Maker collective Hackerloop modified a Nerf gun into a bionic prosthetic for their friend Nicolas Huchet. He fires the gun via EMG (electromyography) sensors that detect when he tenses his forearm muscles.

"It all started with jokes about the fact that it was too easy for us to win over him in a nerf battle, as he’s missing his right hand," writes "tinkerer in chief" Valentin Squirelo.

From Medium:

DIY hardware is not just about temperature sensors and automated door locks anymore. Every hardware component used to make this gun can be found online.

“Electromyography is a great way to make the body communicate with hardware. We used it to detect electrical impulses and translated them into instructions for our gun. You could think of a thousand other uses.

You could think it’s not the first problem to solve for people with disabilities, but in fact being able to have fun with your friends with these wonderful toys is also a real game changer”.

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In September 1981, Stevie Nicks was sitting in Annie Liebovitz's studio for a Rolling Stone photo shoot just after the release of her first solo album Bella Donna. While Nicks is having her makeup done, someone plays an early demo of "Wild Heart." The rest is magic. (via Kottke)

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Thousands of years ago in Hierapolis (now Turkey), tourists visited a temple named Plutonium built at a cave thought to be a gateway to the underworld. Magically, large and small animals would drop dead at the entrance to the cave while priest somehow survived. This isn't legend, it's reality. And now scientists have determined why. From CNN:

Research published by the journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences in February shows that a fissure in the earth's surface, deep beneath the site, emits carbon dioxide at concentrations so high it can be deadly.

Using a portable gas analyzer, Hardy Pfanz and his team of volcanologists found CO2 at levels ranging from 4-53% at the mouth of the cave, and as high as 91% inside -- more than enough to kill living organisms...

Pfanz's research adds another possibility: the fact that the animals and priests are different heights. CO2 is a heavier than oxygen, therefore it settles lower, forming a toxic gas lake above the ground. "The nostrils of the animals were way in the gas lake," he says, whereas the priests stood taller, above the gas lake.

Above: digital rendering of the temple Read the rest

Are you at SXSW this week? On Thursday (3/15) at 12:30pm, I'll be on a panel about art and technology titled: "Why are artists vital to tech's future (and ours?)" Moderated by Heather Sparks of ScienceSparksArt, the panel also includes artist Rhonda Holberton and curator Aimee Friberg. I'll be speaking about the Voyager Golden Record as a futurist talisman at the intersection of science, art, and wonder. From the panel description:

In a recent report from Silicon Valley's Institute for the Future, technology is said to be "on an inexorable path toward redefining the human experience." Our lives will soon be entirely networked and analyzed by for-profit interests. Yet art—from Carl Sagan's Golden Record on the Voyager, to the works of many artists today—offers a different vision. Join this panel to discuss how artists are vital in steering technology—and therefore humanity—toward a more beneficent and beautiful future.

I hope to see you there!

image above: Rhonda Holberton; below: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Russian guitarist Alexandr Misko delivers another rousing fingerstyle guitar cover. This time, it's the turn of A-ha! Previously: George Michael's "Careless Whisper," The Cranberries' "Zombie," and so many more.

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Back in 2012, we published a feature about Frank Cifaldi, one of the world's leading collectors of rare vintage videogames and related ephemera. Since then, Cifaldi founded the Video Game History Foundation, dedicated to preserving this vibrant art form's history and culture for the ages.

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In June 1980, "Weird Al" Yankovic first performed "Won't Eat Prunes Again" on The Dr. Demento Show. Shortly after, he rocked it live at Cal Poly. Audio evidence above.

(via r/ObscureMedia and Weird Al Wiki)

That was such a dirty trick Boy, it really made us sick Well it looks like we've been done in by the prune

Still the memory lingers on I been livin' in the john 'Cause I've had the runs since Monday afternoon

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Championship gymnast Bradley Burns, 20, is reportedly one of only two people in the world who can do this trick. I am not the other.

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DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh has a line of fantastic spectacles for booji boys and girls. Guaranteed to help you stay focused on the smart patrol! Here's Mothersbaugh on how eyeglasses improved his vision, and his life:

I have a really bad astigmatism and extreme myopia. I could see just enough to make it around a room but kids would throw a ball, and it would hit me in the head. I was happy and just kept running around because I didn’t know that I was any different than anybody else. The teachers at school would ask me to read the board and I’d say, ‘What’s a board?’” and they’d put me in the corner. Finally they tested me, and it was like “Oh my God, he can’t see the big ‘E’ on an eye chart from 12 inches away.

So, I got glasses right before my eighth birthday, and in the car on the way home I remember seeing clouds and trees. I had never seen what the top of a tree looked like. I had never seen a roof of a house. I was stunned and excited. The next day, I was drawing pictures. I remember the teacher who had been totally frustrated with me and disciplining me every day said, “Mark, you draw trees better than me.” That was the first time a teacher had ever said anything nice. I was struck by it, because I had never had a teacher say anything positive to me in my life. And I remember that that night, I went home and had a dream that I was going to be an artist.

The bootleg_daycare Instagram account is a fantastic stream of poor representations of famous cartoon characters emblazoned on the walls of dodgy daycare centers, ice cream trucks, and other locales. "Don't worry, your children are in good hands."

bootleg_daycare (Thanks, Lux!)

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This week Victorville, California police arrested a 14-year-old boy who dressed up in a sheriff's uniform, put emergency lights on his grandfather's car, and drove around "responding" to various crimes. After the real police pulled him over, they searched his room and found "counterfeit money, simulation firearms, ballistic vests and other law enforcement related items." No word on whether the youngster had cultivated cop speak. From the Merced Sun-Star:

Police also realized the teen had a busy night before he was pulled over: He had pulled over a woman in a fake traffic stop, and asked for her identification, police said. The teen let her off with a warning.

During a separate incident that day, the juvenile turned on his emergency lights, drawing a 16-year-old out of a home. The dressed-up teen told the 16-year-old he was responding to a domestic disturbance call. But when the imposter was told no one had made such a call, he left the scene, police said.

Nick Cave is heading out on a short speaking tour titled "So What Do You Want to Know?" during which he will spend his stage time just answering questions from the audience. It reminds me of some of Hunter S. Thompson's later "lecture" gigs when the Doctor would just walk out, sit down, and say "Any questions?" Last week, Cave posted this:

I’ve been feeling for a while that I’d like to talk to people about things. I’m not sure what to do with that. I’ve sort of had this idea of doing some kind of interview but I’m not sure that a regular press interview is the appropriate place to talk about certain things. Maybe some sort of dialogue beyond that might be valuable, where I can talk directly to people, in a more personal way. There seems to be some sort of understanding that now exists with our audience. The idea of an open dialogue with them seems a worthwhile thing to explore.

The tour:

04.30.18 – Academy of Music Theatre, Northampton, MA 05.01.18 – Boch Center, Shubert Theatre, Boston, MA 05.03.18 – Peter Norton Symphony Space, New York, NY 05.05.18 – The Murmrr Theatre, Brooklyn, NY Read the rest

In 2002, Eric D. Page was granted US patent #6681419B1 for a "Forehead support apparatus" enabling men to rest their head (the one atop the neck) while standing at a urinal. The device includes a "mounting member," which contrary to what you might think is actually a fitting for attaching it to the wall. It's also suitable for the shower. From the Abstract:

A compressible head support member is attached to and extends from the wall and said mounting member. The head support defines an elastically deformable or resilient forehead support surface which is spaced above the floor and from the wall a distance sufficient for the user to lean his forehead thereagainst and be supported while using the commode or urinal.

Ordinary scarecrows cower in fear at the Super Monster Wolf, an animatronic beast invented to protect rice and chestnut crops from wild boar. The Super Monster Wolf has proven its value during trails near Kisarazu City in Japan. When an animal approaches, sensors on the Monster Wolf trigger its creepy eyes and hellish howl. From BBC News:

The Japan Agricultural Cooperatives say that crop losses have noticeably decreased in areas where the Super Monster Wolf has been present. Beforehand, farmers around Kisarazu were resigned to giving up at least part of their crops to wild boar every year.

Speaking to the Chiba Nippo news website, Chihiko Umezawa of the agricultural cooperative says that the device has an effective radius of about one kilometre, suggesting it is more effective than an electric fence.

Now, the robot wolf is going into mass production, with units costing about 514,000 yen ($4,840; £3,480) each, but there are options for farmers to pay a far cheaper monthly lease on a wolf instead.

Next Thursday (3/15) to Sunday (3/18) in San Francisco, the visionary dancers of ODC will culminate their 47th season with the premiere of Brenda Way's "News of the World" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts! This new piece, with music by David Lang and mise-en-scène by painter Doug Argue and set designer Alexander V. Nichols, will be complemented by a reprise of "What we carry, What we keep," a real stunner that I had the chance to experience last year. (Behind-the-scenes video below.)

Tickets available here for the performances. Also, Friday night (3/16) is the very special ODC Dance Around Town Gala Performance + After Party!

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Back in 1999, I wrote a Boing Boing Digital article called "Head Like A Hole," about trepanation, the intentional drilling of a hole in your skull for medical reasons or, according to its contemporary DIY practitioners, to achieve higher consciousness. But while trepanation has been around since ancient times, Katherine Foxhall argues that the commonly-held belief that the procedure was once used to cure migraines is just a myth. From Smithsonian:

In 1902, the Journal of Mental Science published a lecture by Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, a London physician well-known for his work on pharmacology and ideas about migraine pathology. The lecture mixed neurological theory and armchair anthropology, and ranged over subjects including premonitions, telepathy, hypnotism, hallucinations, and epileptic and migrainous aura. In one notable passage, Brunton proposed that visions of fairies and the sound of their jingling bells were “nothing more” than the zigzags of migraine aura, and the aural results of nerve centre stimulation.

Brunton proposed that openings bored into ancient Stone Age skulls during life had been made to cure migraine. His suggestion followed considerable excitement during the 1870s when the French physician and anthropologist Paul Broca claimed that ancient skulls discovered in Peru and France had not only been opened surgically during life in order to release evil spirits, but that the patients had survived. To Brunton, it seemed obvious that the holes would have been made at the request of migraine sufferers in order to “let the headache out”.

"History isn't a a cold, dead thing but always contested and in flux." In this short video, PBS's The Art Assignment does a fine job explaining why museums matter:

The powerful and privileged have hoarded precious artifacts in museums for centuries, and it's only recently that these treasures were made available to the rest of us. What purpose did museums serve? And why does every city have one today?

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