Boing Boing

The administrators of the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport are apparently considering getting rid of the TSA and replacing them with private contractors, similar to the setup at San Francisco International Airport. (more…)

Iceland's elections are publicly funded, with funds awarded based on polls of the electorate; the Pirates have consistently polled higher than any other party, and the incumbent coalition (whose parties are polling in the single digits) has been scrambling to avoid a general election after the Panama Papers revealed that he had secret offshore accounts that benefited from his bailout of Iceland's planet-destroying banks. (more…)

I'm excitedly preparing to head down to Beyond Brookledge!This from event organizer Bob Self:Gaze upon this year’s Beyond Brookledge giclée poster (which will be gifted to event attendees along with a few other treasures May 20-21st at the Mission Inn in Riverside). The art is by Ragnar who also created the imagery for the Beyond Brookledge 2013 and 2014 posters.As always, visual treats will be abound throughout the weekend-long whirlwind of magic, music and comedy. Connoisseurs of Walking Your Octopus creator Brian Kesinger’s art, board game aficionados, and devotees of the alternative histories of acclaimed author Tim Powers are sure to be pleased with the event’s mysterious and exhilarating goings-on.A few tickets (very few) are still available at http://beyondbrookledge.com… but they are only recommended for those who are daring enough to plunge headlong into an art and entertainment wonderland.Event co-producer Bob Self says, “You’ve never experienced anything like this… except maybe in your most spectacular dreams. Leave your expectations at home, because nothing can prepare you for what will happen when you join us.”And corn dogs!

Jonathan Mathew is one of the bankers at Barclays who participated in the Libor rigging fraud, which cost people all over the world trillions of dollars in higher payments on mortgages, government bonds, student loans, and other assets totalling $350 trillion. (more…)

U Maryland English professor Matthew G. Kirschenbaum has a new book called Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing that tells the story of word processing from writers' perspectives; an accompanying gallery collects photos of famous authors with their first word processors (mine was an Apple //e). Pictured above: Stephen King with his Wang System 5 Model 3 word processor in 1982. (more…)

The Russian Embassy in London retweeted a screengrab from Command And Conquer Generals: Zero Hour along with the comment, "Extremists near Aleppo received several truckloads of chemical ammo." People replied with funny tweets.. @mod_russia: Extremists near Aleppo received several truckloads of chemical ammo. pic.twitter.com/scCEMXRvwH— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) May 12, 2016.@RussianEmbassy @mod_russia Real drone footage of Baghdadi's secret hideout: pic.twitter.com/pddHg1jo6T— Mansour Moufid (@EliteRaspberrie) May 12, 2016@RussianEmbassy @mod_russia Folks this tweet is not legitimate;I understand the Russian Embassy has been infiltrated pic.twitter.com/OWDL5PRZ8R— Nerpov Rupelnrop (@Zinkugel) May 12, 2016@RussianEmbassy @mod_russia An column of Russian tanks were defeated by an unit of ISIS spearmen this thursday. pic.twitter.com/LcW1gf26m1— rfcapa (@rfcapa) May 12, 2016@RussianEmbassy @mod_russia Extremists from Italian terrorist cells have been seen attacking innocent civilians. pic.twitter.com/qmCmgsX4pE— Kevin (@iam16bit) May 12, 2016

This man of the forest enjoys a cool washcloth, even when his young friend tries to take it from him.

What do you do if you're a giant corporation devoted to selling people huge, $100/month bundles of TV channels they don't want anymore, but you also have a monopoly on selling high-speed Internet access, which they want very badly? (more…)

The vaping phenomenon has exploded over the past decade. Whether it’s smokers transitioning to a less harmful pastime, or connoisseurs of exotic tastes and textures, the market for vaping enthusiasts continues to grow. For buyers looking to straddle the gulf between cheap disposable e-cigarettes and ultra-expensive vaporizers in the $300 to $400 price range, FEZ has hit the sweet spot. Meet the FEZ Vaporizer, a high quality dry herb pen with an affordable price tag -- now just $99 (28% off) in the Boing Boing Store.From vaping novices to expert users, the FEZ combines a simple, easy-to-use design with a variety of features and settings to help serious vapers customize their experience. The FEZ charges up via USB, warms up in less than a minute and sports three different temperature settings to modulate your vaping depending on the dry herb or flower you’re burning.The FEZ’s impressive battery will carry you through practically any session, offering up to 2,000 puffs off a single charge. It also comes with a easy cleaning kit to keep your pen in tip-top condition.At around 3.5 inches long and about an inch wide, the FEZ is a perfect portable alternative to bigger, clunkier models, all while putting out a smooth vapor flow to allow for maximum enjoyment while even eliminating any toxic compounds.At 28% off its already low MSRP, grab the FEZ vaporizer now before this deal expires.

