How astronauts see Hurricane Earl. This image acquired by NASA two days ago:
The relatively placid view from the International Space Station belied the potent forces at work in Hurricane Earl as it hovered over the tropical Atlantic Ocean on August 30. With maximum sustained winds of 135 miles (215 kilometers) per hour, the storm was classified as a category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale as it passed north of the Virgin Islands.
Curator and artist Aunia Kahn selected a group of 23 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists to interpret one card each of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Hi-Fructose has a sneak preview of 14 of the cards, which will debut October 1 with a full show at Los Angeles's La Luz de Jesus Gallery, a book, and of course a deck of cards. Above left, card back by Daniel Martin Diaz; right, The Devil by Chet Zar
The LowBrow Tarot Card Project preview (Hi-Fructose)
UPDATE: You can see the entire show at the La Luz De Jesus site here.
Looking for Bigfoot in Minnesota
Yesterday, while flipping through my Minneapolis Continuing Education fall catalog, I noticed a class on the Great Mysteries of Science, which turned out to be lake monsters, Sasquatch and UFOs. The class was to be taught by a retired University of Minnesota professor who has since participated in an expedition to study said Sasquatch.
Now, this surprised me, because I had previously pegged Bigfoot as one of those coastal elites, who spent all his time in the Pacific Northwest and shunned the forests here in flyover country. But, apparently, Sasquatch is a Real American after all. In fact, sightings are common enough in northern Minnesota that the Bigfoot Field Research Organization recently organized a Sasquatch search party up there. Forty-two people went along, including my friend, travel journalist Frank Bures, who wrote about the experience of "'squatch hunting" for Minnesota Monthly magazine.
We'd been split into 15 camps, and we were carrying an armament of investigative equipment: night-vision scopes, walkie-talkies, GPS, infrared cameras, thermal-recording devices, video and audio recorders, and more. Someone handed me a thermal imager, which would show bright heat signatures of the living things in the forest. I scanned the area around us but saw nothing except a few warm rocks and something that may have been a raccoon.
"We've got some activity here," came another report across the radio. "They're walking around our site." Whenever the group laughed, apparently, there was a rustling in the woods. When they laughed really hard, there was even more rustling.
Those lucky bastards!
Rob Cockerham's quest for a solid ice beer tray
Rob say: "I spent way too much time making a solid-ice beer tray, but I still feel it was worth the effort. To be truly complete, I should have test floated it in a pool or hot tub, but the bottle opener kept short-circuiting my experiments."
Here's video of the triumphant success of an elaborate kids' Rube Goldberg machine, created at an "informal Rube Goldberg summer camp for kids ages 3-8." I know nothing about this summer-camp, but it seems like one of the great Good Things of our era -- especially judging from the awesome elation of the kids after the successful run!
How to Get a Beach Ball Into a Galvanized Bucket (the Hard Way)
A white tiger cub born at the Vandalur zoo in Chennai, India is turning black. From The Telegraph:
Biologists believe a large presence of melanin, the dark skin pigment, is the likely reason for its unusual colouring."White tiger cub in Indian zoo turns black"Tigers' skin colour is determined by the presence of black and yellow pigments. In most tigers, the colour yellow dominates over black to give them their characteristic colouring.
"In this cub, the reverse has happened — black is the dominant colour," senior zoo biologist Dr Manimozhi told The Times of India.
"It is the dominance of yellow pigment that enables tigers to survive in the wild," he added. "In fact, this is the reason why most white tigers are found only in zoos and not in the wild," Dr Manimozhi said.
JenG sez, "NBC4 offers a few great pictures of Columbus College of Art & Design students playing with this interactive 8-bit mural. The mural depicts classic moments from Super Mario Bros., positioned without Mario or Luigi so passers-by can hop into level 1-1."
CCAD Students Create Interactive Mural (Thanks, Jen G!)
(Image: Ken Aschliman)
Quiznos sandwich: reality versus advertising
Quiznos's food photographers and stylists are apparently some kind of latter-day sorcerers, judging from the ad-versus-reality photos of their "Baja Chicken Sandwich" product, as snapped by Sarah, a Consumerist reader.
