Now I understand why we have to do away with that pesky Bill of Rights -- there are over 900,000 terrorists on US soil. The ACLU has a counter to show the latest number.

"At the current rate of growth, the U.S. watch lists will contain a million records by July. If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins" said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

The new counter features a rolling, odometer-style display with a real-time readout showing how many individuals are on the list at a given moment. The figures are extrapolated from a September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.As of today, the list stands at approximately 917,000 names.

Link (Via Gerry Canavan)

A gnome is walking the streets of Salta, Argentina at night, and he scaring the town's children.

A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a "creepy gnome" that locals claim stalks the streets at night. The midget -- which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk -- was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters. ... "One of my friends was so scared after seeing that thing that we had to take him to the hospital."

We believe these kids when they say it's not a prank, right? Link (Via Arbroath)

I've just posted the first installment of a podcast reading of a new novella that I co-wrote with Hugo- and Nebula-nominee Benjamin Rosenbaum. The story's a big, 32,000-word piece called "True Names" (in homage to Vernor Vinge's famous story of the same name), and it involves the galactic wars between vast, post-Singularity intelligences that are competing to corner the universe's supply of computation before the heat-death of the universe.

Ben and I will be reading the story in weekly installments, taking turns as our schedules allow. The reading is Creative Commons licensed -- Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial -- and the story itself will be published this fall in Fast Forward 2, Lou Anders' followup to his knockout 2007 anthology, Fast Forward (regular Boing Boing readers will remember Paul Di Filippo's Wikiworld story from that volume). Lou's given us permission to post the story's text simultaneous with the book's publication, under the same Creative Commons license.

I had a nearly illegal amount of fun working on this story with Ben, who is a gonzo comp-sci geek with a real flair for phrasing, and I hope you'll enjoy hearing it as much as we enjoyed writing it! Link, Podcast feed

Love LOLCats and papercraft? Now you can have them both in the same file, with this papercraft ceiling-cat cut-and-stick model! Link (Thanks, Dan!)

Bestselling author Terry Pratchett has donated $1,000,000 to fund Alzheimer's research. Pratchett announced that he had a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's last December, and he's since discovered that there's an enormous gap in the science of Alzheimer's, noting, "I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance."

“I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the Cure comes along. Say it will be soon – there's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with dementia will double within a generation. In most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much. It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer’s research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.”

Mr Pratchett’s donation is in recognition of the urgent need to provide funding for research into the disease, which affects an estimated 700,000 people in the UK. For every person with Alzheimer's, £11 is spent each year on UK research compared with £289 for each cancer patient, even though similar numbers of people are affected.

Link (Thanks, Irene!)

(Image: Pratchett Himself, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Myrmi's Flickr stream)

See also: Terry Pratchett has rare, early-onset Alzheimer's

Xeni speaks with author and Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson, and "airplane geek" Jordi Munoz, about the quest to create the ultimate sub-$100 aerial drone. One design involved the use of a Nintendo Wii controller. UAVs are often associated with military combat or police surveillance, but what "friendlier" uses might we put them to, in civilian hands? Shot at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, California.

Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with discussion thread, and downloadable video.

From rootkits to hair-metal, from suing Neil Young to ditching Bob Dylan, from nuking Napster to passing on the Beatles, Blender Magazine rounds up the 20 worst gaffes of the record industry, going all the way back to Tom Edison's dismissal of Jazz.

#2 Decca Records A&R; exec tells Fab Four, “No, thanks”
Dick Rowe was not the only record-label executive who passed on the Beatles in the early ’60s, but he was the only one who brushed off their manager, Brian Epstein, with the astute prediction that: “Groups with guitars are on their way out.” Epstein begged Rowe to reconsider, so Rowe hopped a train to Liverpool to check out the band live. When he arrived at the Cavern, he found a mob of kids trying to force their way into the club in the pouring rain. Annoyed, he smoked a cigarette, went home and signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead.
Unintended consequence: The Monkees

Link (Thanks, Barry!)

