This video shows an absolutely stunning cloud formation over Moscow. It was reportedly shot in Moscow's Western District last week. It makes me want to reread the fantastic intro to cloud watching, The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds. From The Telegraph:

Talking to the Daily Mail, a spokesman from Moscow's weather forecasting service said: "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west - this is how the effect was produced.

"This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive," he added.

"If you look closer, you can see sun rays coming through that cloud. Most likely, the sun was setting when the video was being made.

"If you observe clouds regularly, you may see many other astonishing things. Clouds of the same class may look absolutely different in different areas," he said.

"Bizarre 'Independence Day' cloud spotted over Moscow"

I'm pleased to welcome our new guest blogger to Boing Boing: Connie Choe! I met Connie last month at Machine Project's krautfest 2009, where Connie and her mother, Granny Choe, showed everyone how to make kimchi. Take it away, Connie!

Good people of Boing Boing, I hope you appreciate the fact that this picture has been censored for your sake. I'm not flashing the camera or anything... In fact, I'd probably be the last person on the interweb to let the girls go out for a public swim. Yes, there's a good chance that I'm the most annoyingly squeaky clean, law-abiding citizen you will ever virtually meet, and if I were half as smart as I used to be, I would take advantage of this by starting a career in politics. Unfortunately, politics makes me sleepy and large crowds of people make me hyperventilate. It's a shame, really. The censorship is due to the fact that I'm wearing a big company logo and I didn't want to offend you with shameless self-promotion. 

I'm a health and culture writer whose work has appeared in Shape magazine and on LA.com. I'm also co-founder of a burgeoning kimchi empire: the award-winning Granny Choe's Kimchi Co.

For the next two weeks I'll be sharing about the little things that amuse me personally including health/psych news, the cleverness of Asians, and squirrels. 

Life.com has a great gallery of little models of spacecraft built by NASA engineers.

Photo above is from 1967.

Artists and engineers share this bond: the fruit of their labor is often first embodied in rough, rudimentary form. Namely, a model. Pictured: An early and brilliantly minimalist model of the lunar module that, on July 20, 1969, landed on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard.

Weirdly Beautiful Spacecraft Models

Tara McGinley of Dangerous Minds reports on mucus-like blobs that are forming with increasing frequency in the Mediterranean. They're loaded with bacteria and viruses and the larger ones are 200 kilometers (125 miles) long. Sea snot invasion!

I was thumbing through the Summer 2006 issue of The FretBoard Journal (Number 2), a gorgeous magazine for stringed instrument players, collectors, and builders, and came across this short piece about "tone balls." These are the "nebulous balls formed from the bits of lint, dust, hair and insect husks that fall into the soundholes of guitars and mandolins."

Steve Olson, who repairs guitars at Elderly Instruments in Michigan has been collecting tone balls for years and has "catalogued dozens of examples by make, model and year of the host instrument." He says his favorite tone balls are the "densely compressed, perfect spheres formed by rolling around under the cone of old National guitars (top left)."

The Fretboard Journal Number 2 is sold out at the publisher's website, but is available at Elderly Instruments' website for $9.95 (the same issue contains an article I wrote about a ukuele strumming robot used to break in newly-made ukuleles).

Breadpig Publishing were kind enough to send me a review copy of xkcd: volume 0, the first-ever collection of strips from Randall Munroe's fantastic, unrepentantly geeky webcomic XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

I've been a fan of XKCD since I happened upon his Help! I'm Trapped in a Universe Factory strip, and Randall was kind enough to write a fictionalized version of me into later toons. We got to meet last summer at a science fiction convention in Springfield, Mass, and hit it off like a house on fire.

So I was delighted to find myself holding an actual book -- cover price $18, portion of profits goes to building schools in Laos through the Room to Read charity -- and turning the pages. Randall once told me that he'd rejected earlier book offers because his older strips were only available at a very low resolution, and it seems like many of these were included on the basis that they're funny and interesting enough to overlook the lower-quality reproductions. The tool-tips -- hidden punchlines that show up if you hover your mouse over the XKCD strips -- are included as small-caps print tucked among the frames, and this is nearly as good as the screen experience.

The book is full of eastereggs; the pages appear to be numbered in trinary. There is a cryptographic puzzle hidden in the margins, along with many small, Sergio-Argones-like doodles and gags. More than anything, xkcd: volume 0 feels like it is a part of the XKCD continuum, a mix of blog, webcomic, doodle and tweet, handsomely presented and long overdue.

xkcd: volume 0

Zachary Christie is a six-year old student in Newark, Delaware who is facing 45 days in reform school because he brought his new Cub Scout eating utensil to school for lunch. The utensil includes a knife, and this violates the school's brainlessly, robotically enforced zero-tolerance policy on "weapons on school property."

