Fisherman Wily Dean was trying to catch cow-nosed rays in Southern Maryland's Potomac River for a marine biologist this week, but he ended up netting an 8-foot-long bull shark. Unfortunately, the story doesn't have a happy ending for the shark. From NBC Washington:
"We had an interesting morning bringing it in," Dean said. "It was quite a fight."
Once the shark was captured, the next question was: What the heck do you do with it?
"I am probably going to have it mounted, maybe the head," Dean said. "Right now, the shark's in the freezer."
Last night, the Hugo Awards, one of science fiction's most prestigious prizes, were presented in Melbourne at Aussiecon 4. The Hugo ceremony is one of my favorite parts of any WorldCon, and last night's event, emceed by Garth Nix, was a particularly outstanding edition. The ballot was extremely strong, with works that I really enjoyed competing in several categories. The voter and nominator turnout were both much higher than usual, and the program moved at a very, very good clip. This year's award, designed by Nick Stathopolous, was gorgeous, incorporating aboriginal motifs and an organic, Belle Époque look inspired by the Paris Metro signs. Kudos to the administrators on a smooth, well-run ceremony!
The fiction prizes were especially sweet this year. Best novel was an almost-unheard-of tie between China Mieville for his brilliant, mind-bending The City and the City and Paolo Bacigalupe for his stellar debut novel The Windup Girl. Best novella went to my collaborator Charlie Stross for Palimpsest, from his wonderful, mind-bending solo short story collection Wireless. Best novelette went to Peter Watts for The Island, from The New Space Opera 2. Boing Boing readers will remember Peter as the SF writer who was beaten and gassed near the US/Canada border when he got out of his car to ask why US customs officers were searching his car; he spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting the charge and the potential two-year sentence; was found guilty but received a suspended sentence. SF fans raised money to bring Peter to Australia, and his acceptance speech in which he called this the "best and worst year of his life," was brilliant. The best short story, which I presented, went to Will McIntosh for "Bridecicle," a lovely story.
Net-based media was a big winner this year: the podcast Starship Sofa (often presented here) won for Best Fanzine. And of course, there was Fred Pohl's Hugo for Best Fan Writer for his excellent blog The Way the Future Blogs.
Other categories whose winners made me especially glad include the Best Editor prize for my editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (this was his second prize in the very new category, and he has taken his name out of the running for next year). The graphic novel category went to Phil and Kaja Foglio's steampunk comic Girl Genius. The Campbell Award for best new writer to Seanan McGuire, whose heartfelt acceptance speech made me burst into tears.
Tor.com has the full list of nominees and winners here.
The Bad Astronomy blog posted this blink-and-you'll-miss it video of the International Space Station zipping across the face of the sun back in 2007. Let's put that speed in perspective:
It orbits the Earth a mere 350 or so kilometers (220 miles) up; I like to say that if you live in DC and see it pass overhead, it's about the same distance from you as New York City. So it's actually pretty close to the Earth's surface, and screaming around at 8 km/sec (5 miles/sec). That's a good clip! From the point of view of someone watching from the ground, it only takes a couple of minutes for the station to go clear across the sky, horizon to horizon.
No, it does not involve hundreds of tiny exercise wheels. (Although that would be pretty damn cute, too.)
Instead, every month, the farmers process more than 400 pounds of guinea pig poop into combustible gas—and a liquid byproduct that works as plant food—by allowing bacteria to break the waste down in a warm, oxygen-free environment. It's called anaerobic digestion, and it's a process that's increasingly popular on American farms, as well. Dairy farms—with their easy access to lots of consolidated cow shit—in particular.
What's cool about this Peruvian model is that it shows you don't necessarily need fancy, expensive equipment to make anaerobic digestion work. The process can be applied at different levels of tech intensity, depending on resources, location and how much energy you actually want to produce. This Peruvian family makes enough gas for themselves, plus a little extra. Meanwhile, a dairy farm in Wisconsin uses the gas to make electricity that they sell back to the utility company. All told, there's enough to power 70 households.
Uncle Sam is programmed with a variety of different "gaits", or types of movement patterns, which are based on the real-life behavior of real-life snakes. The goal is to create a modular—and, thus, relatively simple to produce and scale—robot that can get to and through places where people, and less-willies-inducing robots, can't maneuver.
