Boing Boing - Cached 0 minutes ago.
Acclaimed animated movie can't be shown because of licensing costs for 80+ year-old music
Animator Nina Paley's brilliant film, "Sita Sings The Blues," has been wowing the festival circuit but you're probably not going to see it anytime soon. That's because the company that controls the synch rights to the 80+ year old music in the film want so much money for licensing that Paley can't afford to distribute her movie, despite all the critical acclaim. Question Copyright has a 42-minu...
CCTV decals for your toilet
These Etsy-sold CCTV decals make a handsome addition to your white goods, porcelain fittings, and other smooth surfaces. SECURITY CAMERAS vinyl toilet fridge wall or window decal (Thanks, Iain!)...
Apple dropping DRM from music in iTunes, keeping DRM for audiobooks, video
Looks like Apple's going to drop the DRM on the music in the iTunes store -- but there's no indication that the DRM that's too evil to be borne for music will be likewise dropped from audiobooks and video. Right now, Apple will only sell audiobooks from Audible -- and Audible will only sell audiobooks with DRM (even if the author and publisher don't want it). I don't get it -- if DRM is so foul...
Cookie Monster eats World Trade towers in 1976
Cookie Monster devours a pair of buildings that resemble the the Twin Towers. From the cover of the October 1976 issue of Sesame Street magazine....
U.S. household debt down for fist time since feds started tracking it in 1952
The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. citizens have suddenly become quite thrifty. Usually, frugality is good for individuals and for the economy. Savings serve as a reservoir of capital that can be used to finance investment, which helps raise a nation's standard of living. But in a recession, increased saving -- or its flip side, decreased spending -- can exacerbate the economy's woes. It...
What it feels like to die in a black hole
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, author of Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, tells the entertaining story of what it's like to be sucked into a black hole. Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death by Black Hole (via How Good is That?)...
Naughty speed camera prank
Some high school students in Maryland are reportedly taping fake license plates to their cars, then speeding past speed cameras so that owners of the cars with the real license plates get fined. Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera "Pimping" game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools. Originating from Wootton High Schoo...
Law prof wants to webcast RIAA lawsuit
Campaigning law prof Charlie Nesson wants the whole world to see how the RIAA shakes down students, so he's asked for the proceedings to be webcast. The RIAA wants to hide under a rock: A Harvard Law professor representing some students sued by the recording industry for illegally downloading music has filed a motion to broadcast online the proceedings of two cases being heard by the U.S. Distr...
Legal Beatles MP3 archive goes dark
NRK, the Norwegian public broadcaster, has had to pull its legal MP3 archive of all 212 Beatles songs. Turns out the agreement they had with the local rights society didn't mean what they thought it meant. Our new agreement with rights holder TONO gives us rights to publish radio and TV shows we aired a long time ago. But the agreement NRK has with rights holders IFPI and FONO only allows us to...
Tumbarumba: a surreal fiction anthology in the form of a browser plugin
Ethan Ham sez, Turbulence.org recently released ?Tumbarumba,? a project by Benjamin Rosenbaum and myself (Ethan Ham). Tumbarumba is an anthology in the form of a browser add-on. To read the stories, readers must stumble upon them while browsing the web. The browser add-on will occasionally insert a story fragment into a web page as it loads it. The result is a disorienting surreal sentence that...
Mommy? Maurice Sendak's monstrous kids' pop-up book
The coolest thing about your kid's first Christmas is that you get to watch her unwrap all the amazing kiddy treasures that your friends and family found. It was a fantastic haul this year, no doubt about it, and my favorite was Mommy?, a 2006 pop-up book by Maurice "Where the Wild Things Are" Sendak that I'm thinking of keeping for myself. Mummy? is a practically wordless, six-page popup that ...
Atheist bus ads roll in London today: massive success
A UK campaign to raise money to buy London bus-ads to promote atheism was a massive success -- 800 of the busses took the streets today, and the campaign is spreading around the world. Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount...
Hank Paulson's literary bailout
Julian Gough sends us his NYT piece, "A Modest Proposal For The Publishing Industry": "It's a piece in yesterday's New York Times. It's a parody of all the recent, massive, Treasury bailout plans. (Having done banks, insurance and cars, the Treasury are now solve the unread books crisis for us). It is written as an official statement from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, using language taken d...
Maker Faire comes to the UK: Newcastle, March 14-15
Josette from O'Reilly sez, "Call for makers! It is now official the long awaited first UK Maker Faire will take place in Newcastle, UK on March 14th-15th! Maker Faire seeks to inspire, inform, connect and entertain thousands of Makers and aspiring Makers of all ages and backgrounds through the public gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, students, authors and...
Disneyland home movie from 1956 makes Library of Congress's National Film Registry
Molly sez, "Robbins Barstow's film Disneyland Dream was included in this year's National Film Registry (25 films selected by the Library of Congress annually). He is a tireless advocate for amateur film and a great supporter of Home Movie Day. Steve Martin wrote to Robbins Barstow after the news of Disneyland Dream being selected for the Film Registry. Martin appears in the home movie, he's 11 ...
Hugo nominations open!
The 2008 Hugo award nominations have opened -- if you were a member of the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, or have bought a membership to the 2009 WorldCon in Montreal, you're eligible to nominate. I'll be sending in my nominations this week, and just in case you were wondering, here's the stuff I wrote that's eligible for this year's ballot: * Best novel: Little Brother, Tor, 2008 * Best related book...
A Brief Essay on the Sad Lack of Imagination in Invertebrate Oriented Erotica with Brief Notes on the Lascivious Nature of Both the Lophotrochozoa and Ecdysozoa, or, Getting Beyond "Hur hur! That Squid Tentacle Looks like Penis!"
Loligo Lothario sez, "With all of the recent postings on cephalopod oriented erotica (or tentacle porn, as it is coarsely called), I had wondered if you had not stumbled on this musing on why those fixated on tentacles really lack imagination, and how other invertebrate oriented erotica can be really really hot. Invertebrates are amazingly kinky, as pointed out in some lovely marine science blo...
Shanghai recreated in dice and poker chips
Liu Jianhua recreated the Shanghai skyline from dice and poker-chips -- the gigantic piece was displayed at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy. The close-up detail view (shot by Flickr user cinghialino and licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike) is spectacular. Liu Jianhua - Unreal Scene (2008), Liu Jianhua - Unreal Scene (2008) (detail view) (via Neatorama)...
China treats "Internet Addicts" with boot-camp discipline and sex ed
Thomas sez, "China's People's Liberation Army has made Sex education part of the detox methods for getting people over Internet addiction. They claim it works, but one woman under their care has acquired 68 virtual husbands." Here, in addition to military-style discipline, some 60-odd patients at his center undergo a three-month regimen of counseling, confidence-building activities, sex educati...
Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds launch in NYC, Jan 29
My pals Rita King and Josh Fouts have just completed an ambitious public diplomacy report on using virtual worlds to create understanding between Islamic and western societies. The book itself is presented in Understanding-Comics-style graphic novel format. They're holding a public launch in New York this month and I expect the report will hit the web around the same time. After a year of resea...
JetBlue and TSA pay $240,000 to man refused boarding because of Arabic writing on shirt
JetBlue and the TSA have settled a lawsuit brought by a man who was refused boarding on an airplane because he was wearing a shirt with Arabic writing on it (the TSA said that this was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, 'I am a robber.'"). They've paid him $240,000. Only 14 days until we get a change in administration. Maybe the new guys will appoint someone who understands that Arabic ...
Screamin' Jay Hawkins: "I Put A Spell On You"
Here is an absolutely stupendous video of Screamin' Jay Hawkins in full witch doctor regalia performing "I Put A Spell On You". (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)...
Gulnur Ozdaglar's PET Jellies
I've always really liked jellyfish. I can spend hours zoning out at the jelly exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And I'm almost as enthralled with these jelly sculptures made out of plastic bottles by Gulnur Ozdaglar, which I discovered on Design Sponge. Ozdaglar makes all kinds of wonderful things out of PET bottles. --Bruce (Thanks, Shawn, for getting me to add Design Sponge to my RSS read...
Today on Offworld
Today on Offworld we saw Rock Band's vocal pitch recognition get trumped by some ace theremin playing on Portal theme song Still Alive, and downloaded a new unofficial theme for the PlayStation 3 featuring gorgeous HD paintings of cult Genesis shooter Gunstar Heroes. We then got more musical and listened to an album composed on DS synth Korg DS-10, as well as a one-man gadget orchestra featurin...
The 2009 Nibbler Championship
Joshua Bearman wrote about the 2009 Nibbler Championship at the LA Weekly Blog. He says: Why is this so awesome? Nibbler, as I mentioned in a brief aside in my Harper's piece on Billy Mitchell, was an arcade game made by the jukebox company Rock-Ola in the early 1980s. Nibbler is mostly forgotten other than its historical appeal as the sole arcade machine whose counter had enough digits to disp...
97-year-old Botanical Artist
I really enjoyed this interview with 97-year-old Chikabo Kumada, a botanical artist in Japan. His philosophy about life is every bit as lovely as his paintings. Here?s a snip: Mr. Kumada, when did you start drawing illustrations of plants and insects? I started to do it for work when I was twenty-six. I quit the graphic design company I?d been working at and switched careers without talking to ...
1970s humor mag predicts future
Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew says: I received several old issues of Cracked magazine over the holidays and noticed this article predicting life in the 21st Century had become surprisingly accurate. "Today's Swinger is Tomorrow's Square," illustrated by John Severin, appeared in the 1974 annual Super Cracked (It was most likely a reprint from a 1970 issue). In it, the writer predicts that young pe...
Turning plastic crap into beautiful objects
An inspiring how-to for turning an ugly plastic clock into a nice-looking wood-cased object. Inspiring! Turn a generic plastic gadget in to something a little more beautiful (Via MAKE blog)...
Mall in China has McDnoald's and Bucksstar Coffee
If you aren't in the mood for McDnoald's, how about Pizza Huh? Fake brands shopping center set to open in China (Via Michael Dolan)...
Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs
Posted to the Apple web site on January 5, 2009: Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs Dear Apple Community, For the first time in a decade, I?m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote. Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stor...