The Latest from Boing Boing

Boing Boing tv: Online Pujas/World's Most Polluted Posted: 08 Oct 2007 12:57 AM CDT A new episode of Boing Boing tv is online. Today: online ceremonies for Hindus, a toxic real estate in-faux-mercial, and Sputnik Mania. Video Link.

One laptop per prostate massage Posted: 07 Oct 2007 10:31 PM CDT This is the weirdest CL barter ad I've seen all week. Well my Dell is on it's last legs. (...) For my needs I am looking for a laptop that is at least 1.5 ghz minimum. Built in wireles, pentium 3 minimum, in good condition. Basically, not a beater laptop but a well maintained machine. (...) Now offering prostate massage. Link (thanks, Pesco!)

LOLBible Posted: 07 Oct 2007 09:38 PM CDT Eric sez, "Finally! I have been waiting all my life for this (OK, a few months). This site is translating the Bible into LOLcat and it's a wiki!" 1. In teh beginnin Invisible Man was invisible, and he maded the skiez and da earths, but he did not eated it. 2. The earths wus witout shapez and wus dark and scary and stuffs, and he rode invisible bike over teh waterz. 3. And Invisible Man sayz, i can has light, and teh light wuz... 18. And Invisible Man sawed it wus the goodz, so wai. Link (Thanks, Eric!)

HOWTO make a glowing punk cupcake Posted: 07 Oct 2007 09:29 PM CDT Under the heading of yet more food I'd love to eat but probably shouldn't, I give you this HOWTO for making glowing punk cupcakes. I gave the Dracula Punk Monster two large eyes and I used the sponge wedge that I had cut out to make a Punk hair style. It was secured with icing and black spikes added. I used writing icing to add detail to the Halloween cupcake. A green jelly bean made a great tongue. It will now glow in the dark in a black spooky room. Kids can use the fangs after enjoying eating the cake. Link

Unicorn Chaser Posted: 07 Oct 2007 09:03 PM CDT Mark Frauenfelder shot this in his house. Thank gopod, it's about time.

Swedish TV host barfs, returns seconds later (video) Posted: 07 Oct 2007 03:58 PM CDT Best 1.3 television minutes of all time. If I can exhibit just a fraction of the indefatigable professionalism that Swedish TV game show host Eva Nazemson demonstrates here, in the world's moment of need, I will be a proud, proud woman. Seriously. I mean, she just gets right back the hell up and keeps on going. Barely wipes her mouth! After composing herself, and continuing with the show, even explaining in embarrassing detail and candor the intimate cause of her sickness -- she lets loose with the projectile puke a second time off camera. Poor thing! I know this has been all over the internet, but it's just too profound to not post here. What a pro. Video Link, second cut with more barf at the end: Video Link. (thanks Coop)

Africa: rape epidemic in Congo war worsens Posted: 07 Oct 2007 11:12 AM CDT Each day, at least ten new women and girls who have been raped show up at one hospital in the Congo. Many have been so violently assaulted "from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair," according to this piece by Jeffrey Gettlemen in today's New York Times: According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way. United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty. Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said. "I'm weak, I'm angry, and I don't know how to restart my life," she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her. She is also pregnant. Link. Photo: Honorata Barinjibanwa. (Hazel Thompson for The New York Times / Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Ontario's privacy commissioner to geeks: design for privacy! Posted: 07 Oct 2007 08:54 PM CDT Here's a one-hour video of a magnificent lecture from Canada's Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Dr Ann Cavoukian, to the University of Waterloo's Computer Science Club. The talk is called "Privacy by Design," and it charges technologists to build tools that minimize the collection and retention of personally identifying information, and to consider a complete, end-to-end, comprehensive framework for protecting user privacy. As Mitch Kapor said when he founded EFF, "architecture is politics" -- when you design tools that have wiretappable elements, you invite wiretapping. When you design tools that retain user data, you invite identity thieves and overreaching subpoenas. Cavoukian argues that privacy and security are not zero-sum, that privacy is just as important in the "post-9/11 world" as it was before, and that you don't need to give up one to get the other. She addresses specific privacy-protection computer science techniques, and cites Kim Cameron's wonderful Seven Laws of Identity (I wish Kim would approach trusted computing with the same skepticism that he brought to identity issues, but that doesn't take away from his excellent work there). There's something incredibly refreshing about hearing a high-ranking government official say things like, "Privacy is integral to freedom. You cannot have a free and democratic society without privacy. When a state morphs from a democracy into a totalitarian regime, the first thread to unravel is privacy." Link (via /.)

French fan-translation of "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" Posted: 07 Oct 2007 06:27 AM CDT Zen le Renard, a French reader of my stories, has translated my story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, which appeared in my short story collection Overclocked and was released under a Creative Commons license that allows for noncommercial remixing. Zen le Renard reads English, but wanted to share the story with his monolingual sysadmin friends in France, so he took on the project. Voila! Quand le mobile de Félix se mit à sonner à 2 heures du mat, Kelly se retourna, lui tapa l'épaule et grogna « Pourquoi t'as pas éteint ce putain de téléphone avant qu'on se couche ? » « Par ce que je suis d'astreinte,» lui répondit Félix en s'asseyant au bord du lit. Il attrapa son futal qu'il avait laissé par terre avant de se pieuter et Kelly, en continuant de lui boxer l'épaule, lui dit : «T'es pas un putain de médecin non plus, t'es rien qu'un foutu administrateur système » « C'est mon boulot,» qu'il lui dit. « Ils te font bosser plus dur qu'un cheval de trait ! » lui dit Kelly. « Tu sais bien que j'ai raison, bon dieu. T'es un père maintenant, tu peux plus te casser en pleine nuit à chaque fois que quelqu'un perd l'accès à sa dose de porn. Ne réponds pas à ce putain de téléphone » Il savait bien qu'elle avait raison. Il répondit au téléphone. Link, Link to HTML version, Link to text version

Public radio station in NYC won't air "Howl" for fear of the FCC Posted: 07 Oct 2007 06:19 AM CDT The FCC's war on dirty words is having a chilling effect -- even WBAI Pacifica, the radical radio station in NYC, is scared of airing Allen Ginsberg's magnificent poem, Howl. "Why, 50 years later after a judge ruled that children could read this poem, people are afraid the courts will say that their ears shouldn't hear it," said Ron Collins, a constitutional law instructor and First Amendment advocate who is leading a small group of authors, broadcasters and free-speech advocates pushing to broadcast the poem eventually. "Yet they can go on the Internet and see far, far worse things." Another irony: WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation station in New York that plans to post "Howl" online, is the same station that took on the FCC more than 30 years ago over the right to air George Carlin's comedy routine featuring the "seven dirty words." The challenge led to a 1978 Supreme Court decision governing what naughty words can be broadcast and when. Pacifica's attorney for FCC issues, John Crigler, thinks airing "Howl" would be "a great test case" in the current environment. But he understands why WBAI won't broadcast "Howl," even between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the hours the FCC has cordoned off for rougher language. WBAI program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg's dirty-word bombs. If each Pacifica station that aired the poem - and possibly repeated it - were to be fined for airing "Howl," it could mean millions of dollars in fines. Link, Link to Ginsberg reading Howl at the Internet Archive, Link to reproduction of the Howl manuscript on Amazon (via JWZ)

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