Stabo makes men's "Bivvy Trousers" out of surplus WWII British military tents, turning the thick, lightly waxed canvas into comfortable pants. I bought a pair on Sunday and they're incredibly comfortable and look great. I feel like the canvas is going to last for years, and the stitching and construction is both thoughtful and thorough (I love the grommeted back pockets, too!).

After many attempts to find the perfect recycled material, we finally found a pair of World War II era Bivouac tents languishing in a dusty warehouse. Luckily they make fantastic trousers and because they are individually cut and sewn each pair is unique.

The cut evolved through a process of making and remaking till we eventually developed this relaxed fit. The legs were really long so we rolled them up and that became part of the look….although we are happy to shorten them.

The trousers are either dark brown, tan, dark green or faded green, but we don’t have every size in every colour. As these trousers are made from used tents there are inconsistencies, marks and even patches where they were mended and which all add to their charm.

Link

Subterranean Press has produced a free MP3 audiobook of Charlie Stross's comic science fiction novella "Trunk and Disorderly."

Charles Stross is damned funny, both in person and on the page. You’ll have to take my word on the first count. As to the second, here’s a P. G. Wodehouse meets Robert A. Heinlein as filtered through Mr. Stross’s sensibilities. In other words, it’s funny and indescribable as hell, and probably my favorite story this year.

Link (via Charlie Stross)

Coop sent this story link to me a while back, describing it as "an excellent first-person account [by Chuck Rozanski] of the discovery of the 'Mile High' collection, the Holy Grail of comics collecting. This is the kind of thing that craphounds have wet dreams about."

I worked at Mile High Comics in Boulder, Colorado from about age 12 to 17. I was working there when Chuck Rozanski bought what is widely regarded as the most valuable cache of Golden Age comics on the planet. I was too young and dumb to realize how monumental this find was. I just remember Chuck fretting about how he was going to come up with the tiny amount of money he'd need to pay for the collection that was worth millions.

It's an amazing story.

Believe it or not, what was going through my mind as I was looking at the closet was fear. Not just a fear that the deal would get screwed up somehow, but also a realization that my life was about to radically change. It's one thing to have slowly built up a small business over a period of many years, and quite another to suddenly win the lottery. I could see very clearly that discovering this collection was going to completely change my life, and that nothing would ever again be the same. I was excited at that prospect, but also very trepidatious. Radical change can be good, but it can also destroy much of that which you hold most dear.

Link

Wearing my MAKE propeller-beanie, I'd like to make the following announcement: "MAKE is hiring an online manager. You don't need to live in Sebastopol, CA. San Francisco or thereabouts is OK if you're willing to come to the offices a few times per week, or as needed."

And we will miss our beloved former online manager Terrie very much!

Details: Link

I have nothing to add to this excellent sentence:

CNN apologized today for getting on-air analysis of Gov. Spitzer's legal options from a former U.S. Attorney who resigned after being accused of biting a stripper.

Link (via For Your Entertainment, Thanks, Mark Frauenfelder!)

From Ohio's Beacon Journal, this breaking news:

A 38-year-old Cole Avenue man reported that his home was invaded on Sept. 9. The man said he was sitting home alone masturbating and watching a pornographic movie when a man came down into the basement, holding a gun, and started to videotape him. The man said that before he left, the intruder fed his dog some mushrooms and the dog died.

UPDATE: In the comments section, Dave says: "I think you guys were had on this one. A search of ohio.com does not bring this article up."

