Breaking cover from my paternity leave again with an important bit of news: Neil Gaiman's publisher HarperCollins have given him the green light to do a free (as in beer) web-release of one of his books and Neil's running a poll to see which one he should put online -- go vote! They'll leave it up for a month and track sales -- if the experiment succeeds, they'll do more.

What I want you to do is think -- not about which of the books below is your favourite, but if you were giving one away to a friend who had never read anything of mine, what would it be? Where would you want them to start?

Link (Thanks, John!)

Reports are circulating that a tentative deal has been reached in the WGA strike. Snip from NYT:

The agreement would let writers claim to have bettered a similar deal achieved last month between the production companies and the Directors Guild of America. In the third year of the Writers Guild deal, writers will be paid a percentage of the distributor’s revenue rather than the flat fee for Web-streamed television shows granted to the directors. The writers had insisted on this issue to ensure they not lose out on any new-media windfall the studios and networks may get from Web video. The producers yielded on this point — and the directors did not push it —arguing that Internet distribution is unlikely to become a significant business during the length of these contracts.

In the fine print, this detail:

In their message to members, [Michael Winship, president of WGA East,] and [Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone] focused on the WGA's contract gains, which include the studios' agreement to pay a percentage of distributors' gross on streamed online product in the third year of the deal; writers will receive a flat fee of $1,200 for the first two years, for content that airs after the promotional periods.

Kari in Toronto blogs:

When I first heard the news yesterday, that Sheridan College had been locked down because of a gunman, I felt chills run up my spine. Someone from my work had just been sent over to the school to talk about sales, and back at my office we were all concerned. Thankfully it was reported later in the day that there was no attack. Today, however, it's been revealed that the gun sighting that caused a professor to call in the emergency and the subsequent police lockdown was actually... a camera tripod sighting.

Link to blogTO post. (thanks, Jerrold)

Link to Etsy item, a Gocco print in "bright white ink on red cardstock. The paper is acid free, archival, 30% recycled and measures 5"x7"."

peter callesen
cardboard puma
wholemovement
necromancer
flying pig
ivor the engine
models
arcades
boxes
pocketmod
start here

previously on web zen:
paper zen 2005

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

And apparently, they're intended for kitty titties. Snip from Instructables:

This instructable will teach you how to make pasties with LED nipples. Obviously this is information you need to succeed in life!
First of all, thank you to clamoring for the original instructable! I followed her instructions to form the pasties, but made a few adjustments to add the LEDs. :D The pasties are so simple to make that I figured it would be nice to add something else - hence the LED "nipples."

Link.

Link to ad mashup, via hiltonjapan (thanks, DGHilton!)

You might have seen this shaded gray squares illusion before. Squares A and B are the same shade of gray. (It was created by Edward H. Adelson, Professor of Vision Science at MIT.

Here's a similar illusion with colored squares. The "blue" tiles on the top face of the left cube are the same color as the "yellow" tiles in the top of the right cube.

Don't take my word for it. Use an image editing program with a eyedropper to see for yourself. I used Photoshop's eyedropper tool to take 5x5 samples and found that both the "yellow" and the "blue" tiles are C:50 M:40 Y:40 K:5.

Take a look at the brown tile in the center of the top face and the yellow tile in the center of the side facing slightly to the left. They're the same color.

UPDATE: The color tile illusion is one of many excellent illusions created by R. Beau Lotto.

According to Barstool Sports, these photos of men with very dark spray tans were taken in New Jersey. Link (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

Real estate agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert in Victoria Australia have filed a defamation lawsuit against Google. The two agents said that they asked Google to remove allegedly defaming links to articles about them, but that Google did not take any action.

The plaintiffs claim the articles suggest Mr Forytarz bullied an intellectually disabled man into selling his home in order to claim a commission of at least $200,000.

It is claimed the article paints Mr Forytarz as unscrupulous and unethical and he suffered distress embarrassment and humiliation as a result.

They also claim another article alleges Mr Castran used dummy bidders to inflate the prices of the properties he sold.