In What We Buy When We "Buy Now", a paper forthcoming in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, respected copyright scholars Aaron Perzanowski and Chris Jay Hoofnagle report on an experiment they set up to test what people clicking the "buy now" button on stores selling digital things (ebooks, games, music, videos, etc) think they get for their money -- it's not what they think. (more…)

Last night, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blithely threatened Jeff Bezos over The Washington Post's investigations of him. It's a preview of exactly what form Trump's authoritarianism would take in government: the use of federal power to intimidate media.Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise. He’s using the Washington Post for power. So that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed. He’s getting absolutely away — he’s worried about me, and I think he said that to somebody ... it was in some article, where he thinks I would go after him for antitrust. Because he’s got a huge antitrust problem because he’s controlling so much. ...I’ll tell you what: We can’t let him get away with it. So he’s got about 20, 25 — I just heard they’re taking these really bad stories — I mean, they, you know, wrong, I wouldn’t even say bad. They’re wrong. And in many cases they have no proper information. And they’re putting them together, they’re slopping them together. And they’re gonna do a book. And the book is gonna be all false stuff because the stories are so wrong. And the reporters — I mean, one after another — so what they’re doing is he’s using that as a political instrument to try and stop antitrust, which he thinks I believe he’s antitrust, in other words, what he’s got is a monopoly. And he wants to make sure I don’t get in. So, it’s one of those things. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. What he’s doing’s wrong. And the people are being — the whole system is rigged. You see a case like that. The whole system is rigged. Whether it’s Hillary or whether it’s Bezos.tl;dr Amazon is a tax-evader, so The Washington Post's constitutional right to free expression should be abridged. Worth bearing in mind now that the Republican party and conservatives are merrily eating shit and cosying up to the prospective nominee they described as the death of their party and their movement.

Public schools should allow trandgender students to "use bathrooms matching their gender identity," reports CNN on guidance to be issued later today by the Obama administration.The announcement comes amid heated debate over transgender rights in schools and public life, which includes a legal standoff between the administration and North Carolina over its controversial House Bill 2. The guidance goes beyond the bathroom issue, touching upon privacy rights, education records and sex-segregated athletics, all but guaranteeing transgender students the right to identify in school as they choose."There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said. "This guidance gives administrators, teachers and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies."It's getting nasty out there, faster than I think anyone expected. Yesterday, one school district decided to permit students to carry weapons onto campus, with a school board member plainly suggesting they pepper spray transgender people who "follow" them into bathrooms. The future, assumedly, seems to non-gendered bathrooms. It's an interesting architectural, legal and space-efficiency problem: not every venue can just peel off and throw away the stickers.

Billy Corgan, of the Smashing Pumpkins, laments the fact he can't say a certain word without becoming unpopular, which is the result of social justice groups shutting down free speech."It's pretty remarkable that I could say one word right now that would destroy my career," he said, as the screen displayed images of Michael Richards and Paula Deen, both of whom faced derision after using the N-word. "I could use the wrong racial epithet or say the wrong thing to you or look down at the wrong part of your body and be castigated and it's a meme and I'm a horrible person. Every day through the media, through advertising, we see people being degraded, we see people doing all sorts of things that we should be horrified at as a culture. So we've normalized all sorts of things, but we live in a world where one word could destroy your life but it's OK to, if you're a social-justice warrior, spit in somebody's face."Yet, he says, such groups "don't have power." The epiphany: always hovering just out of view. Good luck sticking to the right racial epithets, Billy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byUVR04CMBU&feature=youtu.beIncredible footage of the TSA line at Chicago Midway airport yesterday, which snakes out the airport atrium and into the surrounding transit hallways -- it's hundreds of yards long.It follows news of massive layoffs at the TSA, though apparently most of the planned firings haven't happened yet, so it's only going to get worse.The only bright spot is that the airlines themselves appear to be at the end of their tether: the lines are depriving them of passengers who must be rebooked. And, thanks to the Brussels attacks, everyone knows that the compressed packs of humans created by airport security theater are a prime target in their own right.Good to know no dangerous breast milk got on those half-empty flights, though.

