The South African rap-rave internet star known as The Ninja grabs my face by the cheeks. He leans forward and stares into my eyes, like a large savannah predator about to inhale a hamster.

"And that's what I did to Jimmy Iovine," he says. "He didn't seem to like it, but nobody told me it wasn't cool to do that. And then I kissed him on each cheek, because we were making a deal like you do with the mafia. Die Antwoord is in business with Interscope now."

It's been just over a month since a friend emailed me a link to their music, and I blogged here on Boing Boing. They had fans before, but what exploded in these past four weeks is the stuff labels and artists dream of: Die Antwoord became a living meme of unprecedented velocity, propelled into global megawebstardom faster than any act I've ever seen. Ninja tells me that in addition to signing with Interscope, District 9 helmer Neill Blomkamp will direct Antwoord's next music video, they'll likely be performing at the Coachella festival, a film is in the works, and hardball rockstar manager Tony Ciulla (best known as Marilyn Manson's rep) has agreed to manage the band. "Tony FOKKEN Ciulla," Ninja clarifies.

Harbor East is hosting an art opening called "Tools, Trash and Technology - A 25-year retrospective of the Art and Design of Marque Cornblatt." Marque's whimsical, clever creations have been featured on BB and MAKE.

The event runs March 10-April 4, 2010 and is open Wednesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Opening reception for the artist Friday March 12, 5-8 PM

Cornblatt will personally be in the gallery each afternoon, offering hands-on demos and opportunities to operate the robots.

San Francisco-based and Baltimore native artist Marque Cornblatt will be presenting a 25-year retrospective of his work in Harbor East in Retail Suite 102 of The Legg Mason Tower. The exhibition will include self portraits, interactive sculptures, web-based robots, and video, as well as examples of Cornblatt furniture and interior design. This 25-year retrospective represents Cornblatt's return to exhibiting on the East Coast and his first major exhibition in Baltimore.

From the very first Sony Watchman to portable DVD players, no technology is off-limits to Cornblatt's creative eye. Using found objects, broken toys and re-purposed electronics, Cornblatt creates sculptures that challenge ideas about technology and the self. His recent use of videogames and virtual reality to create self-portraits offers a glimpse into the future of digital identity.

Cornblatt's will also be presenting the Sparky project, his pioneering interactive videochat robot. First shown in 1996, Sparky has evolved from an assemblage of mixed parts into a worldwide network of telepresence robots capable of connecting people face-to-face in real time over the internet.

The gallery will be furnished with examples of Cornblatt's handmade design and housewares, including cardboard furniture, metal and glass tables, candleholders, chess sets and object d'art made from scrap metal and other recycled materials.

Tools, Trash and Technology - A 25-year retrospective of the Art and Design of Marque Cornblatt

Scientists want to study whale diseases, but collecting blood is difficult and dangerous to the scientists and the whales. But whale snot is also good for analyzing whale health, and whales shoot it out of their blowholes freely and frequently. The trick is in collecting it.

Dr. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse of the Zoological Society of London things remote control helicopters are the answer.

Her recent paper in Animal Conservation (abstract), irresistibly entitled "A novel non-invasive tool for disease surveillance of free-ranging whales and its relevance to conservation programs," introduces the ground-breaking methodology of strapping a petri dish to a toy RC helicopter and flying it into the spout.

Just look at it.

It Shoots Monkeys (Thanks, Jessemoya!)

A geologist proposed bombing Japan's volcanoes to win the war in a January 1944 issue of Popular Science. [via Google Books via Pink Tentacle]

(Today's post inspired by the ghost of Andy Rooney.)

Don't we get to have our cheap movie clichés anymore? The well-shod feet walking away in the rain... the lonely figure in silhouette, illuminated by headlights at the mouth of a dark alley... the mirrored medicine cabinet that swings shut to reveal the knife-wielding maniac? These are movie inventions, and every one carries with it the emotional aura of a thousand iterations in a thousand films, and all those images add up to a part of cultural memory. Which is where they should stay. Who needs them here in the real world with us, where it's raining and the neighbors are blasting death metal and I really don't like the looks of that mole on my shoulder? What I'm saying is, do we really need a calendar in which the pages automatically sever themselves and fall to the ground? This is, of course, a venerable movie device to signal the passage of time. Here in the actual world, however, it's an advertising gimmick cooked up by a German agency. Parenthetically, it seems worth noting that the pages don't fall as much as they do plummet, which sends a subliminal message that is perhaps even more dark than intended. (Message: Time is passing, and it is passing really really fast.) Also, the connection to the advertised product (leaf blowers?) is tenuous at best. So here's a plea to advertisers: Let our movie clichés stay in the cineplex where they belong. On the big screen they're iconography, weighted with memory and meaning. Out here in the everyday world, they're just weird.

(This just in: Apparently Andy Rooney is still alive.)

As a relative newcomer to the craft of sewing, I just recently started to realize the value of fabric scraps. That's why I was intrigued when I heard of Looptworks, a new apparel company — started by three guys who worked together on product design and management at Adidas — that claims to make all their products out of excess materials. This MacBook laptop sleeve, for example, is made from scrap neoprene found in wetsuit factories in China and Thailand. I love the simple design; it also has two exterior pockets that fit a power adapter and a couple of thumb drives perfectly. Because their materials aren't mass-produced, most of their designs are available for a limited time only. Looptworks rolls out new items every month on their web site and in selected specialty apparel stores in most major cities.

Product page

If you do decide to bring kumquats into your kitchen, you'll find that they're pretty versatile. You can eat them raw, cooked, candied, pickled, or as a marmalade. Even just tossing a few peels of the rind can add a ton of flavor to anything. They also last a few weeks in the fridge, so you'll have some time to contemplate and experiment — but you better get them quick because they're a mid-winter fruit, and spring is just around the corner. My favorite rendition of kumquat was on white fish, sea bass it might have been, at some fancy restaurant in San Francisco. So tasty.

