boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289792122/did-gnarls-barkleys.html

Clayton Cubitt, whose photography I've blogged about a bunch of times here on BoingBoing, writes...

“Lagos Calling”, (above right) mixing African tribal style with working class British skinhead punk style. My good friend and constant collaborator, René Garza, and I had this idea about five years ago, and just finally got around to doing it last year. It felt good to get it out of our heads.

I don’t know when the idea for the Gnarls Barkley video “Going On” (above left)  was hatched, or shot, but it’s just coming out now and bears a striking resemblance to our inspiration. I think this is a lovely happenstance, and it’s happened to me before.

I’m a firm believer in artistic “multiples”, as Malcolm Gladwell writes about scientific discovery in The New Yorker...

It looks like I spoke too soon. Turns out the production people for the Gnarls Barkley video were taking their inspiration from our shoot after all, and even contacted my stylist Rene’ in April to ask him where he had sourced the beaded African accessories. They didn’t bother hiring him for the job though, or crediting either of us for the advance “art direction.” You’re welcome anyway, Gnarls! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289761877/flickr-photoset-of-l.html

Dianne Stevens says: "When I heard the Magic Carpet miniature golf course here in Tucson was closing, I thought about that big Tiki Head and wondered what would become of it. It looks like it's destined for the landfill, but I thought you'd enjoy the photos."

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289738292/usborn-journalist-th.html

I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of the rising sun. Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, and covered a roster of characters that included serial killers who doubled as pet breeders, child pornographers who abducted junior high-school girls, and the John Gotti of Japan.

I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything about Japan, you'll realize how bizarre this is -- a gaijin, or foreigner, covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the early 1990s, I knew nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the Japanese mafia. But following their prostitution rings and extortion rackets became my life.

...

On May 18, 2001, the FBI arranged for Tadamasa Goto -- a notorious Japanese gang boss, the one that some federal agents call the "John Gotti of Japan" -- to be flown to the United States for a liver transplant.

...

Three years ago, Goto got word that I was reporting an article about his liver transplant. A few days later, his underlings obliquely threatened me. Then came a formal meeting. The offer was straightforward. "Erase the story or be erased," one of them said. "Your family too."

I knew enough to take the threat seriously. So I took some advice from a senior Japanese detective, abandoned the scoop and resigned from the Yomiuri Shimbun two months later. But I never forgot the story. I planned to write about it in a book, figuring that, with Goto's poor health, he'd be dead by the time it came out. Otherwise, I planned to clip out the business of his operation at the last minute.

I didn't bargain on the contents leaking out before my book was released, which is what happened last November. Now the FBI and local law enforcement are watching over my family in the States, while the Tokyo police and the NPA look out for me in Japan. I would like to go home, but Goto has a reputation for taking out his target and anyone else in the vicinity.

thinkgeek

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/a651/?cpg=wnrdf

thinkgeek

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/a69c/?cpg=wnrdf

thinkgeek

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/popculture/a6b2/?cpg=wnrdf

xmidnitekissx
austincommunity

I like on the southside of Austin.

Does anyone know where I can get my oil changed relatively cheaply? 




Thanks in advance :)


Cheers

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289688802/john-shirley-and-dan.html

JOHN SHIRLEY "known for astonishingly consistent and rigorously horrifying work, addresses the terrible ease with which we modern Americans have learned to look away from pain and suffering... And while the matter of his stories is often shocking, his manner is calm, restrained, the prose attitude-free and precise, its characteristic sound a minor chord of sorrow and banked anger. His fiction, however, is only sometimes recognizably horror, as Shirley was also one of the primary cyberpunk writers, in company with William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker." His "lost cyberpunk novel" Black Glass, is due out in August from ESP books, with the urban fantasy novel Bleak History from Simon & Schuster to follow. John Shirley also wrote several suspense novels including Spider Moon and The Brigade, and won a Bram Stoker Award for his collection Black Butterflies. His best-known science fiction novels are City Come A-Walkin', the Eclipse trilogy, and A Splendid Chaos.

DANIEL MARCUS has published around twenty short stories in literary and genre venues, including Witness, Asimovs, Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, ZYZZYVA, and F&SF. Most of these stories will be collected in Binding Energy, appearing soon from Elastic Press. A finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, his short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and placed in the Asimov's Readers' Poll Top 10. His nonfiction has appeared in Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, on Boing-Boing, and he is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. After a spectacularly unsuccessful career attempt as a saxophonist, Daniel earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley. Currently a technology executive for a digital multimedia firm, Daniel lives in Berkeley, California, and he has authored more than twenty articles in the applied mathematics and computational physics literature, although the three are not mutually exclusive. Binding Energy is already garnering high praise, such as this from Mike Driscoll at The Fix: "If he deploys the mechanics of SF and fantasy, it is as a mean to explore worlds and mental landscapes defined by disconnectedness and isolation, by degradation and deceit, by love and its absence. This is not to say that these stories are filled with gloom and despair. Quite the contrary, most of them, despite their degraded physical or spiritual terrain, are marked by a sense of hope and possibility."

Lounge and cash bar open at 6:00 PM
7:00 PM readings
The Variety Preview Room
The Hobart Building, 1st Floor
582 Market St. @ Montgomery & 2nd, by Montgomery St. MUNI/BART
Entrance to the Hobart Bldg. is between Citibank and Quiznos

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289688803/open-letter-to-libra.html

Libraries that use DRM are submitting patrons to the onerous and unethical legal terms involved with purchasing, installing, and using software such as Microsoft Windows and the Windows Media Player. In the case of Microsoft Windows, this entails agreeing to terms that allow Microsoft to delete software and data that the user legally owns and has created or installed on their own machines. For a library to require their patrons to agree to such End User License Agreements as a prerequisite for gaining access to its collection is an injustice.

These software requirements drive the sales of DRM technology vendors, such as Microsoft and OverDrive, providing an incentive for patrons to discontinue using software and materials that do not impose DRM. The common argument that DRM and proprietary software are necessary because publishers require them becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the library is using its own market power to encourage their use, hurting the emergence of competing alternatives in the process.

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289649001/scientific-research.html

“Early on, when SL really got going, it looked like it was going to be a huge playground,” says Amme. “I thought personally, who needs a second life unless you don’t have a first one?”

Although SL retains a large recreational component, with fantasy, racy nightclubs and sex, the science islands have distinguished themselves as places to connect with the “outside” world. Scientist-avatars guide students through formal university educational programs — such as the University of Denver’s master’s degree in environmental engineering — or create exhibits designed to demonstrate scientific principles. Navigational tools let users zoom in and around objects, making SL a convenient place to investigate phenomena that would otherwise be hard to visualize or understand. Avatars can, for example, initiate chemical reactions with a touch of their hand, watch a tsunami form or stroll through the internal structures of a cell.

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/289624050/1939-marital-rating.html

The test was designed to give couples feedback on their marriages. Either husbands or wives could take the test, which rated wives in a variety of areas. For instance, if your wife "uses slang or profanity," she would get a score of five demerits. On the other hand, if she "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress," she would receive 10 merits. The test taker would add up the total number of merits and demerits to receive a raw score, which would categorize the wife on a scale from "very poor" to "very superior."