A favorite demonstration in high school science classes of yesteryear, dropping sodium into water is spectacularly explosive. In this video, a fellow attempts to skip a pound of sodium across a river.

Microsoft Office remains the world's most powerful and widely used productivity suite. Right now, you can earn an expert’s understanding of Office with the complete A to Z Microsoft Office 2016 Training Bundle - and you can get it by paying whatever price you want.By paying any price at all, you’ll automatically receive two of the bundle’s popular courses, Basic Microsoft Access 2016 Training and Learn Microsoft OneNote 2016. You’ll learn Access, a database management tool that helps keep all of a website’s information streamlined and ordered; and OneNote, a notebook organizing wizard that will keep all of your thoughts and ideas consolidated and easy to use.The real value kicks in when you pay anything over the average price other shoppers spent, unlocking an additional eight courses to round out your Microsoft Office knowledge. Along with your Access 2016 and OneNote 2016 training, you’ll also get tutorials covering:Microsoft Excel 2016 Basic CourseAdvanced Microsoft Excel 2016Basic Microsoft Word 2016Advanced Microsoft Word 2016Learn Microsoft Outlook 2016 CourseBasic Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 Advanced Microsoft PowerPoint 2016Advanced Microsoft Access 2016 Get ‘em all and you’ll have all the tools you need to unleash Microsoft Office to its fullest potential. Get it at any price you want to pay right now.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Alien Invasion in My Backyard: An EMU Club Adventureby Ruben BollingAndrews McMeel Publishing2015, 112 pages, 5.3 x 8 x 0.4 inches $12 Buy a copy on AmazonTV will tell you the truth is out there. Decades ago folks would warn you to “Keep watching the skies!” But kids know the truth: The mysteries aren’t out there, they’re right here. They are in every bump from the attic, that weird locked door in the basement, and, especially, the often mystifying backyard. Kids know that’s where the real mysteries lie, and we’re all lucky that Ruben Bolling knows it, too.Alien Invasion in my Backyard, the first in the EMU Club series, is a fun and ridiculous (in just the right way) story of the creation of the Exploration Mystery Unbelievable Club. The book itself is intended to be the Official Report of their first mystery and written by eleven year-old President Stuart Tennemeier who, other than planning on a growth spurt in college, is planning to document all their amazing adventures. His best friend, CEO Brian, and his little sister Violet (no title because Mom makes them let her join) join him to solve all of life’s important mysteries. And we can’t forget Sergeant at Arms Ferdinand, Stuart’s loyal dog who proves critical to cracking the case. As an Official Report the reader gets direct access to the EMU Club files, including photos of their whole adventure lovingly taped to the lined graph paper it’s printed on. This is fresh from the brave pioneers themselves and you’ll read and see every detail, from slobbery robots and aliens with briefcases to didgeridoo lessons.Ruben Bolling is the pen name of the creator of the awesomely acidic Tom the Dancing Bug and a finalist for the 2016 Herblock Award for Editorial Cartooning. This, his first work for kids, is a light, charming read that one can only hope gets into the hands of many a little one thirsting for adventure. As a recovering child who looked for mystery behind every door but mostly found it in books, I can tell you I enjoyed reading every moment of this book and cannot wait until I can share it with my own little adventurer. Once he learns how to talk, find important clues, and play the didgeridoo, of course. – Rob Trevino

The FBI isn't in the mood to discuss why it installed hidden microphones and cameras in and around Alameda County’s Rene C. Davidson Courthouse. It had been conducting secret surveillance for 10 months, even though they didn't have a court order. From the East Bay Express:At the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland, the FBI planted hidden microphones inside light fixtures on the courthouse’s exterior steps to capture the conversations of people attending the foreclosure auctions. Cameras and microphones were installed in parked Alameda County vehicles next to the courthouse. The FBI even hid a microphone in the AC Transit bus stop on Fallon Street, and dropped a bugged backpack next to a statue inside the courthouse, according to a letter sent by US Justice Department attorney Kate Patchen to Marr's attorneys on March 15. The surveillance was ongoing from March 2010 to January 2011....[D]efense attorneys in the San Mateo case said they believe the federal agents committed felonies when they planted the bugs.Facing this challenge, government prosecutors in San Mateo have moved to withdraw the recordings as evidence at trial, but the defense has called this move an attempt by the FBI to "cut its losses and sweep its criminal conduct under the rug."

