Offered in scarlet ink on a jet black T-shirt, "It Followed Me Home" is the latest in our Artists Series of T-shirts, an original illustration designed exclusively for Boing Boing. It's $14.95 for men's sizes and $16.95 for women's sizes.
This is the first post from the fine folks of the American Library Association, which recently launched a member interest group called Library Boing Boing. They will be posting now and again as LibraryLab.
On April 23, 2012, tens of thousands of people in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, and Germany will go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving away free books. All you have to do to participate is register by midnight EST tonight.
The goal is to have 50,000 people give a book to a stranger or to people you might know but believe aren’t frequent readers. Go to a coffee shop, a hospital, a park, a church, a community center, an after-work party, a local school, or even just give them away on your daily train ride. WBN will give you 20 specially-produced, not-for-resale World Book Night editions to randomly give away. There are 30 titles to choose from for all types of readers. Basically, if you love any of the books included in the program, you can get free copies to share with others.
Timo's video "Robot readable world" is made up of stitched-together found footage from computer vision systems, "exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye." It was inspired by Matt Jones's essay The Robot-Readable World, and it reminds me Laura Mulvey's idea of the Male Gaze.
A recent mathematics study showed that you have to have at least 17 clues on a Sudoku grid in order for the puzzle to be solvable. You could make the game easier, by adding more clues. But if there are fewer than 17 clues, then the game becomes impossible to solve. In this video, mathematician James Grime explains how the researchers figured this out.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Andreas Gursky "Union Rave" (1995)
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke wrote ""Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." That's no longer true. These days, there are apparently 15 dead for every living person. Still, the living clearly do not outnumber the dead. Not even close, according to new research from the Population Reference Bureau. according to new research from the Population Reference Bureau. The TL;DR is that "There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived," according to a BBC News article. Of course, the vast majority of history is based on educated guesses. The first homo sapiens weren't too interested in acquiring census data. It wasn't until the 18th century or so that the best ongoing data was collected about such things. "Do the dead outnumber the living?" (BBC News)
The "flow state" is how neuroscience researchers describe that zone you can get into when you're doing something that you've become highly skilled at. It's a zen-like place in your brain — that state where you lose track of time doing something that you enjoy doing for its own sake, and where the job of doing the task seems to become something you don't even have to think about. You just do it, and you do it right.
The catch, of course, is that usually it takes a lot of heavy work to get to the point where the flow can take over. This is where Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice comes into play. But, over the years, scientists have learned that there are some ways around that 10,000-hour rule. Some people just seem to pick up on the flow easier than others, for instance.
If your brain isn't just naturally inclined toward the flow, though, there is the option of zapping it into line. This is called transcranial direct current stimulation—basically running a very small electric current through specific parts of the brain. In some studies, and for some tasks, it's been shown to induce a feeling very much like a flow state, and possibly make it easier for people to get to a high level of skill faster. Last spring, Pesco wrote about some of the research that's being conducted on this intriguing but still-not-proven technique. Recently, New Scientist reporter Sally Adee tried it out, and saw a significant short-term improvement in her ability to spot and hit targets in a video shooter game.
The mild electrical shock is meant to depolarise the neuronal membranes in the region, making the cells more excitable and responsive to inputs. Like many other neuroscientists working with tDCS, Weisend thinks this accelerates formation of new neural pathways during the time that someone practises a skill. The method he is using on me boosted the speed with which wannabe snipers could detect a threat by a factor of 2.3
It's not yet clear why some forms of tDCS should bring about the flow state. After all, if tDCS were solely about writing new memories, it would be hard to explain the improvement that manifests itself as soon as the current begins to flow.
One possibility is that the electrodes somehow reduce activity in the prefrontal cortex - the area used in critical thought, which Csikszentmihalyi had found to be muted during flow. Roy Hamilton, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, thinks this may happen as a side effect of some forms of tDCS. "tDCS might have much more broad effects than we think it does," he says. He points out that some neurons can mute the signals of other brain cells in their network, so it is possible that stimulating one area of the brain might reduce activity in another.
