Retired US Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News commentator Ralph Peters's comment on live TV after President Obama's Oval Office address yesterday about ISIS:

In 1988, Leonso Canales of Kingsville, Texas, began his righteous, decades-long campaign to replace the greeting "hello" with "heaven-o."(more…)

Idaho State University anthropology/anatomy professor Jeffrey Meldrum 3D printed a scale model of a speculative bigfoot skeleton.(more…)

Our friend Joshua Foer, memory champion and author of the fantastic book "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything," shows how he stores incredible amounts of useful (and useless) information in the memory palace in his head.

Our friend, filmmaker Joe Sabia, made this video with Joshua Foer, the ex-US memory champ, on how to memorize the first 100 digits of Pi. "A while back, said Joe," "I reached out to my miniature figure making friends, Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, and asked if they wanted to visualize Josh Foer's brain, by making an actual memory palace. They spent months crafting miniatures, and in the end we were able to make this video."Joe was inspired to improve his memory, too! He is using the Person-Action-Object (PAO) system to memorize a randomized deck of cards. Here's how de described it to me:

David Vetter (1971-1984) suffered from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a disease that required him to live inside a sterile environment, a plastic "bubble." Eventually, he tested a special suit developed by NASA so that he could venture out of his bubble. Vetter's story partially inspired the 1976 TV movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," starring John Travolta (full film below), the asinine 2001 comedy "Bubble Boy," and a Seinfeld episode. Vetter's life and tragic death continues to help physicians understand and treat immunodeficiency diseases.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHnhyiepxc

Trina Merry (previously) has created "Lost in Wonder," a series of trompe l'oeil photos in which painted models are posed against many of the world's great wonders, vanishing into the background. (more…)

https://youtu.be/V5RLTZSrr4AAyun Halliday of Open Culture posted a 1965 film of Marcel Marceau's performance of Youth, Maturity, Old Age, and Death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=wu_Lct-uVW8The two creepy head-characters rode the Northern Line, pushed an empty pram down the platforms, and sat down to play trains at Hamley's toy-store, as a publicity stunt for Mind Gap, a new theme park ride designed by stage conjurer/hypnotist Derren Brown (previously) that will open in March 2016 at the Thorpe Park theme park in Chertsey, England. (more…)

The Crooked Timber folks have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century, a must-read economics book (don't be scared by its brick-like appearance!). (more…)

See sample pages from this book at Wink.My own initiation into Freemasonry was one of the highlights of my adult life. The marvelous rituals and the delightful imparting of “secrets” are sublime, but they are threaded with a hint of anachronistic camp. In the moment you give over to it completely. This is the true power of theater and pomp. Much of Freemasonry’s ability to elicit this good-natured suspension of disbelief is its varied use of symbol and parable, most of which is part of the very architecture and decor of the lodge.Like Freemasonry itself, the art and other artifacts that are both standard and unique to each lodge waver between high and low, masterful and kitsch. As Above, So Below by Lynne Adele and Bruce Lee Webb, and lovingly presented by University of Texas Press, collects all the various kinds of fraternal arts, including banners, aprons, paintings, and even magic lantern slides and quilts. The book is not limited to Freemasonry, and offers examples from Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias, among others.What is made most apparent is how deeply these societies are entangled with folk elements. Images of death and resurrection abound, as do beehives, goats, and of course the all-seeing eye. There is esoteric lore and mystery layered with mystery. As David Byrne says in his foreword to the book, “The obscuring layers are the content.” And yet, the humble often outsider nature of the examples in this book reveal the most startling truth about Freemasons and others secret societies: these are the homegrown fellowships of our ancestors, people looking for fraternity and the warmth of a lodge, often during our country’s most difficult times. These were simple men and women, not the secret rulers of the universe.As Above, So Below: Art of the American Fraternal SocietyAs Above, So Below: Art of the American Fraternal Society, 1850-1930

A special holiday thank you to our long time sponsor Shanalogic! Shanalogic is a curated shop of handmade and independently produced gifts, many of which we own and love! Check out this fantastic Halfling Door Locket Necklace!

https://youtu.be/NxOPnxoGQhsFor the last two years, Jasen Dixon of Sycamore Township, Ohio has displayed a front yard nativity scene with zombified versions of Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the three magi. The city has demanded that Dixon remove the scene from his yard, because it says the "accessory structure" violates the zoning code.From Local 12:

The history of American prison visitations are a mix of racism ("black men, denied sex, will riot in jail") and compassion -- especially the late 1960s' ground-breaking, multi-day family visitation programs that allowed prisoners to play and live with their children for a whole weekend a few times every year. (more…)

The weather on Sol-d is simply too strange and unpredictable, pretty as it sometimes may be. We recommend colonizing Sol-e instead. Cold but serviceable.

