The Buddha Machine from Chinese manufacturer FM3 looks like a cheap transistor radio. Turn the single dial, and it starts making crazy-ass, generative ambient music. Press the single button and a different kind of crazy-ass music emanates from the single small speaker. That's it -- one button, one dial, one speaker. There's also an LED to let you know it's on.

It is the single most interesting gadget I've held all month. It doesn't feel like something manufactured this decade. It feels like something from the first blush of Walkman knockoffs, the JiLs and the like. And the sounds are really soothing and kind of haunting. There's nothing on the box that tells you how the sound is generated -- maybe it's analog, but I'm guessing digital.

At $35, it's a little steep, given that it has the hand-feel of a Happy Meal toy. But I bought one and I don't regret it. It's going in my keeper pile -- it will be no less anachronistic, weird and interesting in an age of nanocomputers than it is today.

The Buddha Machine is a modified version of a device used in Buddhist temples throughout Asia, which feature repeating loops of chanting monks or nuns. This particular incarnation is the brainchild of the musical duo FM3. It contains nine preset loops which which play individually and run continuously. The sounds can be played from the built in speaker, or by connecting headphones to the built in jack.

If you are aware of ambient music such as the works of Brian Eno (Music for Airports, Discreet Music) then this is of a similar vein. Whereas music on a CD, Record or tape inherrently has to end before being restarted, the loops of the Buddha Machine will continue for as long as the AA batteries work (or forever if you connect a 4.5v supply).

Link

Update: Sonny sez, "GM3 is not a manufacturer but a group formed in 1999 consisting of Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian. They have released full CDs under that band name and have also done some CDs for the excellent Sublime Frequencies record label which I suggest you check out. Also a album was released of remixes of all the loops by various artists called 'Jukebox Buddha.'"

See also: Musician releases songs in a $23 electronic gizmo

Update 2: FM3's Christiaan sez, "Here's the official English site. The Buddha machine is available in the USA for only $23 from our distributor Forced Exposure, and in the UK at Boomkat."

Update 3: Simon sez, "All nine Buddha Machine loops in uncompressed .WAV format are available for download."

Update 4: John sez, "Sonic musician Robert Henke, aka Monolake, has a great album of Buddha Machine remixes available." and Michael sez, "I live in Taiwan and have my own B-box that I bought at the NT$10 (33 cents) store down the road."

Update 5: Rob sez, "Your readers in toronto may want to head to a Buddha Machine gathering *today* in Toronto's Allen Gardens, also, Buddha Machine pool on Flickr."

Update 6: Mark sez, "I thought you might be interested in this (video) interview I conducted with FM3 for flasher.com at Montreal's MUTEK festival in 2005. We talked mostly about the conception and creation of the Buddha Machine and I think it's a pretty interesting look at their process. You can find it here."

Check out this lost remnant of the Disney archives -- an irreverant, unofficial employee send-up of the Haunted Mansion, done in MAD Magazine style.

Stephen Worth, Director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, very generously passed on scans of a wonderful vintage Disneyland document to post here at 2719 Hyperion. The Haunted Mansion Supplement appears to have been a supplemental publication to the internal newsletter Backstage Disneyland, and was produced to commemorate the 1969 opening of the Haunted Mansion. It is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of WED Enterprises, the company’s theme park design division that would ultimately evolve into Walt Disney Imagineering.

The highlight of the piece is a two-page Mad Magazine-inspired comic strip by William Barry.

Link (via The Disney Blog)

On the Soupy Sales show in the 1950s and 1960s, there was an ongoing gimmick where there'd be a knock at the door and Soupy would open it to reveal a surprise celebrity guest. The best part of the gag is that neither Soupy nor the audience knew who the celebrity would be. Once though, Soupy's crew played a great prank on him where a stripper was waiting behind the door. COOP found the video on YouTube. It's a real hoot. From Wikipedia:

One time during the Los Angeles years, as Sales was ending the show, when he opened the door he saw a topless dancer gyrating with a balloon. Viewers saw only the balloon, although a second, non-broadcasting camera captured the uncensored version, and Sales was forced to try to keep the show going without revealing the risque events backstage.