Fast Food Advertising Vs. Reality: Quiznos Baja Chicken Sandwich
Wendy's restaurants beverage-handling training songs
Consumerist reader SteveDave has dug up a pair of 1990s-vintage Wendy's training videos explaining how to serve beverages. They're masterpieces of shitty, squirm-worthy industrial video, especially the insincerely rapped "cold beverages" short (they should have just licensed the kick ass G Love and Special Sauce song). Looking at the Submitterator queue, I see that Cassandra found this one last week, too -- thanks, Cassandra!
Our friends at Biomega designed this cool-looking cargo bike for Puma.
PUMA Mopion is rock steady for the daily grind. It mixes city bike features, and cargo bike features, making it a sturdy companion. It comes with a super-size innovative front carrier for heavy duty transport of your groceries or other needs. Developed for city dwellers, Mopion features a light aluminum frame, making it a one-of-a-kind lightweight cargo bike weighing only 22 kilos. The geometry holds the body in a slightly inclined, but still heads-up position for navigational ease and exceptional balancing.PUMA Mopion
Here's a mesmerizing three-minute tutorial on cutting erratic "organic" gears that spin freely despite their odd shapes. After watching it, I was left wondering how you'd make a third (and fourth, and fifth) gear that could mesh with the system without repeating the earlier gear forms, to create an enormous, improbable Rube Goldberg display.
How-To: Make Organically-Shaped Gears
German "secure" ID cards compromised on national TV, gov't buries head in sand
A German TV programme showed hackers from the Chaos Computer Club using off-the-shelf equipment to extract personal information from the government's new "secure" ID card, which stores scans of fingerprints and a six-digit PIN that can be used to sign official documents and declarations.
In an interview with the show, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said he saw no immediate reason to act on the alleged security issue.New government ID cards easily hacked (via /.)Meanwhile on Tuesday the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) rejected the Plusminus' criticism of the new ID card. The agency's personal identification expert Jens Bender said the card was secure and called the combination of an integrated chip with a PIN number a "significant security improvement compared to today's standard process of user name and password."
But a classic Trojan horse program that logs keystrokes remained a threat, he admitted, because users must use keyboards in addition to the scanners.
The West Chester Guerilla Drive-In MacGuffin Quest
John Young says:
Boing Boing has mentioned us at the West Chester Guerilla Drive-In a couple of times now (here and here). We show 16-millimeter movies at secret locations that match the film, projected from the sidecar of my 1977 BMW motorcycle. In order to find out where and when the movies will be, folks must find the MacGuffin -- an AM transmitter hidden in a waterproof Pelican case.MacGuffin quest on the Guerilla Drive-In siteThis year, we raised the bar on the quest. The MacGuffin is hidden in public. In order to finish the quest, folks must memorize and recite Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias", the most metal poem ever written. Some of the folks present will know what is going on, but they will not let on that they know until the recitation is complete. And the reciter can't half-ass it, either. Unless they chew the scenery, unless they really SELL the bombastic majesty of the lone and level sands, the judges won't reveal themselves, and you won't even be sure that you're reciting in the right place.
To demonstrate a proper recitation, I asked Hunter Davis to do a reading. Hunter is the fellow who did the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" in the voice of Sir Ian McKellen. Here's the result, setting the bar for all our MacGuffin quest-ers. You must be at least THIS METAL when reciting the poem!
Laser cut and 3D printed decorative objects derived from geography
Fluid Forms is a 3D printing and laser-cutting company that produces a wide range of objects based on maps, satellite images, and other photos. They started off with topographical maps of physical places printed in sterling silver with pinbacks, and now they've expanded their repertoire. The new offerings include necklaces with steel charms based on your photos, or maps (inexplicably, these are marketed as "necklaces for men," though I can't imagine why they're not unisex -- the same charms are also available as earrings) and acrylic/wood clocks with finely cut lines reproducing streetmaps.
I love the idea of using "emotionally significant" places as motifs for jewelry and other decorative items. On the 3D printing side, it's a clever way of giving everyone a ready-made, personally important 3D mesh to use as the basis for an object.
