Andy Switky of IDEO shares this fun illustration from an English-Chinese book that a colleague bought for his young son. "The Nature" page includes such natural features as a nuclear power plant and giant dam. Click the image to enlarge.

Village Voice interviews porn producer Dez, who says he got bored of making gonzo porn and applied his talents toward making porn based on World of Warcraft. He calls the Web-based video series Whorelore: Swords, Sorcery, and Sex.

Whorelore, now in its second season, started in 2006 as Dez’s “labor of love.” He’d already starred in over 600 porn titles—most famously, he says, Rectal Rooter and Dez’s Dirty Weekend—before venturing behind the camera. “Whorelore had always been something I wanted to do,” he explains. “I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since the time I was eight, and I love World of Warcraft. Besides, I was bored doing Gonzo porn. [In the past] they’ve done porn with knights and bare maidens and stuff like that, but they’ve never added magic or anything cool.” So Dez decided to “step it up a notch,” throwing in low-grade special effects, a storyline, and a geek’s affectionate attention to detail. Originally he called his new project Whorecraft, but had to change the title due to some hush-hush legal flack from “you know who.” Read: Blizzard Entertainment, the company that runs World of Warcraft and looks out for its good name. (A Blizzard spokesperson declined to comment on the name change, saying the company doesn't publicly discuss legal issues.)

A little legal action hasn’t stopped Dez from accomplishing his goal to show the world how hot it’d be if WOW's sensual elves swallowed. And Whorelore doesn’t stop at sweet elf love. Often shot outdoors for a more rustic, “medieval” feel, the six, half-hour episodes in season one feature everything from two armor-clad, busty blonde warriors making out on a boulder to a masturbating troll (i.e. a woman painted entirely green moaning with a Jamaican accent). Playing off an old video game joke, Dez called episode one "Rogues Do it From Behind," and episode four, “Man Hunt,” has Dez’s characters encountering a real live bear--though, thankfully, it doesn’t join in on the fun. The second season of six more 30-minute episodes is still in production, but the Whorelore website describes it as a struggle between light and dark, with a villain “capable of vanquishing those who thrive for harmony.” Don’t worry, that just means there’s a magical nympho who likes to deep-throat elf ears.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Jack Ruby's pistol that he used to kill JFK assassin (?) Lee Harvey Oswald will go up for auction next month. The Colt Cobra is expected to fetch $2 to $3 million as part of a huge auction of pop culture collectibles on the block by Guernseys auctioneers. From Reuters:

Collected over the past 25 years by South Florida property developer Anthony Pugliese, the collection, which also includes a whip and the holy grail from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," will be put up for auction next month in Las Vegas...

He said the Colt Cobra revolver used by Jack Ruby to kill Oswald in 1963, just days after Oswald was arrested for assassinating Kennedy, could fetch several million dollars alone. The initials of detectives who handled the gun are scratched on it.

"The whole world saw that unfold live and here's the very gun and the hat that Jack Ruby was wearing," said Ettinger, adding that the tag tied to Oswald's toe to identify his corpse and a lock of his hair were also to be auctioned.

Also up for grabs is the jacket worn by Beatle John Lennon in the "Imagine" video, the wedding dress worn by pop star Madonna in her "Like a Virgin" video, a "Superman" costume worn by Christopher Reeve, and an Andy Warhol paint brush.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Jeff Healey, the Toronto blues guitarist, broadcaster, and music historian, died yesterday of cancer. Healey was most widely known for his appearance as the blind guitar player in Roadhouse, and for his distinctive way of playing his guitar laid flat across his lap. I met Jeff many times at the Crow's Nest Bar over Chicago's on Queen Street, and at the open-mic days at Grossman's Tavern, and he was always a mensch, not to mention funny and blisteringly talented.

Acclaimed jazz and rock guitarist Jeff Healey was remembered Sunday as a musician of rare ability who had a wicked sense of humour and a generous nature as fans and bandmates mourned his death at age 41, following a battle with cancer.

Bandmates of Canadian rock and jazz legend Jeff Healey were among those shocked by the news of his death Sunday.

Healey died Sunday evening in a Toronto hospital surrounded by family and a bandmate, Colin Bray.

