Boing Boing

Xeni Jardin: "The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, and throughout the year, I ask all Americans to join me in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation." - GEORGE W. BUSH, April 30, 2007. Link. (thanks, John K)

Xeni Jardin: Video Link. (Thanks, Gram)

Xeni Jardin: My co-editor Mark Frauenfelder just tweaked BoingBoing's main page design a bit. You'll notice the number of posts on the main page is down to 20 (from 5,000 or whatever it was), which should make load times on mobile devices and slower 'net connections less excruciating -- and there's a bunch of handy links to BoingBoing by day, month, or year archive, including quick links to the most recent three days at the top of the page. Neat-o.

Xeni Jardin: Mia Sara Bruch says,

As part of the "Six Actions for New York City" festival, wrangled by the metropolis-scale arts organization Creative Time, artist Javier Tellez will unleash his army of minitature robots for a parade down NYC city streets. If that weren't already enough, our toy robot overlords will be holding placards written in collaboration with inmates of mental hospitals. But the best part is that Creative Time is looking for volunteers. I imagine (read: hope) it's to man the robots.

Assuming that's correct syntax.

You can also find all other sorts of other volunteer opportunities related to the festival on the site, including the chance to have your forehead henna'd by Adrian Piper.

Link

Xeni Jardin:

Demonstrators are gathering in cities around the United States today in support of immigrants' rights. In Los Angeles, crowds are reported between 10K and 100K+, depending on who you ask. Photographer and blogging.la contributor Dave Bullock (aka eecue) was downtown at the big boycott/rally today, and shot a bunch of photos. Link 1. Link 2.

Xeni Jardin:

If you've ever slummed around on 9-11 alternative reality sites, you'll feel right at home when you visit 429truth.com. Anonymous Investigative Citizen Truth Defenderist tells BoingBoing, in hushed tones,

I'm not sure if you heard about the fire and collapse of the overpass in Oakland.

The government is telling us that for the second time in 6 years a liquid petroleum fire weakened the steel reinforcements of a massive structure causing it to collapse? Preposterous.

Obviously the truth is far, far, far, far, far more sinister. I created this website yesterday afternoon to help expose the real truth about 4/29.

Link. Don't miss critical posts like "The 'Truck' and the 'Driver'", and "Did Arnold know?".

Here's a taste of The Truth:

Unlike the World Trade Center, the 580/980/880/80 overpass was reinforced against earthquakes and was not under the enormous compressive load that the towers were when they fell. The overpass was designed to support gridlocked traffic in an earthquake, but it collapsed without even a single car on it. The fire consumed only 8,600 gallons of fuel, whereas the WTC was allegedly brought down by 24,000 gallons of fuel. Does Governor Schwarzenegger really expect us to believe a story even more preposterous than the already-discredited official story about 9/11?

To answer the question ?Who is responsible for this terrible tragedy?? we must ask who stood to gain the most.

George Soros? The California Department of Transportation? The Jews?

We pray that those drawn to the 4/29 issue by sensationalist claims will stay long enough to learn the less theatrical but equally damning truth.

UPDATE: BoingBoing reader Andrew tried to access The Truth, and found the 429truth.com site was blocked at his workplace. The 429 coverup has begun!!!! Screengrab Link. Look closely, though, and you'll see that another interesting site got through. Yay Websense.

Reader comments: Many BoingBoing readers wrote in to question The Truth in this post. Oh, I know that confronting "government sources" and everyone else's version of reality can be a harshout and a total downer. But you should at least consider the possibility that 4/29 was no accident. Also, if we're gonna talk culprits, my money is on Communist China. BoingBoing reader and 4/29 Truth Doubter Adrian Bardet says,

I'd like to say that this BoingBoing article is total B.S. I'd like to quickly debunk the story, especially the use of the photos as his evidence. The author assumes that the photos were taken in the morning right after the incident. I know this is false because I personally saw that news conference LIVE on the KTVU nightly newscast (~10pm), which even had audio difficulties (which they probably would not have replayed if it were a taped rebroadcast). Secondly, in the first sfgate photo you can clearly see construction crews already at work dismantling the mess in the background. As for the second photo there is absolutely no way they would be able to walk around and inspect the damage due to safety concerns and the residual heat if it were in the time frame the writer suggests. The live news conference was around 10:15pm?plenty of time of time for the governor to show up.

