Last night, Locus Magazine held its annual Locus Awards Ceremony in Seattle, the winners include several of my favorite books of the year -- and my novella, "After the Siege" -- which was collected in my short story collection Overclocked and adapted for comics in my new collection Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now". (The story's first publication was in the Russian magazine Esli, and the translation is also downloadable). This marks my fourth consecutive Locus Award win!

Many thanks to all who voted for this story, to Eileen Gunn for publishing the story and accepting the award on my behalf, and especially to my grandmother, Valentina Rachman, for sharing her stories of life as a child-soldier in the civil defense corps during the Siege of Leningrad.

SF NOVEL The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
FANTASY NOVEL Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
YOUNG ADULT BOOK Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
FIRST NOVEL Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
NOVELLA "After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)
NOVELETTE "The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)
SHORT STORY "A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
COLLECTION The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)
ANTHOLOGY The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
NON-FICTION Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)
ART BOOK The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)
EDITOR Ellen Datlow
MAGAZINE F&SF
PUBLISHER Tor
ARTIST Charles Vess

Link

Findings presented to ENDO 2008, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Francisco this week, show that a spice found in curries has remarkable properties when administered to obese and diabetic mice:

"It's too early to tell whether increasing dietary curcumin [through turmeric] intake in obese people with diabetes will show a similar benefit," Dr. Tortoriello said. "Although the daily intake of curcumin one might have to consume as a primary diabetes treatment is likely impractical, it is entirely possible that lower dosages of curcumin could nicely complement our traditional therapies as a natural and safe treatment."

For now, the conclusion that Dr. Tortoriello and his colleagues have reached is that turmeric – and its active anti-oxidant ingredient, curcumin – reverses many of the inflammatory and metabolic problems associated with obesity and improves blood-sugar control in mouse models of Type 2 diabetes.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Gerard Brion's garden in the south France town of Vaissac contains a replica of Paris built from junk, trash, glue and paint.

The Frenchman, 29, has spent 15 years crafting landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Sacré Coeur out of old concrete blocks, baby food jars and soup tins.

Link (via Craft!)

Z sez, "LonelyCylon15 (an ongoing YouTube project edited by ChurchHatesTucker) explains why DRM is a bad idea." Link (Thanks, Z!)

Here's a fine little dance remix of Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice ducking questions about his terrible new copyright proposal, Bill C61 (AKA the Canadian DMCA), on the CBC Radio show Search Engine. Link (Thanks, Rick!)

See also: Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up

Spotted on Joi Ito's blog: quick and dirty directions on how to "hack" Firefox 3 into delivering richer, brighter colors more faithful to the original photograph (or graphic).

Snip:

I think that the esoteric discussions about color are interesting, but for most people, the bottom line is, if you turn color profile support "on" on Firefox 3, many images will end up appearing much closer to the color of the original and less washed out. You do this by typing "about:config" in the address bar of Firefox 3. Click thru confirmation page and find: gfx.color_management.enabled. Double click that until it says "true". Then restart Firefox 3.

There are a number of monitor color calibration gadgets and software packages like Eye One Match which will allow you to calibrate your monitor (and camera and printer). If everyone actually did this, we'd all be seeing the same colors.

Downside: you void your warranty (browsers have warranties? who cares) and apparently this tweak causes a non-insignificant performance hit.

Whatever, I'm just thrilled that favorite snaps I shot, caressed lovingly in Photoshop, then uploaded to Flickr don't look so anemic anymore. Like "Daniela," above, an aging camioneta cooling her heels on a beach along the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Or these women from the Gaddi tribe in Northern India, at bottom, climbing a mountain to reach a shrine.

Source: DRIA. Gina at Lifehacker just blogged about it, too.

