Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance was an experimental, dialog-free film by Godfrey Reggio (with a score by Phillip Glass) that depicts our relationship with nature and technology through a series of striking film images. Jesse England's Koyaanistocksi is a convincing recreation of its trailer made exclusively from generic stock art. A funny simulacrum, but of what order I can't tell: art rendered empty of meaning thanks to the pervasive replication of its own forms. [via Jeremy Erwin]

In The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, economists from Stanford, MIT and Harvard analyzed 1.4 million US tax records to see how income correlated with lifespan. (more…)

It's been 21 years since the Republican Congress zeroed out the $20M budget of the Office of Technology Assessment, a casualty of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" that deprived Congress of its principle source of technological expertise. (more…)

In this 20 minute video, Princeton computer science prof Andrew Appel lays out the problems with Internet-based voting in crisp, nontechnical language that anyone can understand. (more…)

Reuters reports that VW is about to tell the federal judge in San Francisco in charge of its case that it will offer to buy back nearly half a million of its diesel vehicles from owners who were deceived about the cars' emission standards and performance when the company engineered its cars so that they would act daemonically, performing differently based on whether they were being tested or not. (more…)

Uruguay, Namibia, Samoa, Ghana, and South Africa all offer a greater "level of freedom of information” than the United States, according to Reporters Without Borders' 2016 World Press Freedom Index, released today. The U.S. is ranked at 41 out of 180 countries in the survey.(more…)

“i found an SD card in the middle of zimbabwe. now I am trying to find the card's owner.”(more…)

There is growing concern in the American marijuana industry “about what may happen on the intellectual property frontier if and when legalization spreads across the country,” Greg Walters writes at VICE in a story out today. In recent years, there's been an explosion in new strains with wacky names, and growers are looking to patent their strains just like one might for a new type of apple or rose. If or when America decriminalizes pot, our intellectual property laws could clash with the pot business boom to create one hell of a legal mess, very quickly.(more…)

Canada's Health Minister Jane Philpott (hehe pot pott get it pot) said today that Canada now has a date for decriminalizing pot: Spring, 2017. The announcement was made on 4/20 Day, significant to cannabis users for reasons nobody can remember, wonder why.(more…)

Decades ago, Norman Sperling co-created the Astroscan telescope. As that telescope is no longer available new, and such an incredible treasure, Sperling has decided to kickstart a new model, the Bright-Eye!The kickstarter video for this is so charming, I almost want to give up my Astroscan and get a Bright-Eye! My Astroscan is beautiful, portable, and easy to use. The Bright-Eye should be no different.Help kickstart this telescope.

Glue is pretty fantastic stuff. But sometimes, you’re dealing with a project that takes a little more finesse than a bottle of Elmer’s can satisfy. For fixing serious jobs, roll in the big guns and use versatile, liquid plastic to handle your major repair issues. The Bondic Pro Kit is the world’s first liquid plastic welder - and now, you can grab that baby to tackle a host of household fixes for just $22.99 - 54% off - in the Boing Boing Store.Application is simple - just lay a smooth layer of liquid plastic over the cracks in that outdoor chair or car bumper and with the use of the included UV LED light, your plastic layer is cured in just four seconds. Apply a few coats and before you know it, your item is looking as good as new again.The Bondic applicator allows maximum precision to get your liquid plastic into just the right spot. And with three tubs of plastic included, you’ll be ready to take on any number of honey-do projects without calling for reinforcements.The entire Bondic Pro Kit fits in a travel case about the size of a small pencil box, perfect for keeping the Bondic on hand and ready when the need arises.Check it out now at more than half off its MSRP...and you’ll never have to go back to that simple white glue again.[embed]https://youtu.be/xTsfwL61CR8[/embed]

The internet is addicted to Slither.io, a startlingly compulsive multiplayer mashup of the classic "Snake" game and Tron's "Light Cycles": block other snakes with your body, watch them explode into a cloud of orbs, then eat the glowing remains in order to grow longer and larger. It's a game of fast reactions, split-second decisions and low-latency internet connections.Naturally, then, I wondered what it would be like as a text adventure. (more…)