Critics contend that zero-tolerance policies like those in the Christina district have led to sharp increases in suspensions and expulsions, often putting children on the streets or in other places where their behavior only worsens, and that the policies undermine the ability of school officials to use common sense in handling minor infractions.

"Something has to change," said Dodi Herbert, whose 13-year old son, Kyle, was suspended in May and ordered to attend the Christina district's reform school for 45 days after another student dropped a pocket knife in his lap. School officials declined to comment on the case for reasons of privacy.

Ms. Herbert, who said her son was a straight-A student, has since been home-schooling him instead of sending him to the reform school...

"I just think the other kids may tease me for being in trouble," he said, pausing before adding, "but I think the rules are what is wrong, not me."

It's a Fork, It's a Spoon, It's a ... Weapon? (Thanks, Ron!)

(Image: Case Boy Scouts of America Caramel Jigged Bone Hobo Knife 4-1/8", Knifecenter.com; illustration only, this is not necessarily the cutlery Zach Christie got in trouble for carrying)

Over at Instructables, Mike Galloway posted a howto for creating a lovely, twinkling star field ceiling using fiber optics. Inspired by a star field ceiling he saw at a movie theater, Galloway decided to install one in his soon-to-be-born baby's room! "How to create a fiber optic starfield ceiling"

The following true story was told to me by a woman who chooses to remain anonymous for privacy reasons. If you think you have Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder, you can visit this forum for help. I had my first orgasm at the age of 17. I was sitting at my desk at school when all of a sudden, I felt a warm, pulsing feeling in my genital area. My vagina flared up and I couldn't think straight. It was like someone had squeegeed my thoughts away. I was like, whoa, what's that? It felt really erotic and good, but I was also freaked out, scared, and confused. After that, it started happening a few times a day. I searched online for spontaneous orgasms, but all I found was weird porn. It kept getting worse. During my second semester of senior year, I counted orgasms on a sheet of paper. I was having 100 and 200 a day. I ran to hide in the bathroom between classes to relieve the pressure. By the time I started college, the orgasms became even more intense and disruptive, and I was having trouble concentrating. I became really depressed. I didn't know what was wrong with me, and I wasn't getting any better. I cried a lot. I hid in the bathroom. I became violently protective of my privacy. In the beginning, I told everyone I trusted about my condition. People said things like: "You're so lucky!" and "Dude, I'd love to date you." They didn't understand why I wanted it to go away, and labeled me a drama queen. The school psychiatrist thought I was crazy. After my sophomore year, I bought a bunch of vibrators and took medical leave. One day in 2003, a friend sent me an article in the Boston Globe about a newly discovered condition called Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome*. When I read it, I started crying hysterically--it described exactly what I was going through. I immediately made an appointment at the institute the article linked to, and after hours of tests, I was diagnosed with PSAS. My engorged genitalia and hypersensitivity made me a textbook case. Every other doctor had thought I was just a delusional hypochondriac. PSAS feels like having a second heartbeat. No, it's more than that. It's alive — it has its own life force, a mind of its own. I often wonder if this is how teenage boys feel about their erections. My parents pretend my PSAS doesn't exist. It makes me feel uncomfortable and rejected. My mother is very conservative — she has trouble saying the word "orgasm" out loud, and she thinks I'm a pervert because I have toys. A couple months ago, out of the blue, she said, "You still having that orgasm problem?" That was only the second time she asked about it since 2003. I sometimes wish I could make reference to it in normal conversations without feeling like a freak, but I understand that PSAS isn't exactly dinner conversation. Every time I do something, I have to evaluate my situation. Where am I? Are there other people around? How well do I know them? What is the likelihood that, if I don't get someplace private in time, things could get complicated? Can I make noise? (Being vocal isn't necessary, but it helps release more of the pressure.) I avoid triggers — things like music with heavy bass, vibrations from riding a train or an idle car, cold air, musky cologne, darkness, stress, scary movies, romantic movies, unexpected touch, a full bladder. PSAS is completely unrelated to sex drive. Watching sex scenes does nothing for me, but the other day, when a friend put his hand on my back, I found it really hard to contain a screaming orgasm. If my heart rate shoots up too high for too long, I flare up. I avoided exercise and gained a lot of weight. One time, I was hugging a male relative and I felt an orgasm arise. It felt really dirty and wrong, and I totally freaked out. Now, I try to avoid hugs in general unless I feel ready for them. I've been with my boyfriend for about six years, but we still haven't had sex. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to do it. Because of a vulvar pain disorder I have that sometimes comes with PSAS, I know it will hurt like hell. Others who have PSAS say that sex is not satisfying at all — the orgasms associated with sex are nothing compared to the ones induced by the condition. Sometimes I wish I could have sex with him because I think he deserves to have a 'real' girlfriend, but honestly, I just enjoy being held by him and not having it feel inappropriate. He's been very patient and understanding; he's my best friend, and we talk every night. I'm 24 now, and have learned to manage PSAS pretty well. I discovered dancing — it's a great alternative to jogging because it's not as cardio-intensive. As long I take breaks between routines, folk dancing or doing salsa doesn't cause a flare up. Last week, I was at the movies and had to leave twice because I was flaring up. Each time, I ran to the bathroom and tapped my heels on the floor to hear if there was anyone else around. Then I locked myself into a stall, braced myself against the stall door, and let the orgasm run its course. I missed about 15 minutes of the film, but that's just one of the many things that result from managing PSAS and its collateral damage. My orgasms feel like a cosmic joke. I don't know why this happened to me and not someone else. If I didn't have PSAS, I'd be much more outgoing, and I probably would have finished college two years earlier. I'd have a normal sex life. I feel like I'm lugging around a shadow, a ghost that I just can't shake. It depresses me that I'm stuck with it, probably for the rest of my life, but strangely enough, I don't want to be cured instantly of PSAS. It appeared suddenly in my life, and if it disappeared just as suddenly, I would always be looking over my shoulder, and I'm not sure I would know who I was. I would rather have it slowly fade away, but if it doesn't, well, I'm doing my best to make peace with this part of my life. *The name of this condition was recently changed to Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder to remove the stigma that this is a sexual disease. PGAD will be officially recognized in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which comes out in 2012.

