Upcoming Appearances • October 19, 2011 in Washington, DC: Speaking at "What will turn us on in 2030?", a conference on energy futures.
• March 29-31, 2012 at York College of Pennsylvania: Writer in residence
Zeon Santos of Neatorama says:"The New Yorker rejected this great same sex marriage cover art by Robert Crumb, so he subsequently declined to do any more work for the magazine. I think Robert Crumb is an unlikely candidate for New Yorker cartoonist, because his illustrations are neither boring nor conservative enough for the average subscriber, but what do you think?"
The cover editor explained to me that the chief editor, David Remnick, went back and forth, first accepting my cover design, then rejecting it, then accepting it, then rejecting it. This went on for many months. I heard nothing for a long time. Finally, the artwork was returned to me without explanation, nor was an explanation ever forthcoming. Remnick would not give the reason for rejecting the cover, either to the cover editor, or to me. For this reason I refuse to do any more work for the New Yorker.
I felt insulted, not so much by the rejection as for the lack of any reason given. I can’t work for a publication that won’t give you any guidelines or criterion for accepting or rejecting a work submitted. Does the editor want to keep you guessing or what? I think part of the problem is the enormous power vested in the position of chief editor of the New Yorker. He has been ‘spoiled’ by the power that he wields. So many artists are so eager to do covers for the New Yorker that they are devalued in the eyes of David Remnick. They are mere pawns. He is not compelled to take pains to show them any respect. Any artist is easily replaced by another. Fortunately for me, I do not feel that I need the New Yorker badly enough to put up with such brusque treatment at the hands of its editor-in-chief. The heck with him!
National Underwriter Life & Health Magazine has the insanely depressing story of comics legend Bill Mantlo, an incredibly prolific comics writer who created ROM and wrote Micronauts before getting a law degree and taking a huge pay cut to work as a crusading New York public defender, right up to the time that a hit-and-run driver left him with a near-fatal brain injury. Mantlo's insurer, Cigna, rode his family hard, pushing to get him moved out of top-flight rehab institutes (where he'd been making progress, even writing) and into a cheap warehousing facility for seniors and head-injury cases. Mantlo is still in that facility, in Queens, where his life is a kind of waking nightmare.
Bill can hear and recognize when people speak to him, but his own speech is slow, labored and typically consists of single words or very short sentences. Most times, he simply yells at anybody who enters his room. He has a history of lashing out violently at staff and patients, though in his current condition, the only person he is likely to hurt with a swing is himself.
His room is nearly empty. No television. No radio. No books, magazines or newspapers. No decorations on the walls. No mementos from previous visitors. Nothing at all to mark the individual who has lived here since 1995. A solitary prison cell has more personality than this, even though Bill is not prohibited from going anywhere. He just lacks mobility, and most times, the will. His average day consists of waking up, getting changed and cleaned by the morning shift nurses, and then a sit in his wheelchair, where he stares at nothing. When he has had enough, he is transferred back to his bed, where he closes his eyes and tries going back to sleep. At some point he will be fed, and after that, more sleep.
Today, however, he has a visitor. A man comes to his room, but immediately Bill wants no part of it.
A New Yorker with a $235,000, 450sqft studio apartment in Manhattan paid $70,000 to remodel it with a series of clever, well-thought-through dividers and pull-out furniture that makes very good use of the space, effectively giving him a guest-room as well as a good-sized kitchen and bedroom
Johannes sez, "monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner gave a short presentation about traditional narrative cinema, the problems of storytelling in the digital age -- and monochrom's feature film project 'Sierra Zulu.'"
According to analysis from economist Michael Mandel, the average wages of US college grads have experienced sharp declines in the last decade. On the other hand, college keeps getting more expensive, and the collection of student loans has become much more aggressive. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
By my latest calculations:
* Real earnings for young male college grads are down 19% since their peak in 2000.
* Real earnings for young female college grads are down 16% since their peak in 2003.
These figures are for full-time workers, ages 25-34, with a bachelor’s degree only. See the charts below.
I want to ask an economic question, a political question, and a policy question. First, no one has given me a good explanation yet of why young American college grads should have been hit so hard. Is there increased competition with young college grads around the world? Are new college grads lower quality than their predecessors? Has information technology reduced the need for young grads? I really would like to know.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is continuing its series of in-depth analysis of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the most dangerous piece of Internet legislation ever introduced, which is set to be fast-tracked through Congress by Christmas. Today, EFF's Corynne McSherry and Peter Eckersley look at the way that SOPA attacks innovation and the integrity of Internet infrastructure.