[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]All politics is showbusiness these days, so it’s no surprise that this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines are knee-deep in matters of state, displaying their usual gifts for gravitas, balance and fairness.Ted Cruz’s father is linked to JFK’s assassination, Michelle Obama is working to destroy Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie plans to run for Congress, and Hillary reveals that she likes Goldfish and hot sauce, we are told in what passes for political coverage.“Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination!” screams the National Enquirer’s typically ungrammatical cover, boasting a “world exclusive investigation.” Photos obtained by the Warren Commission purportedly depicting Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald distributing Communist-leaning pro-Castro pamphlets three months before he shot the president show the killer posed next to a man who for 52 years has remained unidentified by federal investigators - but who the Enquirer now claims is Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz. The magazine employed “a group of world-renowned experts in photography and facial recognition” to reach their verdict: “The man in the frame is indeed Rafael."How positive are these experts? Not very. “There’s more similarity than dissimilarity,” says veteran photo analyst Mitch Goldstone, hardly giving the image a ringing endorsement. The Enquirer also wins the dubious imprimatur of “renown court-certified expert witness” Dr Carole Lieberman, who says: “The photos of Rafael Cruz all seem to match.” But wait a second - Dr Lieberman is an author and psychiatrist, not an expert witness in facial recognition or photo analysis. Chicago plastic surgeon Dr Otto Placik tells the Enquirer “The photos are difficult to decipher,” and that the man pictured alongside Oswald has "thinner lips, a weaker jaw and a more prominent brow” than Rafael. But the Enquirer doesn’t let that keep them from a good slur.Michelle Obama is “out to kill off hated Hillary’s campaign!” alleges the Globe, claiming that the current First Lady is a Bernie Sanders supporter working secretly to undermine the former First Lady. Michelle has never forgiven Hillary for the bruising 2008 presidential campaign, the mag claims, and calls Clinton “Hillbilly Hill” behind her back. But how exactly is Michelle trying to torpedo Hillary? The Globe hasn’t quite figured out that part yet, floating the idea that she is “compiling a secret dossier of Hillary’s mistakes.” Oh, that’ll hurt. Michelle is also allegedly campaigning to turn Democratic powerbrokers against Clinton. I think the Globe won’t be satisfied with anything less than a mud-wrestling Michelle vs Hillary catfight on primetime TV.The Globe takes a week off from screaming that Angelina Jolie is near death from an eating disorder, instead revealing her “ten-year scheme” to run for Congress. But as anyone who reads the tabloids knows, Jolie only has months left to live, so such long-term plans seem moot. But the Globe warns: “It may not be smooth sailing - George Clooney may also be considering a run.” Then we’ll have a Jolie vs Clooney electoral race that’s sure to garner some serious political coverage in the tabloids.Us magazine’s indefatigable investigative team this week bring us their exclusive cover story about Hillary Clinton: “25 Things You Don’t Know About Me.”Among the shockingly unexpected revelations: “I’ve been coloring my hair for years.” Hillary confesses that she can’t sing, likes hot chile peppers, loves the Beatles and Adele, chocolate and Goldfish snacks, and twice rejected Bill Clinton’s proposal before accepting. How Us mag was overlooked when the Pulitzer prizes were handed out this week is beyond me. This is the same crack reporting team that this week tells us that actress Jennifer Carpenter carries vegetable soup, toothpaste and lip balm in her leather Tumi rucksack, that Emma Roberts wore it best, and the stars are just like us: they get parking tickets, eat corn on the cob, go jogging, and shop at supermarkets.People magazine anoints Jennifer Aniston as "The World’s Most Photoshopped Woman,” though through some inexplicable editing error the printed cover actually says “World’s Most Beautiful Woman.” But readers are left in no doubt that the wrinkle-free 47-year-old, with flawless baby-smooth glowing skin beaming from every photograph, is all natural. Her secret to looking good: yoga, spin classes, cardio, drinking hot lemon water, protein shakes, seared ahi tuna and imbibing water all day. For some reason she doesn’t mention good genes and great Photoshopping. With all those smoothies, lemon water and bottled smartwater, she must also boast a cast iron bladder.Leave it to the National Examiner to bring us the week’s most important news: “Planet X will end life on Earth!” That’s a “top scientist’s chilling warning,” apparently, and you’d think that the world’s imminent destruction might merit front page coverage rather than being buried on page 42. Maybe they’re trying not to scare us. We’ve actually been hearing claims about this alleged planet, supposedly orbiting just beyond Pluto, for several decades. Despite the abject failure of scientists to actually find this celestial object with an estimated mass ten times that of the Earth, the Examiner assures us it’s out there, and about to fling deadly comets heading our way.I, for one, will be glad if they hit Earth before we have to endure any more of this unending barrage of what passes as political coverage.Onwards and downwards . . .

