Boing Boing

Little Free Library can help put a library on your corner

Amy Seidenwurm — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:45:47 PDT

I happened upon this mini-library in my neighborhood and am so impressed with the movement that Little Free Library has started that I am getting one together for our street. The concept is simple: put a charming box full of books in a public place, encourage people to share them and to contribute their own.

From their FAQ:

If this were just about providing free books on a shelf, the whole idea might disappear after a few months. There is something about the Little Library itself that people seem to know carries a lot more meaning. Maybe they know that this isn't just a matter of advertising or distributing products. The unique, personal touch seems to matter, as does the understanding that real people are sharing their favorite books. Leaving notes or bookmarks, having one-of-a-kind artwork on the Library or constantly re-stocking it with different and interesting books can make all the difference.

Little Free Library sells pre-made mini-libraries or will show you how to build your own.

Check out a couple of my favorites from around the country:

Here's a Google Map with many of the libraries on it. Support Little Free Library if you can!

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to return their medals to protest war on terror at Chicago NATO summit this weekend

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:38:24 PDT

Iraq Veterans Against the War is bringing veterans to the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20 to ceremonially return the medals they were awarded for serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. The group's statement -- which will be reiterated to NATO's representatives -- is:

We were awarded these medals for serving in the Global War on Terror, a war based on lies and failed polices. This endless war has killed hundreds of thousands, stripped the humanity of all involved, and drained our communities of trillions of dollars, diverting funds from schools, clinics, libraries, and other public goods.

They are calling on supporters to rally with them:

Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on fellow service members, veterans, Chicagoans, and everyone who believes in justice, dignity, and respect for all peoples to join us in the streets on May 20th. On this day, we will hold a nonviolent march to the site of the NATO summit where we will ceremoniously return our military service medals. We will demand that NATO immediately end the occupation of Afghanistan and relating economic and social injustices, bring U.S. war dollars home to fund our communities, and acknowledge the rights and humanity of all who are affected by these wars. We wish to begin a process of justice and reconciliation with the people of Afghanistan and other affected nations, fellow service members, veterans, and the American people.

Canadian MP: ripping a CD is like stealing a pair of shoes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:24 PDT

Yesterday's Canadian Parliamentary session included a moment of dramatic idiocy, when the Tory Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dean Del Mastro climbed to his hind limbs to declare that wanting to rip your CDs to listen to them on your MP3 player was like buying a pair of socks and then stealing a pair of shoes to go with them.

“It’s like going to a clothing store and buying a pair of socks and going back and saying by the way it wasn’t socks that I needed, what i really wanted was shoes. So I’m just going take these, I’m gonna format shift from socks to shoes and I’m not gonna pay anything because it was all for my feet,” he says.

A better analogy: it's like buying a bottle of wine and then demanding to drink the liquid in contains from a glass of your choosing.

This is in the context of Canada's disastrous pending copyright law, Bill C-61, which has even worse digital lock rules than the failed US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that's been in force since 1998, suggesting the Tories haven't learned a thing about technology policy over the course of the entire current century.

Mr Del Mastro is the MP for Peterborough, a suburb of Toronto with a large university population. Students of Trent, this guy is your MP. Remember when Sam Bulte lost her "safe" seat because she wouldn't side with the people instead of off-shore copyright giants?

Idiotic Copyright Comparisons in Canadian Parliament (Thanks, Ben!)

Apps for Kids 022: Junk Jack

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:15 PDT

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder.

In this week's episode we talk about Junk Jack, a sandbox game that's a lot like a 2D version of Minecraft. It's $2.99 in the iTunes Store.

Don't forget to be part of our "Listener Email" segment. If you would like to have us read your favorite game or gadget recommendation on the air, or if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, email us at appsforkids@boingboing.net. Include your age, and the city, state, and country you live in.

If you're an app developer and would like to have Jane and me try one of your apps for possible review, email a redeem code to appsforkids@boingboing.net.

Listen to past episodes of Apps for Kids here.