Link

Over the last couple of days on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at this trailer for a documentary about the Blip Festival, how to run cable like NASA, a litter box that doubles as a planter, my new studio monitors and my ignorance about them, giant LEGO chess pieces, the first issue of Wired, the continuing lack of Nazis in LEGO games, three new Picoo-Z helicopters (including 3-channel models!), antique hand-cranked coffee mills, a modular cell phone that is supposed to live inside all your other gear, Michael Ruhlman's affection for old GE percolators, and a crappy new Zippo lighter.

David Gray says: "Old commercial (1960's?) for a kids game where you get smacked in the face with a cream pie."

In January, I posted the news that a young man had been arrested in Dubai for carrying melatonin. This BBC article looks into the story, and serves up some other examples of the draconian drug laws in the United Arab Emirates.

Examples:

• A Swiss man "is serving a four-year jail term after three poppy seeds from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes."

• A 43-year-old Englishman who had a cigarette stuck to his shoe was sentenced was sentenced to four years in prison for possession of 0.003g of cannabis, which I would imagine is a microscopic amount.

• Customs officers held a woman for eight weeks before she was able to convince authorities that her codeine pills were prescribed by her doctor for back pain.

According to BBC article:

"If they find any amount - no matter how minute - it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence.

"What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person."

Link

The fellow who uploaded this to YouTube writes:

This is possibly the most disturbing thing I've seen on the Interweb. I'm sorry for inflicting this upon all of you. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: The mushroom in this video looks like Amanita muscaria, which are very poisonous! Don't ever try this at home, people. Picking and eating random wild mushrooms MIGHT KILL YOU. After a rigorous session of super-sleuthing, I was able to find out more about this guy. It seems that he is a performance artist from Japan that goes by the name of 'wotaken.' Here's his home page: http://katura.is.land.to/index.html.

YouTube Link (Thanks, Russ Gooberman!)

The Asian Law Caucus and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed a joint lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over access to public records on the questioning and searches of travelers at U.S. borders.

Filed under the Freedom of Information Act, the suit responds to growing complaints by U.S. citizens and immigrants of excessive or repeated screenings by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

ALC, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, received more than 20 complaints from Northern California residents last year who said they were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad. In addition, customs agents examined travelers' books, business cards collected from friends and colleagues, handwritten notes, personal photos, laptop computer files, and cell phone directories, and sometimes made copies of this information. When individuals complained, they were told, "This is the border, and you have no rights."

"When the government searches your books, peers into your computer, and demands to know your political views, it sends the message that free expression and privacy disappear at our nation's doorstep," said Shirin Sinnar, staff attorney at ALC. "The fact that so many people face these searches and questioning every time they return to the United States, not knowing why and unable to clear their names, violates basic notions of fairness and due process."

ALC and EFF asked DHS to disclose its policies on questioning travelers on First Amendment-protected activities, photocopying individuals' personal papers, and searching laptop computers and other electronic devices. The agency failed to meet the 20-day time limit that Congress has set for responding to public information requests, prompting the lawsuit.

Link to EFF.org announcement, here's a copy of the complaint (PDF).

Previously on Boing Boing:
* US Customs TSA confiscating laptops
* TSA apologizes to "blogesphere" for arbitrary gadget screenings
* Arbitrary TSA requirement: all electronics out of your bag (cables, too)

My four-year-old daughter's pre-school visited a nursing home. When they got back to class, they teacher asked them to describe what old people look like. Here are their answers.

Q: What do old people look like?

A: Very old. Their stomach is very big. They have a wheelchair. They look like they can't walk.

Link

Here are two other Flickr galleries of my kids' class drawings, containing similar sentiments: Preschoolers' feelings, What happens to people when they get old?

On Afrigadget today, the story of an organization working with people in Africa to build bicycles from a locally-available and sustainable resource -- bamboo:

The Bamboo Bike, an endeavour that aims at building bicycles in a sustainable fashion using bamboo as the primary construction material, is a joint project run by Craig Calfree of Calfree Design, a high tech bicycle design firm based in California and The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The bicycle is the primary mode of transport in Africa and it is used for everything from personal transportation to moving medicine and the sick to hospital. Sadly, the design used in most of Africa has not changed for the last 40 years to take into account the different ways in which the bicycle is used. In fact, most bikes in use in most of Africa today are based on a colonial British design tailored to individuals travelling short distances on smooth roads.