The Hoverboard Cart is a $69 aluminum frame that attaches to hoverboards and holds a beach chair, cooler, or other seat. You steer it with your feet. The only thing missing is a mount for a fire extinguisher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCkrj0K5Dc4

See sample pages of this book at Wink.Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is a strange, effectively touching, and surprisingly rigorous exploration of prostitution as found in the Christian bible. After doing extensive research on the subject, Chester Brown offers his graphical reimagining of the prostitute stories from the bible. Besides the tales of Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, and Mary of Bethany, we also get scenes from the lives of Bathsheba, Mary, Mother of Jesus, Cain and Abel, and others. Some of these stories seem out of place with the rest of the collection (e.g. Cain and Able and Job), with no apparent link to prostitution. But with them, Brown is sharpening one of his main points about following the spirit versus the letter of the law of religious obedience, a theme which runs throughout the book.The meticulously rendered stories, eleven in all, have a strange, disarming innocence about them. There are moments of truly felt compassion and generosity encoded in some of these panels. But the comics are really only half of the book. The second half, over a hundred pages, contains all of the notes from Brown’s research. I found it an absolutely fascinating look, not only into the academic research and religious texts that he cites, but into his own thinking, and his confirmation biases. The whole book feels more like a captured thought process, a research notebook, than a typical narrative or expositional work. That’s part of what makes this book so unique and interesting to me, but it may turn off others for the same reason.Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is basically Chester Brown’s presentation of his belief that Jesus did not condemn prostitutes or prostitutions and that it is very possible that his own mother, Mary, may have been a prostitute. Or at least pregnant with a baby that wasn’t Joseph’s. Brown makes his case by looking at translation drift/censorship of key words from the bible, by reexamining all of the passages about prostitutes, by citing modern scholarship, and by offering his own speculations.In many ways, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is a follow-up to Brown’s highly acclaimed Paying for It, “a comic-strip memoir about being a john.” The cynical or faith-invested reader might easily dismiss Mary Wept as a very overwrought justification for Brown’s embrace of prostitution and sex work. One uncharitable Amazon customer went in an entirely different direction with “it’s finally apparent to what extent Chester Brown thinks he’s Jesus.”Messianic complexes and personal justifications aside, I found Mary Wept extremely engaging and thought provoking. It is eccentric, ponderous, and beautifully rendered books like this that renew my faith in humanity. Or at least in humanity’s adventurous small press publishers.

In 1938, Mihailo Tolotos died at age 82. He's considered to have been the only man to have lived such a long life "without ever seeing a woman." Tolotos, whose mother died at childbirth, lived all his years as a monk in one of Greece's Mt. Ethos monasteries where only men are permitted. Of course, Tolotos's claim to fame doesn't account for people who are blind since birth, but it's still a rather curious story anyway.(more…)

Whatever you say, Ted.(more…)

Chris from Sense About Science writes, "Nominations are now open for the 2016 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science. Now in its fifth year, the prize recognises the work of an individual anywhere in the world who promotes sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, facing difficulty or hostility in doing so." (more…)

In a new scientific study, researchers conducted acoustical analysis of Queen singer Freddie Mercury's singing voice. While he spoke in a baritone voice, Mercury had a tremendous singing range. But his real vocal superpowers were a rather unique vibrato combined with his ability to use subharmonics, like a Tuvan throat singer. The Austrian, Czech, and Swedish scientists report on their research in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology."Perceptually, Freddie Mercury's irregular (and typically faster) vibrato is clearly audible in the sustained notes of famous songs such as 'Bohemian Rhapsody' (A Night at the Opera) or 'We Are the Champions' (News of the World), and it appears to be one of the hallmarks of his vocal style," they wrote.In other Mercury news, a notebook containing some of his last lyrics will be auctioned off at Bonham's in June. It's estimated to go for £50,000-£70,000.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ

Follow @RubenBolling on Twitter and Facebook.Please join Tom the Dancing Bug's subscription club, the INNER HIVE, for early access to comics, and more.And/or buy Ruben Bolling’s new book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures. Book One here. Book Two here.More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

We live on a street with no streetlights and it gets very dark at night. People who come to our house at night have trouble seeing things. I bought one of these $24 solar powered motion sensor lights with a 20-LED array and PIR (passive infrared) motion sensor and mounted (hardware included) it on a 12-foot wood column at the far end of the driveway. Lucky for me, the solar panel is facing the south so the batteries get a good dose of juice every day.It works really well. When a car or person enters the driveway at night, the light comes on and throws surprisingly wide coverage. The light is so bright that it hurts to look directly at the lED array. The back of the unit has a 3-mode switch. You can set it to turn on and stay on when it gets dark (in one of two brightness levels) or to turn on only when it detects motion (the setting I use). People on Amazon say the batteries run down in 11 hours if you set it on the dim mode, and 2 hours in bright mode.