I'm only using common sense in debunking this article and I'm not trying to defend the governor (I didn't even vote for him). This should never have been posted on boingboing in my opinion.

Thanks, and keep up the great work on boingboing!

[shrugs disdainfully]. What EVER.

Anonymous commenter says,

A significant fact that the media is not reporting is that there were no Jews on the overpass on that fiery morning. Coincedence or compelling evidence of Mossad involvement? The Israel intelligence agency has a long history of causing stop and go traffic as a way to boost oil consumption which will drain their Arab neighbors? oil supplies more quickly. I?m not implying anything, just asking the important questions.

Mark Frauenfelder: It must have been quite hot in Coachella. Some of the folks near the stage removed their tops. Here's xtrapop's Flickr set. (photos are work safe) Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Coachella pt. 1: Björk's wild sound machines; report from the turf
• Coachella pt. 2: hipsters, robots, ravers, steampunk, 122 bands
• Coachella, pt. 3: plastic crunch, raver cruft, ghosts of desert past.

Mark Frauenfelder: "nomad4ever" has a nice photo gallery of Balinese Ogoh Ogoh monsters.

Ogoh Ogoh monsters are colourful monster sculptures, which are made from bamboo frames and paper mache. They are made in the form of creatures of the underworld known in Balinese as buta-kala. The creatures are based on characters taken from traditional myths and legends, however in modern times many also take the form of modern characters, including even people in the media or in the government.

Link (Thanks, Kirsten!)

David Pescovitz: Last year, I posted about Greg Fleischut, an ultra-talented 14-year-old musician who played in a bluegrass band called The Lil' Billies. I received a bunch of reader emails raving about Greg's music. In the last year though, Greg, now 15, has moved into the indy rock arena with his new band The Audiophiles. Right now, The Audiophiles are in a Battle of the Bands for a chance to play the Vans Warped Tour at the San Francisco Bay Area stop. (Listen and vote for The Audiophiles here.) I know it would be fun for Greg to play the Warped Tour but I'm more excited about his next gig! I convinced him to go back to his bluegrass roots and reunite the Lil' Billies for a special performance at MAKE:'s upcoming Maker Faire, May 19 and 20 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. The Lil' Billies play the outdoor stage on Saturday, May 19, at 11:15am.

Link to Maker Faire, Link to Lil' Billies video, Link to video of Greg jamming with other pals

Previously on BB:
? Greg Fleischut's teenage folktronica and bluegrass Link

Xeni Jardin:

Here's a trailer for the documentary film "Ghosts of Cite Soleil," which opens this week: video link, and official movie website: Link. Haven't seen the film, but sure looks worth checking out. (thanks, Joseph Anthony)

Xeni Jardin: Who knew avian reproductive research could be so darned interesting?

When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller?s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.

The anatomy of ducks is especially bizarre considering that 97 percent of all bird species have no phallus at all. Most male birds just deliver their sperm through an opening. Dr. Brennan is investigating how this sexual wonder of the world came to be.

Part of the answer, she has discovered, has gone overlooked for decades. Male ducks may have such extreme genitals because the females do too. The birds are locked in an evolutionary struggle for reproductive success.

Link to NYT article. (thanks, Rose and Melissa)

Photo: David Goldenberg from Gelf Magazine points us to an earlier piece they ran on the topic of duck genitalia: Link.

Cory Doctorow: Bill sez, "As a benefit for the family of Joe Murphy, a podcaster and XM Radio personality who passed away on April 1st, a group of podcasters spearheaded by Paul Fischer and Phil Rossi have created a Creative Commons-licensed version of Jonathan Coulton's hilariously profane song 'First of May.' With the song they also hope to raise awareness of leiomyosarcoma, the rare form of cancer that claimed Joe's life." Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Cory Doctorow: HotelChatter has just published its annual best-of list for hotels with wireless Internet access. Marriott's budget hotels took top honors. In my experience, Americans have it good here -- in Europe, it's often the case that hotels have execrable, punitively expensive Internet access from the likes of Eurospot -- one time I ended up spending €90 for one day's access at a hotel in Amsterdam that used Eurospot!