Link

Showstudio blog has an item up today about an interesting fashion advertising experiment:

[L]ast night the mighty PRADA unveiled 'Trembled Blossoms', a showstopping fashion film, at their 'SoHo Epicenter' store in New York. Directed by the performance artist James Luna and based on James Jean's Nouveau-esque wallpaper seen in the ad campaign, the film is an ambitious narrative fantasy depicting a cyber woman's journey through a magical, illustrated forest.

Link (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Bibliodyssey blog (which recently published a wonderful book about wonderful old books!) has a post up today with scans of a geomantic almanac from the mid-1500s:

The above images come from a manuscript commissioned by Ottheinrich which was completed between 1552 and 1557 (calligraphy by Heinrich Rüdinger and illumination by Albrecht Glockendon [attributed]). It's title is 'Geomantie' (Geomancy) - Codex Palatinus 833 Germanicus. The title is misleading really. This is not a work of geomancy* as any reference material describes it, although there may have been a broader medieval definition which has since been superseded. (...)

The spectacular full page images (...) are all volvelles (rotating paper wheel charts) and were used for various computations such as calculating the time and the lunar phases. The zodiac images on the wheels could be aligned with the night sky and the disk turned to reveal desired incremental measurements. Some were able to function as astrolabes, to give approximate positions of ships at sea.

Link to Bibliodyssey post. And, Amazon link to "BibliOdyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet (Hardcover)," which includes selected works featured on this fine blog over the past years. I have a copy, and it's already dog-eared from too much lovin'.

The National Space Society's art contest has announced its winning entries to illustrate the NSS 2009 Space Settlement Calendar. Link to gallery. Shown here: After the Storm, by Colorado-based artist Raymond Cassel, submitted in the "Martian Settlements" category -- this one took grand prize.

Writer and sex worker Melissa Gira Grant is now contributing to Valleywag. Here is an excerpt from her first item about a sector of the Silicon Valley economy that is rarely mentioned in tech biz publications (unless, say, some high-profile exec is caught in a transaction):

# Search sfbay area -> sby -> services -> erotic. Keywords you're looking for: "college," "tuition," "arrangement," "daddy."

# When you find a few likely prospects, email them. DON'T mention money or sex. Follow any instructions she's included, e.g. send her your phone number. She may ask you to confirm who you really are and where you work. She's not a cop -- she's a contractor. You can have her call the front desk at your workplace and ask for you. She'll say she's your "trainer" or something.

Link.

"Ella" is a 12-meter-long sculpture made from peaches, as part of a promotional campaign for an Australian skin care product company. The site has a video about its design and construction. Link

Today on Boing Boing tv: What has one Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 160G hard drive, 1G RAM, buck teeth, fur, and a big fat tail? Duh, Compubeaver! This taxidermy casemod was created by Kasey McMahon of yourpsychogirlfriend. Compubeaver boasts impressive technical specs, and can chew through logs or logfiles with equal ease. We observe the critter in his native environment: a contemporary office space, with eager information workers -- and one big problem.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with video and discussion.

Want to build your own? Read this Instructables HOWTO! If you dig this video, feel free to Digg it.

Link to larger size, Link to original post on dieselsweeties blog. Thanks, R Stevens and crew!

Link, via Joel's Dethroner blog, via this post on ectoplasmo. (thanks Susannah Breslin.)

The beautiful Cape Schank House in Victoria, Australia, designed by Paul Morgan Architects, has some interesting features, including a rain water tank in the middle of the living room.

Within the living room the ceiling wraps down to an internal water tank. The tank cools the ambient air temperature of the living room during summer, supplies rain water, and structurally carries the roof load.

Link (Via notcot.org)

US and Italian authorities arrested 80 suspected Mafia bosses in New York and Sicily on charges of murder, racketeering, loan sharking, conspiracy, drug dealing, and extortion.

My favorite part of the article is the silly names of the thugs:

Among those facing charges were top Gambino leaders including acting boss John D'Amico, also known as "Jackie the Nose," acting underboss Domenico "The Greaseball" Cefalu and consigliere Joseph "Miserable" Corozzo.