Link

UPDATE: YouTube yanked the video, but reader Matt Sanderson kindly points out that right now it's still viewable via Delutube. Link

Czech painter Jeremiah Palecek has created these Vista error message stickers ("Error: The Operation Completed Successfully") that are the right size to stick over the Vista screens in bus-shelter ads and the like. Link (via Wonderland)

See also: Oil paintings inspired by video-game scenes

The makers of China's popular MMO Cabal told banned players that they could get back into the game if they donated blood.

An online game operator has demanded that banned players donate blood to be allowed back into the game. Moliyo, which runs a 3D massively multiplayer online game in China, made the demand after banning 120,000 players who attempted to hack the game.

More than 100 players had already signed up to exchange half a litre (1 pint) of blood for game accounts. The company has also offered free accounts to ordinary players who give blood...

Chinese hospitals have had increasing difficulty attracting blood donors in recent years after scandals in which thousands of donors and blood recipients contracted HIV, the virus which causes AIDS. Blood donors in China are usually paid about 12 dollars per donation.

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

Singapore is building this crazy housing block with four towers kind of hanging off the sides of another, central tower.

The 153 meter tall tower will be located at the intersection of Scotts Road and Cairnhill Road, in close proximity to Orchard Road, Singapore’s famous shopping and lifestyle street. With 20,000m² of built floor area, the building will provide 68 high-end apartment units with panoramic views. The design strategically maneuvers within the highly regulated building environment to maximize the full potential of the site: Four individual apartment towers are vertically offset from one another and suspended from a central core.

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

A Boing Boing reader writes, "Bruce Lehman, the architect of the DMCA and the WIPO Internet Treaties, appeared at a conference in Montreal today and made a series of admissions that are obvious to everyone but still remarkable given the source."

The most interesting - and surprising - presentation came from Bruce Lehman, who now heads the International Intellectual Property Institute. Lehman explained the U.S. perspective in the early 1990s that led to the DMCA (ie. greater control though TPMs), yet when reflecting on the success of the DMCA acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" (presentation starts around 11:00). Moreover, Lehman says that we are entering the "post-copyright" era for music, suggesting that a new form of patronage will emerge with support coming from industries that require music (webcasters, satellite radio) and government funding. While he says that teens have lost respect for copyright, he lays much of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s.

In a later afternoon discussion, Lehman went further, urging Canada to think outside the box on future copyright reform. While emphasizing the need to adhere to international copyright law (ie. Berne), he suggested that Canada was well placed to experiment with new approaches. He was not impressed with Bill C-60, seemingly because he does not believe that it went far enough in reshaping digital copyright issues. Given ongoing pressure from the U.S., I'm skeptical about Canada's ability to chart a new course on copyright, yet if the architect of the DMCA is willing to admit that change is needed, then surely our elected officials should take notice.

I think that Lehman is still out of it. Patronage? Has he missed the fact that there are tons of new, copy-friendly artists who are making a good living from touring (using free copies to bring people to gigs), from direct sales of MP3s, from merch, and so on? Sure, these people aren't supporting a label that takes $0.92 out from every buck they earn, but should the law concern itself with full, permanent employment for middlemen? If they add value, they'll survive. If the market doesn't support them, they'll go broke. The point of copyright is to support creativity, not Fortune 100 entertainment giants.

This Slashdot article also includes a link to some video of the event, with Lehman's talk at 11:00. In the video, Lehman reportedly blames the DMCA's failure on the record industry (McGill University's crazy media player won't play the video in my browser for some reason, and they don't have a direct download link -- someone rip/post this and send me the URL?)

Link, Link to video

Update: Here's the Windows stream -- still won't play for me, but maybe someone can transcode it to something less brain-damaged. -- Thanks, Whiteg!

Update 2: Thanks to Jason Turgeon for ripping this video to something easier to see. Here's the whole thing, and here's Bruce Lehman's bit.

Update 3: Carl Malamud has made the whole video available on the Internet Archive.

The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a colorful entomologist's attempt to map out the relative ouchiness of different bug-stings. The definitions -- from a man who was stung many, many times -- are hilarious:

* 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
* 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
* 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
* 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
* 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
* 2.x Honey bee and European hornet.
* 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
* 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
* 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
* 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.

Link (via Kottke)

My friend Rael Dornfest is the founder and CEO of values of n, the company that created Stikkit ("little yellow notes that think") and now, iwantsandy, an email assistant. Rael asked me to come up with a drawing of Sandy and here's what I gave him. Can't wait for the service to go live! Link

Patrick Rosenkranz, author of the highly recommended history of underground comics, Rebel Visions, says

Thanks for your advance listing for the Rand Holmes art show. I helped to organize it. It was a unique experience in a wild and wooly place. My son Crispin and I spent six days shooting a documentary of the event. He posted some pictures on Flickr.

Link

Holme's painting of a marijuana farming family reminds me of Will Elder's A Visit to Grandma's. (Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Rand Holmes retrospective
• Account of Rand Holmes art show

Next Thursday, March 29 at 6:30, I'll be doing a drop-in signing and meet-and-greet at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego. They've got a stack of copies of Overclocked (my new short story collection) in stock. I hope to see you there!

When: Thursday, March 29: 6:30-7PM
Where: Mysterious Galaxy Books, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA 92111, 858.268.4747

Link

On the Rich Text blog, a list of the most expensive items in each Amazon category. The write-ups are really funny, and the items are often surprising -- entire businesess, a spacesuit, and buildings!

Toys: A city-park-size playground system for $32,229.59. The most expensive toy for a single child is an electric monster truck for $13,800. For that I bet the kid would have more fun with a real, yet not monster, truck.

Automotive: A JIC EK2D1-TI res Spartan DE Type 1 TI Exhaust System for a 2dr 1996-2000 Honda Civic for… $891,480. I don’t understand either. #2 is an actual physical auto parts store for sale for $750,000.

Gourmet Food: 4 lbs Russian Beluga Caviar for $10,560. I was expecting something even more ridiculous, but ok.

Grocery: Skin cream for $340, but that’s boring. How about 25 lbs of Altoids for $337? 22 lbs of chocolate powder for $313? (Gourmet Food and Grocery? Classist!)

Furniture & Décor: “Goddard replica“, $9,999,999. I’m not sure what it’s a replica of, but I’m betting it’s not the entire space research complex. If that seems a bit too much, then there’s a $999,999 space rock paperweight. Incidentally Amazon themselves put the accent on the “e” in “Décor”.

Outdoor Living: 10×18 Log Wedding Chapel with Wooden Roof,  $20,319.97. Now this is the kind of ridiculous-but-not-impossible thing I wanted to find on a list of Amazon’s most expensive things. But a wedding chapel really ought to cost twenty grand, right? So there’s also a $14,662 barbecue grill that you could use beside your $13,997 tiki hut.

Apparel: Space suit, $999,999. I think they’re pulling my leg, though, so skipping over the jewelry that is in the wrong category, we have a $40,000 fur coat from WEBFURS. You know, if you’d asked me what WEBFURS was, I wouldn’t have guessed “fur coat company”.

Sporting Goods: Football arcade game, with real football-throwing, for $88,550. #2 is an extremely dorky golf cart for $77,988.

Link (via Consumerist)

I love the giant, luxuriant cakes printed on the upholstery of these Dutch kids' chairs. Link (via Cribcandy)

This Chinese phone comes built into a pack of cigarettes and sports a government health warning, an MP3 player, dual GSM radios, a VGA screen and a microSD slot, all for $175 (purchase price includes cigarettes). Link, Chinese Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Carol Shloss, a Stanford professor, has prevailed in her lawsuit over the litigious estate of James Joyce. Shloss, a Joyce scholar had been threatened by the Joyce estate (who also threatened to sue the Irish library for displaying Joyce's letters!) over her forthcoming book. Larry Lessig and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society represented her, and fought the Joyce state to surrender. Bravo!

Last June we sued the Estate of James Joyce to establish the right of Stanford Professor Carol Shloss to use copyrighted materials in connection with her scholarly biography of Lucia Joyce. Shloss suffered more than ten years of threats and intimidation by Stephen James Joyce, who purported to prohibit her from quoting from anything that James or Lucia Joyce ever wrote for any purpose. As a result of these threats, significant portions of source material were deleted from Shloss's book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance In The Wake.

In the lawsuits we filed against the Estate and against Stephen Joyce individually, we asked the Court to remove the threat of liability by declaring Shloss's right to publish those deleted materials on a website designed to supplement the book. After the trying to have the case dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the Estate gave up the fight. Joyce and the Estate have now entered into a settlement agreement enforceable by the Court that prohibits them from enforcing any of their copyrights against Shloss in connection with the publication of the supplement, whether in electronic or printed form. (The Settlement Agreement is posted here.)

Link (via Lessig)

See also:
Stanford prof sues James Joyce estate for right to study Joyce
James Joyce's descendants are copyright jerks
Molly Bloom talks copyright

The US News and World Report interviewed a bunch of tech people about making America more competitive and innovative, including me. Flatteringly, they published the article under the headline "America Needs More Boing Boing Economics."

1) I would repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so that it would once again be legal to create technology that competes directly with incumbent technology–for example, to make a device that plays all the songs on your iPod. It's presently illegal to do so, because you have to break Apple's copy prevention to get the songs to play on non-Apple hardware.

2) I would then create a black-letter law that repealed the "inducement" standard set out in the Grokster Supreme Court decision. That's the standard that says that if you designed your technology with the idea that some users might use it unlawfully, then your technology is illegal. The problem is that it's often impossible to know which uses will and won't be lawful until a court rules on them. Under this standard, the videocassette recorder would be illegal, since Sony advertised it as a machine for time-shifting (which the Supremes found legal) and for making libraries of shows (which they didn't find legal). It's inducement that's at the heart of Viacom's ridiculous lawsuit against YouTube.

3) Finally, I would regulate telcos to enforce a neutral Internet. These companies are creatures of enormous regulatory largess–without government handouts, like rights of way into every basement in the country, they wouldn't exist–and if they don't want to play fair, let's get someone else to run the phone network. Government monopolies aren't a right; they're a privilege.

Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Alcohol and tobacco are more "harmful" than LSD and ecstasy, according to a new study published in scientific medical journal the Lancet. Researchers from Bristol University and the UK's Medical Research Council came up with "a systematic framework and process" to assess the harm of certain drugs. They developed a "matrix of harm" to classify 20 different drugs. From Bristol University:

Professor David Nutt from the University of Bristol, Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council, and colleagues, identified three main factors that together determine the harm associated with any drug of potential abuse:

1. the physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug
2. the tendency of the drug to induce dependence
3. the effect of drug use on families, communities, and society...

Professor Colin Blakemore added: “Drug policy is primarily aimed at reducing the harm to individual users, their families and society. But at present there is no rational, evidence-based method for assessing the harm of drugs. We have tried to develop such a method. We hope that policy makers will take note of the fact that the resulting ranking of drugs differs substantially from their classification in the Misuse of Drugs Act and that alcohol and tobacco are judged more harmful than many illegal substances.”

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

France's space agency has released more than 100,000 UFO-related documents. The material, documenting sightings as far back as 1937, is now being uploaded in batches to the space agency's Web site. From the International Herald Tribune:

The space agency, known by its French initials CNES, said it is making them public to draw the scientific community's attention to unexplained cases and because their secrecy generated suspicions that officials were hiding something.

"There's always this impression of plots, of secrets, of wanting to hide things," (said Jacques Patenet, head of the space agency's Group for Study and Information on Nonidentified Aerospace Phenomena.) "The great danger would be to leave the field open to sects and charlatans."

He said many cases were unexplained lights in the sky. "Only 20 to 30" could be classified as "Objet Volant Non Identifie" — UFOs that appeared to be physical objects, leaving "marks on the ground, radar images," he said...

Only 9 percent of France's strange phenomena have been fully explained, the agency said. Experts found likely reasons for another 33 percent, and 30 percent could not be identified for lack of information.

Link to IHT article, Link to the overloaded CNES site (Thanks, Chris Courtney!)

Glenn Fleishman sez,

The FCC approved the rules for in-band, on-channel (IBOC) digital AM and FM yesterday, and didn't include a broadcast flag requirement. Digital radio has been broadcasting in the US under interim rules, mostly on the FM band and initially largely on public radio, for over three years. One company, iBiquity, controls this particular form of digital audio broadcasting (DAB). About 1,200 stations broadcast digital signals, 300 of them multicasting, or providing one or more additional digital-only broadcasts.

Part of what has held back DAB in the US has been uncertainty about the FCC's ultimate statement on IBOC would be, especially in regards to AM, and about a broadcast flag. Because IBOC's FM flavor has the dynamic range of a CD (albeit with somewhat less fidelity than a good MP3 or AAC), the RIAA and others have raised the same bugbears for terrestrial DAB as they have for Sirius and XM.

IBOC's particular difference from European DAB, by the way, is that it allows existing broadcasters to use their current frequencies and nestle digital signals alongside the stronger analog signals. (IBOC requires 1 percent of the power to reach a similar geographic area: 100,000 watt stations broadcast 1,000 watts of IBOC.)

There is a fair amount of opposition to IBOC particularly in the AM band, because of the concern of how AM signals propagate between dusk and dawn, with buzz from digital signals allegedly affecting reception far distance. Hobbyists DXers also hate IBOC because it interferes with their hobby (pun intended). The FCC dismissed all the petitions against IBOC as part of yesterday's order, and allowed 24-hour-a-day AM broadcasting, which was previously restricted.

With the FCC approving IBOC without a broadcast flag requirement, Congress would have to impose a regulatory requirement. Which seems unlikely with the current composition.

Link (Thanks, Glenn!)

A couple of weeks ago I posted a couple of entries about people who refused to give up their homes to new development and ended up being surround by a parking lot, freeway, or airport. Many readers offered stories of other holdouts. Here they are.

Here's a long interview with 40-year-old Mrs Wuping, the owner of the "nail house" (called that because it sticks out of the pit around it like a nail).

Wuping: until present I haven’t received a single bit of monetary compensation or a resettlement. According to the pertinent regulations, at the minimum they have to give us temporary housing, and you’ve seen in the picture there aren’t any, we can’t even get up to the building. This absolutely is the government and businessmen working together; there is nothing we can do. Jiulong Hills is completely managed by the district party committee and government. At the hearing yesterday I cited several laws and regulations, all are explicit, the city cannot force people to leave their homes for demolition.

Kurt Randall says:

Hey, there is another guy like this in Hamilton Ontario, whose house is surrounded by a mall parking lot. I've admired the guy for years every time I drive by for not giving up. I've always wondered what is going to happen to these sorts of places once the homeowner finally moves or dies. Sadly, I can't imagine that most of these holdout houses will survive their owners.

Destin says:

All these stories about companies building around homeowners who wouldn't sell out in the face of "progress," and no link to arguably the most famous example? I refer, of course, to the case of one Mr. B. Bunny, who successfully defended the sanctity of his American home against an *extremely* aggressive developer. His brave struggle was documented in this 1950 film by historian Charles M. Jones.

Nathan says:

http:// In response to the article about the Chinese leaving a house standing in the midst of a construction site, I'd like to point out that this isn't the first time this has been done.

Around 100 years ago, in Seattle Washington, they undertook a project and washed away and entire large hill before this sort of thing would have been illegal for environmental reasons. Anyone who didn't sell their land and go along with the regrading was left on what is known as a "Spite Mound". There are various photos of these, including on the page linked.

Shad says:

I love the farmhouse at the end of the runway at the Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell, Montana. There is a high barbwire security fence that runs along the highway, then cuts in and around the house, then back out along the highway. It's great.

Andrew Webb says:

Mark, I'm late to the party with my favorite homeowner holdout, but here she is.

The two houses on a quarter acre, surrounded by a parking lot, belong to the family of Adele Martinez, who, in the mid-1990s, fought efforts by the state to buy her property for $119k for its planned, $16.5 million National Hispanic Cultural Center. As you can see, she prevailed, and they built around her. Adele has since died, but her family still lives there, where they have a beautiful view of a parking lot.

Chris says:

Last May, the Washington Post profiled a man who refused to sell his hundred year old house to developers who had purchased the entire block. At the time of the article, the house jutted out into a 40 ft deep chasm buttressed by a rather precarious-looking system of boards constructed by the developers. Photo here.

Justin says:

Here is another holdout. (In Harrisburg, PA) Link

Maury says:

A similar case but with a twist. When my former company, Microsoft, was building their Redmond West campus, they purchased an old chicken farm a mile or so from the main campus. The owner didn't want to move his parents however, so part of the deal was that their house could stay intact at the same location until they died. It's circled in red in the attached pic. As far as I know, it's the only private residence on any MS property.

Steve says:

Here are two guys who won't sell to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Xon says:

This house not only borders a major artery in northern Delaware it actually sits on the entrance ramp besides a GM plant. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

Stephen Worth, the director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, says:

Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, we digitized a collection of cartoons by the great Playboy cartoonist, Eldon Dedini. Dedini is best known for his watercolor paintings of satyrs and nymphs, but most people don't know that he got his start as a story artist on Disney's Donald Duck cartoons. Along with our gallery of images, we have posted a video clip of an interview with Dedini in his studio where he discusses how he got his start, and his years at Disney. It's an amazing insight into an important cartoonist.

Link

There are a lot of other great features on Playboy cartoons in the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive collection as well...

• Erich Sokol's Playboy Cartoons

• Kurtzman and Elder's Little Annie Fanny

• Doug Snyed and Phil Interlandi

Chris Thompson says:

Flickr user Troy Paiva of lostamerica.com found an interesting spot in the California desert. This is from the picture's description:

Joe and I woke late the next day and began exploring potential night-shooting locations near Helendale. We stumbled on an abandoned ranch just outside of town and immediately stopped to explore it. As soon as we opened the car door we were bowled over by the strong smell of organic decay. The place literally smelled like death.

Expecting to find a dead cow (or worse) we rounded a corner and came upon an unexpectedly appalling sight: Food, still in packages. By the case, and even pallet full. Just rotting in the hot desert sun. Tons of it. This forgotten corner of the desert appeared to be a dumping ground for expired donations for a SoCal foodbank. When we got close enough to take pictures the stench was overwhelming. We thought about shooting here at night, but after 15 minutes of walking around we were both nauseated beyond belief. Neither of us EVER want to go back.

I found it because I'm subscribed to a feed for the Infiltration pool. We can only wonder why someone thought this was a good idea. What a waste.

Link

Noah Shachtman blogs on Wired: Danger Room...

For years, the Pentagon has come under harsh criticism its brain-dead approach to handling the media, broadly defined.  From clamping down on bloggers to chucking out embedded reporters to  banning digital cameras to quaking in fear of web developments, the military's press operators seemed to miss no opportunity to shoot themselves in the collective foot, repeatedly. All this, while insurgents trained potential terrorists online, advertised their martial prowess on YouTube, even sold t-shirts over the 'net. 

But recently, things have begun to change.  The Defense Department's Pentagon Channel started posting YouTube-esque videos.   Bloggers have been called into more and more conference calls with senior leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Multi-National Force-Iraq set up its own YouTube channel.   

Now, the Army has set up shop on content-sharing sites like Flickr, del.icio.us, and YouTube.  The material is pretty awful -- like the stilted, propaganda-like reports, straight from the Armed Forces Network.  It's a start, though. 

But the military is a huge organization.  And not everybody gets with the program, at an equal pace.  A general is threatening to boot Michael Yon, the special-forces-soldier- turned-milbogger-supreme, out of Iraq -- again.

Link to full text of post.

Link. (Thanks, Angstrom).

Previously on BoingBoing:

Viacom censors Colbert Report machinima off YouTube

EFF sues Viacom over YouTube takedown of Colbert parody

YouTube/Google sued by Viacom for a billion bucks

Viacom: privacy-hating hypocrites

Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bullshit DMCA notices

Viacom announces deal with Joost

Why was Colbert press corps video removed from YouTube?

Fans protest Comedy Central's YouTube demands

YouTube removes Comedy Central clips over DMCA claims

Steven Colbert: Machinima fantasy with Karl Rove, Soledad O'Brien...

correct me if i'm wrong

grammar girl

cliche finder

palindromes

nova convention

poetry archive

pulp fiction (screengrab above)

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!).

This tool-cutlery (knives, spoons and forks with wrenches on the other end) is just fantastic -- though at $24 per place setting, it's the kind of thing you might want to reserve for good company and special occasions. Link (via Make)

"Just Do It" by Heather Lindsley is the story this week on Escape Pod, the wonderful, free science fiction podcast, and it's a doozy, really one of the best stories they've featured so far. It's a darkly comic corporate dystopia where "chemical marketing" (shooting people with darts that make them crave french fries) rules the day. The reader, "Word Whore," does a terrific job of bringing the story to life, and Sal Fadhley does a nice intro on the role of special audio effects in sf. All in all, the best listen I've had all week -- all month, even. Link

See also:
Escape Pod -- great sf story podcast
Cory's Printcrime audio on Escape Pod
Paul Di Filippo's "Shadowboxer" - Twilight Zonesque story podcast
Di Filippo's story "Little Worker" as a podcast
Podcast of Cory's story, "Craphound"
Science fiction podcast: a modern Paul Bunyan story (funny!)

I picked up Gene Luen Yang's "American Born Chinese" yesterday at Secret Headquarters, LA's best comic shop, and read it all before bed last night. American Born Chinese is a wonderful, funny, heart-breaking and inspiring graphic novel that tells the story of Jin Wang, a Chinese boy who is one of two Asian kids in his class at an American school. The story is told through three interleaving narratives -- the story of Jin's school life, and two others: one is a recounting of a Chinese legend about The Monkey King, who wants to be something he is not, and the other is a notional sitcom about an American kid named Danny whose racist stereotyped Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, is ruining his social life.

These three stories interact in truly unexpected ways, creating a wonderful effect by the story's end. This isn't just a story about kids coping with racism and young love. This is really a story about identity, and coming to grips with who you are. According to the cover, the book has already won a couple of prestigious awards for kid's lit, and they're well-deserved. There's a lot of subtlety and smarts in this story. Link

The Elephant Poo Poo Paper company makes stationery and related goods out of dried, odorless elephant shit:

We can make about 25 large sheets of paper from a single piece (or turd) of elephant poo poo!!! That translates into about 10 standard sized journals including the front and back covers! Neat, huh!?!?!?

Link (via Cribcandy)

Update: Henrik sez, "Swedish entrepreneur (and some other folks, too) Lars Cronquist makes paper out of moose shit. And old denim jeans... and different vegetables and stuff...."

Update 2: Ilja sez, "These people make paper from sheep droppings."

Update 3: Lorraine points us to this panda shit paper, too.

A couple weeks ago, I blogged about "Clockpunk," a sub-genre of science fiction about anachronistic use of Renaissance technology -- Da Vince automata in the stone age, etc.

Now, the Da Vinci Automata blog -- a Clockpunk blog -- is putting together its own Clockpunk anthology, using stories solicited from readers, and voted on by readers. They've just gotten their first submission, “On Deep History” by Jim Rossignol. I haven't read it, but this is a pretty cool project -- I wish I had time to write something for it!

The disease collectors were famed for their lethargy. Belatedly, Stry realised he had not left himself enough time to deliver the bundles of infected wax, to claim a receipt from the collectors, and then still make it to the Lehmkuhl lectures on time. He could not afford to be late, since the tickets were issued only once a year, and then only through a lottery system controlled by the college.

Stry paced outside the clerk’s office in the Hall Of Ailment. The dark and lonely building was far from the central campus of the University. Deliberately isolated, as one might expect. Stry delivered garlic and disease samples for his wage, and was more familiar with the building than most other students. It troubled him less and less. The disease collectors were mostly ageing men of a certain disposition, and Stry gave them a wide birth as they shambled by, although he did not fear them. A few younger students had passed Stry in the hallway, but they too were pallid and exhausted, reeking of decomposition, weakness.

Link

SF writer and design prof Bruce Sterling has produced a wonderful 8-minute short film about the future of cities, in which he wanders around Belgrade, the city he's made his home, and talks about the way that his city is interacting with the present, past and future. This is fascinating stuff. Link (Thanks, Al!)