Ron Amadeo has Walmart's $10 smartphone, the LG Sunrise. It's shit. And yet…

Each and every item in the Boing Boing Dry Goods store had been blessed by a Discordian Monk, imbuing it with extra entropy. If enough people by these items, our ancestors will look back on 2016 and say, "It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton."

The 12" retina MacBook, 6 months in. Almost ready to review it.

Having failed to wrest control of the San Francisco bay area by reducing technology reliant humans access to electrical power, wild life freedom fighters have resorted to direct attacks on individuals and their canine sympathizers.Incidence of surprise attacks are on the rise in Marin County, where a young human was attacked in one of their farcical day care/standardized testing institutions known as an "Elementary School." The glorious, stealthy squirrel warrior wounded both a student and its educator before fleeing. Local officials state this is a solo squirrel working alone. This claim is unsubstantiated.As this battle expands from the east bay to Marin, we are reminded that the Squirrel Defense Force has been joined by masked procyonid warriors from the raccoon family, conducting operations in San Francisco proper. Two humans and their canine escort were attacked by a pack of raccoons while crossing a street. Had aid not arrived in the form of a human wildly banging on a garbage can, upsetting their clandestine attack, it seems certain the raccoons would have carried the day.Via SF Gate:

Thinkgeek has extended its solar system drinking glasses with a new link of six 10oz Star Wars glasses that symbolize six of the Lucas mythos's most important celestial bodies: Alderaan, Dagobah, Hoth, Tatooine, Endor, and the Death Star (natch). (more…)

In Iceland, tax-authorities collect "parish fees" from all residents and remit them to churches based on the stated religious affinities of those residents. If you're an atheist, your fees are collected and go into a general fund shared by all churches. (more…)