Residence Inn, Courtyard, Springhill Suites by Marriott
Marriott is so close to doing WiFi right. Residence Inns, SpringHill Suites, and Courtyard all have strong, free, fast, working wireless in the rooms and the lobbies.

Furthermore, the rooms at the above hotel brands will give you an ethernet cable, and a free tethered connection if the WiFi in your room is spotty or not preferred.

The lobbies at the above mentioned Marriott's are also perfectly outfitted for meetings--meaning they offer plenty of power outlets and places to sit down and log on. The above video was shot at a Residence Inn and it shows you the mood and situation that is featured in most Residence Inn lobbies.

Finally, in our WiFi hotel testing, we have noticed that newer construction hotels, and low lying hotels, are much more apt to have strong wireless signals. Those old, multi-story buildings can be hard to optimally configure for wireless access.

What does all this mean? Marriott, you are so close. Just offer free wireless access at every Marriott property and you will be the first and only hotel brand to have a consistent free wireless policy.

Link (via The Consumerist)

Update: Michael sez, "Just this morning Wayport (the ISP for many Marriott brand hotels) blocked my Internet access for using video chat, despite the fact that Marriott advertises guests using video chat in their television adverts. In general Wayport reserves the right to block guests based on Mac address for 'excessive bandwidth' despite the fact that they refuse to explain what their bandwidth limitations are. This would be like a police officer taking away your keys for speeding on a highway without a posted speed limit. 'But officer, what's the speed limit on this road?' 'I'm not allowed to tell you that ma'am, but I will impound your vehicle.'"

Cory Doctorow: Guilherme sez,

A broad coalition of groups is urging members of the public to submit comments rejecting the illegal national identification system created under the Department of Homeland Security's REAL ID program.

The link takes you to several portals where the public can comment online. Comments are due by 5pm EST on May 8, 2007.

A part of the sample comments give you 4 -- of the many -- reasons to reject REAL ID:

1. The law that created the Department of Homeland Security prohibited a national identification system. By trying to implement REAL ID, the Department of Homeland Security is breaking the law and violating the public trust.

2. The plan will create a massive national identification system without adequate privacy and security safeguards. It will also make it more difficult for people to get driver's licenses. And it will make it too easy for identity thieves, stalkers, and corrupt government officials to get access to such personal information as a home address, age, and Social Security number.

3. The regulations endanger the privacy of domestic violence survivors' personal information, exposing them to stalkers in all 50 states.

4. If the regulations are not withdrawn, then the Department of Homeland Security must FULLY APPLY all provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 to this REAL ID system, including the right to limit the use of personal information collected by the federal government, access the data collected about them; correct any mistakes in the data; and turn to the court system to apply for redress.

Link (Thanks, Guilherme!)

David Pescovitz:
Last week, I visited our pals at GAMA-GO, the fantastic clothing and merchandise line that features Tim Biskup's character designs. I couldn't leave without buying one of these limited edition GAMA-GOO baby quilts for my son. They're handmade by designer Sarah Larson from irregular GAMA-GO t-shirts, so every quilt is different. Once my son outgrows it, it'll make a beautiful wall hanging. Link (Thanks, Greg Long!)

Mark Frauenfelder: Happy May Day! Here's Jonathan Coulton's happy song to celebrate it. (NSFW unless you are wearing headphones) Link (Thanks, Jesse!)

Mark Frauenfelder: The Guardian has a 6,000 word "condensed book" version of "Other People's Money - The Rise and Fall of Britain's Most Audacious Fraudster," an autobiography of a Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can) type character named Elliot Castro.

Elliot Castro is unique in the history of British financial crime. No outside individual has stolen so much money for so long from the credit card system. Identifying the banks' many security weaknesses, utilising his formidable intelligence and charm, Elliot embarked on a spending spree that ran into seven figures. The money wasn't funding an addiction or other criminal enterprises - Elliot was simply a working-class kid who lacked qualifications but not ambition.