Australian artist Van Thanh Rudd, nephew of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, spent 15 years stealing forks that had been used by the rich and powerful, vacuum sealing them to preserve leftover morsels, saliva and DNA, and now he tours them as a gallery show called "Rich Forks." (more…)

Gen Con, the giant, venerable RPG convention in Indianapolis, has announced its Industry Insider slate of featured panelists, revealing that the con's organizers attained (and surpassed) gender parity, with a group composed 52% of women. (more…)

Putting Middlebury college kids to shame, these sky divers come about as close as you can to playing quidditch.

Another attack on North America's power infrastructure by embittered animals has resulted in the death of at least one raccoon. Via KOMO News:The city's electric utility said service was knocked out at around 3 a.m. and power was restored to all customers by 5:30 a.m. At the height of the outage, the utility says 38,778 customers were without electricity.Initial reports from the scene said that the raccoon survived, but later it was determined that it was electrocuted by 26,000 volts when it came into contact with electrical equipment inside the substation.

Upgrading is compulsory!I had to have this Cyberman minifig. The stacked up bunch of pieces that resembles a Dalek is also cute. Dr. Who Cyberman Fun Pack - Lego Dimensions via Amazon

The Guardian has recreated a 6x9 solitary confinement cell in VR, designed to be viewed with Google's cheap cardboard VR viewers, which uses your phone for screens. (more…)

Sovereign immunity prevents one government from using its courts to attack another, but Chinese state-backed industries are taking it to new places, arguing that sovereign immunity means that the US courts have no jurisdiction over Chinese companies whose products are harmful or whose conduct is negligent -- and US courts are buying that argument. (more…)

Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc Mezvinsky is a Goldman Sachs alumnus; in 2014, he founded Hellenic Opportunity, a hedge fund that raised $25M to bet on distressed assets from Greece's collapsed economy, wagering that the country's investors would force it to make deeper cuts to finance payments on the debts. (more…)

George Zimmerman, acquitted in 2013 of murdering Trayvon Martin, plans to auction the gun he used to kill the unarmed teen. The proceeds will be used to "fight violence against Law Enforcement officers" by black activists, Zimmerman says."I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon," he wrote in the description of the gun used to kill the unarmed, black teenager. "The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012.""He wrote that the proceeds will be used to "fight [Black Lives Matter] violence against Law Enforcement officers" and to "ensure the demise of Angela Correy's persecution career and Hillary Clinton's anti-firearm rhetoric," though he hasn't expounded upon how.Zimmerman pursued Martin after finding the 17-year-old's presence in his Florida neighborhood "suspicious," then shot him dead during the resulting confrontation. Martin was visiting a family member who lived nearby; Jurors acquitted Zimmerman after finding that the 200lb Zimmerman was "standing his ground" against the boy, who was black. Zimmerman's last effort to court controversy was his sale of a painting of the Confederate battle flag.

Since its inception as a 2012 Kickstarter, the Reading With Pictures project has gone from strength to strength, culminating in a gorgeous, attractively produced hardcover graphic anthology of delightful comic stories that slot right into standard curriculum in science, math, social studies and language arts. (more…)

Remember those funny atheist protest ads mocking a Noah’s Ark-themed amusement park being built in Williamstown, Kentucky? Two billboard companies with no sense of humor have refused to run the atheist group's funny ads ridiculing The Ark Encounter. (more…)

Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther Theme" (1963) reworked into a major key would make a good soundtrack for a bad 1960s sitcom. (Major vs Minor, via Digg) (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Deceptive Desserts: A Lady's Guide to Baking Bad!by Christine McConnellRegan Arts2016, 288 pages, 8 x 10 x 1 inches $19 Buy a copy on AmazonTake a ripened crafter, mix in a pinch of YouTube lessons on cake decorating, blend that with a humorous fascination with the macabre, and you’ve got Christine McConnell’s new cookbook, Deceptive Desserts. (more…)

