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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Boing Boing's InsaneJournal:
- EFF analyzes the legal creepiness of ACTA, the secret copyright ...
- New ACTA copyright treaty dodges the UN, poor countries and ...
- Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. - Boing Boing
- Everything you want to know about the scary, secret copyright ...
- Consumer groups around the world demand transparency on secret ...
- Secret super-copyright treaty MEMO leaked - Boing Boing
- Secret copyright treaty meeting coming to New Zealand; activists ...
- US Trade Rep weasels and squirms when cornered on an airplane and ...
- UK police watchdog finally gets off its butt to investigate ...
- David Byrne's snapshots of UK police posters. - Boing Boing
- British police use unprovoked violence and restraint as punishment ...
- UK Police seize amateur photographer's film - Boing Boing
- Police warn UK man that taking photos of "hooded teenagers" is ...
- British cops arrest people just to add them to the DNA database ...
- UK cop: 'War on terror means no pictures of police vans in ...
- British police medic uses nightstick to treat his involuntary ...
- Afrigadgets: homemade model airplane from Kenya - Boing Boing
- Kenyan blacksmiths make bellows from cement sacks - Boing Boing
- DIY gadgets in Africa: the knife-sharpening bicycle - Boing Boing
- Africa: small-scale generator powered by sugar and yeast (video ...
- Xeni on the Road in West Africa: Liberia's Blackboard Blogger ...
- Bicycle "handcuffs" for flexible bike-locking - Boing Boing
- Pedal vehicle for traversing abandoned monorailway - Boing Boing
- Organization for Transformative Works: defend fandom! - Boing Boing
- BoingBoingBoing podcast 10: Bonnie Burton, Star Wars fandom ...
- Joey writes "Esoteric Fandom: A - Boing Boing
- TV execs coming to grips with Internet fandom - Boing Boing
- It's fandom! - Boing Boing
- SF fanzines prefigured blogs: Roger Ebert - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 7 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 6 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 5 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 4 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 3 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 2 - Boing Boing
- JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 1 - Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome anti-banana-ripening bag. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome Korean banana-ripening facility. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome banana peeler. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome banana peeling simulator. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome banana slicer. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome banana saver clip. Boing Boing
- Just look at this awesome banana bunker. Boing Boing
- HOWTO disassemble a banana - Boing Boing
- Robber uses banana as "gun" - Boing Boing
- Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta Interviews Ray "The Banana Man ...
- Peeling bananas from the other end is easier - Boing Boing
- Forlorn bananas of London - Boing Boing
- 11 students suspended for banana prank - Boing Boing
- Terrorism pundit accused of astroturfing extremist Jihadi message ...
- Al Qaedaism, communism, and 1949 MGM water ballet musicals - Boing ...
- Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds launch in NYC, Jan 29 ...
- FBI interrogator: Torture doesn't work, breeds jihad - Boing Boing
- Obama's Afghanistan escalation speech: now *here's* a response ...
- Preview of Audrey Kawasaki's upcoming solo show in Tokyo - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki curates L.A. art show - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki's new painting series - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki print from Pressure Printing - Boing Boing
- audrey kawasaki: juxtapoz profile
- Boing Boing: Audrey Kawasaki interview on MacTribe
- audrey kawasaki at roq la rue
- Preview of Audrey Kawasaki's upcoming solo show in Tokyo - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki new painting exhibition - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki's new painting series - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki print from Pressure Printing - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki: Juxtapoz profile - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki interview on MacTribe - Boing Boing
- Audrey Kawasaki at Roq La Rue - Boing Boing
| Friday, December 11th, 2009 | |
| 7:58 am | Interactive timeline of secret copyright treaty Michael Geist writes, "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is generating growing concern as many people learn about the secret copyright treaty for the first time. I've create a visual timeline to trace its emergence that includes links to the leaked documents, official government statements, and NGO letters and work in the area."
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| 8:01 am | Mall cops in Norwich, England get police powers In England, the police are allowed to give "policing powers" to private individuals. The private security guards in a shopping mall (called "The Mall") in Norwich now have police powers. These civilian security guards can now "issue on-the-spot fines, give lawful orders and check normally confidential police records." Mall security staff will get police powers in Norwich (Thanks, Gill!)
(Image: TheMall.co.uk
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| 7:47 am | Kenyan bike-mechanic's homemade tools Here's an inspiring video of Mohammed Makokha, a master bike mechanic in Nairobi who has designed and built a bunch of custom tools for repairing bikes. Video of home made bicycle repair tools and gadgets in Nairobi
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| 7:23 am | Superb data-visualization of UK government spending  Yishay sez, "The good people of the Open Knowledge Foundation have just released a prototype of their visualisation tool for UK gov spending. This on the same week that the government announced radical plans for opening their data. Open data needs to be seen, not just done." I'm loving this: you can click on any of those dots (on the actual web-page) to see what it represents. The slider moves you back and forth year-to-year. It's an amazing way of visualizing public spending. Where Does My Money Go? (Thanks, Yishay!)