Mad Men discover the laptop computer
Mad Men's Ken Cosgrove and Harry Crane stumble upon a MacBook Pro about 40 years before its time. What did the web look like in 1965? From a terrific Rolling Stone gallery of behind-the-scenes Mad Men photos by James Minchin III.
Applying "ownership" to links, public domain material does more harm than good
My latest Locus Magazine column, "Proprietary Interest," talks about the way that our instinctive ownership claims over the stuff we find and post to the Internet do more harm than good. When we claim that public domain images, interesting links, or other net-fodder are "ours," we invite a muddle in which others make even more compelling ownership claims. For example, if the old public-domain Lysol ad you scan is "yours," then why shouldn't it be Lysol's?. This is a world in which we spend all our time arguing about whose interest is most legitimate, instead of sharing, discussing, criticizing and enjoying the world around us.
Proprietary InterestAny ethical claim to ownership over a scan of a public domain work should be treated with utmost suspicion, not least because of all the people with stronger claims than the scanner! To be consistent with the ethical principle that one should never use another's work without permission (regardless of the law or the public domain), every scanner would have a duty to ask, at the very least, the corporations whose products are advertised in these old chestnuts (the very best of them are for brands that persist to today, since these vividly illustrate the way that our world has changed - for example, see the very frank Lysol douche ad). For if scanning a work confers an ownership interest, then surely paying for the ad's production offers an even more compelling claim!
And the publishers of the magazines and the newspapers - to scan is one thing, but what about the firm that paid to physically print the edition that we make the scan from? And then there are the copywriters and illustrators and their heirs - if scanning an ad confers a proprietary interest, then surely creating the ad should give rise to an even greater claim?
We do acknowledge these claims, at least a little. A good archivist notes the source. A good critic notes the creator. But that is the extent of the claim's legitimacy. If we afford descendants and publishers and printers and commissioners their own little pocket of customary right-of-refusal over their works, we would eliminate the ability to keep these works alive in our culture. For these owed courtesies multiply geometrically - think of the challenge of getting all of Dickens' or Twains' far-flung heirs to grant permission to do anything with their ancestors' works. What a lopsided world it would be if ten seconds' scanner work with the public domain demanded 100 hours' correspondence and permission-begging to be ''polite!''
From Arbroath: Student who electrocuted his nipples sues teacher and school for not warning him it was dangerous — Mark • Comments: 12
TipEx's clever, raunchy YouTube ad
TipEx (a Commonwealth analogue for Wite-Out and other correction-tape products) has an ingenious and engaging YouTube marketing campaign: a video called "NSFW: A hunter shoots a bear," branches off into a kind of video-text-adventure, where you are invited to type verbs into a box and see what the bear and the hunter do with one another (you can get funny results out of "fuck," of course, and also "gets high with" and "dances" -- I'm sure there's more). It's a kind of next-generation Subservient Chicken, and the (no doubt blisteringly expensive) creative reworking of YouTube's familiar user-interface makes it even more click-trancey than its forebears.
This is how to use YouTube to sell a product. (Thanks, Copyranter!)
Pedal-powered farm machinery for use in rural Guatemala
Cory Doctorow at 1:45 PM Thu 
Maya Pedal is a Guatemalan NGO that works with international volunteers and local experts to remanufacture old bicycles to serve as "people-powered farm machines." The dozens of "Bicimaquina" designs include bike-powered washing machines, blenders, grain mills, water irrigation devices and animal-feed mills.
Up to ten volunteers from around the world take up residency in San Andreas Itzapas each year for several weeks at a time. Based on bicycle parts contributed by their partner organizations around the world, they work with Mr. Marroquin and his staff to produce between five and ten bicimaquinas a month, and up to fifty over the course of a year. Roughly half the working time at Maya Pedal is devoted building these machines, and the remainder is directed to an extensive bicycle maintenance program for the residents of the city. The bicimaquinas are sold locally for the cost of manufacturing. Several family-run businesses have developed from the bicimaquinas program including a shop that grinds different grains for customers, and a building contractor that uses a bicycle-powered concrete compaction machine at construction sites in the region.Maya Pedal (Thanks, Hughadam, via Submitterator!)