Painter and sculptor Kiel Johnson created a gorgeous cardboard model of a twin-lens reflex camera. It actually functions as a pinhole camera. His next exhibition, opening October 17 at the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, is dedicated to the printing press. The centerpiece of the show, titled "Publish or Perish," is a huge metal and cardboard of a printing press with a 70-yard drawing fed through it. For more, see the upcoming print issue of Hi-Fructose, Volume 14.

From Johnson's artist statement quoted on the Hi-Fructose blog:

An interest in "the way things used to be" as well as the "way they might end up". I enjoy engineering and design features of the past. A time when objects were well crafted and meant to last for a generation or more, not just a season. I enjoy thinking about a time when your fancy new sewing machine came in a big pine crate and you needed a pry-bar to open it. Once opened, the machine had thousands of moving parts all cast in iron and aluminum, with levers, knobs and switches. You could see how it was built and if something broke down, you might even fix it yourself with a basic set of tools and some ingenuity.

I'm thinking about dying technologies, communication highways, information networks, power of the press, memories of youth, searching, investigating, lessons learned, stories told, Thomas Paine, W. R. Hearst, printed images, reproduction, news feeds, "live at five", "this just in", "Exclusives", HIStory vs THEIRstory vs HERstory vs the PRESStory vs FAMILYstory.