To get a weekly email to notify you when a new episode of Apps for Kids is up, sign up here.

A photo of a photo of Soyuz

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:54:15 PDT

NASA's Image of the Day is always awesome, but I particularly love this image from behind-the-scenes of the Pretty Space Photography Industrial Complex.

The Soyuz rocket is seen in the monitor of a video camera moments before Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineers Joseph Acaba and Sergei Revin arrived to board the rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for their flight to join their crew mates already aboard the International Space Station. The craft successfully launched at 11:01 p.m. EDT, Monday, May 14, 2012.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Via Colin Schultz

Placebo: Now available in maximum strength

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:47:41 PDT

For only 6 British Pounds, you can cure what ails you with Placebo maximum strength sugar pills.

I'm a little sad that Etsy user spellingmistakes got to this idea before I could start marketing Placebex, as I've been threatening to do since approximately 2001. Maybe there's an intellectual property lawsuit in there someplace. ;)

And, before you ask, yes ... there really is some evidence that placebos work even if the people taking them already know that the drug is a placebo. Back in 2010, a study of ethical placebos used with irritable bowel patients got a lot of press. It was a follow up to a 2008 study that found roughly the same results.

If you want to read more on ethical placebos, I'd recommend checking out the following stories:
Evidence that placebos work even if you tell people they're taking placebos by Ed Yong
Meet the ethical placebo by Steve Silberman

Or, perhaps, you might like to purchase some Placebo maximum strength

Via Darren Cullen

More detail on what Kodak was doing with a neutron multiplier

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:34:41 PDT

Earlier today, David told you about a news story that's everywhere right now: The fact that the Kodak company ran a small nuclear facility at its research lab in Rochester, New York.

The facility closed down in 2007, but I can totally understand why this story interests people. It's nuclear! And it is really weird for a corporation to be sitting on 3.5 pounds of uranium. Like David said, this is unusual today. David did a good job covering this in a sane way. The TV news I saw this morning at the airport ... not so much. That's why I like the detail provided the Physics Buzz blog, where Bryan Jacobsmeyer explains, better than I've seen elsewhere, just what exactly Kodak was doing with their nuclear system. Turns out, it's really not all that odd for this specific company to own this specific piece of equiptment when they did. That's because of what Kodak was. We're not just talking about a corporation in the sense of middle managers and salesmen. We're talking about original research and development—a job for which a californium neutron flux multiplier is quite well suited.

In fact, these research reactors can be found on several university campuses, and they are operated under strict guidelines without any nefarious intentions.

Researchers working at Kodak wanted to detect very small impurities in chemicals, and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) proved to be one of the best techniques to find these impurities. During NAA, samples are bombarded with neutrons, and elemental isotopes from the sample will absorb a small fraction of these neutrons.

Many of these stable elemental isotopes will become radioactive after gaining a new neutron; consequently, they will emit gamma rays. With the right equipment, researchers can measure the precise energy levels of this radiation and narrow down which elements are in the sample.

Basically, it provided a way to sift through the components of a sample at a molecular level, and spot the things that shouldn't be there. Originally, the lab used just californium. Later, it added uranium plates that helped make the system more powerful.

Read the full Physics Buzz post

Via Jennifer Ouellette

Image: IMG_7391.jpg, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jameskarlbuck's photostream

Dog Vacay: Airbnb for dogs

David Pescovitz — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:29:23 PDT

Dog Vacay is like Airbnb for canines. This is brilliant because on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

Woman controls robot arm with her mind

David Pescovitz — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:07:14 PDT

In this video, a woman known as Cathy, who is unable to speak or move any of her limbs or torso, controls a robot arm with her mind to take a sip of coffee. This fantastic breakthrough is reported in the current issue of the science journal Nature. Cathy has been implanted with a BrainGate neural interface (below left), the same technology that previously enabled two individuals to control computer cursors with thought alone. One of the lead researchers is Brown University neuroengineer Leigh Hochberg. I visited Leigh more than 13 years ago when he was a grad student at Emory University. He introduced me to monkeys who had received neuroimplants in his lab. At the time, Leigh was just trying to record the signals from the monkeys' brains while also dealing with the implants' proclivity to move around, reducing the quality of the signal over time. Leigh was humble, cautiously optimistic, and deeply dedicated. Amazing how far this research has come. From Nature:

The (latest) study participants — known as Cathy and Bob — had had strokes that damaged their brain stems and left them with tetraplegia and unable to speak. Neurosurgeons implanted tiny recording devices containing almost 100 hair-thin electrodes in the motor cortex of their brains, to record the neuronal signals associated with intention to move.
In a trial filmed in April last year and presented with the paper, Cathy, who had her stroke 15 years ago and received the implants in 2005, used her thoughts to steer a robot arm to grasp a bottle of coffee and lift it to her lips. She drank and smiled.
‘We’ll never forget that smile,” says Hochberg...
In the longer term, the scientists want to dispense with the wires that must be attached to a patient’s skull; wireless systems are in development… Even further in the future, researchers hope to dispense with the robot arms and direct the decoded brain signals straight to the patient’s own muscles.

"Mind-controlled robot arms show promise"

Researchers expand clinical study of brain implant - Boing Boing

From hacker to wonk

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:45:12 PDT

This week on the always excellent Command Line podcast, Thomas Gideon -- senior staff technologist for the New America Foundation -- describes his journey from programmer to technology wonk (MP3), explaining the relationship between code and policy.

Warren Ellis talks aliens, space travel and the singularity

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:23:54 PDT

Matt sez, "Hey, it's Matt at the Disinformation Company, and I thought that you'd enjoy the lengthy interview I did with Warren Ellis for the DisinfoCast. We talk about aliens, space travel, the singularity and more. We even squeeze in a second or two for talk about comic books."

Warren Ellis on The DisinfoCast with Matt Staggs (Thanks, Matt!)

TOM THE DANCING BUG: What Mischief Does Li'l Mitt Get Into This Time?

Ruben Bolling — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:30:57 PDT

Support Tom the Dancing Bug and receive BENEFITS and PRIVILEGES by joining the INNER HIVE right now!

"My only argument with Ruben B. here is his apologetic tone for asking you to pay money for early access to his very good comics —- that is to say, something that YOU LIKE AND WANT. DO NOT APOLOGIZE, RUBEN." -John Hodgman, INNER HIVE member since two weeks ago

Kodak had weapons-grade uranium

David Pescovitz — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:06:53 PDT

For three decades, camera company Kodak had a secret deep inside an underground lab in its Rochester, New York research facility: weapons-grade uranium and a californium neutron flux multiplier. (No, not a flux capacitor.) They stored 3.5 pounds of the uranium, apparently not enough to make a nuclear weapon but still not something you'd expect to find in most corporate research labs. The Union of Concerned Scientists are, well, concerned. From CNN:

Kodak turned the material over to the government in 2007, under heavy security. But for more than 30 years, the company had a device called a californium neutron flux multiplier, or CFX, in a specially built labyrinth beneath Building 82 at its labs near Rochester, New York. The device was about the size of a refrigerator. It was not a reactor, but rather a hunk of metal emitting radiation. Its purpose was to create a beam of neutrons to use for scanning and testing other materials. The device's primary source of neutron radiation was the radioactive element californium, but the stream of neutrons produced by the californium was multiplied by passing it through a lattice of highly enriched uranium U-235, whose nuclear fission released additional neutrons.
According to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Kodak's uranium was highly enriched -- to a level approaching 93.4%. That is the type of weapons-grade material that U.S. government agencies are trying to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on…
Kodak says it never intended to hide the CFX, and it was licensed by both state and federal officials. But the fact that the company was handling highly enriched uranium was never widely publicized.