In this new bill, Hollywood has expanded its censorship ambitions. No longer content to just blacklist entries in the Domain Name System, this version targets software developers and distributors as well. It allows the Attorney General (doing Hollywood or trademark holders' bidding) to go after more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders. This language is clearly aimed at Mozilla, which took a principled stand in refusing to assist the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to censor the domain name system, but we are also concerned that it could affect the open source community, internet innovation, and software freedom more broadly:
* Do you write or distribute VPN, proxy, privacy or anonymization software? You might have to build in a censorship mechanism — or find yourself in a legal fight with the United States Attorney General.
* Even some of the most fundamental and widely used Internet security software, such as SSH, includes built-in proxy functionality. This kind of software is installed on hundreds of millions of computers, and is an indispensable tool for systems administration professionals, but it could easily become a target for censorship orders under the new bill.
* Do you work with or distribute zone files for gTLDs? Want to keep them accurate? Too bad — Hollywood might argue that if you provide a complete (i.e., uncensored) list, you are illegally helping people bypass SOPA orders.
* Want to write a client-side DNSSEC resolver that uses multiple servers until it finds a valid signed entry? Again, you could be in a fight with the U.S. Attorney General.
Dearie me, that's some freaky illustration in this 1952 Karo corn syrup ad -- that belligerent, half-naked moppet in his Village People cowboy suit is clearly experiencing some kind of blood-sugar rollercoaster as a result of dipping into the product. Someone take his guns away before he does something we all regret.
This weekend, Silicon Valley's premier convention venue is hosting a job fair -- for people who want to work in India:
A job fair at the San Jose Convention Center this weekend is focused on helping companies recruit Indian workers who may in the U.S. on a visa by informing them about the professional and economic opportunities back home.
Organizers also stressed that the job fair is also open to anyone who is interested in working in India.
Among the companies involved in the job fair are: Flipkart, an Indian online shopping company; consulting firm Accenture; and Amazon.com, which runs development centers in Indian cities.
Others include: McAfee, which is now part of Intel; SmartPlay Technologies, an Indian semiconductor firm; InfoTech Enterprises, an Indian engineering design firm; Indian manufacturing firm Jindal Steel & Power; Tata Motors; San Jose-based Synapse Design; and UST Global, an IT services firm.
La Receta de la Felicidad, a Spanish-language site, has Sandeea Cocina's great little HOWTO for baking brownies inside blown eggshells. You make a hole in the shell with a corkscrew, stand the shell up in a muffin tin with tin-foil supports, and fill the egg with brownie batter using a piping bag and bake (make sure to leave room in the egg to allow for cakeular expansion!). My mom used to make me Jello-filled hollow eggs, but this is a whole 'nother level of egg-hacking.
The crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's upper part of the No.3 reactor building is seen from a bus window, November 12, 2011. REUTERS/Kyodo.
On Saturday, Japanese government representatives and TEPCO officials escorted a group of Japanese and foreign journalists inside the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for the first time since March 11. This was the first time media were allowed in after a tsunami and earthquake eight months ago triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
TEPCO and government officials hoped to show the world that the situation inside Fukushima is under control, eight months later. Visiting reporters had to wear protective gear, and undergo radiation screening. They saw crumbling reactor structures, huge piles of rubble, twisted metal fences, dented water tanks, and trucks overturned by the massive tsunami wave. Smaller administrative buildings nearby remain just as they were when office workers fled the oncoming wave, on March 11.
Authorities said they are hoping to reach full cold shutdown, but the reactor at Fukushima is not yet fully under control. It may take decades to safely close this site.
A worker (C) is given a radiation screening as he enters the emergency operation center, November 12. The poster (L) reads "No tobacco and gum on the premises". REUTERS/David Guttenfelder.
The Fayetteville Free Library is installing a hackerspace/fablab with 3D printers, CNC routers and other equipment, available free to the public as a community space for making. The project is led by librarian Lauren Smedley, who is basically MADE OF AWESOME.
Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine’s Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking “Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make ‘techshops’?” In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created (such as General Assembly which we covered yesterday) and become “hackerspaces” or “makerspaces”?
“Yes!”, says librarian Lauren Smedley, who is in the process of creating what might just be the first maker-space within a U.S. public library. The Fayetteville Free Library where Smedley works is building a Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — that will provide free public access to machines and software for manufacturing and making things.
So far, the Fab Lab is equipped with a MakerBot, a 3D printer that lets you “print” plastic pieces of your own design. The potential for 3D printers to revolutionize manufacturing as we know it is huge: imagine being able to design and then manufacture — or “print” — whatever you want. Moreoever, imagine the tools of manufacturing being in the hands of everyone, not just giant factories (and remember, since this is a public library, this is really putting the technology in the hands of everyone, not just those that can afford a membership at a traditional hackerspace).
