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Distributed Boing Boing

A distributed circumvention of SmartFilter's Boing Boing blocking.
In February 2006, Boing Boing was added to the list of sites blocked by SmartFilter, making it inaccessible to people in various countries and organizations. Although one can argue the merits of censorship either way, I'm personally against it. Distributed Boing Boing is my attempt at protest

Curiosity is bliss: BoingBoing Ad Remover

So here is "BoingBoing Butler" (requires Greasemonkey), which hides all non-content from BoingBoing.

Boing Boing Firefox Search Plug-in

I finally got around to updating the Boing Boing search plugin for Firefox that I wrote sometime last year, sorry it took so long! (To all the five or so people that used it.)[winking face]

BoingBoing Search Engine

BoingBoing Search Engine. Discover, browse and search BoingBoing sites. A custom search engine featuring hand-selected BoingBoing resources, created by jeffryv.

BoingBoing 

The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn,

The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn, "playfully explores the etymology and history of hundreds of...

Dr. Housing Bubble Interview

I hope Boing Boing readers enjoyed yesterday's interview with Charles Hugh Smith. Today I'm post...

The government subsidies behind Cindy McCain's family fortune

(I admit the reason I'm posting is this is because the image is funny.) John McCain has made no bone...

Mister Jalopy interviews the folks at Illuminati Motor Works

Mister Jalopy interviewed the folks at Illuminati Motor Works, who are competing in the Automotive X...

Homes made from shipping containers

Treehugger has a collection of a dozen fantastic, recession-compliant homes and buildings made from...

Australia's Great Firewall: just like China, Syria and other "free" countries

Andy sez, In a move that seems to be happening without comment from the Australian media, the Austra...

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets our anonymous "sauce" ponied up an ad for the 20 separate editions of W...

A special message from Ringo Starr - no more fan mail after Oct. 20

You have just five days to send stuff to Ringo to get it autographed. Hurry, hurry. Don't get shut o...

McCain To ACORN: You Are 'What Makes America Special'

John McCain used to like ACORN, back when it was convenient for him to do so. Here's a video of him...

Krazy Krax 1954 gag looks like a broken TV screen

On eBay: a decal that makes it look like the TV screen is smashed. "After watching the victim's cons...

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The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn,

The Idler's Glossary, by Joshua Glenn, "playfully explores the etymology and history of hundreds of idler-specific terms and phrases, while offering both a corrective to popular misconceptions about idling and a foundation for a new mode of thinking about working and not working" is now available on Amazon. The publisher asked me for a blurb to put on the back cover. Here's what I sent them: The Idler's Glossary is wonderful! I opened it, set it over my eyes, and took a delightful two-hour nap. Thank you so much. Here are a few examples from this worthy tome, which is illustrated by the stupendously talented Seth: bootless: Must every non-useless, non-unprofitable activity involve wearing boots? Quite the contrary, wouldn't you say? Let's start using "slipshod" to mean any activity which is not an end in itself. See: FLIP-FLOP, SLIPSHOD. bored: Being bored [a term which appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, among the smart set in the 1760s] is the condition?which Guy Debord called the "worst enemy of revolutionary activity"?of being too restless to concentrate, but too apathetic to bust a move. Fortunately, unless one's boredom becomes magnified to a sort of frustrated world-rejection, it's just a mood... and soon passes. Also note that Lin Yutang says that "philosophy began with the sense of boredom," since both involve dreaming wistfully of an ideal world. See: ACEDIA, APATHETIC, ENNUI, SPLEEN. bum: Like "queer" or "bitch," this term for a wandering mendicant has long since been re-appropriated, as in the song, "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." As opposed to the guy who sits in the same spot every day asking for a hand-out, the bum [from the German for "saunter"] roams freely throughout the city, the country, the planet: He is king of the road. See: BEGGAR, LOAF, SAUNTER. cadger: Cadging, the ancient art of imposing upon the generosity of others, is an essential skill for the would-be idler, since poverty is the easiest way to obtain a great deal of free time. According to Henry Miller, who calls it "mooching," when performed without squeamishness or reservations, cadging is both exhilarating and instructive. So long as a cadger [from the Scandinavian word for "huckster"] is generous in turn (though not necessarily in kind), he ought not to be considered a deadbeat, freeloader, or sponger. See: BEGGAR, SCROUNGER. The Idler's Glossary...

Dr. Housing Bubble Interview

I hope Boing Boing readers enjoyed yesterday's interview with Charles Hugh Smith. Today I'm posting an interview with another of my favorite bloggers, Dr. Housing Bubble. I discovered the good Doctor's blog back in early 2006 and have been a faithful reader ever since. At the time my wife was a real estate agent and the two of us became puzzled, then obsessed by the bizarre socio-economic implications of the then still-inflating housing bubble. This obsession led to discovering great blogs like Patrick.net, Professor Piggington, Peter Viles excellent blog at the LA Times, and of course, the subject of today's interview., Dr. Housing Bubble. The Doctor blogs anonymously. Perhaps this is because of his ?Home of Real Genius? posts where he highlights -- and loudly cackles about -- some of the most ridiculously overpriced real estate listings on the MLS. If staying incognito helps him do his work, I'm all for it because his blog is such an amazing resource. There is a tremendous amount of erudition, expertise and a profound understanding of both history and economics that go into his writing. Dr HB can take complex and daunting economic theories and lay them open with a surgeon's skill making them easily understood by all. This guy is good, really good. When he's on a roll (which is frequently) I've actually found myself getting jealous that I didn't think of that first or even worse, wishing I was as smart as he is! I suppose that's the best style of compliment I could give the good Doctor, isn't it? (Jealousy being such a visceral emotion...). I encourage you to check out his blog and to check it out often. The Q&A starts after the jump....

The government subsidies behind Cindy McCain's family fortune

(I admit the reason I'm posting is this is because the image is funny.) John McCain has made no bones about his disgust for greed. But as Senior Editor Radley Balko reports, his wife Cindy's fortune comes from a government-created entity that's anti-competitive and full of lobbyists and special interests. Radley Balko on the Government Subsidies Behind Cindy McCain's Family Fortune from Reason Magazine - Hit & Run...

Mister Jalopy interviews the folks at Illuminati Motor Works

Mister Jalopy interviewed the folks at Illuminati Motor Works, who are competing in the Automotive X Prize (1 Gallon of Gas, 100 Miles - $10 Million: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car"). Here's the MP3 file of the interview. Mr Jalopy interviews Illuminati Motor Works...

Homes made from shipping containers

Treehugger has a collection of a dozen fantastic, recession-compliant homes and buildings made from old shipping containers, the packets of the sea. I really like this South Melbourne playground made from everyone's favorite big steel boxes, but there's plenty more to love on the site. Last year, I nearly rented an office in a building made from pieced-together containers -- it was a beautiful space, but I ended up going with something cheaper (a space in a rotting Victorian factory in Clerkenwell). Shipping containers are cheap, plentiful and strong. I grew up surrounded by containers (and helped my dad design the Kalkinesque warehouse shown above for Northern Canada in the seventies) and always thought the interior dimensions too small, the floors too toxic and the problems of insulating and making them comfortable too challenging, but dozens of architects and shipping container designs have proven me wrong. Let's count the ways. Crate Expectations: 12 Shipping Container Housing Ideas (via Consumerist)...

Australia's Great Firewall: just like China, Syria and other "free" countries

Andy sez, In a move that seems to be happening without comment from the Australian media, the Australian government is introducing a censorship regime ostensibly targeted at stopping teenagers accessing online porn. But rather than being an opt-in system, it's "opt-out". I use the scare quotes because, and this is most insidious part, you can't actually opt out - you can merely be placed on a alternative blacklist which, instead of blocking "content innappropriate for children", block any material deemed to be illegal. The fact that it will likely reduce everyone's internet performance is secondary; It will most likely incorrectly block 1% of sites, and now what you are allowed to view online is determined and controlled by the state (although most likely quite inaccurately). The rationale is that since they're setting it up anyway, they're morally obliged to block traffic deemed illegal: "Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked ? end of story." I don't think I need to go into too much detail about the potential threat to our civil liberties. People of Australia, please write to your MPs to voice your opposition to this. No opt-out of filtered Internet (Thanks, Andy!)...

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets our anonymous "sauce" ponied up an ad for the 20 separate editions of Windows 7. Then it was back to Infomercia for the denoument, as the now-free gadgetganda-spewers explored their freedom: a handheld Dreamcast, a pac-man bikini and a new Sandisk music player couldn't save them from Pippin Cray's zealotry and retribution. Not even a screwy speak and spell. Marvin, however, escapes to another reality. Speaking of reality, we also saw RjDj, a live ambient sounscape generator, a vintage-style camera that uses 35mm film, and the RKS Gig Stand, a folding guitar caddy. Joel explored the meaning of the word "Gadget," and polished us off with a Horological LOL....

A special message from Ringo Starr - no more fan mail after Oct. 20

You have just five days to send stuff to Ringo to get it autographed. Hurry, hurry. Don't get shut out. (Via Arbroath)...

McCain To ACORN: You Are 'What Makes America Special'

John McCain used to like ACORN, back when it was convenient for him to do so. Here's a video of him heaping praise on ACORN. McCain had no trouble fraternizing with ACORN in 2006 when their political interests coincided with his. Now, his campaign is writing e-mails in his name bashing ACORN as a tool of the Obama machine. McCain To ACORN: You Are 'What Makes America Special'...

Krazy Krax 1954 gag looks like a broken TV screen

On eBay: a decal that makes it look like the TV screen is smashed. "After watching the victim's consternation, you'll agree that Krazy Krax is the perfect T.V. gag." Krazy Krax (via Retro Thing)...

Librivox free audiobook library now has 365 days' worth of continuous listening material

Hugh sez, "This past weekend, LibriVox reached an extraordinary milestone: our catalog now contains 365 days worth of free, public domain audiobooks." In the past week alone we've released numerous wonderful recordings, including: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott Abbott Middlemarch, by George Eliot Münchhausen, by Gottfried August Bürger (German) Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1, by Karl Max Les Trois mousquetaires, by Alexandre Dumas (French) Perhaps you'd like to come help us record more?blockquote> 365 Days of LibriVox Audio (Thanks, Hugh!)...

Boing Boing tv: Cafe Tacvba -- Interview and Performance (Music)

Café Tacvba (MySpace, Wikipedia) are one of the most, if not the most, imaginative and recklessly experimental indie rock bands ever to come out of Latin America. They formed in near Mexico City in the late '80s, and have been happily mutating ever since. I'm always kind of surprised when non-Spanish-speaking American friends don't know who they are -- they're sort of like the Radiohead of Mexico. Anyway, Boing Boing tv caught up with the tacubos backstage after their set at the Outside Lands festival, and our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter asked them important questions about their excellent shoes, and why lots of ladies run screaming to stage-rush them during shows (Answer: because they're awesome). Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with instructions on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast. MP4 Link is here. Sponsor Note: This episode, and other BBtv music features this month, are sponsored by the Crowdfire live music social media project. You can find images, video, and audio about the band featured in today's show at Crowdfire -- here's the search link for fan-uploads related to Café Tacvba. Related Boing Boing tv episodes from Outside Lands: * Roots Reggae Legends Toots and the Maytals (music) * Broken Social Scene: interview and live performance (music) * Galactic's "Modern New Orleans Funk" with Xeni and Russell (music) * Interview with Cold War Kids frontman Nathan Willett (music) * Andy Gould, rock band manager, dances on the labels' graves. * Primus: Xeni interviews Les and Ler (music) * Kaki King, guitar hero: performance, interview with Xeni (music) * BB Gadgets' Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed * Carney at Outside Lands - a "Boing Boing tv Bus Session." (music) * Steel Pulse founder David Hinds at Outside Lands (music) * Boing Boing tv backstage at Outside Lands: (Xeni + Russell Porter) (Special thanks to Wayneco for the magic bus, and to Virgin America for air travel.)...

Dictator birdhouses

Artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson of London Fieldworks built an installation of birdhouses based on the palaces of dictators like Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Nicolae Ceausescu. Seen here is the animal house embodiment of Ceausescu's Palace of Parliament in Bucharest. Creative Review has more. Despot Birdhouses...

Web zen: more meaty zen

moo! water gadgets sundae sausagecase sausage art jaffegg munchy box meat guttenberg's steak house rejected bbq names buche previously on web zen: meaty zen 2008 Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)...

Letters from Iceland: SomaFM's Rusty at the Iceland Airwaves festival

SomaFM founder Rusty Hodge is posting updates from the Iceland Airwaves festival this week. Here's his latest installment: We at SomaFM had made plans to cover the Iceland Airwaves music festival for SomaFM back in August. So in the last two weeks as we heard about the "economic collapse" of Iceland, we were a little nervous as to what the situation would be like over there. By the time we arrived at the Keflavik Airport and got to the Duty Free shop, we realized there wasn't anything to fear. The Duty Free was packed with people buying their allowances of liquor and wine to bring with them to Iceland- because the Duty Free is about half the price of buying liquor anywhere else in Iceland (due to the high taxes on liquor here). Although when we got on the shuttle bus to Reykjavik, there were only 15 others on it; last year the bus was mostly full. This turned out to be a false impression; 20 minutes after we got to the hotel, a bunch of other people arrived, apparently on a later bus. I guess we were just faster than the normal crowd. The "Economic Crisis" in Iceland is not being felt too hard on the streets of the city centre. In fact, if you look around, it doesn't seem like anything has happened at all. Banks are functioning like normal- I admit I was hoping to see protests and angry customers waiting for them to open. But even the branches at the big Kringlan mall seemed their normal busy self, and the people in them were happily going about their business. A few Icelanders have made reference to the "economic crisis" in the same way many Americans refer to our own banking crisis... snide comments about irresponsible bankers, distrust of the way the government will handle things, etc. When asked what has really been affected, they say it's impossible to get a mortgage or car loan right now. Prices for groceries and imported goods have gone up. Real estate prices are falling, especially in "Old Town" Reykjavik, but they'll also point out that's probably a good thing since it was overpriced to begin with. The big complaint is that everything is becoming more expensive. And you can't get a car loan. Icelanders seem to be fond of new cars judging from the cars I see on the streets. Continued after the jump....

A second home in Russia for American astronauts

Over at the New York Times, John Schwartz has a new installment in a series of pieces about current cooperation between Russia and America in space exploration: Star City has become an important second home for Americans working with their Russian counterparts, and it is about to become more important still. During the five-year gap after NASA shuts down the space shuttle program in 2010 and the next generation of spacecraft makes its debut by 2015, Russia will have the only ride for humans to the station. The gap, which was planned by the Bush administration to create the next generation of American spacecraft without significantly increasing NASA's budget, is controversial. But it is also all but inevitable, because much of the work to shut down the shuttles is under way, and the path to the new Constellation craft would be hard to compress even with additional financing. Those who work side by side with their Russian counterparts say that strong relationships and mutual respect have resulted from the many years of collaboration. And they say that whatever the broader geopolitical concerns about relying on Russia for space transportation during the five years when the United States cannot get to the space station on its own rockets, they believe that the multinational partnership that built the station will hold. For U.S. Astronauts, a Russian Second Home. See these related pieces in the series: One Way Up: U.S. Space Plan Relies on Russia, and Russia Leads Way in Space Tourism With Paid Trips Into Orbit. Image: James Hill for The New York Times. "Cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and astronaut Mike Fincke took part in a simulation exercise at a training center in Star City."...

Alan Shepard's lunar golf

One of my 2.5-year-old son's favorite books is "A Is For Astronaut: Exploring Space from A to Z." Listed under the letter "G" is "golfball," for the balls that Alan Shepard hit on the moon during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. This week, the "Question" section in the New York Times' Science Times recounts the interesting story behind Shepard's historic swings. From the NYT: ?Being a golfer,? he said, ?I thought if I could just get a club up there, and get it going through the ball at the same speed, that it would go six times as far as it would have gone here on Earth.? So with NASA's permission, he designed a club head to fit on the handle of the device the astronauts used to scoop up dust samples. (The collapsible club was brought back to Earth and became the property of the United States Golf Association.) Before the flight, he practiced using it in a space suit and made a deal that if the mission went well, ?then the last thing I was going to do, before climbing up the ladder to come home, was to whack these two golf balls.? Lunar Golf...

Physical security maxims from Argonne National Laboratory

Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) Seals has a list of "somewhat cynical and tongue-in-cheek" security maxims that are nevertheless "essentially correct 80-90% of the time (unfortunately)." Here are a few examples: Insider Risk Maxim: Most organizations will ignore or seriously underestimate the threat from insiders. Troublemaker Maxim: The probability that a security professional has been marginalized by his or her organization is proportional to his/her skill, creativity, knowledge, competence, and eagerness to provide effective security. Feynman's Maxim: An organization will fear and despise loyal vulnerability assessors and others who point out vulnerabilities or suggest security changes more than malicious adversaries. Irresponsibility Maxim: It'll often be considered ?irresponsible? to point out security vulnerabilities (including the theoretical possibility that they might exist), but you'll rarely be called irresponsible for ignoring or covering them up. Physical security maxims from Argonne National Laboratory (via Schneier)...

Bob Garfield: Presidential candidates should promise not to lie.

Bob Garfield at Ad Age proposes the radical idea that neither of America's presidential candidates should be lying during the campaign. "We're heartbroken that fabricating big lies from nominal truths has become standard operating procedure." [W]e surrendered to the sick pleasure of Mr. Straight Talk Express revealing himself as just another cynical, self-serving politician, but we're correspondingly disgusted with Mr. Change We Can Believe In, who has revealed exactly the same thing. More broadly, we're simply heartbroken that this tactic -- fabricating big lies from decontextualized elements of nominal truth -- has become, in our most important national discourse, standard operating procedure. Needless to say, if Crest or Wal-Mart or Bridgestone tried it, there would be hell (or at least lots of lawyers) to pay. Two years ago, we proposed something called The Oath, whereby every candidate would pledge, on behalf of his or her entire campaign, "not to lie or misrepresent my opponent's record and positions on the stump, in my press materials or in my advertising." The theory was that no candidate could refuse to make such a pledge, and because every trespass is now documented by the opponent or the media, nobody could dare break it. Or, as we put it back then, "The Straight Talk Express will be like that bus in 'Speed.' Take your foot off the truth gas, and the whole thing explodes." Lying Politicos McCain and Obama Should Take the Oath (AdAge)...

La Pequeña Sarah Palin (Thank you Jesus)

As previously prayed for. Video Link. (via dlisted, which has more on this piece; thanks Susannah Breslin!)...

Why people who try to bring toothpaste on a plane should be arrested

In his monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter, Bruce Schneier argues that people who try to bring 3.1 ounce tubes of toothpaste on a plane should either be treated the same as someone who tries to smuggle a gun or a bomb onto the plane, or else they should be allowed to bring the toothpaste (or shampoo) on the plane. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there's a decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great. Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There's no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them -- like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce -- the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed. The Two Classes of Airport Contraband...

Steven Hawking: in bronze and in tattoo ink

The Great Beyond blog notes two interesting ways in which physicist Stephen Hawking is being honored as of late: A ten foot bronze statue outside his office at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. And a large tattoo on the right leg of Brighton tattoo artist Jack Newton. From The Argus: The text below the grinning image of Professor Hawking reads ?He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy?. The quote is taken from Monty Python's cult film Life Of Brian and is a nod to Professor Hawking's discoveries, which have given a scientific explanation for the beginning of the universe... It has already caused a stir in the tattoo world, winning two trophies at conventions. Jack, 23, said Professor Hawking, who suffers from a type of motor neurone disease, was one of his heroes. He has read the professor's best-selling book A Brief History Of Time but said he did not understand it all. He said: ?I respect him in quite a few different ways. ?He has worked on some groundbreaking scientific research and is an amazing example of how illness does not necessarily stop a man. ?He's an inspirational man.? Brighton tattoo artist has Hawking ink (The Argus), New bronze to honour Prof Hawking (Cambridge News)...

Daft Punk designer toys

French electronica duo Daft Punk have been transformed into a pair of Medicom Be@rbricks designer toys. They come in pairs and are almost a foot tall. Daft Punk vinyl toys...

Canada elects 34 copyfighters to Parliament

Michael Geist sez, "Boing Boing covered the copyright pledge during the Canadian election campaign. Following last night's election, 34 candidates that supported fair copyright are now Members of Parliament including 11 Liberals and 23 New Democrats." While copyright reform is unlikely to emerge as a top legislative priority in the current economic environment, there is little doubt that the Conservative minority government will return to the issue (whether Jim Prentice leads that charge as Industry Minister or shifts to Foreign Affairs is a separate matter). With that in mind, having Members of Parliament who will speak out on the need for a balanced approach to copyright that preserves user rights is essential. Coming out of last night's election, 34 candidates who supported the copyright pledge during the campaign were elected - 11 Liberals and 23 New Democrats, covering 8 of 10 provinces (only NB and Saskatchewan do not have a copyright MP). In some ridings - particularly Edmonton-Strathcona where Conservative Rahim Jaffer lost to the NDP's Linda Duncan - it is certainly possible that copyright swung enough votes to help make the difference. The New Copyright MPs (Thanks, Michael!)...

BART directors to management: stop using terrorism "fearmongering"

BART, the Bay Area's metro line, is debating whether or not to allow drinks on trains. As Schneier points out, there are plenty of reasons to ban drinks on the carpeted (!) trains, like spills. But the BART management have invoked fears of terrorists bearing Super Big Gulps filled with lighter fluid to try to make their point. Just another stupid terrorism scare? Nope! The BART's top bosses have clobbered management for invoking terrorism to get their way, calling it "fearmongering." Added Director Tom Radulovich, "If somebody wants to break the law and bring flammable liquids on, they can. It's not like al Qaeda is waiting in their caves for us to have a sippy-cup rule." Directing his comments to BART administrators, he said, "You know, it's just fearmongering and you should be ashamed." BART debates allowing drinks on trains (via Schneier)...