Publish or Perish: Kiel Johnson

One of the highlights of this year's Austin GDC was a session by game design veteran Greg Costikyan on the 'blight or bane' of randomness in games -- a wide-ranging talk that covered the history and delicate balance of luck or chance in games, and their interplay with the idea of skill. Of particular note were his final slides on algorithmic content: randomly or procedurally generated games, starting, of course, with the genre-defining early computer RPG Rogue, a game highly dependent on luck but also one of near infinite variety with each successive playthrough. The idea is one that's been prevalent throughout videogame history, but it's also one that's most recently and notably being embraced by indies for its exploit-ability in adding 'cheap' (once your algorithms have been perfected) content and replayability on a tight budget and tiny team. Derek Yu's Spelunky (at top) is easily the best example, and where all discussion of the indie embrace of procedural generation needs to start. Taking the Rogue formula and applying it to the 8-bit platformer genre, Spelunky's enduring power and charm (having been finessed for nearly a year, and only just now hitting its 1.0 release) is its ability to create "situations" rather than rote level layouts. Though your only goal is 'simpy' to reach an exit at the bottom of each generated cave, without the benefit of memorization (think of how easily, 25 years later, you can now anticipate each impending Goomba and pitfall in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.) every new twist in Spelunky is a fresh test of more overarching skills: arrow-traps lining the walls of your next drop, a giant spider hovering near a precious gem, a distressed damsel crying for help at the bottom of a snake pit. None of these situations are ever presented the same way or in the same sequence twice, nor are their solutions any less unique, and each failure presents a learning opportunity that feels as rewarding as each victory (particularly in how it avoids the Groundhog Day frustrations of butting up against identical deaths). Play Yu's free PC release of the game and you'll understand instantly, and prep yourself for the 2010 release of the Xbox Live Arcade version. Adam Saltsman's embrace of these ideas goes even deeper: his decision not to include GUI level-editing utilities in his recent free Flixel Flash engine was meant to encourage new developers to experiment with script-based procedural techniques, starting with his own game Fathom (and Flixel demo game Mode). Where that's shined most brightly, though, is in his Experimental Gameplay contribution Canabalt (just recently released for the iPhone [App Store link]). Stripped down even further than Spelunky, Canabalt is one-button economy over-top procedural play. Your only interaction in Canabalt is to jump from roof to algorithmically-heightened and extended roof in a break-neck escape from a situation unspecified, giving the game a laser-focus on speed and reaction time. It's that simplicity and variety that's made it not only one of the most compulsive indie games of the year, but also the near-instant viral hit it's now become (alongside Saltsman's smart social network promotions). Finally, procedure meets sandbox in Farbs' Captain Forever, the least overtly or recognizably generated game of the three, but no less infinitely replayable, as signified by its title. Your goal in the game? Merely to act and excel as a star pilot -- and by 'you' I mean 'you': Forever's best fourth-wall-breaking trick is to use your PC's webcam to project your own face as a ghostly reflection on its low-bit display, visible primarily on direct-hit enemy explosions, which places you directly inside your ship's cockpit even as you sit slumped at your MacBook. To progress further into its infinite universe, Forever lets you procure scrap from demolished ships to build your own ever-more-fearsome craft, which elicits a further push-pull by generating both more powerful foes with higher-grade shields and weapons, and easier prey as you lose your own components in firefights. Still in pre-release, you can donate to Farbs to get an early look into the infinite space of his generated space, and, as with the other games above, become a firm believer in the church of procedural gaming.

See, it says so right there on the sign.

Crop art is exactly what it sounds like: Art made with crops. Generally speaking, that means everything from crop circles to grape-vine wreaths. But we're talking about a very specific kind of crop art. One seldom seen outside the surreal confines of the Minnesota State Fair. This crop art is all about seeds--thousands of them--glued together to form an image. Right now, you're thinking about preschool macaroni pictures, aren't you? Don't. Real crop art is much more challenging.

Everything you see here is seeds. Artists like Kimberly Cope--the Minneapolitan responsible for this punny little number, which references the grand Fair tradition of serving anything and everything fried and on a stick--painstakingly glue the seeds to a masonite backer board. It's an artistic technique that stems from historical attempts to display crops for show. You wanted something aesthetically pleasing, but you also wanted to show off the quality of the crops themselves.

"It's telling that these pieces are displayed in the horticulture building, alongside the blue-ribbon corn and flax," says Colleen Sheehy, director of the Plains Art Museum and the author of Seed Queen, a book about crop art and the woman who revolutionized the medium.

These are all the different types of seeds that make up Conan. You see the teeny canola seeds and quinoa? You put those on individually with a toothpick, Sheehan says. Unsurprisingly, that kind of work doesn't have particularly widespread appeal. When Sheehan was researching a book about Lillian Colton--the mother of modern Minnesota crop art--she contacted every state fair in the U.S., looking for similar competitions. Nobody had one.

"You will see some crop art in other states, mixed into a different category, like in arts and crafts," she says. "But Minnesota is really the only place where this isn't just nostalgic and cute. It's still a live art here. It's still evolving."

(Ms. Cope, by the way, deserves some sort of award for most puns shoehorned into a State Fair art entry.)

Lillian Colton deserves the credit for keeping crop art alive in Minnesota. This Abe Lincoln--again, all seeds, including the background--is one of hers. Colton first entered the crop art competition in 1966, the second year of its existence as a special category. Back then, Sheehy says, people were using the seeds like stitches of thread. You'd have a big, blank background with seeds forming some abstract shapes or mimicking old-fashioned embroidery samplers. Colton (truly, a Happy Mutant before her time) went in an entirely different direction. At the 1967 fair, she unveiled her first portrait, using seeds like drops of paint to create texture, depth and shadow.

"She really blew it open by showing you could do any subject matter," Sheehy says. "And the virtuosity she introduced by using the really tiny seeds, it raised the bar with obsessive quality in the art."