The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China's space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?
More free tickets available for special Boing Boing screening of CATFISH
It turns out there are more free tickets available for the special Boing Boing screening of CATFISH in Los Angeles on Wednesday, September 8. Grab one while you can!
Read the announcement here.
Warning: LSD turns hot dogs into screaming trolls with 7 children
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Case Study: LSD, a PSA produced by Lockheed Aircraft (!) in 1969.
Trailer for Walking Dead series on AMC
Here's the trailer for the AMC series based on the fantastic, long-running comic book series about a zombie apocalypse, The Walking Dead. It premieres on Halloween night!
Bad news: Facebook simultaneously became sentient and figured out that zombies are popular. Would you like to become a Fan of Facebook devouring your brains?
Via Josh Helfferich
AIDS sufferer Vinny, about whom Lisa recently wrote a feature here at BB, died this morning at 8:35 a.m.
— Rob • Comments: 4
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is making its way into the public consciousness. The film Salt has an interrogation scene where a spy spills some secrets while a scientist looks at his brain scan. After a quick glance, the scientist casually says with absolute certainty, "He's telling the truth."
As with any new technology, there's a lot of potential for good, but there's also a lot of potential for pseudoscience and bad science. Remember those kooky Canadians who've used "fruit machines" and peter meters to catch people lying about being gay and what-not? Now they are moving north of the groin and firing up fMRIs. They're already making questionable claims and writing grant proposals based on what parts of the brain "light up" when people view certain stimuli. Lies, thoughtcrimes, and precrime (offense prevention) are all on the list of things they claim fMRI will divulge if taxpayers will just fund their research.
It's the same concept behind privately-held ventures like No Lie MRI in San Diego, which, for a cool $5,000, will administer a "truth-verification" session. Though this Orwellian evidence has so far been successfully deemed inadmissible in US courts under the Daubert Standard, people are still trying to use it. Reporter Mark Harris got tested to see if he is a liar and presented his troubling experiences in the most recent IEEE Spectrum.
MRI Lie Detectors [IEEE Spectrum]
Meet Desiré Dubounet: prolific gadget patenter and healing space medicine drag queen YouTube starlet
Robert Popper discovered this one, and suggests that it is very likely the new "Pardon Me." But oh, there's more...
Man in hot tub calls 911 seeking cocoa
A homeless man having a hot tub soak at a suburban Portland home allegedly called 911 requesting "a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it." Police arrested him for criminal trespassing and unnecessarily calling 911. I really hope they brought him the cocoa though. From AP News:
Beaverton police say Mark Eskelsen called 911 from his cell phone, identified himself as "the sheriff of Washington County," and asked for medical help. He later admitted he wasn't the sheriff but informed the dispatcher he'd been "yelling for about an hour and a half.""Homeless man calls 911 from hot tub, seeks cocoa" (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)The man said in his Sunday morning call that he'd been in the water about 10 hours and his towels had gotten wet.
HMS Beagle: Awesome geeky science store in Kansas City
Mat Mets of Make: Online visited a great science store in Kansas City called HMS Beagle.
While in town for the Kansas City Mini Maker Faire, we had the chance to visit the HMS Beagle, which is a gem of a science store located in nearby Parkville. Started by John and Carol Kuhns, they stock an impressive range of geeky equipment, from telescopes to model rockets, rock tumblers, and Arduinos. In addition, they also host science club meetings, star gazing parties, fossil digs, and other fun-sounding activities. If that isn't enough, they are also the home of Make: KC, an enthusiast group for Makers that meets in their shop on Tuesdays.A visit to the HMS Beagle science store
Noir movie for free download: Two Dollar Bettor (1951)
I subscribed to the Internet Archive's RSS feed for noir films. This movie, called Two Dollar Bettor, looks good!
