Children's book about ghosts (and zombies)

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:43:14 PDT

There Are No Ghosts is a delightful and creepy children's book written by my niece Amanda Pescovitz, a high school senior, and illustrated by her classmate Ellen Wang. The book was born from an award-winning poem that inspired the fantastic (and fantastical) art. The illustrations landed a silver key in a Scholastic Art competition. While [...]

BBC radiophonic sound experiment from 1957

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:24:36 PDT

From 1957, "Private Dreams and Public Nightmares," an incredibly weird and fantastic BBC sound experiment by writer Frederick Bradnum, pioneering electronic music composer Daphne Oram, and producer Donald McWhinnie. Oram went on to co-found the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the massively influential sound effects and music studio. From McWhinnie's narration introducing the piece: This programme is [...]

Help Wanted ads for Torturer, Abuser, Kidnapper

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:07:38 PDT

Above, an ad that recently ran in The Guardian newspaper. “The government of a Middle Eastern state is recruiting a senior torturer to work in a well-equipped prison. Our ideal candidate would be prepared to inflict extreme pain and suffering… Candidates will be expected to inspire a small but enthusiastic team." The ad is part [...]

Slime computes freeways systems

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:55:05 PDT

We've posted before about researchers exploring slime molds as a kind of bio-computer capable of some amazing accomplishments in information processing. Recently, computer scientist Andrew Adamtzky of the University of the West of England in Bristol and his colleagues used a slime mold to devise optimal internet highway systems for the United States, Britain, Mexico, [...]

Former Warner Music CTO: Of course leaked albums drive sales!

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:45:23 PDT

On Twitter, former Warner Music CTO Ethan Kaplan greets the "surprising" news that file sharing of pre-release albums drives demand with acerbic and admirable sarcasm: "Let me simplify this answer: YES IT LEADS TO MORE SALES. DEMAND = DEMAND W/ $$$$$$ IF PRODUCT GOOD." Simplified further: MUSIC BUSINESS (RECORDED): your product isn't diamonds mined from [...]

Exhibition of invisible art

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:36:47 PDT

London's Hayward Gallery is mounting an exhibition of Invisible Art. The exhibition includes pieces such as Andy Warhol's Invisible Sculpture, essentially an empty pedestal, and, seen above, Tom Friedman's "1000 Hours of Staring," a large blank sheet of paper that he looked at repeatedly over five years. They should play John Cage's 4'33" as the [...]

"Brass knuckles" iPhone case

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:24:18 PDT

OK, they're not brass, they're aluminum. Knuckle Case for iPhone (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)

Toronto neighbours turn their laneway into a garage-door art-gallery

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:00:37 PDT

A pair of Toronto neighbours, Elly Dowson and Christine Liber, set out to cover the coach-house doors in their laneway with awesome murals. This was in the context of an edict from Toronto's dipshit mayor, Rob Ford, who has instituted fines for property owners who don't remove graffiti from their premises. Dowson and Liber figured [...]

Conclusions from studying 20 file-sharing papers

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:18:46 PDT

Zeropaid's Drew Wilson has wrapped up his series examining 20 studies that looked at the impact of filesharing on the sales of entertainment products (previously). He's summed up his conclusions based on the project, comparing the entire corpus to the notorious "Phoenix study" that was used as "evidence" for SOPA: Claim: One of the claims [...]

Proposed US law makes domestic propaganda legal

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:00:25 PDT

Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings reports on a revision to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987, which prohibit the use of government disinformation and propaganda campaigns within the USA. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State, would allow the US government to [...]

Upside Comics: UK charity that uses comics to promote literacy

Mon, 21 May 2012 07:14:40 PDT

This weekend, I took my daughter to the Kapow! comics fair in Islington, London, and happened on the Upside Comics booth. Upside is a charitable trust that promotes literacy using comics. They run comics-creation workshops for kids, produce pro-literacy comics, and bibliographies of great kids' comics. They're looking for donations of comics and graphic novels, [...]

Free edu-comic about genomics and stem cells, written by Ken Macleod

Mon, 21 May 2012 07:09:27 PDT

Ken Macleod and the European stem cell research consortium OptiStem have produced a CC-licensed educational comic about genomics called "Hope Beyond Hype." It's available as a free download, or as a &gbp;1 hardcopy, with translations to follow in many languages. 'starts with the true life story of two badly burned boys being treated with stem [...]

Did the Kansas legislature just accidentally prevent itself from banning gay marriage?

Mon, 21 May 2012 06:51:44 PDT

Read the text of the "anti-Sharia" bill that passed in the Kansas state legislature last week. I'm no legal scholar, but it sure does seem like you could use this to make a case that it's now illegal to ban gay marriage in the state of Kansas. If so, that would be an amusing bit [...]

Overjoyed frog gives unicorn chaser a run for its money

Mon, 21 May 2012 06:41:54 PDT

Photographer Joel Sartore has been shooting nature for 20 years—long enough to amass a great collection of images you can check out at the New York Times. “The whole point of this project is to really be able to look these creatures in the eye and get to know them,” he said. The animals are [...]

Inside the world's most-studied forest

Mon, 21 May 2012 06:00:03 PDT

I'm currently attending the Marine Biological Laboratory's 10-day science journalism fellowship. As part of that, I get to do some hands-on science experiments and get a better perspective on how the work of science is done and how data is collected. Along with five other fellows, I spent last weekend collecting A LOT of data [...]

How past land use affects the current landscape

Mon, 21 May 2012 05:35:40 PDT

Do you see how the ground level is higher on the left-hand side of this photo? To the right of the stone wall, the ground distinctly drops by a foot or more. That wall is more than 200 years old. It marks the border between what was once a plowed field (on the left) and [...]

