over the United States yesterday. And snow-covered ground makes for some pretty cool snowmen, sagging trees, and a great big blank canvas everywhere you look. We're seeing a few great photos from the snow day yesterday in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, but we're thinking you must have some great ones too. If you want to share some fun photos of the snow with us, like this image of a snowman by Gina Herold, please go ahead and add them to the pool. Please include the tag "snow" in your images so they're easier for me to spot. I'll be keeping an eye out for good ones today!   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 10:57 AM PST  Baby you can drive his car. John Lennon's first car, a 1965 Ferrari, is up for auction. The estimated value is $155,000 to $220,000. One of the last cars he owned, an inconspicuous green 1972 Chrysler station wagon, recently sold for $5,500. From CNN: Lennon got his first driver's license in 1965, by which time he and his band, the Beatles, were world famous. In passing his driving test, Lennon made national headlines. Within hours, high-end luxury car dealers were jamming the streets outside Lennon's Weybridge, England, with cars including Jaguars, Maseratis and Aston Martins, according to Bonhams. Lennon chose the Ferrari."John Lennon's Ferrari for sale" (Thanks, Jason Weisberger!)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 10:47 AM PST Poynter's Damon Kiesow offers an early first look at The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's failed iPad newspaper.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:16 AM PST My friend Miles O'Brien produced a cool piece for PBS News Hour about "what could be happening to teenagers' brains as they develop in a rapid-fire, multitasking world of technology and gadgets." You may know the PBS correspondent best from his many years as space and science reporter with CNN—he also slummed it on a few BBTV episodes (1, 2, 3). This News Hour segment (above) is great, but the companion chat with his kids (below) is also fun: a sober counter-point to the hysteria of "video games/texting/IM/the internet is destroying our minds." Suck it, tech-haters. Watch video: • Is Technology Wiring Teens to Have Better Brains? (PBS News Hour) • Miles O'Brien: Teen Brains on Technology (a chat with News Hour host Hari Sreenivasan)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 09:50 AM PST Driving with only right-hand turns—no lefts—saves on gas. But a new study suggests that it might also, surprisingly, save time. And reduce the number of car crashes.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 09:45 AM PST I had a conversation on Twitter Tuesday with several other science journalists and science bloggers about whether there's actually been much research done definitively linking violent political rhetoric to an increase in violent behavior. The connection makes common sense, but common sense and reality don't always line up. I've been curious what we actually KNOW about this, and how well we know it. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like there'd been much research specifically targeted at that question. One thing that did turn up, via blogger Josh Rosenau, was a presentation put together by Nathan Kalmoe, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Michigan. The research doesn't focus on the rare, particularly heinous examples of violent rhetoric, but on far-more-common word choices, such as urging supporters to "fight". Kalmoe ran an online survey, involving a diverse group of 412 adults from all across the United States. The survey respondents read two political ads—one that used neutral words like "work for", and the other that used metaphorically violent works, like "fight". Then they responded to statements about what was and wasn't acceptable behavior. Things like, "Some of the problems citizens have with government could be fixed with a few well-aimed bullets." Here's what he found: Most people—across the board—are actively resistant to the influence of violent metaphor in political speech. At first glance, it looks like the vast majority of Americans—regardless of political leanings—are unlikely to turn violent rhetoric into violent action. But, there's a catch. People who are classified as "trait aggressive"—those more likely to engage in aggressive social interaction, no matter the circumstances—DO respond to violent metaphor in political advertisements. What's completely safe for most of us can make a small minority feel more like acting out. After Kalmoe controlled for those aggressive people, he saw other patterns. Among both the people who were naturally aggressive, and those who weren't, people under 40 were more likely to respond to violent rhetoric. Ditto with men, compared to women. And he saw a small difference between political persuasions, too. Trait aggressive people—whether Republican or Democrat—responded about the same, with higher levels of support for physical violence. Among the trait passive, however, there was a small increase in support for violence among Democrats. The difference is small enough that you can't really say, "Democrats are more violent than Republicans!" At least, not without being really misleading. However, from Kalmoe's research, you most DEFINITELY can't say the opposite. Here's how Kalmoe puts it: The results from this study provide some evidence rebutting partisan interpretations of political violence support, at least in the present form. Trait-aggressive Democrats and Republicans both expressed greater