BoxRec writes with this excerpt from The Daily Mail: "A mother trying to identify a blackmailer who posted 'sensitive' details about her child on Wikipedia has won the right to find out who edited her entry. In the first case of its kind, a High Court judge has ordered the online encyclopedia's parent company to disclose the IP address of one of its registered users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Surprised Kitten, which was the subject of much squealing in a Boing Boing post, can haz a backstory. Aude Baron, the French journalist who previously wrote about YouTube star Tsimfuckus (the child who has Progeria and loves gangsta rap) contacted the mother of the teen who captured the kitteh that launched a gajillion clicks.

Here's the article, auto-translated from French. It appeared in Lepost.fr. After the jump, I summarize the contents in English.

---

THE TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY OF SURPRISED KITTEH

The kitten in this viral video hit is a female named Attila, as in "The Hun." She is fierce, hence the name.

But, wait for the paradox: she is also cute. Hence the surname, "fluff."

So, the kitten's full name is "Attila Fluff".

She was between 6 and 10 weeks of age when the video was made.

The teenager who shot the video is named Rosa.

Attila does not belong to Rosa. She belongs to a friend of Rosa's, who came by with the kitty one day to visit.

Rosa thought the kitten was so cute that she decided to shoot some video. The video ended up on YouTube.

Millions of people have watched the video now. Attila the kitty is famous.

Now Attila has a coke habit and wants implants, and thinks she might be a lesbian.

TMZ is posting rumors that Attila has invested in a franchise of catnip dispensaries supplied by the feline prison gang known as the Manx-ican Mafia.

---

How'd I do with the French translation? I hope I didn't mess any of that up.

A bunch of folks have submitted the story of Henrik Anderson, a Danish man who ripped a bunch of DVDs for personal storage, and then turned himself in, noting that even though Danish law says it's okay to make a backup copy of content for private purposes, it also forbids circumvention of DRM, such as the DRM found on DVDs. We had avoided posting anything on the story until the Danish group responded, and while it missed the original deadline, it has now stated that it will not go after Anderson, so long as he's only using the content for private use:

The main purpose of the rule is to ensure against abuse of films and music being illegally copied and distributed further. The Association of Danish Videodistributors certainly have no interest in suing consumers who like you have purchased legitimate products -- quite the contrary.

Of course, if that were true, then wouldn't the Danish Antipiratgruppen push to change the anti-circumvention law that makes this particular process illegal? After all, shouldn't they stand behind what they claim?

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If people were just more aggressive about deleting irrelevant things and relevant things aren't that important, they would probably be happier. Because I'm happier. So there must be something to it.

Emails only take up virtual space, not literal square footage, so it's easy to let them pile up. But have you ever scrolled through your inbox and realized what a monstrous mess of random messages you've accumulated? It can be pretty overwhelming. I, for one, have been terrible about keeping things in order, even with dozens of folders and subfolders in my Apple mail.

And then there are people like Rob Beschizza. Despite the barrage of work emails, publicity junk, and miscellaneous crap he gets emailed to him every day as Boing Boing's managing editor, Rob manages to keep a completely empty Apple Mail inbox and no permanent folders.

His organizational system is so simple that it's almost impossible for most of us clutterers to fathom: he deletes everything.

"I used to have loads of folders, date-based folders, even. I did the whole Dave Allen GTD-in-email stuff, but for me all that amounted to was this elaborate procrastination system," Rob says. "I realized that if something can't be dealt with immediately, it needs to stay right in front of you. So it's either in my inbox or it's deleted. And if it sits in my inbox, then it has to be turned into action."

Basically, he immediately deletes every message that comes into his Inbox. Either that, or he replies to it and then deletes it. Nothing stays longer than a day or two. Sounds like something easier said than done, right? It's a system he launched when he began covering tech full time at Wired, when email morphed from a fun, convenient way to communicate with others into a virtual slave driver. Rob's email address is now on the list of hundreds of companies wanting to send him gadgets to review, and they're all demanding his time. Most of the time, he just doesn't write back; he hits Delete. "The more I delete, the happier I am. It's about learning to say no — learning to refuse things that aren't contributing to my work or to my life."

Similarly cutthroat rules apply for personal emails. "If it's conversational in tone, I delete it. It's not that I don't value or enjoy the communication, but the fact that all my work is done by email makes it harder for me to appreciate the humane stuff."

Here are some other smart tricks that Rob uses:

* backs up all his email, so if he really needs to refer to it, it's there

* takes screen grabs of important clippings and downloads all needed attachments to folders on his desktop

* for stories he's working on now, creates a folder, puts photos and one neat text file with source contact info, contents of important emails, and specs.

* prints out one copy of emailed bills for tax purposes and deletes the email notifications

The most important thing for him is that his Inbox is empty at the end of the day.

But where do we newbies start, Rob? I still have 1,113 messages in my inbox, and that's after hours of reorganizing and putting things in Apple mail folders. "If you can't just sit down and kill an email by working on it, then you should just delete it, even if it means flipping someone off," he advises. "Once you've done everything, you can think of a system whereby you turn emails into actions on an ongoing basis quickly and efficiently."

Rob's system isn't just about email — it's about life, and the way we choose what belongs in it. The more proactive we are about removing the junk that filters into our minds, the more clarity we have, and the deeper we breathe when we go to sleep at night.

Advisor is a column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email me at lisa [at] boingboing [dot] net.

Image via Mixy's Flickr

TopSpin writes "BMW's limited roll out of the electric version of its Mini has met with complaints from early adopters including less than advertised range, cold weather charging problems, bulky batteries and connection issues. Richard Steinburg, BMW's manager of electric vehicle operations, assures everyone that the manufacturer is 'learning quite a bit as we go.' Drivers are paying $850/month for the privilege of helping BMW learn how to build EVs, while also helping BMW meet alternative fuel mandates so that other models can continue to be sold in select markets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Koosha," a 29-year-old Iranian-American engineering student, received an email warning that his relatives in Tehran would be harmed if he didn't stop criticizing Iran on Facebook. Two days later, he realized the email was no joke when his mom called from Tehran to say that his father had been arrested by state security agents. (thanks, Cyrus)

At Wired's Danger Room, Nathan Hodge on the often-blurry line between Afghan surge "policy analyst" and Afghan surge pitchman: How the Afghan Surge Was Sold

My buddy Ross Pfund, senior editor at the surprisingly un-boring Minnesota Law & Politics magazine, has, for some reason, decided to read the latest Dan Brown novel. Over the last few days, he's been sharing facts about Professor Robert Langdon, the be-mulleted academic/literary hero played by Tom Hanks in "The DaVinci Code". The punchline: The facts are not made up. Well, OK, they're made up in that Professor Robert Langdon is a fictional character. But any comedy you find here is the work of Dan Brown and is, ostensibly, unintentional.

• Did you know: Professor Robert Langdon avoids enclosed spaces because a childhood accident left him trapped at the bottom of a well for a day.
• Did you know: Professor Robert Langdon wishes someone would ban the word "awesome."
• Did you know: Professor Robert Langdon was an All-American water polo player in college.

• Did you know: According to Professor Robert Langdon, the favorite beverage of Harvard freshmen is alcohol.
• Did you know: No matter how dire the circumstances, Professor Robert Langdon prefers not to look at a piece of art on the internet if the original is in a gallery nearby.
• Did you know: One of Professor Robert Langdon's foremost professional regrets is that he's only an expert in a single runic language--Futhark, the most basic runic language of them all.
• Did you know: Like most teachers, Professor Robert Langdon hates being lectured to.
• Did you know: When you and I watch ESPN, we see end-zone celebrations. When Professor Robert Langdon watches ESPN, he sees athletes engaging in pre-Christian ritual traditions.
• Did you know: Professor Robert Langdon prefers hand-ground Sumatra coffee beans for their exotic aroma.

Pictured: A god among men.

What if they opened a gay bar and no one came? Wait, no no -- don't go there. A gay bar in China's Yunnan province that receives government funding from the state health bureau for AIDS prevention is empty, because all the gay people are afraid that being seen there will lead to discrimination and harassment.

The folks at HalfDayToday have remixed the Tiger Woods "take your name off your phone" voicemail into a lovemaking-quiet-storm-slow-jam, á la Usher.

It was a human rights tragedy on December 2, 1984, and it remains so today. Shortly after midnight on that date, 25 year ago, thousands of tons of lethal chemicals leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. About half a million people were exposed, roughly 10,000 of whom died in the immediate aftermath. Another 15,000 died in the following two decades.

One of my first jobs in the technology industry in the 1990s was doing intranet/extranet dev work for a large law firm that defended the company responsible for this disaster. Knowing how many high-paid corporate attorneys around the world have been paid so much for so long to preserve impunity for Dow, which took over Union Carbide in 2001, the odds of justice for the victims seem long indeed.

WITNESS and Amnesty International collaborated on a video report about the ongoing fight to "make the government do something about the suffering of the victims," as one Bhopal survivor says in this piece.

Despite a quarter of a century having passed the factory site has not been cleaned up. More than 100,000 people continue to suffer from health problems. Efforts to provide rehabilitation - both medical care and measures to address the socio-economic effects of the leak - have fallen far short of what is needed. Many of those affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and the full facts of the leak and its impact have never been properly investigated. No-one has ever been held to account for what happened at Bhopal and efforts by survivors' organizations to use the Indian and US court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress have so far been unsuccessful.

Bhopal - End 25 Years of Injustice (WITNESS)
Amnesty International's call to action: write India's prime minister, and hold Dow Chemicals responsible.

eldavojohn writes "A UK study of three thousand children aged nine to sixteen suggests something that may not come as a shock to geeks: using technology increases a child's core literary skills. As Researcher Obvious put it, 'The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.' And for those of us worried about a world of 'tl;dr' and 'Y U H8n?' the research claims that 'text speech' does not damage literacy. The biggest shortcoming of this research is that it appears the children graded their own writing in that their methodology was an online survey designed to ask the children which technology they use and then follow up with asking them how well they write to determine which children have better literacy skills."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although they could probably use some more exciting branding, Concrete Cloth from the UK's Concrete Canvas company is a pretty cool idea. The cloth, which is draped over forming members and then set by exposure to water (as, for instance, from rain), has a projected lifespan of 10 years.

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Here's Bruce Sterling's Dwell interview with ISS engineer Nicole Stott on the living conditions in space:

"BS: It would be great to hear about any wear patterns that reflect the traces human beings always leave in a home. Hand-written labels, fridge magnets, welcome mats, duct tape, foam padding on metal parts where people bump their heads, posters, decals, wise-cracking graffiti, barracks pin-ups, spittoons, any of that. The human dwelling element. "

NS: There are several places across the different modules where "human traces" can be found. We all try to make our sleep quarters as homey as possible with pictures of our families and pets and with special things from home: toys our kids gave us to have with us, books, hobby supplies. We as crews have also established traditions for putting crew patches on display; there is a panel in Node 1 with patches stuck to it from every shuttle crew that's ever visited the station. One of my favorite areas that has the human touch is in the Russian Service Module where there is a classic picture of Yuri Gagarin, an Orthodox Russian crucifix, and picture of [Russian space theorist Konstantin] Tsiokovsky. And then there are some of the science experiments that help bring more life to the station: plant growing, mice, protein crystals, Earth observation photography

Life in Space: Email from the ISS

John Obeidin points us to the news that The Dallas News has basically wiped away the standard "church" and "state" separation of journalists and ad sales and has reorganized such that editorial and journalism positions now report to ad sales managers (nicely renamed "general managers"). Of course, historically, newspapers have always been clear to separate the two. There's no reason why this needs to be the case, but it can certainly raise questions about the objectivity of the reporting.

Of course, it's interesting that this is happening just days after those new FTC guidelines on making it clear if content is somehow sponsored. So, will the Dallas News now need to be more clear about its advertising partners, since the paper is now admitting that its editorial content will now be closely tied to its advertising relationships?

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President Obama says Yucca Mountain is off the table as a storage center for waste from America's nuclear power plants. Congress seems to disagree and are still authorizing funding for the project. While political footballs are tossed about, people like Abraham Van Luik--a geoscientist with the U.S. Department of Energy--are quietly going about the business of making sure a facility like Yucca Mountain (if built) will actually work. No small feat, considering the fact that such a facility is supposed to be able to quarantine waste for a million years.BLDGBLOG interviewed Van Luik about what it's like to try to plan and engineer a project of this scale. It's long, but well worth the read.

BLDGBLOG: I'm interested in how you go about testing these sorts of designs. Do you actually build scale models, like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' hydrological models, or do you rely on lab tests and computer simulations, given the timescale and complexity?

Van Luik: What we do is safety assessments that project safety out to a million years. What I used to say to my troops, when I was a manager of this activity, was: "Safety assessment without any underlying science is like a confession in church without a sin: without the one, you have nothing to say in the other."

BLDGBLOG: One Million Years of Isolation

(Thanks, Chris Tackett!)

Image of a tunnel boring machine at Yucca Mountain courtesy the Department of Energy.

Darren sez, "Greenpeace is running a clever ad campaign in the Copenhagen airport in preparation for the Copenhagen climate negotiations that start on Dec. 7. They're a series of ads featuring Photoshopped images of sad-looking world leaders, apologizing for not addressing climate change when they had the chance. Canada's Prime Minister looks like the saddest hockey coach in the land."

Greenpeace: i leader invecchiati e il clima (Thanks, Darren!)

In the December issue of Vogue Italia, a photo spread by Stephen Meisel that pays design homage to Twitter and Twitpic. Caption the one above at your own peril, in the comments. Fashioncopious: scanned images part 1, and here is part 2. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to mattm@makezine.comor drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!

Chris writes in:

I have been experimenting with my Arduino and piezo buzzers as simple speakers - noisy and fun. But one question has been bugging me, what on earth is the third blue lead for on some piezos? If I leave the blue lead disconnected, the piezo seems to behave identically to its two-lead cousins. Am I missing out on some noise making opportunities?

Aha, good question. The short answer is no- the third lead is most likely used for feedback in an oscillator circuit, so leaving it disconnected shouldn't affect your circuit. The long answer is, well, maybe, if want to make your piezo into a buzzer.

There are two kinds of piezoelectric devices that are commonly sold as piezos: buzzers and transducers. Though they both use the same kind of ceramic disc to make noise, the difference is in how they are controlled. A piezo buzzer already contains some circuitry to create a buzzing noise, so all you have to do to make it work is connect it to a power source. The buzz can range from a tolerable alert to signal that your clothes are dry, to the ear-splitting noise of a fire alarm. A piezo transducer works more like a speaker, where you have to feed it an audio signal to get it to make noise. This is what you are using if you are generating your own frequencies with your Arduino.

So what does this have to do with your question? Well, it turns out that a really simple way to make a piezo buzzer is to use the feedback electrode that you were talking about to make a Harley oscillator circuit. As an example, I found this schematic in Murata's (a piezo manufacturer) Piezo Electric Sound Components Applications Manual:

The circuit is a little advanced, however the basic idea is that a small amount of the energy fed into the piezo device is fed into the input of the transistor, which amplifies the signal and feeds it back into the piezo. If the component values are chosen correctly, the resonation can be very efficient and loud, perfect for that fire alarm!

[title photo by Flickr user Josh Kopel]

Related:

• HOW TO - make piezo crystals at home
• Hacking the Glade Wisp

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An anonymous reader writes "A family member recently asked me to pick up more ink for her Epson Photo RX 595. Unfortunately, replacing the black and color ink cartridges costs $81.92 + tax at the local store! That so bad that I got a replacement printer that's just as good and spare ink for less. But now I have a useless piece of e-waste that I can't even give away. What can you do with a printer like that? I hate to just throw it away."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Next year, residents of Denver will get to vote on whether or not the city should set up a seven-member commission for the study of UFOs and extraterrestrial sightings. UFO advocate Jeff Peckman collected 10,000 signatures in order to get his proposed commission on the ballot. If approved, the commission would cost Denver about $100,000, not including any travel or similar expense requests. Peckman claims gifts and grants will fund the commission and says it would provide such vital city services as opening secret UFO files, establishing a protocol for UFO sitings and performing risk/benefit analysis for close encounters of the third through seventh kinds. (Via Bad Astronomer).

I've been answering email today with a bunch of Isaac Hayes songs on rotation from the Stax years. Kept coming back to this one, and stumbled on a 1969 television performance with spectacularly mod staging. Walk on by that large pastel brick with the embedded mirror-donut! The audio in this YouTube clip stinks, but you can preview a better streaming version here. The full, funky glory of the extended 12-minute version is such a thing of beauty, though. Listen to that fuzz guitar! This masterpiece has been sampled to hell by many different artists over the years (Hooverphonic's "2Wicky" may be the most popular). I think of great, timeless tracks like this as big cuts of high-quality meat that can be sliced into little pieces as they age, and made into lesser leftovers by lesser chefs. RIP, Chef.

I'm a month late on this, for the spotlight of public attention, but I have an Ayn Rand story, too. 11 years ago I blind-pitched Wired magazine an ill-defined article on Rand. In response, they asked me to write an "interview" with her, where I would come up with all of the questions and then cobble together her answers from things that she had written and said (she died in 1982). Fun! Around the same time, they published similar "interviews" with Nicola Tesla and Mark Twain under the rubric "The Wired Living Archive."

I had a great time researching and writing it, and although they never published it, they must have seen something they liked in it because I started working at Wired the following year. Meanwhile I never did anything with it. But re-reading it now, I like the added time-trip aspect of it. The idea of the article was to make Rand relevant to the current day, of course, but things were different in 1998. Like, the biggest newsmaker was Monica Lewinsky (hmm... I didn't see much 10th Anniversary coverage of that), and personally, things like the Critical Mass bicycle demonstration had a much larger role in my life than they do today.

Rand was a contradiction-filled woman who hated all contradictions, and whatever fiery, petite actress can succeed in bringing this complex character to life, in the inevitable major studio biopic, is pretty much guaranteed an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Meanwhile, here's my attempt at bringing Ms. Rand to life.

Note that it's long-- over 4000 words, and written for an editor to cut down. Sources for all quotations are noted as abbreviations inline, with full titles listed at the end.

WIRED: Last March, when Bill Gates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the Justice Department's antitrust investigation, I thought of you.

RAND: [Margin 195] This is as crude a case of penalizing ability for being ability, and of national suicide via anti-capitalism as one could invent in any fiction. Straight out of Atlas Shrugged - [Obj News v1 5] the sacrifice of productive genius to the demands of envious mediocrity. [Margin 195] This is horror and vicious insanity.

But isn't there a point at which monopolies can injure competition?

[Letters 61] Boy, oh boy! If this isn't collectivist Party Line, I'll eat Das Kapital unabridged. [Margin 210] Just how are you going to compete if you cannot "injure" competition?

And government has no business trying to guide technology either.

[Obj 963] "Restricted technology" is a contradiction in terms. [Obj 983] Technology is moved by such a complex and interconnected sum of the work of individual minds that no committee could prescribe its course. Who can predict how a given bit of information will strike an active mind and what it will produce?

Which is why the Internet has been so valuable for research, facilitating idea flow.

[Column 127] Think of the human ingenuity, the technological development, the large-scale synchronization of effort required to create such a worldwide system! [ARL 13] Nothing can raise productivity except technology.

But the net's development was hardly a private, laissez-faire effort...

[Obj 712] Scientific research is not the proper province of the government. But this is a political issue; it does not alter the superlative technological achievement. [Journals 323] What was the most important thing? The government did not attempt to run the project. The government took orders from the scientists - not vice versa. The government provided the means - and let the scientists do the work as they wished.

We don't need the government to protect the environment?

[Playboy 23] My position is fully consistent. [Obj 977] In the Middle Ages, man's life expectancy was 30 years. If it were true that industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.

What about the other species?

[Obj 966] Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of "equilibrium" that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all her greatest and most fragile product, man. [Cult Update 12] Man cannot survive in the state of nature ecologists envision. Man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background. Man has to manufacture things. The lowest tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man.

Don't you enjoy the world's biological diversity? Doesn't the natural world fill you with wonder?

[Donahue #2 26:18] No. You know when I'm filled with wonder? When I look up at skyscrapers, at the manmade, at what men were able to achieve on their own, without the help of faith or any sort of mysticism.

But you do acknowledge that pollution can cause problems for people?

[Obj 789] Pollution is primarily a scientific, not a political problem. In regard to the political problem: if a man creates a physical danger or harm to others which extends beyond the line of his own property, the law can hold him responsible. If the condition is collective, such as in an overcrowded city, appropriate and objective laws can be defined, protecting the rights of all involved - as in the case of oil rights, air-space rights, etc.

How about laws based on "True Cost," like pollution-credit systems, which incent industry to compete on finding environmental solutions?

[Obj 790] Such laws must not be aimed at a single scapegoat, i.e. the industrialists. [Obj 981] Industry is not the only culprit. The handling of sewage and garbage disposal problems, so frequently denounced, has been the province of local governments. [ARL 21] Americans will enthusiastically clean their streets, their rivers, their backyards, but when it comes to giving up progress, technology, the automobile, and their standard of living, Americans will prove that the man-haters "ain't seen nothing yet."

You must despise alternative transportation protests like London's annual "Reclaim the Streets" action or the "Critical Mass" bicycle demonstrations.

[Obj News v4 56] It can be rationally proved that the airplane is objectively of immeasurably greater value to man, to man at his best, that the bicycle. But if a given man's transportation needs do not extend beyond the range of a bicycle, [there is no] reason why the rest of mankind should be held down.

So, mass transit and roads themselves should all be private. No more departments of transportation or motor vehicles.

[Column 24] The only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off. [Margin 143] By their very natures, bureaucrats are neither intelligent nor competent, but parasites. The competent do not go in for government service.

And of course, any government power opens the door to corruption.

[Obj News v1 40] Cases of actual corruption are not a major motivating factor in today's situation. The motive power is the manipulations of little lawyers and public relations men pulling strings. These lobbyists are profiteers on America's self-immolation.

Your philosophy leads you to differ with domestic lobbyists who push a number of "family values" issues, including reproductive rights, censorship, and symbolic speech.

[Mediocrity 5] Speaking culturally, not politically, the worship of the "Family" is un-American. According to one of the best American traditions, a person had "to be on his own" in order to prove his value and independence.

How about foreign lobbyists? China's "Pull Peddlers," as you call them, have had considerable success, as shown by their "most favored nation" trade status and Clinton's visit last June.

[ARL 58] Morally, it was impossible to watch all the gracious ceremonies, benevolent smiles, handshakes, speeches - and hold in mind the reality of China's terror, starvation, torture chambers, mass slaughter. For the Chinese to see an American President drinking toasts to their jailers is cruel. [Obj 584] There is only one form of protest: do not help them to pretend that they are the morally acceptable leaders of a civilized country.

Generally speaking, you think our foreign policy is too soft?

[ARL 68] What is America's image? It used to be a stern Uncle Sam. Has it now become an international social worker, cooing baby talk and wagging her finger at armed gangs, urging them to remember that they are not infallible?

I must raise a topic very close to you: Russia. Since the fall of Communism, business activity there has not managed to improve people's lives, except for a new class of ex-Party members turned to organized crime. Meanwhile, violence, or at least violence perpetrated by private citizens, has risen.

[ARL 133] It may take a long time. [Cult Update 13] It is still precarious, still without intellectual leadership, still perverted by social pathology. A trend against something is not enough; when and if it becomes a trend for capitalism, it will triumph. [Column 60] One liberated area of economic activity requires the liberation of further areas that require the liberation of still further areas, and so on. [Obj News v4 20] A mixed economy, economically, is the equivalent of robber gangs.

I also have to ask you about Clinton. What's your take on the scandal?

[Journals 379] I don't believe the American people should ever be told lies, publicly or privately. I don't believe that lies are practical. I don't think it was necessary to deceive the American people?

But is it impeachable?

[ARL 187] It is not the worst offense of today's politicians - and of small significance compared to what most of them do to the country. The attempts to cover it up translated it into a felony. But here, the fog is so thick that nothing can be judged with certainty. [ARL 187] In spite of the enormous coverage given, it is impossible to untangle facts from allegations, proof from rumors, truth from innuendo.

What's your impression from watching his testimony?

[ARL 216] It was a solid act, a studied act, and an act aimed at showing that he had no act. [ARL 217] Did the camera reveal anything beyond this act? Only the look in his eyes - the cold, shrewd, calculating look of a manipulator. [Donahue #2 6:49] He is not a strong personality, nor is he showing genuine emotion. I don't think he has any ideas, and if so, he has no feelings.

But it's hard to tell just from TV.

[ARL 209] Television is a wonderful invader of psychological privacy, more potent than a lie detector. [Donahue #2 7:23] You can tell a lot about a person - more than in a personal encounter.

How does Clinton's sexual behavior reflect on him personally?

[Letters 138] A person betrays his own valuation of himself in his attitude on sex. If the attitude is cheap and sloppy, the person has no real self-respect, whether he know it or not. He usually does know it. [Fountain 461] Let a man corrupt his values and he will cut himself in two. His body will not obey him; it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type he can find.

Does it say the same about Monica?

[Wallace 21:21] Most certainly not. [Obj 562] For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship - the desire to look up to man. [Letters 156] The danger is to succumb to some such fallacy as that "the heart is more important than the brain." (By "heart" they actually mean here a less polite anatomical organ.) Nothing is more important than the brain.

Wait - so you think that women are less rational than men?

[Margin 42] Good God, no! [Obj 561] It is not an issue of the notion that women are motivated by their emotions rather than by reason - which is plain nonsense. The issue is primarily psychological. "To look up" does not mean anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value judgments. [Letters 58] I'm a natural-born hero worshipper, but I find damn few heroes to worship.

So you think she's fundamentally confused and admires the wrong men as a result.

[Margin 170] Correct.

What advice would you give her?

[ARL 289] "Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection, you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by self-deception. [Letters 592] You are young; I suggest that you study philosophy more carefully."

Do you think many young people have a similar "erroneous" outlook?

Yes. [Obj 774] They have accepted the philosophical beliefs of their elders. [Obj 774] They are the distilled essence of the Establishment's culture. [Obj 916] The average graduate has no concept of knowledge. He has the cynicism of a decadent adult and the credulity of a child. His mind is in a state of whirling confusion. [Obj 917] He finds himself in the midst of the brilliant complexity of an industrial, technological civilization which he cannot begin to understand.

You refer to "graduates" in particular - you think it's education's fault?

[Donahue #1 41:56] Today, those who didn't go to college are better informed and less easily fooled than those who did. [ARL 52] Of all government undertakings, none has failed so disastrously as public education. [Obj 933] The grade-and-high-school teachers blame it on parental influences. The college professors blame it on the teachers. Few, if any, question the content of the courses.

So, what's wrong with the courses?

[Obj 956] The purpose of education is to teach a student how to live, by developing his mind. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e. conceptual. He has to be taught how to think, to integrate, to prove by his own effort. This is what the colleges renounced long ago. What they are teaching today has no relevance to anything.

Is this necessarily the fault of public education? Wouldn't private schools under no regulation run the risk of being even more limited and trend-driven?

[Margin 35] Oh, no! The exact opposite is true. [ARL 78] A private school has the right to teach any ideas of its owners' choice, and to exclude all opposing ideas; but it has no power to force such exclusion on the rest of the country. The opponents have the right to teach a wider spectrum of viewpoints, if they so choose. The competition of the free marketplace of ideas does the rest, determining every school's success or failure - which, historically, was the course of the development of the great private universities. [Faith 8] If you want to prove to yourself the power of ideas, the intellectual history of the Nineteenth Century would be a good example to study.

So you would support a voucher system?

[ARL 81] It would work not as a motor of freedom, but as a brake on total regimentation, [ARL 77] a temporary measure in a grave national emergency. [ARL 53] We are living in a disastrously mixed economy, which cannot be freed overnight. In today's context, the proposal would be a step in the right direction.

What about government scholarships?

[Obj 92] The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism. Those who advocate public scholarships have no right to them; those who oppose them, have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.

This brings to mind a couple of issues from the California ballot. One is affirmative action.

[ARL 92] The notion is so obviously an expression of racism that no lengthy discussion is necessary. [Global 13] There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred than by splitting it into ethnic groups. The record of hatred is always the same. A recent, grand-scale example was Nazi Germany.

The other one is bilingual education. Californians voted against both affirmative action and bilingual education in 1997.

[ARL 138] The election demonstrated that the people are ready to hear the voice of reason. [Global 9] A country has to have only one official language. I have observed that bilingual countries tend to be culturally impoverished, by comparison to the major countries whose language they share. Consider the record of Belgium against France - or Switzerland against France, Germany, Italy - or Canada against the United States. My hypothesis is: bilingual rule is a perpetuation of a strong ethnic-tribalist element within a country, an element of anti-intellectuality and stagnation. The best minds run from such countries.

Don't you think a healthy amount of ethnic pride can be valid and enriching?

[Margin 81] Who have you been talking to? [Obj News v2 33] There is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements. [Global 6] The acceptance of achievements by other individuals does not represent "ethnicity." It represents a free market. Tradition has nothing to do with it. [Global 7] The old, the tired, the timid, and those who gave up before they started are the carriers of "ethnicity:" folk songs, folk dances, ways of cooking, traditional costumes...

I take it then you're not particularly fond of folk festivals.

[Margin 40] Boy, what a set-up! [Global 7] All folk art is essentially similar and excruciatingly boring: if you've seen one set of people clapping their hands while jumping up and down, you've seen them all. [Obj 1068] If there is a more repulsive spectacle than a television broadcast presenting - as news - pretentious, self-conscious adolescents performing some Slavonic folk dance in the shadow of New York's skyscrapers, I have not discovered it yet.

What sort of culture do you like?

[Donahue #2 43:22] The school I prefer is Romanticism. [Obj News v1 49] Romanticists present a hero as an abstraction of man's best and highest potentiality. [Obj 641] Romanticism recognizes the existence of man's volition - and Naturalism denies it.

Examples?

[Obj 646] Among novelists, the greatest are Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky. Among playwrights, the greatest are Friedrich Schiller and Edmond Rostand. [Obj. 1011] The greatest of all artists? Vermeer.

Nothing more modern?

[Obj News v1 49] Take a look at modern literature. The subjects are such themes as: the hopeless love of a bearded lady for a mongoloid pin-head in a circus side show - or: the tragedy of a gentle young man who just can't help murdering strangers in the park, for kicks. All presented to us under the Naturalistic heading of "a slice of life" or "real life." Why is the soul of a murderer worth studying, but not the soul of a hero?

How about in the visual arts?

[Obj 75] One finds the same sewer in somewhat different forms. The visual arts are ruled by a single principle: distortion. The kindest thing to say would be that the purpose is to take in the suckers and provide a field-day for pretentious mediocrities. [Obj 1046] I do not know which is worse: to practice modern art as a colossal fraud, or to do it sincerely. [Obj 1047] "Something made by an artist" is not a definition of art. A beard and a vacant stare are not the defining characteristics of an artist.

And in music?

[Obj 1016] In the field of musical perception, man is still in a state of infancy. Until a conceptual vocabulary is defined, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible in music.

Well, do you enjoy the work of minimalist composers, like Philip Glass and John Adams?

[Obj 1029] The endless repetition of few notes and of a rhythmic pattern that beats against the brain with the regularity of the ancient torture of water drops falling on a man's skull, paralyzes cognitive processes, obliterates awareness and disintegrates the mind. Such music produces a state of sensory deprivation.

How about older, avant-garde composers like John Cage or Toru Takemitsu?

[Obj 1030] No scientific discoveries are required to know with full, objective certainty that it is not music. The proof lies in the fact that music is the product of periodic vibrations - and, therefore, the introduction of nonperiodic vibrations, i.e., of noise, eliminates it automatically from the realm of art and of consideration.

In general, you're not too keen on today's culture.

[ARL 69] There is an air of impoverished drabness, of stagnant monotony in all our cultural activities. Everything produces the effect of déjà vu or déjà entendu. How long since you have read anything startling, different, fresh, unexpected? [ARL 225] Art (including literature) is the barometer of a culture. If you find political issues too complex to diagnose, take a look at today's art. It will leave you in no doubt in regard to the health or disease of our culture.

Surely there must be some bright spot somewhere. For instance, don't you think US postage stamps are better than ever? After the Elvis stamp in 1993, they really started branching out.

[Margin 136] Now this I agree with fully! [Column 127] There is change in the world of stamps, and spectacular displays of human imagination. [Column 128] I like the enormous amount of talent displayed on stamps - more than one can find in today's art galleries. One finds real little masterpieces!

On that positive note, I'd like to start asking about you personally. Some background--

[Letters 616] Don't ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends, or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think. The only thing that really interests me is ideas.

But I'd like to bring more of you into this. Many journalists and critics discussed your background when Atlas Shrugged came out.

[Letters 607] Reviews and interviews are two different kinds of undertaking. A review does not require the victim's cooperation. An interview does.

How about this: In 1934, at age 29, you wrote in your journal, [Journals 68] "I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion." In 1973, at age 68, you wrote to your long-lost sister, [Letters 657] "I have achieved everything I wanted to achieve in my youth." You've clearly been successful. How did you do it?

[Letters 599] The most important thing in life is never to surrender one's concept of what is right, what life could be and should be.

You also wrote in that early journal, [Journals 73] "Some day I'll find out whether I'm an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest?" What is your answer?

[Journals 73] Honesty is a form of superior intelligence. [Letters 229] I'm the kind of ballplayer who endorses what she really smokes, and smokes only what she really endorses.

Meanwhile, you've had countless critics.

[Donahue #1 17:07] I don't give a damn about my critics. I have not heard a good one. [Donahue #2 38:12] I would love to see an honorable adversary, but I have stopped hoping.

Do you ever conclude that you take things too seriously?

[Journals 88] The truly joyous man does not laugh too much, because there is little to laugh at in life as it is today. The truly joyous man takes himself very seriously, because there is no joy without self and pride in self. One does not revere with a giggle.

You never pop out a frame and laugh at how serious you are? Come on...

[Lexicon 207] The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.

There's one last quote of yours I want to bring up--

[Journals 319] Be careful. [Letters 170] A quotation must be clear and unmistakable - by its own terms, through its own words - so that it retains its meaning no matter who is quoting it.

It's from a letter you wrote to a friend in 1948: "I have seldom enjoyed anything concrete or in the present. I am always in the abstract or future." When you think about the future, what do you see?

[ARL 16] If America is to be saved from destruction, she will be saved by her sense of life. [Obj 610] Contemporary events are slowly bringing men's minds to Objectivism. [Obj 380] If men dedicate themselves to the greatest of all crusades, a crusade for the absolutism of reason, the twenty-first century will have a chance.

I hope so. Thank you!

[ARL 388] Good-bye and good premises!

SOURCES

ARL	The Ayn Rand Letter
Column	The Ayn Rand Column
Cult Update	Cultural Update (pamphlet)
Donahue #1	Rand / Friedman / Donahue (VHS)
Donahue #2	Rand / Friedman / Donahue Vol.2 (VHS)
Faith	Faith and Force (pamphlet)
Fountain	The Fountainhead
Global	Global Balkanization (pamphlet)
Journals	Journals of Ayn Rand
Letters	Letters of Ayn Rand
Lexicon	The Ayn Rand Lexicon
Margin	Ayn Rand's Marginalia
Mediocrity	The Objectivist Forum v.2 no.3 (pamphlet with "The Age of Mediocrity")
Obj	The Objectivist
Obj News	The Objectivist Newsletter (pages numbered as four separate volumes)
Playboy	Playboy interview
Wallace	Mike Wallace Interviews Ayn Rand (VH)

Agram writes "Take a netbook, Wiimotes, Nunchuks, and hemispherical speakers (which were once IKEA salad bowls), toss it up with some Ubuntu goodness and what you get is Virginia Tech's L2Ork, the world's first Linux-based laptop orchestra. With its affordable design and support from the Linux community, L2Ork hopes to bring laptop orchestras to K-12 education and beyond. So, regardless whether you wish to hear how L2Ork might sound or to learn how to build your own Linux-based *Ork infrastructure, perhaps this is a good opportunity to reopen the age-old debate: is Linux finally ready for some serious audio work?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shocklee points us to an odd, totally unsubstantiated article by a University of Southern Illinois professor insisting that "piracy" is creating tremendous harm to West African content industries. This goes against numerous studies, including those by the WTO on how developing nations often should have less stringent intellectual property laws while they're developing. The article is based on some simple conjectures: that even with low budgets, films made in Nigeria are having trouble making money and it's all the fault of piracy -- first from lost sales, but also because people are pirating high budget American films as well. Basically, the argument is that if people can get those high budget films at the same "pirated" cost as local films, of course they'll go for the high budget films, and thus destroy the local film industry.

Of course, that assumes that in the absence of "piracy" prices to see foreign films or to buy their DVDs scale relative to their budget. That's simply not true. Movie tickets and DVD prices do not scale based on the budget of the movie. The professor doesn't seem to mention the fact that most films (especially the low budget kind) struggle to make money in the first place. He just assumes that it's because of piracy. He neglects to mention that there are plenty of business models beyond selling DVDs. He does mention that people seem to prefer local content, but then ignores that in his very next sentence, saying that local content "can't compete." Even though he just said that the market demands local content.

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UPDATE: After reading some of the comments below, I'm inclined to think this guy is trying to pull a fast one.

Swan Fungus of WFMU's Beware of The Blog writes about a strange CD-r he found while hiking in Joshua Tree a couple of years ago. He writes, "I have played this CD for record scum collector friends and pop culture junkies in the hopes that someone might recognize something about it, from a riff to a clip from some television show or movie. The only constant is that no one knows what to make of it." You can listen to the tracks here.

The last place I ever expected to find an unlabeled CD-r filled with music would be in the middle of the fucking desert. But nearly two years ago I was hiking in Joshua Tree and I came across a completely surreal sight: an old-school 5 1/4" computer floppy disk. It appeared to have been tossed casually near the side of the trail I was on, housed in a simple plastic baggie. I reached into the bag and pulled out the floppy disc. I noticed that the magnetic tape inside the plastic case had been replaced by a recordable compact disc. The disc had a creepy message scrawled on it which read, "A silvery female voice breaking through onto the airband sang in German, 'We are from another world, but you have cut us out". I don't believe in ghosts or extraterrestrials or anything, but standing in the middle of nowhere reading that line was enough to send me into a miniature freak out. What's more, a folded-up piece of paper was also buried inside the plastic cover. A treasure map. Browned edges and everything. It featured a pirate ship (?), a series of footsteps through mountains and palm trees (?), one red X, and ten blue X's. One of of the X's appeard to be floating in the middle of a body of water.

Whoa.

I listened to the recording on my drive back to LA that night. It was indescribably weird. The dedication to the floppy disk case, chicken scratch message, and treasure map implied that someone with way too much time on his or her hands crafted it. The insanity of the recording -- with one or two kind of pretty moments -- mirrored the obsessively constructed feel of the package. I didn't know if I was listening to the work of a mad genius or a deranged psychopath. The sounds are a combination of heavily processed human voices and schizophrenic space music. The 11 tracks are very short, with only four "tunes" lasting longer than three minutes. Most are in the thirty-second to two-minute range in length. I wouldn't call it "rock," but it's guitar-centric. I also wouldn't say that it is very good, but it made for an interesting listen.

"A silvery female voice breaking through onto the airband sang in German, 'We are from another world, but you have cut us out"

Using TouchOSC on an iPhone alongside Processing and an Arduino, Chris Rojas made this awesome Xbee controlled tank that runs on solar power. He lists all of the parts required for the project on his site and even provides the code to get you up and running with your very own iPhone controlled tank!

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The multi-talented Tom Parker (author of the Rules of Thumb series of books, and the "Make Money" columnist for MAKE) made this space-saving "devention" that combines a mousetrap and cheese cutting board.

An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, The Daily WTF's Alex Papadimoulis announced Bad Code Offsets, a join venture between many big names in the software development community (including StackOverflow's Jeff Atwood and Jon Skeet and SourceGear's Eric Sink). The premise is that you can offset bad code by purchasing Bad Code Offsets (much in the same way a carbon-footprint is offset). The profits are donated to Free Software projects which work to eliminate bad code, such as the Apache Foundation and FreeBSD. The first cheques were sent out earlier today." Hopefully, they work better than carbon offsets, actually.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A deadly animal virus, known for killing 80-90 percent of infected cattle in as little as 7 days, is on the verge of extinction. Rinderpest, a relative of measles, is a threat to humans as well as domesticated livestock. Not because it can jump species, but because of the famines it leaves in its wake.

Now, thanks to an extensive program of vaccination and surveillance begun in 1994, the World Organisation for Animal Health reports that we may have seen the last of Rinderpest. According to an article in Nature, the last known cases of the disease were in Kenya in 2001. Experts are holding off on a formal "In Your Face, Virus!" announcement, but if all goes well over the next 18 months, Rinderpest will become the second disease (after Smallpox) to be completely eradicated by human public health efforts. Go us!

BTW: The name "Rinderpest", which is fabulously poetically awesome, is derived from the German for "cattle plague".

Nature News: Deadliest Animal Disease on the Brink of Eradication
(Thanks, Tara Smith!)

Image courtesy Flickr user foxypar4, via CC

This morning Google announced that they're now running a free DNS for everyone to use.

The IP addresses: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Interesting and unexpected.

Why? Obviously they get a lot of data -- all the sites we're visiting.

Have you tried it? If not, why not?

If so, how is it? They say it's faster -- is it?

They say they won't screw with it. Do you believe them?

Update: I'm using it here on my LAN. Just changed the configuration of my router, so all my machines will start using their DNS.

eeBoo's Tell Me a Story Creative Story Cards are boxes of 36 beautifully illustrated cards showing loosely connected scenes that your kids can make stories out of. The motifs on the cards repeat themselves -- characters and props recur -- so that there are many, many ways of joining them up into different tales. We have the circus set and my 21-month-old loves them, though she's just getting the hang of words and stories. But she likes to arrange them and then demand that I link them up with some kind of narrative, and then she plays with them on her own and talks a combination of nonsense and some recognizable words as she tells the story herself. It's a a really fun way to play together, and I like that you can lay out the stories in two dimensions, placing cards above, below, behind, before and on top of one antoher as the story progresses.

I bought the cards on impulse while I was on tour, thinking they'd make a nice present for Poesy when she got a little older, but they've become one of her favorites. This weekend, she grabbed the box and carried it over to me, shouting "Story! Story!" A hell of an endorsement.

Some alternatives, courtesy of my Twitterers: Once upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game (for older kids) and DIY Children's Board Book from Instructables.

Tell Me a Story - Creative Story Cards

Click for large-size. From Josh Stearns of Free Press.

Dave Allen, who is both a successful musician (founding member of Gang of Four) and a successful digital marketer and strategist for music business models, is preparing for next week's SFMusicTech event (reminder: Techdirt readers can get a discount) with a brilliant new manifesto of sorts, pointing out that it's time for musicians to stop blaming others and take charge: Dear Musicians: Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way.

It has been more than a decade since I was last fully immersed in the recorded music business [and then only peripherally as GM of eMusic.com,] and I have long held out hope that musicians would ditch the old media model, both the business and the manufacturing sides, and fully embrace the huge possibilities that the unfettered social web allows them -- asymmetrical distribution as opposed to old media distribution silos, two-way communication with music fans as opposed to old media PR, and marketing tactics and an unparalleled universal sandbox in which to experiment.

I am still waiting. Unfortunately my patience is now wearing thin. And my impatience is no longer with the record labels, it's with the musicians. Despite all the data and untold amounts of writing about the decline in music sales, mainly the fall off of CD sales, musicians appear to be sitting on their hands. The reason I am no longer impatient with record labels is because their business model is transparent -- they exist to make money from musicians. On the other hand, musicians are [or ought to be] immersed in their art; no one guarantees a living from the arts, but talk to the average musician about internet music distribution and you will often hear the same refrain -- "downloading and file-sharing is killing music and denying me a living.."

That sort of "woe is me, I'm a victim" situation is certainly getting tiresome, especially as we see more and more and more bands take charge of their own future and implement smarter and smater business models that are working wonders for those who embrace them. So, Allen points out, it's time to stop waiting for others to solve the business model issue, and take charge yourself (or, at the very least, partner with someone who can take charge for you):

Now that the internet has provided disrupting producers with all the tools they need to bypass the existing recorded music system, there should be no excuse for musicians to not go it alone. Yet, the producers -- the musicians themselves, remain the problem. I believe that the safety and comfort offered to them in the past -- record label deals, publishing deals, old media distribution, plus MTV and commercial radio for the most successful -- created a diabolical music Nanny state, an addictive teat at which to suck that they are now having trouble weaning themselves off. I know there are many examples of musicians embracing the web but they have taken only baby steps and are in the minority -- the majority are still staring into the headlights. [I purposefully won't discuss Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails here as much has been written about their successful use of the social web and I consider them special cases.]

The Nanny state reduced risk taking and danger in popular music. The very founding spirit of rock and roll was danger. Danger as perceived by those who didn't understand the outburst of energy and excitement that this early musical form drew out of teenagers. Parents and adults in authority voiced their concerns and this led to ridiculous moments in musical history such as TV cameramen being told to only film Elvis Presley from the waist up.. If we fast forward to 1975 in the UK, we find that rock and roll, a mere 20 or so years later, with only a few exceptions, had become commercial, flabby, conservative and mostly dull. Then along came a new genre of music delivered by bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Siouxie and the Banshees who injected rock with some street smarts and and sprinkled it with just a soupcon of danger. It was known as Punk Rock.

I bring up punk rock here as it defines a moment in rock music history that was as disruptive in 1976 as online music distribution became in the late 1990's. Punk rock challenged people's assumptions that popular music would always be, and could only be, controlled by large, well-capitalized, business organizations. Punk rock drove down production values and just like the Internet, became disruptive and leveled the playing field. Punk bands formed quickly, releasing records as 7" vinyl singles on their own equally quickly formed record labels. A long term career in music was not the point of this enterprise, many bands flamed out within six months of their existence. Small independent labels sprang up to cater to this avalanche of bands, offering more favorable contracts than the majors had in the past. Business is business though, and the small label owners had plans for growth that ultimately led to punk rock's demise. Soon enough punk rock was commoditized and, after a brief fling with Post-Punk, quickly fizzled leaving the stage for the New Romantics and their ilk. It wasn't long until it was business as usual for the record labels -- five years of promise had passed very quickly.

So I have to ask - why is there no online music equivalent of punk rock? Why is there no real and passionate embrace of the new?

It's a great manifesto (this is only a snippet -- the full thing is worth reading), and it's going to make Dave's session at SFMusicTech next week one not to miss (I just hope he's not on at the same time I am!).

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AdmiralXyz writes "Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service, called Google Public DNS. According to their blog post, Google Public DNS uses continuous record prefetching to avoid cache misses — hopefully making the service faster — and implements a variety of techniques to block spoofing attempts. They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard, and will not redirect you to advertising in the event of a failed lookup. Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gary Watts built his Chumby Guts Kit into a hollowed-out book. Check out the other two photos at his Flickr.

More:

Build: Chumby Guts kit

In the Maker Shed:

Chumby Guts

What's a Chumby? Glad you asked! It's an amazing little piece of technology that lets you get what's best on the web and delivers it right to you on it's 3.5" touch screen LCD. You can play games, check the weather, twitter, news, music, and even watch YouTube videos. All of this is done via you home's wireless Internet connection.

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December 3rd marks the 15th anniversary of Sony's entrance into the console arena, with the 1994 launch of the PlayStation in Japan. This had me thinking all morning about the impact it had, both personally and for the wider gaming landscape. There's a lot can and has been said on how the PlayStation changed the latter: how it helped standardize optical media over custom-built and more expensive cartridges, along with all the audio/visual upgrades that brought, (slightly overblown) sentiments on how it 'brought the Japanese RPG to the American mainstream' with Final Fantasy VII (a trend that hasn't necessarily carried through with nearly as much fervor), or how it helped ease gaming out of the shameful basement and into the living room as a lifestyle accessory. More directly, it was also responsible for creating or evolving a laundry list of names that remain some of the industry's biggest franchises -- Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Resident Evil, Wipeout, Castlevania and Final Fantasy. But my vote for the console's top achievement? It gave birth to the music game. NanaOn-Sha and Rodney Greenblat's Parappa the Rapper might not have been the smash success of any of the names above, certainly in the West (where in Japan Sony would adopt the dog as the official face of its gaming wing), but it managed to make its strongest impact right where it counted.

Previous experimental flirtations aside (primarily Electroplankton creator Toshio Iwai's Famicom Disk System game Otocky and Maxis-published SimTunes), you can trace a clear line (as UK journo Simon Parkin has done) between Parappa's controller-button-Simon interactions to Konami's Beatmania/DDR beat-matching, to -- most importantly -- the creative turning-point at then-still-young developer Harmonix, who openly credit Parappa as leading them from a focus on simulation and instrument instruction to games proper, starting with Frequency, Amplitude and then, of course, the original Guitar Hero through to Rock Band.

It's a startling thought to realize that the tie that ultimately binds gaming to a cultural icon as big as The Beatles is an innocent stocking-capped rapping dog, and it follows that even that game couldn't have existed (at least in as captivating a way) without the music that the disc it lived on afforded, on the only console with the magic-formula of entertainment industry clout to attract that 'outsider' talent.

And on a personal level, too, Parappa was solely responsible for drawing me back into gaming itself, having skipped out on most of the 16-bit era to turn my teen-rebellion attention instead to music. It wasn't until I realized the two could play so happily together that I knew I wanted back in, and without that I wouldn't be writing this here today.

Which leads me to ask: a decade and a half on, did the PlayStation have as meaningful an impact on you? What's your view on its role in games history? Let us know via the comments below.

A 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics has an article about Robert Heinlein's 1,150-square-foot home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which he designed for extreme efficiency. For instance, a table rolls between the kitchen and the dining room to make it easy to set and clear tableware and food dishes. Skylights have mirrors to reflect more light into the rooms. Most of the furniture is built in.

"The built-in bed with storage drawers beneath it, the built-in divans that can be converted to extra beds and all the other furniture are built right down to the floors," Heinlein says. "There is nothing to clean under.

"There are no rugs or any need for them. All floors are surfaced with cork tile that provides a warm, comfortable and clean footing. Nor are there any floor lamps or table lamps. The illumination is built into the house. General lighting for the living room comes from cold-cathode tubes concealed behind a box molding. These illuminate the ceiling. Adjustable wall spotlights are located at all work and relaxation areas in the house. All electric convenience outlets are at a comfortable hip height. I'm through stooping over to the baseboard whenever I want to plug in an appliance.

After the Heinleins moved in the 1960s, the house was extensively remodeled and enlarged, but apparently the bomb shelter "survives in almost original condition."

A House to Make Life Easy (Via Unclutterer)

An anonymous reader writes "How is reading different on a Kindle, a Nook, or an iPhone? The NY Times asked two writers what they thought. Joseph Finder, the author of thrillers, misses the indices compiled by humans and finds it annoying the way that all of the fonts are the same. Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, actually likes the simplicity because he can concentrate on the words themselves. And then there's the issue of monopoly, which must give the authors the willies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

False Friends is a series of vinyl figurines created by German-Chinese artist team Coarse. The figurines are for sale, and they come in a super-cute box with a storybook that tells the relationship between the characters in this alternate world that the figurines come from. This anime character-looking man in bunny pajamas and his rabbit-monkey-robot-hybrid frenemy are from a series called paw!

...the young noop begins to mimic the appearance of his natural enemy, paw!, a tactic to secure his own survival. However, after being acknowledged as a paw!, the noop becomes trapped behind this mask forever. A dangerous and fragile friendship takes its course.

You can read the entire story of the noop and paw! on Coarse's blog. You can also buy the figurines on their site; it says they're made to order, and you'll need to email them for a price.

CoarseToys.com (via Dezeen)

Google Public DNS - handy... just remember 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 - my ISP's DNS is always slow, this one and OpenDNS are better.

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Adam "Everyware" Greenfield writes,

Everywhere you go, there are certain things which play heroic roles in knitting the world together, and which somehow remain anonymous, even unseen. The first book from Do projects, Tokyo Blues, is the story of one of them: the common blue PVC plastic construction tarp.

Tokyo Blues is a photographic record of Nurri Kim's 2002-2003 investigation into this humble industrial material and the very wide variety of uses to which it's put in the everyday life of Japan.

From construction sites and homeless settlements to cherry-blossom viewing parties in the park, the ubiquitous blue tarp is a constant of Japanese life and a bearer of multiple registers of meaning. In sixty-four images from the boulevards, alleys, sidestreets and interstitial spaces, Tokyo Blues explores these dramatically different contexts, returning something "we see too often, and then forget to see" to full, vivid visibility. The result is a book that provokes its readers to see the city around them with new eyes - whether that city is Tokyo, or their own.

We thought you'd appreciate two things in particular about Tokyo Blues: firstly, that we released a free and freely downloadable PDF of the book simultaneously with its physical publication; and secondly, that the book in both of its forms is offered under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Our philosophy is that you buy the book if you want the object, but the ideas within are and will remain free.

0901 Tokyo Blues. (Thanks, Adam!)

This happens all too frequently. I recently wrote a short post about something that was apparently happening with YouTube and soon after received an angry email from a PR person at the company first scolding me for not contacting Google PR first and then demanding that I insert some PR babble paragraph that said nothing that addressed the key questions raised in the post in "response." This made no sense to me. If I got something factually wrong, I have no problem having someone point out what was in error, but demanding that I first contact them and then include a meaningless statement is ridiculous. If the PR folks have something to say, they're free to take it up in our comments.

It seems that Michael Arrington, over at TechCrunch, has run into something similar (and I'm sure it happens to him all the time as well). After briefly (really, in passing) mentioning the infamous Video Professor in his post on marketing scams, the company first tried to get him to post their response, and when he told them no (in less friendly words), the company instead complained to the Washington Post, who syndicated the same TechCrunch post (as it has done for a while with TechCrunch posts). The real issue, of course, is that The Video Professor didn't like getting called out on its marketing practices. The company is notoriously sensitive over its reputation and has gone legal on people multiple times in the past. At issue is the fact that people are told they're getting a "free" product, but don't realize they're really signing up to pay a lot of money if they don't follow the fine print carefully. Arrington called this a "scam" and plenty of folks agree. The Video Professor did not agree, but if that's the case, it has every right to clarify its own marketing material, rather than going after those who call them out on their less-than-clear practices.

But the bigger issue with these types of situations is that companies need to realize that just because someone doesn't like the way you're acting and states an opinion, on that subject, it doesn't mean that they first need to contact you or get a meaningless PR quote from you. You have a right to respond, but on your own website -- or within open comments if they're available (as they are on this site). For too long, companies have hid behind bland PR statements and the willingness of the press to "balance" stories with an accusation and a denial, but no real effort to get to the bottom of things. That's changing, and it's time that companies and their PR reps caught up to what's happening.

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theodp writes "Google says it's declined to pursue awesome job prospects to avoid an over-concentration of brilliance at the search giant. Speaking at the Supernova conference, Google VP Bradley Horowitz said the company intentionally leaves some brainpower outside its walls: 'I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people,' said Horowitz. 'But [the engineer] stopped me and said: "These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nerdy physics/astronomy humor FTW. If you don't get it (and it's OK if you don't, really), you might refer to Wikipedia's article on blue shift. You can buy variations of this bumper sticker all over the web, but I've no word, alas, on how to score one of these official APS versions. [via Neatorama]

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This cigarette box from Thailand is totally punk rock. (Via asobitsuchiya's photostream)

Zordak writes "US patent 6,631,400 claims a method of making sure enough people get your spam. A federal district court had overturned the patent as anticipated and obvious, and not drawn to patentable subject matter. The Federal Circuit, the appeals court which hears patent matters, upheld the finding of obviousness, thus invalidating the patent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have sent in this column by freelance writer Anne Wollenberg claiming that there is no defense for file sharing and that free riders and freeloaders are simply bad, stop, end sentence. Oddly, looking over Ms. Wollenberg's own website, we find links to many of her works, including PDF files and jpg image files of writeups done for publications that don't have those writeups on the web. Some of those appear to be written up in magazines that require a subscription or a newsstand fee to view normally. Now perhaps she has permission to post these (or perhaps not), but even if she does, it certainly seems that she sees the value in having her works shared freely for the promotional value of her ability to write (not particularly well, mind you, but that's a separate issue). Yet, oddly, her writeup seems to ignore the concept of promotional value of works shared freely online.

Instead, she tries to lump all who file share into a single camp of people who are pure freeloaders. Of course, she even gets the basics of freeloading wrong, focusing on the sociological issues, but ignoring the economic research on freeloading and the value of commons and sharing. That's doubly odd considering that our recent Nobel Prize winning economist won that prize for her groundbreaking work showing that the simplistic thinking on "sharing" and "commons" simply isn't accurate, and that communities will quite frequently create models where sharing is seen as beneficial and other structures make sure that fair compensation occurs.

Now, I'm not one who believes that people should be sharing the files of those who don't allow it (and I don't participate in any unauthorized file sharing myself), but to write off the entire community as "freeloaders" without understanding what's actually happening and without actually understanding the economic research on freeloading seems like a pretty weak argument.

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A Taiwanese World of Warcraft player has "completed" the game, having scored all 986 achievements. To accomplish this remarkable feat, he "killed 390,895 creatures, accumulated 7,255,538,878 points of damage, completed 5,906 quests (that's 14.62 quests per day, apparently), raided 405 dungeons and hugged 11 players." Man 'finishes' World of Warcraft (via /.)

Stacey sez, "In innovative collaboration between a music shop and a band with no cash that will help get an album made. The music shop is allowing the unsigned band to use the recording equipment for sale in the shop after hours. The band, Georgia Wonder, were also happy to be 'one of the most pirated bands in the world' on PirateBay

Georgia Wonder: Recording An Album With No Cash (Thanks, Stacey!)

We all know that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, but this song--performed by The Chromatics, an acapella group that includes three astrophysicists from the Goddard Space Flight Center--gets a little more in-depth.

(Thanks, Mark Day!)

Precision pointed out that a Taiwanese man has been named the first ever person to successfully beat World of Warcraft, getting all 986 achievements, completing 5906 quests and /hugging 11 players. Insert joke here. There are many.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE's on a list of about 200 magazines rounded up by the Better Paper Project for using recycled paper in our print magazine. From the statement in the mag:

MAKE is printed on recycled, process-chlorine-free, acid-free paper with 30% post-consumer waste, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forest Initiative, with soy-based inks containing 22%-26% renewable raw materials.

In other words, we love trees and the planet, so you can feel good about subscribing.

From MAKE magazine:

Want to know how to build a hydrogen rocket? How about a laser light show in a lunchbox? Or a simple remote-controlled videocam car? Or maybe you want to go old-school and build a wooden mini sailboat or toy car launcher? All this and tons more, plus revealing photos of Adam Savage's maker childhood, can all be found in MAKE, Volume 20, "For Kids of All Ages." Get your individual copy in the Maker Shed, or subscribe now.

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Found on the net, these gingerbread zombies inspired by the terrifying and brilliant new Left 4 Dead 2 game. Anyone know who made these or where they come from? Whomever it is deserves a medal, some ammo, an incendiary grenade, some boomer bile and a BFG.

Update: Maxious knows who made it!: He writes in the comments, YellowPoison and his mom on reddit did it

Frequent awesome BB suggester Avi Solomon sez, "Yes, I know I'm totally biased, but I honestly think that my wife Dr. Elly Teman's forthcoming ethnography 'Birthing a Mother' will truly blow your mind if you're concerned with how technology forms and reboots core human experiences like 'Motherhood'. Surrogacy is a hot topic nowadays but there have been very few perspectives empathetic to the actual experiences of the women involved in the process. Surrogate and intended mothers are on the frontlines of renegotiating what being a mother really entails. 'Birthing a Mother' provides an insider's account of this new terrain. This is the future that's not yet widely distributed. Read the free PDF chapter 'Surrogate Selves and Embodied Others' to get a taste of it!"

Birthing a Mother (publisher's catalog)

Sample PDF

Amazon

Artist Matei Apostolescu (AKA "Beaucoupzero") creates stunning robots, mecha, fighter jets, cute tanks, vintage racecars and other oddments out of polymer clay. I got lost in the gallery and only pulled myself out when the drool started to pool on my chest.

Matei Apostolescu - Toys (via Superpunch)

Another year, another profusion of robot kits, toys, and showy humanoids demo'd by entertainment conglomerates and big car companies. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It wasn't a huge leap year for the evolution of robokind, but there are definitely plenty of new tools and toys to play with, and plenty of perennial favorites, too. Let's have a look...

Fully-Assembled Robots

Roborover (WowWee Toys, $79)
Joebot (WowWee Toys, $99)
WowWee keeps cranking out the robot models, most variations on the theme of the Robosapien. This year, two of their bots included the Roborover and the Joebot. Both of these robots are clearly designed to act as synthetic "buddies" for kids, and have amiable personalities and programmed "can do" attitudes. Roborover is geared towards younger children, has a simple remote control interface, and tread mobility, so it can traverse low-lying objects. Joebot is the first WowWee robot that responds to voice commands. He's a lot more versatile than Roborover and can store up to 40 programmed steps in a playback sequence. Like his Robosapien forebots, Joe has a wacky personality and uses animated LED lights on his face to express various "emotions." And given his constant chattering, bad joke telling, and general mischief-making, it's comforting to know he comes with a volume control.

---

i-Sobot (Maker Shed, $126)
We got a bunch of these in the Maker Shed last year after TOMY discontinued them. We still have a few left and are selling them for half their original price. This is a very hackable little robot. It is a 6-1/2"-tall humanoid that uses 17 servomotors to somersault, stand on one leg, do push-ups, perform martial arts, and more. It has 180 pre-programmed movements, responds to verbal commands, and performs up to 240 movements in sequence, allowing you to design countless routines, such as programming him to say "hello," introduce himself, play air guitar, bow to an audience, and say "good night." Oh, and he farts, too. Using the included action chart as a guide, you simply enter the alphanumeric codes into the remote control and i-SOBOT reacts in earnest with acrobatics, verbal phrases, and greetings, or you can control his movements manually using the dual joysticks and trigger buttons on the remote. In voice recognition mode, the robot moves in response to ten verbal prompts, such as "Go forward" or "Back up," and acknowledges questions like "How are you?" with appropriate retorts.

Robots-Dreams.com has some links to i-SOBOT hacking-related resources here.

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YouTube user MechanicalSculptor's exploding picture frame does just that -- a clockwork frame that explodes into flinders and then reassembles itself, over and over again, in a metaphor for everything that is awesome.

YouTube - MechanicalSculptor's Channel (via Make)

DeviantArt's ~mburk painted these zombie Vans, which now reside in Australia. I want a pair.

Zombie Shoes by ~mburk (via Geekologie)

eldavojohn writes "A number of blog posts are surfacing that are calling out the helpful open source community on their documentation. No, not the documentation for the highly skilled technical people, but the documentation from beginner to apprentice. A two part series by Carla Schroeder lists bad documentation as 'Linux Bug #1' and advises users to use Google as the documentation. We've discussed before some of open source's documentation being out of date. Is it really as bad as these blogs paint it? Has it come down to using Google before a man page?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group effort from the minds and hands of Alvaro Cassinelli, Daito Manabe, Kuribara Yusaku & Ishikawa Masatoshi - scoreLight (we covered an earlier demo prior) can be seen above fascinating visitor's to Tokyo's Miraikan science museum -

"scoreLight" is a prototype musical instrument capable of generating sound in real time from the lines of doodles as well as from the contours of three-dimensional objects nearby (hands, dancer's silhouette, architectural details, etc). There is no camera nor projector: a laser spot explores the shape as a pick-up head would search for sound over the surface of a vinyl record - with the significant difference that the groove is generated by the contours of the drawing itself. The light beam follows these countours in the very same way a blind person uses a white cane to stick to a guidance route on the street. Details of this tracking technique can be found here. Sound is produced and modulated according to the curvature of the lines being followed, their angle with respect to the vertical as well as their color and contrast. This means that "scoreLight" implements gesture, shape and color-to-sound artificial synesthesia [4]; abrupt changes in the direction of the lines produce trigger discrete sounds (percussion, glitches), thus creating a rhythmic base (the length of a closed path determines the overall tempo).

Much more development info & media can be found on scoreLight's project site.

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Sarah sez, "UK human rights campaign group Liberty lobby the British government on a range of issues which have implications for human rights and civil liberties. Liberty have produced a detailed briefing on the controversial copyright infringement proposals in the Digital Economy Bill from a human rights perspective."

13. In creating such an order-making power the Government is proposing that in dealing with suspected copyright infringement (or indeed as we outline below in dealing with any particular type of internet use) ordinary criminal or civil procedures will be bypassed replaced instead with an administrative process laden with executive involvement and devoid in the first instance of due process safeguards. This proposal continues two disturbing trends enthusiastically adopted by this Government over recent years. The first is the attempt to sidestep traditional criminal or civil law standards and procedures in favour of administrative systems controlled by the executive which undermine rights and erode procedural fairness. At its very worst this corrosive model has allowed for indefinite house arrest for those suspected of involvement in terrorism under the control order regime. The second trend is the penchant for leaving that which should properly be dealt with on the face of primary legislation to secondary legislation in the form of regulations or Orders which do not attract sufficient levels of parliamentary scrutiny.

14. The sanction proposed under model 2 is severe. The explanatory notes state that orders by the Secretary of State under clause 11 "would require ISPs to take measures to limit internet access to certain subscribers" and "would be likely to include bandwith capping or shaping that would make it difficult for subscribers to continue file-sharing but other measures may also be considered. If appropriate temporary suspension of broadband connections could be considered". These technical measures implemented at the Secretary of State's behest may therefore include disconnection.

Digital Economy Bill Briefing, Second Reading, Lords (PDF) (Thanks, Sarah!)

Ok, perhaps the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly appears to be what a Microsoft exec in the Philippines implied in a recent interview concerning Windows 7. Basically, he said that using unauthorized copies of the OS were really unsafe, so doing things like online banking or other sensitive stuff on such software could put users in serious danger. Of course, that makes you wonder what Microsoft has done to make unauthorized copies of the software so dangerous to use...

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diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mårten Bergkvist's elegantly simple sequencer installation -

The Water drop sequencer is an interactive sound installation. It creates sound by water drops falling on suspended iron bars with piezo elements attached. The viewer or performer can control which tones will be played by placing water bottles upside down in holes that are centred over the iron bars. It is also possible to control the speed of the dripping.

[via Califaudio]

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eldavojohn writes "A patent issued in 2003 called 'Method and system for demultiplexing a first sequence of packet components to identify specific components wherein subsequent components are processed without re-identifying components' is now owned by Implicit Networks, who has recently claimed Windows 7 infringes upon it with its Filtering Platform. This is used in Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Implicit is seeking a jury trial and damages. A shocking turn of events; you actually want to cheer for Microsoft this time as Implicit is nothing more than a patent licensing company (troll) and has done battle with Sun, AMD, Intel and NVIDIA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From YouTube user MechanicalSculptor comes this awesome gear-pr0n automaton, reminiscent of the work of Arthur Ganson. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]

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mantis2009 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a request for public comment (PDF) on an upcoming transition from the decades-old circuit-based Public Switched Telephone Network to a new system run entirely with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. This is perhaps the most serious indication to date that the legacy telephone system will, in the near future, reach the end of its life. This public commenting phase represents a very early stage in what will undoubtedly be a very complex transition that makes this year's bumpy switch from analog to digital television look relatively easy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There was a lot of reasonable concern earlier this year when a much needed federal shield law proposal appeared to ignore participatory journalists and only cover those employed by major media companies. After people complained about this we were relieved to see Senators Chuck Schumer and Arlen Specter change the bill to cover participatory journalism as well. As they realized such a law should be about protecting acts of journalism not some arbitrary definition of journalists.

Unfortunately, it looks like some other Senators disagree. Karl Bode alerts us to the news that Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Durbin are specifically trying to limit the bill to only covering major media journalists. It's hard to see any rationale for such a move, but it does seem rather obnoxious. One of the fundamental points of a strong media is the ability to protect their sources. Without that, it's that much harder for the media to actually hold anyone accountable, since sources will be more afraid to reveal important information. Why would Senators Feinstein and Durbin be so against protecting the process of journalism?

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Sean_st shares pics of his homegrown Settlers of Catan boardgame. He even carved his own buildings and roads from soapstone & alabaster! Have a closer look at his work on Flickr.

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DesertNomad writes "Attorney Mitchell Lazarus over at CommLawBlog gives a good overview of a new radar technology and the challenges of getting regulatory approval, which seemingly can be just as difficult as developing the technology itself."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After the first minute I hated it. After a day I loved it. After a week, I'm on ibuprofen. I like the Magic Mouse, especially the touch-sensitive surface and flick scrolling, but am just not sure how long my metacarpals can take it.

It's not Apple's fault: my hand is passing three decades old and I can't get away with poor mousing habits anymore. But the iffy ergonomics don't help. And though this is Cupertino's best mouse by a country mile, it has some other drawbacks, too. So an unqualified recommendation isn't quite possible.

But I do like it. Surfing the web was a flick-scroll delight from the get-go, even if something about the twitchy touch-sensitive surface dissuades me subtly from doing any real work with it. It's just weird enough to present the brain with a new learning curve that turns swiftly into a dangerous acquired taste: like the iPhone keyboard, it makes casual use easier and serious use harder.

As far as the multitouch touchpad goes, the iPhone--not a laptop's trackpad--is the right comparison. Clicking is still done the old-fashioned way, which is a good thing, but there's no middle-click. No pinching gesture, either! The embedded multitouch tracking pad covers almost all of it and mostly serves to replace the scrollwheel found in standard mice--and the Mighty Mouse's scrollball.

Visually, Magic Mouse is an archetypally beautiful Apple product. There are just two curving surfaces, which meet to trace the geometrical form otherwise represented in nature by shoe horns. On top is the expansive white button/trackpad. Underneath is the metal base, broken up by two long teflon pads, a hole for tracking optics, a power switch and a battery light. Two AA batteries are required and are included. It's well-made, wireless (BlueTooth) and attractive; the minimalist design will be a boon for those who like neat desktops. Drivers are available for Windows.

Momentum scrolling feels natural and establishes an organic correspondence between force used and on-screen results. It's the best thing about it. Other tricks the touchpad facilitates, like holding one finger down to click and then using another finger to scroll-select—feel elegant, a taste of even better implementations to come. This stuff is the magic in the Magic.

Also good is that it doesn't have the wake lag that typifies the BlueTooth mice I've used before. In its tracking, responsiveness and precision, it feels much like a decent RF wireless mouse from Logitech or Microsoft.

The lack of middle click remains my most pressing real problem. Snow Leopard users can set up a triple-tap gesture with this trick, but people on 10.5 seem out of luck. Command-clicking is a poor substitute.

The relatively low-profile shape means it lacks the domed, palm-nestled ergonomics of standard mice. For me, this encourages a punishing anti-grip in which the mouse is pushed around by the inside edges of my little finger and thumb. My pointer, index and ring finger arch over the surface like taut fleshy claws. Old muscle-memory habits occasionally send my hand wandering up it like a spider, sending documents scrolling out of place. Any who prefer a sense of mechanical control will not like this inadvertant fluttering around.

Lack of middle click, odd ergonomics, and an occasional inclination to do whatever it pleases. If you don't like the sound of those drawbacks, don't let yourself get addicted to momentum scrolling.

Magic Mouse - $69 at the Apple Store.

Mobile gaming mastermind ZodTTD has updated his mame4iPhone app to use BTStack, allowing the use of a Wii remote as a controller. I could see using this with the iPhone app video out hack as a low-cost casual gaming console. It would be pretty cool to go from playing a mobile game directly to playing the same game on a large screen with a controller. It's no Xbox, but give it a few years.

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Welcome to the seventh serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing the story via links found at J.C.'s About 7th Son page. You can also dive in right away, thanks to...

THE STORY SO FAR: The Beta clones finalized their plans for their cross-country trek. Gen. Hill explained the true power of Code Phantom security clearance. The clones called home, to chat with family and lovers. John and the Mikes headed westward, to California . . . and a likely showdown with John Alpha.

Meanwhile back at the 7th Son facility, Jay, Jack, Kilroy2.0 and Father Thomas attempted to understand John Alpha's scheme. Kilroy2.0 enlisted the help of his cyberflock. Their dedication was chilling: "I comply."

Check out this week's installment below. If you're enjoying this serialized experience, support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site.

7th Son: Descent, Part 7

There are a few countries out there that have "artist resale rights," which make little sense and do a lot more to harm artists than help them. Earlier this year, we wrote about plans for Australia to implement such a right and Michael Scott alerts us to the news that a watered down version of the plan is moving forward. If you're unfamiliar with it, the concept is that even after an artist has sold a piece of artwork, such as a painting, if the owners later decide to sell it, they must give back a percentage of the sale price to the original artist. The (faulty) thinking on this is that poor, starving artists sell their paintings or sculptures or whatever for next to nothing, and it's only later, when they're famous, that they're actually worth anything -- but the artist will never get a cut of that value.

Of course, that's not true. In reality, if those earlier works are so valuable, so are many newer works as well -- which the artist can create and sell for much more than ever before. Meanwhile, the problem with an artist resale right is it actually decreases the incentive for anyone to buy the original artwork, knowing that they'll have to sell it for that much more before they can actually make a profit -- since they'll have to kick back fees to the artists. It adds an unnecessary tax that acts as friction in the art market. The Australian plan tries to limit at least some of this issue by only having the resale tax kick in after the second resale. But, of course, this just moves the unnecessary friction up a level, and doesn't change the thought process that goes into the buying decision. With any other product, once you sell it, you've sold it. It makes no sense to allow the original creator to retain a cut of any later sale. Imagine if that were the case with cars or houses as well? Who would ever think that was reasonable?

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An anonymous reader writes "Controlling computers with our minds may sound like science fiction, but one Australian company claims to be able to let you do just that. The Emotiv device has been garnering attention at trade shows and conferences for several years, and now the company says it is set to launch the Emotiv EPOC headset on December 21. PC Authority spoke to co-founder Nam Do about the Emotiv technology and its potential as a mainstream gaming interface." One wonders what kind of adoption they expect with a $299 price tag.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently the Maker Shed started to carry OLLO kits. What are OLLO kits? OLLO is a reconfigurable construction set for beginner robot enthusiasts. Think of them as a cross between LEGO and Erector sets. I made one of the projects from the OLLO Action kit and learned a few things along the way.

Before you start building the kit, it's really helpful to assemble a bunch of the "rivets". In the picture above you can see the little pin that sits inside the groove of the rivet. I went ahead and made all the rivets, and then started building the dino-bot. It made the build a lot easier since I didn't have to stop and make more at each step.

The parts simply snap together via the little rivet system. It's a really strong connection and it allows for hinged movement when only (1) rivet is used.

When building the robot dinosaur be sure to keep the main drive wheels slightly away from the motor housing. This will make the walking a lot smoother. You can see the black axel and drive wheels in the picture above. Yes, the one of the robo-rear-end, sorry!

I had a great time with my kids building the dino-bot. Once you get familiar with the riveting system, it goes together fairly quickly. Looks like it's time to move onto the next build in the kit...but which one? I guess I'll let the kids decided.

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Gabe from Big Apple Hobbies is looking for people who want to learn to build "one of these things" on Saturday at Big Apple Hobbies in the middle of Queens... he writes -

The idea is that they make a small wing section that contains all the representative elements and steps required to make a larger wing. If you can make this one, you can make a big one, the only things we're leaving out are a) repetion - ours only has 6 ribs, not 26, and b) special shapes and fancy anything - all the pieces are cut from the same size balsa sticks, and if you mess one up, no problem, it's just a stick. There will eventually be a nominal charge for this thing, but for right now, the whole thing is free including all tools and materials to allow us to see how it goes and how good the instructions .No special knowledge or skill is required, but we are currently limiting it to adults, and reserve the right to exclude anybody who strikes as being unduly silly.

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John from the Creative Commons label Vosotros sez,

On March 16, 2007, a great thing happened in Culver City, California. For the first time ever, all three contestants of the game show Jeopardy, without ending in a score of zero, tied. At the time, at least two incorrect interpretations of this event were made; one being that it was a chance occurrence, the other that it was caused by mistake.

In fact, this tie was purposefully created by the episode's returning champion Scott Weiss, a puzzle-lover who must have been thrilled when he saw the opportunity arise (in the form of his tailing opponents being tied) in the Final Jeopardy round. Instead of wagering the customary one dollar extra needed to win, Weiss bet the exact amount required to tie, should all three contestants question the answer correctly, which they did.

When I saw this happen-- coincidentally I was watching the show that evening, something I did rarely before and have barely since-- it struck me as a profound gesture of good sportsmanship. All three got to keep their winnings and play again on the next episode.

Drawing on an amount of gathered research as well as formulated opinion on the event, we organized this twelve-song interpretation of the story, which takes place in ancient Greece. The album is entitled (a telling of) The Greatest Event in Sports History. As you might be able to guess by now, there is a fair amount of humor in this album. But also, I hope, a good and resounding lesson to be learned.

LMM 2.10 - The Greatest Event In Sports History

Here's a detailed look at the way that Warner accounts for digital download revenue to one of its acts, Too Much Joy. The author of the piece works for Rhapsody, the back-end for a lot of digital music services, and knows exactly what kind of information Warner gets from these services, and he butts up against what looks like utter carelessness on the part of the label when it comes to fulfilling its contractual obligations to its signed acts.

Back to my ridiculous Warner Bros. statement. As I flipped through its ten pages (seriously, it took ten pages to detail the $62.47 of income), I realized that Warner wasn't being evil, just careless and unconcerned - an impression I confirmed a few days later when I spoke to a guy in their Royalties and Licensing department I am going to call Danny.****

I asked Danny why there were no royalties at all listed from iTunes, and he said, "Huh. There are no domestic downloads on here at all. Only streams. And it has international downloads, but no international streams. I have no idea why." I asked Danny why the statement only seemed to list tracks from two of the three albums Warner had released - an entire album was missing. He said they could only report back what the digital services had provided to them, and the services must not have reported any activity for those other songs. When I suggested that seemed unlikely - that having every track from two albums listed by over a dozen different services, but zero tracks from a third album listed by any seemed more like an error on Warner's side, he said he'd look into it. As I asked more questions (Why do we get paid 50% of the income from all the tracks on one album, but only 35.7143% of the income from all the tracks on another? Why did 29 plays of a track on the late, lamented MusicMatch earn a total of 63 cents when 1,016 plays of the exact same track on MySpace earned only 23 cents?) he eventually got to the heart of the matter: "We don't normally do this for unrecouped bands," he said. "But, I was told you'd asked."

My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement (via Making Light) (via Making Light)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

People may remember there has been a bit of a spat over the Oregon Attorney General's Public Meeting Manual. This is part of a series of issues in the state of Oregon over the question of who may copy and public the law of the land.

I'm pleased to report that Attorney General John Kroger today released that manual, appointed a special Deputy Counsel to handle these kinds of transparency issues, and announced a set of hearings about the issues involved.

This is good news! It does not yet address the most fundamental issues, such as whether the state may assert copyright over the law, but it is a formal set of hearings that will examine the issue, which we're happily going to participate in.

Some background on the Oregon issue is available at the Public.Resource.Org Oregon.Gov page and you should read the Attorney General's announcement. If Oregon resolves the issue of who may copyright the law, this will be real progress.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN KROGER ANNOUNCES GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY INITIATIVE (Thanks, Carl!)

Noah from the wonderful Skull-a-Day site got interviewed by Robert Hicks, PhD, Director of the Mütter Museum (Philadelphia's astounding pathology musuem). The Mutter is one of the most astounding, humbling, beautiful places I've ever been.

No Bones About It! Featuring Noah Scalin (Thanks, Noah!

Sue sez, "Keith Lo Bue is an Australian assemblage artist who makes jewelry, eyeglasses and other objects as well as teaching assembly as an art form. Lots of fascinating stuff to browse here."

Keith Lo Bue - Eyewear (Thanks, Sue!)

A few hours ago, I made a post about the Houston Chronicle's investigation into the practice of local charities, including the Salvation Army, requiring proof of immigration status before giving toys to children. The Salvation Army has written to me to clarify that their checking of social security numbers and other ID is intended to "verify that individuals and families are not registering more than once at multiple Salvation Army facilities and to ensure people actually have the number of children they claim."

Jennifer Byrd sez, "As The Salvation Army's National Public Relations Director, I wanted to inform you that the original Houston Chronicle story was a bit misleading in how it portrayed the use of social security numbers and ID by The Salvation Army in Houston to register people in need. In actuality, no program run by The Salvation Army at a national or local level requires the recipient of services to present documentation that verifies they are a U.S. citizen."

From the Houston Chronicle's followup story:

Flanagan and Salvation Army spokesman Juan Alanis spoke up Tuesday after a story in the Chronicle noted that both groups require birth certificates, Social Security numbers or other documents indicating immigration status. They said it's not their intent to discriminate.

Alanis acknowledged that families cannot register for the Angel Tree program, which allows children to request specific gifts, unless one member of the family can present a Social Security number.

"It is not because we seek to discriminate. The Salvation Army is not in the business of verifying legal status," he said. "We have to be good stewards. If we let people register without checking, that could be abused."

Alanis said the agency uses Social Security numbers, rather than some other type of identifier, because "that's just the way we've found to verify it at this point. If other agencies do something different, we'd be interested in finding that out."

Charities say they don't intend to discriminate (Thanks, Jennifer!)

Before you give any money to the Salvation Army this year, remember, they run a program where kids are only given toys if they can present a valid birth certification or immigration papers, so that the children of illegal immigrants are punished for their parents' deeds. At Christmas. While other kids are given toys. That your donation paid for.

In a year when more families than ever have asked for help, several programs providing Christmas gifts for needy children require at least one member of the household to be a U.S. citizen. Others ask for proof of income or rely on churches and schools to suggest recipients.

The Salvation Army and a charity affiliated with the Houston Fire Department are among those that consider immigration status, asking for birth certificates or Social Security cards for the children...

The Outreach Program requires parents to show photo identification and birth certificates or Social Security cards for the children. Young said she makes an exception if parents can show they have applied for legal status or that a child is enrolled in school.

As Patrick sez, "Evidently, I missed the part of the New Testament where Jesus instructs his followers to check people's immigration status before rendering charity to them."

Some toy drives check immigration status

(via Making Light)

(Image: Salvation Army, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from zieak's photostream)

A few hours ago, I made a post about the Houston Chronicle's investigation into the practice of local charities, including the Salvation Army, requiring proof of immigration status before giving toys to children. The Salvation Army has written to me to clarify that their checking of social security numbers and other ID is intended to "verify that individuals and families are not registering more than once at multiple Salvation Army facilities and to ensure people actually have the number of children they claim."

Jennifer Byrd sez, "As The Salvation Army's National Public Relations Director, I wanted to inform you that the original Houston Chronicle story was a bit misleading in how it portrayed the use of social security numbers and ID by The Salvation Army in Houston to register people in need. In actuality, no program run by The Salvation Army at a national or local level requires the recipient of services to present documentation that verifies they are a U.S. citizen."

From the Houston Chronicle's followup story:

Flanagan and Salvation Army spokesman Juan Alanis spoke up Tuesday after a story in the Chronicle noted that both groups require birth certificates, Social Security numbers or other documents indicating immigration status. They said it's not their intent to discriminate.

Alanis acknowledged that families cannot register for the Angel Tree program, which allows children to request specific gifts, unless one member of the family can present a Social Security number.

"It is not because we seek to discriminate. The Salvation Army is not in the business of verifying legal status," he said. "We have to be good stewards. If we let people register without checking, that could be abused."

Alanis said the agency uses Social Security numbers, rather than some other type of identifier, because "that's just the way we've found to verify it at this point. If other agencies do something different, we'd be interested in finding that out."

Charities say they don't intend to discriminate (Thanks, Jennifer!)

James McP writes "Ars Technica has a write-up on the unregulated telegraph of the 19th century, which gives a view into what could happen to an internet lacking any regulation mandating neutrality. The owners of the 'Victorian internet' used their control of the telegraph to prop up monopolies, manipulate elections, facilitate insider trading, and censor criticism."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Travis sez, "'H.M.' are the initials of a patient who had a portion of his brain removed many years ago to combat epilepsy. One of the unanticipated side effects was that he was unable to form new memories. Its a very famous case in the brain and cognitive sciences. Anyway, the guy died a little while ago and now they're turning his brain into 30,000 cross sectional slides. They're slicing it up right now and there's a live feed from the UCSD lab which is doing it."

The Brain Observatory - In Memory of H.M. (Thanks, Travis!)

A bunch of folks have been submitting the recent Patently-O post by Martin Goetz, the guy who claims to have the first "software patent," defending the concept of software patents. The argument boils down to pretty much the same argument we've heard a thousand times before: that what people create in software is no different than what they create in hardware -- it's just a different method of doing the same thing, and thus, software should be patentable. To some extent, I agree. Unlike some, I'm not in favor of making a specific "exemption" for software as not being patentable (though, I do question why or how something should be covered by both copyrights and patents, and also am curious how you can patent basic mathematics... but those are questions for another time).

Honestly, in reading through his arguments, what struck me is that there is no explanation for why even computer hardware should be patentable. It's just taken for granted that computer hardware patents must be good, and since software is the equivalent of what's done in hardware (not really true in many cases, but...), software patents must be good. But shouldn't the original question be whether or not the hardware itself requires patents and whether or not that helps to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts"? Goetz never bothers to explain how any of these patents promote progress.

And, of course, the bigger point is whether or not it's really true that software is just a different way of doing what you can do in hardware. In some cases, that's true. In other cases, it's not. Most software today is not just a different way of doing things that could be done in hardware, but involve things that couldn't be done without software. How do you offer wireless email without any software? How do you do "one-click shopping" without software? What the article is really arguing is that because you could build software-functionality into hardware, you should be able to patent it, but perhaps that never should have been allowed to be patented in the first place?

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MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've been seeing a ton of stories in the last year concerning collection societies around the world increasing their efforts to collect money from any sort of entity that plays music ever -- even if it actually ends up causing significant harm to new and up-and-coming musicians. The efforts usually focus on two areas: (1) increasing the fees they're able to demand from venues (usually set by the government) and (2) getting places that barely play any music at all to pay up at exorbitant rates. SOCAN, up in Canada, is supposedly working on both of these fronts, with reader Adam Bell pointing out that it's been going after gymnastics clubs because a small number of kids who use them practice routines done to music. But, of course, SOCAN wants to calculate fees not based on the small number of people who actually use music (which is usually intended for themselves, anyway, not for others -- which should exclude the usual "ambiance" reasoning that collections societies claim), but the "average number of persons per week per room multiplied by $2.14." This can really add up for small businesses, and many gymnastics clubs are refusing to pay, recognizing that they might not be able to afford it at all if they want to stay in business. It's difficult to see how that helps anyone.

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Our friend Teresa Nielsen Hayden shares these truly beautiful videos of time-lapse photography shot in the Alps, with Beethoven compositions for the soundtrack. They're like ambient video bedtime stories for internet grownups. I feel drowsy and dreamy already, with the full moon overhead this evening.

The videos were created by Michael Rissi of Zurich, whose Vimeo profile describes him as a medical physicist and timelapse enthusiast who is fond of the Canon EOS 50D.

Here is Day, set to everyone's favorite bit of the Seventh. Here is Night, and the Moonlight Sonata. More at magictimelapse.ch/en.

Both HD videos embedded at 970 pixels wide after the jump.

Night

Day

Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has launched a series of web videos which tell the stories of people in Congo, an African country that has seen violence and human rights atrocities of phenomenal scale during an ongoing civil war. The online shorts are part of a larger MSF campaign called Condition: Critical. I asked Pete Masters of MSF to tell us more about the videos. His response below, and links to all videos after the jump.

Condition: Critical was launched one year ago by Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to bring to the world's attention the plight of the people living through the war in Eastern Congo (DRC). BUT, rather than MSF at the focal point, it is the people and their stories that take centre stage. In this, the last chapter of the Condition: Critical project, listen to the stories of four people telling how the conflict has affected their lives.

Francoise (in the video above) was locked in her hut when they came and set it alight. Although she escaped, her sons did not make it; one she could not save from the fire and the other died in hospital. Although she is horribly burnt, she tells how it is the hurt in her heart that really affects her.

Bahati is far from his village which he cannot return to because of the ongoing violence. He talks about how he now works as a lumberjack, trying to make enough money to survive while teaching anyone who wants to learn so they might also have a means of survival.

Mishoka fled his village when he found his brother brutally murdered. Now, in a camp with his family and his brother's daughter, he explains his struggle to provide any sort of life for them.

An ex-child soldier tells of his experiences of being abducted and forced to fight. His story is illustrated by the paintings he has been making while he tries to come to terms with the trauma of his ordeal.

These four people, the others who have told us their story through Condition: Critical and millions like them have been largely forgotten by the world. Please visit Condition: Critical, see hear their stories and leave a message of support for them, so they know that someone is listening. MSF promises to take a selection of these messages to Congo give back to the people.

• Bahati's story
• Francoise's story
• Mishoka's story
• Drawing the war

More: Condition: Critical

garg0yle writes "According to McAfee, more than a third of Cameroon domains (TLD of .cm) are infested with viruses or other not-so-fun party treats. Given that it's very easy to mis-type .com as .cm, this puts the computers of a lot of fat-fingered typists in peril. Second place on the most-infested domains list goes to China (.cn), while Hong Kong (last year's "winner") is now comfortably middle-of-the-pack."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris (DIY drones, Wired, MAKE 19) is making the rounds with "Atoms are the New Bits" - here is an overview of his talk, sounds excellent -

• The Web revolution is hitting the real world. “We are entering a new manufacturing age,” said Anderson. “I’ve been thinking about being analog and the world of manufacturing.”
• Manufacturing businesses are utilizing a lot of the techniques pioneered on the Web.
• Tools of production are being democratized. Exhibit A: 3D printers will now run you $750. Anderson has one in his basement. Laser cutters and circuit boards can all be designed in your basement using world class industrial technologies.
• If you want scale, a Chinese factory will work with you where ever you are. “I can click a button and make robots in a Chinese factory move,” said Anderson. “These factories want to work with smaller companies because there’s the flexibility to do so and higher margins. You have access to the same factory as Sony.”
• The list goes on. Anderson’s big point is that the barriers to manufacturing are falling away. In fact, we may all be manufacturers down the road. Consider it the long tail of physical stuff.

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With the movie industry's lawyers recently demanding that ISP Portlane shut down the OpenBitTorrent tracker, claiming (without any evidence) that it was just a rebranded version of The Pirate Bay's tracker, it seemed possible that the Swedish courts would roll over again. However, in a bit of a surprise, the court has pointed out that it's a big stretch to hold the ISP liable without more evidence, and has refused to order the shutdown of OpenBitTorrent. Nice to see that the courts don't always just accept what the movie industry says without further examination.

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A bunch of big name tech companies have come out against Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill. They're most concerned with the clause that gives Mandelson (a guy who resigned elected position in disgrace twice) the ability to flat out change copyright laws on a whim with no real oversight. Amazingly, Mandelson had his staffers try to make the case for this clause:

"The law must keep pace with technology, so that the Government can act if new ways of seriously infringing copyright develop in the future."

And what's wrong with Parliament actually setting those laws? That part isn't explained. Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if this particular clause is being used to draw away the fire from the "three strikes and we kick you off the internet" clause. With the big tech companies focused on this ridiculous power grab by the Business Secretary, not nearly as much attention is being paid to that "guilty based on accusations" clause. In the meantime, if these tech firms actually want to get anywhere, an open letter might not do the trick, but I hear that a nice dinner with Mandy at a fancy resort can do wonders.

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kdawson writes "A year after voting unanimously to open 'white space' frequencies for unlicensed use, the FCC has now issued a public notice seeking database proposals (PDF). Howard Feld explains in his blog posting: 'At last! We can get moving on this again, and hopefully move forward on the most promising "disruptive" technology currently in the hopper. And move we are, in a very peculiar fashion. Rather than resolve the outstanding questions about how the database provider will collect money, operate the database, or whether the database will be exclusive or non-exclusive, the Public Notice asks would-be database managers to submit proposals that would cover these issues. ... I label this approach "good, but weird."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guestblogger Paul Spinrad is a freelance writer/editor, and is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He is the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, and was an early contributor to bOING bOING when it was an online zine. He lives in San Francisco. 

Here's my idea for a Monty Python And The Holy Grail-like opening title sequence. The following titles fade in and are crossed out one by one:

• A True Story
• Based On A True Story
• Inspired By A True Story
• Inspired By Real Events
• Inspired By Reality
• Partially Inspired By Reality

I've argued here before that storytelling, like language itself, is a compression scheme-- ideally, you leave out everything that doesn't matter or doesn't in some way contribute to the whole. If you're decompressing the story-- reading, listening to, or watching it-- the first thing you need to know is, is this true? You need to know where to put it in your head, whether to incorporate it into the model you use to navigate the real world, or whether it should go into the "not true" bin. Our survival depends on this distinction.

Meanwhile, on the storyteller's side, there are many reasons to blur true and not-true-- particularly, I think, if a story is being told for profit or to maintain of power relationships. Stories interpreted as real demand more attention and more likely to influence people's actions than fictional stories.

There was an interesting discussion here (in response to a great piece by Susannah Breslin) about the future of porn video when CGI can simulate humans realistically. Yes, there is an "uncanny valley" problem where the simulations are not quite realistic enough, but let's assume it will be overcome. My prediction is that there will still need to be living, breathing porn stars in the world, because viewers need something to build a fantasy around, no matter how remote. Recall the parade scene at the end of National Lampoon's Animal House, when a college cheerleader flies through a window and lands on the bed of a teenage boy reading a porno magazine. He says, "Thank you, God!" It's funny because it's true-- or so I am told. 

It's true that people can become obsessed with animated fictional characters, and for them the real/unreal issue doesn't matter (or works the other way). But those of us with more "stalker" type personalities want to be able to think, "I wonder what she's doing right now?" Instead of pitching our fantasy tents comfortably in the world of fiction, we anchor them to some contrived but remotely plausible chain of circumstances where we might, just might, really have a chance.

With MAKE Volume 20, the Kids Issue, on newsstands right now, I got to thinking about previous MAKE projects that would be fun to build with the bambinos over the holidays. The Recycled Kaleidoscope project from MAKE Volume 14 would be a super fun build. Got any plastic CD cases laying around? Put em to use, along with whatever little bits of your choosing you want to include for the inside. Tiny electronic components? Itty bitty screws? So pretty!

Recycled Kaleidoscope
Make a classic optics toy from an old CD case.
By Carolyn Bennett

The kaleidoscope was invented in 1816 by a Scottish physicist named Sir David Brewster, and it has intrigued people of all ages ever since. Through the years, kaleidoscopes have been made of nearly every possible material. Now it's time to take the kaleidoscope green. Here's a simple one you can create from recycled materials and common household items. For the mirror elements, we'll use pieces of an old "jewel box" CD case backed with black paper or neoprene.

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Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Doug Repetto's Walking Tables workshop
New York, NY
Friday, Dec 4th, 2009, 2pm - 6pm, Performance 7pm - 8pm

First Robotics Presentation/ FinishIT night
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Dec 4th, 2009, 7pm +

Beginning PHP @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Dec 5, 2009, 12pm - 2pm

DIY Paper Engineering @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Dec 5, 2009, 3pm - 5pm

Lock picking for Fun @i3Detroit
Royal Oak, MI
Saturday, Dec 5, 2009, 8pm - 10pm

Code Your Own Spam (or Awesome) Filter! @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Dec 6, 2009, 1pm - 3pm

Guitar Effects 101 @Hive 76
Philadelphia, PA
Monday, Dec 7, 2009, 7pm - 10pm

Designing with QCAD @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Monday, Dec 7, 2009, 6:30pm - 8:00pm

GO-Tech (Ann Arbor, MI) December Meeting
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009, 7pm - 10pm

Make:SF at reMake Lounge
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009, 6:30pm +

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Sound Experiments and Experimental Sound @Bug Labs
New York, NY
Wednesday, Dec 9, 2009, 5:45pm - 7:30pm

Start planning for:

RjDj: New software release party!
New York, NY
Friday, Dec 11, 2009, 7pm - 10pm

Introduction to the AVR Micro Controller @Hive 76
Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, Dec 12, 2009, 5pm - 8pm

Bicycle Frame Welding - Beginning TIG @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Saturday, Dec 12 and Sunday, Dec 13, 2009, 10am - 4pm

Arduino 102: Sensors and Relays @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Dec 13, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

Introduction to Electronics Workshop @Metrix Create:Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Dec 13, 2009, 2pm - 4:30pm

Crystal Radio Building Workshop @Bug Labs
New York, NY
Wednesday, Dec 16, 2009, 5:45pm - 7:30pm

ITP Winter Show
New York, NY
Sunday, Dec 20, 2009, 2pm - 6pm and Monday, Dec 21, 2009, 5pm - 9pm

Classroom Arduino for Teachers @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Monday, Dec 28 - Wednesday, Dec 30, 2009, 10am - 4pm

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