Who were the Harvey Girls, and what were the Harvey Houses in which they worked? It's actually more innocent than it sounds, as Hunter Oatman-Stanford explains in his latest piece at Collectors Weekly. The Harvey Houses were a series of eateries and hotels run by a British ex-pat named Fred Harvey alongside the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad tracks that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. The Girls were women from the East Coast and Midwest, imported to replace the local, often uncouth male waiters in towns like Raton and Belen, New Mexico. Together, the Girls and the dining establishments they worked in lent an air of respectability to the still-wild American Southwest at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as Hunter learned when he spoke to Richard Melzer, author of Fred Harvey Houses of the Southwest. Here's a snip from the article:In 1883, Harvey had decided to fire the rowdy male waiters at his restaurant in Raton, New Mexico, and hire respectable young women in their place. Customers responded so positively to the female staff that Harvey began replacing all of his company’s male servers, advertising for women employees in newspapers throughout the Midwestern and Eastern states.Unlike much of the Eastern United States, in small Western outposts, it was acceptable for single young women to work and live away from their parents — though they were often stigmatized as being prostitutes or sexually promiscuous. “The Harvey Company called its servers ‘Harvey Girls’ — not waitresses — because the term waitress had a bad connotation: It was linked to the saloon girls,” who were viewed as bawdy and indecent, Melzer says. “Fred Harvey didn’t want customers thinking there were saloon girls at his restaurants, and he certainly couldn’t recruit respectable women to work there if they thought they’d be working in a saloon-like atmosphere.” To ensure there’d be no confusion, the Harvey Girls were always attired in a conservative black-and-white uniform, just one of many strict job requirements.Harvey had no trouble finding suitable young women, despite the perception that the Wild West would scare them off. In fact, many women jumped at the opportunity for economic independence, adventure, and travel in an era when their prospects were greatly limited. “A lot of them came for the chance to see a different part of the country,” Melzer says. “After six months at a Harvey House, you could be transferred, so even if you started in a small place like Belen, New Mexico, you might eventually get to Santa Fe or to the Grand Canyon. Others came for the money, hoping to send it home to their families, save for their education, or maybe open a business themselves someday.”However, many took jobs with the Fred Harvey Company for a more traditional reason: The high ratio of single men to single women meant they had great prospects for meeting potential husbands. Yet even with such a goal in mind, women who moved west were often required to step out of their traditional roles simply to survive.