The history of the U.S. electric grid

Mon, 21 May 2012 05:08:14 PDT

Where did our electric grid come from? It's a complicated question to answer. That's because the grid we have today didn't come from any single place. Instead, its origins are scattered, distributed geographically, technologically, and philosophically. Different people built different parts of the grid in different ways and for different reasons. For many years—up until [...]

Scientific research in a forest

Mon, 21 May 2012 04:54:04 PDT

I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the Harvard Forest—the most-studied forest in the world. It's an interesting place, with a complicated history. Originally forest, it was clear-cut in the decades following European settlement. By 1830, less than 90% of this part of Massachusetts had any forest left. But that trend had already begun to [...]

Game of Thrones S2E8: It's family stuff

Mon, 21 May 2012 04:00:31 PDT

Ravens are a big deal in the Game of Thrones universe. They’re used to transmit information from one place to another, and often seem to be portents of death. This week’s episode begins with a whole dead basket of ‘em, as Prince Theon, in his latest act of swaggering idiocy, has killed all of Winterfell’s [...]

The Dictator

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:42:39 PDT

Unless you've recently had a bag on your head to be specially renditioned, are related to murdered Israeli athletes, don't like lesbian kisses, cock, dildo or pussy jokes, and unless you think that cancer, torture, dwarves, Jews, Arabs, infanticide, paedophilia, prostitution, incest, rape, anti-Semitism, casual racism or misogyny are inappropriate subjects for jokes, then it [...]

Marine nomad kid hitches a ride on a shark

Sun, 20 May 2012 22:09:36 PDT

In National Geographic, a rare moment of marine nomadism, as a sea nomad child called Enal hitches a ride by holding onto the tail of his friend, a tawny nurse shark. The picture is by James Morgan, submitted to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest (Top prize: Photo expedition for two to the Galapagos with [...]

Rolling Stone: "Ed Piskor is the Next Big Thing in Books"

Sun, 20 May 2012 19:37:35 PDT

Rolling Stone just announced something that we have known for a long time: Ed Piskor (our own Brain Rot cartoonist) is a hell of a talented cartoonist. I have an advance copy of his upcoming book, Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker, and it is a masterpiece. I'm going to be interviewing Ed on Gweek [...]

Robin Gibb, 1/3 of the Bee Gees, has died of cancer at 62

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:48:59 PDT

Photo: Robin Gibb. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor, 2008. From multiple sources today: One of the three Bee Gees has died. Robin Gibb was 62 years old, and was diagnosed two years ago with colon and liver cancer that responded to treatment, then returned and spread. "The family of Robin Gibb, of the Bee Gees, announce with great [...]

Live indie web video coverage of NATO protest in Chicago: many streams, one post

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:42:53 PDT

[Tim Pool: @timcast on Twitter, Ustream video feed.] UPDATE, 4pm PT: Reports from Chicago of police attacking protesters and journalists, chemical weapons being readied for use, and possibile imminent "weaponized" use of LRAD. In this post, embeds for some of the known live independent web video streams covering the NATO protests in Chicago today. Community [...]

Tracking the arrest and harassment of journalists at US protests

Sun, 20 May 2012 12:27:28 PDT

Josh Stearns has an update on police harassment, detention, and arrest incidents involving journalists at protests this weekend. He says, "I have been tracking, confirming and verifying reports of journalist arrests at Occupy protests all over the country since September. Help me by sending tips and tweets to @jcstearns and tagging reports of press suppression [...]

Child delivers balloon-inspired call for empathy to father

Sun, 20 May 2012 12:09:57 PDT

Simonhac sez, "Today I armed my kids with unrolled paperclips and asked them to pop the two-week-old helium balloons that have been kicking around our house at ground level since my daughter's birthday. I was not aware that my 8 year old daughter had given the balloons personalities and was really not happy with my [...]

Earthquake and bombs in Italy: An eyewitness report from Jasmina Tesanovic

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:36:48 PDT

[Video Link.] A weekend of fear and mourning in Italy. Early this Sunday morning, an earthquake struck near Bologna: at least six killed (ceramic workers, and a hundred year old person), and big material damage in the region. The US Geological Survey heard the tremor: a magnitude-6.0 quake struck at 4:04 a.m. Sunday between Modena [...]

NATO protests in Chicago: Police van drives into protesters, web video reporters detained, held at gunpoint (photos+video)

Sun, 20 May 2012 09:40:34 PDT

Photo: C.S. Muncy "Occupy" movement participants and an array of protest groups are among those gathering in Chicago this wekeend to demonstrate outside the NATO summit. Sunday, protesters are ramping up for the largest demonstration of the weekend. So are police and Homeland Security agents. Today, thousands of demonstrators are marching to the convention center [...]

Nebula Award winners announced

Sun, 20 May 2012 09:14:12 PDT

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Nebula Awards, especially to Jo Walton, who won for her magnificent novel, Among Others (see my review, here). Also congrats to Delia Sherman for her best YA book prize for The Freedom Maze (my review). * Novel Winner: Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor) * Novella Winner: ”The Man [...]

Making a shot-glass out of a jawbreaker

Sun, 20 May 2012 05:55:49 PDT

Last summer, Hifijohn successfully turned a giant jawbreaker on his lathe, making a beautiful, striped and striated shot glass (or egg cup) out of it: "My third attempt at turn a giant jawbreaker. I put some of my guitar playing songs to make the video a little bit more enjoyable." new jawbreaker video (via JWZ)