UPDATE 2: In a selfless quest for the truth, I sacrificed $2.95 to buy the 3000-word "Crime Watch" section from the September 21, 2003 edition of the Akron Beacon. Yes, the article really did appear in the paper. (Click on image for enlargement)

(Via Yes But No But Yes)

I'm awfully fond of this desktop wallpaper by UPSO, an illustrator who has contributed to MAKE.
UPDATE: UPSO (AKA Dustin Amery Hostetler) has a solo show this friday at Wootini in North Carolina. He says "The show is called 'I will miss you when I'm gone' and it's all about the things I will miss when Im dead, like my wife, my pocket knife and the finches on my birdfeeder."
Link (Via Notcot)

The new Moshi Moshi gallery/store in Portland, Oregon opened to the public last weekend with an "I Love Mr. T" art show to benefit an area elementary school. The show was the brainchild of a ten-year-old artist, Levi Pitters, who also got his friends to contribute Mr. T-related artwork. If you can't get to Moshi Moshi in person, you can check out (and buy!) the artwork on Etsy. Also, MAKE:'s Shawn Connally was there and snapped some photos. Shawn says, "As you can imagine, it was RAD!"
Link to the Moshi Moshi shop on Etsy, Link and Link to the Moshi Moshi blog posts, Link to Shawn Connally's photoset

A spiffy dance number from Pop Gear, a 1965 compilation of British Invasion song "videos." According to IMDB, it "includes bands such as The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Peter and Gordon, and the Spencer Davis Group (with Steve Winwood). The film also features bookend live performances by The Beatles." (Via Otomano NSFW)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• 1966 Time article about swinging London

A family in Sebastopol, California (hometown of the MAKE: headquarters!) is auctioning off a beautiful fossilized mastodon. Found on the Fiddler family farm in 1997, the specimen spent several years on display at the Oakland Museum and then in a wine bar. The starting bid at eBay is $115,000, which is apparently way too high. No bids as of yet. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"That's an incredibly inflated price," said UC Berkeley paleontologist Mark Goodwin. "Mastodons are not uncommon. And the commercialization of fossils is a huge problem. It's undermining the science. This is our fossil heritage, and it shouldn't be for sale..."

(Nancy) Fiddler hopes the giant fossil will find a good home, and she hopes it will go on display in another museum. But most of all, she hopes to get $800,000, so she and her family can buy a large ranch and some cars.

"If it doesn't sell, we'll just hang on to it a while longer," she said. "We're not going to give it away."

Link to SF Chronicle article, Link to eBay auction

(Image via Students for a Free Tibet.)

Following up on this previous BB post, thousands of Chinese security personnel today fired tear gas in an effort to scatter more than 600 monks taking part in the second day of rare street protests inside Tibet. Tibetan Buddhist monks from Sera and Drepung monasteries refused to return to their quarters for several hours, according to reports.

I have traveled in this region, and to those monasteries, and have spoken with monks and nuns who participated in similar actions in previous years. What is taking place this week would seem to be the most significant series of demonstrations inside Tibet in nearly 20 years. Snip:

The Tibet demonstrations follow a string of marches around the world to commemorate the 49th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule in the remote, mountainous region that has become a flashpoint for protesters ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

"The police were armed with electric prods. Other uniformed security forces had firearms," the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

"The monks chanted: 'Release our people'," the source said, quoting a witness. The group, from the Sera Monastery, also shouted "We want human rights and freedom", the source said.

Link More from the UK's Times:

Clearly rattled by the bold display of opposition, Chinese authorities have ordered the closure of the north face of Mount Everest to expeditions until after the Olympic torch is carried up to its peak in early May. The expedition web portal posted a copy of a notice from the Mountaineering Association of the Tibet Autonomous Region asking climbers to delay their ascents.

The notice, dated March 10, said: “Concern over heavy climbing activities, crowded climbing routes and increasing environmental pressures will cause potential safety problems in Qomalangma [Everest] areas. We are not able to accept your expedition, so please postpone your climbing.”

(...)Chinese officials had said previously that the north face of the mountain, which straddles the border between Tibet and Nepal, would remain open. They could now be concerned that international activists may try to use the occasion of the arrival of the Olympic torch to stage some kind of demonstration on the world's highest mountain. Last April, four protesters at the Everest base camp on the Tibetan side unfurled a banner reading, “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” — referring to the official games slogan. The group was deported.

Link.

The Dalai Lama issued a related statement earlier this week, calling for a "comprehensive approach to resolve the problem of Tibet."