(Why, yes, my nose is rather runny, why do you ask?)
Urge to vengeance aside, my main reaction while flipping through this gallery of pollen images was wonder at the intense variety of sizes, shapes, textures and tricks floating through the microscopic world of plant pollen. This group shot ranges from the (relatively) giant orb of pumpkin pollen in the center, to the teensy blue dot that belongs to the forget-me-not. Some of the grains seem like completely alien things, but others bear a striking resemblance to the plants they help create—for instance, I guessed that Venus fly trap pollen went with the Venus fly trap before I read the caption.
All these shots are the work of Swedish Swiss scientist Martin Oeggerli, who makes amazing art using a scanning electron microscope. The images actually start out in black and white, with Oeggerli going back and adding color, pixel by pixel. The colors can, but don't necessarily, reflect reality, but they do help make textures stand out and make the form more easily readable by your eye.
Mark Allen of Machine Project in Los Angeles says:
For a period of five weeks Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph will be host to a whole series of nautical-themed events, performances, lectures, and workshops, as well as an opera by and for dogs. Inside the capsized hull of the ship there will also be a crystal cave. Join us at Machine for the opening on September 5th from 5-10pm, where you can gaze upon the wreckage with accompanying performances by Clay Chaplin, Ambient Force 3000, Ecce, OK Music, Chris Kallmyer, and Colin Woodford.
This is the world's first frozen margarita machine, invented and built by Mariano Martinez in 1971 from parts of a soft-serve ice cream maker. His inspiration: A 7-11 Slurpee.
Today, it resides in the collection of the National Museum of American History, where a museum director once called it a, "classic example of the American entrepreneurial spirit."
Polar explorer Børge Ousland (How'd you like to have that as your job title?) is on a sailboat making its way through the Arctic Ocean. This has never been an easy place for boats, and this video gives you a good idea of why. The captain of Ousland's boat explains the hazards of this area a little more in-depth, while simultaneously making an important point—thanks to warming trends, traversing the Northwest Passage isn't has hard as it used to be.
It is obvious that the conditions met by the early explorers such as Vitus Bering, Fridtjof Nansen, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and Roald Amundsen no longer exists. We passed through in a few weeks, while our predecessors were forced to overwinter once or even twice. Still, it is not an easy passage for any kind of boat or vessel. There is still ice, although not to the extent there used to be, but plenty to make conditions unpredictable for ships. In addition many of the seas you have to pass are very shallow. In the East Siberian Sea, the shipping lane is located 50 nautical miles off the coast, in order for there to be sufficient depth for bigger ships. Lights, buoys and nautical markings are scarce.
You can follow Ousland's progress on his blog. Today, he reached American waters and changed his underpants, and we learn that changing your underpants on special occasions is a fine, old Norwegian tradition. To which I can only say, "Good."
What would you make of medieval historical records that prominently note the occurrence of large crops of acorns? It's a bit of a weird departure from the kinds of things these records normally care about, i.e. battles and the deaths of famous people. In fact, the people keeping these records didn't even eat acorns, and other, more useful, crops aren't mentioned at all.
But, sometimes, an acorn might be more than just an acorn, according to a 2003 paper by classicist David Woods. That's because the Latin word for "little nut" and the word sometimes used to describe the swollen lymph nodes caused by the Capital-P Plague are one and the same.
The Latin term glandularius is the root of our word for gland; etymologically, glandula means 'little nuts' because this is what they felt like when palpated. There is at least one other example of a plague record using glandulara as a descriptor. In c. 660 the Burgundian 'Chronicle of Fredegar' describes the 599 plague of Marseilles as a cladis glanduaria.
So "a spark of leprosy and an unheard of abundance of nuts", becomes the far more logical, "we've had some issues with leprosy and The Plague this year".
Craigslist, the popular classifieds Web site, has blocked access to its "adult services" section and replaced the link with a black label with the word "censored."
Gilpin Family whisky is a new single malt whisky made from the urine of diabetics. Creator James Gilpin doesn't sell the stuff, but rather gives away bottles as a public health statement. From the product page:
Sugar heavy urine excreted by diabetic patients is now being utilized
for the fermentation of high-end single malt whisky for export. The Whisky market is growing faster then any other alcoholic beverage worldwide. With a prevalent genetic weakness being exposed in the northern hemisphere leading to a sharp rise in type two diabetes, economists have found a new exportable commodity to exploit and are keen to capitalize on this resource quickly.