Bank controller John Hewitt is a much-respected member of the community. One afternoon he is persuaded to make a small two-dollar bet at the racetrack and collects a couple of hundred dollars when his horse wins. Such a return-on-investment intrigues him and he begins to frequent the track and making larger bets. After a short period of winning, he hits a losing streak and his savings are soon wiped out. He then starts to take money from the bank and is soon thousands of stolen-dollars behind. Mary Slate, secretary of his bookmaker, advises him that the bookmaker has a sure thing, and if he will liberate $20,000 or so from the bank, he can get in on it and solve all his problems.
If you've seen and would like to review it in the comments, please do! Two Dollar Bettor (1951)
Short documentaries about people who work with monkeys and apes
Manjaro makes short documentaries about people around the world who work with monkeys and apes. You can watch them on Vimeo. The series is entitled Monkey Business. (Via Arbroath)
This tombstone was shipped from Jamaica to Cincinnati, where US Customs and Border Protection at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport discovered it was filled with 50 pounds of marijuana.
Officers questioned last week why someone would ship a tombstone from Kingston, Jamaica, to London. An X-ray machine revealed packages of the drug in a metal box, wrapped in metal mesh and hidden inside the hollowed-out concrete marker.
The stone bears the name of 35-year-old Delroy Senior. Part of its inscription reads, "your place no one can fill."
Designer Art Donovan has a lovely line of handmade steampunk lighting that he sells direct (inquire within, as they say). No idea how they're priced, but they sure are purdy.
Donovan Design (Thanks, Art, via Submitterator!)
Copyfighting banjo-picker Patrick Costello has a new book of free/open banjo tunes: Songs for Sunday: "In this book you will find a selection of hymns, country gospel and even some blues
songs arranged for frailing banjo. The arrangements presented here blend melody and
rhythm so that you can sing along with the banjo and still be able to knock out a solo
once in a while. The accompanying DVD contains video workshops where I walk you
through each song." (Thanks, Patrick, via Submitterator!)
— Cory • Comments: 4
Debate with Nina Paley about noncommercial licenses
Recently, Nina "Sita Sings the Blues" Paley and I conducted a protected email exchange debating the merits of the Creative Commons "noncommerical" licenses (like those used on my novels and here at Boing Boing). It was an instructive and sometimes productive debate, and Nina's edited the thread and posted it.
Here's my perspective: the purpose of any cultural policy or regulation should be to encourage a diversity of both participation and works (that is: more people making art, and more kinds of art being made).Paley & Doctorow argue over Non-Commercial licensesISTM that your assertion amounts to: "Whatever forms of participation that come into existence as a result of the capitalization opportunities that accrue in an exclusive rights regime, they are dwarfed by the works that lurk in potentia should such a regime perish."
IOW: we unequivocally get *some* participation in culture as a result of exclusive rights regimes, some of which would not exist except for exclusive rights. You believe that if this regime and the works that depend on it was to vanish, the new works that would come into existence as a result would offset the losses.
I don't know how either assertion could be tested. We both have firsthand experience of both modes of creativity -- I know of works that wouldn't have been capitalized absent the higher returns expected in the presence of exclusive rights; I also know of works that could only have been made in their absence.
Why natural history museum collections rock!
David Ng (Twitter) is a science literacy academic based at the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia. He is currently on sabbatical at London’s Natural History Museum, and encourages you to check out the PHYLO project.
Photo: Tom Goskar. Used with permission.
So far, it's been a very interesting experience in the month and a bit into my sabbatical at London's Natural History Museum. First off, there was that element of giddiness: coming back to an iconic institution that takes me back to my time as a kid in awe of dinosaurs, blue whales and all the sparkly stuff in the mineral exhibits. Next came, a weird sort of pride - like as if being in the museum's great hall, looking up at the beautiful ceiling, and standing in between a Diplodoccus skeleton and a statue of Darwin, made me feel privileged to be a scientist. I felt as if I was in the best-club-ever: one that carried on the work of so many pioneers whose efforts are housed in this museum. But then a strange feeling of discomfort settled in. This was because the science that goes on here, by and large, is quite foreign to the medically genetic driven projects of my own background. In other words, the bench tops here do not always require pipettemans and overpriced electronics. However, after having had the privilege of meeting some lovely people at the museum and viewing a few of these collections, I've come to really appreciate the importance of biological curation.