Link (Via The Day the Tried to Kill Me)

Stephen Worth says:

It's rare for a publisher to allow a parody of its own characters, and unheard of for the creator himself to get the opportunity to make fun of his own creation. But back in the late sixties, the powers that be at Marvel didn't take themselves quite so seriously. Here we have the unthinkable... Jack Kirby and Stan Lee doing a parody of their own Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics!

"The Fabulous Fantastical Four Suffer Through The Saga Of The Silver Burper!" Marvel's Not Brand Echh! #1 (1967)

Link

In 1997, the BBC aired an episode of their science show Horizon about psychedelic drugs and medicine. Over at Mind Hacks, Vaughan reports that the entire program, titled Psychedelic Science, is now available on Google Video. From his post, which puts the episode in a bit of historical context:

The programme looks at the history of psychedelic drug research when it was still easily possible, focusing on Osmond and Hoffer's early work on using LSD in treating addiction and facilitating psychotherapy.

It's also got loads of great historical footage from the early research but also talks to the new generation of researchers looking at compounds such as ayahuasca and ibogaine, who are now the senior figures in this growing area.

Link to "Psychedelic Science" video, Link to Mind Hacks

Dude, seriously. Link. (thanks, amos)

Seen here is an example of a purported rat king, a giant rat beast created when many rats get their tails tangled together. Legend has it that the rats then grow together into a single creepy entity. This mummified "rat king" was discovered in 1828 in Buchheim, Germany and is currently on display at the museum Mauritianum in Altenburg, Germany. From Wikipedia:

The earliest report of rat kings comes from 1564. If real, the phenomenon may have diminished when the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) displaced the black rat (R. Rattus) in the 18th century. Sightings have been sporadic in the modern era; most recently comes an Estonian farmer's discovery in the Võrumaa region on January 16, 2005.

Most extant examples are formed from black rats (R. rattus). The only find involving sawah rats (Rattus rattus brevicaudatus) occurred on March 23, 1918, in Bogor on Java, where a rat king of ten young field rats was found. Similar attachments have been reported in other species: in April 1929, a group of young forest mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) was reported in Holstein; and there have been reports of squirrel kings. The Zoological Institute of the University of Hamburg allegedly owns a specimen.

Rat kings are not to be confused with conjoined twins, which arise in many species. Rat kings would grow together only after birth.

Link

Pressure Printing has two beautiful new framed color prints of paintings by Glenn Barr and Amy Crehore. Link

DIY splatterpunk film directors take note, Erik Beck from Indy Mogul posted an Instructable on making a cheap yet effective decapitation effect for your next slasher movie. The ingredients include: a test dummy, fake head (we used styrofoam), foam, liquid latex (preferably in a skin color), garden sprayer, valve, 6 bottles of food coloring, and a balloon. Link

During WWII, group of American pilots founded The International Association of Turtles in an English pub. The basic rules for membership:"You must think with a clean mind and you must be willing to stick your neck out for yourself and for other people in need."

The Silent Porn Star blog came across an early membership card, the back of which reads (typos and all):

We assume all prospective Turtles own a Jack Ass. On this assumption is the reason for the password.

This password must be given if you are ever asked by a fellow member, "Are you a Turtle?" You MUST then reply "You bet your sweet ass I am." If you do not give the password in full because of embarassment or some other reason, you forfeit a beverage of his choice. So always remember the password.

As all members are of clean mind to become an official Turtle the person must solve the following riddles with clean-minded correct answers:

1. What is it a man can do standing up, a woman sitting down, and a dog on three legs? (Answer: shake hands).

2. What is it that a cow has four of and woman has only two of? (Answer: legs).

3. What is a four letter word ending in 'k' that means the same as intercourse? (Answer: talk).

4. What is it on a man that is round, hard, and sticks so far out of his pajamas that you can hand a hat on it? (Answer: his head).

You are now a member of The Turtle Club. Govern yourself accordingly and produce new members.

You can join the Turtles by paying a $5 initiation fee. Link

"I'm Learning to Share" has posted three nice galleries of old paperback covers on Flickr: 40s mysteries, 50s and 60s mysteries, and 60s and 70s scholastic book cl