Colton, as the kids say, brought it. She entered a new portrait every year, and it eventually got to the point where the judges may as well have printed her name on the blue ribbons in advance. Thus, did the backlash begin. It started with subject matter. Colton's portraits, innovative as they were, were very Lawrence Welk, culturally speaking. You got your presidents. You got your un-controversial movie stars. You got your Jesus.

In response, younger Minnesotans started turning up with portraits of Bob Marley and Che.

Which leads us to this snappy little number from the 2009 Fair. One of the first reasons I got curious about Minnesota crop art was its tradition of political commentary, often featuring a strong lefty bent--a somewhat unexpected tendency for a state fair art competition involving commodity crops. It's quite a bit different from Lillian Colton's polite portraiture, but Sheehy says the credit goes to Colton all the same.

"Even to those who reacted against her, she was really the standard people measured themselves against. Good and bad she sent crop art in a lot of different directions and made it seem alive and viable," Sheehy says. "What you see here today is more interesting, artistically, than anything over in the fine art building."

For the record, the liberal bias of modern crop artists does attract its own dissent. No, I'm not sure why Nancy Reagan has a parrot. Or why Barbara Bush was left out.

And the competition isn't all about politics.

The competitors also aren't all Minnesotan. There is a category for would-be seed kings and queens who live out of state. The most out-of-state of all the out-of-staters, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is Zambian artist Obrien Shipeka. Shipeka has long worked with seed art and entered this portrait of his little sister after a U.S. Embassy public affairs officer told him about the Minnesota State Fair. Unique to Shipeka's work is the technique of roasting seeds--in this case, millet--to alter their color. The innovation helped earn him the 2009 overall Best in Show, the out-of-state blue ribbon and a $40 prize. To put the prize in perspective, Shipeka just made about as much as a Zambian security guard could expect to earn in a year, according to the 2002 Economic and Social Development Research Project of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection.

Small businesses are the driving force behind growth and innovation in the American Economy, and their inspiring stories reverberate across all industry sectors. American Express and NBC Universal are proud to support the small business community, so they've partnered to create the Shine A Light program in order to honor standout small businesses everywhere.

It's down to the wire with three finalists vying for the winning nod. And who provides that winning nod? You do! Your votes will determine which of these three hard working small businesses will receive $100,000 in grant and marketing support from American Express.

Read through the inspiring stories of these three finalists - a telecommunications company, a paint and hardware store and an organic baby food company - and cast your vote for the most inspiring story. It means a lot and can make a real difference to one inspirational small business.

Vote today!

Open source banjo maven Patrick Costello writes,

We have been hosting folk musician retreats for the last couple of years here in Crisfield, Maryland. The idea is to bring musicians together in a funky old house on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay to jam and share ideas. From our very first event we have been able to draw musicians from all over the world and the mix ranges from rank beginners to seasoned professionals. When we started the project we were charging a registration fee to cover food and lodging, but as the event started to grow we realized that we had to rethink how we running things.

For our last retreat on September 17-20 2009 we decided to take a risk and make the event free - food, lodging and access to the event all at no charge. We simply passed the hat and asked folks to contribute what they could to keep the event going. (Canada Goose Records has released a soundscape of our April 2009 Retreat under a CC-license.) This probably won't surprise you, but we wound up bringing in enough to cover a good deal of the expenses for our next retreat on May 6-9 2010.

So we are going to continue running the Crisfield Folk Musicians Retreat as a pass-the-hat funded event. Four days of amazing music, fellowship, good food and amazing scenery for whatever you can afford to throw into the hat.

The Crisfield Folk Musicians Retreat 2010

(Attentive readers will remember that Patrick had been legally and painfully deaf for some time, and recently had corrective surgery via a BAHA implant; he adds, "My Baha implant is amazing. I can hear! For the past month I have been wandering around like a little kid listening to birds and crickets. Most of all I can hear my instruments again. It has been so wonderful being able to just kick back with my guitar and play without struggling to make out the sounds or having to hunch over and rest my teeth on the upper bout. My father caught the activation of the device on video. I have a hard time watching the bit where I hear my guitar for the first time in years. Technology is just grand!)

I'm speaking at a Hoxton LibDems dinner in London on Oct 19 at 7:30PM, at the Hoxton Apprentice in Hoxton Square, near Old Street Station. The event is open to the public -- though they will try to get you to join/donate to the LibDems, whom I support for many reasons, not least because they're a national party who don't expect me to carry a biometric radio-enabled ID card as a condition of my spousal visa. Not surprisingly, I'll be talking on "Privacy, Civil Liberties and Technology - Is Privacy Possible in the 21st Century?"