The first thing I thought of when I read this: The way drinking one (but not more than two) beers can change the way I approach a billiards game. It doesn't improve my skills, per se—I don't suddenly become graceful with a pool cue. But when it's a game that I have some skill at already, like table hockey, one beer is often just enough to allow me to stop over-thinking and just play the game ... making it feel like I'm better at it then than I am stone-cold sober. I'd be really interested to know if/how these experiences are related.
How to Be a Retronaut's gallery of images from the 1970 edition of the "Encylopedia of Home Improvement" are like shots from a never-aired episode of The Brady Bunch where the family took over management of The Madonna Inn and did a little light redecorating.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Last month, I posted about the gorgeous droning ambient music of From The Mouth of the Sun. People really seemed to dig it! Carter Gunn created this video for their track "Sitting In A Roofless Room" from video footage courtesy of the fantastic Prelinger Archive. The song is on From The Mouth of The Sun's new album, Woven Tide, which you can listen to right here. And you can purchase it directly from Experimedia.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
An Icelandic man captured video of what some suggest is the Lagarfljótsormur, a lake monster residing in the lake Lagarfljót in the eastern part of the country. Others suggest it's a fishing net. I prefer the former. Stories of the Lagarfljótsormur date back to 1345. From Iceland Review Online:
According to legend, it was at first a tiny worm which was placed on a ring of gold to make the gold grow.
When the owner of the ring returned she noticed to her great terror that the worm had grown immensely but not the gold. She tossed the ring and worm into Lagarfljót where the worm continued to grow.
The Jolly Green Giant was always the most ambiguous and slightly threatening of the tinned food mascots. Tilt your head and squint and this is a cruel titan who's toying with the mortals at his dinner table before turning them loose for the Wild Hunt. Plus: Mexicorn!
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This is a Sol LeWitt yarmulke created by the Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek temple in Chester, Connecticut. LeWitt, a member of the congregation, helped design the temple. "Sol LeWitt Kippah" (Thanks, Jill Miller!)
I've been doing periodic appearances on Sex is Fun, a sex-positive podcast aimed at providing fun, informative sex ed. for grown-ups. Last time I was on the show, we talked about some funny animal sex studies and what they can and can't teach you about human sexual behavior. This time around, we talked about a couple of recent studies focusing on sociology and sex.
In particular, we focused on a study from last fall that surveyed students at the University of Kansas to find out how men's and women's internalized sexism affect their relationships with each other. If you've ever watched one of those shows about so-called "pick up artists" and wondered, "Who the hell are the women falling for this crap!?", then this is the show to listen to.
This is the U.S. Air Force's pitch to the entertainment industry, a smorgasbord of mil-porn to delight anyone who loved shows such as Airwolf and The A-Team. The objective is to help productions, from teen-magnet Hollywood epics to seniors' detective show "Monk", get the details right—and, of course, to put the taxpayers' latest hardware on show.
"The industry's gateway to an extraordinary arsenal of aircraft, equipment, credible personnel and locations," intones Fake Morgan Freeman. "Their mission: protect and project the Air Force and entertainment media, including film, tv, video games, comic books and more."
The Air Force's Entertainment Liaison Office offers uniformed extras, on-set technical advice, research trips and even script feedback. Michael Bay totally has his own personalized tankard under the bar at this place.
This bit of graffiti, spotted by entomologist and photographer Alex Wild, seems like the perfect way to start off a Monday morning. Thanks, anonymous tagger! I feel better already!
Glenn Greenwald notes that the New York Times broke its own policies on source anonymity to run the quote.