support for political violence following exposure to violent metaphors in political texts, though Democrats seem to show somewhat greater reactivity. Apparently, though Democrats and Republicans differ in many ways, support for political violence is not one of them.It's worth noting that this is one study—a single data point. Just like it's a bad idea to draw conclusions based on common sense, it's also a bad idea to draw conclusions based on one study—and one based on surveys at that. This is interesting. But it will not be the final word. I want to make that clear. This is what one study says, not a definitive explanation of the way the world works. But you can't just dismiss it, either. Especially because it tells us that, whoever you're looking at, there's a small percentage of that group that could take violent words and turn them into violent action. That's definitely something that deserves more study, and it's something that should give all of us pause.   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:39 AM PST Quicklyfailing's senior thesis project was this short animated movie called "Repeat Viewings," of which he says, "An animated film about a man distant future rife coping with a peculiar breed of mid-1990's nostalgia and useful pets." It's a cute and fun 11 minutes' worth of stylish animation and wry humor. Repeat Viewings (Thanks, Quicklyfailing, via Submitterator!)   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:35 AM PST  Benny sez, "A friend of mine shot this picture of some Galaga-looking bugs and shared it on Facebook. According to his description they seem oblivious to humans and are attracted to corn plants. Perhaps some happy mutant entomologists out there can help us identify the bugs. We live in Malaysia which has a tropical rainforest climate - perhaps that information will help a little. P.S. please credit the picture to Robert Chua from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia."   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 12:33 AM PST  This 1915 Boston Journal ad warning against the dangers of women's suffrage lays all manner of dangers at the feet of "burdening" women with the vote, including increased taxes and divorce. It warns that extending the vote to women is a joint plot of the anarchist Industrial Workers of the World, socialists, and Mormons. Good to know that we've come so far in our political rhetoric. 1915 - Suffrage   |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 11:45 AM PST  Ben Cosgrove of LIFE Magazine tells Boing Boing, This morning LIFE published a gallery of exclusive, never-seen photographs by Anthony Karen (the same photographer who did our KKK gallery last year) taken at the Westboro Baptist compound in Topeka, Kansas, in June 2008, and other places where the church likes to hang out and picket grieving families, etc.Here is the full photo gallery at LIFE.com. The church has been in the news this week for their characteristically offensive plans to protest at the funerals of shooting victims in Tucson. The government of Arizona took quick action to block this, by passing an expedited law that made protesting within 300 feet of a funeral or burial service illegal. NY Mag, CNN, ABC affiliate in AZ, Christian Science Monitor. This person has some interesting theories on the church's founder.    |
Posted: 13 Jan 2011 08:50 AM PST Dave from Sesame Street sez, "We've taken one of the interactive science games that we developed for our website and made it accessible and playable on YouTube. This is Sesame Street's first foray into YouTube gaming and we're pumped to lead with a game that teaches the scientific process to young kids." Join renowned scientist Cookie Monster as he hosts an interactive science experiment for the YouTube community!Sesame Street Science: Sink or Float?
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Posted: 13 Jan 2011 08:40 AM PST  In a really interesting follow up to the kerfluffles over Gliese 581g and arsenic-based life, NASA recently introduced an interactive website that explains what it takes to make a life-producing planet—by having you design your own. The game starts with presets tuned to mimic either Earth, Gliese 581d (a planet that sits on the very edge of Gliese's habitable zone but seems, at this point, more likely to exist than 581g), or Mars. From there, you can alter factors like distance from the star, planet size, star type, and planetary age. That's probably-lifeless Planet Maggie pictured above. If it seems like there's only a few, very limited ways to "win" this game ... well, that's kind of the point. The planet-builder is based on what we know about what it takes to produce life as we know it. And that list of requirements and contradictions really narrows your options. Ultimately, this site should make it clear why finding a "Goldilocks" planet is such a chore, and why everybody is so prone to get excited about the possibility that "life as we know it" isn't the same thing as "life". Lesson: Don't get too bouncy when you see headlines about either possibility. We might find extraterrestrial life someday, but this isn't a simple or easy thing to pull off. Thanks to monekyodeath for Submitterating!   |
Senin, 14 Februari 2011
Thieves rip off SIM cards from Johannesburg's traffic signals and Discussing Wikipedia's first decade on The Takeaway, 7:20am Eastern
The components were ripped out by the criminals from the traffic lights and used to make unlimited calls that have cost JRA a lot of money... 
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