Date: Monday, October 19, 2009
Time: 7.30pm - 10.00pm

We have a top speaker for our autumn dinner this year, the science fiction writer and civil liberties campaigner; Cory Doctorow. The theme is; "Privacy, Civil Liberties and Technology - Is Privacy Possible in the 21st Century?". Find out more on our website where you can book in advance at the cheaper rate of £10 (£12 on the door).

The venue is just 5 minutes walk from Old Street tube in near the City in Central London.

Hackney Lib Dems autumn dinner in Hoxton Square near Old Street tube, with special guest speaker Cory Doctorow

On the news that Bobtown, Pennsylvania has outlawed Hallowe'en to "keep kids safe," Lenore "Free Range Kids" Skenazy points out that there has never been a single substantiated incident of a kid being sickened, hurt or killed by doctored candy handed out during trick-or-treating in the history of America.

Ever.

Was there ever really a rash of candy killings? Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, took it upon himself to find out. He studied crime reports from Halloween dating back as far as 1958, and guess exactly how many kids he found poisoned by a stranger's candy?

A hundred and five? A dozen? Well, one, at least?

"The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating," says the professor. The fear is completely unfounded.

Goodbye Halloween, Hello "Safety"

(Image: Me as a pirate, Hallowe'en 1975, Toronto, Canada -- photo by Gordon Doctorow)

Nice work from Ars Technica's Nate Anderson on the ways that entertainment companies have spent the past century decrying new technology, claiming that it would destroy copyright, from the record player to the xerox machine to the VCR to DTV to Napster.

Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti appeared at a Congressional hearing on the VCR and famously went hog-wild. "This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here," he warned after reciting VCR import statistics. "Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that the VCR is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace... We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine..."

"We're in favor of HD radio," said the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol in a 2004 interview. "It offers great benefits for consumers and everyone involved, but we're not blind to several concerns. Someone could cherry-pick songs off a broadcast and fill up a personal library and then post it on Kazaa... We're concerned for ourselves and the artists. If you don't have protection, it undermines the future investment in music."

100 years of Big Content fearing technology--in its own words

Boing Boing guestblogger Mitch Horowitz is author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation and editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin publishers.

Friends, It has been a pleasure to be a part of the Boing Boing nation as a guest blogger these past two weeks. I hope to stay in contact online and to meet some of you at various gigs around the country, including at the Esalen Institute, where Erik Davis and I will be delivering a weekend workshop on February 19-21 titled "The Occult in America: An Adventure in Arcane History." You can also see me next Friday at 9 p.m. EST on a Dateline NBC special about Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

While I was writing Occult America, the figure I came to most admire was Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965), Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture and second vice president. Wallace was not only a successful businessman (founder of Pioneer Hi-Bred) and an innovative politician (his policies saved thousands of family farms during the Great Depression), but he was also a genuine searcher into cosmic realms, freely exploring Theosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, astrology, Native American shamanism, and various strands of mysticism. His name may be largely forgotten, but he was a model of how to live with purpose.

I wish you farewell with two of Wallace's statements:

Religion is a method whereby man reaches out toward God in an effort to find the spiritual power to express here on earth in a practical way the divine potentialities in himself and his fellow beings.

Karma means that while things may not balance out in a given lifetime, they balance out in the long run in terms of justice between individuals, between man and whole. It seems to me one of the most profound of all religious concepts.

Selected Works of Henry A. Wallace

Henry A. Wallace Country Life Center

The Arizona Republic is plumbing new lows, quoting "psychics" as though they were experts on the future:

Consider the way the story starts. The word "apparently" is a tip-off that the piece is based on no actual data. Who's the source for this alleged mini-flood of new customers? Why, the people selling the product. Makes sense to me: In I-can-see-into-the-future territory, we can just take their word for it.

Not a single customer is quoted. We hear only from the people who are claiming to be getting this influx of new customers. Can't the newspaper find even one client?

Look. Newspapers run astrology columns -- something I'd ban if I ran a paper, period -- with no disclaimers that there is no scientific basis for what these planet- and star-gazers tell us. But the astrology columns run, typically, near the comics, which is the fiction section of the daily paper.

No newspaper, as far as I know, gives its pages over to self-described psychics. Yet the Republic's story quotes several, along with the astrologers, with a straight face.

Quoting 'Psychics' Like Experts: How Low Can News Judgement Go? (Thanks, Dan!)

