Ancient alchemists referred to H2SO4 as "oil of vitriol."

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Last week, Boing Boing pals Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and Marina Gorbis, executive director at Institute for the Future (where I'm a researcher), took the stage at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club to discuss why we've lost sight of the open Web and how the digital economy has gone terribly wrong. It was a fantastic freeform barrage of brilliant and witty criticism, insights, and ideas for rewriting the rules of this game that right now nobody can win.

Listen to it here!

Or download the podcast here.

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On a stretch of Route 66 between Albuquerque and Tijeras, New Mexico, engineers at Sand Bar Construction, the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and the National Geographic Channel installed a series of rumble strips that play “America the Beautiful" as you traverse them at 45 miles per hour. Apparently, the jingle of corporate sponsor Nationwide was originally included in the road's repertoire but it has since been removed. Watch the video above about the installation, meant keep to drivers at a safe speed.

(via TIL)

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Alec Smecher built a wireless electronmechanical system that enables him to robotically raise and waggle his eyebrows via remote control. Because, you know, he could. From MAKE:

Beyond its obvious practicality, this project makes a great introduction to DC motor control, infrared remote control, and moving from working with an Arduino to working with the bare ATMega328 chip. These concepts are combined with some minimal extra circuitry.

The end result will be a great conversation piece, that is… if you don’t stab your eye with a toothpick. My implementation supports calibration, independent control of each eyebrow, and a 1- to 9-way waggle feature. Expressions vary from skeptical to shocked to very, very shocked.

"Strap a Robot to Your Face! Your Expressions Are Now Controlled by Technology" (MAKE)

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A feel-good film for the whole family. (Mashable)

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Forty-seven years ago today, John Lennon and Yoko Ono celebrated their honeymoon with a weeklong Bed-In For Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. Was it a prank or a protest? Yes.

"It's part of our policy not to be taken seriously," Lennon said. "Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don't know how to handle humour. And we are humorous."

Above is the short documentary of the events, titled Bed Peace.

War is over! (If you want it).

More at Imagine Peace.

Below, the song "Give Peace A Chance," recorded June 1, 1969 during the second Bed-In, at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel. (Bonus appearance by bOING bOING patron saint Dr. Timothy Leary!)

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For several years, The National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner have been collecting musical tributes to the Grateful Dead by a variety of their fave artists, from Sharon Van Etten to the Flaming Lips to Real Estate. Finally, the long-anticipated set, Day of the Dead, will be out May 20.

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Concetta Antico, who made the paintings above and below, is an artist known for being a tetrachromat, meaning a genetic difference in her eyes enables her to see approximately 100 times more colors than an average person. "I see colors you cannot perceive or imagine," Antico says. (Previous BB posts about Antico here and here.)

While the vast majority of peoples' eyes contain three kinds of cone sensitive to different wavelengths of light, tetrachromats have four. Apparently the genetic difference isn't very rare, but only a tiny fraction of those who have it actually develop unique perception. Why? UC Irvine researcher Kimberly Jameson and University of Nevada's Alissa Winkler studied Antico, another tetrachromat, and an artist with regular vision. From David Robson's article at BBC Future:

The experiment tested the participants’ sensitivity to different levels of "luminance! at certain wavelengths of light; put simply, with Antico’s eye’s extra cone, she should be picking up more light, meaning that she could see very subtle differences in the brightness of certain shades. Sure enough, Antico proved to be more sensitive than the average person, particularly when looking at reddish tones – a finding that perfectly matched the predictions from her genetic test.

As Jameson had suspected, Antico also performed much better than the other potential tetrachromat who was not an artist – supporting the idea that her colour training had been crucial for the development of her abilities.

Using these results, Jameson then reconstructed some photos to give us a better idea of the way the world may look to Antico.

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Legendary punk Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar) has a killer new album out today, Patch the Sky! One of Bob's pals is singer-songwriter Ryan Adams who was a fan before becoming a friend. Earlier this week, Ryan invited Bob over to his studio to hang out, shoot the shit, and play some songs. NPR has the audio evidence.

...For the next hour you'll hear Bob and Ryan play music and hear a sprawling, geeky and fun conversation. Sometimes it's about Bob's record, other times it's about Metallica bootlegs, caveman sounding lyrics, favorite cereals, fasted band, how the revival of vinyl helps make better, more focused records, praying, the quietness of church, zombies, Einstürzende Neubauten, noise rock and recording/mixing/soundboards.

"Hear Ryan Adams and Bob Mould Play Music And Talk About Everything Under The Sun" (NPR's All Songs Considered)

Bob Mould "Patch The Sky" (Amazon)

Bob Mould's "Voices In My Head":

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Familiarize yourself with the underside of myriad animals, from turtles and birds to bats and cats. (Wakaleo Animal Channel via Laughing Squid)

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Belzberg Architects built the magnificent "Skyline Residence" on a ridge in the Hollywood Hills. The 5,800 home consists of two separate structures, a main house and guest house, with a gathering space between them to watch a film outside.

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Since 1993, Jake Phelps has been the top editor at legendary skateboarding magazine Thrasher. At 53, he's still a skate punk through and through. From Willy Staley's fantastic profile of Phelps in California Sunday, with photos by Andrew Paynter:

An unwillingness, or inability, to stop is perhaps the defining characteristic of Phelps’s career. He’s been the editor of Thrasher since 1993. The magazine occupies such a privileged space in skateboarding’s collective imagination that it’s difficult to know what to compare it to. Skaters call it “the bible,” but we’re prone to hyperbole. Maybe it’s Vogue, but for degenerates, and Phelps is skateboarding’s Anna Wintour. Phelps likes to think of himself as the Thrasher brand personified, and in many ways, from his caustic wit to his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport, that’s true.

Phelps is an unreconstructed punk rocker in a city that has little need or space for them anymore. He refuses to pay his Muni fare, instead slipping through the rear doors. He bums cigarettes everywhere he goes; he calls kids blood. He barks at strangers and screams at drivers. He sails through lights with an unearned confidence, directing traffic with cryptic hand gestures. He shoplifts candy bars just to see if people are paying attention. (Once, in Copenhagen, they were.) His entire affect is charmingly cartoonish. His ears protrude from low on his head, and his smile cracks his face in half. If you dipped him in yellow paint, he might not seem out of place in Springfield.

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George Reeves remains my fave.

Previously: The Evolution of Batman.

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Brooklyn-based artist/designer Scott Albrecht has launched a new series of limited t-shirts designed in collaboration with a variety of other rad artists. Each shirt in the project, called Artifact, is only available for a week and a half. Above is the first offering, by the esteemed Nathaniel Russell.

"I was thinking about secret clubs and not-so-secret societies like the Masons, the Odd Fellows, Schriners, The Optimist Clubs, Book Clubs, Quilting Bees, etc. and was thinking of a new imaginary but as-real-as-we-want-it-to-be club, whose membership you could join just by wearing a shirt or button or waiving a flag or by writing "PEACE FRUITS INTERNATIONAL" under your name when writing checks or signing the electronic credit card machines," Russell says. "I want there to be a union of people that i know and am inspired by. A fellowship for peace and art and music and jokes and for keeping the spirit of weirdness and curiosity alive. This is the shirt for that."

Buy one at Artifact until April 3. Read the rest

Malik Taylor, aka Phife Dawg, of pioneering hip-hop trio A Tribe Called Quest has died at age 45 from complications arising from diabetes.

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When I was ten, my friend and I got excited by the rumor that if you play Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" backwards, it says "Smoke marijuana." We tried it and it sounded clear as day! Then we played it for my dad who laughed and said that to him, it sounded like "Go to California." Of course, this was during the heyday of fantastic urban legends about the occult and backmasking in rock music. Evangelist Michael Mills fueled the insanity with this 1981 radio broadcast, featuring bits by Black Sabbath, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest who famously went to trial (and won) over bullshit accusations of backmasking.

!nataS liaH

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Shon Arieh-Lerer goes public with his love for the industrial food-processing videos on YouTube. (Slate)

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