The Bureau’s journalists and researchers spent months engaged in the painstaking and difficult task of gathering documentation on the effects of the top secret U.S. drone program in Waziristan — producing extraordinary findings — only to find themselves and their sources, many of whom are local villagers whose children have been killed, depicted as Al Qaeda’s witting or unwitting allies the very next day in The New York Times, by some senior government official too frightened to put his name on his accusations and aided (as always) by a newspaper that has repeatedly vowed to stop these practices.
It looks like the price of continued access to "senior counterterrorism officials" is that you must, now and again, launder their dirty political opinions.
Today in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, "Planktonauts," by Robert Steven Connett, who notes, "This is a direction that I feel very comfortable with. Very enjoyable to create. I’m happy with the results. I hope to do many more similar paintings in the months to come."
Ty Templeton has a strangely appealing and plausible look at the likely fallout from the DC comics' decision to produce a line of Watchmen prequels. Click through below for the punchline.
Ange-line Tetrault made a series of "hidden animal" teacups with little ceramic beasties inside that are slowly revealed as you sip through your (opaque) beverage of choice.
A group of Anons are about to dump a torrent 2.6GB of email containing "detailed records, transcripts, testimony, trial evidence, and legal defense donation records" about the Haditha massacre, in which 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children were killed by the USMC.
The announcement states that Anonymous stole 2.6 gigabytes of e-mail belonging to Puckett Faraj, a law firm that represents Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who is accused of leading the group of Marines in Haditha. The Web site of Puckett Faraj is not currently loading, and Gawker is reporting that the site was hacked.
A spokeswoman for Puckett Faraj confirmed that the Web site was down but said that she could not confirm or deny whether the site had been hacked.
One of the first "physibles" available for download on The Pirate Bay's 3D object download site was a 3D model of TPB's pirate-ship logo. Canadian Charles Randall ordered one up from Shapeways, and it's arrived.
“I was entertained by telling shapeways.com that I owned the copyright on the design though, something they force you to accept in order to have the model printed. But I guess, in a way, we all do,” Randall told TorrentFreak. “I debated just putting it up for sale on the site, but despite the Pirate Bay sensibilities, I didn’t want to entangle myself in any weird controversy for trying to sell it.”
Unlike regular downloads on BitTorrent, 3D objects come with a hefty price tag. Using the cheapest materials available, 3D pirates have to invest roughly $100 to get their new toy made.
“The raw price was about $80 for the material, $6.50 for the shipping, and then I had to pay $15 in Canadian duties,” Randall said
Tor.com's Irene Gallo gathers together an absolutely fantastic gallery of science fiction artwork that quotes famous works of fine art. I'm all over John Mattos's Mos Eisley reimagined as Picasso's Three Musicians.
An 83-year-old woman with a badly infected lower jaw had the entire thing replaced with a 3D printed titanium/bioceramic replica. The surgery was performed by doctors from the University of Hasselt (Belgium) in collaboration with Dutch surgeons.
The 3D printer prints titanium powder layer by layer, while a computer controlled laser ensures that the correct particles are fused together. Using 3D printing technology, less materials are needed and the production time is much shorter than traditional manufacturing. The mandible was finally given a bioceramic coating compatible with the patient's tissue by BioCeramics in Leiden. The artificial jaw weighs 107 grams, it is only 30 grams heavier than a natural jaw, but the patient can easily get used to it.
The operation was performed in June last year in the hospital in Sittard-Geleen. One day later the lady could start talking and swallowing.
Chris sez, "My name is Chris Peterson. I run web communications for MIT Admissions and have been a loyal BB reader for years.
For the last several years we have been sending our admitted students their acceptance letters in cardboard tubes. First because we sent a poster, but now it's its own thing.
2012 is the anniversary of an old MIT balloon hack, so we put a letter in all of the Early Action admit tubes telling them we wanted them to hack the tubes somehow, and set up http://hackthetubes.mitadmissions.org to collect responses.
Lots of them are great, but this one, from Erin King (MIT '16) in Georgia, is the best."