1. The collections serve as the physical and open portal to specimens needed for biodiversity research.
Chic apartments for London birds
David Ng (Twitter) is a science literacy academic based at the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia. He is currently on sabbatical at London’s Natural History Museum, and encourages you to check out the PHYLO project.
Take a look at this art project entitled, "Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven"
In the sought-after London boroughs of Chelsea and Islington, inner city birds often have to claim their nesting space quickly! However, birds that are open to changing their wild ways might be convinced to try out the innovative bird-housing concept developed by the artists at London Fieldworks. The "Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven" opened recently as part of the Secret Garden Project by UP Projectsand hopes to develop into a haven of biodiversity and create a new public awareness of the ecological and cultural value of urban green spaces. (via Inhabitat)
These look very pretty, although I am curious as to how they fare when the tree moves or when it grows.
As an added layer of biodiversity speak, there's a bit of irony in the title of the project. Turns out the "Tree of Heaven" or Ailanthus altissima is actually a tree species of much botanical interest in London, and elsewhere in England generally. Essentially, a lot of folks are quite concerned that this ornamental turn invasive species is poised to rocket in numbers. It's one of the fastest growing trees around, it's allelopathic (meaning it produces a chemical that inhibits the growth or other plants), and its seed production capabilities are almost unmatched. In fact, the female tree is capable of producing upwards of 30,000 seeds per kilogram of tree! That would be akin to a small tree as heavy as me (at about 160 pounds), being able to produce 2.2 million seeds!
Why is this tree a particular interest these days? Well, over the years, climate has been steadily getting warmer and sunnier in England, and given that the Tree of Heaven is shade-intolerant, the extra sunlight is possibly giving the opportunistic tree the small push needed to expand greatly in numbers.
Anyway, perhaps this means more places for the birds to live?
Merry Cemetery celebrates the dead with gaily painted grave-markers
Michael sez, "The Merry Cemetery is a cemetery in north-east Romania (the Moldovan region). I visited it with my wife and parents-in-law this summer. nstead of a sombre and sad approach to death the Merry Cemetery celebrates life with colourful painted oak 'headstones' engraved with a picture and story of the life of the deceased."
The Merry Cemetery (Thanks, Michael!)
Undergrads at the University of Colorado sent a NASA satellite to its fiery demise on August 30th. But don't worry. They are not in trouble. In fact, they were specifically tasked with the job of decommissioning the satellite—figuring out where and when to send it screaming through Earth's atmosphere so as to ensure that any leftover bits land someplace where they won't do much damage—as part of a class. An incredibly awesome class. — Maggie • Comments: 6
Videos that prove the elites are really reptilian humanoids
I'm with my friend and senior editor of bOING bOING (the zine) Gareth Branwyn and he is showing me funny videos posted by people who think the world is ruled by reptilian humanoid shapeshifters (basically, the nonsense that David Icke perpetuates). The videos show politicians and other powerful people's tongue flicks, hisses, strange head tilting, and membrane eyelids that move sideways. Commentary from video above:
'HISSSING' at 1:35...HEAD TILT at 1:38...how many times have you seen a human tilt their head like a freakin animal?...look at her nose...it flatens an the nostrils are larger and farther apart...near complete morph...Reptilian shapeshifter videos on YouTubeNotice everyone, body language? She points to her face. The middle man tries to cover it up.... His voice tone gives it away. The Reptile even gives a Freudian Slip.... "the whole thing feeds on itself."...and are those the twin towers in the background?...more subliminal reptilan sh*t
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Mark
Read free sample chapters from my new book, Made By Hand.
Cory
Latest novel: For the Win
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Australia: World Science Fiction Convention/Melbourne Writers Festival, Sept 2-5
Germany: Little Brother tour, Sept 13-23
Netherlands: PICNIC/Bits of Freedom (Dutch Makers launch), Sept 23-25
Xeni
Check out Boing Boing Video's YouTube channel, full of video goodness.
Rob
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