I've been collecting playing cards since I was a kid and after amassing enough to choke Godzilla, I have a thing or two to say about the ones that stand out to me.When I used to open a pack of cards, the first one I was drawn to was the Ace of Spades. It was always the low hanging fruit of awesomeness but as time went on, my tastes changed. I now know there’s so much more going on with the backs of playing cards, the court cards and the box itself.A London based designer named Joe White took a full year to jam as much symbolism into his Contraband deck as possible. It’s so stuffed with content, it feels like it’s a treasure map to nowhere - and I think that’s the point. You’re supposed to create the journey yourself.If you look closely, you’ll find skulls, pirate symbols, the eye of Horus, hanging keys, the holy grail, eve’s apple and the gates of heaven. I thought these things were thrown in willy-nilly at first, but when I took the time to break things down, I saw a unified story.The box is covered with delicate embossing, gold foil stamping and interwoven design. A literal "X" marks the spot in the center of the box spawns a cacophony of imagery.On the X itself, we have the Latin phrasing:Carpe Noctem – sieze the night&Carpe Diem – sieze the dayI put a lot of thought against this and here’s what I’ve come up with – There's an elite group within the deck called the court cards. They're the most powerful and all others bow before them. The Latin phrases throughout the deck is the collected mantra for the court cards and they've set their plans in motion long ago.They make their fortunes off the backs of the working class who toil day and night by moving Contraband through their intertwined global network. The artwork is symbolic of the iron grip the wealthy has over the world - The contraband weapons are poised to be used for war at a moment’s notice, while the world is literally chained in submission.I'm not a conspiracy guy or anything - that's just the story I see in the deck.At the bottom of the box we have another Latin phrase:Cerca Trova – Seek and you shall find.The phrase seems empowering at first glance and besides being a biblical reference, it has interesting wartime history that changes the meaning altogether.The phrase was painted in Vasari’s 1554 fresco, The Battle of Marciano.It’s an awesome piece that depicts an important battle fought by the troops of the Duke Cosimo I de’Medici against the city of Siena – The Duke was victorious and gained control over Tuscany because of it.When you look very closely you can see the phrase Cerca Trova as clear as day on the green banners carried by the soldiers of Siena.This depiction of the battle is revisionist history though. The reality was that Siena soldiers actually flew their flags with a verse from Dante:He goes in search of freedom, which is so dear,As he who gives his life for it would know.Sienna fought for their freedom but instead found defeat and history was rewritten by the victorious Duke. He had this painting commissioned after the battle and the message was changed to Cerca Trova - seek and you shall find.They searched for freedom and the Duke made sure they found it only in their deaths.That in itself, is interesting but consider this - when the box that holds the cards is opened, a skull is revealed on the inner flap. It’s the only one depicted in the entire package.When you close the box, the skull is tucked (or buried) under the very phrase that actually refers to death. Could that skull represent the soldiers form Siena?Probably not – but moving right along.The aces in the Contraband deck take the cake as far as denseness and complexity goes.There's so much layered art and detail that it’s difficult to make out what they’re trying to be or say. The printing is too small for the amount of content that wants to come across and each of the aces needs a companion poster to help with that.But that won’t stop me from appreciating or analyzing what I can see.The latin phrase audaces fortuna luvat can be found on the white banner of the Ace of Spades which translates to fortune favors the bold.Below is the Goddess of luck, Fortuna. She most closely represents this latin phrase in Greek Mythology.When it comes to this deck, Fortuna is important because of her connection with Roman Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla.On the battlefield, he believed in the influence of the goddess Fortuna and because of that was a consummate risk-taker. He became famous for wearing disguises and living among the enemy - and this brings me to what I think is the most interesting thing about the Contraband deck.A few of the characters are either having an identity crisis or are masters of disguise. As you will see, there is cross-pollination among the suits.Here are the 4 Jacks of the deck. Each one is well designed and in keeping with the contraband weapons theme.Sure there are no “two eyed” jacks as there are in most of the other decks I’ve studied but there is something else going on here – and it all stems from the King of Hearts.It’s a subtle thing but once it’s brought to your attention, it’s all that you’ll ever see. This King of Hearts is not suicidal. Normally, the King of Hearts is depicted with a sharp instrument plunged through his head or into his neck.Go ahead. Check out a few of your favorite decks of cards.You’ll find that the King is usually trying to off himself with a sword in one way or another. It’s possible that yours isn’t as obvious and graphic as my example but you’ll see what I mean.It’s almost as if when the time came to create the portrait of these guys, the models were too busy to pose with the correct costumes or props.And that brings me to the King of Spades.We’re catching a glimpse of this King just before he plunges his hare kari knife into his sternum. He has adopted the classic “Suicide King” role as his own and he seems to be pissed about it.The King of Hearts, however, doesn’t look pissed or scared at all. He’s looks pretty content actually – almost too content.When you compare the King of Hearts with the other kings of the group, an un-ignorable inconsistency jumps out. The King of Hearts is definitely a fraud!The King of Clubs, Spades and Diamonds are classically gnarled, old and bearded while our King of Hearts is different. To put it clearly – The King of Hearts has the head of a Jack.Again, I invite you to look at your favorite decks of cards and compare the kings. You'll definitely find that their heads all look very similar.My final theoryThe current King of Hearts is actually the Jack of Hearts in disguise. He waited for the King of Hearts to off himself and before anyone else could find out, he stepped in and has successfully become the king. For the past year or so, he’s been going around the court pretending to be 2 men at once to keep the ruse going. From the look of things he gets the best of both worlds.The King of Spades, has been trying to get into the Queen of Heart’s pants for a very, very long time and now realizes he can’t compete with the new and improved King of Hearts. For this reason he’s chosen to off himself.It’s a sad tale for sure and I’d like to think there’s a lesson here somewhere. For now, I have 3 potentials -

Cloud storage can get pricey no matter how good the bargain. That’s why Zoolz offers a smarter way to purchase cloud backup based on tiered solutions meant to suit your particular needs.(more…)

Now that Lindsey Graham is totally unelectable, he's decided to drop out of the "say the craziest thing I can think of" race and started a new one: the race to say things that are obviously true to everyone who's not trying to win the Tea Party, low-information-voter, religious fundamentalist vote. (more…)

The Intercept reviewed the earnings calls for gun manufacturers, retailers and distributors from the past several years' worth of investor filings, and found a sad and predictable pattern: every mass shooting in America is followed by hand-rubbing glee from the gun profiteers, who cynically plan campaigns to capitalize on trauma and fear by selling lots more firearms. (more…)

After some trial and error, Chris-Rachael Oseland has perfected a recipe for spice-filled sandworm bread, just in time for Kitchen Overlord's Dune Week. (more…)

Talking to the creators of open-world hit game Uncharted on his show, Conversations with Creators, the geek legend praised a feature that helps you guide protagonist Nathan Drake around its vast, sprawling environment: “And I love there's that subtle yellow path," he said. "I never got lost!”When I heard him, my eyes widened. I'd finished all three games in the series and never had any help from any “yellow path”! Do you have any idea how many hours I wasted wandering off and backtracking? Those are hours I'll never get back, Naughty Dog!Why didn't I know about the yellow path? Because I never saw it. I was born with an extremely rare eye condition known as achromatopsia nystagmus.It only affects 1 in 33,000 people. What it breaks down to is:• near-sightedness

Lumino City is a charming, hand-crafted point-and-click adventure that’ll make you smile. It’s a cozy world of clever puzzles and light storyline where you hunt for your kidnapped Grandpa while repairing the world around you.It’s now available on Steam and on your iOS device.Did I mention this is a hand-crafted? Even if I did, it’s worth saying again because at first glance you probably wouldn’t know it. London based game company, State of Play, took 3 years to lovingly create a 10 foot tall physical set entirely out of paper, balsa, miniature lights and motors.They then filmed transitions from one area to another to achieve an interesting and cinematic gaming experience.Lumino City reminds me a bit of the claymation game Neverhood from the 90‘s where camera movements and focus shifts wasn’t programmatic but created from real cameras in physical environments.The working set pieces are just part of an undertaking that was clearly a labor of love.And it’s one of those projects I wish I was a part of.I love making stuff – but more than that I love making stuff that comes to life.Once State Of Play created and filmed their whimsical set, they plopped 2D animations on top of it – and what they now have is a unique and delightful wonderland to us to explore with Lumi, the main character.The movement of Lumi works and looks beautiful because the designers elegantly keep the plane that she travels in crisp and the others hazy.As you play, there are no time limits, there's no way to hurt yourself and for better or worse - there are no voiceovers. It’s just you controlling your flat avatar in a not-so-flat world.With each newly discovered area, you’ll be given a puzzle to solve that'll help the city or NPC characters around you. There are no instructions so you’ll be incorporating trial and error to learn the rules and make things happen.From the get-go you’ll be collecting, tinkering, and code cracking in ways that you haven’t in other games - where else are you going to power a Ferris-wheel with an aquarium of electric eels?To keep you on track, the experience is linear and the puzzles act as roadblocks to other areas. If you ever get stuck, there’s always The Handy Manual at your disposal. It’s a 900 page book in your inventory that'll help you through any puzzle problem you’ll ever have.I know that 900 pages seems impossible to navigate, but the designers came up with a clever way to make only certain pages matter to you.Though there were hundreds of touch points in Lumio City that I loved, there were just a few things I can criticize:1) The tiny text in the environments was sometimes difficult to read2) I was at times confused as to where I could click on or travel to3) Sometimes inputting puzzle answers was punishing even when I understood the mechanic4) The difficulty of each puzzle ramped up nicely until the middle of the game when a spike occurred - this inspired me to cheat from then on.At that point, it became more about exploring beautiful environments for me. But even with these nitpicky gripes I enjoyed the game from beginning to end and the fact that the story is so light only increased the charm factor. Because I was forced to fill in story gaps myself, I looked at this from a maker point of view rather than that of a designer or storyteller.In the end, State of Play has created something you just can't help but be inspired from - there is something truly amazing in Lumino City!

Just when you thought the surreal San Bernardino mass shooting or is it terrorism or is it a BHO false flag to take our guns couldn't get any weirder, it gets weirder.(more…)

Already into our first week of December, the holiday month flies by about as fast as the bills spill out of our wallets. But fear not! Wink Books and Wink Fun have some extraordinary gift ideas ($3-$19!) that won’t bust your budget. (For less budget-minded ideas, you can also check out Gareth Branwyn’s 2015 gift list.) (more…)

Our friends at Bigshot Toyworks are kickstarting a new line of dolls called Dream BIG Friends. I saw the prototypes at DCon in Pasadena a couple of weeks and they are beautiful.