Large amounts of sugar are excreted on
a daily basis by type-two diabetic patients especially amongst the upper end of our aging population. As a result of this diabetic patients toilets often have unusual scale build up in
the basin due and rapid mould growths as
the sugar put into the system acts as nutrients
for mould and bacteria growth. Is it plausible
to suggest that we start utilizing our water purification systems in order to harvest the biological resources that our elderly already process in abundance?
As summer draws to close, I suggest a trip to Antarctica in this lovely Boing Boing special feature from our archives, Maggie Koerth-Baker's "Charting The Frozen Continent." When you get there, be sure to also scroll right to explore the photos! An excerpt:
"Oh, it's 32 and sunny here," says Claire Porter, a University of Minnesota graduate student working on the ostensibly frozen continent. "We spent the whole day outside hiking and playing around."
Antarctica, as it turns out, defies all sorts of expectations. Far from a blank, white canvas, the bottom of the world is a beautiful place, full of breathtaking peaks and stark, rock-strewn valleys studded with cerulean lakes. But the things that make Antarctica so fascinating—and such an important center for scientific research—also make it a difficult place to work. Porter is part of a team of scientists whose job is to make other scientists' jobs easier.
Video artist and viral genius Joe Sabia, whose work we've featured before on Boing Boing Video and the Virgin America in-flight Boing Boing TV channel, shares word of a project he just completed for the energy drink company behind Zombie Blood Energy Potion.
"Red Light Fright was highly experimental, highly speculative, and the results were hilarious," Joe says.
"We basically loaded an intersection with zombies, intentionally blew a right light, and received a ticket in the mail with a ton of photos showing branded zombies in action. No arrests, no manhunts for us (we hope). just good, safe clean fun."
Did the zombies really get the parking tickets? Are they real zombies? Are they real parking tickets? He won't tell me. Either way, a clever viral marketing stunt on what I'm told was a very low budget.
Parenting advice from another era: give your squalling children a pipe to smoke! Right up there with "Speak roughly to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes."
Kamill1 sez, "My first attempt at an automata, I think it turned out pretty well! Super fun build. A little wink to Jake Von Slatt, sitting down to play the pipe organ. Huzzah!"
"An executive at a billion-dollar Connecticut hedge fund was arrested on felony charges of allegedly running a huge year-round pot farm inside her home. But her boyfriend says the cops have it wrong, that they're goat farmers, not dope farmers."
For some uplifting weekend reading, I suggest Mary Roach's excellent Boing Boing special feature "Death In Space." From the intro:
The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China's space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?
Swedish ecologists Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak and Peter Mäsak are the inventors of an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation and burial, called Promession. The technique entails freezing a body, vibrating it into tiny pieces, and then freeze-drying the pieces, which can then be used as compost to grow a memorial shrub or tree.
Staggs: Both World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron take place in the world of The Long Emergency, which you’ve written about in the non-fiction title of the same name. Could you very briefly explain what the Long Emergency is for our readers?
Kunstler:The Long Emergency is the culminating crisis of modernity, growing out of the limits to growth, resource scarcity, and the collapse of the complex systems that keep us going — everything ranging from industrialized farming to oil-based transportation to electronic communication. It can also be described as the crisis of over-investments in complexity — resolving in a traumatic wave of sudden de-complexifying.
Staggs: Reading your novels, I find myself in some ways envious of the sense of community enjoyed by the residents of Union Grove, yet I remain aware of – and wary of – the incredible loss of life that our world would experience following a collapse of our oil-based infrastructure. On the whole, would you imagine that we’d gain or lose more in such a world?
Kunstler: It’s part of the tension of the story that we are constantly having to measure what’s been gained against what’s been lost. The losses are perhaps more obvious: comfort, certainty, and the whole prosthetic nimbus of technology that we are so used to. The gains are perhaps more subtle: making your own music, enjoying the sounds, scents, and sensations of nature much more directly, the blessed absence of cars and other motor-driven annoyances, unmediated relations with family, friends, and community members, a reconnection with the elemental ceremonies of birth, death, the harvest, the coming of spring, etc.