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]How sick do you have to be to love celebrity magazines?People mag this week boasts ads promising to treat migraine, lung cancer, psoriasis, exocrine pancreatic deficiency, irritable bowel syndrome, aging, protein deficiency, blisters, allergies, pneumococcal disease and clogged nasal pores. Presumably the advertisers know their audience.Yet the mag also seems intent on hurrying readers to an early grave with artery-clogging recipes for mustard barbecue ribs and grilled corn with cheese and cayenne, along with ads for cherry and chocolate s’mores, fudge stripe cookies and caramel macchiato.When Us magazine insists that the stars are just like us - this week they walk their dogs, slurp soup and buy in bulk - it doesn’t mention that they’re also fighting depression and chugging diet pills, both of which are advertised in its pages.But if you’re not already sick, this week’s tabloids will get you there.Ten pages jam-packed with Bill Clinton’s alleged mistresses, sex harassment victims and even discredited accusers fill the National Enquirer, which explains “Why Hillary can never be president” because “she covered up predator Bill’s sex crimes.”It’s a claim that bears consideration, but the Enquirer’s full-nuclear-option attack listing Bill Clinton's 36 alleged victims and “Hillary’s decades of terror and threats against women” may seem just a mite politically motivated. Especially when followed by a spread headlined: “We’re backing Donald all the way!” in which “ex-wives Ivana and Marla reveal why Trump’s the only man for the White House.” Because he’s done so much to advance women’s rights, one assumes.How sick must you be to believe the Enquirer’s “world exclusive” claiming that Tom Cruise has not seen ten-year-old daughter Suri since September 2013 because he “has been brainwashed into believing that an ‘evil spirit’ is controlling his innocent little girl”? What the Enquirer actually means is that Cruise hasn’t been photographed in public with Suri in three years, which isn’t exactly the same as not seeing his daughter. But as the Enquirer will tell you, if they don’t see it, it never happened. (And if they report it, it probably never happened either.)It’s a similar logic that has the Enquirer show a photo of Drew Barrymore, freshly split from husband Will Kopelman, in a baggy sweater which prompts an “insider” to say: “It looks like she has a baby bump!” Let’s get this straight: a Kalahari tribesman could look at this photo and say: “It looks like she has a baby bump!” It’s a baggy sweater, fer cryin’ out loud. We don’t need an “insider” to speculate on why an actress wears loose-fitting clothing. An “insider” would actually know. And the Enquirer simply doesn’t, which is par for the course.Beyonce “is rocketing toward a blockbuster $1 billion divorce” from husband Jay Z, claims the Globe, flying in the face of all evidence that she has overcome whatever concerns she may have had over her husband’s alleged infidelity. The Globe also claims that Ted Kennedy’s first wife Joan is writing a “deathbed tell-all,” “feverishly scribbling page after page during the wee hours of the night in a race against time.” A “deathbed” normally conjures up images of hospital ventilators, intravenous drips and painkillers, but evidently to the Globe it means writing long into the night. Which naturally gives the Globe carte blanche to dredge up every Kennedy clan scandal it can think of, because speculation is always more interesting than reality.Kelly Ripa tells “My side of the story” in People magazine, revealing her shock at co-host Michael Strahan’s departure from TV show Live, and I really couldn’t care less.Us magazine brings us Prince’s “final days” hiding his prescription pill addiction from loved ones, and “his last-ditch plea for help.” But that’s just wishful headline writing: Us mag’s story reveals no last-ditch plea for help by the rocker - it was worried aides who called an addiction specialist, and Prince’s lawyer confirms that “the hope was to get him stabilized . . . and convince him” to go to a rehab clinic. Fortunately we have Us mag’s crack investigative team to tell us that Lily Aldridge (Who she, Ed?) wore it best, Caitriona Balfe (Seriously, who she - Ed?) carries mascara, highlighter and an In-N-Out Burger gift card in her Miu Miu satchel, Trevor Noah admits “I love cuddling,” and that Kim Kardashian had an epiphany on her recent trip to Cuba: “Living in the moment having no phone service was so amazing!” If a visit to Cuba stops her posting relentless selfies, I for one would happily donate generously to a fund to keep her there.The ever-optimistic National Examiner reveals details of a “secret” White House economic analysis which foresees “a new Great Depression within months or even weeks,” with U.S. unemployment hitting 40 per cent, average annual salaries dropping to less than $10,000 and uncontrolled inflation. I can’t imagine why the Wall Street Journal hasn’t picked up on this yet.Onwards and downwards . . .

I appeared on the O'Reilly Hardware Podcast this week (MP3, talking about the way that DRM has crept into all our smart devices, which compromises privacy, security and competition. (more…)

For his project Velocipedia, artist/designer Gianluca Gimini asked friends and strangers to draw a men's bicycle from memory. Then he digitally mocked up the designs. Gimini writes:Soon I found out that when confronted with this odd request most people have a very hard time remembering exactly how a bike is made. Some did get close, some actually nailed it perfectly, but most ended up drawing something that was pretty far off from a regular men’s bicycle. Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.

The Host Committee for this year's Democratic National Convention includes Finance Chair Daniel Hilferty, a health insurance industry lobbyist on the board of America’s Health Insurance Plan (which lead the FUD campaign against Obamacare and is backing the GOP's anti-Obamacare bills), who has donated thousands to PACs supporting GOP candidates like Orin Hatch, Pat Toomey, and Tim Scott. He also donated to the presidential campaigns of Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-ATxSHGU4John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, was ejected from the country's parliamentary debating chamber yesterday when he repeated ignored the Speaker of the House's calls to yield the floor, continuing to rant even after his microphone had been cut off. (more…)

In a desperate attempt to stop that crazy Nigerian Prince communicating with rogue congressional staffers, the House IT department has banned Yahoo Mail! Seems ransomware attacks are on the rise, and the Government has responded. Via Computerworld:The House’s IT department told staffers that it “will be blocking access to Yahoo Mail on the House Network until further notice. We are making every effort to put other mitigating protections in place so that we can restore full access as soon as possible.”One day before the House sent the email, the FBI posted a warning about ransomware, which has targeted a wide variety of victims ranging from “hospitals, school districts, state and local governments, law enforcement agencies,” as well as large and small businesses.Despite that ransomware is becoming an “epidemic,” too many people are blissfully unaware of the threat. Using a small town in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as an example, James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology, told Newsweek, “I can go to a public computer right now and take down a local hospital in a day.”