Carla Hayden is President Obama's pick for the next Librarian of Congress, and she's an extraordinarily good choice: an open-access advocate who opposes mass surveillance and comes out of the library world, Hayden is ideally poised to lead the Library, which, in turn, supervises the Copyright Office and sets the nation's de facto IT policy, for example through things like the Triennial DMCA 1201 hearings). (more…)

[The late children's book author Beverly Cleary would have turned 100 this month. Here's an entry I posted in 2006 about an NPR interview with her.]I'm over a month behind in listening to podcasts, so I just got around to listening to this NPR interview with Beverly Cleary. She just turned 90, and her mental acuity is better than most people half her age.She said that she was a children's librarian in 1940 and got the idea to write kids' books when some boys at the library complained that they couldn't find any books "about kids like us." So she sat down and started writing stories about the kids she had had gotten to know at the library.My daughter is now reading Beverly Cleary books. I flipped through them and was disgusted to see that the books do not use Louis Darling's darling illustrations. Instead, the publisher is using looser, more cartoony illustrations that have none of the charm or humor of Darling's work. I wish NPR would have asked Mrs. Cleary what she thought of this depressing switcharoo. Linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b0fY9SmqDY

Sleepbus is a startup that's "disrupting long distance transport" -- it's a bus. (more…)

In this Chinese government comic book, women are warned that mysterious foreign strangers who pitch woo at them are secretly Western spies trying to get at their government secrets. (more…)

Richard Payne, director of Douglas County School District security, spent $12,000 on 10 Bushmaster semi-automatic long rifles that will be given to the district's in-school security guards. (more…)

(more…)

Motherboard's Claire Evans visited The Church of Perpetual Life, a transhumanist house of worship whose adherents await the time technology brings them into eternity—by curing aging. The strangest thing is that it seems much like any other smalltown Protestant church, right down to the bland off-white architecture, the nice pews, the books on tables, the clean-cut religiosity. It is in Florida.

The New York primary results are still being tallied, but Trump has won the GOP vote, and Hillary Clinton is emerging as the Democratic party winner. Widespread reports of voting irregularities have Bernie Sanders' campaign and some elected officials calling the state's primary voting system "a disgrace." New York City officials were quick to blame the city Board of Elections for stripping more than 125,000 Democratic voters from the rolls.(more…)

A high school in my home state of Virginia discriminated against a female-to-male transgender teen boy by forbidding him from using the boys' restroom, a federal appeals court ruled today. The case is a win for human rights, and could change what happens just one state to the south, in North Carolina. There, a recent and similarly weird bathroom law just went into effect, discriminating against LGBT people and hearkening the good old southern days when "colored" Americans were forced to use separate bathrooms, far away from where they could contaminate any white people with their otherness.(more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.Activists, artists, pioneers. Rad American Women A-Z takes readers on an alphabetized journey through the lives of women throughout the country and across time “who fought,” “who led,” and “who soared.” Every woman’s story begins with an action: there are no passive heroines in this historical feminist primer.Each biographical sketch by Kate Schatz is accompanied by a crisp, black and white print from Miriam Klein Stahl. The author and illustrator team create a tone that is both conversational and immediate. The brightly colored background of each portrait seeps across from image page to text, highlighting each woman’s name and drawing readers into her story. This alphabet book meets call to action lends itself to a wide range of readers, using accessible, explanatory language (“A union is an organization that helps protect the rights of people who have the same kind of job.”), bold, dynamic illustrations, and a traditional walk through each letter of the alphabet (“J is for Jovita,” and “K is for Kate.”). I’ve been reading it with my three year old knowing that even on the days we use it only to practice the alphabet, she’s getting a dose of empowerment and diverse herstory. Though many of the women profiled are easily recognizable agents of change, Rad American Women introduced me to others I hadn’t heard of and began to flesh out the origin stories and broader social contexts of the women I already knew. Through the work of greats like Billie Jean King, Angela Davis, Temple Grandin, and Maya Lin, this book does an excellent job introducing the concepts of identity, intersectionality, and straight-up girl power, simply by telling the stories of real, radical women.It’s easy to forget that “rad” is short for radical, and even easier to forget what being a radical really means. In addition to the snapshots of rad women that make up the bulk of the book, there is a brief resource guide at the end for further reading, as well as the alphabetical acrostic, 26 Things That You Can Do To Be Rad! Armed with this list of ideas for cultivating social change through basic, individual actions, Rad American Women readers, no matter their age or identity, will connect with, and aspire to be like, one of the athletes, organizers, writers, or rock stars whose actions shaped the world we live in today. – Marykate Smith Despres