From London to New York, Ibiza to Beverly Hills, Castro lived a fantasy life. He stayed in famous hotels, travelled first class, and blew a small fortune ondesigner clothes and champagne. Time after time, Elliot managed to wriggle free of the numerous authorities who were on his tail while his life spiralled out of control. As he juggled aliases and lied to family and friends, he began to lose his grip on reality.

Link

David Pescovitz: The Webby Awards have announced the 2007 winners. As always, the list of winners, nominees, and honorees is a terrific survey of great sites in a variety of categories. Congratulations everyone! Here are a few of the category winners:

BLOG - CULTURE/PERSONAL
Webby Award Winner: We Make Money Not Art
People's Voice Winner: TreeHugger.com

SCIENCE
Webby Award Winner: HubbleSite
People's Voice Winner: HubbleSite

WEIRD Webby Award Winner: Cute Overload
People's Voice WInner: Cute Overload

COMMUNITY
Webby Award Winner: Flickr
People's Voice WInner: Flickr

Link

Mark Frauenfelder:
Amy Crehore recently completed a fantastic new painting, full of mystery and subtle whimsy, entitled "Snake Tamer's Ditty." It's 24" X 12". Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Three new Amy Crehore prints for sale
• Amy Crehore's "Banana Eater" painting
• Amy Crehore's "Monkey Love Series" prints for sale
• The art of Amy Crehore
• Amy Crehore's "Flower Muncher" painting
• Amy Crehore print for sale: "Bubble Gum Encore"
• Interview with Amy Crehore
• New Monkey Love painting by Amy Crehore
• Interview with artist Amy Crehore
• Guitar in the form of a teenage girl

Mark Frauenfelder: Jeremiah says: "The New York Times reports that dogs wag their tails in an asymmetric manner to demonstrate whether they have positive (calm and happy) feelings about what they see or aggressive and negative. Left is negative, right is positive. A lot of brain research says this makes perfect sense, but no one had studied it before."

When the dogs looked at an aggressive, unfamiliar dog — a large Belgian shepherd Malinois — their tails all wagged with a bias to the left side of their bodies. Thus when dogs were attracted to something, including a benign, approachable cat, their tails wagged right, and when they were fearful, their tails went left, Dr. Vallortigara said. It suggests that the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while the muscles in the left side express negative ones.

Link

David Pescovitz: Researchers at the University of Tokyo have demonstrated a one-milimeter sheet of electronic plastic that can deliver power to devices nearby. The idea is that you could cover, say, a desk with the material and power computers, for example, just by sitting them on top without having to plug them in. The key are organic transistors that are printed right onto the material, MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) switches that control the flow of power, and copper coils that wireless transmit the current. From News@Nature:

When the sheet itself is plugged in, it can power devices ? such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) strung on a Christmas tree ? that are built with a matching receiver coil. When these are placed within 2.5 centimetres of the sheet, the nearest MEMS switch turns on, feeding power to the closest sender coil, which powers the device's receiving coil through induction.

The researchers say the transmission of power happens with 81.4% efficiency ? compared to 93% efficiency in the wired grid network as a whole ? with a "quite low" level of leaked electromagnetic radiation. As a demonstration of the product's safety, the paper shows it powering an LED at the bottom of a bowl containing water and a live fish.

All four layers are produced by literally printing them ? the coils using screen printing, the switch and transistor layers with an ink-jet printer (using special electronic inks). So the product is thin, lightweight and mechanically flexible.

Link

David Pescovitz: This hand-knitted softie snake devouring a mouse, by crafter Anna Hrachovec, is a scream.
Link

David Pescovitz: In honor of Carl Linnaeus's 300th birthday this month, Smithsonian magazine published a tribute to the father of taxonomy whose obsessive quest for organization brought order to nature, or at least the study of it. Linnaeus not only named and classified more than 8,000 plants and 4,000 animals, but invented the taxonomic framework we all learn in high school biology: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. From Smithsonian (image from Wikipedia):

