A happy sign I spotted in the alley....

get_partner_container(722, 320, 320, 1, 'en'); BrainPOP, makers of short educational animations, created this short film based on the life of Ada Lovelace, inventor of computer programming, daughter of Lord Byron, partner-in-crime of Charles Babbage, and horse-fancier. BrainPOP | Ada Lovelace (Thanks, Karina!) Previously:Ada Lovelace Day needs your support! Ada Lovelace Day T-shirts! Ada Lovelace biopic needs letters of support Comic about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage Linda Stone profiled for Ada Lovelace Day Lisa Randall on the origin of the universe -- Happy Ada Lovelace ......

Skimbal created this 3D-printable Gothic Cathedral playset -- you can print and add as many segments as you'd like and assemble a church to your specification. As Skimbal notes, "Have you ever wanted a Gothic Cathedral of your very own? Are you intimidated by the centuries long construction schedule, and the punishing job requirements of being a European Bishop during the Dark Ages? Then We Have a Thing For YOU! The Gothic Cathedral Play Set!" Gothic Cathedral Play Set by Skimbal (via Make) Previously:MakerBot: 3D Printers for the mildly solderphobic Shapeways interviews Makerbot: 3D printing ahoy! Can Bre Pettis Replicate Himself? Parts Nebula: a parts-tracking inventory system for makers - Boing ... Successful marriage proposal via 3D-printed ring...

I've spent the last day in a funk at the news that my friend, Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was convicted of obstruction for getting out of his car at a US Border crossing and asking what was going on, then not complying fast enough when he was told to get back in the car. He faces up to two years in jail. David Nickle, a mutual friend who worked with Peter on his defense, has a very good post on the subject, including a quote from one of the jurors: The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge. That's apparently the statute: if you don't comply fast enough with a customs officer, he can beat you, gas you, jail you and then imprison you for two years. This isn't about safety, it isn't about security, it isn't about the rule of law. It's about obedience. Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking "why?" It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small. I don't know if Peter will appeal. I hope he does. I hope he gets a jury who nullify the statute. I hope he brings a civil action against the officials who clearly played fast and loose with the truth (From David: "Under cross-examination by Mullkoff, the border guards had conceded that Peter hadn't assaulted anyone; hadn't threatened to assault anyone; and that his aggressive stance was nothing any reasonable person would consider aggressive. The allegations that he had somehow choked border guard Andrew Beaudry while Beaudry was hitting him, were demolished."). I don't know if he will. He may decide to take his chances for a suspended sentence and forswear ever visiting America again, opting to be a writer instead of a professional litigant. I'd understand. But tonight, I'm understanding that dark place that so many of Peter's books seem to come from. I think of myself, fundamentally, as a optimist and a believer that justice can and will prevail. But in the face of that jury's decision, in face of the dishonesty of the officials, in the face of the absurdity of the statute, I feel like justice is a joke and hoping for it is a waste of time. I'm sorry that the system failed you, Peter. Guilty Previously:Peter Watts found guilty Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and ... Peter Watts's wonderful dystopias under a CC license...

Don't muck around in the affairs of planets that are less technologically advanced than yours. Despite how often it gets ignored, Star Trek's Prime Directive is a pretty nice attempt to take a universe brimming with life and figure out how to interact with it in an ethical way. Unfortunately, the Prime Directive isn't terribly nuanced. How do we relate to alien life that's as, or more, advanced than us? What if alien life is bacteria—do we still have to leave its home planet alone? How do we explore the galaxy without spreading—or picking up—any deadly diseases? The Prime Directive can't really help you here. That's why scientists from NASA and the SETI Institute are boldly going where no bureaucracies (real or fictional) have gone before—drawing up the safety protocols we Earthlings will use as we explore new worlds, and the social and ethical guidelines we'll turn to if we ever do find life on other planets....

Remember the satisfying sizzle of ants under a magnifying glass? No? Is that just me, then? Whatever, haters. ANYway, the same science responsible for frying ants is at work on a larger scale in this clip from James May's "Big Ideas" series. What you've got here is a solar furnace, a carefully arranged array of mirrors that catches heat from the sun and reflects it, focusing it to point—effectively taking a lot of disparate, comfy sunbeams and gathering them together in a tight bundle. By their powers combined, the reflected beam can reach temperatures of 3,500 °C (6,330 °F). Watch in wonder and terror as the beam turns a hot dog to char and melts steel. Thumbnail courtesy Flickr user gi, via CC...

"Check back panel for nutritional information" [Thanks, Heather!]...

This is music made by four postal workers as they cancel postage! When I listen carefully, I think I can actually hear the spring mechanisms as the stamps hit the ink. I love it as an example of music turning what is normally seen as a boring, repetitive task into something this joyful. The song was originally recorded in 1975 at the University of Ghana by James Koetting and appeared on a cd accompanying the book Worlds of Music, but you can download the whole clip here. Thanks to Bernie Krause and Anthropologist Steven Feld for helping me track this one down....

Have you used an upside-down tomato planter? I moved last year and I don't have as much space for a garden as I used to have, so I am considering getting a few upside-down tomato planters. If you have used them, please share your experience in the comments!...

Every time I have put this on at least three new conversions occur, where the listeners go on to permanently install this woman's music on their stereo. My neighbor even stalked me once just so she could listen to it more, until I just gave her my extra copy. Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a nun currently living in Jerusalem. She grew up as the daughter of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, but spent much of her young life in exile, first for schooling, and then again during Mussolini's occupation of Ethiopia's capitol city, Addis Ababa, in 1936. Her musical career was often tragically thwarted by class and gender politics, and when the Emperor himself actually went so far as to personally veto an opportunity for Guèbrou to study abroad in England, she sank into a deep depression before fleeing to a monastery in 1948. Today, she spends up to seven hours a day playing the piano in seclusion and even gave a concert to some lucky ducks in Washington D.C. a few years ago. A compilation of her compositions was re-issued on the consistently great Ethiopiques label. You can read more about her life at the Emahoy Music Foundation....

"I've been incarcerated for 40 years, and I've had a good record all around. I don't see any reason for holding me." —Thomas Hagan, the confessed killer of Malcom X. The state agrees with him: he will soon be out on parole, a murderer and a free man....

Homegrown Evolution has a gallery of various terrible garden sculptures for sale on Amazon.com. This one is my favorite Amazon sculpture offering. Looks like something Saddam Hussein would have installed by one of the shark ponds. Suggestive and creepy all at once. The Scary World of Garden Sculpture...

Jeffrey of ASPEX, a producer of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and microanalysis software says: Our company recently kicked off a "Send Us Your Sample" campaign, which allows anyone to mail us an object of their choosing and have it scanned for free under one of our powerful desktop SEMs. People can send us a piece of clothing, an old toothbrush, or even a dead insect...anything they want to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. It's pretty cool. Once we receive the samples, we'll notify senders of their results via email. You can view other reports we've done here. Above: a paper tear. SEM Image Gallery by ASPEX - Send Us Your Sample!...

New to the Boing Boing Bazaar: the Tubby Amp Kit. It's easy to build and presents wonderful opportunities for creative packaging. Will you put it in a coconut shell? An old DDT can? Geronimo's skull? Tubby Amp Kit Previously:Aerogel chunks in Bazaar Chaotic Pendulums for sale in Bazaar Get a P8TCH at the Bazaar The splendor of the Bazaar! Miniboss T-shirt in the Bazaar Mustache crayons for sale in Bazaar Hine's felt camera cases in the Bazaar Tiny glass bell jar display case Zombie shadow maker T-shirts: robots, aliens, and zombies galore! Hollow spy coins for all your micro-smuggling needs Laser cut model rocket ship...

Early terse reports are that the jury has returned a guilty verdict for Dr Peter Watts, a science fiction writer who was beaten at the US-Canada border when he got out of his car to ask why it was being searched, then charged with assault. Peter faces up to two years in prison. I've emailed him for comment and I hope that he's appealing. More later....

Slave to the Needle's Andrea executed this completely freaking awesome Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem tattoo for a very lucky Muppet-fan. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)...

Two electrodes, placed 30 cm apart on a human arm, can transmit data through said arm at about 10 megabits per second, according to researchers at Korea University. (Thanks, Ken Steidle!)...

The UC Santa Barbara researchers seen below "have provided the first clear demonstration that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to the mechanical motion of an object large enough to be seen by the naked eye." Andrew Cleland, Aaron O'Connell, and John Martinis. Photo: George Foulsham In a paper published in the March 17 issue of the advance online journal Nature, Aaron O'Connell, a doctoral student in physics, and John Martinis and Andrew Cleland, professors of physics, describe the first demonstration of a mechanical resonator that has been cooled to the quantum ground state, the lowest level of vibration allowed by quantum mechanics. With the mechanical resonator as close as possible to being perfectly still, they added a single quantum of energy to the resonator using a quantum bit (qubit) to produce the excitation. The resonator responded precisely as predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics. Bob Harris says: "What's the real-world application? No one knows, although cats should start avoiding any box they could become trapped in." UCSB Physicists Show Theory of Quantum Mechanics Applies to the Motion of Large Objects...

BoingBoing pal and fellow happy mutant John Cusack visited the Boing Boing Video studio this week for an internet video crate-digging session, and shared the 10-minute clip above. This find is ample proof that Cusack possesses a doctorate degree with honors in the Studies of High Weirdness. The video is titled "Tiny Tim at The Hunt Club (The Festival Green Room)," and neither of us could figure out much about its origins. Which Hunt Club? What city, what year? What were the circumstances, an afterparty in a "green room," after some festival? There are some clues (the blip-flash between songs to sync light and sound suggests a certain era), but no answers. What is evident in the video is what a delightful freak Tiny Tim is. Cusack points out that the video is different from all the other clips you can find of Tim on YouTube, mostly television appearances in which his character is louder and over-the-top. But this one seems more vulnerable and personal. Tim meanders in and out of modified Vaudeville classics, dips into an Al Jolson impression somewhere, all the while strumming his uke. "There's something about him that reminds me of Joey Ramone," Cusack observes—Tiny Tim was anything but classically handsome, just like Joey, and he had a certain talent and force of personality that the "normal" world had no use for. Until that talent burst forth, and the world came to appreciate it, weird punk freak that he was. Cusack also got a kick out of the "thank you/goodbye-kissies" hand-gesture Tim uses in this video, and compared it to Noh theatre. There's no kiss, really: he's just tapping his chin, a sort of oblique blessing-greeting. I'm tempted to use that one myself now, at tea parties. Here's to high weirdness. I've asked Cusack if he might join us on Boing Boing as a guestblogger, and he's thinking about it. If you have some thoughts to share with him on that matter, why don't you speak up in the comments? Incidentally, Cusack has a movie coming to theaters on March 26 that you should go see: Hot Tub Time Machine. It's not on YouTube, but it might show up on YouTub....

Here's game-designer Jane McGonigal at her most incandescently inspiring, speaking at TED. Her hypothesis is that games allow us to experience epic wins, incentivizing us to give them millions of hours to them in order to feel the thrill of success. She proposes that we can harness all that energy -- and all the good feeling and camaraderie that emerges from all that play -- to solve the world's hardest problems. And she makes a good case that we can do it. Key phrases: "blissful productivity" and "urgent optimism" and "the desire for epic meaning." Games can make a better world Previously:Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your ... Video: Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World ... Jane McGonigal's The Lost Ring alternate reality game Video: Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance ... Ask a Scientist: Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal joins Institute for the Future SF Weekly on Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal's new game: Cruel 2 B Kind...

The secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has leaked again. Michael Geist has analysis below: New ACTA leaks have emerged this week that fill in the blanks about the remainder of the still-secret treaty. While earlier leaks provided extensive detail on the Internet and civil enforcement chapters, these latest leaks shed new light into the criminal enforcement section, the chapter on ACTA institutional issues, and international cooperation. The international cooperation chapter includes extensive provisions on capacity building and technical assistance. This is noteworthy since it (1) confirms the vision that developing countries will ultimately be pressured to join ACTA and (2) represents a counter to the developing country focus at WIPO. While WIPO has typically provided this assistance, the emergence of the development agenda has promoted a more balanced approach to technical assistance in developing countries. ACTA seeks to return technical assistance to an enforcement oriented approach. Translation for non-wonks: Historically, developing countries have asked the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization for "technical assistance" with their copyright laws. This has usually amounted to "Create copyright laws that will make it easier for rich countries to get richer," but in the past several of years, WIPO has found itself with a large cadre of public interest activists and now, WIPO is working on a treaty on its "Development Agenda" to figure out a copyright system that serves humanitarian goals, too (for example, by making it legal for archivists and educators to work together to translated and adapt works that have different copyright rules in different countries). We've all known that ACTA is a way of writing copyright treaties without having to let poor countries and human rights advocates into the room. We've suspected that poor countries -- who aren't invited to the negotiations -- will be strong-armed into signing onto the treate afterwards. This leak confirms our worst fears: ACTA throws out the pretence of justice, fairness, and humanitarianism present at the UN, for pure, naked, crony-capitalism. It's an instrument for allowing entrenched corporations from rich countries change the laws of other countries to their benefit -- and to the detriment of the people of those countries. It's a hijacking of the world's legislative systems by private interests, abetted by the US Trade Rep. New ACTA Leaks: Criminal Enforcement, Institutional Issues, and International Cooperation (Thanks, Michael!) Previously:Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry ... ACTA leak: Now we know who is against transparency - USA, Korea ... EU Parliament votes 663-13 against ACTA's enforcement measures ... Danish activists demand to know why their governments block ACTA ......

I honestly don't remember much about 2000 Republican primary candidate Gary Bauer, but his backwards tumble at a New Hampshire pancake breakfast is a thing of beauty. I'd give it a 9 in the Pratfall Olympics. Update: The pratfall is at 21:08. Sadly C-Span Video Library doesn't seem to have a good way to cut right to the point. In related news: C-Span now has its full video archives up on the Web. The site covers 23 years and 160k hours of video. There's even Book TV, which means you can re-watch your favorite Rock Bottom Remainders live shows. Previously:Selleck Waterfall Sandwich Batman Lightsaber Shark Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza!...

No two farts smell exactly alike, according to this interview with Dr. Lester Gottesman, a proctologist from St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. The smell has to do with the amount of absorbed products like methane, which is made by fermentation of what we eat, and that's what causes the bad smell, basically. As a baby, when you're born, passing through the vagina, you're infected by the bacteria in your mother's colon, and that's the bacteria you're dealt for your lifetime. Also, everybody is different in how they'll digest wheat products, milk products, whatever. And if they are not digested properly there will be a lot of methane produced and a lot of acid, and that would tend to cause a stinkier bowl movement. Image courtesy Flickr user banjo_d, via CC...

Indie game developer Jason Rohrer (of Passage fame) recently took Brandon Boyer on a tour of his latest project, Sleep is Death. It's a two-player storytelling sandpit with the approachable look and feel of an old-school computer game, and it'll be out in just three weeks. Read Caught Sleeping, a Boing Boing special feature:...

I'm loving the design the Ada Lovelace Day organizers put together for these great T-shirts celebrating women in technology. Ada Lovelace Day, a blogging holiday honoring the often overlooked work done by women in the sciences, is March 24th....

Use sparingly...

New from Ukrainian steampunk maskmakers: the Lord 3 mask. Who's a handsome devil then? Lord 3 Previously:Bob Basset's latest steampunk mask Cthulhu mask on eBay Steampunk "Raptor Pilot" mask #4 Leather fetish pilot mask Steampunk leather mask with a breathing tube beard...

Police in Huntington Beach, CA are asking for the public's help in trying to identify possible victims in photos belonging to convicted rapist and serial killer Rodney Alcala (the "Dating Game" killer). Above, photo #110, from a series of hundreds taken on of before July, 1979, many believed to have been shot by Mr. Alcala. The prints were found in his Seattle storage locker. Some have been ID'd since the scans were published online. (Random case fact: he is reported to have studied film under and worked for Roman Polanski.)...

Above, a "food indemnity form" for takeaway food at a hotel in Dubai. Tweeted by CNN International correspondent Atia Awabi, who is based in Afghanistan....

"When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out." Bibi Aisha, 19, of Afghanistan, who was punished by the Taliban for "shaming" her in-laws when she ran away to escape torturous domestic abuse. Her father promised her hand in marriage to her abusive husband when she was 8. (CNN blogs, via Kristie LuStout)...