Kumquats are full of vitamin C and potassium; in Japan, it is called kinkan, also the name of a popular over-the-counter drug brand that makes remedies for sore muscles, sore throat, and mosquito bites.

Kumquats were originally found in China, but have made their way to Japan, Europe, and North America; Dade City, Florida even has a Kumquat Festival every winter to celebrate its harvest.

Image via Miss Meister's Flickr

WorldBytes, a charity that trains people to make their own journalism got sick and tired of British policemen, bureaucrats and officials telling them that they don't have the right to shoot motion pictures in public places. There's no law against making movies or taking pictures in public in Britain -- and indeed, you can hardly turn around without a CCTV recording you -- but officials and cops enforce this imaginary no-camera law as though it were the law of the land. Saleha from WorldBytes adds, "In this film, we investigate what the public think and let people have their say on issues of the day. Sick of being stopped,our volunteer film-makers made a stand against the arbitrary interference suffered by photographers and film makers and achieved a one day victory for citizen journalism."

Freedom to film (Thanks, Saleha!)

James from the New America foundation sez, "The FCC launched a consumer broadband test on their blog broadband.gov yesterday. Internet speeds in the US are often 50% to 80% lower than advertised and its vital consumers have reliable information on the actual performance of their connections. One of the two tools the FCC is using is the Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), an open source tool hosted on MeasurementLab.net (M-Lab). The validity of NDT can be independently verified, and all data is publicly released. M-Lab hosts other test as wells, such as a test to see if bit torrent is being throttled, or how much bandwidth is available."

Consumer Broadband Test (Thanks, James!)

I'd love to read this hypothetical sequel to J.G. Ballard's Crash, since Dinos and Jake Chapman have already designed the perfect cover.

"Ambiguous aims": a review of Crash: Homage to J.G. Ballard (NSFW) [Ballardian]

Almost every Richard Thompson song could be subtitled, "Watch out!" You never know where it's going next and you always have to be wary, even when he's having fun. Thompson is as familiar with the dark end of the street as any songwriter, he's a singer of uncommon emotion, and as a character in High Fidelity, the first novel by closet rock critic Nick Hornby, notes, he's "England's finest electric guitarist." Thompson is both tasteful and wild; one of three (so far) overlapping box sets of his recordings includes a disc labelled "Epic Live Workouts" that includes precisely zero wankery. "For Shame of Doing Wrong" is one of Thompson's strongest compositions. It began life on Pour Down Like Silver, one of the '70s recordings he co-headlined with Linda Thompson, they recorded it again for the sessions they abandoned in favor of the Joe Boyd-overseen Shoot Out the Lights (a strong candidate for Greatest Album of All Time of the Day), and this version, recorded live in 1985, is Thompson at his best. The lyrics overflow with regret without turning maudlin, the band rocks, and the only thing wrong with the extended guitar solo is that it isn't long enough. Enjoy!

A Montreal man has had his lawsuit against Air Transat dismissed. He was suing the airline because the flight attendants refused to help him look at his scrotum and determine why it had started bleeding on a flight (they gave him some sanitary towels and told him they'd land for emergency medical attention if it got worse). On arrival in Mexico, the man saw a doctor who determined that the problem was a ruptured vein near his scrotum.

I can understand a flight attendant's reluctance to help a stranger examine his scrotum, but didn't anyone have, you know, a hand mirror? If I started mysteriously bleeding from my scrotum, I'd be pretty distressed, too.

Cote sued Air Transat and the employees on the flight that day, accusing them of failing to provide appropriate medical assistance, seeking damages of $8,000 for the anguish he suffered as a result of their neglect.

But judge Michele Pauze rejected Cote's case.

In her decision, she said she agreed with arguments offered by Air Transat representative Chantal Chlala, who explained to the court that flight attendants do not have the right to examine passengers, and even less to make a diagnosis.

"It was not incumbent upon a flight attendant to conduct the medical examination of a passenger, a measure reserved for the medical profession," wrote judge Pauzé.

"Pony Express," a Bulgarian mechanical horse (created by T.J. Tangpuz) is made out of discarded packaging, plastic ties, and other detritus, and it delighted the people of Oryahovo, Bulgaria with its regular perambulations, before it was moved to a gallery.

Mechanical cardboard horse

These beautiful, fanciful miniature cities built into household objects like power-strips and desk-fans are part of the graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The artist is uncredited, but it's very lovely work.

Student Work | Kyoto University of Art and Design (via Cribcandy)

For 50 years, residents of the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit have tried to understand the "cursed bread" incident, a moment of terrifying mass insanity and hallucinations that left at least five dead and dozens in asylums. Now the mystery is solved: the CIA secretly spiked the bread from the bakery with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments, at least according to recently uncovered documents. The allegation originates with H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist who uncovered the documents while researching his forthcoming book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets...

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated "local foot products".

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

(Image: Shaw's French Bread, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Adam Pieniazek's photostream)

The Olympics are coming to London, so our civil liberties are going out the window: because nothing epitomises the spirit of global competition and cooperation like corporate bullying and unfettered truncheon-waving.

Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events.

"I think there will be lots of people doing things completely innocently who are going to be caught by this, and some people will be prosecuted, while others will be so angry about it that they will start complaining about civil liberties issues," Chadwick said.

"I think what it will potentially do is to prompt a debate about the commercial nature of the Games. Do big sponsors have too much influence over the Games?"

(Image: More Riot Police a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Kashklick's photostream)