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| 7:28 am | Science fiction fandom is 80 today 80 years ago today, the first ever science fiction fan group, the Scienceers, met for the first time at organization president Warren Fitzgerald's apartment in Harlem (Fitzgerald, the first-ever big name fan, was black). Happy 80th, fandom! Happy 80th anniversary, SF fandom
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| 7:36 am | JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 8 
Welcome to the seventh serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing the story via links found at J.C.'s About 7th Son page. You can also dive in right
away, thanks to...</p>
THE STORY SO FAR: The story shifted to Houston, where billionaire oil tycoon A.U. Rookman conducted a videoconference with a John Alpha. Michael, John, Dr. Mike and the 7th Son soldiers reached Los Angeles. After a tense ride through the streets of West Hollywood, the team arrived at Folie a Deux. At the 7th Son facility, Father Thomas, Jack and Jay learned more about Kilroy2.0’s world. A powerful benefactor helped Kilroy in a time of need. Check out this week's installment below. If you're enjoying this serialized experience, support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site. JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 8
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| 7:39 am | Scientists study bird courtship with help of a "Fembot" She's not packing heat, but she does have a camera hidden in her (apparently attractive) breast. Researchers at the University of California, Davis built a robotic version of a female sage grouse in order to get a bird's-eye view of courtship rituals. They're hoping to learn more about the evolution of sexual selection, and what the sage grouse do to survive in a shrinking habitat. Bonus: The video features Miles O'Brien. Yeah, Miles O'Brien! NSF.gov Science Nation: Bird Courtship |
| Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | |
| 2:05 am | Just look at this awesome EU banana curvature regulation. 
Just look at it.
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| Friday, December 11th, 2009 | |
| 2:05 am | Video from Mad Max campout weekend Last month, I blogged about a group of Mad Max superfan cosplayers who hied themselves out to the desert in a variety of amazing vehicles (including a flying one-person chopper!) and costumes and spent the weekend playing at apocalypse. The event's organizer, DJ Wolfie, has put together a (mildly NSFW) video of highlights from the weekend. Road Warrior Weekend Dj Wolfie
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| 3:37 am | Cinch Seat: handsome flat-pack portable booster chair 
Inventor Adam Kay sent me one of his flat-pack "Cinch Seat" kids' booster chairs to play with. The Cinch Seat comes as four pieces of composite wood-board with a white, hard-wearing eggshell veneer, laser-cut so that all four pieces can be quickly slotted together to form a secure and very pretty booster-chair. A set of nylon straps threaded through the seat board keep the kid safe and also securely affix the seat to a regular chair. It's very quick to assemble and disassemble the seat, and the extremely clever design lets the chair sit at one of two different heights, depending on how you put it together. It's altogether one of the handsomest and cleverest baby-gadgets I've tried.
That said, I have a few caveats. At £57.50, I think it's pricey, especially given the use-case for this as a portable chair you can keep in the car or under the stroller for those times you're out and about at a restaurant or relative's place. I can see paying a small premium to have a really beautiful piece of furniture for home use, but I don't see shelling out to ensure that my kid's chair doesn't clash with the restaurant's decor for the hour we're having lunch there. The composite wood is extremely sturdy and lovely besides, but it's heavy, especially relative to equally hard-wearing (and much cheaper) plastics. Again, the weight isn't a big deal if this is meant to be a permanent home seat, but as a portable seat, every gram counts. Finally, the first-time assembly, during which all the straps have to be threaded through various slots on the seat, is fiddly and confusing. You only have to do this once, but at nearly £60, I'd expect the thing to come ready for use. Conceptually, the Cinch Seat is fantastic, and I love the idea of making kids' furniture and gadgets out of simple materials with an eye for good design. If price is no object, the Cinch Seat is a great idea -- if I were running an upscale restaurant, I'd certainly consider buying a couple of them. Cinch Seat (Thanks, Adam!) Update: Adam adds, "I know it's expensive for a portable booster so I'm happy for you to offer a discount to your readers if anyone orders one before christmas day. I'll reduce it to £50. They just have to let me know they saw it on your site."
