Boing Boing

Fist sledgehammer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:04:12 PST

DesignMartus's portfolio has some beautiful metalwork on display, around a motif of hands and fists. This wonderful fist sledgehammer would be a fine addition to any toolkit.

Early Tools (via Make)

Theme Park Maps through the ages

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:01:25 PST

Theme Park Brochures, a superb gallery of theme-park maps from the 30s onwards -- I especially love the hand-drawn ones.

Theme Park Brochures (via MeFi)

Thinking off

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:01:53 PST

Big Think video: "According to Rutgers psychology professor Barry Komisaruk, some women are able to achieve orgasm through mental activity alone. What can their brains tell us about the neurological basis of sexual pleasure, and can these discoveries help patients who are unable to orgasm at all?"

Clock on a bicycle chain

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:57 PST

A reader writes, "The Catena wall clock harkens back to traditional mechanical clocks. Copper digits mounted onto a bicycle chain place emphasis on the cyclical nature of time. This clock is a striking clock, literally and figuratively."

Well, not literally. But figuratively. And man, was this thing ever designed to fire up the desiderata center of my brain.

Catena Wall Clock

EFF lawyers grin like holy fools, surrounded by a fan of formerly secret government documents

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:36 PST

Followers of Boing Boing will know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been battling in court to force the US government to disclose documents related to the illegal mass wiretapping that the phone companies and Uncle Sam engaged in as part of the "war on terror." Now the government has blinked, and EFF has the photos to prove it.

Hugh from EFF sez, "A photo of what it looks like when the gov't says 'uncle': EFF lawyers with a mountain of telecom immunity docs."

nate&marcia (Thanks, Hugh!)

Previously:

Aerobics championship video from 1987

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:48:25 PST

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 1987 Crystal light National Aerobic Championship. (Thanks, Bloggy!)

Virus loads child porn on unwitting users' computers

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:45:16 PST

Another good reason to get a Mac or use Linux. A Windows-only virus can "visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute" filling the unsuspecting computer owner's hard drive with child pornography. It has already ruined at least one couple's life.

Deer butt face taxidermy

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:31:43 PST

Above are examples of deer butt face taxidermy art. Yes, indeedy. For more about this fine craft, visit "Make your own redneck art." Note that the description of the process, and reference to a hunter's "game dressing tool" called "Butt Out," may be offensive to some. Deer butt face mounts can also be found on eBay. (Thanks, Michael-Anne and Barnaby!)

Eye exercise may boost creativity

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:20:44 PST

A study in the scientific journal Brain and Cognition suggests that increasing the "crosstalk" between the brain's left and right hemispheres can increase creativity. Researchers from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey ran an experiment on 62 people to gauge creative thinking. After a first try at the task, some of the participants were told to shift their eyes horizontally back and forth for 30 seconds, an exercise that boosts the communication between the hemispheres. Those subjects performed much better on the test the second time around than a control group who stared straight ahead. The scientists published the results of their study in the journal Brain and Cognition. From the British Psychological Society Research Digest:

An important factor that the researchers took note of was the participants' handedness. Prior research has suggested that people who have one hand that is particularly dominant, so-called "strong-handers", have less cross-talk between their brain hemispheres compared with people who are more ambidextrous or "mixed handed"...
The key finding is that on their second creativity attempt, strong-handers who'd performed the horizontal eye movements subsequently showed a significant improvement in their creativity, in terms of being more original (i.e. suggesting ideas not proposed by others) and coming up with more categories of use...
The researchers also showed that, for strong-handers, the beneficial effects of the eye movement exercise lasted nine minutes for originality, but just three to six minutes in terms of coming up with more categories of use.

"Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity"

Dogs welcome soldiers home

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:03:49 PST

To commemorate Veterans Day, Mental Floss collected videos of very happy dogs greeting returning soldiers.