As high rises replace their elevator up/down buttons with panels that you enter a floor into, which then direct you to a specific elevator, they create the possibility of adding more cars to each shaft, radically increasing the efficiency and throughput of a building's lifts. (more…)

Test Pilot, a new Firefox plugin from Mozilla, lets you try out features that the company is thinking of launching, contributing both telemetry and explicit feedback that they'll use to plan the product roadmap. (more…)

Give any adult the Makey Makey Invention Kit and they’ll all invariably have the same reaction: I wish I had something like this when I was a kid.But it’s probably best to just put the Makey Makey into the hands where they belong...because children and the imagination of those formative years are all the fuel needed to make this Makey Makey Invention Kit: Collector’s Edition (right now $47.99 in the Boing Boing Store) a Hall of Fame toy-slash-introduction to computer engineering.It’s deceptively simple on the surface, just a set of multi-colored alligator clamps and connecting wires. But the magic of Makey Makey takes shape in what a child brings to it. Wanna use balls of Play-Doh as controller buttons for a real computer game? You can do that. Wanna turn bananas into piano keys that can actually play music? You can do that too. Once a kid grasps the ultra-simple method of connecting real-world objects to virtual outcomes (no programming know-how or expertise needed), they’ll take the fun into areas adults never dreamed of.The Makey Makey can even keep inquisitive adults on the their toes. It’s compatible with both Mac and Windows systems and doesn’t require any special software or training.You’ve got to see the Makey Makey Invention Kit in action to gain a true appreciation for its potential, so get one now at 19% off its regular price.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU&w=560&h=315]

Almost all of Canada's oil sands production has been shut down by a raging wildfire in Alberta's Fort McMurray region. (more…)

UPDATE This is a couple months old -- I read "Mar 5" as "May 5." My apologies.Ray Tomlinson created the first networked email system in 1971 while working on his MIT doctorate and collaborating on the early ARPAnet at BBN; he used @ -- the at symbol -- to separate the username from the machinename because "it did not appear in user names and did not have any meaning in the TENEX paging program." (more…)

Earlier today I posted the news that Megumi Igarashi (pen name Rokudenashiko) was found guilty of obscenity for distributing a digital file containing a 3D scan of her vulva. Today also marks the publication of her graphic novel memoir, What is Obscenity?, a beautiful little book (with a cover design by Chip Kidd) that uses comics, color photos, and current events to tell Rokudenashiko's story of how she creates pussy-themed art that has the power to frighten government officials into arresting and censoring her.A graphic memoir of a good-for-nothing Japanese artist who has been jailed twice for so-called acts of obscenity and the distribution of pornographic materials yet continues to champion the art of pussy. In a society where one can be censored, pixelated, and punished, Rokudenashiko asks what makes pussy so problematic?Rokudenashiko (“good-for-nothing girl”) is a Japanese artist. She is known for her series of decorated vulva moulds, or "Decoman," a portmanteau of decorated and manko, slang for vagina. Distributing a 3D scan of her genitalia to crowdfunding supporters led to her arrest for alleged violation of Japanese obscenity laws.

NASA announced today that the Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets -- the single largest finding of planets to date. (more…)

In 1991, The Simpsons episode called Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? aired, in which Homer becomes an auto-executive and designs a car that is used to show why American auto-manufacturing had failed: now you can own that car. (more…)

"You come upon the track of a bicycle in the mud. Was the bicycle traveling to the left or the right?" Visit Futility Closet for the solution. I haven't looked yet, as I'm still riding a bike in my mind, to see where the tracks go.