I'll be in Brighton, England next Saturday, Oct 17 for a Battle of Ideas event entitled "The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age." I'll be on a panel with Michael Bull from the University of Sussex and Nico Macdonald, chaired by Robert Clowes of Brighton Salon. It's at 8PM in the Jubilee Library and tickets are £7.50 (£5 concessions). Hope to see you there! (I'll also be doing a London Battle of Ideas event on Oct 31, "Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing")

The 21st century looks set to be age of online collaboration. While old forms of community and solidarity have waned, leaving us apparently more fragmented and individualised, the social web enables many of us to work, play and organise with others in ways previously unimaginable. Technologies like Flickr, Delicious and Wikipedia evidence new means of sharing information and working together. Many suggest these technologies will have far-reaching social implications, and even presage a new form of production and work outside the market system. While traditional free market capitalism is compromised by the worldwide recession, the world wide web is said to promise an exciting alternative. Wired's Kevin Kelly suggests we are entering a new collectivist epoch, a 'New Socialism'. Technology guru Howard Rheingold sees these developments as disruptive, and will change the way people 'meet, mate, work, fight, buy, sell'. Charles Leadbeater, author of We-Think, sees the new means of networked collaboration as presaging a new production model: 'Mass Innovation rather than Mass Production'.

The Future of Collaboration: Sharing and Work in the Networked Age

I'll be in Waterloo, Ontario on 22 Oct 2009 for the Perimeter Institute's Quantum to Cosmos event, which will also feature Neal Stephenson, Stewart Brand, Neil Gershenfeld, Stephen Hawking, Tara Hunt, Jaron Lanier, and many other distinguished scientists and writers. I'm doing a solo talk on copyright at 4PM and then a panel on AI and robotics for TVO's The Agenda at 8PM.

Quantum to Cosmos

Quantum to Cosmos tickets

Type design legend John Berry writes in about his upcoming panel on Web font embedding: "It's all about getting new fonts onto a web page, so the content doesn't all end up in default Times or Arial. After a wide-ranging but inconclusive panel on web fonts at TypeCon in July, this time around some of the browser makers will be represented -- and the focus will widen to include *how* fonts are used on the web. "

I hope they put this on the web afterward!

Where: Typ09, the 2009 ATypI conference, Mexico City
When: 26-30 October (web-fonts program on Thursday, 29 October, at Anáhuac University campus)

Web fonts: the talk of Typ09 (Thanks, John!)

Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive says:

Down on his luck, Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (aka "David Seville") bought a tape recorder capable of speeding up voices with his last $200. He quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records. The label was close to bankruptcy, but Bagdasarian convinced them that they might as well press Chipmunk singles with the leftover vinyl pucks and labels in their warehouse rather than just turn the unused stock over to the bank when the business went under. Production commenced and in just a few months leading up to Christmas of 1958, the record shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of the best selling singles of all time. Bagdasarian won two Grammy Awards, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy, and the Chipmunks became a household name with children all over the world.

The History of the Chipmunks

Game research, ghost stories, Alan Moore, and academia: The far reaches of edutainment.
Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun argues that games don't necessarily have to be fun to be engaging: "Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on?"

How'd They Do That? Poison Ivy and Carbon Dioxide Studies
Maggie Koerth-Baker discovers how scientists figured out that CO2 makes ivy grow incredibly fast ... and problematically poisonous.

The ecologist who found his wedding ring
Lisa Katayama writes: "When Aleki Taumoepeau, a 42-year old ecologist, dropped his wedding ring in the murky waters of a New Zealand ... he was determined to find it at all costs"

BBVideo: SYNESTHESIA, a film by Jonathan Fowler.
Boing Boing Video presents a remix of "Synesthesia," a documentary directed by Jonathan Fowler, about people whose senses blend, or mix. For instance: a synesthete might see colors when listening to music, or taste flavors when hearing a spoken word.

Why Halo makes me want to lay down and die
Margaret Robertson on Halo's oneiric call to adventure: "Halo is a place where I feel peaceful. It's partly, I grant you, the pistol in my hand and the rocket-launcher on my back, both of which take the stress out of day-to-day life."

Grab your favorite sugary cereal and pull up a seat. It's time for Saturday Morning Science Experiment! This week, we're finding out what happens to a gummi bear (i.e., sucrose) when it's dropped into molten potassium chlorate.

Got a video you want to see on Saturday Morning Science Experiment? Drop me an email, I'm taking suggestions.

Gummi bear thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user Furryscaly, via CC.

Mathias sez, "Nasty Old People is the first feature film in Swedish history to be released under a Creative Commons license."