3D medical viz system with Xbox controller

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:56:47 PST

Iowa State University researchers developed a system to converts common 2D MRI and CAT medical scans into 3D visualizations, enabling physicians to fly through the body using an Xbox controller. Apparently, their software is much simpler to use, and the visualizations easier to explore, than existing 3D medical imaging technologies. The engineers have now spun out their innovation in to a start-up, called BodyViz. Their hope is that the software can be used to train medical students and enable physicians to try procedures before doing them on live patients. The PC software sells for $4,995, plus $69 for the wireless Xbox controller. From Iowa State:

Two-dimensional imaging technologies have been used in medicine for a long time, said (BodyViz co-founder) Eliot Winer, an Iowa State associate professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State’s Virtual Reality Applications Center. But those flat images aren’t easily read and understood by anybody but specialists.
“If I’m a surgeon or an oncologist or a primary care physician, I deal with patients in 3-D,” Winer said.
(The creators) like to quote a doctor who told a reporter that when preparing for complex procedures, “2-D is guessing and 3-D is knowing.”

"Iowa State engineers develop 3-D software to give doctors, students a view inside the body"

McDonald's Gitmo is hiring!

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:43:46 PST

Joe sez, "The McDonald's franchise at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba is looking for an assistant manager. The ideal candidate will have previous restaurant management experience, a valid U.S. passport and a willingness to relocate to Cuba. Apparently, no special security clearance is required. Perks include great weather, potential tax free status for year-round residents, and half of the successful candidate's stateside rent paid by the company. The Gitmo McDonald's has been in operation since 1986, and serves the base's 6000 inhabitants, including military personnel, their families, Jamaican and Filipino guest workers. and 215 detainees, who can make take-out orders for Big Macs, fries and other items."

Guantanamo-based McDonald's seeks applicants (Thanks, Joe!)

Previously:

EFF to represent Yes Men in Chamber of Commerce lawsuit

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:41:46 PST

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "More news about the Yes Men and the Chamber of Commerce. BoingBoing reported on the lawsuit the Chamber filed over the activists' political criticism of the Chamber's stance on climate change and the Chamber's DMCA takedown attempt. Now it's official: EFF and Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, will defend the Yes Men and other activists involved in the action. As EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry says: "The action was a brilliant piece of political theater, but it had a serious purpose: calling attention to the Chamber's political activities. This is core political speech, protected by the First Amendment." Next step in the case -- a response to the Chamber's complaint is due later this month in the U.S. District Court for District of Columbia."

"The action was a brilliant piece of political theater, but it had a serious purpose: calling attention to the Chamber's political activities," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "This is core political speech, protected by the First Amendment. We're very pleased that Davis Wright Tremaine -- with its long, successful history of protecting free speech rights of Americans -- has joined us in helping these activists battle a transparent attempt at censorship."
"U.S. courts have recognized that political parody lies at the heart of the First Amendment," said Davis Wright Tremaine LLP partner Bruce Johnson. "Even if the party parodied refuses to giggle--or even panics and sues--free speech will ultimately triumph. We look forward to a prompt dismissal of this case and a reaffirmation of the rights of all Americans to poke fun at the pompous and powerful."
The Chamber has pulled out all the stops in its effort to silence the activists. First, it sent an improper copyright takedown notice to the Yes Men's upstream provider, demanding that a parody website posted in support of the action be removed immediately and resulting in the temporary shutdown of not only the spoof site but hundreds of other sites hosted by May First/People Link. Next, the Chamber filed suit against the activists in federal court, claiming among other things the activism infringed their trademarks.

EFF to Represent Yes Men in Court Battle Over Chamber of Commerce Action (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Previously:

Sean Hannity plans to blame liberals for his mis-use of video

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:22:18 PST

Predict what excuse Sean Hannity will use to explain why he misused old video to back up his claim that a large crowd came to Washington to protest the health care bill. (One rule: his excuse must somehow blame the liberals).

Graph compares rock music quality with US oil production 1949-2007

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:59:49 PST

From GOOD: "The remarkable similarity between the arcs of U.S. oil production and songs in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" by year is staggering." (Graph created by Overthinkingit.com)

Eleven myths of de-cluttering

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:50:36 PST

Gretchen Rubin, author of the forthcoming book, The Happiness Project, offers several good de-cluttering tips in a blog post titled "Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering."