Prior to Linnaeus, taxonomy had been a shambles. There were complex names for even the commonest species, and multiple criteria for classifying them. The tomato, for example, was Solanum caule inermi herbaceo, foliis pinnatis incises?the solanum with the smooth stem which is herbaceous and has incised pinnate leaves. Linnaeus' genius was to apply the social hierarchy of his day, with its kingdoms, provinces, parishes and villages, to the natural world. He slotted plants and animals into a framework of five main categories?kingdom, class, order, genus, species. Almost incidental to his encyclopedic audit of the natural world was his decision to call each living thing by just two Latin names, representing genus and species. This innovation, known as binomial nomenclature, has proved to be Linnaeus' greatest gift to posterity. Any time Homo sapiens mention Felix domestica (the house cat) or Lycopersicon esculentum (the tomato) or Callyspongia ramosa (one of my beloved sponges) Linnaeus' naming system is invoked. Out of the babel of competing nomenclatures he forged a single, universally applicable scientific language...

At times, Linnaeus thought of himself as the second Adam. "Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit," he liked to say?God created, Linnaeus organized. The frontispiece of his Systema naturae, his magnum opus, depicts its author in the Garden of Eden, evidently applying Linnaean names to freshly minted creatures.

But how much longer will the Linnaean system last? Recently it has come under attack from some taxonomists who believe its structure is too inflexible to cope with the explosion of knowledge unleashed by DNA analysis. Today's young Turks of taxonomy want to abolish the strict ranked hierarchy of family, order, class, etc. In its place they advocate "clades," groupings that are based on genetic relationships and can be expanded, contracted or redefined as new kinships are discovered. For now, the traditionalists outnumber the iconoclasts, and Linnaean-style classification remains the gold standard.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder: This week's always-wonderful "Harper's Weekly Review," lists some of the possible reasons for the alarming global honey bee die-off. (Creative Commons-licensed photo of bee by aussiegall)

Researchers investigating the collapse of honeybee colonies in Europe and the Americas identified several possible reasons for the catastrophe: poor diet; radiation from mobile phones that disturbs bees' sense of navigation so they cannot fly home; increased solar radiation due to the thinning of the ozone layer; bee AIDS; stress from cross-country travel in trucks; falling queen fertility; the microsporidian fungus Nosema ceranae; or imidacloprid, a pesticide sold under the brand name Gaucho and banned by France in 1999 for spreading "mad bee disease." Investors were advised to put their money in gold and corn futures to profit off the recession that may result from the disruption of the food chain caused by the vanishing bees. Grapes, which self-pollinate, and olives, which are pollinated by the wind, will not be affected by the bees' disappearance; Christians pointed out that the Book of Revelation predicts that a famine sparing grapes and olives will precede the apocalypse.

Link

Reader comment:

Peter Dearman says:

This is a lengthy in-depth news feature I just wrote on the vanishing bee crisis. It contains over 30 linked footnotes to news reports, opinions and such.

David Pescovitz: Colby Elrick and Colin Arlen shot and edited this beautiful video of track bike riding in San Francisco. I don't ride a bike, but the feeling this film conveys is so soothing and peaceful that it makes me want a fixie.
Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Cory Doctorow: A reminder! Today is my last official day at USC and some of my students are throwing a BBQ for me at the Annenberg Center, off campus. The event is sponsored by the USC Free Culture club, and kicks off at 6:30. All are welcome!

They're also doing a Flickr photo hunt, scouring the campus for useful objects to photograph and put on Flickr on a Creative Commons license -- that kicks off at 11AM.

Link

Cory Doctorow: Ian McDonald's Brasyl is his finest novel to date, and that's really, really saying something. There are McDonald novels -- Hearts, Hands and Voices, Desolation Road, Out on Blue Six that I must have read dozens of times, as you might watch Gene Kelly dance over and over, seeing it but never quite understanding how he does it.

Brasyl is a story in three braided pieces. The main action concerns Marcelina Hoffman, a coked-up ambitious reality TV producer in contemporary Brazil, a striving amateur martial artist who transcends the cliches of luvvy television phony and becomes a full-fledged, truly likable person as we watch her embark upon a mad new project. Marcelina is going to find the disgraced goalie who lost Brazil a momentous World Cup half a century before and trick him into appearing on television for a mock trial in which the scarred nation can final wreak its vengeance.