Sonne's trial is underway now, and Denise Balkissoon is covering it in depth for OpenFile.ca. Balkissoon's coverage cuts through the legal complexities and tedium and gets right to the point, and is as good as courtroom reporting gets.
This week, the Crown conceded that Toronto Police used a ruse in order to get Byron Sonne to hand over his ID on June 15, 2010. Sonne—otherwise known as the G20 Hacker, or the Anarchist of Forest Hill—had been filming the $9.4 million security fence that went up before the international summit. A security guard called the police, and three officers stopped Sonne as he walked along Temperance St.
One asked for his identification. Sonne refused, stating that he knew it was his right not to identify himself unless he was being detained for a specific crime. So, bicycle officer Michael Wong told Sonne that he was being investigated for jaywalking under the Highway Traffic Act. “This was simply a ruse employed to obtain the Applicant’s identification,” reads the statement of fact submitted by the Crown Attorney. “It worked.”
In Sonne’s preliminary trial last winter, all three officers agreed that none of them had actually seen him cross the street illegally. On November 10, Superior Court Justice Nancy Spies decided this ruse meant Sonne was unlawfully detained, and that his rights were violated under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Next week, Judge Spies will decide if the Toronto Police also violated his rights when searching his home, seizing his possessions, or questioning him for 12 hours without access to a lawyer. Then begins his trial for possessing explosive materials and “counseling the indictable offense of mischief not committed.” I’ll explain that one to you when the trial gets started.
A dog dressed for carnival is pictured in the streets at the start of the carnival in Cologne, Germany, on November 11, 2011. In many parts of Germany, at 11:11am on November 11 people mark the official start of Carnival, a season of controlled raucous fun that reaches a climax during the days before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. (REUTERS/Ina Fassbender)
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Police are raiding the Occupy St. Louis protest encampment. According to their Twitter, at least two dozen have been arrested tonight. "People are chanting, 'Our passion, our freedom, is stronger than your prisons!'" Here's their live web stream.
— Xeni
Scotland Yard have arrested 179 members of the ultra-right English Defense League for plotting an attack on the OccupyLondon protesters encamped at St Paul's cathedral in London. The EDL had sent a statement to the Occupy camp threatening violence if protesters didn't leave "their" church and "stop violating their religion." EDL members also posted arson threats to Facebook. The police arrested the EDL members as they massed near St Paul's. An EDL spokesman denies that violence was imminent.
Scotland Yard said they believed a breach of the peace was about to take place after they got intelligence that the EDL were planning the Armistice Day attack. The law states officers can arrest if they believe the breach of the peace to be "imminent."
A member of the tented community outside the cathedral expressed gratitude to the police for preventing any violence.
"It is fantastic if they are using their resources to try and stop people getting on to this site," said Bryn Phillips, a member of the Occupy LSX community. "If this has prevented violence then I am pleased."
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After an Occupy SLC camper was found dead in his tent, the city's mayor has called for an end to the protest. "Investigators believe the man died from a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a space heater inside his tent and a drug overdose." (via @apelad) — Xeni
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A 34-year-old inmate in a Florida prison who is serving a life sentence for sexual battery on a child says soy-based prison foods amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Soybeans, according to the convicted child sex offender, threaten his health by endangering his thyroid and immune system. — Xeni
Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old Marine veteran seriously injured by a police projectile during a violent raid on the peaceful Occupy Oakland encampment, was released from the hospital this week. Olsen received traumatic brain injury when a police officer (still un-named, from an unknown force, maybe Oakland police but maybe not) shot him with a so-called "less-lethal" round. Veterans For Peace volunteer Adele says:
I had a chance to visit Scott this evening. He is very present, alert, and has a lot of energy. He is still struggling with speech, but is attempting conversations without having the writing instrument out. He also is doing an amazing job of staying patient with himself and didn't seem to get frustrated with himself or need to rush when trying to work out thoughts in speech. Personally, it was a huge relief to see him after last having seen him while he was sedated and in critical condition.
★Courthouse News Service: "The FBI can shield its terrorism-investigation data from the prying eyes of New York Times investigative journalist Charlie Savage, a federal judge ruled. Savage repeatedly sought FBI data through the Freedom of Information Act for a series of articles exposing how federal authorities vigorously probed thousands of people without reasonable suspicion." — Xeni
There's no evidence of foul play in the death today of Mexico's Interior Minister José Francisco Blake, but amid the country's raging drug war, there's plenty of suspicion. The helicopter carrying the country's top domestic security official and seven others crashed in the southern part of Mexico City en route to a meeting of prosecutors in nearby Morelos state. The cause of the crash is unknown.
