The Latest from Boing Boing

A visit to a heritage chicken farm Homogenized genetics makes sense for industrial food production, but it limits our ability to adapt to changing climate and other risks. Read the rest... The math story problem that would ensue if a carnival ride catastrophically failed Alejandro Tauber does the math AND pulls out the maps to trace where the parabolic arc would drop you were said carnival disaster to happen in Amsterdam. Read the rest... Marie Curie: Open source pioneer Part of the reason why radium snake-oil products proliferated in the years after Marie Curie and her husband first isolated the element is that the Curies refused to patent the process and, in fact, shared it with the world. Read the rest... How to spot fake hotel reviews A 2013 Cornell study found the fake ones emphasize great activities and "family fun". Real reviews just talk about whether the hotel sucked or not. Read the rest... The English Method: UK taught modern torture to Brazil's dictators Brazil's 21-year military dictatorship was a torturing, brutal regime -- among their victims was the current president, Dilma Rousseff. At first, the generals tortured by flogging and shocks, but British officials taught them to torture without leaving marks, helping the regime to rehabilitate its international human rights image. Read the rest... Wink's remarkable book picks of the week Wink is a website that reviews one remarkable paper book every weekday. My wife, Carla Sinclair, is the editor. We take lots of photos of the covers and the interior pages of the books to show you why we love them. Read the rest... Why does pot produce cannabinoids? The little hairs that cover a cannabis plant are the source of the chemicals that get you high, writes Anna Tiley at Science Says. Read the rest... This Day in Blogging History: Attention, computers, and education; Cinema fined $10K for bag-search; Evoting and open source One year ago today Linda Stone on attention, computers, and education: At one point, I interviewed a handful of Nobel laureates about their childhood play patterns. Read the rest... The Moon is a harsh wi-fi hot spot Scientists proved it's possible to connect the Moon to a wireless Internet signal beamed from Earth — and the connection speed wasn't terrible. Read the rest... Man took skin from hospital. It's still missing. A Delaware man was arrested this week for allegedly stealing $357,000 worth of human skin from the Philadephia hospital where he worked. Read the rest... Sneaky spiders weave webs that look like bird poop The species, Cyclosa, is known for other acts of subterfuge, like building decoy spiders out of plants and spent egg sacs. Read the rest... Carabiner box-cutter with a ceramic blade Slice's $19 box-cutter is a clever design -- a combination of carabiner and a knife, with a long-lasting, replaceable ceramic blade. Read the rest... 80s classic Remo Williams to be reissued with a 70s-style cover Splendidly bad action thriller Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins is to get a long-deserved reissue on Blu-Ray this July. The story of a former NYPD cop, operating outside the law and mentored by a mysterious master of martial arts, it is an almost ideal 1980s B-movie. Read the rest... What's the story with the Makerbot patent? The 3D printing world is all a-seethe with the story that Makerbot supposedly filed a patent on a design from its Thingiverse community. As Cory Doctorow discovered, the reality is a little more complicated: if Makerbot has committed a sin, it is not the sin of which it stands accused. Read the rest... Super Mario dress Koala's $60 Super Mario dress looks lovely. It's screened on both sides. Hand-wash only. Super Mario Dress (via Geekymerch) Read the rest... US vs UK: Eggs edition! Alison Spiegel alleges that English eggs are way different to American eggs. (As someone who enjoys both, I find far more variation within each national eggdom than between them) Read the rest... Finding Hidden Treasures in Los Angeles Mark Frauenfelder presents a photo-tour of Hidden Treasures, a gem of a store in Los Angeles' rustic Topanga Canyon. Read the rest... You should try the 1913 Webster's, seriously James Somers thinks you should switch to the Websters 1913 dictionary, and he cites John McPhee's composition method of looking up synonyms for problematic words as the key to his peerless prose style. Read the rest... SpaceX unveils new Dragon V2 manned spacecraft Described by its chief designer Elon Musk as "a true 21st-century spacecraft," the DragonV2 flight could achieve its first unmanned flight as soon as late 2015, and its first crewed flight as soon as mid-2016. Read the rest... Trailer for Steven Johnson's new PBS series, "How We Got to Now" Steven Johnson -- a real favorite around here! -- has a new six-part PBS show coming this October called How We Got to Now, along with companion book. Read the rest... Kickstarting a coffee-table book of grisly, real Russian nursery-rhymes Russian-born comedian Ben Rosenfeld is kickstarting a book of gruesome, real Russian nursery rhymes, illustrated by Dov Smiley (example: "A little boy found a machine-gun, nothing lives in the woods anymore"). Read the rest... Jonathan Lethem and Lars Eidinger's claustrophobic, Snowden-commemorating short film Jonathan Lethem and Lars Eidinger star in Lars and Jonathan: A Berlin Friendship , a short, paranoid, quirky film made for Transmediale's Snowden-leak-commemorating Magical Secrecy Tour. Read the rest... Nat Hentoff on Eric Dolphy Below you'll find a short piece by Nat Hentoff on the late, great Eric Dolphy, musician and hero of avant-garde jazz movement. Read the rest... China holds mass sentencing in football stadium "In a spectacle designed to show their resolve against terrorism, Chinese authorities held a public sentencing in a football stadium in the northwestern Xinjiang region of 55 people convicted of violent crimes," reports the LA Times. Read the rest... Yarnbombing the Lizard's Mouth trail in Santa Barbara, California "Combining contributions from hundreds of artists from 36 countries and 50 states into individual works of art, 17 boulders were covered on the Lizard's Mouth trail in Santa Barbara, California." A photo series from Derek Powazek, and a wonderful afternoon online escape. Read the rest... Tor.com: a new short-fiction imprint from Tor Tor Books founder Tom Doherty's speech at Book Expo America yesterday didn't just explain the company's DRM-free strategy, it also announced a new imprint based on Tor.com, publishing DRM-free novellas and novelettes as ebooks: Each DRM-free title will be available exclusively for purchase, unlike the current fiction that is free on the site, and will have full publisher support behind it. Read the rest... Portraits of asexual people Worth checking out: this photojournalism project about people who identify as asexual. Barcelona-based photographer Laia Abril, whose work often focuses on gender and sexuality, shot a series of portraits of people who say they "feel no sexual attraction to others." They identify as asexual, and often face stigma and isolation because their orientation is seen by others as unhealthy or lacking. Read the rest... The whole world is fat, and getting fatter The USA is the world's leader in obesity: we are home to 87 million of the world's 671 million obese people, according to a new report. Read the rest... Commemorative cheese platter no longer available at 9/11 museum One of the most distasteful objects at the 9/11 museum in New York City is no more. Now, victims' families will have a say on what items are sold in the gift shop. Honestly, though, a gift shop? Still feels weird. Read the rest... Amazon's illegal drug trade At Slate.com, Ford Vox has an investigative piece on how Amazon.com will deliver steroids, muscle relaxants, and prescription antibiotics right to your door, despite the fact that the sale of various drugs without a pharmacy license or a doctor's prescription is against the law. Read the rest... Follow us online:   forward to a friend   unsubscribe from this list

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