Offered in scarlet ink on a jet black T-shirt, "It Followed Me Home" is the latest in our Artists Series of T-shirts, an original illustration designed exclusively for Boing Boing. It's $14.95 for men's sizes and $16.95 for women's sizes.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is petitioning the US Copyright Office for a DMCA exemption legalizing "jailbreaking" -- modifying the devices you own so that they can run software of your choosing. The Copyright Office holds hearings every three years on DMCA exemptions and these need to be renewed at each hearing.
To highlight the need for a jailbreaking exemption, EFF has made this video showing how Sony shipped its PlayStation 3 with the promise that users could run GNU/Linux on it, a promise that was taken up by many purchasers, including the USAF, who used a room full of PS3s running Linux to make a clustered supercomputer. But Sony changed its mind and revoked the feature after the fact and began to actively pursue legal penalties against researchers who attempted to restore it.
However, in April 2010, Sony’s mandatory firmware update -- version 3.21 -- removed the ability to install "Other OS" -- meaning no more Linux on your PlayStation. To add legal muscle to its firmware, Sony sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes that would allow users to run Linux on their machines again. Claiming that the research violated the DMCA, Sony asked the court to impound all "circumvention devices" -- which it defines to include not only the defendants' computers, but also all "instructions," i.e., their research and findings.
This means you can set your PlayStation on fire, but you can’t run Linux on hardware you own. To illustrate how ludicrous this is, we made a video illustrating what an owner can do with a PlayStation -- and what Sony contends they can’t.
This Thursday, I'll be donating my time to support The Phillips Clinic, a free healthcare provider that serves more than 1000 patients in Minneapolis. Come to the Clinic's annual silent auction where you'll be able to bid on awesome items like gift cards, a hot air balloon ride, and a presentation by me! If you win me, I'll come talk to your lab/students/friends/cats about how to better communicate science to the general public. Bidding starts at 6:00 pm, this Thursday, at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center. — Maggie
Here's a peek of a 30-minute profile of MAKE founder Dale Dougherty that will air on CNN this Sunday night.
Dale says, it’s time to get back to making. It doesn’t matter what it is: cheese, wine, sculptures, robots, rockets, 3D printers - even electric muffins! As simple or as bizarre as a person wants to get, Dale believes everyone should be passionate about making something. So Dale decided over a decade ago to create a grassroots festival called Maker Faire. There’s one every year in the Bay Area, NYC, and all over the world. There’s one in Africa. Tens of thousands of people attend, showing off all of the spectacular things they’ve made. Things like a basketball bikini, art sculptures made from car parts and wooden catapults, large and small. Simply, makers are enthusiasts, amateurs and hobbyists.
Dale also created MAKE magazine. The magazines are jam-packed with ideas and exact plans for making things. One issue might be dedicated to making robots, or rockets. Anyone with an interest can pick up a magazine and get right to work.
Carlos Miller, an accredited photojournalist covering the Occupy Miami eviction, was arrested by Miami-Dade police, who deleted several videos from his camera before they returned it to him. Miller recovered some of the deleted files and has posted them to YouTube. They support his version of the events of that night, in which he was subject to arbitrary arrest. The deletion of a journalist's arrest-video seems a move calculated to obscure guilt on the part of the police.
So now the next step is taking my camera to a professional recovery service with a forensics specialists who will not only retrieve the entire deleted footage without interruptions, but would also determine the exact time the footage was deleted
That will determined that the footage was deleted while I was in custody and the camera was in their possession, leaving them no defense for blatantly violating my Constitutional rights.
I also plan on obtaining the footage recorded by the Miami police officer as well as the footage recorded by the television news cameraman.
And, of course, I plan on filing an internal affairs complaint against Perez as well as a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice for deleting my footage.
Rench sez, "The previously BoingBoinged bluegrass hip-hop band Gangstagrass shares an exclusive premiere of their live video for 'Gunslinging Rambler featuring R-SON' - showing that this has gone way beyond a mash-up. Witness rapper, dj, and bluegrass band rocking the stage together at one of their face-melting shows in Brooklyn. We are offering the first peek at this to BoingBoing as a world premiere!"
I'm a great fan of this stuff. Gangstagrass performs exactly the kind of bluegrass music I favor and exactly the kind of hip-hop I favor, and seems to have discovered the alchemical secret of mixing the two perfectly.
