Saturday, February 28, 2009

Vicodin earrings

Vicodin earrings: "200902231041




Becky Stern had some leftover Vicodin tablets from her recent knee operation, so naturally she fashioned them into a pair of Vicodin earrings.

As I posted earlier, Becky also created an embroidered replica of her knee MRI. I really like the way she turned this otherwise painful and time-sucking event into an opportunity to create some cool works of art.






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Skinless skin-tight cycling outfit

Skinless skin-tight cycling outfit: "


Tomek Pietek created this anatomical cycling gear -- not sure if it ever went into production or just existed as a portfolio piece, but it's sure striking. Finally, a good use for elasticated athletic wear!



Muscle - Skin suit

(via Street Anatomy)








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(Via Boing Boing.)

Tourists reenacting the cover of Abbey Road -- timelapse video

Tourists reenacting the cover of Abbey Road -- timelapse video: "


'Garble Arch' is a short timelapse film of tourists at the Abbey Road zebra crossing reenacting the iconic cover of the Beatles album. London's full of spots like these, where tourism and the needs of locals to get their life underway collide; my favorite are the luxury flats that line the route of the (absolutely excellent) Jack the Ripper tours of east London. All summer long, as they dine with their windows flung open to catch the evening breeze, out-of-work actors stand beneath them with groups of tourists, propounding the grisly deaths that Jack the Ripper wrought on this very spot, lovingly describing the slaughter as they try to get some supper down.


Blame Ringo - Garble Arch (A Day in the Life of Abbey Road)

(via Kottke)






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Neil Gaiman waxes sensible on Kindle Audiobooks and the redonkulous Author's Guild

Neil Gaiman waxes sensible on Kindle Audiobooks and the redonkulous Author's Guild: "For those of you who are outraged (as I am) to discover that the Authors' Guild believes that a piece of software that can read an ebook aloud infringes copyright by 'performing' the work as an audiobook, here's Neil Gaiman being unbelievably sensible on the subject.


When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.


What he said, but with no-severance layoffs for anyone who is blowing potential marketing dollars for audiobooks on pursuing this fool's errand. The Authors' Guild is hell-bent on convincing the world that ripping off authors is OK, because we're a bunch of greedy jerks like the record industry.


Quick argument summary








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(Via Boing Boing.)

1,234,567,890 Seconds Since Unix Time Began

1,234,567,890 Seconds Since Unix Time Began: "os2man was one of many readers to let us know that later on today, at 23:31:30 UTC (30 seconds after this story went live), the number of seconds since January 1st 1970 will be exactly 1234567890. January 1st, 1970 marks the start of the clock for the Unix operating system and many other operating systems. Here is a list of celebrations of the moment around the world.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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(Via Clippings.)

Monday, February 9, 2009

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

a must read or listen

Anathem by Neal Stephenson: "Let's take a trip through time, space, and the history of human thought. The journey starts with the observations and suppositions of ancient philosophers, gains both credence and clarity through the development of the rules of logic, and eventually leads all the way to modern theories of everything, including the possible existence of not one but multiple universes and realities. That's the goal here and it succeeds better than any work of fiction with such ambitions has a right to."



(Via SF Site.)

Name this Insect

Mary, any idea>

Name this Insect: "


Bizarre insect



(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

No doubt some BB reader can name this far-fetched creature, which I found pinned to some styrofoam in a display case at the Butterfly Museum in Boca Raton, Florida. Picture yourself camping somewhere in the wilderness and seeing one of these six-inch weirdos zooming into your tent. I have to wonder why such a thing should evolve the way it did, especially with that weird extra pair of wings, like the canard on one of Burt Rutan’s composite airplanes.

The museum is a fun place to visit, allowing you to walk through giant cages full of freshly hatched butterflies. Watching people trying to photograph them is highly entertaining, since butterflies move chaotically while flying and then, as soon as they land, most of them close their wings.

It was much easier to take pictures of the insects that were dead.






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Colorado Man Robs Store with Klingon Bat'leth

Colorado Man Robs Store with Klingon Bat'leth: "klingon020409.jpg

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.




According to a Denver local news report, and reported on io9, a man wielding a Klingon Bat'leth (Sword of Honor), has robbed two 7-Elevens. Kahless must be so proud.

[Via Bonnie Burton's Twitter feed]






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Ziggy Stardust remix album

Ziggy Stardust remix album: "


Mashup genius dj BC sez, 'Bowie's classic glam album, remixed, mashed-up and spaced-out. With bootleg mixes and mashups from myself, ATOM, A plus D (Bootie), World Famous Audio Hacker, and ToToM. Videos from VJ Brewski and AJ 'Hatperson' Mazur. (You may remember AJ as the genius behind the now legendary 'Cooking By The Book' video.) Art by the very talented Shana B.

This record has been in the works since 'Wu Orleans' but the arrival of my daughter and some 'official' releases distracted me, and drove me to seek help completing it. And I am glad I did. A+D's MGMT mashup and ATOM's 'Star Man' remix are nothing short of genius.'


ZIGGY STARDUST REMIXED

(Thanks, dj BC!)






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(Via Boing Boing.)

How Lost bends the rules

How Lost bends the rules: "Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.


A show as complicated as 'Lost' deserves an equally complicated spoiler alert: if you have never seen an episode of 'Lost' past, say, Season Two, and plan on immersing yourself in the show sometime soon, you might want to bookmark this post and revisit sometime in the future, once you've gotten up to speed. Otherwise I will keep this relatively vague, so that hardcore fans (for whom there will be no surprises) and Lost-dabblers can both read with no worries.


I posted yesterday about the often insurmountable complexity of seasons 1-4 of 'Lost,' but the first episode of season five held out the distinct possibility that that complexity might well be conquered by the end of the series. Not just because all the questions would be dutifully answered in some kind of contrived, ad-hoc fashion, but because the events in last night's episode suggest--in a way that earlier episodes have only delicately hinted-- that all the madness of the last four years, all the implausible speeches, connections, surprises, and attacks, have at their root one small change in the core bylaws of Reality As We Know It.


This is a formal innovation worth noting, though of course it's unclear from just a single episode whether the innovation has long-term significance or whether it turns out to be just another distraction. But I'm rooting for the former: 'Lost' has the unique opportunity of proving you can build a narrative of mesmerizing implausibility that ultimately turns out to be entirely plausible simply by changing one elemental rule of the universe--and then not telling your audience about the rule change until the third act. Mainstream entertainment toys with the conventions of reality constantly (see Back to the Future, or pretty much every Jim Carrey movie) but invariably it lets the audience in on the rule changes early in the story. 'Lost,' not surprisingly, is playing hard-to-get with its revelations: not just in the backstory and mythology of its characters, but the basic laws of the genre.


That a mass audience is willing to embrace this kind of storytelling innovation is truly remarkable, and has a kind of sign-of-the-times quality to it. (The ultra-complex serial narrative show is to our own moment what the concept album was to the late sixties culture.) In a small way, 'Lost' was actually an inspiration for The Invention of Air: I had a moment early in trying to figure out what the book would be like when I imagined that I would write a founding fathers history book that would be structured like a season of 'Lost.' (There's a middle chapter, for instance, that jumps back 300 million years, to the Carboniferous Era, before zooming back to the late 18th-century.) It's probably good that I didn't fully try to emulate 'Lost' in the end, but just the fact that one could look to a prime time network mega-hit for inspiration in writing a book of science history is a sign that something has changed -- most of what I was watching as a kid in the seventies would not have been quite as inspirational.


I'm sure there are plenty of strong opinions about last night's episode: I hereby declare the comments thread below open to all spoilers. If you haven't seen the show yet, you are duly warned.







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(Via Clippings.)

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Life of Christ in Cats

meowlol.

The Life of Christ in Cats: "The Life of Christ in Cats



I think this has been around the internet forever, but I don't recall having blogged it before. Life of Christ in Cats (Thanks, R. Stevens)






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Creepy public service comic book about bike safety (1972)

kewlbike stuff

Creepy public service comic book about bike safety (1972): "Picture 2-2


In 1972 the Highway Safety Division of Virginia published a comic book for kids about bike safety called Danny and the Demoncycle . It stars a young sociopath named Danny who enjoys riding his bike in such as way as to cause the death of innocent people. He changes his ways after having a dream involving Satan and a 'demoncycle' that takes him on a ride so wild that even Danny can't handle it. After that, he becomes an exemplary lad, following bicycle safety rules to the letter and admonishing anyone who doesn't.

This is the latest addition to the 'Comics with Problems' library, curated by Ethan Persoff.






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(Via Boing Boing.)

Another stupid fear-mongering cover from Time magazine (1972)

Another stupid fear-mongering cover from Time magazine (1972): "200902021203

Time has long history of running cover stories designed to whip up artificial frenzies. The hood on this Satanist has some nice embroidery on it. I wonder if Jenny Hart's seen it?







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(Via Boing Boing.)