Here are the first three:

1. "I need to get organized." No! Don't get organized is your first step.
2. "I need to be hyper-organized." I fully appreciate the pleasure of having a place for everything, and perhaps counter-intuitively, I believe it’s easier to put things away in an exact place, rather than a general place (“the third shelf of the coat closet,” not “a closet.”) However, this impulse can become destructive: if you’re spending a lot of time alphabetizing your spices, organizing your shoes according to heel height, creating eighty categories for your home files, etc., consider whether you need to be quite so precisely organized. I find this particularly true with toys – I’ve spent hours sorting pretend food, Polly Pockets pieces, and tea sets, only to find everything a jumble the next day.
3. "I need some more inventive storage containers." See #1. If you get rid of everything you don’t need, you may not need any fancy containers.

In short, she's a fan of getting rid of stuff. Me, too!

Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering

Pratchett's "Unseen Academicals" - a gift to Discworld lovers and an argument for the importance of sport

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:36:41 PST

I always celebrate when a new Terry Pratchett novel hits the stands -- doubly so now that health problems are slowing him down from his normal superhuman output to a merely impressive one. But I confess I was a little less excited to learn that the newest Pratchett Discworld book, Unseen Academicals, was about football (AKA soccer). I'm not a sports fan. I wasn't a hockey fan when I lived in Canada. I wasn't a baseball fan when I lived in the US. I'm not a footie fan now that I live in the UK. But I gave it a whirl: this is Terry Pratchett, after all. I'd read his grocery lists.

A word about Pratchett for the uninitiated. Terry Pratchett is an incredibly funny, warmly human British fantasy (mostly) novelist. He writes at an impossible rate. Most of his books are part of a sprawling, infinitely varied fantasy series called Discworld, about a flat, disc-shaped planet that is carried on the backs of four gigantic elephants who tramp in slow circles around the back of a vast, interstellar turtle called A'Tuin. On Discworld, everything happens. There are imperial battles and barbarians; witches and trolls and dwarves in the hills; animist spirits on lost continents; and there is a vast and wonderful and terrible city called Ankh-Morpork. Ankh-Morpork is presided over by a tyrant called Lord Vetinari, who is quite progressive as tyrants go. For one thing, he's let the trolls, vampires, medusae, dwarves, werewolves, zombies, and assorted other nonhumans into the city. For another, he's organized the thieves into a guild to whom one can pay an annual license and be guaranteed a life free from official thieving (freelance thieves are dealt with most firmly by the guild).

You can read the Discworld books in almost any order. Some of them run in little trilogies that follow the same characters, but even if you picked up the second or third volume of these, you'd probably get along OK -- Pratchett is quite good at getting newcomers to Discworld up to speed on its basics.

Back to Unseen Academicals. Here's the setup: the wizards of Unseen University have discovered that a key grant from a former Archchancellor requires them to keep a football team that plays regular matches. It's been decades since the last UU team was fielded, and they're in imminent danger of losing a substantial source of funding. Meanwhile, football itself -- as played on the streets of Ankh-Morpork -- is a vicious game that is more riot than sport, and the wizards of UU have no intention of getting involved in that mess.

So they cook up a plan to reform football -- and to field a team of their own, coached by Nutt, a mysterious (and erudite) goblin who has been heretofore employed as a candle-dribbler (no self-respecting wizard wants to do magic by the light of a pristine, unmarked candle) in the cellars of UU.

That's the setup. Here's the payoff: it's brilliant. The novelist's best trick is to make you care about stuff you don't care about. It's what Fever Pitch does. And it's what Unseen Academicals does, too. Pratchett shows us how sport is part of the emotional life of a city, and how its significance resonates across generations, across regional parochialism, across social strata, uniting us behind something that transcends the mere game.

What's more, Pratchett shows us how fragile a thing this is, how vulnerable it is to greed and thuggishness and venality, and how those who defend the game do so for the best reasons imaginable. As Pratchett says, "The thing about football is, it's not about football."

I wouldn't call this the best Discworld novel ever (I think my vote for that honor would go to Monstrous Regiment, which, incidentally, can be read without having read any of the other Pratchett novels). But it's in the top five.

A word of warning: it's also one of the most inside-baseball (you should forgive the expression) of the Discworld books, requiring a fair bit of familiarity with the previous books in the series to be fully appreciated. It's a real gift from Pratchett to his fans, in other words, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

Unseen Academicals (Amazon US)

Unseen Academicals (Amazon UK)

Previously:

Make Volume 20 features Adam Savage

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:21:26 PST

MAKE, Volume 20 is out (and will be on newsstands and in bookstores next week) and it's one of my favorite issues. The special theme of this issue is kid-friendly projects.

Our projects editor, Paul Spinrad, sat down with Adam Savage to talk about his childhood as a maker. Adam is on our cover, which was illustrated by our pal Ape Lad (aka Adam Koford). Here's an excerpt:

Paul: I think of enthusiasm as the opposite of coolness, and adolescence is a turning point for this. Children are all enthusiastic, they're into what they're into, and it's great and they love it. But then something happens, and suddenly some of the kids start looking down on that enthusiasm and seeing it as immature or dorky. So they invent coolness as an alternative. I always gravitated away from that because I was interested in too many things. Adam: Yes, and enthusiasm also makes you vulnerable. When you like something, someone can take it away from you. I once gave a sculpture to some friends as a wedding present, and they turned it down. That was really upsetting to me. And that vulnerability itself is also embarrassing. The two emotions are deeply linked, which is why people try not to cry in public.

One of my favorite articles in the issue is "Productive Plastic Playthings," written by toy design Bob Knetzger. He takes a look at 1960s "maker" toys like the Vac-U-Form, the Time Machine, the Thingmaker, and the Mold Master. I had a lot of these toys when I was a kid, and when I read Bob's piece, it brought back the smell of Plastigoop.

Of course, we've got a bunch of great projects in this issue, including a hydrogen-oxygen bottle rocket (use electricity to split tap water into the two gasses), a laser light show you can fit into vintage metal lunchboxes, a DIY van Leeuwenhoek microscope, a guide to lashing, and much more. For a look at the complete table of contents, go to the MAKE Vol. 20 page at makezine.com

The Gigantic Robot

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:06:51 PST

The Gigantic Robot is a 32-page board book written and illustrated by Tom Gauld, and published by Buenaventura Press. Each two-page spread has a single sentence on the left, and a hauntingly stark drawing on the right.

Gauld describes the book as a "wry fable concerning the production of an impressive secret weapon whose promise goes unfulfilled." I don't want to give away any more so I'll leave it at that.

The extremely short story takes place over an extremely long time period, and even though it took 60 seconds for me to read it, I went back and studied the powerful illustrations for a long time.

The Gigantic Robot

The Running Man: behind the sketchbooks of Adam Saltsman's Canabalt

Brandon Boyer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:06:10 PST

Adam 'Atomic' Saltman's one-button action-opus Canabalt (covered earlier in a previous column) will likely go down as 2009's biggest viral surprise -- to no less even than Saltsman himself, who admitted at this year's Austin GDC Indie Games Fest to squandering and then scrambling to capitalize on the success the game near instantly saw (the first 120,000 players the game captured by its second day, and subsequent 650,000 by the week's end, saw none of the cross-indie/Twitter/iPhone port promotions subsequently rolled out as quickly as possible). But there's almost no one in the industry that hasn't taken serious note of its acclaim and wondered what magic formula there might be hidden in its design that can be replicated elsewhere. And so -- in service to fans, would-be devs and established designers alike -- Saltsman has provided us with his sketches and notes, illustrating each leap to logical leap he made in finishing that first version. Interestingly -- though maybe not so surprisingly, given that the game was created for the Experimental Gameplay's 'Bare Minimum' challenge -- the documents show a game more complex than what we eventually received, with its anonymous runner able to pull off sliding ducks on top of his now-singular jump, and 'edit' and 'profile' modes obviously stripped from the game (indeed, the entire game seems to now live inside what Saltsman originally had planned as a 'quick race' option). And so, what follows is the necessarily brief notes and calculations for a necessarily brief production, neither any less worse off for it: let us know if you crack Saltsman's magic code. [Canabalt fan art at top by Pauli MadamLuna Kohberger, via Saltsman]

Saltman's first page shows the rooftop decorations that would eventually make it into the game, as well as the first try at the fine-mist-making dropped bomb, with all other front menu options (and what appears to be a Mirror's Edge inspired vent system) having been stripped from the completed game.

