Mike Jones, the former prostitute who serviced Ted Haggard, is eBaying the massage table on which Reverend Ted Haggard enjoyed himself with Mr. Love. Proceeds go to charity. It's at $860 with over 7 days left in the auction.

Own a piece of Ted Haggard history from Mike Jones.

The table where it all happened. Table is about 10 years old with a few tears but totaly usable.

Will autograph table if requested and in June an autographed book "I Had To Say Something" by Mike Jones will be sent.

All proceeds benefit 'Project Angel Heart', who provides people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses nutritious home-delivered meals.

Link

Roq La Rue gallery owner Kirsten Anderson attended the opening for Mark Ryden's new art exhibition, "The Tree Show" at the Michael Kohn Gallery.

The entire show is woodland themed. Everything has the same mystical creepy-cute, child's nightmare vibe that is Ryden's trademark, but the girls and assorted beings in this show have a new intensity to them, even more than the Blood show. There were 8-9 large paintings (including the largest one which went for $800,000!) and a large sculpture of a treee with a antler headed baby inside it. In the next room were an array of drawing and paintings studies, plus random ephemera including a large display case full of Ryden's inspirations, toy trees, babies, lumberjack books, toy trains, creepy bunnies...The front windows of the gallery were fully dressed and had a diorama of a wooded scene full of aforementioned ephemera and a large Abe Lincoln figure. It was fabulous.

Link

"Clockpunk" -- a sub-genre of science fiction -- appears to have been created while I wasn't looking:

Clockpunk can be divided into historical and non-historical Clockpunk. Historical Clockpunk explores how the world would have turned out if certain technological developments that occurred later had happened in the Renaissance and or certain inventions in the time of the Renaissance were created on a mass scale in the time period.Non-historical Clockpunk is set in settings similar to the Renaissance but on alternative worlds, planets etc.

Link

Ned sez, "I made a cool birthday cake for my son's 15th birthday: Cakehenge. It's got a druid and cosmic alignment and everything. BTW: You linked to this same son's birthday cake two years ago, the Myst Island Cake."

Link (Thanks, Ned!)

British designer Nick Foster created this amazing Boing Boing "portrait" -- an illustrated tour of Boing Boing's obsessions. He's agreed to let us put it up under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license -- and we've got 600DPI version of it living on the Internet Archive for your remixing pleasure. Thanks Nick -- this is just so damned cool! We'll be making t-shirts shortly!

1.5MB medium-rez JPEG link, 15MB high-rez JPEG link

Link to blog where this "What Would A Unicorn Do?" divination tool was spotted (I don't know who created it). JPEG Link to larger size. (About this post)

Update: Tara says,

The WWUD spinner is from a folder that they sell at Archie McPhee (Product Link) along with other unicorn finery.

Caution: This link will take you a 3D online presentation of images from an atlas of skin diseases, "consisting of color stereoscopic illustrations and a text in the form of clinical lectures, designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine." Photographed by S. I. Rainforth, M.D., of New York, and published in 1911. ( thanks, Soylent and Macki )

My God, but Warren Ellis makes Second Life sound like a place where you'd actually want to spend some time. Snip:

..it seems that the Filthy Avatar Sex will come with consequences, and your cybershagging will produce a screaming digital baby that probably poops singing metal bat heads.

Link. He's got a new book out, too, raking in some smokin' reviews -- Crooked Little Vein, can't wait to read it. (via Warren Ellis' blog)

An Oakland, CA judge today ruled that Linux programmer Hans Reiser will stand trial on charges that he murdered his estranged wife, 31-year-old Nina Reiser, who's been missing for six months. Hans Reiser, 43, is the founder of Namesys, and invented the ReiserFS Linux file system.

Nina and Hans Reiser had been separated for nearly two years when she disappeared on Sept. 3rd. She was last seen at the home Reiser shared with his mother in the Montclair area of Oakland. Her van turned up five days later, abandoned on a quiet residential street two miles from Reiser's home.

Though no body has been found, Reiser was arrested Oct. 10 after the Oakland Police Department found small drops of blood in his house and on his Honda CRX. DNA testing tied the blood to Nina Reiser.

(...)The judge also noted that Reiser bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder soon after the disappearance. She found there was sufficient evidence to make him stand trial for murder.

"It's sort of a downer," [Reiser's lawyer William DuBois] concluded as his client was shackled and led from the courtroom.

Link to Wired News story by Joshua Davis. See also this earlier story on Hans Reiser's plans to sell his company.

On the superb BibliOdyssey blog, one of my absolute internet favorites, there's a fascinating post today with scans from 'De Naturae Simia', by Robert Fludd, an English Rosicrucian, Paracelsian physicist, astrologer, and mystic. The BibliOdyssey post includes some really awesome images of 17th century war technology and perpetual motion machines. Snip:

This book forms part of the encyclopaedic series issued over 9 years to 1626 called 'Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minores Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia'.

(...) Fludd is credited with one theoretical concept (...) that, to an extent supports the notion that he contributed his own ideas, rather than merely extracting material from older sources. He described a perpetual motion system in which a water source would turn a wheel which in turn would be able to both grind grain and also drive an Archimedes screw pump to return the water to its origin, able to fall again and continue to power the process.

It's completely fanciful of course but this was an era when there was no knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics and speculative entrepreneurs even attempted to obtain patents on aspects of Fludd's design up to the 19th century.

Link to the full post, which includes lots more info and images related to Fludd's work and early perpetual motion machines.

SimCity and Sims creator Will Wright is showing his new project called Spore, "a game which simulates the complete history and future of an alternative universe populated by incredible creatures."

He shows how easy it is to create a 3D creature using body parts menu. It's like building a Cootie bug, but you have many more options and control over what it looks like and how it behaves. It looks really fun, and once you put a creature together, you can see how it moves and fights. He says the process of making a critter is like "Maya for 8-year-olds." Link

For the first time, the USDA has granted preliminary approval for large-scale planting of an engineered food crop that contains human genes.

The rice from California-based "pharming" firm Ventria Bioscience was designed to synthesize a human immune protein. The crop will soon be cultivated on 3,000 acres of land in Kansas, if the USDA finalizes its approval after a public comment period that ends March 30.

Coverage: TransWorld News, Food Business Review Online, High Plains Midwest Agricultural Journal, About.com.

Reader comments: Robert Searfoss says,

Please note that NYTimes columnist Denise Caruso has a new book "Intervention" about the science that is used by agencies to look at and evaluate the risks of new transgenic experiments and products.

I've read it and it is one of the most important books Ive ever read. FYI I'm 61 years old and have done a LOT of quality reading.

Snip from a story in New York Magazine by Emily Nussbaum in which we meet MySpacer and LiveJournaler Kitty Ostapowicz (photo above by Alyson Aliano):

[A]t 26, Kitty is herself an old lady, in Internet terms. She left her teens several years before the revolution began in earnest: the forest of arms waving cell-phone cameras at concerts, the MySpace pages blinking pink neon revelations, Xanga and Sconex and YouTube and Lastnightsparty.com and Flickr and Facebook and del.icio.us and Wikipedia and especially, the ordinary, endless stream of daily documentation that is built into the life of anyone growing up today. You can see the evidence everywhere, from the rural 15-year-old who records videos for thousands of subscribers to the NYU students texting come-ons from beneath the bar. Even 9-year-olds have their own site, Club Penguin, to play games and plan parties. The change has rippled through pretty much every act of growing up. Go through your first big breakup and you may need to change your status on Facebook from “In a relationship” to “Single.” Everyone will see it on your “feed,” including your ex, and that’s part of the point.

Link to "Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy_ The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll." (via Bruce Schneier)

Snip from a New York Times story by John Markoff, just out today:

A new company founded by a longtime technologist is setting out to create a vast public database intended to be read by computers rather than people, paving the way for a more automated Internet in which machines will routinely share information.

The company, Metaweb Technologies, is led by Danny Hillis, whose background includes a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering and who has long championed the idea of intelligent machines.

The idea of a centralized database storing all of the world's digital information is a fundamental shift away from today's World Wide Web, which is akin to a library of linked digital documents stored separately on millions of computers where search engines serve as the equivalent of a card catalog.

In contrast, Mr. Hillis envisions a centralized repository that is more like a digital almanac. The new system can be extended freely by those wishing to share their information widely.

Link to "Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching."

Image (Darcy Padilla for The New York Times): "Danny Hillis, left, is a founder of Metaweb Technologies and Robert Cook is the executive vice president for product development."

See also this Edge feature: "Aristotle" (The Knowledge Web), By Danny Hillis: Link. And here's his bio at Edge.org. (thanks, John Brockman)

Previously on BoingBoing:

NPR "Xeni Tech": Talk Freely Behind the Fortress of Babble

Wired: Applied Minds Think Remarkably

Metaweb gets meta-dough: $15 million financing round

ETECH Notes: Danny Hillis and Applied Minds

Steven Levy on Danny Hillis

Deborah Scranton, a documentary filmmaker, talked about a new way of making documentaries. She gave video cameras to soldiers in Iraq and had them shoot the movie, called The War Tapes. The clips she played show soldiers driving through fields with bombs going off around them, and car bombing victims seconds after the explosions. She's now working on a documentary about immigration. She's given video cameras to border guards, vigilante groups, and the immigrants. A very cool recipe for making movies. Link

Reader comment:

Jen Patashnick says:

Saw the post about the documentary maker giving cameras to her subjects, and wanted to point you to our research project which has been giving camcorders to children and adolescents for the last 13 years so they can teach their clinicians about life as a kid with a chronic condition! It's an excellent way to empower participants and gather rich qualitative data. You can find out more about Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) at www.viaproject.org.

A Justice Department audit released today concludes that the FBI broke the law in its use of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain phone, business, and financial data about people in the US.

The report also found that for three years, the FBI understated to Congress how frequently it forced businesses to hand over that private information.

PDF LINK to a copy of the 199-page report, "A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Use of National Security Letters." IMAGE above, a diagram from page 24: "How the NSA uses National Security Letters."

FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters today "I am to be held accountable," then added that he has no plans to resign.

Snip from AP story:

At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers - without a judge's approval.

About three-fourths of the national security letters were issued for counterterror cases, and the other fourth for spy investigations. Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration. The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By 2003, however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.

Over the entire three-year period, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses, the audit found. But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, the audit found.

Also, Fine's audit noted, a 2006 report to Congress showing that the FBI delivered only 9,254 national security letters during the previous year - on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents - was only required to report certain types of requests for information. That report did not outline the full scope of the national security letter requests in 2005, nor was it required to, Fine's office said.

Link, here's a related NYT story: Link. Wired's 27B Stroke 6 blog has a related post here.

Of all the fan-made Apple store sims I've seen, this one is the most fetching. This unofficial homage to Apple's 5th Avenue New York store opens next week inside SL. The salesavatars sport excellent hairdos, the go-go dancers have superb racks. I must be shopping at the wrong store here in LA -- I've never witnessed spontaneous iPod ad re-enactments like these when I'm waiting in line to buy an AirPort or a spare LaCie drive. Video link, from AxisVR.com. (for clarity: this is not an Apple project, but a shrine of Apple love created by the world's biggest Mac fanboy).

JJ Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost, is talking about his grandfather. After WWII, his grandfather started an electronics kit company. He says his grandfather inspired him to "make things." Thanks to his grandfather, Abrams is interested in silkscreening, printmaking, book binding.

He's also an accomplished sleight of hand magician, and made a business card disappear with the wave of his hand.

He also showed us a box from Lou Tannen's Magic Store in New York that he bought many years ago. It has a big question mark printed on it. It's a mystery box that contains "$50 worth of magic for $15." He has never opened the box and he says he never will. "What I love this box is that I find myself drawn to infinite possibility -- mystery is the catalyst for imagination. In my work, mystery boxes are everywhere."

According to a number of BoingBoing readers inside Turkey, the government's court-ordered ban of YouTube has apparently been lifted, after two days. Melissa's there, and she says,

"I've been turning off my proxy and checking YouTube every couple of hours... as of this afternoon, nothing, but I just tried again five minutes ago and it's working now. So I guess that's that crisis over with. For now."

Link to AP report confirming the same.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Greece vs. Turkey vs. YouTube: Greek youtubers chime in

Did Google/YouTube cave to Turkey's censorship demands?

Turkey: YouTube blocked by court order

Update on Turkey bans YouTube: all a "you're a fag" flame war?

Fred von Lohmann of the EFF says,

Janko Roettgers describes the painful process of getting legit downloads from the Bit Torrent store to play, thanks to Microsoft DRM requirements. It appears that even Bit Torrent's own tech support staff haven't been able to play certain movies on their own systems! Not exactly the best way to lure movie fans away from the Darknet.

Excerpt:

Looks like watching a TV show on your computer just got really, really complicated. Especially in my case, since I'm using a four year old Sony notebook for all my Windows needs - and Sony lists the newest video driver being from 2003. Chipset manufacturer ATI apparently doesn't even remember they ever made such a chip. Seems like I'm out of luck.

Link

During President Bush's visit to Guatemala this week, he was escorted to Iximche, an ancient Kakchiquel Mayan holy site which is the center of continued ritual practice today. Mayan peasant activist Juan Tiney, who is the head of Guatemala's Coordinating Council of Indigenous People and Campesinos, says Mayan priests have decided they're going to have to purge the site of Bush's bad vibes:

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture."

(...)Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites -- which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles -- would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Link to wire service story. Image of Iximche, Guatemala, courtesy of "John Pohl's Mesoamerica," Link. (Thanks, Aaron Harms)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Xeni's NPR series "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future"

Notes from the road in Guatemala

More BB posts about Guatemala

Magician and hokum-dedbunker extraordinaire James Randi is giving a fantastically entertaining presentation about scammmers who say they can communicate with the dead, which he says is a "cruel farce" that ruins people "emotionally and financially." Randi offers a $1,000,000 prize for anyone who can demonstrate a psychic phenomenon. So far, he's had no takers. "Wouldn't they take this money just to make me look silly?" He is pushing for laws against psychics. While I agree psychics are scammers, I don't like the idea of outlawing them.

(He started the talk by eating 36 homeopathic sleeping pills -- "six-and-a-half days worth -- a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills. Why don't they affect me?") Link

UPDATE: Another BB source inside Thailand says YouTube is accessible now. I'm trying to confirm details, but three scenarios are possible: (1) this was a hoax (2) the government never blocked YouTube, and this was just an isolated issue with one user, or perhaps with one ISP (3) The government or various ISPs *did* block YouTube, but the site has since been made accessible. Censorship of TV broadcasts and other media in Thailand is not uncommon, and often haphazard when applied, so it could easily be any of the above.

----------------

BoingBoing reader Paul says,

I am a New Zealander living in Bangkok, Thailand. For the last 24 hours, no You Tube in Thailand! The site redirects to picture of the King at this government web site. I don't have UBC (Thai cable TV), just rely on internet for news/info on gummy bear chandeliers and stuff, and I can't find any other information about why this is so. I really need to get my fix of illegal(?) broadcasts of The Colbert report. Help.

Anonymous says,

It wasn't a hoax, a lot of my friends encountered the same block and redirection, BUT they can access youtube without the www, while www.youtube.com was blocked. This happened before with some hentai sites but they got around to that eventually, The best possibility is your #3, they are too dumb to realize the nature of youtube site, like how they misbanned geocities and angelfire before.

Mekongcola says,

Thailand has a long history of media censorship. Anything that conflicts with the official government statements, insults/degrades Buddhism, or is deemed as immoral (read naked people) is censored. Various examples here: Link.

Oscar Bartos says,

This doesn't address the Thai youtube ban specifically, but if Paul is looking for Colbert clips he won't find much since the Youtube Viacom crackdown. The next best thing is Comedy Central's youtube-esque video site: Link. Although I prefer the Colbert Report "channel" on ifilm with less intrusive advertising: Link. Cynthia Barnes says,

I was able to access everything, but a number of my friends here in Bangkok were reporting that CNN, Google, and BBC News were also down. When this happens, we just assume soldiers are on the move and run down to the 7/11 to stock up on beer.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Thailand: huge anti-gov demonstrations, media silent

CNN censored inside Thailand, on-air and online

Bangkok Coup: Media clampdown in Thailand

Markus sez, "'Big Brother State' is a nice animation about surveillance society with examples of trusted computing and CCTV. It is released under a Creative Commons sampling licence by David Scharf and you can download the short film in several formats."

This is brilliant -- some of the best work on the subject I've ever seen. Watch it NOW.

Link (Thanks, Markus!)

Update: Eric sends in this YouTube mirror

RIAA-fighting attorney Ray Beckerman has a stirring open letter to universities whose students have been targeted by the RIAA:

What you should, at a minimum, do for your students.
What you can do is insist that the RIAA stipulate with you that (a) any motion for an order granting discovery of the students' identities will be on notice, both to you and the students, rather than ex parte, (b) that the RIAA must furnish to you, for each "John Doe", a copy of the summons and complaint and exhibits, a full set of the motion papers, and a full set of all other court documents which are required to be served on the defendant when an action is initiated... for you to distribute to the affected students.

If the RIAA refuses to so stipulate, you should go to Court yourself and get an order requiring them to comply with these fundamentals which are required by due process.

What you should also do.
The courts have held that in order for a claimant to get an order for discovery of confidential names and addresses of a John Doe in a copyright infringement case, it must make a prima facie evidentiary showing that it has a case for copyright infringement against each "John Doe".

Since the RIAA has been proceeding ex parte, however, and since they weren't challenged by the ISP's, judges have signed off on the orders even though supported by mere conclusory hearsay of suspect reliability. (Compare the courts of the Netherlands and Canada, where the ISP's challenged the application for "John Doe" information, and the Courts refused to grant the discovery orders, due to the unreliability of the RIAA's investigative "method").

Link

Joe sends us this "William Gibson aleph site which has posted up the short-lived graphic novel adaptation of Bill Gibson's seminal novel Neuromancer. The graphic novel series didn't get too far before cancellation and is long out of print; it tickles my sense of SF irony that it now exists as a cyberghost in the virtual machine online. Methinks Bill would approve of the irony. I'm having 'how the future used to look' type feelings going through my mind right now, still spooky how much Bill was getting right back in 84 when I was still using a Spectrum 48K and a tape deck to load and save data... Also interesting to see this work as a graphic novel now, in a present where respected SF authors are being increasingly asked to write for major comics publishers. " Link (Thanks, Joe!)

See also:
Neuromancer jacket-quote
Neuromancer radio play preservation effort in the teeth of bureaucracy
Gibson reads Neuromancer
William Gibson explains how Molly's mirrorshades work

Update: William Gibson sez, "The tragic thing about that adaptation, for me, was that the artist apparently couldn't draw girls. Not a all. Like he'd missed life class entirely. Molly looks like a dude."

Almost 20,000 (I don't know the exact number -- I thought Kamen said 18,000. See update below) soldiers have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq missing one or both arms. Here at TED, inventor Dean Kamen showed a short video of an artificial arm he and his team designed in 13 months at the request of the Department of Defense. The arm can scratch a nose, pick up a pen, and perform other delicate actions. It weighs six pounds and can be covered with a mirror-image cast of the person's other arm. People in the audience were crying when they watched the video. Here's a bit more about the cyborg arm: Link

Reader comment:

Ivy G says:

I'm not sure where you got this astonishing number from, but it's not right. According to Time magazine January 2007 (if you believe them to be a reliable source) the figure for soldier amputees (not specified if it's arms or legs) is 500 and counting. Still horrifying, but FWIW... accurate.

See this article: "The 500 major amputations -— toes and fingers aren't counted — represent 2.2% of the 22,700 U.S. troops wounded in action. "

Philipp sez, "God bless the Creative Commons. I've selected over 200 images from Flickr to be part of this image rotation game. Your objective is simple: rotate the tiles into the right position!" Link (Thanks, Philipp!)

Watchismo is featuring a little article on this gorgeous wooden pocket-watch -- the entire works are made from wood.

Take a break from the complicated world of mechanical innovation for a few seconds... The orgy of Tourbillons, Forged Carbon, and Silicium Components can fade for a moment while you appreciate this early 1900 Russian pocket watch entirely made of wood. The case, the hands, and the gears, all from a tree - a living material that also marks time with it's rings - natures own clock and a profound medium for a watch.

Link

See also:
Pictorial history of kids' watches
History of armored military watches
History of slide-rule wristwatches
Early days of plastic watches Mechanical "LED watch" from 1970
History of calculator watches
Steampunk watch
Belt-drive watch
Watch guts of great beauty
All-plastic watch movement from the 70s
Awesome, impractical, expensive watch

In a chilling analysis of the PATRIOT Act, the ACLU points out that the new definition of "domestic terrorist" redefines any US criminal as a terrorist, exempt from due process and an open trial. "Domestic terrorists" can have their assets seized without a hearing, have their educational records pulled, and a host of other nasties. "Terrorism" is now officially meaningless: as far as the PATRIOT Act is concerned, if you do anything the government doesn't like, you're a terrorist. When you put it that way, it seems even less likely that we'll win the "war on terrorism."

Section 802 does not create a new crime of domestic terrorism. However, it does expand the type of conduct that the government can investigate when it is investigating "terrorism." The USA PATRIOT Act expanded governmental powers to investigate terrorism, and some of these powers are applicable to domestic terrorism.

The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations. Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism.

Link (via Digg)

I'm watching lateral thinking pioneer Edward De Bono present at TED this morning, and he told a funny anecdote. He was asked by the mayor of a small town in Australia to consult on the town's parking problem. The mayor wanted to know how to effectively use parking meters. TK told the mayor that the problem was not about parking meters and how to use them, it was about people parking their cars all day on the street. "Don't use parking meters," he told the mayor. "Tell people they can park as long as they want for free, provided they keep their headlights on while the car is parked."

Hod Lipson of Cornell just showed a robot that learns how to locomote by generating and selecting competing "self models." The way it moves looks something like a frantic starfish. It's very lifelike. Here's a video and more information. Link

Joey "AccordionGuy" deVilla reports on the single dumbest thing I've ever heard of an elected city official saying. Toronto councillor Rob Ford told the Toronto Star: "I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day."

Joey highlights a comment from the Raise the Hammer blog,

Ford is an idiot, there's no defending that, but he highlights a common problem among City Councilors:

a. he does a great job at meeting his constituent's needs. A recent Star article highlighted a day with Councilor Ford which found him working 12 hours, and visiting constituent's homes personally, along with various city staffers, to address their complaints directly. Now that's service. He is also ethically astute and regularly files the lowest expense reports of all Toronto Councilors. But:

b. he has a complete lack of understanding of how to build and manage a livable city. His ignorance is truly astounding.

I don't know if a) is true, but b) is clearly demonstrated. Link

Update: Ryan sez, "New York mayor Bloomberg said something very similar: 'Even if they're in the right, they are the lightweights, Bloomberg said of cyclists. "Every year, too many people are hit by cars - and bikes have to pay attention.' Bikers shouldn't assume car doors won't open into their path, for example,' he said. Bloomberg's comments were especially ignorant and hurtful, as he was asked specifically about the the death of Eric Ng, who was killed by a drunk driver who was racing down a seperated bike path. Eric was a close friend of mine, and his death -- like most bike deaths in New York -- could have been prevented with simple infrastructural changes, if only city officials cared enough to do so."

The USPS is rolling out a line of R2D2 mailboxes in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars -- these are really amazingly cool, they just work really well. It's the Anthony Trollope/George Lucas mashup I've been waiting for all my life! Link (via OhGizmo)

Abba the Hutt is a poster for a notional Star Wars/Abba mashup ("The album includes an irresistible mash up of seventies Swedish pop music and Tatooinish sex funk. Features timeless hitsongs such as 'I Ho, I Ho, I Ho, I Ho', 'Dancing Queen Amidala' and 'Super StormTrouper'. In a planet near you soon!") that begs out to be actually made. Link (Thanks, Hendrik!)