"Joey! It's Chris from Sloan!"LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing]
Once again, Sloan may not be familiar to people outside Canada, but they were -- at least until their current album, which ain't so hot -- a band with a knack for really good songwriting."Play some Sloan! Do you know any Sloan? Play some Sloan!" she screamed.
I started playing their first big single, the grunge anthem of unrequited university love, Underwhelmed:
She was underwhelmed if that's a word
I know it's not 'cause I looked it up
It's one of those things I learned in my school...
Chris' face first showed curiosity. Then it showed recognition. Followed by shock. And then we didn't see his face at all."He's...he's running away!" said Meryle, who burst out laughing.
"Come back, you coward!" I yelled. "Even Alanis would've faced me!"
Chronicle Books editor Alan Rapp shared this photo with BoingBoing co-editor David Pescovitz (see this website if you don't get the joke). More stuff from readers:
Australian blogger Andrew Bulhak shot these photos (one and two) of masked mannequins in a Melbourne storefront. Sean spotted a SARSparilla ad and the Official SARS Website which will totally flip out and kick your ass.
Charles V. painted this for you, e-mail him to purchase prints.
Eli the Bearded points us to this story from North Korea claiming creation of a wacky new anti-SARS drug made from ginseng, gold, and platinum. Charlie O in Seattle submits this on-stage snapshot of indie band Melt Banana's guitarist: "I didn't get a chance to ask him if this was just for the stage, but he played the whole set in a facemask."
Canadian BoingBoing reader Kean Soo writes: "I only recently discovered sarsart.org, but wish I had found it sooner. I've already been exposed to some of the direct-and-less-than-savoury discrimination as an Asian living here in Toronto. Since then, I've been obsessed with SARS, and since I've been keeping a semi-daily journal comic online, I figured I would write about it in some way. It isn't finished, but I do have one panel that I turned into a wallpaper."
Blogger kaminogoya from Osaka, Japan found the provocative photo at left (Link to full-size image). If anyone knows who took the shot, please let me know.
Taiwanese blogger Wei-Chung Yang says, "I noticed that your project doesn't include any works from Taiwanese artists, so here are some of mine. I created a comic series that combines the two hottest issues in Taiwan right now - SARS, and the hugely popular TV show, Taiwan Thunder Fire, whose protagonist also plays a starring role in my blog comic. His name is Liu Wen-Tsung the Beast, played by Taiwanese actor Ching Young. Liu Wen-Tsung is a 'never-nice' guy -- he bankrupted his own father, and killed a bunch of people for personal gain. But he's cool, tough, and loved by the TV audience, hence his nickname 'the Beast' . So, my comic is called The Diary of the Beast about SARS."View Wei-Chung Yang's amazing contributions here.
Discuss. Read about it in The South China Morning Posthere (600k JPEG). Future contributions will be added to the SARS Art Project Archive website, and we may post brief updates on BoingBoing from time to time. Much gratitude to each of the artists and bloggers who contributed, and to Sean Bonner for building sarsart.org. Very special thanks to Reverse Cowgirl for introducing us to many of the illustrators and artists who generously created original works exclusively for this project. Susannah, this wouldn't have happened without you.
[Boing Boing]
LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing]
First, there's the issue of whether a computational model can, in any amount of time, solve a certain problem. Recall that it was Turing's proof that there are problems that the Turing machine cannot solve, notably the Halting Problem. This is an extension of Godel's incompleteness principle. Keep this in mind: Turing's accomplishment was not showing the universality of the machine, although he did do that; it was in showing the fundamental limits of it.
Now even given two models that can solve a problem, there's still performance questions. This isn't a trivial difference; a model that can solve a problem in polynomial time really is fundamentally more powerful than one that takes exponential time. And there are tons of computational complexity classes above the standard P and NP that represent problems that deterministic and non-deterministic Turing Machines can solve in polynomial time. Just for one example, the class of problems that can be solved by a Turing Machine that can, in turn, use another Turing Machine as an oracle is more powerful than a single Turing Machine.
Update: the movie's official url hasn't been announced, but in a bored moment of idle whois-ing, I queried robotsmovie.com -- and 20th Century Fox Films owns it. Link to Hollywood Reporter story,
Mattel, Burger King, Kellogg's, Keebler, Hewlett-Packard, HarperCollins and Vivendi Universal Games have signed on as promotional partners for the film's release. Set in a world composed entirely of robots -- designed by William Joyce ("Rolie Polie Olie") -- the Lowell Ganz- and Babaloo Mandel-scripted project centers on Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor), a young genius inventor who dreams of making the world a better place. Berry voices Cappy, a sexy executive rebot with whom Rodney is instantly smitten. Other lead voices include the nefarious corporate tyrant Ratchet (yet to be cast), who locks horns with Rodney, and Big Weld (Brooks), a master inventor who has lost his way. Other characters include a group of misfit robots known as the Rusties.
Amazing Star Wars-themed casemods: Darth Vader shown at left (Hey! Note the OS!), Falcon Battleship, and my favorite: Rebel Forces. Discuss (Thanks, David!)
[Boing Boing]
"Impeach Bush" Spreads
From the Indymedia-set to the New York Times's Op-Ed pages: "impeach Bush" spreads. [Kuro5hin.org]
LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing]
There have been many contenders, but for inspiring life-long loathing and contempt, nothing beats The Lord of the Rings. The childish storytelling, the valetudinarian mythologising, Tolkien's lack of any feel for language, description, landscape, emotion or confrontation, the desire to garotte Pippin and Merry in a dark alley ¬ how can so many readers have put up with such codswallop for so long? -- John Walsh: Author and Independent columnist
I've never understood the point. It's strange, weird and frightening, and makes me feel like I'm on the sidelines of a joke I don't understand. -- Alain De Botton: Author and philosopher
Anything about Gandalf, and those little things with hair between their toes. I hate that sort of portentous, phoney, medieval-magical way of writing. -- Sir John Mortimer: Author and creator of Rumpole
"They, like, don't know anything," said Mary, 14, giggling.LinkDiscuss"They're, like, do you like Michael Jackson?" said Karen, 14, rolling her eyes at just how out of it adults can be.
Probably the youngest instructors ever in an FBI classroom, the girls have become an invaluable help to Operation Innocent Images -- an initiative that tries to stop people from peddling child pornography or otherwise sexually exploiting children, FBI officials said. The Washington Post agreed to withhold the girls' last names to protect them from harassment on the Internet and elsewhere.
(via Kottke) [Boing Boing]
LinkDiscuss
The afternoon that Erin Carter was interrogated by two FBI agents, the Chapel Hill High student and a friend went to have the officer’s business card, which bore the organization’s name, laminated.
Looking back, she considers that a good move.
The two Chapel Hill police officers are under investigation for having allegedly misrepresented themselves as FBI agents and have been placed on administrative leave with pay pending further investigation, Chapel Hill Police Chief Gregg Jarvies announced Thursday.
(Thanks, Zed!) [Boing Boing]
This morning on The Current, a CBC radio show, Bob MacDonald (the CBC's science commentator and host of the brilliant show Quirks and Quarks), was asked to justify the expense of the space program. Among other things, he said:
"It costs NASA less to send a probe to Mars than it would cost Hollywood to make a movie about it"LinkDiscuss
(Thanks, paulbel!) [Boing Boing]
1. The one where Buffy slays a bunch of vampires. 2. The one where one of the main characters gets... [TeeVee]
Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. Harry Knowles reviews a shot-for-shot remake of Speilberg's classic movie done, over the span of seven years, by 10-11-12 year olds. Speilberg, upon seeing it, was "astonished" at its "ingenuity and imagination." There's even a preview. [metafilter.com]
Pixar's newest kid flick good enough for adults, Finding Nemo was proceeded by a "classic" Pixar short, KnickKnack. The weird thing is that they felt compelled to change 2 characters (the "bathing beauty" and the mermaid) from a ridiculously geometric, cartoony bosomy shape to flat chested. What gives here?
This reminds me of the changes Spielberg made in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and of course, the regrettable Greedo shooting incident in Lucas' Star Wars: A New Hope.
My question is: When is it right to change an existing work, for whatever reason? [metafilter.com]
The origins of the Star-Spangled Banner may come as a surprise to many Americans. The tune was originally that of an old English drinking song about a gentlemen's club, the Anacreontic Society. Of course, the words may have changed, but the song remains the same.
Thanks to Adbusters for the spark. [metafilter.com]
News.Com: Microsoft to abandon standalone IE. This means that to get a new version of the browser you'll have to install a new version of the operating system? Also, what about the Mac version of IE? Again, Web developers never asked to be Microsoft developers, now they think we should be Windows developers. Oy. [Scripting News]
The Unh project: colleted comic-panels with "guttural moans."LinkDiscuss
(via The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the Twenty-First Century)