More Mirror's Edge parkour-acrobatics having never made it in are shown above, in the first sketchy mockup of how the runner would eventually move, along with Saltsman eschewing a day/night progression for the simple black and white palette the game would take on.

And finally, the first color sketch of the look of the final game, and the first evidence of its un-expounded-on far-backstory with the giant invaders in the far background, and the military-dropship-esque vehicles passing in mid-ground. Also, note back to page one to see Saltsman arguing with himself over the size of the game's John Woo-esque scattered doves.

If you haven't already, by all means play the final game itself at its official site, and pick up its essential iPhone port at the App Store, then check either the unofficial Twitter leaderboards set up by CapnDesign or Onstuimig to see just where you rank in the eternal race.

Previously:

My generation: How Indie Game Makers are Embracing Controlled Chaos

Goldwag: I Was A Teenaged Straussian

Arthur Goldwag — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:33:50 PST

Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.

No, not really. But when I was a freshman in college in 1975, the Poli Sci 101 course that I took was Straussian and neo-conservative to its core. Kenyon College's political science department was (and still is--or at least it was three years ago, as this story in the far right wing journal Human Events confirms) an "oasis" of Straussian and conservative theory. The first text we read, as I recall, was Socrates "Apology." Most of us assumed that Socrates' persecutors were the bad guys, that freedom of thought was strictly good and the suppression of free speech categorically bad. But using Socrates' own mode of questioning, our teachers challenged our blandly liberal presuppositions. Precisely what's good about Democracy? Why shouldn't the state protect itself? Are we sure we understand what the Founders of our own country really meant when they wrote about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"

Writing in David Horowitz's rightwing Front Page magazine in 2002, Robert Locke explains:

The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one ("exoteric") thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real ("esoteric") meaning. The reason for this is that philosophy is dangerous. Philosophy calls into question the conventional morality upon which civil order in society depends; it also reveals ugly truths that weaken men's attachment to their societies....Strauss shockingly admits, contrary to generations of liberal professors who have taught him as a martyr to the First Amendment, that the prosecution of Socrates was not entirely without point. This honesty about the dangers of philosophy gives Straussian thought a seriousness lacking in much contemporary philosophy; it is also a sign of the conviction that philosophy, contrary to the mythology of our "practical" (though sodden with ideology and quick to take offense at ideas) age, matters.

This isn't the inherent slipperiness of language that we're talking about, Strauss's isn't the radically deconstructive spirit of Barthes, Derridas, or Paul de Man. Strauss believed, rather, that the authors had deliberately coded their texts; applying sufficient care and scholarship, they could be decoded too. We spent an entire semester working through Allen Bloom's copiously annotated translation of Plato's Republic, for example, which had a surprise on nearly every page.

Though Strauss was an atheist, he was culturally Jewish to the core. And hermeneutics is a prototypically Jewish practice. Kabbalists acknowledge that every Biblical text has four distinct levels of meaning:

Pashat (simple), its literal surface

Remez (hints), suggestions (mostly through paradoxes and double-meanings) that something lies deeper

Drash (search), allegorical, symbolic, or analogic interpretations

Sod (hidden), its deepest, most mystical level of meaning

The Masons borrowed the idea of exoteric and esoteric texts from Kabbalah; needless to say, Conspiracy Theorists are as suspicious of Masons as they are of Jews. But they have armed themselves with their enemies' methods and learned to be attentive for hidden messages and meanings themselves--thus, this anonymous poster on a conspiracist website: "Has anyone else noticed that Obama keeps saying, 'Out of many, we are one?' It's the E Pluribus Unum from the seal of the US. Is this his ritualistic mantra signaling to the world that HE will bring about the NWO?"

A number of leading conservatives in Washington turn out to be Straussians--Locke's piece identifies some of the most prominent circa 2002: "Justice Clarence Thomas; Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; former Assistant Secretary of State Alan Keyes; former Secretary of Education William Bennett; Weekly Standard editor and former Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol; Allan Bloom, author of THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND; former New York Post editorials editor John Podhoretz; former National Endowment for the Humanities Deputy Chairman John T. Agresto; and, not meaning to class myself with this august company but in the interests of full disclosure, myself."

