2007 Bloggies: Weblog of the Year [view: normal]

LA County detectives are investigating an assault on on a 12-year-old boy which may have been incited by a Facebook group message referencing a 2005 South Park episode. "The boy was kicked and hit in two separate incidents (...) by as many as 14 of his classmates." The attack followed a Facebook message promoting that date as Kick a Ginger Day." Sadly, not the first time for such stupidity.

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Fox News spokesdouche Glenn Beck is seeking a more direct role in American politics, though it sounds mostly like a clever marketing campaign: "He will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington in August to coincide with the release of his book on conservative proposals for the c...

I was reading a Cool Tools review of a company that puts any image on blinds, wallpaper, or flooring, and one of the comments led me to some fantastic illusions made using photo prints on the floor. More info on the bathroom floor and elevator from the Amazing Illusions blog.

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Sic itur ad astra = Latin for "thus you shall go to the stars". Yet another beautiful work from artist Michæl Paukner. "I used some scans of old astronomy maps from the 17th century," he says. You can buy prints of his work now! I want the Aztec Calendar print so bad. And Luna, too. I want every single one he's selling, but then I'll need to buy some more wall space, too.

Previously:

• The s...

Is Bruce Vilanch writing for Hugo Chavez now? 'Cause the Venezuelan leader's comedy material is pretty good lately: now he's a cannibalism apologist. In a recent speech, Chavez praised Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the late Ugandan dictator Idi "Butcher of Uganda" Amin. Said Chavez: "We thought he was a cannibal... I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patri...

Above is an 18th century "witch bottle," used to fend off evil spirits. Discovered at a construction site in the London borough of Greenwich, this example is particularly rare because it's still corked. Retired chemistry professor Dr. Alan Massey analyzed the bottle and its curious contents. From Fortean Times:

(The bottle) contained 12 bent iron nails (one of which pierced a small leather heart)...

Behaviorally speaking, heroes and serial do-gooders have a lot in common with sociopaths, according to this paper on psychology and neuroethics: "their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them."

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Parents, romantic partners and roommates of America: I am not encouraging your child, partner or person you share living space with to do this. At least, not in your good microwave. They should buy their own for this sort of thing. And for the love of Pete, they should wear protective eye covering.

I am so very serious about the protective eye coverings.

(Thanks, Greg Laden!)

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Britain is full of license-plate cameras, cameras used to send you tickets if you're caught speeding, or driving in the bus-lane, or entering London's "congestion-charge zone" without paying the daily fee for driving in central London. And because of Chekhov's first law of narrative ("a gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off by act three"), the police have decided to also use these cameras ...

Vadim Ponorovsky, the owner of the restaurant Paradou in trendy Park Slope, sent his employees an email in which he called them "lazy motherfuckers" because they failed to extract enough email addresses from their customers (he has a spam list and he makes it his servers' duty to get email addresses out of diners). Ponorovsky went on to call his employees "fucking lazy disrespectful assholes," "fu...

Vadim Ponorovsky, the owner of the restaurant Paradou in trendy Park Slope Manhattan's meat-packing district, sent his employees an email in which he called them "lazy motherfuckers" because they failed to extract enough email addresses from their customers (he has a spam list and he makes it his servers' duty to get email addresses out of diners). Ponorovsky went on to call his employees "fucking...

Designer Michiel Cornelissen laser-sintered stainless-steel crucifix has screwdriver bits cut into each tip, turning it into a screwdriver that repels vampires.

a bit cross (via Make) Previously:

• Boing Boing: Electronic crucifix broadcasts Lord's Prayer
• Boing Boing: Mobile phone antenna disguised as a churchtop crucifix
• Boing Boing: Programmable screwdrivers

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Muji's going to start selling hole-punches that knock out patterns that can be threaded between two Lego bricks. They go on sale in a week, and open up many possibilities for crafty Lego extensions.

LEGO for MUJI Paper and Block Sets (via Make) Previously:

• USB devices stuffed into legos -- Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing
• Frank Lloyd Wright Lego -- Boing Boing Gadgets - Boing Boing

This looks like a truly useless, and depressingly ugly device for cracking eggs (which this TV commercial would like you to believe is a big problem).

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Gary says:

I’m reading the latest Thomas Pynchon book, Inherent Vice, and he makes reference to this song.

It’s like Tiny Tim is tripping on acid, entertaining children, and predicting global warming — all at once.

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The Arkansas cop who used a Taser on a 10-year-old girl was punished with a 7-day paid vacation -- not for stungunning a little girl, but for not having a camera on his Taser.

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Coming soon to a science fiction plot near you: with the right software, a plain-jane webcam can be a 3D scanner. It's a project from Qi Pan, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University Engineering Department.

ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition (via Futurismic) Previously:

• Homemade 3D printer goop made from maltodextrin costs 1/50 of the ...
• Baby brain scanner photo - Boing Boing
• Live nude supermodel scanning online: Naomi Campbell - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: More live 3D Naomi Campbell on Mon. Jan. 29

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Behold! The Rings of the Earth.

Michael Wolf took 100 photos of people living in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate. Each flat is 100 square feet. Almost every room has the same kind of metal bunk bed. They almost all have a TV, electric fan, and rice cooker.

I looked at all 100 photos. Here's the creepiest room. Here's the most cluttered room. Here's the tidiest room. Here's the most spartan room.

Michael Wolf 100 x...

Matt Logue says: I just completed a self-published book depicting an uninhabited Los Angeles, and it got an honorable mention in the photography.book.now competition at blurb.com! The photos were made over a period of 4 years, beginning in 2005, at a variety of locations around LA.

Empty Los Angeles

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An after-Thanksgiving treat for the whole family...

Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate? Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

Playing November 27 through December 13 at Minneapolis'...

As a little kid, I used to think electrical substations would make really awesome jungle gyms. This video helpfully demonstrates why 5-year-old Maggie was an idiot.

This is the Eldorado Substation near Boulder City, Nevada. What you're seeing: A substation like this one is connected to long-distance transmission lines and electricity has to be very high voltage to travel on those. The substatio...

Marginal Revolution posted the following excerpt from Jeremy Taylor's book titled Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human.

I think we have to start thinking about the idea that humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves. If we're following the bonobo or dog pattern, we're moving toward a form of ourselves with more and more juvenile behavior...

(CC-licensed image by Flickr user laverrue)

Gregory Glass is a disease ecologist -- he studies the relationship between pathogens and hosts. A professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Glass's laboratory is Baltimore's urban underbelly, where he hangs out with beefy sewer rats. Apparently, Baltimore is a hotbed of rat research. I wonder if Glass has encountered any Rat Ki...

Last month, I wrote about a Japanese husband who confessed to his wife that he had a virtual girlfriend, a character from an addictive Nintendo DS game called Love Plus. Now, another man is planning to hold a wedding ceremony with his Love Plus girlfriend this coming Sunday. The man, who calls himself SAL9000, was so in love with Nene Anegasaki that he decided to marry her and take her on a honeym...