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| 7:15 am | English anti-terror cops ask nursery school workers to watch 4 year olds for signs of "radicalizatio England's West Midlands counter-terrorism unit is putting nursery schools on notice to check out their four-year-olds to make sure that they're not being "brainwashed" into "Islamic extremism." Now, I'm no fan of parents instilling racial intolerance in their kids, but if "All Christians are bad" is the gold standard for telling whether a kid is being "radicalised," then I quake for all the Jewish kids I grew up with hearing things like "A shikker is a goy" (gentiles are drunks). I'm likewise pretty certain that there are many Christian kids being brought up on messages like "Jews are all cheap" and "Muslims are all terrorists." Terror police to monitor nurseries for Islamic radicalisation (Thanks, Marilyn!) (Image: Nursery School, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Editor B's photostream)
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| Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:22 am | Rhythmic Truth to Power: RIP Luis "Terror" Días, 1952-2009 (Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter based in New York. His latest book: The Year Before The Flood.)
"Singer/songwriter/guitarist, musical anthropologist, and one of rock and roll's pioneering forces in the Dominican Republic, Luis Días, passed away from a heart attack and other health-related complications on the morning of Dec. 8th, in Santo Domingo." That's from an obit at Kiko Jones's blog, written by someone who knew Luis Días and felt what he was about. I borrowed the photo from writer-photographer Eliseo Cardona's fine music blog Blue Monk, which also has an appreciation of Luis's life and work. In the Santo Domingo daily paper 7 Días, Alfonso Torres writes a eulogy (in Spanish): Nadie como él desafió la muerte, la noche terrorífica del último cuarto del siglo 20 dominicano, con su lírica estremecedora, su irreverencia, sus acordes exóticos tan lejanos y tan cercanos de nuestra cultura popular. Which I crudely translate to (though I have to repunctuate): Nobody could defy death—the terrorific night of the last quarter of the 20th century in the Dominican Republic - like him, with his shake-you-up lyrics, his irreverence, his exotic chords so far away from and so close to our popular culture. Luis Días was a folklorist, albeit an unorthodox one, and a Dionysian theorist of his own musical culture. He and his generation had to find a creative cultural response to a national history that still lives in a direct way the consequences of 16th-century Spanish conquest, the 18th-century Haitian Revolution, and 20th-century US clientism. (In 1965, when Días was a teenager, US President Lyndon B. Johnson invaded the country with tens of thousands of troops and blockaded it with the US Navy to keep the Dominican government right-wing so that it wouldn't become "another Cuba.") Días not only spoke truth to power, he spoke Dominican truth to Dominican power. To understand his importance fully, you have to know something about the insults endured by Dominican music. Rafael Trujillo, who from 1930 until he was assassinated on May 30, 1961 was "the dictatingest dictator who ever dictated" (Junot Díaz's Pulitzer-winning words), unsubtly imposed on the country a musical monoculture of one strain of Dominican music that he favored, along with a murderously racist anti-Haitian ideology that demonized the republic's hardest-laboring class, to say nothing of his near-total disinterest in educating children. Moreover, because Trujillo's brother owned the radio broadcasting industry and didn't want competition from records, there was almost no recording of Dominican music for thirty years—three decades of music, wiped out of history. (This story is told in Deborah Pacini Hernández's Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music.) So the fact that Luis Días was a student and connoisseur of the diverse unrecorded, under-researched musics of his land — a precious, neglected cultural legacy — was a case of speaking rhythmic truth to power. After Trujillo was assassinated, the music called bachata began to be heard. Días was at the head of a new songwriting movement that valorized this romantic but realist guitar-driven music of the Dominican underclass. He was at the cutting edge of a brilliant Dominican artistic generation in the years preceding the megasuccess of Juan Luis Guerra (who titled one of his albums Areíto, something Días had done eight years before; areíto was the indigenous form of music of the Taínos). His rock band, Transporte Urbano (urban transport), is often credited as the beginning of a Dominican rock movement. His megahit, "El Carnaval," first recorded with his great interpreter Sonia Silvestre, became a street-and-stadium anthem in 1985 as sung by Fernando Villalona; with its simple, impossibly catchy refrain of "Baila en las calles de noche, baila en las calles de día," it's a carnival perennial 25 years later. His Dominican colleagues, including Silvestre, Guerra, Sergio Vargas, and Víctor Víctor, remember him (in Spanish) at hoy.com.do Luis Días was the kind of person about whom everyone has a story. My friend Henry Mena is a songwriting Dominican rocker in New York and leader of the band La Ruta, which in summer 2009 played a short set of Días's Transporte Urbano classics as a birthday present to him at New York's Quisqueya on the Hudson Festival. Henry recalled a hang with Luis:
"One afternoon I dropped in on Luis at his and then-wife Laura's apartment in Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town. He confessed not having more than $5 on him but, regardless, asked me to accompany him to get a six-pack and spend the afternoon listening to Soundgarden. As we made our way back to his place form the corner bodega, he noticed the mail had arrived and with it, a check for a few hundred bucks: airplay royalties from "Carnaval (Baila en la Calle)".
"But the best part came a few hours later: between beers, 'Superunknown,' and tales from his days working with Dominican record producer/music biz impresario Cholo Brenes—'I've got a smash for you, Cholo. A hit. Send the messenger with the money, so I can send you back the cassette,' and then after hanging up with Brenes, he'd proceed to hurriedly write the promised winning song, heh heh. Invariably, Brenes would excitedly call back a short time later: 'Damn, Luis! What a song!' heh heh—ASCAP called asking if he'd stop by or would he prefer they mail him a royalty check for $2,000+ he'd earned from 'Si He de Morir,' which Luis had contributed to Marc Anthony's debut salsa album.'Man, you're my lucky charm!' he said to me. And so, we rushed uptown to get that loot." I said to Henry, what makes this story perfect is the listening-to-Soundgarden part. He answered, "The man loved his rock and roll, Ned." [PHOTO: Eliseo Cardona]
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| 12:24 pm | Eurovision 1971: Woman Freezes Mid-Applause Improv Everywhere travels back in time to 1971, or mind-lock virus? (Via Arbroath)
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| 11:44 am | Ukrainian student killed by exploding chewing gum A 25-year-old chemistry student died when he chewed chemically treated gum that exploded and blew off part of his face. Are you ready for the TSA to ban chewing gum? "A loud pop was heard from the student's room," the ukranews.com portal said, citing an aide to the city's police chief. "When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man's face had been blown off."Ukrainian student killed by exploding chewing gum (Via Arbroath) |
| 12:24 pm | Sneak peek at Audrey Kawasaki's upcoming Hajimari show 
Artist Audrey Kawasaki posted a bunch of photos of her in-progress paintings, which will be unveiled at her Hajimari solo show at Jonathan Levine Gallery in NY this coming Saturday. Sneak peek at Audrey Kawasaki's upcoming Hajimari show Previously: |
| 12:48 pm | Sustainability on ice Want to make your diet more sustainable? Buy your fish frozen, not fresh. Researchers studied the ecological impact of salmon and found that, "the questions of organic versus conventional and wild versus farmed matter less than whether the fish is frozen or fresh. In many cases, fresh salmon has about twice the environmental impact as frozen salmon." (Via New York Times) |
| 1:26 pm | Rick Warren does the right thing Rick Warren has officially come out against the proposed laws in Uganda that would make homosexuality a crime, punishable by death in some cases. In an open letter to the pastors of Uganda (with whom Warren has a great deal of influence from his missionary work) the American mega-pastor says,
Obviously, Warren holds (and reiterates in the letter) beliefs about sex and about queer men and women with which I thoroughly disagree. But I want to thank him for doing the right thing here, for putting his influence and power to use to save the lives of innocent people. Hopefully, Warren's letter will make a difference. Rick Warren: Letter to the Pastors of Uganda
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| 2:45 pm | Medical marijuana restaurant opens in Denver A medical marijuana dispensary in Denver is taking a fun new approach to distributing pot — it's marketing itself as a restaurant. Called Ganja Gourmet, it has a full menu of international dishes — lasagna, pizza, paella, jambalaya — made with medical marijuana. The waiters are all dressed in tie-dye and they offer free rides home to people who are too high to drive after their meals. |
| 3:12 pm | Very young kid is a great ukulele player He barely knows how to talk yet, but he's already a better ukulele player than I'll ever be. (Thanks, Gabe!) |
| 4:00 pm | Alphabet updated with new letters I had no idea that typography industry lobbyists were so powerful! |
Our thanks to Rob Hansen, author of the formidable history of British fandom Then, for reminding us of this anniversary. Says Rob, "I've always been fascinated that the first president of that first US fan group--indeed, the world's first fan group--was a black guy, Warren Fitzgerald, and that they held their early meetings at his home in Harlem. I'm amazed this doesn't seem to be widely known." Rob also points out that Fitzgerald was one of the founders of the American Rocket Society.
Arun Kundnani, of the Institute of Race Relations, contacted the officer and said he was told that officers had visited nursery schools. Mr Kundnani added: "He did seem to think it was standard. He said it wasn't just him or his unit that was doing it. He said the indicators were they [children] might draw pictures of bombs and say things like 'all Christians are bad' or that they believe in an Islamic state. It seems that nursery teachers in the West Midlands area are being asked to look out for radicalisation. He also said that targeting young children was important because they would be left aware of what was inappropriate to say at school. He felt that it was necessary to cover nurseries as well as primary and secondary schools. He said it was a precaution and that he wasn't expecting to come back with a list."