Some of the architects and most strident apologists of the Iraq war turned out to be students (or students of students, or protégés of students) of Leo Strauss, among them Wolfowitz, Abram Shulsky, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Douglas Feith, and Robert Kagan. Some of them (not all of them, but enough that it was noticeable) were Jewish. Leftists rightfully attacked these neo-conservatives for the disastrous consequences of their militarism, but at times there was an unsettling undertone to their rhetoric. "The anti-Semitism behind the current wave of Strauss hatred, like the anti-Semitism that drives so much talk about the neoconservative "cabal" in Washington, is barely even veiled," Adam Kirsch complained in the New York Sun. "Tim Robbins, in his recent play "Embedded," portrays characters based on Messrs. Wolfowitz and Perle shouting "Hail Leo Strauss," in an echo of the Nazi salute." Extreme rightists were even less circumspect. But how could they not be? I mean, the whole phenomenon was an antisemite's dream. Here was a real-life, flesh-and-blood cabal of influential Jews, academically trained in the art of dissimulation and coded discourse, enacting what seemed to be a well-thought-out, long-held plan to hijack American foreign policy. It could have been ripped right out of the pages of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

The art of directing masses and individuals by means of cleverly manipulated theory and verbiage, by regulations of life in common and all sorts of other quirks, in all which the GOYIM understand nothing, belongs likewise to the specialists of our administrative brain. Reared on analysis, observation, on delicacies of fine calculation, in this species of skill we have no rivals, any more than we have either in the drawing up of plans of political actions and solidarity. In this respect the Jesuits alone might have compared with us, but we have contrived to discredit them in the eyes of the unthinking mob as an overt organization, while we ourselves all the while have kept our secret organization in the shade.

I never drank the Straussian Kool Aid, but it was offered to me, and by teachers that I respected. Maybe that's why I'm troubled by some of the kneejerk denunciations of Strauss. Writing in Free Inquiry, Shadia Drury declared that,

Strauss thought that the best way for ordinary human beings to raise themselves above the beasts is to be utterly devoted to their nation and willing to sacrifice their lives for it. He recommended a rabid nationalism and a militant society modelled on Sparta. He thought that this was the best hope for a nation to be secure against her external enemies as well as the internal threat of decadence, sloth, and pleasure. A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.

Is that a fair summary of Strauss or a caricature of his disciples? I can't answer the question with any authority--I'm not deeply read in Strauss, as she is--most of my exposure to him was second hand, and it was more than thirty years ago, when I was eighteen and nineteen years old.

Anything that provides fodder to anti-Semites is unfortunate, but it's hardly surprising that the most politically ambitious exponents of Straussianism would have found each other in Washington and formed a clique-College Republicans, Dartmouth Review editors, born again Christians and students of Robert Bork do the same thing. There's a creepily culty quality to the ism that his name is attached to today, which never quite made it into the mainstream of American academia, suffered a major backlash in the '60s and '70s, and is experiencing another today, during the reaction against George W. Bush. Most of those guys are bad actors and some of them must have real chips on their shoulders. But do they rise to the level of a cult or a conspiracy or a secret society? I suspect not.

School sells test scores to students

Lisa Katayama — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:45:12 PST

A strapped-for-cash middle school in North Carolina is selling test points to students for $20.

Vatican conference on ETs

David Pescovitz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:37:57 PST

We've posted before about the Pope's chief astronomer Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes and his statements on possible extraterrestrial life. (ETs "don't contradict our faith," he has said.) The Vatican recently hosted a conference on the topic of astrobiology -- the study of life in the universe -- where a group of international scientists from a variety of fields discussed the possibility of alien life. From the Associated Press:

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.
Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.
"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe..."
The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

"Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life"

Previously:

What Pandemics and Meteorology Have in Common

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:11:52 PST

We aren't very good at predicting either one much further out than a week or two.

A BBC story (and film) talks about the problems virologists and public health defenders face as they tackle a virus like H1N1 flu and try to figure out how the disease will impact people around the globe. It's an honest examination of both the strengths of science, and the barriers that exist around human knowledge.

