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Kirigami is kind of like origami except you get to make cuts, too! Check out Daniel Wyllie L. Rodrigues's excellent kirigami geometric shapes. The top image is called Five Spheres of Persistence. Each of the five spheres consists of a cube, an octahedron and a rhombic dodecahedron on top of each other.

The bottom image is a rhombic dodecahedron with a papercraft sphere inside that Daniel made as a gift to his father.

More:

• Papercraft rhombidodecadodecahedron

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/14/new-keyboard-cat-is-pretty-great/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/13/programming-the-commodore-64-the-definitive-guide/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/13/programming-the-commodore-64-the-definitive-guide/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:42:00 +0000 timothy tag:rss.slashdot.org://f3613e66cd5ba43828f7e5cc53c35ee2

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Xylocopa Design (of Build-Your-Own Ratmobile fame) just added this beautiful Mysterious Mushroom Puzzle to their Makers Market store:

These gorgeous engraved wooden mushrooms fit together to make a 6" square - but in only one configuration! Assembling them may not look so bad, but trust us, it's no simple task. Each mushroom is based on a different, real species of fungus. Fun and frustration for adults and children alike. The mushrooms are crafted from assorted hardwoods - maple, cherry, walnut, mahogany, padauk, and bloodwood - and finished with an all-natural Tung Oil finish. The storage tray is made of birch and comes with an engraved cheat guide.

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The LibDems were plunged into controversy last week when two of the LibDem Lords introduced a pro-web-censorship amendment to the Digital Economy Bill (this amendment was later shown to have been written by record industry lobby group BPI). Outraged party members (including dozens of prospective parliamentary candidates) rallied to fight this shift in party direction toward curtailment of freedom on behalf of corporate lobbyists.

The outcome of that outrage is the emergency motion on internet freedom, called the "Save the Net" memo. It calls for net neutrality, proportionality and due process in copyright enforcement, an absolute rejection of web-blocking and disconnection to solve copyright problems, and other good, principled stands that I'm proud to see my party get behind.

Organisers worked around the clock all week to get the emergency motion accepted for debate. Tomorrow morning, party delegates at the Spring Convention will debate the Save the Net motion from 0915 to 0945. If you are attending the Birmingham convention (or know someone who is!), please help support this motion and get it passed -- let's send a signal to corporate schemers that British law isn't for sale.

If you're not attending the convention, you can still help by joining the Facebook fan page for the motion. If thousands -- tens of thousands! -- of people from around the country and the world show their support for this motion, it will help conference delegates understand how important and far-reaching Internet freedom is.

Laws about copyright and the Internet don't just affect how we get and use cultural works: they affect everything we do with the Internet, whether it's earning a living or staying in touch with family or reporting the news or organising your neighbours around important political issues.

UK Lib Dems: Save the Net!

Mollet's memo, entitled "Digital Economy Bill weekly update 11 March 2010," appears to be a weekly status report on the DEB's progress. On the CC list are executives from major record labels, staff at IFPI (the international record industry lobby), PR agents from The Open Road, and others I don't recognise (if you can identify others on the CC list, please post to the comments).

In the memo, Mollet identifies Britain's top spies as being a stumbling block to the bill's passage -- worried, apparently, that creating a Great Firewall of Britain will make it harder for spies to spy on naughty sites (someone should tell MI5 about Ipredator, the excellent proxy service from the Pirate Bay; after all, that's the same proxy that everyone else in Britain is likely to use to get at the blocked sites if the BPI gets its way).

Mollet also implies that Britain's spy agencies might have paid for a Talk Talk survey in which 71% of 18-34 year olds said that they would simply evade the DEB and go on infringing.

Mollet claims that Britain's ISPs have already caved into their duties to spy on and censor network connections, claiming that there is a sense of "settled will" in the "ISP community."

On the other hand, he identifies Members of Parliament as being "resigned" to the fact that they will not be allowed to debate the bill or give it "detailed scrutiny" (heck of a job, MPs!). He cites an expert on legislation as saying that the bill will likely die if MPs insist on their right and responsibility to examine this legislation in detail before voting on it.

BPI Digital Economy Bill weekly minutes (PDF)

Mirror

Marilyn sez, "El Ateneo Grand Splendid in downtown Buenos Aires is a spectacular bookstore that retains all the glamour of its former life as a 1920s movie palace, with a original balconies, painted ceiling, ornate carvings and crimson stage curtains. Photo by Bob Krist for National Geographic Traveler. The Guardian named El Ateneo as one of the top ten bookshops in the world (along with Secret Headquarters):'Where else can you sit in a theater box and leisurely read a volume of Neruda, or sip a cortado where Carlos Gardel once performed?'"

Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Conference-goers had fun building tiny robots and high-tech graffiti at the TEDActive event in Palm Springs last month, thanks to Newegg and the Maker Shed. The annual get-together of big thinkers had a Newegg-sponsored Tinker Box "lab" area where conference attendees built bristlebots, LED throwies, and RGB LED origami lamps.

My friend Tod Kurt and I were asked to come up with some maker projects for Newegg. We had a month to do it. We ruled out soldering-based kits; too slow. We decided on the three kits mentioned above, but knew it would be tough to source the parts we needed in time. Enter Rob and Marc of the Maker Shed. They turned around the custom order in record time, with no hitches, other than the proclamation that "it's not a lot of fun to try to separate huge stacks of magnets into individual kits".

Tod ran a number of very successful classes at the event, and attendees came away smiling. Some surprised us with their creative mash-ups of bristle bots and LED throwies. Inspired by the awesome Young Makers event at the Exploratorium, Tod laser cut a cool little racecourse for the bristlebots. Check out this video to see them in action.

To make the bristle-bots robust, I soldered two leads to every single one of the pager motors in that bowl there! (About a hundred of them; it was actually very meditative.)

Thanks to Lora at Newegg for making it all possible. Newegg Tinker Box press release

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You've heard of tilt-shift photography, right -- pix shot with a special lens that makes everything look like little models. Well, check out Sam O'Hara's The Sandpit, an awesome tilt-shift movie of a day in the life of New York City! [via Kottke]

More:

• DIY tilt-shift lens
• Weekend Project: Tilt-Shift Photography
• HOW TO - Make a Tilt-Shift PC Lens

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MAKE is at the FIRST Robotics expo at the Javits Center in NYC for the NY/NJ regionals. Check out my Flickr set for some of the robot action!

The New York City / New Jersey FIRST  is a regional office of FIRST, the 501c3 nonprofit organization created to inspire youth to pursue further studies and careers in science and technology and to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the technologically-driven global economy.

Participation in FIRST has a positive impact on the lives of students, increasing college attendance, majors in science and engineering, participation in internships and co-ops, and involvement in community service.

We'll be here all weekend, stop by our table and say hi and learn about our Make: Money fundraising program for robotics groups!

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Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec - 2nd teaser (Thanks, Xeni!)

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/13/luc-bessons-steampunk-movie/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/13/sci-fi-a-jesusfish-raygun-parody/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/13/sci-fi-a-jesusfish-raygun-parody/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:31:13 +0000 Cory Doctorow tag:www.boingboing.net,2010://1.71592
]]> Looking for an automobile decor element that proudly proclaims your devotion to the earliest, persecuted science fiction fans who huddled in catacombs, scratching crude rayguns into the walls?

Look no further.

WHITE vinyl SCI-FI RAY GUN decal jesus fish parody 3x5 (Thanks, Travis!)

STATISTICAL ATLAS OF THE NINTH CENSUS (1870) (Thanks, Marilyn!)

The South African rap-rave internet star known as The Ninja grabs my face by the cheeks. He leans forward and stares into my eyes, like a large savannah predator about to inhale a hamster.

"And that's what I did to Jimmy Iovine," he says. "He didn't seem to like it, but nobody told me it wasn't cool to do that. And then I kissed him on each cheek, because we were making a deal like you do with the mafia. Die Antwoord is in business with Interscope now."

It's been just over a month since a friend emailed me a link to their music, and I blogged here on Boing Boing. They had fans before, but what exploded in these past four weeks is the stuff labels and artists dream of: Die Antwoord became a living meme of unprecedented velocity, propelled into global megawebstardom faster than any act I've ever seen. Ninja tells me that in addition to shaking hands with Interscope, District 9 helmer Neill Blomkamp plans to direct Antwoord's next music video, they'll likely be performing at the Coachella festival, and a film is in the works.

I'm in a diner in Hollywood with my friend Sean Bonner early Friday morning, and we're eating breakfast with the Ninja. Between bursts of rapid-fire recollections, he stares at his granola for meditative pause: an Afrikaans astronaut hit by vertigo; a recently broke and obscure artist punched in the face by the the full force of fame.

"I'm not skinny like this by choice," he says, huddled over the table in a Ren and Stimpy hoodie adorned with John Kricfalusi doodles. "We had no money forever. Now, we're flying business class to America, and look at me, I'm eating berries and granola in Hollywood."

He says Die Antwoord is in LA for the first time. He's joined by his creative partner Yolandi Visser (who's sleeping in this morning, upstairs in the hotel), and their "consigliere" Jay.

"When we did the big meeting with Interscope, Jimmy Iovine was telling me all about how badly their business has been harmed by the internet," Ninja says, sipping black coffee. " I can understand that but I said, 'Jimmy, I want to give you a piece of samurai advice: Become the enemy."

The band's forthcoming debut album $O$, streaming in entirety on their website for free, is the first of 5 albums they plan to release. A sort of documentary film is in the works, too. "It's like an hour-long introduction to a music video, like Thriller, only you can eat popcorn while you watch it at the cinema," he says.

After breakfast, they're off to meet one of their creative heroes, director and high weirdness curator David Lynch.

"I used to smoke a lot of weed," Ninja says. "Then I got my hands on a David Lynch Twin Peaks box set, and I watched the whole thing in one sitting, and it blew my mind. Special Agent Dale Cooper said something about pot being bad for you, and that convinced me that maybe I shouldn't smoke pot anymore. All of this now might be a little harder to take if I were."

Die Antwoord have been eagerly courted by many in the Hollywood power elite during this first brief trip to LA.

"I don't understand how it happened any more than they do, but I understand how rare it is," he says. And he's right: labels spend millions of dollars trying to create what happened to them.

Fans have swarmed at every turn during their LA trip: this in a town where more conventional celebrity spottings are commonplace. A brief club appearance—"just me busting out one long rap-rave rhyme," says Ninja—turned into full-on moshpit hysteria, with underground music blogs describing the event as Antwoord's debut US performance, a carefully planned secret show. "It wasn't, this is all crazy," he says.

"The funniest thing has been the people on the internet angry that we were 'fake.' The only people who thought we were some kind of hoax were from the US and the EU. This is just real, it's who we are."

Ninja and Yolandi have long been fans of photographer (and onetime geology student) Roger Ballen, best known for his disturbing black and white portraits of South African mining town residents. When fame hit, they emailed their idol, and he agreed to shoot the $O$ album cover.

"The art you see in our videos, on the clothing, the tattoos, everything -- a lot of that is also inspired by the art of children, and the criminally insane," says Ninja. "They don't have that hard barrier between their conscious and subconscious minds, the creativity and fluid consciousness inspires me."

He cites other influences as diverse as William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, the rapper Eminem, science fiction movies, and the toy company Friends With You.

I ask about Leon Botha, an enigmatic figure who appears in some of the band's videos—Botha is 24, and has Progeria, a disease that often takes the lives of its victims at a far earlier age.

"We met at a DJ Qbert concert in South Africa and Leon was in the front, rocking out," Ninja recalls. They became friends and creative kindred spirits.

"When you're hanging around him, it's like you're hearing the voice of God, he's so present and immediate," he says.

"He's a beautiful soul," I say. We've swapped a few emails, and I was mesmerized by Botha's YouTube video monologues.

"We all are," says Ninja, "It's just that he's right there on the surface. He, more than anyone else I know, lives in the moment, because he know he could die the next. I mean, we all could die. You could, Xeni, I could take you out right now—BAM!"

His hand becomes a pretend-gun, and he shoots me pretend-dead.

"Haha! Just kidding. But he is aware of death, and of the preciousness of the present. And that's where the creative power is."

I remind him of the day Die Antwoord burst into dominance on Google Trends: February 3rd, 2010, some 48 hours after that first Boing Boing post.

"February 3rd was already a date I remembered," he replies. "My younger brother, his nickname was 'Boo,' he committed suicide 7 years ago on that day."

"This the only thing I can do, I can't do anything else," he continues. "It is what I love, and all I have ever wanted to do in my life. Now that all of this—" (he gestures toward Hollywood Boulevard, as a truck carrying leftover Academy Awards props cruises by) "—now that this is happening to us, it's overwhelming because you also realize that it could disappear right away. "

"I don't know what that's going to mean. But for now, I just know that we have a film to make, and albums to record, and shows to play."

"It's not bad."

# # #

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Carbert Music is publisher of more than 150,000 songs from all music genres, including "Back in Black" by AC/DC, "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown and "What a Wonderful World," according to the complaint.

Carbert claims Don Great, who is not a party to this lawsuit, fraudulently registered "thousands" of the Carlin Library's songs in his own name, or in the name of his companies, Don Great Music and Tinseltown Music, or in the name of defendant May-Loo Music....

Five years later, May-Loo sued Great, claiming he had brokered secret business deals on behalf of May-Loo and had mishandled revenue. Great countersued, but a federal jury found awarded Loose and May-Loo $1.9 million in 2004, according to Carbert's complaint.

Carbert says it bought a catalogue of music called the GRH Catalogue from Harrose Music Co. in 2005. Soon afterward, Carlin says, it discovered that Great had falsely registered "many" of the GRH songs to himself, his companies or May-Loo. Great's actions "muddied the chain of title" and kept Carbert from licensing the songs, Carbert says.

1. the purpose and character of your use
   
   The question here is if the use is somehow transformative or being used to build something new. But one of the questions usually asked in judging this factor is: "Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?" It seems like an entire blog post around how to build that kind of furniture certainly qualifies. This one is in favor of fair use.
   
   
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
   
   Well, they're photographs, but they were used in catalogs and such, not for sale. So that would seem to, again, lend to a fair use ruling. The orignal purpose of the photos was that they were to be seen widely.
   
   
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken
   
   Indeed, it sounds like the "entire" photo was used, so you might be able to weigh this factor against fair use, but not necessarily. As we've seen in multiple lawsuits, even if you're using the entirety of the work, it can be considered fair use if the purpose is so completely different from the original -- which, in this case, is definitely true.
   
   
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.
   
   Now, some might argue that the use here might harm the market for WSI furniture since it's teaching people how to build their own, but that shouldn't apply here. The test is for the potential market of the copyrighted work. That is, this factor should not take into account the impact on the market for the furniture itself, but just on the market for the photographs. And it's difficult to see any harm done here at all.

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One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets...

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated "local foot products".

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

(Image: Shaw's French Bread, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Adam Pieniazek's photostream)

Alan at Hacked Gadgets found this neat video that shows how ball bearings are made. All of that work to make what seems like a simple part! [via Hacked Gadgets]

He's trying to figure out "what's the most effective thing we can do to help people in countries where the government is" seeking to restrict Internet freedom.

1. They leave the videos on YouTube as embeddable, and just hope that companies will pay them anyway.
   
   In this case, many companies would likely embed the videos anyway, not even realizing that CC wanted them to pay up. That leads to confusion and no legal basis for CC's request. After all, it put the video on a video sharing site and allowed embedding. That seems like a pretty clear authorization to embed the video.
   
   
2. They leave the videos on YouTube, but not as embeddable, and make companies pay to embed
   
   As we saw with the band Ok Go, when EMI disabled embedding for the band's videos, traffic plummeted 90%. You don't go viral if you don't allow embeds.
   
   
3. They stop using YouTube altogether, and don't release the videos publicly themselves
   
   It's hard to be viral when the videos aren't anywhere online.

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At heart, my argument for full RSS feeds is similar to my argument against a NYT paywall, and neither argument has anything to do with a sense of entitlement on my part. Instead, both are simply bad business decisions. If you truncate your RSS feeds, you'll get less traffic than you had with full feeds, and you'll alienate an important minority of your audience. And if you implement a paywall, the increase in subscription revenues will fail to offset the decrease in ad revenues, even as you'll alienate lots of your audience. So neither makes commercial sense.

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More info on their website.

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The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you -- do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters.

We're in a competitive business and while the spirit of social media is collaborative we need to take care not to undermine the commercial basis of our company.

As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don't scoop the wire.

The old means of control don't work.
The old categories don't work.
The old ways of thinking won't work.
We all need to come to terms with that.

Fundamentally, the old media won't control news dissemination in the future. And organisations can't control access using old forms of accreditation any more.

Last year, I gave family members letters from the World's Smallest Postal Service for Christmas. They are awesome and make a fun gift.

Spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool is this professed "smallest zine in the world," an art "zine" done with eraser-carved stamps. I love the idea of doing eraser carvings on pencil heads. I've done them using art gum erasers, but never tried pencils.

Smallest Zine In The World

Harbor East is hosting an art opening called "Tools, Trash and Technology - A 25-year retrospective of the Art and Design of Marque Cornblatt." Marque's whimsical, clever creations have been featured on BB and MAKE.

The event runs March 10-April 4, 2010 and is open Wednesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Opening reception for the artist Friday March 12, 5-8 PM

Cornblatt will personally be in the gallery each afternoon, offering hands-on demos and opportunities to operate the robots.

San Francisco-based and Baltimore native artist Marque Cornblatt will be presenting a 25-year retrospective of his work in Harbor East in Retail Suite 102 of The Legg Mason Tower. The exhibition will include self portraits, interactive sculptures, web-based robots, and video, as well as examples of Cornblatt furniture and interior design. This 25-year retrospective represents Cornblatt's return to exhibiting on the East Coast and his first major exhibition in Baltimore.

From the very first Sony Watchman to portable DVD players, no technology is off-limits to Cornblatt's creative eye. Using found objects, broken toys and re-purposed electronics, Cornblatt creates sculptures that challenge ideas about technology and the self. His recent use of videogames and virtual reality to create self-portraits offers a glimpse into the future of digital identity.

Cornblatt's will also be presenting the Sparky project, his pioneering interactive videochat robot. First shown in 1996, Sparky has evolved from an assemblage of mixed parts into a worldwide network of telepresence robots capable of connecting people face-to-face in real time over the internet.

The gallery will be furnished with examples of Cornblatt's handmade design and housewares, including cardboard furniture, metal and glass tables, candleholders, chess sets and object d'art made from scrap metal and other recycled materials.

Tools, Trash and Technology - A 25-year retrospective of the Art and Design of Marque Cornblatt

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"I think there will be lots of people doing things completely innocently who are going to be caught by this, and some people will be prosecuted, while others will be so angry about it that they will start complaining about civil liberties issues," Chadwick said.

"I think what it will potentially do is to prompt a debate about the commercial nature of the Games. Do big sponsors have too much influence over the Games?" Eyes turn to "value for money" London 2012 (Thanks, Bobby!)

(Image: More Riot Police a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Kashklick's photostream)

This minute-long short by Mindfruit Studios is called "Memoirs of a Scanner," and was made using only a scanner, plus software to stitch the still images together into a movie. It has characters, special effects, and a coherent plot that tells the story of an episode in the life of a business office. From the copier's perspective. [via Neatorama]

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"No one can own the basic idea for a story. General plot ideas are not protected by copyright law; they remain forever the common property of artistic mankind."

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At one point, while face-palming, he says pensively: "I always see husbands and wifes, but this is the very first time I saw husbands and husbands! That's so funny. So—so you love each other! [...] I'm gonna go play now."

Video: Husbands and Husbands. Flip-cammed and uploaded by YouTube user TheColonelFrog.

Alternate video url 1, and Alternate video url 2.

(Dangerous Minds via Oh Have You Seen This, thanks Tara McGinley!).

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/child-sorts-out-concept-of-gay-marriage-husbands-and-husbands-video/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/dr-congo-ring-may-be-giant-impact-crater/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/dr-congo-ring-may-be-giant-impact-crater/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:48:00 +0000 Soulskill tag:rss.slashdot.org://b384aca503c69d8b6a1df555059718cd

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Construct your very own ratmobile in minutes with this easy-to-build kit by Xylocopa Design. Your friends will be envious, and your enemies will flee (or is it the other way around?) when they see the glory of this fantastic little vehicle. Comes as an unpainted, unfinished kit. Just add glue (and, for the adventurous, paint, ornamentation, accessories, etc)!

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"Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me."

I contacted Mr Williams-Thomas to check a few facts, and he confirmed that the story had indeed been "ghosted" by a Mail reporter. He says he got back to the paper with a number of changes before publication, but although they acknowledged receipt of his alterations, they were not acted on.

The cats at Hackerspaces.org are calling for a worldwide hackathon in hackerspaces the weekend of March 20th, 2010. These events are the third weekend of every month, with the inaugural event held last November.

Hackerspaces participating in past events have included Chicago's PS1, Luxembourg's Syn2cat, Ireland's TOG, France's Tetalab, Saint Louis's Arch Reactor and a bunch more besides. Most spaces share ustream feeds during the events.

Might be a good opportunity to work on your Robot Build projects? Is your hackerspace participating? Does a monthly event have value? Leave your thoughts in comments.

Scientists want to study whale diseases, but collecting blood is difficult and dangerous to the scientists and the whales. But whale snot is also good for analyzing whale health, and whales shoot it out of their blowholes freely and frequently. The trick is in collecting it.

Dr. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse of the Zoological Society of London things remote control helicopters are the answer.

Her recent paper in Animal Conservation (abstract), irresistibly entitled "A novel non-invasive tool for disease surveillance of free-ranging whales and its relevance to conservation programs," introduces the ground-breaking methodology of strapping a petri dish to a toy RC helicopter and flying it into the spout.

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It Shoots Monkeys (Thanks, Jessemoya!)

In the tribunal hearing, IP Australia, the government body that oversees trademark applications, said Apple overlooked the fact that there were already a large number of products that have the "i" prefix, for example iSkin and iSoft to name just two, all of which are operating in the same class of electronic goods as Apple.

The registrar overseeing the case Michael Kirov, who confessed to being a tech head and a fan of Apple's products, judged that Apple failed to demonstrate that a "person of ordinary intelligence and memory" would automatically assume that just because a product carries the letter "i" it is an Apple product.

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Tired of an old, clunky printer destroying more paper than it prints? Instructables user laxap helps along a printer aspiring to be a shredder by gutting it and installing an actual shredder. Almost as fun as smashing the thing to bits, like in Office Space.

(This just in: Apparently Andy Rooney is still alive.)

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/thanks-advertising-for-ruining-another-cherished-movie-cliche/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/an-alternative-to-the-atomic-bomb/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/an-alternative-to-the-atomic-bomb/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:32:20 +0000 Lisa Katayama tag:www.boingboing.net,2010://1.71584
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A geologist proposed bombing Japan's volcanoes to win the war in a January 1944 issue of Popular Science. [via Google Books via Pink Tentacle]

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/an-alternative-to-the-atomic-bomb/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/back-in-stock-gakken-sx-150/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/back-in-stock-gakken-sx-150/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:30:00 +0000 Maker Shed http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/03/back_in_stock_gakken_sx-150.html
The Gakken SX-150 is one of the most popular kits in the Maker Shed, and we just got a fresh new supply! We have posted a lot of projects that involve hacking and modifying of the SX-150. We've see Arduino controlled versions, fooling around with plasma, incredible analog cassette hacks, button mods, and more! Collin did a really nice video review too! Did you hack and mod your SX-150? Are you planning on it? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

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Yet our industry faces the relentless challenge of the theft of its creative content, a challenge extracting an increasingly unbearable cost.

Product page

]]> http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/laptop-sleeve-made-out-of-recycled-wetsuits/feed/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/cardboard-horse-to-hide-paper-tiger/ http://clickworldnews.com/2010/03/12/cardboard-horse-to-hide-paper-tiger/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 +0000 Matt Mets http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/03/_httppaperforestblogspotcom201003me.html

Artists Juniper and T.J. Tangpuz built this paper horse out of cardboard and wire ties. Most impressive! [via boing boing]

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Lately we've had lots of folks writing in seeking practical advice on collecting tissue samples for use in studying whaleborne disease. I had no idea there were so many amateur cetopathologists out there!

Anyway, as you folks know--all too well, I'm sure--it is extremely difficult to collect blood from a wild whale without injuring or killing it in the process. However, and as even a child can tell you, the next best thing to live whale blood is live whale snot. Turns out it spews from their blowholes when they exhale, so the process is really very simple:

1. Find whale.
2. Hold petri dish over blowhole to intercept spout.
3. Return to lab, enjoy sample.

Step 2 is actually the hard part. And although your first instinct may be to just jump in your rowboat, paddle out to a whale pod, lean way out over the side with your sample container, and wait, that's actually not as safe as it might sound. Each year, untold millions of scientists die attempting this maneuver. Their sun-bleached bones litter beaches all along the Pacific coast.

Enter Dr. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, of the Zoological Society of London. Her recent paper in Animal Conservation (abstract), irresistibly entitled "A novel non-invasive tool for disease surveillance of free-ranging whales and its relevance to conservation programs," introduces the ground-breaking methodology of strapping a petri dish to a toy RC helicopter and flying it into the spout. This landmark work stands not only to revolutionize our understanding of whale disease, but to save countless lives, and establishes Dr. Acevedo-Whitehouse as a serious contender for this year's (Ig) Nobel Prize.

[via The Thoughtful Animal]

P.S. Dr. Acevedo-Whitehouse, you are made of awesome. And although I have never met you and probably never will, I love you with all my heart.

If you do decide to bring kumquats into your kitchen, you'll find that they're pretty versatile. You can eat them raw, cooked, candied, pickled, or as a marmalade. Even just tossing a few peels of the rind can add a ton of flavor to anything. They also last a few weeks in the fridge, so you'll have some time to contemplate and experiment — but you better get them quick because they're a mid-winter fruit, and spring is just around the corner. My favorite rendition of kumquat was on white fish, sea bass it might have been, at some fancy restaurant in San Francisco. So tasty.

Kumquats are full of vitamin C and potassium; in Japan, it is called kinkan, also the name of a popular over-the-counter drug brand that makes remedies for sore muscles, sore throat, and mosquito bites.

Kumquats were originally found in China, but have made their way to Japan, Europe, and North America; Dade City, Florida even has a Kumquat Festival every winter to celebrate its harvest.

Image via Miss Meister's Flickr

"We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball... There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff. It's a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie.... The idea that there's a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly when they're stealing stuff. No. There should be the same level of sanctity as there is around property. Content is no different. They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them."

"Fans remain the best salesmen of our content, even if that behavior is on the borderline of piracy. Danger of the new world is that we must concede that we'll lose some control."

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Freedom to film (Thanks, Saleha!)

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What do you do when your toddler's having trouble reaching the buttons on the guitar for Beatles Rock Band? Why, modify it and make an Instructable, that's what!

Toddler's Guitar Hero controller

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