I've got a copy of this book at the top of my read-for-review pile. I can't wait. Rebecca's views on international relations and the Internet -- especially the role the Internet plays in both the struggle for freedom and the suppression of freedom in China -- are the most thoughtful, best informed in the field. Here's the site for the book.
Gmoke sez, "This statistical model uses 'zipcode-level energy consumption data to estimate the average annual energy use for every tax lot—at practically building level—through all five boroughs of the city.' Included are estimateans for space heating, space cooling, water heating, and base electric applications such as lighting. 'This map will enable NYC building owners to see whether their own building consumes more or less than what an average building with similar function and size would,' said Professor Modi. 'This is the first time anyone has provided an estimate like this for New York City and the first time anyone has offered information to the public in the form of an interactive map.'"
“This is a critical issue,” said Modi. “While discussions frequently focus on electricity use, homes in New York City, whether a townhouse or a large apartment building, use far more energy in form of heat rather than electricity. Nearly all of this heat is obtained from heating oil or natural gas. In addition, current electricity distribution infrastructure in many urban areas relies on large amounts of electricity brought in from outside the city, making it difficult to support increased future use without requiring significant investment of resources and funds. We are looking at ways we can address both these issues—reducing our heating bills and increasing local electricity generation capacity.”
Dan Sayers ("I am not a type designer") decided to explore "generative" type-design by seeing what happened when he "averaged out" a large number of fonts. Once he got his teeth into the problem, he realized that "averaging out" is a complicated idea when it comes to shapes, and came up with a pretty elegant way of handling the problem, which, in turn, yielded a rather lovely face: Avería, "the average font."
Then it occurred to me: since my aim was to average a large number of fonts,
perhaps it would be best to use a very simple process, and hope the results
averaged out well over a large number of fonts. So, how about splitting each
letter perimeter into lots of (say, 500) equally-spaced points, and just average
between the corresponding positions of each, on each letter? It would be necessary to match up the points so
they were about the same location in each letter, and then the process would be
fairly simple
Having found a simple process to use, I was ready to start. And after about a month of
part-time slaving away (sheer fun! Better than any computer game) – in the
process of which I learned lots about bezier curves and font metrics – I had a
result. I call it Avería – which is a Spanish word related to the root of the
word ‘average’. It actually means mechanical breakdown or damage. This seemed curiously fitting, and I was
assured by a Spanish friend-of-a-friend that “Avería is an incredibly beautiful
word regardless of its meaning”. So that's nice.
This afternoon some friends and I will be playing this new game we really like in Yerba Buena Gardens, and you're welcome to join us.
Johann Sebastian Joust is basically like high-tech tag. Each person has a Playstation Move controller, and the object of the game is to jostle other people's controllers so that you're the last man standing. The twist is that as you play, a Bach concerto will also be playing and its tempo indicates the upper threshold for how much your controller can be jostled before you're out.
If you want to play, we'll be in Yerba Buena Gardens today at 5PM. You don't need to bring anything, we have a full set of controllers, and we'll trade off. See you there!
The NYT's Scott James recounts the insane red-tape endured by Juliet Pries, an entrepreneur who decided to open an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco's Cole Valley. She had to pay rent on an empty storefront for over two years while the necessary permits were processed, and tens of thousands of dollars in fees (including the cost of producing a detailed map of nearby businesses, which the city itself seemed not to have). If the story sounds familiar, it's because it was the subject of a notorious Xtranormal-produced Hello City Planner video that used it as an example to lampoon the planning bureaucracy in San Francisco.
Pries's restaurant, the Ice Cream Bar, is a popular hit, and employs 14 people, but “Many times it almost didn’t happen," as she says, due to the incredibly administrative hurdles she faced in opening it.
Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.
The ice cream shop’s travails are at odds with the frequent promises made by the mayor and many supervisors that small businesses and job creation are top priorities.
The matter has also alarmed some business leaders, who point out that few small ventures could survive such long delays.
“Someone of lesser fortitude would have left three months into it,” Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, said of Ms. Pries. “Through these hard times we’ve heard all the rhetoric about streamlining the process, about one-stop shopping. It hasn’t happened.”
The link comes by way of JWZ, owner of the DNA Lounge and the adjacent pizzeria, who notes that, "I started the process of trying to cut a door in the wall between my restaurant and nightclub in February 2011. It is now February 2012, and we still don't have the necessary permits and have not yet begun construction. If we have a door in that wall -- and are allowed to let people walk through it -- before 2013, we will consider ourselves lucky."
I blogged "Extermiknit!", a knittable Dalek, back in 2007, but it turns out that an even cooler knittable Dalek of the same name was created on Feather and Fan in 2010, with an opening hatch containing a Kaled mutant, and here it is.
After completing the top of the Dalek as specified, I created an opening in the front by steeking carefully along the vertical line between the knit “instrument panel” and the purled rest of the midsection–just used some sewing shears and cut straight through the middle of the rightmost line of knit stitches, along the entire height of the midsection. I then carefully unraveled the stitches from right to left on the rows above and below the desired door area, to the left end of the “instrument panel”, and placed these two horizontal pairs of exposed stitches on DPNs.
This creates a kind of door flap, hinged vertically along the left-hand side. I sewed down the outer edge of the door with one yarn tail, and used a sewn bindoff and the other two yarn tails to fasten the top and bottom of the door flap. The door flap was now bound off and would not unravel.
If you need me to explain why you should spend 1:26 watching a man wielding an iron guitar in a Faraday suit playing Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" on MIDI-compatible Tesla coils, you are in the wrong place, pal.
ArcAttack is performing a Tesla Coil version of Iron Man by Black Sabbath. The Guitar Player is using an iron guitar in a faraday cage
ArcAttack testing out the world's first lighting-proof MIDI guitar in their warehouse in Austin, Texas.
The MIDI signal from the guitar is routed through a fiber optic cable to control the Tesla coils.
Update: From the comments, ArcAttack clarifies, "The guitar isnt iron though, its actually made out of wood with shielding and a couple of micro-controllers hooked up to a switch bank (the fret board) and is all optically isolated. The giant fan in the back isn't for sucking ozone. It was 100 degrees that day and being in a metal suit can get pretty hot. And in reference to Manny's comment, our interview went as follows "THEM: What happens when something goes wrong? US: We have many safety controls to minimize any major problem. If something goes wrong we just turn it off. THEM: is lightning deadly? US: Lightning is very deadly, but our machines arnt nearly as dangerous as real lightning."
Derryl Murphy sez, "Drew Smith's lovely new song 'Smoke and Mirrors' needed a video, so he decided to outsource it. The result is wonderful."
So I outsourced my video to Bangalore, India. Why? Well, I figured the last thing the world needed was another low-budget singer songwriter video.
Fortunately, the first Virtual Assistant I found on google also happened to be a dance choreographer. After a couple of emails and phone calls, I received this beautiful video in my inbox. Many thanks to Asha Sarella and Vishwas Avathi. I can't thank you enough!
In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick examines the impact that Stephen Colbert's SuperPAC is having on public perception of the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, which establishes that "corporate personhood" means that corporations can make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. Dahlia implies that the Court, which has always maintained an aloofness from public life (no cameras, no press office) is smarting under Colbert's withering sarcasm, and that people are responding as well. For example, Colbert's SuperPAC backed Herman Cain (not a candidate) in the South Carolina race, and the voters put him ahead of Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Michele Bachmann.
Then last June, like a winking, eyebrow-wagging Mr. Smith, Colbert went to Washington and testified before the FEC, which granted him permission to launch his super PAC (over the objections of his parent company Viacom) and accept unlimited contributions from his fans so he might sway elections. (He tweeted before his FEC appearance that PAC stands for "Plastic And/Or Cash.") In recent weeks, Colbert has run several truly insane attack ads (including one accusing Mitt Romney of being a serial killer). Then, with perfect comedic pitch, Colbert handed off control of his super PAC to Jon Stewart (lampooning the FEC rules about coordination between “independent PACS” and candidates with a one-page legal document and a Vulcan mind meld). Colbert then managed to throw his support to non-candidate Herman Cain in the South Carolina primary, placing higher on the ballot than Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Michele Bachmann.
The line between entertainment and the court blurred even further late last month when Colbert had former Justice John Paul Stevens on his show to discuss his dissent in Citizens United. When a 91-year-old former justice is patiently explaining to a comedian that corporations are not people, it’s clear that everything about the majority opinion has been reduced to a punch line.
Apparently inspired by the Polish parliamentarians who showed up for work in Guy Fawkes masks for the signing of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (a US-driven secret copyright treaty), members of Bulgaria's parliament repeated the trick.
The MPs say they support copyright laws, but oppose ACTA over its possible turning into an instrument to limit freedom of speech, to control internet use, and to turn into an obstacle for the exchange of information and knowledge online.
On January 26, the Bulgarian government signed in Tokyo the international ACTA agreement, vowing to make downloading content similar to forgery of brands.
The agreement was sealed by Bulgarian ambassador to Japan Lyubomir Todorov, based on a decision by the Bulgarian cabinet taken hastily on January 11.
Michael Geist sez, "I've posted a video version of a recent talk on SOPA activism and what it means for the next generation of global copyright agreements such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership. The talk is about an hour as it also assesses the global strategies employed by the U.S. and copyright lobby groups of shifting away from WIPO toward closed negotiations (like ACTA) and domestic copyright pressure (like the Canada's Bill C-11, which is a combination of DMCA + potentially SOPA)."
UPDATE: My pal Stacey Ransom found the original color photo of this fine resin/fiber piece, titled "Visual Temperature - Sofa," by Cao Hul, and posted it to her Tumblr, Held 4 Ransom.
, my book about the future of energy in the United States, will be published April 10th.
How to Be a Retronaut's gallery of images from the 1970 edition of the "Encylopedia of Home Improvement" are like shots from a never-aired episode of The Brady Bunch where the family took over management of 
This is a Sol LeWitt yarmulke created by the Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek temple in Chester, Connecticut. LeWitt, a member of the congregation, helped design the temple. "
The announcement states that Anonymous stole 2.6 gigabytes of e-mail belonging to Puckett Faraj, a law firm that represents Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who is accused of leading the group of Marines in Haditha. The Web site of Puckett Faraj is not currently loading, and Gawker is reporting that the site was hacked.
The 3D printer prints titanium powder layer by layer, while a computer controlled laser ensures that the correct particles are fused together. Using 3D printing technology, less materials are needed and the production time is much shorter than traditional manufacturing. The mandible was finally given a bioceramic coating compatible with the patient's tissue by BioCeramics in Leiden. The artificial jaw weighs 107 grams, it is only 30 grams heavier than a natural jaw, but the patient can easily get used to it.
I don't know an awful lot about fingernail painting, but this seems like a pretty straightforward painting task, and the effect is pretty awesome.
Joly sez, "Rebecca Mackinnon discusses her new book '
After completing the top of the Dalek as specified, I created an opening in the front by steeking carefully along the vertical line between the knit “instrument panel” and the purled rest of the midsection–just used some sewing shears and cut straight through the middle of the rightmost line of knit stitches, along the entire height of the midsection. I then carefully unraveled the stitches from right to left on the rows above and below the desired door area, to the left end of the “instrument panel”, and placed these two horizontal pairs of exposed stitches on DPNs.
The MPs say they support copyright laws, but oppose ACTA over its possible turning into an instrument to limit freedom of speech, to control internet use, and to turn into an obstacle for the exchange of information and knowledge online.