Link (Image: Jeff Healey in 2007.jpg, by Cmccarten at Wikimedia Commons)

In today's edition of Boing Boing tv, dramatic readings of real-life unsolicited emails. Part one, HOWITZER CANNONPANTS, a spiritual and pharmaceutical parable that ends not with ressurection, but erection. Part two, THANKS, MAURICE, one of dozens of emails received by Boing Boing editors from a disturbed man in Canada who sought cash, justice, and an end to "Mind Controlled Hatred." Link to BBtv post with discussion and downloadable video.

Moo -- the folks who make the sweet little Moo cards and other custom-printed stuff -- are holding a global Egg Hunt with hidden clues buried in many sites (including Boing Boing) and in various cities around the planet. They're publishing clever, cryptic clues about these, and those who discover them get prizes: including MOO discounts and freebies, Flickr pro accounts, Blurb discounts and freebies, Etsy discounts or gift baskets, Timbuk2 discounts, Ponoko 'make' discounts, Styleshake dresses and Picnik premium accounts."

Moo adds: "You can also play to win the 'Ultimate Egg Basket'. This contains a selection of wonderful goodies, including a digital SLR, a range of MOO's partner's prizes and a selection of English treats. There's also a very cute handmade bunny, crafted by Kim, one of the *real* people at MOO." Link

Amazon's launched a Linux-based downloader for its DRM-free MP3 music store -- fantastic news! Now if they'd only change the terms-of-service for the store to something sensible like "Don't do anything illegal with this music." Link (Thanks, Pete!)

Back in 2004, Jason Levin and Chris Hopkins, two students at Cornell, hacked a serial mouse into an Etch-a-Sketch:

The public was introduced to the EAS in 1960 and since then it has stayed virtually the same. This nostalgic toy is recognized by many generations and we decided to put a new spin on the device. Most Americans are familiar with the two knob design which allows a user to control the movement of a stylus by turning each knob. The left knob controls horizontal motion and the right knob moves the stylus vertically. Turning both knobs at the same time causes the stylus to draw out a diagonal line. We decided to mount a stepper motor on each knob and control those with the Atmel Mega 32. By connecting a serial mouse to the microcontroller and using our line drawing algorithm, we could move the stylus directly by moving the mouse. The ability to record movements and play them back is available for creating more interesting designs.

In designing this project, we decided to create something that was a mix of mechanical and electrical components and would ultimately be fun to use. Using an EAS would be a throwback to our childhood but adding the mouse also revitalized the toy. Many students who saw us working with the EAS were immediately interested in what we were doing because it is such a popular childhood toy. Though the control of an EAS with a mouse is not necessarily a practical project, we thought it would be a good way for us to practice our engineering skills and would be something entertaining to do.

Link (via Make)

Seth Godin has posted a transcript of a fantastic talk he gave to some music execs about the future of the music industry and the Internet. This is some good straight-shooting insight about what the music industry will never succeed at (suing fans) and what they could do instead (courting fans):

So if I put all this together I’m going to come up with what I call the Merchant Solution. It has nothing to do with stores, it has to do with Natalie Merchant. (laughter) So, Natalie Merchant shows up in the New York Times last week saying not only do I not have a record label, I’m not going to make records anymore because I just figure out how to do it. And that is the biggest opportunity times 10,000 because Natalie doesn’t want to be in business, Natalie wants to make records. Thirty years ago Natalie couldn’t put together the scratch to record an album because she couldn’t afford a recording studio. Thats what you guys did for her. She couldn’t come up with the time and energy to go out to California to sell and pay for shelf space at Tower, thats what you guys did for her. The point is, now she needs somebody to say “let us take care of your tribe”. Let us figure out the business model that says you get to do what you’re great at, write songs, perform them, find people who love you, not like you, and they are A LOT in the case of Natalie Merchant, and we will figure out not how to exploit that, not how to write a contract that you’re going to regret for the rest of your life, but to sit next to you and say guess what, there are all these people in the tribe [and] we need to figure out how to make stuff for them. And, because we have three other artists that are just like you, Cowboy Junkies, we can start mixing tribes together in appropriate ways that makes everybody happy. Because you [record label] could go to the Cowboy Junkies tribe and say Natalie Merchant is coming to town and they’ll all go. Because they love her and they love each other and they want to see each other again because they can’t wait a whole year till the [Cowboy] Junkies come back.

So if the model that we loved about the record business in 1968 was A&R;, taking care of artists, finding artists who people will love, and the model that we hated was brand management, I want to argue that the next model is tribal management. That the next model is to say, what you do for a living is manage a tribe...many tribes...silos of tribes. That your job is to make the people in that tribe delighted to know each other and trust you to go find music for them. And, in exchange, it could be way out on the long tail, no one wants to be on the long tail by themselves, the polka lovers like the polka lovers, they want to be together. But that you, maybe it is only one person, technology makes this really easy, your job is to curate for that tribe, like the curators upstairs [at the museum]. There is a museum of modern art tribe, you can see them here every Thursday. And if you can curate for them guess what the [musical] artists need...you! Guess what the tribe needs...you! You add an enormous amount of value by becoming a new kind of middleman.

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Richard Esguerra sez,

If you live in Southern California or happen to be going to ETech in San Diego, come and hang out at the EFF Pioneer Awards fundraiser on Tuesday night!

This year, the winners are the Mozilla Foundation and its Chairman Mitchell Baker, University of Ottawa Professor Michael Geist, and AT&T; whistleblower Mark Klein. Past winners include Linux creator Linus Torvalds, security researcher Bruce Schneier, and Cory Doctorow.

Michael Robertson, the Founder and CEO of MP3.com, Linspire, MP3tunes, and Gizmo5, will keynote the ceremony with his talk: "What to Expect When You're Expecting... To Be Sued".

The awards ceremony is open to the public.

Link

See also: EFF announces Pioneer Award winners

Following on the news that Random House Audio is dropping DRM on its audiobooks, both Penguin and Simon & Schuster Audio have announced DRM-free trials for their products. I really hope this means that Audible/Amazon will drop the DRM on its audiobooks now. I used to spend a fortune on Audible books until I realized that the DRM had locked me into iTunes (and had to spend a solid month unlocking my giant, paid-for audio collection when I switched to Linux).

As I've mentioned here, Audible's policy is that they'll only sell DRMed audiobooks, even if the publisher and author want to go DRM-free. That's not because Audible can't handle DRM-free files (they do some free/promotional stuff without DRM), but rather out of some ideological commitment to DRM. And since they're the exclusive supplier of audiobooks to iTunes, that means that you can only buy DRMed audiobooks through the iTunes store, despite Steve Jobs' claim that he wants to make the store DRM-free (he renewed Audible's exclusivity deal after making that announcement, though).

When Amazon bought Audible, they said they'd kill the DRM if they got enough public outcry against it.

Well, here's my promise: if Amazon drops Audible DRM and institutes sensible terms of service (something along the lines of "Don't break copyright law"), I will buy and blog an Audible audiobook here on Boing Boing once a week for six months. Link

See also:
Random House Audio abandons audiobook DRM
Amazon buys Audible, promises to kill DRM if we complain

Futurismic has relaunched its original fiction section with a fantastic short story by Eliot Fintushel, a brilliantly funny and deeply weird sf writer. The story's called "Uxo, Bomb Dog."

It was a comical sight, if not for the stakes: Volkovoy, dull gray heap, like a breaching whale, trundled and pivoted, roared and smoked, extruding claws and spades and hammers. It plowed up the sod. Now and then, if it couldn’t defuse a dinger, Volkovoy flashed and shook, encasing and detonating the thing, then dropping it out the back, busted metal dung. Meanwhile, Uxo, sweetie, his tail curled back like the tongue of a letter “Q,” walked and sniffed and walked. His smart flat face was matted and dirty, but when he yipped and looked back at me and the kids - “A bomb here, boss!” he seemed to say. “Look how good I am!” - his eyes were full of light. Then I’d tiptoe out to fetch the dinger and disable it. He knew not to lick me then.

The bombs in Sheep’s Meadow were easy and few. That’s the great thing about your Neo-Luddites: their effectiveness as terrorists is limited by their disdain for the machine. (We share that.) Of course, it only takes one mine - or the rumor of one - to put forty acres off limits. They’d done a neat job of quarantining Central Park, you’ll have to grant, with a little TNT and a lot of tongue wag.