"Kodak confirms it had weapons-grade uranium in underground lab"

Ed Piskor's hacker history comix Wizzywig, the book trailer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:41:03 PDT

Our own Ed Piskor's Wizzywig -- a graphic novel that is a fictionalized account of a Kevin Mitnick-type hacker and his run-ins with the law -- will shortly be available as a beautiful hardcover from the good folks at Top Shelf Comix, who put together the excellent book trailer you see above. Here are my reviews of the original single-chapter volumes:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first two volumes of Ed Piskor's comic-book historical hacker drama, Wizzywig. Wizzywig is the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a fictional hacker who's part Mitnick, part Poulsen, and part mythological. Boingthump is a preternaturally bright, badly socialized kid who discovers a facility for technology that's egged on by his only pal, "Winston Smith," a would-be Abbie Hoffman who is obsessed with the potential to use Boingthump's discoveries to monkeywrench the machine.
But soon enough, their roles are reversed, as Kevin's relentless pursuit of knowledge and power scares Winston so much that he tries (without success) to put the brakes on Boingthump's crazy ride through the phone system and the nascent Internet. The story blends fiction and fact, dropping in a Blue Box-selling Jobs and Wozniak (Boingthump picks the trunk-lock on their car and steals a Blue Box) and Cap'n Crunch, along with plenty of fictional BBS scenesters and grumpy computer-store owners. The backgrounds are filled with nostalgia PCs -- Atari 400s, Apple ///s -- and old Bellcore manuals.
The illustration and storytelling style reminds me a lot of Harvey Pekar (with whom he's collaborated on American Splendor), jumping backwards and forwards in time, switching points of view, going inside and outside of the characters' heads. The first two volumes are PHREAK and HACKER, with two more (FUGITIVE and INMATE) planned. Piskor prints and sells the comics himself (the books are quite handsome) and he's got extensive free previews online. At $15 each, with all the money going straight into the creator's pocket, what's not to like?

Wizzywig

Occupy footage exonerates journalist; cop lied under oath

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:34:38 PDT

Photojournalist Alexander Arbuckle, arrested while covering Occupy Wall Street protests, was acquitted Tuesday after a short trial. Moreover, footage shown in court suggests that police lied about what happened.

Arbuckle was charged with disorderly conduct when police rounded up New Year's Day protestors near Sixth Avenue. The arresting officer claimed that he was blocking traffic in the street—a version of events repeated under oath.

Nick Pinto at The Village Voice:

There was a problem with the police account: it bore no resemblance to photographs and videos taken that night. Arbuckle's own photographs from the evening place him squarely on the sidewalk. All the video from the NYPD's Technical Research Assistance Unit, which follows the protesters with video-cameras (in almost certain violation of a federal consent decree), showed Arbuckle on the sidewalk. And in an indication of the way new media are transforming the dynamics of street protest, a clip from the live-stream of journalist Tim Pool showed that not only was Arbuckle on the sidewalk, so were all the other protesters. The only thing blocking traffic on 13th Street that night was the police themselves.

The arrests begin about 32 minutes into the clip embedded above.

BB reader Geoff Shively writes in:

This is the first win in a series of cases where the NYPD is accused of manufacturing false accounts to make arrests of journalists, activists and legal observers. I asked an NLG observer in Chicago yesterday if its likely the police officer could be charged for perjury and he replied "Unfortunately, police are rarely rarely rarely held accountable for false arrests". We hope Arbuckle can change that and bring a case to court against this officer so that police understand that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.

REM and Dan Rather: "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

David Pescovitz — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:11:34 PDT

Jason and I were just revisiting the bizarrely fascinating story of Dan Rather getting assaulted in 1986 by an attacker who kept asking the newscaster "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" as he beat him. Of course, that led us to REM's 1994 song "What's the frequency, Kenneth?," culminating in Rather singing the song with the band during a soundcheck before their gig at Madison Square Garden on June 22, 1995.

Reflections on the acquittal of Byron Sonne

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:06:28 PDT

Yesterday, Byron Sonne was acquitted of all charges against him. Sonne is the Toronto-area security researcher who pointedly demonstrated the inadequacy and incoherence of the heavy-handed, $1.2B security arrangements for the G20 summit in 2010. Denise Balkissoon has done some of the best reporting on the bizarre trial that followed (after Sonne spent nearly a year in jail), and now she's got good commentary on the acquittal:

“Byron Sonne, you’re a free man,” said one of his lawyers, Joe DiLuca, as Sonne stood outside the courthouse.
“I can be a moron again on the internet,” Sonne said, as he ripped up court documents that listed the bail conditions—including a curfew and not using a cellphone—that he has lived with since May 2011...
Later on the day of the verdict, in Kensington Market, Sonne stood having a cigarette and discussing Anonymous and Gandhi with Alex Hundert, who pled guilty to counselling to commit mischief during the G20. “They took a somewhat radical person like me and said, ‘Let’s put the guy in jail with real radicals,'” said Sonne, who was not involved with organized activists in advance of the summit. “I’m not interested in playing by the rules anymore.”
Sonne said he intends to help non-technologically savvy activists learn to encrypt their computers and online communications. Police were unable to unencrypt one of Sonne’s hard drives, which led the Crown to argue that it must contain nefarious plans. “There’s nothing on there that wasn’t on my other computers,” said Sonne, who said he encrypted it for travelling over the U.S. border. “But it’s good to know that the technology works.”
Sonne aims to get back the computer security certification that was suspended during his arrest, and wants to start rebuilding his professional network.

Sounds like he needs a job. Toronto-area readers, take note!

Here's our previous Sonne posts.

Byron Sonne, found not guilty on all charges, has plans for the future (Thanks, Denise!)

The DeLorean of game developers?

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:03:36 PDT

A game development outfit took $75m from the state of Rhode Island to move there and hire 450 locals. Two years later, there's only half the jobs, questions over the company's solvency, and no game to show for it. Maybe Lotus can quickly bang something out for them to stuff a lawnmower engine in!

The Playstation Vita as a cellphone

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:53:46 PDT

Sony's tiny but powerful pocket game console has 3G, but no phone app. Skype to the rescue. [Ars]

How to annoy people on Twitter

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:46:39 PDT

There are 11 Ways You're Annoying On Twitter, reports Buzzfeed's Katie Heaney. And not a single one more!

Puzzle adventure Fract takes shape

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:44:44 PDT

Fract is a bizarre-looking game described as "Myst meets Rez meets Tron" in a world "inspired by synthesizers." Sold. Jim Rossignol interviews the creators. [Rock Paper Shotgun]

Cambridge Quad Notebook: The Best Graph Paper

Cool Tools — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:36:56 PDT

Having just finished a year of math and science heavy coursework, I am confident in stating that the Cambridge Quad Wirebound Notebook is one of the best tools I've used all year. Notebooks may seem like a silly thing to get worked up about, but having used this day-in and day-out for a year I can attest that it makes a difference.

When I first started looking for a notebook I was astonished by how much variety existed (especially in the world of graph paper), and consequently how much vitriol crappy notebooks generate. Everything from paper thickness to perforation was a potential sore spot. After field testing several varieties it was immediately clear that the Cambridge Quad was the winner.

Why this particular notebook? It has the perfect weight paper that doesn't bleed when using a variety of pens (I'm partial to the previously reviewed Lamy Safari with Noodler's Bulletproof Black Ink, and the Pentel Sharp Kerry mechanical pencil). Its perforations make for clean tearing, but are strong enough that they never unwittingly lose sheets. At 70-sheets per notebook, it's not too big, and the wire spiral binding holds up throughout its life (which hasn't been the case for other notebooks I've tried). Another benefit is that there are no delineated margins or hole punches which makes this notebook lefty friendly (being right-handed I only know this through hearsay). Finally, the paper in the Cambridge notebook has a warmer tone which provides for a nice contrast while also making it simple to distinguish any of my assignments in a pile.