A few months ago I shared a camera strap that I feel is ugly. Readers disagreed. Now you can get it for almost 33% less!Make sure to select item LC-006B. While they appear the same, select the free shipping option to save $2.28!Vintage Soft Multi-Color Universal Camera Shoulder Strap/Neck Belt via Amazon

A friend from my native England asked me to explain what the hell is going on. I got confused talking about it, so just made this chart instead and emailed it to him. I'm sharing it here so you can marvel, once again, at the curious mix of ignorance and insight that ex-patriot Britons bring to the United States Experience.

Adrienne Lafrance's story in The Atlantic about online harassment is an excellent, thought-provoking read. She describes her online conversation with someone who sent a mean tweet to her:

Pakistan's daily news service Dawn reports on the rise in scorpion smoking there:(more…)

Birdie looks like a large badminton shuttlecock. It's designed to accommodate a GoPro camera. To use it, you toss it in the air and the camera shoots video on its graceful descent.https://youtu.be/ks3iGxMlk0A[via]

Thousand of people have pledged to face arrest at the Democracy Spring demonstrations in DC, whose mission is to eliminate the corrupting influence of big money on politics. (more…)

In Wired, BB pal Kevin Kelly wrote a definitive feature about the current (and future?) state of virtual reality, technology that many of us first tried in the late 1980s but took nearly thirty years to be ready for prime time.

Contrary to popular belief, the best project managers aren’t just the people who “get things done.” In fact, the men and women tasked with successfully guiding a business’ most critical projects have specialized training that’s a whole separate skill set to itself. If you’ve never heard of “sprints” or “burndown charts” or “product owners,” then you’ve probably never worked on an Agile project utilizing the management framework known as Scrum.Scrum is hugely popular because it establishes multiple sets of short-term goals toward long-term project completion, along with quantifiable results that let team members know exactly where a project stands on its path to ultimate success. Now, you can become a certified Scrum Master with the Agile Certification Training courses, now just $59 - 93% off - in the Boing Boing Store.With this set of 20+ courses, including 25 hours of content, you’ll master the Agile principles and techniques you’ll need to pass the PMI-ACP exam, the industry-standard certification essential to becoming an elite project manager in a major company. You’ll learn how to set timelines, assemble and manage multi-generational teams and implement the pathway to project success that Agile provides. Inside this bundle of courses, you’ll not only learn Agile’s most popular application Scrum, but other Agile implementation methods like Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP) and more. You’ll receive expert-led instruction as well as a host of labs, games and other activities to make the tenets of Agile second nature - and put you well on the way to acing the PMI-ACP exam.All this Agile training would normally cost almost $900, but right now, you can score all this learning for 93% off its regular price.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tP3J1a7s0U&w=560&h=315]

Why would you sharpen a carrot, I hear you asking? At $3.77, why wouldn't you? (more…)

Blake Snow imagines a world without internet

Chicago's Police Department are notorious: the force maintains a "black site" where prisoners are secretly held under fake names and tortured, uses political shenanigans to suppress information about corruption, sabotages their own dashcams, secretly operates illegal mass-surveillance equipment (bought with asset forfeiture money, natch), forces out internal investigators who do their jobs conscientiously, and don't get me started on the evils of the Illinois prison system! (more…)

Brady Forrest writes, "Ignite SF's first event of 2016 is on 4/26. We've got lots of great speakers. Eva Galperin (EFF) is going to talk about the FBI, Apple & your iPhone. Renee Diresta is going to dive into conspiracy theories and how algorithms influence policy." (more…)

Google is pointing a finger at its own website, declaring it "partially unsafe" for web visitors. It's not clear if the report is one part of the sprawling company telling the truth about another part, a mistake, or a clever "googlebomb" of inbound links designed to trigger this result.In any case, the warnings posted are delicious.

(more…)

The New York Times reports on a gaffe that's part tragedy, part comedy, all Trump.

In 1928, 199 runners set out on a perilous footrace across America, from Los Angeles to Chicago and on to New York. The winner would receive $25,000 -- if anyone finished at all. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Bunion Derby, billed as the greatest footrace the world had ever known.We'll also learn some creepy things about spiders and puzzle over why one man needs three cars.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!Image: Flickrnationalforest/5734775201">Image: Flickr

And I made an actually-infinite perfect-looping Trump GIF for you: