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| Monkey suspected in garden store heist
July 23, 2009 at 9:55 pm
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| Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. A monkey is the prime suspect in a garden store burglary that recently took place in Richardson, Texas. The monkey was caught on surveillance video maneuvering through the shop, Plants and Planters. Owners of said shop have deduced that the monkey was trained by a human (since monkeys in the wild don't steal flower pots) to collect the goods and hand them over the fence. As of this writing, the monkey--and his or her owner--remains on the loose. Link (via Monkeys in the News)
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| Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
July 23, 2009 at 8:04 pm
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Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, is an enjoyable reflection on young adult books from the 1960s-1980s, written by Jezebel columnist Lizzie Skurnick (who is a young adult novelist herself, having written several Sweet Valley High novels). Skurnik (and her friends) re-read a bunch of the books they cherished as adolescents and wrote funny and touching essays about them. I read quite a few of the books in here myself (I Am the Cheese, Go Ask Alice, My Darling, My Hamburger, The Clan of the Cave Bear) and the essays brought back a flood of forgotten memories. And now I'm interested in reading a bunch of the books I missed out on the first time around, like The Great Brain and A Day No Pigs Would Die Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
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| Bezos apologizes for Kindle 1984 memory hole blunder
July 23, 2009 at 7:09 pm
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| Posted today on the Kindle Community page at Amazon.com: This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission. With deep apology to our customers, Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com Sounds sincere. Of course, now Amazon needs to walk the walk. An Apology from Amazon
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| Holy Vending Machine
July 23, 2009 at 6:05 pm
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| Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.
I'm not sure what I like more, that you can get a miniature Bible or a set of Rosaries for 50¢, or that this is owned by a company called "Impulse Amusements". You know, for when you find it impulsively amusing to have the blood of Christ wash away your sins.
 Plus, my ichthyologist's brother's friend's horse's roomate's cousin swears he once got a piece of the True Cross in one of these.
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| Comic-Con: splendid excuse for cosplay-themed pinups
July 23, 2009 at 5:32 pm
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|  Suicide Girls, who were among the first advertisers ever on Boing Boing way back in the day, have released a Comic-Con themed photoset of bangin' babes in cosplay getup. Yes, yes, it's blatant booth-bait and link-bait, but these really are fun photos (vampy but work-safe, no bewbs).
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| Mexican melodrama spoof "Uso Justo"
July 23, 2009 at 5:20 pm
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| Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. Several years ago, when I put together the Illegal Art Exhibit, Craig Baldwin turned me on to "Uso Justo," a short film by Coleman Miller, and it was always one of my favorites in the show. Miller took a vintage Mexican melodrama and, by writing his own subtitles, turned it into an experimental film that it itself a sort of meta-commentary on experimental film. A terribly funny one at that. Vimeo and Blip TV have the full thing. As far as I know, a higher res version is available only via Mr. Miller himself.
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| The Five Faces of Comic-Con
July 23, 2009 at 5:19 pm
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|  What the look at left says, according to a Comic-Con facial analysis essay at trueslant.com: "How am I going to get from the Burn Notice panel discussion, which ends at 3:30 p.m. and features my man Bruce Campbell, to the can't-miss Q+A with James Cameron about Avatar, which starts at 3 p.m.? Without a time machine, I mean? Sheer force of will, that's how. But hell, it would be pretty cool if I had a time machine." (thanks, coates)
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| Two-year-old has a pack a day habit
July 23, 2009 at 4:54 pm
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According to Bizarre magazine, this two-year-old from China is said to smoke a pack a day. His father first gave him fags at the age of 18 months to help cope with pain from a hernia. Two-year-old has a pack a day habit (Via Dangerous Minds)
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| Diana Eng: Catching satellites on ham radio
July 23, 2009 at 4:48 pm
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Diana Eng, our all-time favorite contestant on Project Runway, is writing a series of how-to articles for Make Online about HAM radio, which is one of her passions. My favorite ham activity is making contacts via satellites. Not only is there the romantic notion of sending messages into outer space, but you have to trace the orbit of the satellite with your antenna while tuning the radio, to compensate for the Doppler effect. The satellites AO-51, SO-50, and AO-27 orbit the Earth acting as repeaters. Repeaters are automated relay stations that allow hams to send signals over a greater distance using low-power hand held transceivers. The satellites allow hams to relay messages from Earth to space and back to other hams somewhere on the planet. The International Space Station (ISS) also has a repeater, but occasionally, if you're lucky, the astronauts turn on their radios to make contact directly with hams on the ground. The following instructions will get you started listening to birds (satellites) on FM, which can be done with a simple VHF/UHF FM radio with a whip antenna, without the need of a ham license. For better coverage, you can use a Yagi antenna (like the one pictured above) connected to a mutli-mode radio and a license (if you want to transmit). A Yagi antenna can also be used to improve the signal of your hand held radio. Catching satellites on ham radio
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| Readings on ambivalent parenting
July 23, 2009 at 4:35 pm
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| Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.  You could burn most every guide to parenting babies and the world would suffer no great loss, but, as the mother of a one-year-old, I feel compelled to endorse a few standout pieces of writing that have helped me survive babycare.
First, Jeff Vogel's diary of raising his daughter Cordelia, as an infant, then toddler. I watched TV, peacefully, with Cordelia lying on the couch next to me. She made some mildly fussy noises, so I picked her up, took her into the nursery, and checked her diaper. I then found that she had shat out, conservatively, 70% of her body weight. The waste product flowed around the diaper like the wind passes by a stick. I had to cross myself. It was majestic... I am almost positive that she can unhinge her hip bones. Second: this bit of fiction by the late, great postmodern writer Donald Barthelme: The first thing the baby did wrong was to tear pages out of her books. So we made a rule that each time she tore a page out of a book she had to stay alone in her room for four hours, behind the closed door. She was tearing out about a page a day, in the beginning, and the rule worked fairly well, although the crying and screaming from behind the closed door were unnerving... Finally, Tom Scocca's "Underparenting" column at theawl.com is excellent. (via Daniel Radosh, Daddytypes)
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| Massive dance-number wedding entrance
July 23, 2009 at 4:27 pm
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| | This St Paul, MN wedding party had way too much fun choreographing a massive dance-number entrance. Be sure to watch until the bride appears, at least! JK Wedding Entrance Dance (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
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| Slap on the wrist for cop who assaulted paramedic
July 23, 2009 at 4:20 pm
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| | Update to the story about the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper who was more interested in choking a paramedic than he was in the condition of the patient in the ambulance. Trooper Daniel Martin was suspended for five days and ordered to "anger assessment." From J.D. Tuccille's Civil Liberties Examiner site:  "Anger assessment" is that greatest of meaningless institutional butt-coverings. It allows organizational higher-ups to tell the lawyers that they're doing something without actually doing something. It's nonsense. What needs to be assessed in a police officer who was fired in 2000 as Chief of Police in Fairfax, Oklahoma, for violent and bullying behavior, and who then endangers a patient in an ambulance and picks a fight while in uniform? Daniel Martin was out of line, acting like a cartoon cop outraged that somebody didn't "respect mah authoritah." While letting his bruised ego run wild, he behaved unprofessionally and, potentially, put a life at risk. Five days without pay and a bit of psychobabble are an awfully light slap on the wrist for that sort of misconduct. Slap on the wrist for cop who assaulted paramedic
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| Tip to encourage dinner party guests to dispose of olive pits
July 23, 2009 at 3:57 pm
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Place an olive pit in the discard dish before the guest arrive. Behavioral Economics 101: Dinner Party Application
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| Land mine "donated" to Good Will
July 23, 2009 at 2:14 pm
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| Someone put a land mine in a Goodwill donation box at an Arvada, Colorado strip mall. A bomb squad dealt with the mine; it's unknown whether it was live or not. According to the Associated Press, the package, a "rectangular, olive-green box with the words 'Front Toward Enemy'" worried Goodwill workers when they saw it. "Land mine left in Goodwill donation box"
UPDATE: In the comments, folks have correctly identified the device as a Claymore Antipersonnel Mine.
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| Museum Boerhaave photos from Morbid Anatomy
July 23, 2009 at 1:56 pm
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Over at Morbid Anatomy, Joanna just posted her lovely photos of the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden, NL. It's the country's National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine, and houses a legendary permanent collection of curiosities dating back several centuries. Above: Bernardus Siegfried Albinus Case in anatomy hall. All preparations by Albinus, Circa 1730. "The Magnificent Collection of the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden"
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| Improbable Video Games
July 23, 2009 at 1:15 pm
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| Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.
I gave an arcade game-making lecture at Machine Project while ago, and as a joke I made some images of what I thought were wildly unlikely video game subjects:
And then, a few weeks later, I saw this:
Wow. Grey's Anatomy, the video game? That would be like if there was a Trapper John, MD video game back in the 80s. Maybe it's because I haven't really watched that show, but it's hard to wrap my head around how something like this would work. Do you shake the Wiimote to... have relationship problems? Push the B button to trigger self-doubt about your abilities as a doctor?
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| Love in 2D
July 23, 2009 at 12:48 pm
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|  An article I wrote for the New York Times Magazine about men in Japan who are in love with anime characters is online now. The print version will be in this coming Sunday's magazine. I should point out that this phenomenon is not unique to Japan, or to men, but I think it's safe to say that that is where it originated. In the interest of space the editors and I had to cut out the sections about 2D love in the US and elsewhere, and among women. Nisan didn't mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan's gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan's bright blue eyes. In the beginning, they were just friends. Then, when Nisan got his driver's license a few months later, he invited Nemutan for a ride around town in his beat-up Toyota. They went to a beach, not far from the home he shares with his parents in a suburb of Tokyo. It was the first of many road trips they would take together. As they got to know each other, they traveled hundreds of miles west -- to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, sleeping in his car or crashing on friends' couches to save money. They took touristy pictures under cherry trees, frolicked like children on merry-go-rounds and slurped noodles on street corners. Now, after three years together, they are virtually inseparable. "I've experienced so many amazing things because of her," Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan's leg warmly. "She has really changed my life." Nemutan doesn't really have a leg. She's a stuffed pillowcase -- a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo, printed on synthetic fabric. In the game, which is less a game than an interactive visual novel about a schoolyard romance, Nemu is the loudmouthed little sister of the main character, whom she calls nisan, or "big brother," a nickname Nisan adopted as his own when he met Nemu. When I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix "tan" to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is 10, maybe 12 years old and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she's not real, but that hasn't stopped him from loving her just the same. "Of course she's my girlfriend," he said, widening his eyes as if shocked by the question. "I have real feelings for her." Love in 2D [New York Times Magazine]
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| Ginormo Sword: a hack-and-slash commentary on video games
July 23, 2009 at 12:42 pm
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| The Play This Thing blog reviews Ginormo Sword, a sarcastic Flash game that's designed to reduce the dopamine drip of your basic video game to its bare minimum:  Ginormo is just as succinct with the gameplay; if you found pressing WASD to move and clicking like a spastic chimp a tad too hard to manage don't fret, as Ginormo Sword further simplifies the controls to just the mouse. Combat is equally as minimalistic and thankfully void of challenge; click to attack and don't be careless enough to walk into your enemies to win. Each enemy you kill drops gold, which of course can be used to buy said loot. Slay mobs, get loot, repeat ad infinitum. You're most likely accustomed to this from your days of Pavlovian conditioning in Azeroth. Once you tire of this, wander around your static environment till you stumble upon another spawning ground of enemies... Srsly, this game is in the vein of Upgrade Complete or Achievement Unlocked, and is a great meta-commentary on the whole MMO scene and the shallow and one-dimensional gameplay behind it. Strip away the chatroom and all of the other bells and whistles from your MMO and you're left with Ginormo Sword and its lifeless and hollow gameplay
Ginormo Sword
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| ATM to guy depositing California state IOU: "Come back without a [registered] warrant."
July 23, 2009 at 12:21 pm
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|  Clearly the machine knows something we Californians do not. Boing Boing reader Adam Heitzman sends in this iPhone snapshot and says, Here's a comical sign of the Econopocalypse. It's a picture of a Chase ATM in Sacramento telling me "Registered warrants issued by the state of California are not accepted." Registered warrants are IOUs. California is/was something like the 6th largest economy in the world and the bank is saying "cash only, thanks, NEXT!" And in the state capital, no less. [shakes head with sense of foreboding doom].
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| What Worked Then
July 23, 2009 at 12:04 pm
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| Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.
Usually when we look back with smug amusement at technology from the past, the size-related thing that makes us chuckle is how large everything was. The old cellphones that were like holding a lunchbox to your face, the Walkmen that were like carry-on bags-- but we shouldn't forget the joy that comes from laughing at things that now seem too small. 
This came from a 1977 ad for wood panelling, so perhaps they didn't want to obscure any of that glorious, golden wood. But still, I certainly remember having TVs that now would be barely considered adequate for car-headrest use as the main TV in a house. We get spoiled pretty quickly, and there's no going back. Just for comparison's sake, here's how an average-sized HDTV (42") would fit in the scene:  This ad also doesn't do anything to dispel the idea that the only colors we had in abundance in the 70s were browns and the occasional orange. And would it kill them to give Fisty on the right there a chair? And doesn't the left-hand head-smacker look kind of like Steve Martin?
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| Celestial soap bubble
July 23, 2009 at 11:54 am
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|  This gorgeus astro-soap-bubble is a freaky nebula discovered last July by Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, who called it the "Cygnus Bubble." New Scientist has the explanation, courtesy of Adam Frank of the University of Rochester: "'Spherical ones are very rare.' One explanation is that the image is looking down the throat of a typical cylindrical nebula. However, it is still remarkably symmetrical, Frank says." Giant 'soap bubble' found floating in space
(Image: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)
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| David O'Reilly's animated video for U2
July 23, 2009 at 11:50 am
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| Animator David O'Reilly (Twitter), whose work I've featured on Boing Boing's original video program many times, has created this lovely music video for a little-known band from Ireland called "You Too." What's that? Oh I've been corrected, "U2." I think this great little video will really help them get somewhere and make a name for themselves! The song is "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight."
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| Giant "bad ass" watches from Diesel
July 23, 2009 at 11:38 am
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|  Diesel's new charmingly named Super Bad Ass Collection of giant, multi-dial watches is a spear of desiderata aimed straight at my heart. Must. Not. Buy. More. Watches. Diesel Super Bad Ass Collection (Thanks, Mitch!)
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| Basil Wolverton show hanging in NYC until Aug 14
July 23, 2009 at 11:30 am
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| A new show of the art of Basil Wolverton is hanging in New York's Barbara Gladstone Gallery (515 West 24th Street, Chelsea; (212) 206-9300) until Aug 14. The New York Times has a nice potted history (with slideshow) of MAD Magazine's grossest and funniest illustrator to accompany the show.  The Wolverton material best suited to a general audience, though, may be his Bible illustrations, which he was doing in the 1950s and '60s, concurrently with his early Mad work. In 1941 he had become a member of a Protestant sect called the Radio Church of God, later the Worldwide Church of God. He was ordained as an elder in 1943, and as his contribution to the sect he illustrated some of its apocalyptically minded publications, as well as the biblical account of the earth's final days. Several of his end-of-the-world pictures are in the show, and they're wild. Plagues descend on the sin-ridden human race. Bodies break out in disfiguring boils. Faces burn, shrivel and stretch into masks of fear. In this context even the ultra-bonkers cartoons Wolverton did in the 1960s and '70s for the post-underground Gjdrkzlxcbwq Comics and DC Comics make sense.