While in the past I've used the previously reviewed Whitelines graph paper (which is excellent and offers low contrast quad lines for scanning) I found it too expensive for daily use (not to mention that availability was really spotty in certain sizes). At the end of the day these Cambridge notebooks are good enough that I've stocked up in case they decide to stop production.

-- Oliver Hulland

Cambridge Quad Notebook
$5

Manufactured by Mead

Sample page:

Ignore my illegible scrawl, but instead take note of the warmer manila tone of the paper.

Know of a better tool, or have a recommendation? Submit a review or request!

War Crimes trial for Ratko Mladic begins in The Hague

Jasmina Tesanovic — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:27:11 PDT

Photo: Jasmina in a former prison. "Despite the scale of the facility, it was densely crowded once." Shot by Bruce Sterling.

This morning, The Hague tribunal commenced the trial of Ratko Mladic, ex commander of the army of the Serbian republic in Bosnia. Mothers of the slain gathered in front of the court.

Twenty years ago, Mladic started his criminal activities, while still an officer of the army of disintegrating Yugoslavia. A year ago, Mladic was arrested, after years of concealment, mostly within Belgrade. Today Mladic, aged 70, is sitting in the court neatly dressed as a civilian, without his legendary military cap.

As the judge reads the indictment, Mladic cheerily waving to the audience and even applauds certain parts of the recitation. "The wolf loses his hair but not his character," as the Serbian proverb puts it.

The indictment precisely proceeds as a short elementary lesson of the bloody fall of Yugoslavia.

Ratko Mladic is facing 11 charges: ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, sexual violence, the wanton destruction of the urban fabric of Sarajevo, and so forth.

The maps of the indictment are a trail of blood. The borders of these maps were the major outcome of the Dayton peace treaty of 1995, signed a couple of months after the genocide of Srebrenica.

A witness appears to describe the concentration camp where she was systematically raped. I didn't even look at their faces when they would enter the room or go out. They had killed my whole family: I was the only survivor. I was just asking the same question day after day: why?

These people lived together for centuries, and then, in a burst of bloody disaster, some became criminal nationalists when their neighbors, now demonized as Others, had to be annihilated at their hands. There is little going in the Hague courtroom that wasn't described by Hannah Arendt during Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1963.

It outdoes Hollywood, though. Angelina Jolie’s recent movie, "In the Land of Blood and Honey," is a pale replica of this horror reality-show, live from the Hague.

This trial of this soldier is haunted by the conspicuous absence of the late Slobodan Milosevic, the civilian leader. It was Milosevic who transformed General Mladic's Yugoslav army into an instrument of ethnic cleansing.

This much-respected people's army, which had defeated the Nazi genocide and the Fascist occupation, had stabilized Yugoslavia for decades. But, thanks to the machinations of Milosevic, the remnants of this once honorable force, now a micro-state Serbian militia, were liquidating civilians en masse in Srebrenica. Eight thousand ex-Yugoslav men and boys were executed there in three days. The UN protected enclave fell, Mladic raved, lied, and had the Moslems rounded up, confined and shot, while the "international community" turned its attentions elsewhere.

A host of movies, books, and heaps of material evidence didn’t bring justice to that dismal place, which today is a tourist center of crime, but also, still, an ethnic-Serb territory within the Dayton maps. Those who were killed there dwell only within the vast cemetery, so to that extent, Srebrenica was a lasting Mladic victory.

The JNA, once a popular national army, became experts at black operations. Special forces of paramilitary killers, the shadow forces of intelligence services and the mafia, took on themselves the worst burdens of cruelty. Their policy was raiding, arson, robbery, killing, expulsion and rape -- to terrorize all civilian populations that weren't Serbian, leaving a Greater Serbian nation to expand where the victims had fled for their lives.

The capital of this expansionary scheme was Belgrade, but the Bosnian Serb militias headed by Mladic were always formally autonomous and plausibly deniable.