Pro-Tibetan-independence advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet is also covering the ongoing protests.

Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal writes that recent research shows that a brain rewards itself with a squirt of natural opiates when it comes across new information that requires interpretation. That's why, he concludes, people stay on the Web for long periods of time.

What is it about a Web site that might make it literally irresistible? Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information.

Dr. Biederman first showed a collection of photographs to volunteer test subjects, and found they said they preferred certain kinds of pictures (monkeys in a tree or a group of houses along a river) over others (an empty parking lot or a pile of old paint cans).

The preferred pictures had certain common features, including a good vantage on a landscape and an element of mystery. In one way or another, said Dr. Biederman, they all presented new information that somehow needed to be interpreted.

When he hooked up volunteers to a brain-scanning machine, the preferred pictures were shown to generate much more brain activity than the unpreferred shots. While researchers don't yet know what exactly these brain scans signify, a likely possibility involves increased production of the brain's pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters called opioids.

Link

COOP spotted this great YouTube clip of Joe Higgs performing a fantastic raw version of his tune There's A Reward. The clip is from "Roots, Rock, Reggae," a 1977 documentary that is a classic for fans of Jamaican music. COOP adds that Life of Contradiction," Joe Higgs's "best LP, long out of print, has just been reissued on CD by Pressure Sounds, and it contains the studio version of "There's A Reward." Link to YouTube, Link to buy Roots, Rock, Reggae DVD, Link to buy Life Contradiction CD

Previously on BB:
• Xeni on NPR: Dub Reggae Ice-Cream Truck Link
• Willie Nelson: reggae and Wal-Mart Link

I was saddened to read on Atom Bomb Bikini that the terrifically talented cartoonist and good girl artist Dave Stevens died yesterday. Mark Evanier wrote a fond remembrance of Stevens on his blog.

The Rocketeer made Dave's reputation and also spawned a resurgence of interest in fifties' figure model Bettie Page, whose likeness Dave used for the strip's heroine. But the strip was not profitable for Dave, who was among the least prolific talents to ever attempt comic books. It wasn't so much that he was slow, as his friends joked, but that he was almost obsessively meticulous, doing days of study and sketching to create one panel, and doing many of them over and over. Even then, he was usually dissatisfied with what he produced and fiercely critical of the reproduction...

Dave was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life...and was certainly among the most gifted. Our first encounter was at Jack Kirby's house around 1971 when he came to visit and show Jack some of his work. As I said, Kirby was very encouraging and he urged Dave not to try and draw like anyone else but to follow his own passions. This was advice Dave took to heart, which probably explains why he took so long with every drawing. They were rarely just jobs to Dave. Most of the time, what emerged from his drawing board or easel was a deeply personal effort.

The image is a scan of the cover of Airboy No. 5 (September 1986) from my collection. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• New Jack Kirby coffee table art book by Mark Evanier

Susannah Breslin, whose work chronicling first-person testimonies of prostitutes and their clients I've blogged here before, has a feature in Newsweek today. The topic is of particularly broad interest right now, it would seem, because of the scandal surrounding New York's recently-former governor.

She's been gathering letters from hookers and johns, and today she explores what we might learn from them about Eliots. Snip from Susannah's Newsweek piece:

One letter in particular may offer a window into the mind-set of a man like Spitzer. It came in the form of an encrypted e-mail from a state investigator. Professionally, he was dedicated to enforcing the law. Personally, he was in a relationship with a woman with whom he hadn't had sex in years. He'd been seeing prostitutes since 1991. In his encoded diary he recorded his encounters. "1 dot is oral, 2 dots is vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone questions the dots, they are associated with good or bad days: no dots are normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2 connected dots is the best day for that week." For him, sex for money was sex without strings, attachment, or guilt—a transaction.