Mette is a member of a neo-Nazi gang, her day job is to take care of four crazy old people that all are just waiting to die. Her life becomes a journey into a burlesque fairytale, where the rules of the game are created by Mette herself. Mette is indifferent about her way of life, until she one night assaults a man, kicking him senseless. Waking up the day after, she realizes that something is wrong, and in company with the her crazy oldies she longs for respect and love. She can tell that the old folks are marginalized by the modern society, but together they create a world and a voice of their own.

Nasty Old People

Download legally from the Pirate Bay

(Thanks, Mathias!)

When a British girl -- who had an undiagnosed tumor -- died shortly after receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine, the British tabloids jumped on the story as proof that vaccines are evil and pad and deadly and dangerous. They even quoted respected scientists who agreed with them. Except they misrepreented those scientists' views, got the science completely wrong, scared people away from potentially life-saving treatment, and failed to adequately own up to their mistakes. Ben Goldacre, the "bad science" columnist for the Guardian, has written a scathing indictment of the way the press handled the story.

The story seemed unlikely for three reasons. Firstly, Professor Harper is not a known member of the antivaccination community, which is vanishingly small. Secondly, it was on the front page of the Sunday Express, which is indeed cause for concern. Lastly, it was by specialist health journalist Lucy Johnston, whose previous work includes "Doctor's MMR fears", "Exclusive: Experts Cast Doubt On Claim For 'Wonder' Cancer Jabs", "Children 'Used As Guinea Pigs For Vaccines'", "Dangers Of Mmr Jab 'Covered Up'", "Teenage Girls Sue Over Cancer Jab", "Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme", and so many more, including a rather memorable bad science story, the front page: " Suicides 'Linked To Phone Masts".

So I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper's position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

"I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a 'controversial drug'. I did not 'hit out' - I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview."

Jabs "as bad as the cancer" (Thanks, Evidence Matters!)

This week's story on the Escape Pod sf podcast is Marc Laidlaw's "Sleepy Joe," a grimly comic, apocalyptic story about paralegals with a secret cable-access show who find themselves caring for (and kidnapping) a brainwashed war-veteran who's been turned into a human weapon. It's a marvellous story and a great reading (the story was originally published on The Infinite Matrix). Astute readers will remember Marc as a former guestblogger, a wildly imaginative sf writer, and the games-writer behind such Valve titles as Half-Life.

The plan must have come to Rog fully formed that first morning, as he stepped off the elevator into the lobby of Szilliken Sharpenwright and saw the old soldier newly stationed there in his omnichair between the potted silk ferns and the coffee tables.

"Oh. My. God. I am in love."

Megan, her arms loaded with Rog-House props and paraphernalia she hadn't had time to ditch yet, said, "You say that an awful lot for someone who styles himself completely asexual. Not to mention atheistic."

"There's no conflict! He's completely post-human!"

"Hm. You two even look a bit alike."

EP219: Sleepy Joe

Direct MP3 link

Sleepy Joe text on Infinite Matrix

Mike sez, "For three weeks only, Amazon and Mojo Nixon are offering his entire catalog in MP3 format completely free, including his latest album, Whiskey Rebellion."

Now there's some good news! There's nothing I don't like about Mojo Nixon. This is the guy who produced the kiddypunk band Old Skull after all (I always suspected he was responsible for the rousing chorus of "I hate you Ronald Reagan!" at the end of their smash-hit "Homeless").

If you're not familiar with Mr Nixon's oeuvre, give a listen to Elvis is Everywhere, Wash No Dishes No More and This Land is Your Land. Especially Wash No Dishes No More.

Update: This only works if your IP address is in the USA.

One of the most outsized personalities on college radio in the '80s, Mojo Nixon won a fervent cult following with his motor-mouthed redneck persona and a gonzo brand of satire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Nixon had a particular knack for celebrity-themed novelty hits ("Elvis Is Everywhere," "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child," "Don Henley Must Die"), but he was prone to gleefully crass rants on a variety of social ills ("I Hate Banks," "Destroy All Lawyers," "I Ain't Gonna Piss In No Jar"), while celebrating lowbrow, blue-collar America in all its trashy, beer-soaked glory. All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B, which earned Nixon some friends in the roots rock community but had enough punk attitude -- in its own bizarre way -- to make him a college radio staple during his heyday.

Mojo Nixon (Thanks, Mike!)

This Russian casemodder included a dollhouse-scale living room in an elaborate PC case... Presumably it's where the computer elves go to relax after a hard day's tallying up spreadsheets.

Заголовок сообщения: Комната в компьютере (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)