In Belgrade, I lived in the same street with a couple of those notorious criminals: we shopped at the same bakers, and our children went to the same schools. In Belgrade, we were not sniped-at, shot or shelled, we looked peaceful; and the covert war did not touch our streets until it fell from distant jets in the air, in the NATO bombing.

Twenty years later, today, I can ponder the dreadful fates of people I knew, or saw, or lived with, who ripped their country apart to march to power over the bones of their neighbors.

The central mastermind died behind the bars in the Hague. Two major stars are under trial now. A bunch of minor ones are serving sentences. My neighbor, the professor turned war profiteer, committed suicide as a Shakespearean antihero. But there were thousands of others whose activities were just as bloody and sinister, who still live in Belgrade, shopping, sometimes reminiscing over the bad old days.

The Serbian population is still living in denial, and other nations have learned to let this new nation do that. Twenty years have passed, a period longer than the distance between Eichman's Nazi crimes and Eichman's trial. There are other wars nowadays, other covert, armed operations, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Sudan, where the lessons of destabilization, pioneered in the Balkans, have been fully modernized.

Even the political party of Milosevic has managed to rehabilitate itself nowadays. They did well in the recent Serbian elections, mostly through ignoring their heritage and talking about Serbia's modern troubles, which are many.

As for me, I follow the trials, and I sometimes write about them.

After twenty years, a new generation has arisen on the bloodily divided ground. They are innocent, but to live in peace with each other in the region will require an understanding of the past.

That past lives in the details of the Hague court's indictment: the snipers in Sarajevo, civilians mortar-blasted in the marketplaces, women raped, children killed, and much of this mayhem cynically described by the killers in their own documents, a host of private conversations and public interviews exposed to the world.

In the dock, Mladic is industriously taking notes as his prosecutor describes his war-crime strategies. I wonder what Mladic has to say to himself? His diaries have been published and translated: his daughter committed suicide during her father's battles. What does this 70 year old have to say to history? One of his favorite quotes is well-known in the record: “Whenever I come to Sarajevo, I kill.”

The word is power and the silence of the dead is loud.

—Jasmina Tesanovic

Urban plant tags

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:18:55 PDT

I'm amused and charmed by this theoretical public art project proposed by Minneapolis' Carmichael Lynch Creative. Urban Plant Tags explain the care, placement, and proper feeding of inanimate objects like benches, streetlights, and fire hydrants.

You can go to the website to read those plant tags more clearly. But I love the care instructions for this bench: "Apply Real Estate Ads Annually — Occasionally Wipe Clean — Keep Warm With Butt."

Side note: Perhaps you are confused by the fact that this fire hydrant appears to be on a stilt. That's because it snows so much up here in Minnesota that they have to build the fire hydrants tall enough to clear the winter snow cover. An amusing regionalism.

See the whole set of urban plant tags

Via Andrew Balfour

Anti-anonymous hacker doxed--perhaps a little too spectacularly

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:12:21 PDT

The Jester, a vigilante hacker opposed to Anonymous and Wikileaks, was apparently exposed over the last few days. His blog, twitter account and other tracks were soon gone. Many, however, think he's just acting out a scheme to ransom details of the ostensibly "real" identity. [Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica]

Comparing gender in Lego minifig heads

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:02:00 PDT

From the Boing Boing Flickr pool, Maia Weinstock's chart of gender in Lego minifig heads. There's an accompanying blog post, where Weinstock explains:

So many of LEGO’s sets today are made in conjunction with a movie or other Hollywood media brand. It’s a win-win for Hollywood producers and LEGO alike. But how many of those brands star girls or women in the lead role? Star Wars? Toy Story? Pirates of the Caribbean? The Lord of the Rings (available in LEGO this summer)? Hermione Grainger is a major character from the Harry Potter series, and there were a fair number of female minifigs incorporated with those sets, so I’ll give them that one. But still, in almost every franchise that LEGO has partnered with, females are secondary or sidekick characters at best. To be sure, this heavy male slant in children’s programming is a problem with Hollywood as a whole, not just with the famed brick-makers. (For an in-depth look at how girls and women are marginalized, sexualized, and stereotyped in family films, check out these studies by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.) And yet, LEGO could go a long way toward increasing its girl-friendly cred by creating sets and minifigs that mirror movies and shows featuring prominent leading ladies—like Avatar, Dora the Explorer, Spy Kids, and The Hunger Games.

Apollo 10 space-a-versary: Space Meal, 1969

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:00:08 PDT

To commemorate the May 18, 1969 launch of Apollo 10, our friends at the Smithsonian are celebrating the launch by sharing this photo of a meal package from the Apollo 10 mission:

The Apollo 10 spacecraft launched from Cape Kennedy at 12:49 p.m. EST with commander Thomas Stafford, command module pilot John Young and lunar module pilot Gene Cernan. This liftoff marked the fourth Apollo launch in seven months. Its purpose was to serve as a complete dry run for the Apollo 11 mission, the first mission to land humans on the Moon.
Each crew member was supplied with three meals per day, which provided approximately 2,800 calories. This photo shows John Young’s Meal B lunch for mission Day 9. The mission only lasted eight days—he did not eat this food, but astronauts were provided extra supplies if they had to stay in space longer. It contains cocoa, salmon salad, sugar cookie cubes, grape punch and hand wipes. Meals were sorted by day and designated for each astronaut with a corresponding piece of Velcro—white for mission commander, blue for command module pilot and red for lunar module pilot.

Maggie talking about decentralized electricity and the future of energy in New York City

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:50:41 PDT

I'm going to be in New York at the end of May, talking about my new book Before the Lights Go Out. There's two great events you should join me for. On May 29th at 6:00 pm, I'll be talking about the electric grid, the process of writing a book, and how writing online has improved my work as a science journalist. On May 30th at 6:30 pm, I'll be leading a panel on decentralized energy. Chris Hackett—of the Science Channel's Stuck with Hackett—will be joining me to talk about DIY energy, and Susan Covino, who works for one of the independent organizations that controls movement of electricity around the grid, will talk about integrating decentralized power into our existing infrastructure. Both events are free and open to the public, but you do need to follow those links and RSVP.

Reddit culture well-tuned to spot hoaxes

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:36:40 PDT

In professor T. Mills Kelly's class, students act out clever public hoaxes. But while Wikipedians are easily fooled, Redditors exposed the latest jape—Do you think my 'Uncle' Joe was just weird or possibly a serial killer?— instantly. Yoni Appelbaum at The Atlantic unravels what happened.

Although most communities treat their members with gentle regard, Reddit prides itself on winnowing the wheat from the chaff. It relies on the collective judgment of its members, who click on arrows next to contributions, elevating insightful or interesting content, and demoting less worthy contributions. Even Mills says he was impressed by the way in which redditors "marshaled their collective bits of expert knowledge to arrive at a conclusion that was largely correct." It's tough to con Reddit.

This isn't quite true. Reddit is vulnerable to cons: just not this kind of con. Academic hoaxes are the sort of thing Reddit can see through easily. Superficially weighty evidence doesn't trick an audience exquisitely tuned to the forensic texture of information; the site's machinery heaps attention on anything interesting; and the social milieu makes it hard for would-be hoaxers to avoid adopting a pattern of behavior ("karma whore") that threatens their credibility from the outset.

On the other hand, Wikipedia is easy to deceive because it's easy to accumulate low-profile, cross-referenced edits, and the site has a rigid, exclusionary culture that is easy to exploit once it is understood.

However, those iffy props really didn't help! To quote Redditor TruculentTravis: "The papers look falsely aged. I can tell from the burnt edges, and from having seen many falsely aged papers in my time."

Geology geeks: Time for a shopping spree

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:20:20 PDT

The United States Geological Survey is having a great big spring sale, with lots of maps, charts, and publications—some of them mid-century vintage—discounted to $1. Yes, $1. At that price, you can't afford to not own entirely too many USGS maps. (Via Travis Weller)