I am a huge fan of Matt Ruff's novels, so when friends in the know started to spontaneously tell me about how fantastic the advance manuscript they'd just read for his next novel,
The Mirage, was, I just assumed, yeah, it'd be more great Matt Ruff.
But this isn't just more Matt Ruff. This is Matt Ruff with the awesome turned up to 11. To 12. To 100.
The Mirage is an alternate history novel set in a world where Arabia, the United Arab States, are the world's historic superpower. It's Arabia that intervenes in WWII (outraged over Nazi incursions into Muslim North Africa), and after the war, Arabia partitions Germany and establishes a Jewish homeland, Israel, with Berlin as its capital ("Israelis" enjoy a special "right of return" entitling them to visas to visit Jerusalem, of course).
Arabia prospers, though it is not without its internal strife. A notorious crime-boss called Saddam Hussein earns a fortune through narcotics (AKA whiskey) smuggling, abetted by a tabloid newspaper publisher called Tariq Aziz; a hawkish senator called Osama bin Laden commands a secretive private intelligence service called Al Qaeda; and a clownish governor called Moammar Qaddafi is a sort of Sarah Palin figure, running a private fiefdom. On the other hand, Qadaffi is very good to Internet startups, like the group-edited encyclopedia called "The Library of Alexandria" (excerpts from this are sprinkled through the book, written in perfect Wikipediese).
But Arabia is a good place to live. A great place. Until a fateful day: November 9, 2001. That's the day that Christian extremists from the troubled theocracy America hijack four airliners and crash two of them into Baghdad's Twin Towers, triggering a War on Terror that results in widescale incursions on civil liberties, an invasion and interminable occupation of America, and a Gulf War in the Gulf of Texas as the independent republic is threatened by its looming American neighbor.
For Crusaders -- the Christian extremists who go on attacking Arabia -- 11/9 is a wake-up call. The insurgency spreads around the Christian world. As Crusaders are taken into custody by Arabian Homeland Security, they tell a strange story. They are all experiencing a shared dream. A dream of a different world. A topsy-turvy world. A world where a great power called America rules, where Arabia is a collection of squabbling dictatorships, where the atrocities of 11/9 happened on 9/11, and triggered a very different War on Terror. What's more, some of these Crusaders bear startlingly realistic artifacts from this strange world -- copies of an imaginary, long-defunct newspaper called The New York Times, military service records, Iraqi money bearing the likeness of the clownish mafioso Saddam Hussein.
It would be easy enough to laugh off as just another nutty conspiracy theory, except that the Crusaders are very sure of themselves. So sure, in fact, that they believe that this world, the real world, is actually a mirage ("The Mirage"), sent by the Christian God to punish them for their impiety. They must destroy this world to be returned to reality, the reality of America.
So goes this extraordinary novel, which transcends a gimmicky exercise in Arabifying America and vice-versa and becomes a top-rate war novel, a thoughtful and sly commentary on the war on terror, and a scathing critique of religious partisanship, all at once. This is no doubt partly due to Matt Ruff's extraordinary wife, researcher Lisa Gold, the best researcher I know (she was Neal Stephenson's researcher on The Baroque Cycle and other books). But it's also due to Ruff's sure and steady hand, able to steer a course through a narrow strait with mere parody on one side and tedious exercise on the other, finding the sweet spot right in the middle and coming through with a head of steam that's unstoppable.
This is one of those books that you read while walking down the street and long after your bedtime, a book you stop strangers to tell about.
Here's a handsome Blue Screen of Death Valentine's heart. Kathrn Cramer calls it, "A stick-on icon for relationships with a blown motherboard: how to say its over on Valentine's Day."
Here's some handy, infringealicious clip art for the discriminating Anon who wants to make a statement without paying a royalty: a Guy Fawkes mask, suitable for urban art, dress-up, and silkscreening.
One of the quieter scenes from a story in Western Gunfight magazine, illustrated by George Wilson. The high bid on this piece of original art stands at $1!
Mr Norton also added: "It was a pleasure collaborating with PRADA and LG, both Global brands with impeccable reputations for being the most innovative and respected in their fields."
How nice of Mr Norton to write that sentence for the press release!
