2007 Bloggies: Best American Weblog [view: normal]

Photo: PDVos In 1909, British explorer Ernest Shackleton aborted an attempt to reach the south pole. He abandoned two cases of scotch at base camp. A century on, we've found it.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch. Workers from New Zea...

Microsoft is ready to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to remove its news content from Google, according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has also approached other "big online publishers" with similar deals.

"One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan 'puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them",' wrote the FT's Matthew Garr...

PeaceLove sez, "My buddy Chris 'Orbit' Brown just hipped me to this lovely video of one Dimitri Arleri doing some amazing card flourishes, set to an unidentified piece of ambient opera. Most flourish videos are rapid-fire montages of jaw-dropping excellence (ie. the brilliant

The Associated Press, a organization with so little respect for fair use that they expect you to pay for a license to quote as little as five words from its articles, describes how it relied on fair use to do reporting on Sarah Palin's memoir Glowing Rouge:

"The AP was determined to get the first copy," Oreskes [a senior managing editor] wrote, detailing how the writers learned a store had "inadvertently placed the ...

Going West is a beautiful short film illustrating the worlds in a book, incorporating papercraft to make something dreamlike and wonderful. It was animated by Andersen M Studio.

NZ Book Council - Going West (via @GreatDismal)

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I've often found that, when I can't understand a concept in science or math, putting it into pictures will make everything make more sense. It's like magic. Now, none of the visualizations I used as a kid involved a cadre of trained golden retrievers, but maybe that's a flaw the Kansas school system needs to correct.

(Thanks, Mark Day!)

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Britons: here's a petition to the Prime Minister to abolish the new Digital Economy bill's provisions that will require ISPs to cut off your household's internet access if anyone living there (or using your network) is accused of three acts of copyright infringement:

This petition has been set up in response to the Government's proposal to cut off internet access to those who are caught illegall...

Marc Owens's augmented reality project "Avatar Machine" puts its users in VR helmets that display the world around them as though they were playing a third-person game, so that their own body is seen from behind. Owens theorizes that "The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming e...

Nerve is running "Sex Advice From Dungeons & Dragons Players," answering questions about RPGs, role-playing, and finding mating opportunities among the nerdy. It's a delight.

What's the best way to pick up a D&D player?
If you're a geek and you see a girl geek browsing the comic books and players' manuals, don't make assumptions. Nothing irritates me more than having someone tell me what I'm ho...

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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