The Associated Press reports today that GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump asked a man who was once involved in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme to be a senior business adviser to the Trump real-estate empire.His name is Felix Sater. You can follow him on Twitter.AP reports that Sater pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno mafia families.Five years before his financial crime conviction, Sater got a year in prison in 1993 for stabbing a man’s face with a broken margarita glass.From the AP's report:

In a now-viral police killing video captured in San Francisco, a 26-year-old man stands up against a wall as a group of police officers aim their guns at him. Mario Woods, 26, was then shot to death, execution-style.(more…)

In German-speaking Alpine lands, as Americans are increasingly aware, St. Nicholas is accompanied on his gift-giving rounds by the devilish Krampus, who’s said to punish naughty children with stinging blows from birch switches, by stuffing them in a sack and carrying them off to hell, throwing them in a lake, or even eating them -- punishments that all seem infinitely more pleasant than sitting through Michael Dougherty’s horror-comedy Krampus due in theaters December 4.I am not a film critic. I was invited to a preview screening because of my involvement in co-producing Krampus events in Los Angeles since 2013. Over the course of these events and in writing a book on the subject, I’ve had conversations with dozens of Europeans who don the suits annually. I’ve talked to mask-carvers, and Austrian cultural anthropologists, and gotten close enough to Alpine Krampuses to smell their animal pelts and steamy, schnappsy breath. I know the Krampus pretty well, well enough to say this film has almost nothing to do with that old devil.Even from the trailers I already knew we weren’t exploring authentic traditions. I expected some creativity with the tradition and wanted to be entertained. I was there as a horror fan. I’ve been one all my life. By the age 10, I could tell you the release date, directors, lead players and usually the make-up artist behind any of Universal’s classic horror films. But sitting in the Carl Laemmle building watching this, I could hear the old man cursing the very first pfennig he dropped in a nickelodeon. Though I wasn’t there to fact-check, ticking off plot points against those of the accepted mythology did help pass the time.Opening with a title sequence stalely parodying holiday commercialism, the film spends some time angling for comedy at the expense of lower class relatives (David Koechner, Allison Tolman and offspring) arriving at the home of the upwardly mobile family parented by Adam Scott and Toni Collette. As the holiday snark and bickering plays out, the film’s young protagonist Max (Emjay Anthony) and his German-speaking grandmother (Krista Stadler) share inklings that something more profound is afoot. During a dinnertime spat, Max rips up his good-hearted letter to Santa, and before you know it, apocalyptic clouds roil over the neighborhood, a blizzard erupts, and the power goes out, leaving the family isolated in a sort of Night of the Living Dead “something’s out there” predicament. Once Grandma spills her old-country secrets regarding a childhood encounter with the Krampus, people start dying, a monstrous horned thing is glimpsed, and killer Christmas toys aided by assassin gingerbread men begin bedeviling the families. All this provides endless and unsatisfying build-up to the unsatisfying reveal of the Krampus himself. The thing concludes with a double-twist ending partially borrowed from of A Christmas Carol.The mythology Dougherty creates to replace the traditional folklore is spun out of bizarre mix of political correctness, sentimentality, and callow cruelty. While the traditional Krampus is a rather straightforward punisher of naughty children, Dougherty seems uncomfortable with anything so old-fashioned, and substitutes the notion that the beast appears as the result of young Max losing his idealistic belief in Santa Claus, or as Grandma more expansively puts it, losing faith in “the miracle,” or some such warm fuzzy. But in his effort to remove the old fashioned notions of child discipline from the story, Dougherty brings out his devil in response to the poor kid’s broken idealism. The more progressive take on things results in indiscriminate carnage spreading over his entire neighborhood. Focusing neither on naughty children, nor children in particular, as is traditional, the Krampus and his henchmen work in broad strokes slaughtering random neighbors and even a passing DHL delivery person. The film’s climax subverts clichés about childlike purity conquering evil with a cruel adolescent gotcha that sees most everyone not only murdered but condemned to another sort of perpetual hell I won’t disclose. A strange way to encourage audiences to hold to their childlike faith in the “miracle.”In light of all of this internal contradiction, the film’s contradiction with Krampus tradition are purely secondary but as this is where my expertise lies, I can’t help but detail some of the know-it-all specifics. The simplest thing I can say about the film’s authenticity, is what I wrote post-screening to Universal publicists declining my intended involvement in their promotions. I wrote: “I thought there would be a Krampus in the movie.”Seriously. Pretty much the only touch-points this thing has with the tradition are the creature’s horns and the fact that he showed up in December. Not even on the right day though. The traditional Krampus comes on December 5, eve of St. Nicholas Day, not Christmas as in the folklore laid out by Dougherty’s wise old German Grandma. With St. Nicholas completely extracted from the formula this would, of course, make no sense. Also extracted were the Krampus’ fellows. Krampus is a herd animal. He traditionally appears not alone, but usually in groups of three or more accompanying the saint and totally under his control. He is the saint’s slavish helper, not the sort of freewheeling Antichrist of Christmas Doom portrayed in the film.Not only was Krampus’ role in punishing naughty children pruned away, but the iconic sack for young miscreants was transformed (in compliance with the misleading Krampus-as-evil-Santa meme) into a sack of diabolical killer toys. There are no killer toys. No gingerbread men. Do I have to really say that?The very American Krampus-as-evil-Santa errors are pervasive. He defies all spatial logic to squeeze down a chimney. He has a sleigh pulled by musk-ox-like reindeer. He is assisted by elves, who ironically look more like the Krampus than the character himself as some appear to be outfitted with genuine Krampus masks (while other confusingly wear Venetian carnival masks.) And the monster’s character design seals the deal, visualizing the Krampus as an oversized humpbacked being in a fur-trimmed robe, white-bearded, and with ghoulish but human face resembling a rather exhausted Santa Claus.Aside from the horns, the only other commonality with the European devils are the monster’s bells and goat hooves. But, unlike the Austrian or German Krampuses, who make their presence known long in advance by the ungodly clamor of oversized custom cowbells fixed to special bell-belts, Dougherty’s beast wears only a few small, mostly invisible, and completely inaudible bells of the wrong type (oversized American jingle bells vs. the custom cowbell-style bells, or “frog-mouth” bells as they’re called in German, for you sticklers.) Even the goat hooves he sports are never really a feature of the traditional Krampus costume. Transforming human legs and feet into those of a goat is the domain of Hollywood FX shops, and was never a goal of rural Alpine peasants who dreamed up the beast. Even if hooves had been desired, they would never have been seen in the deep Alpine snow the devil treads. The goat-footed creature is actually a rather distinct late-coming breed dreamed up by graphic designers in more urban settings. It was strictly a feature of the Krampus postcards popular in the 19th- and early 20th-century, and now, in American Internet memes. But this is a matter of trivia.The point is, Krampus trashes the perfectly good horror potential of traditional mythology in a film that is neither funny, nor scary. If you want a good Christmas horror film, please watch 1980’s Christmas Evil. And if you want a good Krampus, have a look at the thousands of delightful YouTube videos of Austrian or German Krampus runs and their astounding hand-crafted costumes. If you can ever afford a trip to see this in person, you won’t regret it, and if you can’t, we’re bringing the first Austrian troupe to visit the US to LA December 10. More troupes are due in LA in 2016, and I would not be surprised if more cities begin extending this invitation as the years go by. I just hope the Europeans will still be willing to come after seeing this film.Krampus (2015)