Johannes sez, "Cory was so kind to post my TEDxVienna talk on monochrom's feature film project SIERRA ZULU. I wanted to give you guys an update.
Today we released a short film: EARTHMOVING. It's the prequel to SIERRA ZULU. We thought that's a good way to expand on the backstory and give the folks something to see while we are still working on getting the feature film financed and (hopefully) done.
We have a bunch of great actors (e.g. Jeff Ricketts, who was part of Firefly or Star Trek: Enterprise) and our crew at Golden Girls Filmproduktion (Vienna) was absolutely wonderful."
I've always enjoying studying the original art for comic book pages, because it's fun to look at the washes, white-out marks, pen lines, blue pencil lines, erased pencil, and brush lines. You can learn a lot from them.
IDW's Artist's Editions (I've not seen a copy in person) print scans of original comic art pages, and judging from this video, they seem to go a long way in getting the look of original comic art pages. Here's the video for John Romita's Amazing Spider-Man Artist's Edition (above).
IDW proudly presents John Romita's The Amazing Spider-Man: Artist's Edition, collecting six complete stories by the great John Romita, arguably the definitive Spider-Man artist. Each page is scanned from the original art, same size as drawn, and in full color (in insure the best possible reproduction). This Artist's Edition measures 12 x 17 inches and each book is shipped in a custom cardboard box for maximum protection.
While appearing to be in black and white, each page was scanned in color to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for instance, corrections, blue pencils, paste-overs, all the little nuances that make original art unique. Each page is printed the same size as drawn, and the paper selected is as close as possible to the original art board.
I just found out that there are Wally Wood, Dave Stevens, Walter Simonson Artist's Editions. They are sold out, of course. You can buy copies on Amazon for hundreds of dollars. If you want the Romita one, I suggest you get hopping.
Dan R sez, "This corporate news piece from the opening of 'Spaceship Earth' has plenty to offer the casual to semi-rabid technology fan who is also partial to World's Fair-esque exhibits about the FUTURE! Great footage of 'Spaceship Earth's' exhibits abound, and the film also features other highlights of EPCOT, including Exxon's 'Universe of Energy,' replete with animatronic dinosaurs."
I got trapped on Spaceship Earth during opening month (it had been going down sporadically all day, resulting in heroic queues), just as we reached the top. After a long wait at the apex, we all got to walk down the stairs to get out. It was my first look backstage at a ride. It was seminal.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
I had missed this sad news, but Dick Tufeld, the man who gave Robby the Robot his voice on Lost In Space, died last month. He was 85. Along with his famous catchphrase "Danger, Will Robinson!" and the intro to Lost In Space, Tufield's voice was also heard at the beginning of "Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea." Dick Tufeld(IMDB, thanks Charles Pescovitz!)
This restored 1957 home movie of a Disneyland visit, from the Disney History Institute, is an absolute treat. I love the rare footage of the Frontierland pack-mules and the Jungle Cruise as it was before the jungle really grew in; I'm likewise captivated by the sight of the (by modern standards) harshly metallic and dangerous-looking conveyances for small children. From The Disney Blog:
The Disney History Institute scores big again with a vintage color film from 1957 Disneyland. DHI uses the same transfer process that Ken Burns does to get his amazing footage and the result is something with the truest and brightest colors I’ve ever seen from Disneyland’s early days.
Gweek is a weekly podcast where the editors and friends of Boing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.
My hosts on episode 38 are Dean Putney, Boing Boing's coding and development wizard, Boing Boing alum Joel Johnson of Animal New York, and Dannel Jurado, a software engineer from Peru who's working at Etsy and, by Dean's description, "is deeply ingrained in 8 bit music, geek culture, craft and software."
Below is a list of the things we talked about in Gweek episode 38. (Sure, you could just click on the links below to learn about them without listening to the podcast, but then you will miss out on the mind-blowing insights we shared in the episode.)
Johann Sebastian Joust in Yerba Buena Gardens "basically like high-tech tag. Each person has a Playstation Move controller, and the object of the game is to jostle other people's controllers so that you're the last man standing."
Joel recommends Conan Doyle's The White Company (free on Gutenberg), "about archers from England who go to France to wage war and plunder ... it comes off like Jack Vance."
Joel saw two movies this week: A Dangerous Method (and Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein, "the beautiful but disturbed young woman who comes between them") and The Rum Diary (based on Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel).
Mark told Joel to read Gonzo: the Life of Hunter S. Thompson, which consists of anecdotes culled from interviews with 120 of Thompson's acquaintances, beginning with his childhood in Kentucky and ending with his death in 2005 in Woody Creek, Colorado.
Roots, by Danimal Cannon. Cannon wrote: "Every song on this album was composed using a Nintendo Gameboy DMG-01 running the homebrew software LSDJ. If you download the album I've also included the .sav files so feel free to learn my tricks, remix, or whatever!" Dannel also runs a cool music blog.
Joel gives his first impression Hero Academy, a free, turn-based RPG strategy game for iOS. He also excited about news of an X-Com revival.
Dannel recommends an iOS game called Puzzlejuice, which is a bit like Tetris with the added challenge of having to spell words using tiles with letters on them.
Stop-motion film about an entomologist's nightmare
MikeyP sez, "Filmmaker friends of mine have a lovely melancholy stop-motion film (about a tiny entymologist with a lightbulb for a head) they're hoping to get into the Australian short film festival Tropfest via the audience vote.If you have a second, and feel so inclined, pray click the link, scroll to the right to find 'Re-Collection',* and if you like the film, please vote for it. Even if you choose not to vote for my friends, Tropfest is worth checking out if you like short films. I think all of the finalists' films are viewable from the Tropfest YouTube channel. It's a good festival. * Or you can use the search box. Yes, Tropfest's system is a bit convoluted, and yes, it probably favours the first films in the list. But that's how it is."
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Here is OK Go's excellent video for "Needing/Getting." And yes, it was done "in partnership" with the maker of that particular car. According to the video description, the car "was outfitted with retractable pneumatic arms designed to play the instruments, and the band recorded this version of Needing/Getting, singing as they played the instrument array with the car… There are no ringers or stand-ins; Damian took stunt driving lessons. Each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they'd play the right note no matter where they were struck."
My friend and oft-times workshop mate Tom Marcinko, a very talented writer and critiquer, has just put seven of his previously published sf stories into the Kindle store for what he calls "the amazingly low price of absolutely nothing." He's getting back to work on new fiction after a long hiatus, and this is his way of marking the occasion. How can you resist a free sf collection with a story in it called "The Nixon Wrangler's Tale"?
An ardent missionary beams to another galaxy--but finds his convictions and personality altered in transmission.
A bounty hunter pursues a replicant from out of history. This is not called termination. It is called “impeachment.”
Aliens invade a globally depressed Earth with a sinister weapon: A new line of curiously addictive consumer products.
Superheroes must control their powers. Or a shadowy government agency will do it for them.
Plus the Second Coming, with a special guest appearance by the Patron Saint of Television.
Welcome to seven adventures in space, time, and from under the floorboards.
These stories were previously published in Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Rosebud, Science Fiction Age, and other respected venues.
Tom is the person who introduced me to Mystery Science Theater 3000, and is a very happy mutant indeed.
This is the first post from the fine folks of the American Library Association, which recently launched a member interest group called Library Boing Boing. They will be posting now and again as LibraryLab.
On April 23, 2012, tens of thousands of people in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, and Germany will go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving away free books. All you have to do to participate is register by midnight EST tonight.
The goal is to have 50,000 people give a book to a stranger or to people you might know but believe aren’t frequent readers. Go to a coffee shop, a hospital, a park, a church, a community center, an after-work party, a local school, or even just give them away on your daily train ride. WBN will give you 20 specially-produced, not-for-resale World Book Night editions to randomly give away. There are 30 titles to choose from for all types of readers. Basically, if you love any of the books included in the program, you can get free copies to share with others.
Timo's video "Robot readable world" is made up of stitched-together found footage from computer vision systems, "exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye." It was inspired by Matt Jones's essay The Robot-Readable World, and it reminds me Laura Mulvey's idea of the Male Gaze.