Blake's death is seen as a symbolic blow to the government's military-directed assault on organized crime. 40,000 Mexicans have died in the drug war over the last five years.
The accident occurred almost exactly three years to the day after Mexico’s previous interior minister Juan Camilo Mouriño was killed in the crash of a small plane, also near Mexico City.
Illustrator Robert Ullman wrote a nice eulogy for Bil Keane, creator of Family Circus:
The funnies lost another grand old man today with the passing of Bil Keane, creator of The Family Circus. Family Circus, along with Peanuts, was one of the very first comic strips I remember ever reading...but though my fondness for Schulz's masterpiece grew and grew over time, I really soured on Keane's work as the years went by, as it seemed to lose every bit of its edge and descended into endlessly repetitive jokes and treacly, Extreme Home Makeover-esque forced sentimentality. Still, the first 20 years or so, as good a run as anyone could ever hope for, were often brilliant, helped by the fact that the kids came across as real kids (ie. sociopathic little bastards) rather than the type of children you'd find on greeting cards.
I even managed to work one of Keane's tropes into one of my odder Savage Love illos a few years ago, in response to a letter from a reader who surmised her boyfriend must be cheating on her, as the supply of condoms in the house always seemed to be running low. Not Me, indeed!
Sleestack of the blog Lady, That's My Skull presents a comic book story by Frank Frollo for Funny Picture Stories #11 (Nov 1938) that's so dull and lifeless that it is fascinating.
The lion threatening one of the characters is about a half mile away, something that doesn't really inspire tension and even the captions in the word balloons are spaced out, making it appear that everyone speaks while interjecting extended pauses.
While hero Jack Strand contemplating an open gate for an unknown time prior to climbing over an uncompleted crowd barrier is amusing, the most glaring example of economical artistry or script not matching the finished product is the hilarious scene where the enraged lion leaps from the arena and rushes into the crowd of spectators. Not that you'd know it from reading the story.
[Video Link] Patrick Rosenkranz is the author of an outstanding history of underground comics, Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution. He just emailed to let me know that he has completed a documentary about collectors of all kinds of things, including "antique telephones and talking machines, confectionary molds, snowglobes, handcuffs, breweriana, and other interesting artifacts." It's called Finders Keepers: The Heart of Collecting. The trailer looks good!
The snow globe collector has a good take on collecting. He says: "I don't think of myself as a collector. I actually don't like to collect. I have a collection of snowglobes that I think of as having happened to me, rather than really starting out with any intention." I couldn't agree more. The most interesting collections are the side effect of an obsession.
This is a detail from a print called Dead Sexy by artist Jennifer Daniel. The print reproduces the lips from the centerfold photos of the 36 Playmates of the Month who have died since 1963, listing their causes of death. Lots of suicides and drug overdoses!
Jack R runs a blog dedicated to the great early 20th century illustrator Enoch Bolles. Here, he takes a look at a the November 2011 cover of Esquire, comparing it with this 1920's cover of Film Fun, with a Bolles illo. Do you think the Esquire photographer was inspired by the Bolles illo (or was inspired by someone else who was inspired by Bolles)? If so, neat! If not, it is interesting how both the illustrator and the photographer used a similar pose.
40K, an Italian publisher, have brought out a standalone ebook version of my novella Chicken Little, publishing it simultaneously in English and Italian with some lovely illustrations. They're starting it off at a low price (which will go up on Nov 16): $0.99 in the Kindle store; £0.86 in the UK Kindle store; €0.99 in the German Kindle store; and €0.99 for the Italian edition in Bookrepublic (use discount code 7ATE9).
Cory Doctorow's novella 'Chicken Little' does an excellent job of updating and commenting on some of the themes that informed Pohl & Kornbluth's classic novel ‘The Space Merchants'. Doctorow's updated high-tech take on Pohl's take on Jonathan Swift's 'struldbrugs,' creatures who have immortality but not eternal youth, continuing to age through their extended lives, is particularly ingenious.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this one show up on an award ballot next year." -Gardner Dozois, Locus Magazine
Business Insider interviews Ben Milne, founder of an online payment system called Dwolla that charges a flat fee of $0.25 per transaction (unlike Paypal, Square, credit card companies, which charge a percentage).
We hear you're making credit card companies angry. How are you doing that?
Ben Milne: Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal. We're building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work. The current model needs to be blown up.
Dwolla started out of my old company. I owned a speaker manufacturing company and we sold everything directly through a website. I got really obsessed with interchange fees and how not to pay them. Every time a merchant gets paid with a credit card they have to give up a percentage. In my case, I was losing $55,000 a year to credit card companies. I felt like they were stealing from me -- I was getting paid and somebody was taking money out of my pocket.
So I thought, how do I get paid through a website without paying credit card fees? We pitched a bank, and amazingly enough they said, "We'll give it a shot."
That was three years ago, so we've been working on the project for a really long time. In December of last year we figured out how to legally do what we do.
How many transactions are you doing?
The average transaction volume for Dwolla is right around $500 dollars. We move between $30 and $50 million per month.
Rose Garrett over at The Bold Italic did some crackerjack investigative work on a little lounge nestled between the bars in the Lower Haight of San Francisco. The Peacock Lounge is almost always closed, only very rarely opened for private events. Rose's attempts to reach someone, anyone, associated with the venue go unanswered until its doors serendipitously open again to host a neighborhood meeting:
Nate also shared with me a detail that went a long way toward explaining why Peacock Lounge was such an enigma. He said the space was not, and was never meant to be, a bar or nightlife venue. It was owned and operated by Unity Masonic Hall, located upstairs, and its main use was as a private social hall for the Black Masons.
Jenny digs into what happened with the volunteer effort to rescue and adopt the abandoned pets, and talks to scientists about the effect of fallout on animals (including intergenerational and genetic changes, like what the world saw within bird and wild animal populations after Chernobyl). Snip:
Miles asks, off camera: "Do we have anything to feed him?"
The piece, which airs tonight, reports on the group Safecast, which has measured, mapped and crowdsourced data on radiation levels in locations throughout Japan, particularly in the hot spots near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The dog was one of several scrawny, undernourished dogs and cats they encountered, most likely abandoned by their owners during rapid evacuation.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Boing Boing pal Sarah Ruxin just released her first iOS app for children and it's a hit with my little happy mutants. Oddballz Circus is a very simple, silly, and ultracute game in which you mix and match body parts to make various circus characters. Of course, it's most fun when you create wonderfully strange circus freaks from a completely unnatural combination of head, torso, and legs/feet. My two-year-old (and I) both laugh a lot when she plays it. Sarah told me Oddballz Circus was inspired by the Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse. She also promised that if my kids play Oddballz Circus everyday, they'll be the next André Breton and Méret Oppenheim. Actually, Sarah didn't say that. But I can dream. Oddballz Circus, Oddballz Apps
[Video Link] My favorite maker at Maker Faire Detroit this year was John Dunivant, the creator of an "abandoned theme park" called Theatre Bizarre that comes to life with otherworldly performers. He's an incredible artist and visionary who dreams big and executes on his vision.
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The IAEA reports that "very low levels of radiation, which are higher than normal but don't seem to pose a health hazard," have been registered in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe. The source is unknown, but it's not Fukushima. The "very low levels of iodine-131 have been measured in the atmosphere,", and this radioisotope will lose much of its radiation in about eight days. Read more: AP. — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This is a black rhinoceros being relocated by helicopter out of its home where poachers would likely kill it. Why? Black rhino horn is valuable as "medicine." From National Geographic:
The rhino airlifts were part of WWF's Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, which has moved nearly 120 of the animals to date. In the latest effort, 19 (tranquilized) rhinos were airlifted out of their original habitat (in South Africa's Eastern Cape) and driven to a new location in Limpopo Province, about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) away.
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Bill can hear and recognize when people speak to him, but his own speech is slow, labored and typically consists of single words or very short sentences. Most times, he simply yells at anybody who enters his room. He has a history of lashing out violently at staff and patients, though in his current condition, the only person he is likely to hurt with a swing is himself.
This week, the Crown conceded that Toronto Police used a ruse in order to get Byron Sonne to hand over his ID on June 15, 2010. Sonne—otherwise known as the G20 Hacker, or the Anarchist of Forest Hill—had been filming the $9.4 million security fence that went up before the international summit. A security guard called the police, and three officers stopped Sonne as he walked along Temperance St.
Illustrator Robert Ullman wrote a nice eulogy for Bil Keane, creator of Family Circus:
Cory Doctorow's novella 'Chicken Little' does an excellent job of updating and commenting on some of the themes that informed Pohl & Kornbluth's classic novel ‘The Space Merchants'. Doctorow's updated high-tech take on Pohl's take on Jonathan Swift's 'struldbrugs,' creatures who have immortality but not eternal youth, continuing to age through their extended lives, is particularly ingenious.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this one show up on an award ballot next year." -Gardner Dozois, Locus Magazine
We hear you're making credit card companies angry. How are you doing that?