Japanese manga artist, Megumi Igarashi, who makes whimsical sculptures from molds of her vulva, was fond guilty of obscenity in Tokyo District Court. She was fined 400,000 yen ($3,670) fine.Megumi Igarashi, who works under the pseudonym Rokudenashiko – or good-for-nothing girl – was arrested in July 2014 after she distributed data that enabled recipients to make 3D prints of her vagina.The 44-year-old was fined 400,000 yen (£2,575), half the penalty demanded by prosecutors, at the Tokyo district court on Monday after she was convicted of distributing “obscene” images. She was cleared of another charge of displaying similar material.Igarashi distributed the data to help raise funds to create a kayak inspired by her genitalia she called “pussy boat.”The judge, Mihoko Tanabe, said that the data, though “flat and inorganic”, realistically portrayed the shape of a vagina and could “sexually arouse viewers”, according to Kyodo News.Remember, in Japan: Penis sculpture good. Vulva sculpture bad.[caption id="attachment_461211" align="alignleft" width="640"] Image: Guilhem Vellut/Flickr[/caption]Previously: Artist arrested for distributing 3D file of her genitals

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Unflatteningby Nick SousanisHarvard University Press2015, 208 pages, 7.5 x 10.2 x 1 inches (softcover)$16 Buy a copy on AmazonIt is remarkable how much we learn in our youth and how fast we learn it. It is a pace that really cannot sustain itself as we age, though we might try to continue to learn as though we were young. In my youth, the newspaper seemed a vast swarm of text and a few images that encircled a hidden prize: the funnies. Comics, in youth, are acceptable, but as we age we regard them more as juvenile diversions. Over time, the picture book gives way to the novel. The non-fiction works in the form of text books and scholarly journals are tools to educate us. Finally, should we pursue learning down the institutional path long enough, we encounter doctoral theses with their many and myriad intertextual references. It is a long-standing joke among academics that it is rare that the thesis they slave over for four or more years ever actually gets read.Nick Sousanis, with his doctoral thesis Unflattening, is a poignant departure from any trend of dissertations written for the sake of being written. More than that, it is meant to be more than a read work. It is an experiential work that asks the reader to not just read, but rather to participate in learning to appreciate imagery on equal terms with orderly lines of written text. This is a dissertation written in comic book format that argues for the power of that medium. One might think about the adage concerning the worth of pictures and thousands of words, and that does come up in the work itself, but this is something more than a trite saying. It is a masterful reinterpretation of how we read and learn, and how our world can be captured and conveyed to our fellows. It dismantles the rigid presumptions we have regarding the inherent value of the written word – especially scholarly writing. It champions the comic, for “while the image is, the text is always about.” Indeed, it is brilliantly argued throughout that “the visual provides expression where words fail.”The title, Unflattening, refers to Edwin A. Abbott's novella Flatland (1884), about a dystopian flatland of two dimensional objects, where a coin would not be seen by others for its circular shape, but rather would be seen edge-on as just a line obscuring the horizon. This is a "linelander," and all linelanders see each other this way. A square of three dimensions frees the coin-shaped object by peeling it from the flat surface so that it might see its brethren and world from above – from the third dimension, just as we would look down upon a page in a geometry textbook. Sousanis, similarly, wishes to peel us away from the linear predominance of the textual world where word follows word follows word. He comes from a background in comics, graphic novels, or whatever phrase you would use to describe his art. Just as his square peels away the coin from lineland to reveal it to be flatland, so too Sousanis convinces us, by both text and deed, of the power of comics. His text is often sparse and pared down to its most necessary elements, but the accompanying visuals draw the eye along and serve as an obvious example that reinforces the sometimes vague text. The deed is the image, for it is the more obvious representation of our lived world, while the text can only describe it. This may all seem obvious, but Sousanis brings to bear so many examples and graphical displays to reinforce his line of argument, that the journey through this work is quite remarkable. Moreover, his endnotes at the back serve not only to acknowledge his textual sources, but also to draw attention to and explain his visual inspirations. Those images that so often sit confined within frames within museum galleries or as a ghettoized section of glossy pages in the middle of an art book, they are given life and agency by Sousanis’ deploying of them as allies to his words. Certainly, it is almost with chagrin that one must only write about such a work when it argues so convincingly that mere text is limited in its conveying of full meaning. It is some solace that the accompanying images from Sousanis’ work will allow readers of this review to gain greater insight in the majesty of his pairing of imagery and text. This is a thinking person’s book and it is most definitely academic, but it is also surprisingly accessible. It draws upon – and draws – so many disciplines and so many real-world instances, that anyone and everyone will find it illuminating. So profound are many of these moments of illumination that they go a long way to rejuvenating our desire to see the world anew, from a child's eyes once more. – Stephen Webb

This home was burned to the ground in the Fort McMurray wildfire. The owners watched their living room go up in smoke via a security camera feed sent to their iPhone.