Another story is set in the mid-21st century, at a moment when the first quantum technologies are reaching the street, which industriously finds its own use for these things. Q-blades that undo the information that binds together the universe, Q-cores that break the crypto that powers the surveillance state that knows every movement of every person and object in Rio and beyond. McDonald's future has that genuinely foreign feeling of a world recognizably our own but not our own. Remember how you felt the first time you read Neuromancer, the first time you saw Blade Runner, that feeling of a future that is all glittering promise and thunderous threat. There's an entire literary movement lurking in the bootleg quantum future of McDonald's Rio.

The final story is a 19th century Heart of Darkness adventure in the deep Amazon jungle, as we follow an Irish-Portuguese Jesuit into slaver territory where he is sent to end the mad, bloody kingdom of a rogue priest who scours the land with plague and fire. He is joined by a French natural philosopher, who intends to reach the equator and discover the shape of the world with a pendulum. The Frenchman is a heroic blade, as is the Irish priest, and in these sequences you'll find swordfights that are the equal of anything in Fritz Leiber or the Princess Bride.

McDonald's prose is like chili-spiced chocolate and rum -- it reels drunken and mad through the book, filling your head to the sinuses, with rich complex tastes, until it seems that they'll run out of your ears and eyeballs, until it feels like you're sweating poetry.

He has the incredible gift of blending the foreign and the familiar to create something at once plausible and wonderful. He can turn anyplace from Ireland (King of Morning, Queen of Day) to India (River of Gods) into a bright, unknowably weird land. To see the world through McDonald's eyes -- a trip to Africa (Chaga) in the midst of alien "terraforming," say -- is to visit a place stranger and cooler than anything we might discover among the stars.

Brasyl masterfully braids its three timelines together into a master story that is both exciting and enlightening. I don't think I've had as many a-ha! moments about the metaphysics of computation since reading Cryptonomicon. There isn't a McDonald novel written that I haven't loved, but this one, this one is special.

Pyr Books, the publisher, has posted the first 48 pages of the book, along with other sundry info. Try reading that intro and not getting hooked!

Link

See also: Ian McDonald's Kling Klang Klatch

Cory Doctorow: America is rated the world's most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers in a recent global poll. The War on Terror (which includes a $15 billion fingerprinting program that humiliates every visitor to America's shores and has yet to catch a single terrorist) has destroyed America's tourist industry, killing $94 billion worth of tourist trade, and 194,000 American jobs.

In a recent poll of international travellers, commissioned by Discover America Partnership, a coalition of US tourist organisations, 70 per cent of respondents said they feared US officials more than terrorists or criminals. Another 66 per cent worried they would be detained for some minor blunder, such as wrongly filling out an official form or being mistaken for a terrorist, while 55 per cent say officials are "rude."...

Such comments, and the poll results - which rate the US by a 2:1 margin as the world's "most unfriendly" destination for foreign travellers - are found in "A Blueprint to Discover America," unveiled in January by Discover America Partnership to halt a dramatic decline in foreign visitors.

According to the blueprint overseas travel to the US has slumped 17 per cent since 2001, even as world travel to other countries reaches historic growth levels. The decline has cost US$94 billion ($127 billion) in visitor spending, US$16 billion in tax receipts, and some 194,000 American jobs. Many poll respondents said that visiting the US had become a hassle and that they would take their holiday money elsewhere.

Link (via Lawgeek)

Cory Doctorow: The Star Wars Shop's kids' costumes bring the cute, and none more so than the Chewbacca costume pictured here. Link to Chewbacca costume, Link to Leia costume, Link to Yoda costume (via Wonderland)

Cory Doctorow: Yesterday, I blogged about how the DRM-licensing body that controls AACS (the crippleware in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) censored my class blog, threatening legal action if we didn't remove a link to the Doom9 forum, where a forum member described the flaws in AACS. They also insisted on us removing a 16-digit number, the HD-DVD "processing key," a piece of information that can help you back up your DVDs if you know enough about software (a program called "BackupHDDVD" can do the heavy lifting for you).

Now, more than 10,000 "diggs" point to the page linked below, which contains links to many other places where you can find this information. Link (Thanks, Rudd-O!)