Beautiful work from Redditor navidj.

The New York Times' alarming headline "How to skin a cat" turns out to be a short, intriguing item about being a taxidermist in the 21st century

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On June 30, 2001, a woman brought a strange sculpture onto the Antiques Roadshow for appraisal called The Kangaroo Bird. She paid $60.00 for it and wasn’t she excited to find out it was an original Dr. Seuss sculpture valued at $25,000?!The Kangaroo Bird was part of a project that Ted Geisel, Dr. Seuss, called The Seuss System of Unorthodox Taxidermy. He created these heads to be displayed in bookshops around New York to promote his new book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. They are very striking and unforgettable. I dare you. Just try to not remember The Kangaroo Bird.I got my first glimpse of Dr. Seuss’s Unorthodox Taxidermy while in Kauai, Hawaii, in 2000. I was strolling through an art gallery and nearly dropped my ice cream cone when I saw the Blue Green Abalard.It was beautiful. It was unique. And it was something I just couldn't take with me. What I assumed was an original Seuss sculpture, was actually a one of 99, limited edition, hand-painted, cast resin reproductions. You can sometimes find the Blue Green Abalard on Ebay with a buy it now price of about $20,000 - and this is just a copy. Isn’t that something?Anyway, I talked about the Blue Green Abalard for the next 5 years to whoever would listen to me. I was haunted by the missed opportunity to have something so interesting and then I met my wife. She had just learned about a Secret Art of Dr. Seuss show that was featuring the Blue Green Abalard and a few new “findings" that limited edition copies had been made of.Gina suggested that if the price was right, we’d be able to bring one home and I just couldn't believe it. The day before I didn't even know of the existence of other Seuss sculptures and here I was...so close to having blissful closure! I thought if I got one, the obsession would be over and I could move onto different and more productive obsessions.That was my wife’s first mistake because, you see, I have a problem. I love even the illusion of a good deal. The 4 new featured sculptures were each as amazing as the Blue Green Abalard! The good people at The Sara Bain Gallery in Orange County said that a collector could purchase them individually or they could be purchased as a 4 piece set and at a discounted rate. They would all share the same serial numbers and be a happy family. Doesn't that sound great? If you purchase all 4, you would automatically become "a collector"!Naturally, I talked my wife into the benefits of taking out a loan against our home and buying all 4. I explained that it was like we were making money. I gave Gina some cockamamie story about selling one of the sculptures each year to pay back the loan and do you know what? She believed me! That was her second mistake. Why would she believe me? I NEVER intend to get rid of these! Just look at them! Would you?At that point in my life, besides the Blue Green Abalard, I thought we had EVERY possible Dr. Seuss sculpture ever created! Mission Accomplished! I had won and I could now move on to bigger and better things...but, do you know what happened? The victory was short-lived because before we even hung up the ones we had, I received an email. It was a press release for a new Secret Art of Dr. Seuss sculpture that was "just discovered". It was called the Semi-Normal Green Lidded Fawn and believe it or not...it too was amazing!C’mon! How could I not see this coming? They got me hooked on the hand painted goodness and from the start I was fixing a hole that could never be filled because year after year, they keep releasing newly found “Secret Art”. I was sick. I kept saying to myself, “just one more Mike. This will definitely be the last one. How many could this man have possibly produced?!” Even now, I don’t know the answer but I’ll tell you this: I’ve since gone cold turkey. The obsession…no…the addiction was getting the better of me and though I’ve got it pretty much under control, I still think about the ones that I don’t have each and every day. I check the web for new releases. I look on eBay to see what is being bought and sold. I have a serious problem. And because misery loves company…this is where I give you a link to the current sculpture catalog.And just so you know, if you want to go big guns and take out a loan, the Marine Muggs collection at the bottom left of the page looks pretty sweet! I can only imagine the money you're going to save when you buy 7 at a time!Cheers!

If there’s one thing I just love, it’s tiny objects that do amazing things. Oh…and I also love great big objects that do amazing things. What I’m about to share with you is a perfect combination of both and just knowing about it makes me feel like I’m connected to Her Majesty’s Secret Service.Believe it or not, a company called Shomer-tec has created a compass out of…wait for it – a nickel! It’s the first item in a collection that will be invaluable on secret missions I’ll never go on!If you loop a piece of thread around the groove of the coin and suspend it freely, the “heads” side will always point to magnetic north. It doesn’t matter what angle you start at or where you move in space. Jefferson’s head will always show you the way![embed]https://youtu.be/UR1TIXkBjwU[/embed]Sure, this tiny thing is amazing but it’s even more impressive when you consider that it partners with the world’s largest object. By the largest object, I mean of course, the Earth itself.In grade school, we learned that the Earth has a magnetic field that attracts the north side of a compass towards the North pole. But something slipped my mind since magnets 101.I plum forgot that the North Pole would have to have a magnetic pull of south to make the nickel face it because of the opposites rule.Here’s a tongue twister for you:The north pole has a south pole pull while the south pole has a north pole pull.Nicely done!When you use the nickel compass, North is the only information needed since the other cardinal directions can be derived from it.Since we were kids, we would call out the 4 directions as “North, East, South, West” and it rolls off the tongue. But in proto-indo-european language, “East” was the first and most important direction because that’s where the sun rose from.East – derives from an early word for dawn or “facing the rising sun”.South – derived from “region of the sun”. If you look at the sun at midday and you are facing southWest – derived from “evening twilight” or “the setting sun”North – derived from an ancient term that means “from the left of the rising sun”.I think that just about settles it. All directions actually started out as East’s bitches! Take that, other cardinal directions!But that was then and this is now. I’m going to reel things back to the present where north is still in charge - even though the very idea of north can be confusing. This is because there are actually 2 north poles:1) The true north pole is the axis around which the Earth spins2) The magnetic north pole is where the dangling nickel's face points toCompasses only give a general “top of the Earth” direction and almost never points to the geographic north pole at all. In fact, the two north poles are about 1200 km apart from one another.The angle created from true north, to your compass location and then to magnetic north is called magnetic declination. When looking at the diagram, it’s easy to see that magnetic declination changes depending on where you are in the world.The ridiculous map below will show you how the US is broken up into different values of magnetic declination.If you lived, for example, in Los Angeles and wanted to be absolutely accurate with your nickel head compass, this map would tell you that you are in the +13 magnetic deflection zone.The crazy thing is that each year the location of magnetic north changes position. What that means is that these numbers and lines change as well, making this 2010 map completely worthless. For those of you wanting up to date magnetic deflection statistics, just visit this geomagnetism website. Once there, you can simply type in an address and you'll be good to go.Or, maybe you'd rather just stay indoors with your nickel. That’s what I’ve been doing and I haven’t gotten lost once.If you’re wondering why this piece of tech was created in the first place. Here’s your answer from our friends at Shomer-Tech:“This unique new covert compass was inspired by the various escape compasses developed during WWII and issued to Allied airmen and commandos as part of their escape & evasion kits. Unlike standard military compasses, due to specialized requirements, escape compasses were mostly very small and of rudimentary design, had minimal markings, and provided gross magnetic north indication.”WWII spy pigeons like this one had built in compasses but would have been way too cumbersome for soldiers to carry around in their pockets. The nickel compass would have been a much better option huh? I thought so too.But be careful with your new compass because it’s so well made, you’ll likely spend it by mistake – and then what? You’ll probably have to rely on the crappy GPS on your iPhone and nobody wants that.While I can’t say the Soomer-Tec nickel has saved my life, I can say it’s one of my favorite new toys and if I didn’t already have one, I’d be getting one now.It’s sort of a gateway secret agent gadget and I think it’s safe to say what my next one will be.

This Wired video interview with former director Nicholas Negroponte and current director Joi Ito is a mind-blowing tour through the Media Lab's storied history: from e-ink to touchscreens to multitouch to in-car GPS to wearables. The current Media Lab administration is pretty amazing, and the research just keeps getting more mind-blowing.

Climatebrad writes, "The MIT grad students occupying the hallway outside President Reif's office until MIT divests from fossil fuels have hit the 10000000000-hour mark (base 2 - in base 10, that's a still-impressive 1024 hours). The sit-in began October 22."

Behold! Millenials are a fucking joke.

“The anti-Uber global alliance of ride-hailing companies has now officially taken shape,” writes Mike Isaac at the New York Times.(more…)

Mark Zuckerberg did not just donate $45 billion of his Facebook stock to charity. Perhaps you read this on the internets. It is not true.(more…)

The attackers who shot to death some 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino had enough ammunition and explosive devices to kill hundreds more people, investigators said today. The FBI is now leading the investigation to figure out whether the attack was terrorism, a workplace grudge, both, or something else.(more…)

There's a wonderful new episode out from Food Warriors, the delightful NYC street eats web series starring Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam, and directed by Casimir Nozkowski.(more…)

https://youtu.be/M1pZc7CTQOo"Meet Lyss, a chipper tissue paper enthusiast, as she guides you step-by-step in how to make essential items out of the world's most versatile material: tissue paper!"

Let's Encrypt is a joint project from EFF, Mozilla and others that allows anyone to create a free HTTPS certificate in minutes, this being a critical piece of infrastructure, necessary for making connections between a web-server and a browser secure and private. (more…)

You're probably familiar with Scratch, the introductory programming language that allows kids (and adults) to create interactive stories, games, and animations. Scratch doesn't require lines of code to write programs. Instead, you build programs by snapping together colored blocks. (My book, Maker Dad, has an introduction to Scratch that shows how to make retro-style video games).Scratch is perfect for kids 8 and up. Recently, MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Lab announced the release of ScratchJr, an even simpler programming language for young children (ages 5-7) to create interactive stories and games. It's free and runs on iPads and Android tablets.Mitchel Resnick, who runs MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Lab, and Marina Umaschi Bers, a professor in the Computer Science Department at Tufts University, have a new book out called, The Official ScratchJr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code. The publisher sent me a copy, and it looks like a great way for parents to learn about ScratchJr so they can get their kids up to speed and let them go off on their own. With full color screenshots on every page, it provides a thorough overview of everything ScratchJr is capable of doing.

A hacker broke into the United Arab Emirates's Invest Bank., stole its customer data and started dribbling it out over Twitter, one account at a time, demanding $3 million to stop. The bank didn't pay for it, so the hacker dumped the bank's financial databases. (more…)