The van Gogh of the Gross-Out Slideshow: The Michelangelo of Mad Magazine (Thanks, Ben!)
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| Teach kids to be safe on the net by getting them to think critically about censorware
July 23, 2009 at 11:20 am
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| My latest Internet Evolution feature proposes that the best way for schools to protect their students on the Internet is to assign them curriculum that asks students to investigate all the ways that the school's censorware sucks -- blocks useful material, easily circumvented by students, interferes with teachers, invades privacy and enriches sleazy censorware companies. By systematically approaching the efficacy of censorware, students learn statistics, critical thinking, research skills, civics, and the scientific method -- and they help to expose the worse-than-useless solution represented by using censorware on school networks. Let's start by admitting that censorware doesn't work. It catches vast amounts of legitimate material, interfering with teachers' lesson planning and students' research alike. Censorware also allows enormous amounts of bad stuff through, from malware to porn. There simply aren't enough prudes in the vast censorware boiler-rooms to accurately classify every document on the Web. Worst of all, censorware teaches kids that the normal course of online life involves being spied upon for every click, tweet, email, and IM. These are the same kids who we're desperately trying to warn away from disclosing personal information and compromising photos on social networks. They understand that actions speak louder than words: If you wiretap every student in the school and punish those who try to get out from under the all-seeing eye, you're saying "Privacy is worthless." After you've done that, there's no amount of admonishments to value your privacy that can make up for it. Beyond Censorware: Teaching Web Literacy
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| Miro open video player/client gets a major update
July 23, 2009 at 10:50 am
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Dean from the Participatory Culture Foundation sez, "Miro, the free and open source internet TV application, got a nifty update today! Improvements in Miro 2.5 include: speedier performance, audio podcasts, interface polish, and lots of tweaks. The mission behind Miro, as well as its non-profit developer the Participatory Culture Foundation, is to decentralize and fully democratize television as it moves online. Miro connects viewers and creators more directly, moves open standards forward, and is built on a solid foundation of free and open source software." Get Miro 2.5 (Thanks, Dean!) (Disclosure: I am proud to serve as a volunteer on the Board of the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation, which publishes Miro)
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| Geek Atlas: 128 nerdy must-sees and an education in science, technology and geek history
July 23, 2009 at 10:40 am
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|  John Graham-Cumming's The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive is a geek initiation in 505 pages. Identifying 128 sites of nerdy interest (with strong clusters in the UK and US), the Atlas could also be called 2^7 places to go and have your mind blown before you die. From Charles Babbage's pickled brain (Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Museum, London) to the lockpickers' paradise at the John M Mossman Lock Collection in NYC to place to see the prime-number-oriented magicicadas spawn to the Magnetic North Pole, the Atlas covers a gamut from the historical to the wondrous. It even takes note of some of my local haunts, including the wonderful, solemn and beautiful Bunhill Cemetery, resting place of Thomas "Bayesian filtering" Bayes and his patron, Richard Price, the inventor of actuary. It does a particularly good job on Bletchley Park, site of Alan Turing and co's codebreaking efforts during WWII (part of the proceeds from each Atlas sold go to fund restoration efforts at Bletchley, which is sadly neglected by the British government). Each site in the Atlas is accompanied by a sprightly and well-explained lesson in history, science and technology, from the functioning of diesel, two-stroke and four-stroke engines to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory to the way that antibiotics work to the basis for the Davy lamp. Whether you're off on a trip or just want to do some armchair exploring and learning, the Geek Atlas is a wonderful piece of reading, and an education besides. The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive (Amazon) The Geek Atlas (author's site) Publisher of Geek's Atlas to help save Bletchley Park
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| Canadians: speak out on copyright before it's too late!
July 23, 2009 at 10:24 am
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| Michael Geist sez,  The Canadian government has just launched the first public consultation on copyright since 2001. The consultation represents both a crucial opportunity and a potential threat. While Canadians can ensure that the government understands that copyright matters and that a balance is needed, some groups will undoubtedly use the consultation to push for a return of a Canadian DMCA like Bill C-61. The recording industry has already said that bill did not go far enough. That means we could see pressure for a Canadian DMCA, a three-strikes and you're out process, and the extension of the term of copyright to eat into the public domain. To help facilitate greater participation throughout the consultation process, I have launched SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca. The site features dozens of posts and videos on Canadian copyright law, the Twitter #copycon stream, information on Bill C-61, and a Take Action page that highlights the ways individual Canadians can speak out on copyright.
Speak Out On Copyright (Thanks, Michael!)
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| Recently on Offworld: export Spore to Maya, Sam Raimi's Warcraft, low-tech shoegaze
July 23, 2009 at 10:02 am
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|  Recently on Offworld the first bits of games news have started to trickle in from Comic-Con, as Alien Hominid creators The Behemoth announce that their Xbox Live Arcade hit Castle Crashers is coming to the PlayStation 3, as they also show off more videos of the chaotic-cuteness of their upcoming multiplayer party Game 3 (with a retro-lounge soundtrack by Combustible Edison). We also saw the developers at Maxis open their game even wider and include the ability to export your Spore creature to Maya or any Collada-supporting 3D package (above), fully mapped and posable, to do with it what you will, saw Evil Dead director Sam Raimi tapped to make a World of Warcraft movie, and saw Cartoon Network series Metalocalypse coming to PSN and XBLA courtesy developer Frozen Codebase. Then we wrapped up a very musical Wednesday with yet another chiptune tribute album on the horizon, this time 8-bit covers of The Prodigy, listened to cancer charity CD Songs for the Cure including tracks by World of Goo creator Kyle Gabler, and, best of all, discovered a new, free EP by local favorite low-tech shoegaze band Tree Wave. And finally: a NES made of paper and James Kay's papercraft Game Boy bird, and our 'one shot's for the day: Commander Video's glitch ritual, and a gorgeous tribute to Chrono Trigger.
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| Flashback to 1968: Rolling Stone attacks the counterculture
July 23, 2009 at 9:15 am
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| Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine. Depending on your age, you may (consciously or not) hold the belief that, at some point in time, Rolling Stone magazine had some sort of political "edge." I know I did, until I came across this article (below) by Jann Wenner actively discouraging readers from taking part in the historic protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Wenner deplores the "recklessness and thorough lack of moral compunction that characterize" the protests organizers, the Yippies including Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. The cops beat up protesters, he argues, so why would you want to go? Wenner also seems to resent the fact that the Yippies broke the rules of organized dissent and cleverly used media to their ends. They want to hold a press conference at the Hotel Roosevelt instead of a church because it plays better with reporters = outrage!   Wenner wrote: "The spirit of rock and roll...or the new youth, whatever catch-all phrase may be used to denote this mood wants no part of today's social structure, especially in its most manifestly corrupt form, politics." In other words, rock and politics don't mix. This, in the middle of the Vietnam War, one year before Woodstock would prove just how wrong Rolling Stone was. For their part, the Yippies claimed that Wenner was bribed by Xerox magnate Max Palevsky (a Rolling Stone investor with ties to McGovern) to discourage participation in the protests. Evidence of this collusion, however, is scarce.
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| Last Galapagos Pinta turtle finally knocks up a mate's eggs
July 23, 2009 at 8:30 am
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RJ sez, "Poor old Lonesome George, the last remaining living example of the Galapagos Pinta turtle looks set to finally become a dad at the ripe old age of almost one hundred (no one is sure exactly how old he is). This follows a false start last year when the suddenly horny George and his two Hispanola (the closest relative to the Pinta) lady companions produced around a dozen eggs that unfortunately did not incubate. Like any young couple(s) trying for kids, they didn't let this false start deter them and it looks very much as if the five eggs they have produced this year may well hatch. Fingers crossed!" Lonesome George to Finally be a Father? (Image: Lonesome George 2, a CC Attribution photo from Mike Weston's Flickr stream)
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| Brit photographer who shot demolition of flyover arrested for terrorism
July 23, 2009 at 8:12 am
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| Alex took his camera out to photograph the demolition of a flyover (overpass) in Chatham, England. After refusing to give his identification to two plainclothes people who refused to identify themselves, he was arrested under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (he did explain to the police and the mystery plainclothes people why he was there and what he had photographed, which is more than I would have done). The police officer put him in cuffs and led him down his town's main road and locked him in a police van. Once in the van, he was questioned about his views on terrorism. Later, a policewoman who said that he had caught her in one of his shots felt "intimidated" by him because he was tall (implying, I suppose, that he wouldn't have been arrested if he was shorter -- terrorists take note). Alex has complained to the police Professional Standards Department: 
I believe the way I was treated was unjustified and wholly disproportionate. I assert that officer xxxxx misused her powers of arrest and demonstrated a poor understanding of the law in relation to arrest, the use of force, the use of detention, photography in public places, obstruction and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000. Furthermore I assert that officer xxxxx is unsuitable to act as a police officer or at the very least requires further training if she is intimidated by a male of an unremarkable stature taking a single picture with a camera pointed in her direction. I assert that officer xxxxx failed to follow the correct procedures when conducting his search of me and perpetuated the use of unreasonable force by refusing to release me from handcuffs. I assert that PCSO xxxxx demonstrated an unacceptable attitude by making a veiled threat towards me in relation to my future activities as an amateur photographer. I seek for these matters to be fully investigated, the process and outcomes of which I request to be shared with me. With regards to redress I seek a written apology in relation to any shortfalls identified with regards to the involved officer's conduct and consideration of compensation to be made to me for the upset, embarrassment and psychological trauma caused. I would also like Kent and Medway Police to liaise with Medway Council in order to identify the two unidentified men that initially stopped and questioned me. I seek for their conduct to also be fully investigated, the process and outcomes of which I request to be shared with me. Section 44 in Chatham High Street. (Thanks, Mike!)
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| Sliding/rotating tile-game based on CC-licensed art for MAKERS serial
July 23, 2009 at 5:57 am
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As part of the ongoing serialization of Makers, my forthcoming book (late October 2009, from Tor USA and HarperCollins UK), Tor.com has commissioned a series of 81 interlocking, Creative Commons-licensed illustrations from Idiots' Books. Each illustration's four edges line up with any of the other illustrations' edges. Now Tor has released a Flash game that lets you arrange the tiles to form new illustrations, with new tiles being added three times a week, as each new installment comes online. Tile away! Tile Game (Flash) Behold: The Makers Tile Game, version 1.0!
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| NES controller business-card case
July 23, 2009 at 5:53 am
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These old-school NES controller business card cases will ship in October; GeekStuff4You is taking pre-orders at ¥2,900.00 (about 42.2 Bosnia and Herzegovina Convertible Marka, 85 Samoan Tala or 0.912g of gold). NES Controller Type Card Case (via Akihabara News)
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| Amnesty wants you to join a chat TODAY with Shell over human rights violation in Niger Delta
July 23, 2009 at 5:22 am
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| Ben from Amnesty sez, 
Amnesty recently released a report (PDF) focusing on Shell's human rights violations in the Niger Delta In response, a few hundred of our activists used Twitter to send a message to @shelldotcom, asking them to schedule a 'Shell Dialogues' (their online chats around particular issues) about Nigeria. They responded fairly quickly, and scheduled the chat for 2pm UK (9AM Eastern, 6AM Pacific) today (Thursday). We are asking people to simultaneously join in with Shell's heavily moderated 'chat' on shelldialogues.com and our chat. We're gathering people's questions to hold Shell to account on the issues highlighted. Challenge Shell in a live web chat (Thanks, Ben!)
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| Camel's milk chocolate coming to the west
July 23, 2009 at 1:41 am
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| Al Nassma, a Dubai-based camel's milk chocolate company is planning to export its wares overseas to the US and UK. No word on whether any of the enslaved South Asian workers who make the stuff have fallen in the vats.  With 3,000 camels on its Dubai farm, the company sells chocolates through its farm-attached store as well as in luxury hotels and private airlines. It plans to launch an online shopping facility within a month, Van Almsick said. The farm is controlled by the Dubai government... "We aim to be the Godiva [ed: Ew. Aim higher, camel chocolate man!] of the Middle East," Van Almsick said in an interview. "It's a luxury product, so we will never be in supermarkets. The plan is to be in one mall in each UAE city."
World's first camel-milk chocolates going global (via Consumerist) (Photo: Camel, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Victoria Reay's Flickr stream)
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| Chair hand-woven from aluminium
July 23, 2009 at 1:33 am
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| The Uvula chair is hand-woven from strips of alumnium -- sounds like a fun project for the kids on the weekend, providing you've got some decent hand- and eye-protection around: 
Scream is a new aluminum chair from Bannavis Andrew Sribyatta of PIE Studio, an eco-friendly furniture design firm. Made with the same method as their prize-winning Steel Tongue chair, the piece is constructed by hand-weaving an aluminum skin over a stainless steel frame. According to PIE, " The inspiration derives from a screaming mouth exposing the Uvula. The Uvula moves down and touches the floor as one sits on the chair." This Just Inbox: Scream, a hand woven aluminum chair (via IDSA Materials and Processes Section)
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| Syndicated cartoon strip headed for the Commons needs your uploading and tagging help!
July 23, 2009 at 1:26 am
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Creative Commons artist and filmmaker Nina "Sita Sings the Blues" Paley sez, "Artist Nina Paley (that's me) and writer Stephen Hersh are freeing 'The Hots,' a daily+Sunday comic strip they produced for King Features Syndicate in 2002-2003. They are making all the strips free under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. But the project needs volunteers to upload the strips one at a time to Wikimedia Commons, where they can be read, shared, and enjoyed by everyone. They also need descriptions and dates; any other relevant information is welcome." The Hots return - and need your help (Thanks, Nina!)
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| Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom window
July 23, 2009 at 1:21 am
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At 5AM today -- about an hour ago -- just as my alarm went off, someone in the street below started shouting CALL POLICE! CALL POLICE! I grabbed my phone and went to the window, and saw a man in the street, shouting and looking up at the third-story roof of the office building across the street. Looked over just in time to see a man shinning down the side of the building, holding onto a cable -- probably the co-ax cable. The cable snapped, and the man -- a cat-burglar, apparently -- fell the rest of the way. My wife started calling police while I grabbed my camera. The police-shouter ran over to the fallen burglar and tried to block him, while the burglar screamed, "My leg is broken," and commenced crawling across the street, alternating cries of "My leg is broken" with "I didn't do nothin'." Halfway across, a dog-walker came by, spoke with the police-shouter, the burglar, and went back. When the burglar reached the opposite kerb, he took out his phone and called someone and started shouting "Please come get me, my ankle is broken, just come!" Meantime, a third man -- I think he worked in the office building -- came out and called the police. The burglar continued to insist on his innocence, shouting every time he moved and jarred his leg. Six or seven minutes later, six police cars arrived, and I went back inside. A strange way to start the day. Hope his leg is OK. Cat burglar falls three storeys across the street at 5AM
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