Here's a fine instructable for making a YipYipYip Martian costume from Sesame Street, consisting primarily of lots of fabric, a couple styrofoam balls, sponge and pipecleaners. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Scott sez, "I hosted director Greg Maletic and screened his excellent 60-min documentary, "Tilt," last week. In 1998, Williams saw pinball sales going down and their slot machines going up. Pinball was losing ground in the arcades to the new video machines. In a valiant effort to save their livelihoods, a team of great designers from the video and pinball world decide to combine the technologies into Pinball 2000, a platform the seemed like a great new gaming experience. (I've never played it.) Maletic made a film that is part game history, part product design, and part tragic business story. Well worth watching, and the clip on the website gives a good sense of its quality. " Link (Thanks, Scott!)

(If you can't view the veoh video above, try the YouTube version)

Photographer Clayton Cubitt (disclosure, he's a personal pal) recently returned to NYC after a few weeks in New Zealand on an editorial assignment. During that trip, he also took a series of beautiful (and formal) portraits of interesting people there, including Maori people whose bodies and faces are embellished with traditional tattoos.

He also took one short, informal little video interview (Clayton, what'd you shoot this with?) with a man named Vic Taurewa Biddle, shot with a Sigma DP1 digital snappy cam "as an afterthought during a portrait session." Mr. Biddle speaks about his face tats, known as moko in the Maori language, and shares some insight on how homo/bi/trans-sexuality are viewed among his people -- both historically and now. I wish Clayton had shot more of these, this is short, simple, really interesting stuff.

I've embedded the Veoh video above, here's Clayton's tumblr post with a YouTube version. Incidentally, when Clayton first sent me this link I was in Guatemala, and couldn't view that Veoh item at all. I learned that this is because Veoh is blocked in like 37 countries around the world. WTF, what's up with that?

The folks from Open Source Cinema have reedited their "Copyright Criminals" video to feature Canadian Member of Parliament Charlie Angus and a host of Canadians who don't want Bill C-61, the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to pass. You can re-edit it to your heart's content, natch. Link (Thanks, Brett!)

See also: Canada's DMCA: public service announcement

Chris Borroni-Bird is the director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at GM. He's leading the effort at GM to make fuel cell vehicles, based on a "skateboard" style chassis called AUTOnomy that incorporates the fuel cell, motors and electronics control.

GMnext kindly invited me to visit with Dr. Borroni-Bird and have a discussion with him about "innovation, technology, energy, the environment, and their impact on the future of the automobile." He's a fascinating innovator with ideas that could change transportation around the world. I hope he succeeds.

Here's the first video from our conversation. (Note: GMnext compensated me for my video appearance.) Link

Chris sez, "This is a video of me doing one-handed origami, making a flapping bird in each hand at the same time, one with my left hand and one with my right. I put just a single one-handed video up on YouTube last year and there was like a stream of folk complaining it was fake, so I figured out how to debunk it". Link (Thanks, Chris!)

In this Disney podcast, Chief Imagineer Marty Sklar enumerates Mickey's 10 Commandments of Theme Park Design. MP3 Link (Thanks, Avi!)

Aw, shit. Cody's Books, the half-century-old Berkeley bookstore that has long been an East Bay institution -- one of the truly great west coast stores -- has closed its doors forever.

After 52 years, Cody's Books will shut its doors effective June 20, 2008. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world. Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody's has been a Berkeley institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody's was a landmark of the Free Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable authors, poets and readers.

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.

According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment…in the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."

It was an incredible honor to stop at Cody's for a signing on my book tour last month -- I'm really glad I got a chance to connect with the wonderful staff and patrons there while the store was still around. Link (Thanks, Spincycle)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has spotted this Japanese piggy-bank that includes an RPG that gives you rewards for saving:

This new Tomy piggy bank gives forward-thinking youngsters a reason to save their quarters: it features a miniature RPG game on the front, and every coin you pump into the bank is translated into gold, which can be used to buy weapons, items and armor for your character. Ultima meets Tamagotchi, basically. Although I'd hasten to add that a savings account is a better return on investment than putting your money into a wardrobe for an imaginary elf.

Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

In an amicus brief filed in the Jammie Thomas trial, lawyers for the MPAA argued that it was unreasonable to ask copyright holders to prove that infringement had taken place before awarding them damages of up to $150,000 per file.

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

Link

Jim sez, "Rutgers has an interesting collection of historic maps online, including what appears to be a 1955 tourist map ... of prisons."

The hand-drawn map has normal touristy captions notations like:
- High Point State Park [Highest Point in NJ]
- Lake Hopatcong (largest in NJ) Popular Summer Resort
- Newark's Airport is world's busiest

But the map is dominated by prisons:
- Here maximum and limited security for industrial type prisoner under 30 (Ref't'y Rahway)
- Here minimum custody for older men of common labor type and men nearing time of discharge (Prison Farm Bordentown)
- Here minimum security for men 18-30 trainable in vocational and agricultural work (Annandale Farms)

GIF Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Remember how awesome and cool it was to hear Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' classic anthem "Gone Daddy Gone?" Two great summer debut albums, separated by decades, featuring the same song, done two different ways.

This summer, the Violent Femmes have released their own smoky, slow cover of Gnarls Barkley's high energy falsetto anthem "Crazy" and it's exactly as great, in reverse. Link (via Salon)

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's Travelers series features limited edition prints of grisly, Charles-Addams-esque scenes in snowglobes and on landscapes. Link (via Gizmodo)

My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.

Here's a link to Chapter 3 as a PDF or a text or a Word file. (Here's chapter 1 and an introduction to the book, and here are the previous chapters)

To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.

Lon Harris of Mahalo Daily came to LA Siggraph's Maker Night and checked out some of the cool projects there. Link

Process Media publisher Jodi Wille says: If you're in Los Angeles this coming weekend or next week, we have two very special happenings to celebrate Los Angeles' occult heritage and our upcoming new Process release, Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall by LA Times writer Louis Sahagun.

This is one of the most mind blowing books I've ever worked on, and a perfect followup to The Source.

In the early 20th Century, Southern California became home to one of America’s most powerful occult scenes. Alternative religions, Eastern gurus and esoteric societies compelled thousands to seek enlightenment while mystically inclined civic leaders, artists, and mavericks shaped Los Angeles into a world-class metropolis.

Manly P. Hall was a focal point of this subculture, a striking, self-educated scholar who became the 20th Century’s most prolific writer and speaker on ancient philosophies, mysticism and magic. He was a confidante of celebrities and politicians, and in 1991 he died -- some say he was murdered -- in what remains an open-ended Hollywood murder mystery.

Master of the Mysteries unfolds the dramatic life story of this enigmatic visionary while revealing the occult roots that built Los Angeles and invigorated the rest of the nation for decades to come.

Master of the Mysteries Events Schedule:

Saturday, June 21st, 12pm-3pm
Master of the Mysteries release party and lectures
Philosophical Research Society

3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
phone 323.663.2167
tickets: $1

This historic celebration includes a slideshow and lecture on the life of Manly Palmer Hall by Louis Sahagun; a talk on Los Angeles’ Freemasonic heritage by of Rex R. Hutchens, PhD., author, historian and 33 degree Grand Cross former Grand Master of Arizona; and an appearance by Manly P. Hall’s surviving step daughter JoAnne O’Connor.

Tea and Manly Hall’s favorite snacks will be served.

Tuesday, June 24th, 8 p.m.
Screening of “The Magician”
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90036
(323) 655-2510
Tickets - $12/ $8 for members

In celebration of the creation of the new Manly P. Hall biography Master of the Mysteries by Louis Sahagun, Process presents a special screening of Ingmar Bergman’s 1959 supernatural classic The Magician with an original score composed by string arranger Yvanne Spevack and a live ensemble of improvising magicians.

Bergman’s film is a mystical contemplation of a magician and his vagrant troupe of medicine-show performers as they travel through the country in the mid-nineteenth century and are hounded by a skeptical public. Utilizing a combination of traditional orchestral string instruments, electric guitars, keyboards, accordion and electronic beats, the ensemble will be led by Ysanne on acoustic and electric violin, musical saw, midi-synthesized electronic textures and processing. The Magician marks the second time Ysanne has scored a film and performed it live, the first being Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle Of Algiers. Master of the Mysteries author Louis Sahagun will be present before and after the show to meet guests and sign books.

Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1958, 35mm, 97 min.

And this, folks, is why I love Max Silvestri so much. Above, his masterful followup to Gabe Delahaye's "10 greatest lightsaber mashups of all time" series. mildly NSFW Link.

(You may recall these two internet funnyhunters from this very popular BBtv episode).

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that residue from the spill of a "small amount of plutonium" last week at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado has been found on the floor and tabletops.

The plutonium may have been released into the sewer system after two employees "washed plutonium-containing powder off their hands and into a sink" on June 9.

Traces of plutonium from the June 9 spill were found in a laboratory sink, where the radioactive chemical may have washed into the city’s sewer system, NIST announced last week.

Contamination has since been found on the floor and tabletops, consistent of the spread of plutonium by hands and shoes, the agency said. Boulder officials were alerted since the sink drains into the municipal sewer system.

Boulder city officials say there is nothing to be afraid of. All is well. Link

Sam Scheibner says: "This sign appears three or four times in Fremont WA along the canal. I'm no English major but shouldn't it be Dump No Material Whatsoever? Or did the sign writer give up half way through?"

I hope somebody adds funny punctuation to it, like "Dump No Material? Whatever."

This was one of my favorite projects from MAKE Vol. 14: a parabolic mic from dollar-store parts. Here's a video with Kipkay that shows you how to make one. Link

The opening reception for Kyle Ng's We Hear it All exhibition is Thursday, June 26, 2008, 8-11pm, 326 Sunset Avenue, Venice, CA 90291

Flux is proud to present We Hear It All, a breakout solo exhibition and salon by Los Angeles artist Kyle Ng. Transforming the space into a pop-up natural history museum, Ng will unveil a series of life-size dioramas filled with taxidermy animal sculptures, antique artifacts and luxe jewels. The mixed media sculpture exhibition will include an experimental musical performance by artist Tim Biskup and outdoor video installations. A series of limited-edition digital photo prints will be available for purchase. Open to the public, the reception for We Hear It All will take place on Thursday, June 26 from 8 to 11pm, and the show will be on view until July 18, 2008.

Link

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel wished he was part of the greatest NERF office war in history, and Brownlee wtfed over a Texas Instruments ad featuring an evil floating elephant and a girl with her head exploding, while Rob got pissed about a psychic accusing an autitstic girl's parents of child abuse... and how they only cleared their name because of a GPS recording gadget.

We also looked at a scale for professional bodybuilders and this year's Tokyo Toy Show. Joel slummed inside the insidious bowels of some Chinese gadget sweatshops, scheduled a voyage on the world's largest cruise liner and looked at some faux skylights capable of programmable lighting. John looked at a gorgeous $400k watch, a geiger counter case mod and a piggy bank with a built-in RPG. Rob lusted after a prosthetic foot, then locked himself inside a robot vault.

And we couldn't end the week without flipping the double deuce at the pissloafers who convinced Congress to give carte blanche to the government spying on us. Good one, jackwads.

Link

These ultrasuede scarves from MicroFactory are laser-cut with either upper-case, lower-case, or numeric characters in a close pattern. Link (via Make!)

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy hold more than 8000 mummies, from artists and surgeons to military figures and monks who died between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 20th. The bodies are embalmed, fully clothed, and many of them posed as if they were still alive. As the bodies have decayed, albeit slowly, over the years, the catacombs experience apparently has become even more surreal. Architectural historian Robert Harbison of London Metropolitan University wrote about his visit to the Capuchin Catacombs in Cabinet magazine. The article is accompanied by intense photos by Marco Lanza. From the article:

In Palermo... corpses are treated as characters in a play. Perhaps Walt Disney and Madame Tussaud were inspired by places like this, but the Capuchin crypt will not remind you of their worlds, for in spite of all the talk about the great lengths the monks have gone to in order to create lifelike effects, it feels like somewhere that fell into disuse long ago.

Most of the corpses are wearing clothes, it is true, many of them are sitting up, and whole rows of them are standing. But standing is only a mistake of vision: they are hanging from hooks, so their feet don't normally touch the ground. And the clothe-- there's a kind of allegory in them. They are so dusty and so faded that the whole picture sinks toward something like monochrome. They remind me of a painter that a friend of mine knew who got the idea of painting indoors with the blinds drawn and the lights off. The results were extremely melancholy: muted colors, indistinct forms.

Link

Senate House Democrats covered themselves in shame today, joining with Republicans to pass a bill granting amnesty to the cowardly telephone companies who helped the President's office with its illegal bulk-wiretapping campaign that spied on every American call and email without any judicial oversight. What's more, the bill also allows this to continue going on in the future. Who needs the fourth amendment?

The bill (.pdf) could be voted on as soon as Friday in the House, given its backing by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who in February organized a high-stakes showdown with the president over a substantially similar bill. The Senate would likely also quickly pass the bill, despite already vocal opposition from the ACLU, left-leaning bloggers, as well as Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)...

Additionally, the bill grants amnesty to the nation's telecoms that are being sued for allegedly breaking federal wiretapping laws by turning over billions of Americans' call records to government data-mining programs and giving the government access to internet and phone infrastructure inside the country. The bill strips the right of a federal district court to decide whether the companies violated federal laws prohibiting wiretapping without a court order.

Instead, the attorney general would need only certify to the court either that a sued company did not participate, or that the government provided some sort of written request to the companies that said that the president authorized the program and that his lawyers deemed it to be legal. That would be presented to federal district court Judge Vaughn Walker, who is overseeing the more than 40 consolidated cases against the telecoms. Walker's authority would be limited to judging whether the preponderance of the evidence is that the companies did get a written request, and if he finds that to be true -- as the Senate Intelligence Committee has already publicly stated -- he must dismiss the cases.

Link

Update: Tim from EFF sez, "The Senate vote will probably be sometime next week, could be as early as Tuesday. Folks can contact their Senator here"

GOOD magazine's Matt Schwartz wrote a fun survey of the secret societies that rule the world: Freemasons, Trilateral Commission, Order of Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg Group, and the World Economic Forum. Schwarts, a Freemason himself, profiles those "Shadowy Organizations" in easily digestible chunks, highlighting their mythical achievements, actual achievements, membership, alumni, true facts, and what they say about themselves. Remember, just because you're paranoid, don't think they're not after you. (For more on the secret ruling elite, read Jon Ronson's excellent book Them: Adventures with Extremists.) From GOOD:

In the 19th century, the Masons were the favorite scapegoat of frightened jingoists who found themselves at the mercy of history and wanted someone to blame for their problems. In the early 20th century, it was the Jews—I’m one of those, too. These days, the conspirators of choice are the internationalist elites who arrive by chartered jet to mingle with their fellow Murdochs, Soroses, Gateses, and Wolfowitzes (I’m a few dinner parties away from becoming one of these).

With that in mind, we present six organizations that have been accused of plotting world domination, along with an assessment of who they are, what they do, and just how powerful they actually are. From what we can tell, no group on this list is running the world from behind its locked doors. But those without keys can never be sure.

Link

• History Channel on Bilderberg Group Link
• Punks in the Masons Link
• List of the "World's Weirdest/Stupidest Conspiracy Theories" Link
• San Francisco's clubs you can't join Link
• Documentary: Crazy Rulers of the World Link

In this remarkable leaked Powerpoint presentation produced by a Comcast employee to brief co-workers about how incredibly shit their customer service is, a series of frank admissions of total incompetence, inadequacy and pathetic bumbling paint a (fatally accurate) picture of a monopolist in decline. My favorite quote: "On average, gas is $4.07 (too high for unnecessary truck rolls) and very shortly cable will go from a 'need' to an option for some people."

Comcast Quits Early

Technicians are not showing up for appointments and it appears they are not being held accountable.

* Comcast technicians and subcontractors routinely cancel/reschedule customer appointments without approving or even notifying the customer of the change when they are tired of working.

* Several of my customers have complained that the techn