Note: This starts out somewhat depressingly, with the body of a female octopus that died after reproducing—as all octopuses, male and female, do. But it quickly gets past that, and on to the wee, baby octopuses, floating around the sea. Turn off the sound to block out the sad song, and focus on that.
"In order to study the way that experience can influence the brain, there has been a great deal of research done on the visual cortex of the kitten."
Oh, this is going to end badly, isn't it?
This short documentary from the 1970s explains, in depth, some research that I mentioned earlier this year in a BoingBoing article on fetal senses. Long story short: Kittens are born blind and do a lot of their sight-linked brain development in the first few weeks after birth. Because of this, they make a handy model for studying how the brains of human fetuses form neural connections and how our sense of sight develops in the womb. It's important research that has helped medical science better understand how to care for premature human babies, besides adding valuable details to our understanding of the brain, in general.
Unfortunately, because kittens are adorable, said very important research looks almost comically evil when filmed. Seriously, this video is one "Thittens" joke away from working as a segment of Look Around You.
So, thanks, blorgggg (Thorgggg?), for sending this video in via Submitterator. I'm sure the Moderators will be thanking you (and me) as well. I do ask that, as we get into the inevitable discussion on animal research, you remember that the scientists involved did not raise kittens in completely dark rooms for sociopathic shits and giggles, but because they thought the potential benefits of the research outweighed the (mostly temporary) damage done to the kittens' visual abilities. You may disagree with that calculation—and you're welcome to do so. In fact, I think that complex discussion about ends and means in specific studies is valuable. And interesting. Far more so (on both counts) than simply labeling anyone who uses animals for research as a for-kicks abuser of fluffy baby kitties.
What Things Do is a stunningly good webcomics site, launched by comics artist Jordan Crane and featuring some of the best independent comics artists around, including
Gabrielle Bell, Abner Dean, Sammy Harkham, Jaime Hernandez, Kevin Huizenga, Ted May, John Porcellino, Ron Regé Jr., Steve Weissman, and Dan Zettwoch.
Many of the artists here seem to have been mildly influenced by Tintin's Hergé (and Joost Swarte). This is not a big surprise, since Jordan Crane selects all the artists for his site, and Crane himself shows a little Hergé in his work. (I can't think of a better artist than Hergé from which to draw inspiration.)
The comics in What Things Do all have the same yellow-gray color scheme (with a few exceptions) that give the site and elegant cohesiveness. The comics are large clear and readable.
In addition to showcasing the work of contemporary cartoonists, What Things Do, runs "decades-old work" from worthy but not-so-famous cartoonists, as well as articles about comics.
What Things Do: excellent webcomics
Daniel Raeburn has done the world a favor by creating free PDF versions of his outstanding self-published journal about comic books, The Imp. Though he published only four issues (I have them all in hard copy) Raeburn's journal is regarded as a masterpiece of comic book criticism. Each issue covered a single subject: Daniel Clowes in Vol 1, Jack Chick in Vol 2, Chris Ware in Vol 3, and Mexican "historietas perversas" in Vol 4.
The Comics Journal called The Imp “One of the very best things to come out of comics.”
Here's what This American Life creator Ira Glass said about The Imp:
It was clearly the work of an obsessed person, in the very best way possible. A really smart obsessed person. There was a kind of Talmudic completeness to the whole thing, in a way that journalism rarely even aspires to. Not much journalism tries to be so emotional, and funny, and analytical, and thorough. There’s really very little like it out there. The closest you get is one of those big stories they used to do in the old New Yorker, where at the end you feel like there’s nothing else that needs to be said on the subject. I read it admiringly and jealously. In the years since I read the Chris Ware issue I’ve actually become friends with Chris Ware, real friends, we talk all the time, and probably a third of what I know about Chris still comes from that issue of The Imp. It was that complete and emotionally insightful.
Stefan Jones, who also bought The Imp in hardcopy says,
The issue about Jack Chick is an amazing piece of journalism. It makes you feel some sympathy for the loon behind all of those hate-filled comic tracts.
Much of issue 3 was reprinted in a monograph about Ware. I prefer The Imp version, which resembles one of Ware's big-format comic collections.
Volume Four was mind-boggling. I'd never heard of the Mexican comics in question. I keep meaning to get my hands on some.
Cannabis Catering offers gourmet meals laced with pot. The delivery service isn't cheap, around $100/person, but damn those pot-atoes look tasty. And yes, you need a medical marijuana card to order. From Fast Company:
The idea for Cannabis Catering came to (Chef Frederick) Nesbitt when he learned that his friend's diabetic mother had been diagnosed with cancer. "I would bring back edibles [from the dispensary], but they're so high in high-fructose corn syrup that she was high off sugar rather than being medicated," he says. So Nesbitt began experimenting with his own pot food--starting with mashed potatoes.
UK designer Jeremy May makes jewelry by laminating and polishing pages from old books together to make striking pieces: "The beauty of the jewels extends within the piece: text and images pass all the way though the object, only exposed at the surfaces - giving a tantalising glimpse of the book within."
An unnamed artist transformed a worn antique tabriz wool rug into a wonderful, fanciful bear rug. I imagine the reported "repaired knots and moth damage" just enhance its charm. 87" x 59", $1800 from CS Post.
Last year, I posted about how W. Neil Berrett quit his job by presenting his boss with a resignation letter on a sheet cake. Here's the story behind Berrett's latest cake document, a frosted invoice delivered today to People.com:
On August 10 this year I received an e-mail from an employee of People Magazine requesting permission to use my cake resignation photo in an article. This is shortly after the Jet Blue Steward event, prompting many 'Weird ways people have quit their jobs' news stories.
I replied to People and said they needed a license to use my photo - meaning they have to pay me to use it. I did not receive a reply.
On August 11 my image was used without authorization and without payment on People.com, in an article titled "Take This Job and Shove It! 8 Memorable Quitters".
I sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding my image be removed from their website. Six days later I receive an e-mail stating my image had been removed from their website. I received an offer at that time of $75 for the use of my image. That may have been reasonable if my photo's copyright had not been willfully infringed and used for six days.
So, today I sent the photo director an invoice for a usage license of my cake resignation photo. This cake was delivered today, September 3rd.
"They're into everything, from the Russian prostitute rings in resorts like Cannes and St Tropez to gassing tourists in their villa and stealing everything they've got. Bosses are now based here permanently, with foot soldiers working for them, often flying in for set periods before returning home with their profits in cash. The numbers really are unprecedented at the moment."—a French police officer, on the "military-like precision" with which Russian mafia are said to be taking over the French Riviera. (Telegraph UK)— Xeni • Comments: 11
Information designer Jess Bachman has a new piece out which isn't so much an info-graphic as a graphic article. Jess explains:
It deals with the nightmare that has become student loans. Default rates on student loans are worse than sub-prime mortgages, and the total debt is bigger than all our credit card debts combined. It's a huge issue than many people are keeping quiet about. College students are a hugely under-represented and unadvocated group in Washington, and what we and the government are doing to them is just wrong.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the
United States and other countries.
"We had an interesting morning bringing it in," Dean said. "It was quite a fight."
Last night, the Hugo Awards, one of science fiction's most prestigious prizes, were presented in Melbourne at Aussiecon 4. The Hugo ceremony is one of my favorite parts of any WorldCon, and last night's event, emceed by Garth Nix, was a particularly outstanding edition. The ballot was extremely strong, with works that I really enjoyed competing in several categories. The voter and nominator turnout were both much higher than usual, and the program moved at a very, very good clip. This year's award, designed by Nick Stathopolous, was gorgeous, incorporating aboriginal motifs and an organic, Belle Époque look inspired by the Paris Metro signs. Kudos to the administrators on a smooth, well-run ceremony!
The 
Sugar heavy urine excreted by diabetic patients is now being utilized
for the fermentation of high-end single malt whisky for export. The Whisky market is growing faster then any other alcoholic beverage worldwide. With a prevalent genetic weakness being exposed in the northern hemisphere leading to a sharp rise in type two diabetes, economists have found a new exportable commodity to exploit and are keen to capitalize on this resource quickly.
Video artist and viral genius Joe Sabia, whose work we've featured before on Boing Boing Video and the Virgin America in-flight Boing Boing TV channel, shares word of a project he just completed for the energy drink company behind 
Parenting advice from another era: give your squalling children a pipe to smoke! Right up there with "Speak roughly to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes."
The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China's space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?
Check out 