Link

These "bicycle handcuffs" look like a pretty good solution to a lot of bike-locking problems (though they wouldn't be much help in locking your bike to a telephone pole or wide light-post). I can't evaluate the manufacturer's claims about the material's hardness or the lock's efficacy, but the theory appears sound:

The heavy-duty cuffs attach around the fork and disc rotor so would-be thieves can't make off with your bike unless they’re armed with some kind of Fort Knox-busting wonder weapon. This nifty arrangement means you won’t have to fool around taking off your wheel for full lockdown. You don’t even need to use the keys to secure your bike, just click the cuffs using the integrated buttons.

Link (via Red Ferret)

The Atlantic's James Fallows has turned in an excellent piece on China's Great Firewall, the censorship system that controls the flow of information into and within China. There's some meaty technical detail here, but the kicker is the social and political impact of the firewall: simply by making it inconvenient to read certain sites, the Chinese government can keep politically charged issues from surfacing in the national discourse:

Thus Chinese authorities can easily do something that would be harder in most developed countries: physically monitor all traffic into or out of the country. They do so by installing at each of these few “international gateways” a device called a “tapper” or “network sniffer,” which can mirror every packet of data going in or out. This involves mirroring in both a figurative and a literal sense. “Mirroring” is the term for normal copying or backup operations, and in this case real though extremely small mirrors are employed. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as these travel through the Chinese gateway routers, numerous tiny mirrors bounce reflections of them to a separate set of “Golden Shield” computers.Here the term’s creepiness is appropriate. As the other routers and servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers) that make up the Internet do their best to get the packet where it’s supposed to go, China’s own surveillance computers are looking over the same information to see whether it should be stopped...

[I]t would also be wrong to ignore the cumulative effect of topics people are not allowed to discuss. “Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib,” Rebecca Mac­Kinnon says. In China, “the controls mean that whole topics inconvenient for the regime simply don’t exist in public discussion.” Most Chinese people remain wholly unaware of internationally noticed issues like, for instance, the controversy over the Three Gorges Dam.

Link (Thanks, Vern!)

Nine Inch Nails have released their new album, Ghosts I-IV, as a free download under a remix-friendly Creative Commons license. The band is selling a selection of collectible, high-margin media with the music on it, and will presumably tour and sell tickets to people who got turned on by the freely copyable music.

Q: Is Ghosts I-IV available elsewhere?
A: You can also purchase the download from Amazon's MP3 store right now. The deluxe versions are available for pre-order from Artist in Residence (A+R) as well. Check out their other work.

The same 2xCD you can purchase here and a $39 4x vinyl edition (on 130 gram vinyl in a double gatefold package) will be available at retail in North America (April 8), Australia (April 5), the UK (April 8), Japan (April 5), and most European territories (April 8).

Q: Is the musical content of the CD versions any different from the downloads available here?
A: No, the CD versions contain the exact same 36 tracks as the full download.

Other information:
Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

Link (Thanks, Hunter, and everyone else who suggested this!)

A Quaker math teacher at California State University East Bay has been fired for inserting the word "nonviolently" into the loyalty oath that state employees are required to sign. The woman, who works with young people who need remedial help with math, has always made this change in the loyalty oaths she's signed throughout her long teaching career, but the CSU East Bay administration fired her for refusing to pledge to violate her religion's tenets to in defense of the Constitution (a document that guarantees religious freedom).

Each time, when asked to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and state Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm." All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said...

Modifying the oath "is very clearly not permissible," the university's attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. "It's an unfortunate situation. If she'd just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment."...

"All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don't care if I meant it, and it didn't seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn't matter. Nothing."

Link

The need to "protect babies from kidnappers" inspired an inventor in 1934 to create the world's most perfectly hyperbolic nannycam:

ANOTHER use has been found for that mysterious power known as electricity, and this time it will find favor with all mothers. The photo-electric cell, popularly known as the “eye which never sleeps,” has been mounted on baby’s crib. It watches throughout the night, ringing an alarm the instant anyone tries to reach into the crib.

Link

Bhilmers, a YouTube user and student, created this alternative credit reel for Star Wars in the style of legendary title-designer Saul Bass (The Man with the Golden Arm, Vertigo, Psycho, Casino, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and many more). You know, I think I prefer this to the iconic sheet-of-words, receding-into-space credit-reel. Link (via Kottke)

Jake von Slatt sez, "I have always described Steampunk as the intersection of technology and romance and the email I got last night from Maker Dave Veloz proves it! Look what he made for Jenn, his lovely bride to be and fellow Steampunk aficionado!"

Awww -- that's one happily married couple, all right! Link (Thanks, Jake!)

Glyn sez, "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Rights Group have set up a website so that EU citizens can air their objections to copyright term extension. Sign the petition to the major institutions of the European Union to stop copyright term extension and keep copyright policy sound. Major record labels want to keep control of sound recordings well beyond the current 50 year term so that they can continue to make marginal profits from the few recordings that are still commercially viable half a century after they were laid down. Yet if the balance of copyright tips in their favour, it will damage the music industry as a whole, and also individual artists, libraries, academics, businesses and the public. (Also in French and German -- They are working on a offer to translate the site into Italian. If you're interested in translating Sound Copyright into your local language, please get in touch - email info@soundcopyright.eu)

The labels lobby for change, but have yet to publicly present any compelling economic evidence to support their case. What evidence does exist shows clearly that extending term will discourage innovation, stunt the reissues market, and irrevocably damage future artists' and the general public's access to their cultural heritage.

As Europe looks to the creative industries for its economic future, it is faced with a choice. It can agree to extend the copyright term in sound recordings for the sake of a few major record labels. Or it can allow sound recordings to enter the public domain at the end of fifty years for the benefit of future innovation, future prosperity and the public good.

Link

Eirikso sez, "A while ago you wrote about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and our experiment with distribution of a very popular TV-show DRM-free and in full quality through the use of BitTorrent. The experience so far has been very positive and we've now published some more thoughts on the project and some numbers. The load balancing of the BitTorrent protocol works perfectly well, people are happily seeding the files and the download time for one full 30 minute episode is still 3-5 minutes on a good broadband connection in Norway. We're closing in on 90 000 downloads of the torrent files and are running with a P2P ratio of about 95%. Saving huge on bandwidth cost." Link (Thanks, Eirikso!)

See also: Norwegian broadcaster puts popular show online as no-DRM torrent

I spent the weekend watching every youtube clip tagged "Dr. Steve Brule," alone and with friends, on laptops and iphones. This was Dr. Steve Brule Weekend. The character is played by John C. Reilly, and is part of Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job on Adult Swim. LMFAO. This one's my favorite. no, this one. (thanks Coop)

Update: Our old pal Jesse Thorn has this.

Here's a fine and spicy list of obsolete skills, arranged alphabetically. I like "Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV," "Filing cards in a library card catalog," "Reading Moon Tables or Tide Tables," and "Swapping floppy discs."

V
* Vantive?
* VCR Programming
* VESA Driver for Games
* Visual Basic 3 Programming

Link (Thanks, Eric!)

Neil Gaiman's got some good further ruminations on the nature and reason for free ebooks in a post he called "The nature of free." Bottom line: low-risk/low-cost books are how readers discover new authors, and the biggest threat writers face is the overall unpopularity of reading books, not people reading for free. The more barriers there are to reading, the worse the former gets.

During one of the interviews recently, a reporter said something like, "Of course, a real publisher wouldn't give away paper books," and I pointed out that 3,000 copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy were given away by Douglas Adams' publisher, with a 'write in and get your free book' ad in Rolling Stone. They wanted copies of HHGTTG on campuses in the US, and they wanted people to read it and tell other people. Word of mouth is still the best tool for selling books.

Link

See also: Free download of Neil Gaiman's American Gods

Neil Gaiman's publisher Harper Collins has put his magnificent novel American Gods online for free reading as an experiment to see free digital copies sell print books.

This is a great idea -- it's really exciting to see publishers trying to get actual data about the market, rather than simply condemning all copying as piracy and hoping that the Internet just goes away.

However, I think that Harper Collins got this one wrong. They've put the text of American Gods up in a wrapper that loads pictures of the pages from the printed book, one page at a time, with no facility for offline reading. The whole thing runs incredibly slowly and is unbelievably painful to use. I think we can be pretty sure that no one will read this version instead of buying the printed book -- but that's only because practically no one is going to read this version, period.

The fact is that the full text of American Gods has been online for years, and can be located with a single Google query. I managed to download the entire text of the book in less time than it took me to get the Harper Collins edition to load the first page of Chapter One (literally!). The "security" that Harper Collins has bought with its clunky, kudgey experiment is nonexistent: pirates will just go get the pirate edition.

Unfortunately, the "security" has also undermined the experiment's value as a tool for getting better intelligence about the market. This isn't going to cost Neil any sales, but it's also not going to buy him any. We take our books home and read them in a thousand ways, in whatever posture, room, and conditions we care to. No one chains our books to our desks and shows us a single page at a time. This experiment simulates a situation that's completely divorced from the reality of reading for pleasure. As an experiment, this will prove nothing about ebooks either way.

It's a terrible pity. Link (Thanks, Spider!)

See also: Which book should Neil Gaiman put online for free?

A Fox affiliate managed to get ahold of the TSA's raw data on luggage theft on their watch and is reporting that a whopping $31 million worth of valuables disappeared from the aviation system in the past three years. Many of these items went missing from within suitcases, pilfered in transit after the TSA inaugurated its no-locks policy on checked bags. Now that's security.

A former KCI baggage handler, who asked us not to identify her, said she knows theft happens even in Kansas City.

"There was never anybody who said I did that," said the baggage handler. "But there was always talk. So and so found something in a bag. Shoes were one. Another one was perfumes, really expensive brands."

She said the best time for luggage to be tampered with is when it's in the baggage hold area. That's where it is stored before it's loaded onto the plane.

"You will have one person down there and all they are doing is transferring bags to different carts," said the former baggage handler. "It only takes one person. So you would just be in a room by yourself."

She said one way to get away with the crime was to rifle through a bag and then put it on the wrong plane headed to the wrong city. When the luggage is finally located, it would be unclear where the crime took place.

Link

Lisa Congdon turned her scissor collection into a gorgeous mobile -- think of the incredible mental scars you could leave on your child by hanging this over her crib! Link (via Craft)

My uncle Kevin Scanlon has snapping photos of Appalachian life for as long as I could form sentences -- actually, no, longer. When I was young, his photos taught me to appreciate the modest, mostly overlooked beauty surrounding the old railroads that snake through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and neighboring states. His photographs document what is now a dying culture.

His first-ever solo exhibit opens tomorrow in Grafton, West Virginia. It's probably safe to guess that most of the people who read this blog post aren't in easy driving distance of Grafton, West Virginia, but you can see some of the images online, and buy prints if you're so inclined. If you do go to the opening on Saturday, please give him a hug for me.

Shown above: Morning Coal Train, Coopers, WV, 2005. Here's another one of my favorites from his railroad series. (high five, uncle Kev!)

Previously on BB: Kevin Scanlon's heavy industry photography

Update: Here's a snip from an interview with Kevin:

West Virginia reveals itself much like a book, one page at a time. The mountainous terrain and twisting valleys force you in close. Every page of the state has an interesting story to tell and another surprising view. The railroad is the thread that ties it all together. There are two themes that define my approach to photography: context and light. I am drawn to industrial subjects because of their influence on the culture of an area. Railroads are iconic in West Virginia. They were the key in developing the state, they were one of the defining factors when the state's borders were laid out and they literally carry the state away every day, one carload at a time. This series of photographs attempts to depict the railroad as an element of the landscape.

(thanks Aunt Dory!)

In November, 1969, the New York Times reported on the existence of a secret, miniature art museum that had been smuggled onto the surface of the moon on Apollo 12:

...according to Frosty Myers, the artist who initiated the project, the Moon Museum was secretly installed on a hatch on a leg of the Intrepid landing module with the help of an unnamed engineer at the Grumman Corporation after attempts to move the project forward through NASA's official channels were unsuccessful.

According to the Times, the artworks are, clockwise from the top center: Rauschenberg's wavy line; Novros' black square bisected by thin white lines [in 1969, Novros also created the incredibly rich, minimalist fresco on the second floor of Judd's 101 Spring St]; a computer-generated drawing by Myers; a geometric mouse by Oldenburg, "the subject of a sculpture in his current show at the Museum of Modern Art" [a sculpture which is in MoMA's permanent collection, btw]; and a template pattern by Chamberlain, "similar to one he used to produce paintings done with automobile lacquer." Warhol's contribution, which is obscured by the thumb above, is described as "a calligraphic squiggle made up of the initials of his signature."

Link (via Kottke)