But for some it's the financial transaction itself that is alluring. In the first letter I received I heard from a successful twentysomething who described himself as "attractive and ambitious." He had a girlfriend—"a wonderful woman"—but there was something about the act of paying for sex, he confessed, that turned him on. "I find the idea of paying for sexual acts to be erotic," he confided. For some men, especially those who are seen as particularly moral or righteous in their public lives (think of all those fallen preachers), part of the appeal is the fact that it is illegal and a moral transgression in their eyes.

Link.

In related news, here's a piece about the amateur R&B; singer and pro sex worker who brought down Spitzer. And here's her MySpace page.

A Ness City, Kansas woman apparently sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years. Her boyfriend claims he brought her food and water and encouraged her to come out of the bathroom. She refused and finally, after two years, he called police. The woman was brought to a hospital where the toilet seat had to be removed from her skin. She is in fair condition and authorities are investigating the strange situation. From the Associated Press:

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," (Ness County sheriff Bryan) Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog reports that residents of a southern Israeli town are demanding a "laser cannon" to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. They are suing the government of Israel for failing to provide the ray gun defense. Snip:

Northrop [Grumman] is pushing an upgraded [Tactical High Energy Laser], under the name SkyGuard, which it says can fit into just three cargo containers. Newspapers have been howling for the government to put the laser defenses in place; the volume has only gone up since Hezbollah launched a series of rocket attacks against northern Israel in 2006, and since Hamas started firing longer-range rockets at southern Israel earlier this year. But the Israeli military has said that the sci-fi-esque system is still not ready for a real-world deployment.

Link to full post.

Ambient Corporation has developed a neckband that picks up subvocal communication and translates it into synthesized speech. New Scientist has an article on the technology and a video demonstration that's quite impressive. The applications range from cell phones to aids for people who have lost the capacity to speak due to certain neurological conditions. Called the Audeo, it currently recognizes about 150 words and phrases. A new version without a limited vocabulary is slated for release later this year. From New Scientist:

With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.

Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.

Link to New Scientist, Link to The Audeo

Don't Tase Me, Bro! is a new blog by R.U. Sirius and Phil Leggiere about news on the state of civil liberties and personal freedom. Here's the most recent posting, about an eighth-grader who was suspended from school and stripped of his title of student body vice president for buying a bag of Skittles from his classmate.

What does it take for a school to suspend an eighth-grader, bar his attendance from an honors dinner, and strip him of his post as class Vice President? If you guessed drugs, alcohol, or a firearm, think again. A bag of candy is reason enough. This week a Connecticut school levied thse very punishments on an honor student with no history of misconduct, just for buying a bag of Skittles from his classmate. School officials are hiding behind their Wellness Policy--which prohibits bake sales, classroom pizza parties, and the sale of candy--as justification for the harsh disciplinary action.

Link

Fashionista blog reports that street fashion brand Tonic will launch a personally-branded t-shirt line with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with proceeds benefiting charities of his choosing.

The tees haven't been released yet, but they'll debut online in October, after similar shirts from Donna Karan (in July) and Luella Bartley.

Link. (thanks, Susannah Breslin) Image: from Dean Forbes' photostream.

These 16th-century Japanese illustrations and descriptions of microbes are charming and fascinating. I want a copy of this book, translated into English. It would be great to read to my kids as bedtime stories.

Long ago in Japan, human illness was commonly believed to be the work of tiny malevolent creatures inside the body. Harikikigaki, a book of medical knowledge written in 1568 by a now-unknown resident of Osaka, introduces 63 of these creepy-crawlies and describes how to fight them with acupuncture and herbal remedies. The Kyushu National Museum, which owns the original copy of Harikikgaki, claims the book played an important role in spreading traditional Chinese medicine in Japan. Here are a few of the beasties found in the book.

Jinshaku (Honton) resembles a tiny boar that runs wild through the body. Those infected with Jinshaku develop a weak pulse, a dark complexion, a craving for salty food, and bad breath. Acupuncture is an effective treatment.

Link

trongodeon says:

The Air Force apparently never checked with a German historian before announcing their new motto.

Link to image, don't want to spoil the schadenfreude. (thanks, Jake!)