A recent mathematics study showed that you have to have at least 17 clues on a Sudoku grid in order for the puzzle to be solvable. You could make the game easier, by adding more clues. But if there are fewer than 17 clues, then the game becomes impossible to solve. In this video, mathematician James Grime explains how the researchers figured this out.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Andreas Gursky "Union Rave" (1995)
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke wrote ""Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." That's no longer true. These days, there are apparently 15 dead for every living person. Still, the living clearly do not outnumber the dead. Not even close, according to new research from the Population Reference Bureau. according to new research from the Population Reference Bureau. The TL;DR is that "There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived," according to a BBC News article. Of course, the vast majority of history is based on educated guesses. The first homo sapiens weren't too interested in acquiring census data. It wasn't until the 18th century or so that the best ongoing data was collected about such things. "Do the dead outnumber the living?" (BBC News)
The "flow state" is how neuroscience researchers describe that zone you can get into when you're doing something that you've become highly skilled at. It's a zen-like place in your brain — that state where you lose track of time doing something that you enjoy doing for its own sake, and where the job of doing the task seems to become something you don't even have to think about. You just do it, and you do it right.
The catch, of course, is that usually it takes a lot of heavy work to get to the point where the flow can take over. This is where Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice comes into play. But, over the years, scientists have learned that there are some ways around that 10,000-hour rule. Some people just seem to pick up on the flow easier than others, for instance.
If your brain isn't just naturally inclined toward the flow, though, there is the option of zapping it into line. This is called transcranial direct current stimulation—basically running a very small electric current through specific parts of the brain. In some studies, and for some tasks, it's been shown to induce a feeling very much like a flow state, and possibly make it easier for people to get to a high level of skill faster. Last spring, Pesco wrote about some of the research that's being conducted on this intriguing but still-not-proven technique. Recently, New Scientist reporter Sally Adee tried it out, and saw a significant short-term improvement in her ability to spot and hit targets in a video shooter game.
The mild electrical shock is meant to depolarise the neuronal membranes in the region, making the cells more excitable and responsive to inputs. Like many other neuroscientists working with tDCS, Weisend thinks this accelerates formation of new neural pathways during the time that someone practises a skill. The method he is using on me boosted the speed with which wannabe snipers could detect a threat by a factor of 2.3
It's not yet clear why some forms of tDCS should bring about the flow state. After all, if tDCS were solely about writing new memories, it would be hard to explain the improvement that manifests itself as soon as the current begins to flow.
One possibility is that the electrodes somehow reduce activity in the prefrontal cortex - the area used in critical thought, which Csikszentmihalyi had found to be muted during flow. Roy Hamilton, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, thinks this may happen as a side effect of some forms of tDCS. "tDCS might have much more broad effects than we think it does," he says. He points out that some neurons can mute the signals of other brain cells in their network, so it is possible that stimulating one area of the brain might reduce activity in another.
The first thing I thought of when I read this: The way drinking one (but not more than two) beers can change the way I approach a billiards game. It doesn't improve my skills, per se—I don't suddenly become graceful with a pool cue. But when it's a game that I have some skill at already, like table hockey, one beer is often just enough to allow me to stop over-thinking and just play the game ... making it feel like I'm better at it then than I am stone-cold sober. I'd be really interested to know if/how these experiences are related.
How to Be a Retronaut's gallery of images from the 1970 edition of the "Encylopedia of Home Improvement" are like shots from a never-aired episode of The Brady Bunch where the family took over management of The Madonna Inn and did a little light redecorating.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Last month, I posted about the gorgeous droning ambient music of From The Mouth of the Sun. People really seemed to dig it! Carter Gunn created this video for their track "Sitting In A Roofless Room" from video footage courtesy of the fantastic Prelinger Archive. The song is on From The Mouth of The Sun's new album, Woven Tide, which you can listen to right here. And you can purchase it directly from Experimedia.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
An Icelandic man captured video of what some suggest is the Lagarfljótsormur, a lake monster residing in the lake Lagarfljót in the eastern part of the country. Others suggest it's a fishing net. I prefer the former. Stories of the Lagarfljótsormur date back to 1345. From Iceland Review Online:
According to legend, it was at first a tiny worm which was placed on a ring of gold to make the gold grow.
When the owner of the ring returned she noticed to her great terror that the worm had grown immensely but not the gold. She tossed the ring and worm into Lagarfljót where the worm continued to grow.
The Jolly Green Giant was always the most ambiguous and slightly threatening of the tinned food mascots. Tilt your head and squint and this is a cruel titan who's toying with the mortals at his dinner table before turning them loose for the Wild Hunt. Plus: Mexicorn!
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This is a Sol LeWitt yarmulke created by the Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek temple in Chester, Connecticut. LeWitt, a member of the congregation, helped design the temple. "Sol LeWitt Kippah" (Thanks, Jill Miller!)
I've been doing periodic appearances on Sex is Fun, a sex-positive podcast aimed at providing fun, informative sex ed. for grown-ups. Last time I was on the show, we talked about some funny animal sex studies and what they can and can't teach you about human sexual behavior. This time around, we talked about a couple of recent studies focusing on sociology and sex.
In particular, we focused on a study from last fall that surveyed students at the University of Kansas to find out how men's and women's internalized sexism affect their relationships with each other. If you've ever watched one of those shows about so-called "pick up artists" and wondered, "Who the hell are the women falling for this crap!?", then this is the show to listen to.
This is the U.S. Air Force's pitch to the entertainment industry, a smorgasbord of mil-porn to delight anyone who loved shows such as Airwolf and The A-Team. The objective is to help productions, from teen-magnet Hollywood epics to seniors' detective show "Monk", get the details right—and, of course, to put the taxpayers' latest hardware on show.
"The industry's gateway to an extraordinary arsenal of aircraft, equipment, credible personnel and locations," intones Fake Morgan Freeman. "Their mission: protect and project the Air Force and entertainment media, including film, tv, video games, comic books and more."
The Air Force's Entertainment Liaison Office offers uniformed extras, on-set technical advice, research trips and even script feedback. Michael Bay totally has his own personalized tankard under the bar at this place.
This bit of graffiti, spotted by entomologist and photographer Alex Wild, seems like the perfect way to start off a Monday morning. Thanks, anonymous tagger! I feel better already!
Glenn Greenwald notes that the New York Times broke its own policies on source anonymity to run the quote.
The Bureau’s journalists and researchers spent months engaged in the painstaking and difficult task of gathering documentation on the effects of the top secret U.S. drone program in Waziristan — producing extraordinary findings — only to find themselves and their sources, many of whom are local villagers whose children have been killed, depicted as Al Qaeda’s witting or unwitting allies the very next day in The New York Times, by some senior government official too frightened to put his name on his accusations and aided (as always) by a newspaper that has repeatedly vowed to stop these practices.
It looks like the price of continued access to "senior counterterrorism officials" is that you must, now and again, launder their dirty political opinions.
Today in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, "Planktonauts," by Robert Steven Connett, who notes, "This is a direction that I feel very comfortable with. Very enjoyable to create. I’m happy with the results. I hope to do many more similar paintings in the months to come."
I am a huge fan of Matt Ruff's novels, so when friends in the know started to spontaneously tell me about how fantastic the advance manuscript they'd just read for his next novel,
Here's a handsome Blue Screen of Death Valentine's heart. Kathrn Cramer calls it, "A stick-on icon for relationships with a blown motherboard: how to say its over on Valentine's Day."
Here's some handy, infringealicious clip art for the discriminating Anon who wants to make a statement without paying a royalty: a Guy Fawkes mask, suitable for urban art, dress-up, and silkscreening.
One of the quieter scenes from a story in Western Gunfight magazine, illustrated by George Wilson. The high bid on this piece of original art stands at $1!
I had missed this sad news, but Dick Tufeld, the man who gave 
Playing Dungeons and Dragons via Skype.
A new 
After doing all sorts of cool stuff for 
Joel reviews the book, 
Dean digs 
Joel recommends Conan Doyle's 
Mark reviews the graphic novel 
Joel saw two movies this week: A Dangerous Method (and Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein, "the beautiful but disturbed young woman who comes between them") and The Rum Diary (based on Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel).
Mark told Joel to read 
Joel gives his first impression 
Dannel recommends an iOS game called 
Dean loves his 
An ardent missionary beams to another galaxy--but finds his convictions and personality altered in transmission.
, my book about the future of energy in the United States, will be published April 10th.
How to Be a Retronaut's gallery of images from the 1970 edition of the "Encylopedia of Home Improvement" are like shots from a never-aired episode of The Brady Bunch where the family took over management of 
This is a Sol LeWitt yarmulke created by the Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek temple in Chester, Connecticut. LeWitt, a member of the congregation, helped design the temple. "