Such are the limitations of science, whether meteorology or virology. The recent H1N1 or swine flu predictions have led to forecasts of 65,000 deaths in the UK - but the truth is, we simply don't know. Yet in reporting the outbreak, the media broadly falls between two extremes - from alarming scare stories to experts who purport mass vaccination to be "madness, foolhardy and a gamble". Whatever happens when the pandemic pans out, there will be a substantial third group - the "I told you so" faction. Pandemic disease remains a critical test of the extent of what we do and don't know.

Pandemics--What History Tells Us on the BBC, via Holly Tucker.

Image courtesy Flickr user chascar, via CC.

What Else Would It Be?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:41:53 PST

The pimple detector: Finally, science has invented a portable mean girl to tell you there's a zit on your face. Thanks, Chris Patil!

Previously:

Afghanistan: Poppy Palaces and "Narcotecture"

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:07:13 PST

Here's a photo-essay from True Slant by P.J. Tobia on the houses that opium poppies built in Afghanistan. Here's a related video feature in Monocle magazine. Here's a related AFP item about poppy palaces and widespread corruption in Karzai's Afghanistan, and here's an item about the neologism in the NYT blog "Schott's Vocab." (Image: P.J. Tobia / via Kristie Lu Stout of CNN)

Garden Jawa

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:37:54 PST

Bonnie sez, "Measuring close to a foot tall and crafted in durable all-weather resin, the Garden Jawa protects your tomatoes, zucchini, and daffodils from the dark side, armed with a garden tool bandolier, a garden hose, and a thumbs-up attitude. Reflective amber-colored eyes peek out from underneath his hood, challenging any unwelcome visitors looking to feast on his turf. True to nature, the Garden Jawa is still up to the well-known mischievous antics we know from the movies. Case in point: If you've caught StarWars.com's Flickr sets lately, you may have caught this little guy sneaking into Skywalker Ranch to snag some pics in front of the Main House. We've also caught him snooping around Lucasfilm's Presidio campus, reclaiming a bit of green from the dry California summer months. "

Garden Jawa a StarWarsShop Exclusive (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Crime ring that hit 280 cities' ATMs at once busted

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:28:56 PST

The global crime ring that hit ATMs in 280 cities worldwide last year simultaneously for $9 million have allegedly been busted.

A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight men in connection with the scheme, including five Estonians, one Russian, one Moldovan and one unidentified man. Prosecutors allege that the men "used sophisticated hacking techniques" to defeat the company's encryption system. The scam, which hit RBS WorldPay last November, involved an elaborate plan in which the attackers first bypassed the encryption on the debit cards, which RBS WorldPay issues to customers for employee payroll purposes. They then raised the limits on the accounts attached to the cards.
Once that was done, the gang then allegedly "provided a network of 'cashers' with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards, which were used to withdraw more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada. The $9 million loss occurred within a span of less than 12 hours," the Department of Justice said in a statement on the indictments released Tuesday.

U.S. Takes Down $9 Million RBS WorldPay Hacking Ring (via /.)

Sapolsky's outstanding Stanford lecture on "The Uniqueness of Humans"

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:23:54 PST

Stanford primatologist and anthropologist Robert Sapolsky scores big with this grad lecture on "The Uniqueness of Humans," a humbling, inspiring and sweet 30 minutes on what it is about humans that makes us unique from our animal cousins, and how many of the seemingly unique features of humanity can be found elsewhere.

Sapolsky make me want to go back to school, enrolling in the Stanford anthropology program, just so I can take his classes.

Class Day Lecture 2009: The Uniqueness of Humans (Thanks, Avi!)

Previously:

Space Mountain queue gets short-play video-games

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:17:47 PST

A reader writes, "Passengers riding Walt Disney World's updated Space Mountain attraction will be able to play video games as they wait in line. Each game lasts about 90 seconds with a 90-second interval and the games can accommodate 86 players at one time."

Space Mountain is a notorious slow loader (all coasters are, since they can't do that lovely continuous belt thing that characterizes, say, the Haunted Mansion; nor do they support giant boats like Pirates of the Caribbean). Anything to make the queue less dull is great news!

Walt Disney World's Classic Space Mountain Attraction to Reopen with a Few Surprises

Previously: