For the next several weeks, I'm going to post my favorite entries from Boing Boing this year.

• Heir to dictator moves into $35 million Malibu home (Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue's is slated to take over his father's role as ruthless dictator of Equatorial Guinea.)

• Tijuana cops lose guns, get slingshots (While a corruption investigation is underway, they've replaced the guns all of the cops in tourist areas with slingshots and ball-bearings.)

• State of Massachusetts insists on calling ATHF ads "hoax devices" (The people of Boston should be clamoring for the resignation of the mayor and the head of the department of security for being the only city in the ten-city ad campaign that didn't notice the signs hanging in plain sight for two full weeks and then misidentifying them in a way that caused widespread panic.)

• Witch doctor orders death of Hollywood snow cone man (Article about snow cone vendor who was allegedly murdered by his girlfriend after a witch doctor told her the snow cone vendor had placed a curse on her.)

• Police officer who ejaculated on motorist found not guilty (Jury in Orange County finds Irvine police officer not guilty of three felony charges after he pulled over a female motorist and ejaculated on her sweater.)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Looking back on 2007, part 1

IWantSandy is an email-based automated personal assistant that has just opened up for public signups. I've been using Sandy for a couple months now, and she's fast becoming indispensable for my life. All you do is CC your personal Sandy address on your mail and throw in keywords, like "Sandy, remember that this is the grocery list" or "Sandy, remind me to follow up on this with Fred on January 1, 2008" and the Sandybot will file away all your minutae for you. Sandy emails you with reminders (she can also communicate by Twitter/SMS). She can barf up all your remembers whenever you need them -- just tag your emails with the @-mark (for example @phonenumber @kids @kitchenrenovation @welding) and then ask her for all the items corresponding to a given tag.

The coolest thing about I Want Sandy is the "groupware" function -- if I CC you and Sandy on a message with a reminder, she'll remind both of us. No permissions, no groups, just CC in regular email. The service is free and live and open to all comers.

Sandy's a real Boing Boing-pal effort. It was invented by Rael Dornfest, the former CTO of O'Reilly Media, who (among other things) created the open-source blogging tool Blosxom and chaired the O'Reilly P2P and Emerging Tech conferences. Sandy herself is based on Tim O'Reilly's stellar personal assistant, also named Sandy. And bonus -- the little Sandy logo was designed by our own Mark Frauenfelder! The functionality in IWantSandy is really geared to personal-productivity freaks like me, who were inspired by books like Getting Things Done and the Life Hacks movement.

Link

(Disclosure: I am proud to serve on the advisory board for values of n, the company that produces I Want Sandy)

See also: Meet Sandy -- free email assistant

Several experimental Japanese "melody roads" have been deployed, whose cut grooves and bumps play distinctive songs through your car, but only when you drive slowly and carefully down them. This seems like a potentially useful bit of social engineering -- set the musical timing on a road at the safe speed, and combine that with timed traffic lights that reward you with a "green wave" if you stick to the limit, and you'd have a pretty good set of cues telling you how to travel at speed. Bobbie Johnson writes in the Guardian:

A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of "melody roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.

The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.

Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, enabling cunning designers to create a distinct tune.

Link

The One Laptop Per Child project's "Give One Get One" sale started yesterday. For a limited time, anyone can buy one of the rugged, open little laptops for your own use, provided that you also pay for a second machine that will be donated to a kid in the developing world.

Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

Link

See also: One Laptop Per Child machines for sale this Christmas: buy two, one goes to developing world

Above: Laugh Out Loud Cats meet flowcharts. Below, the most-commented Boing Boing posts of the past 7 days.

Bob Dylan warns of Cylon invasion (Cory)

New iPods reengineered to block synching with Linux (Cory)

Review of $35 Blackwing 602 pencil (Mark)

Magazine back issues on DVD (Mark)

Dr Who services planned for Welsh church (Cory)

Hidden bear in Toblerone logo (Mark)

Discovery paves way for gamma-ray annihilation lasers (Mark)

Capitol police attack, break leg of anti-war minister (video) (Mark)

French art from 1910 depicting the year 2000 (Pesco)

Magicians innovate without IP law (Pesco)

Blog about living in a van down by the river (Mark)

Artist will send 300 meter banana 50km above the earth (Mark)

Many scientists unhappy about Lucy tour (Pesco)

StopTheSpying: Tell the Dems to keep AT&T on the hook for NSA wiretapping (Cory)

Water leak in overhead apartment creates beautiful bump in ceiling (Mark)

Fake sunroof for car (Mark)

1966 prediction of home computer in 1999 (Video link updated) (Mark)

Here is a roundup of the posts our readers found most interesting this week, selected by volume of comments and permalink traffic:

RFID implants linked to animal tumors (Cory)

Erik Davis on watermarked promotional CDs (Pesco)

IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 3: Great anti-piracy PSA sendup (Cory)

Naomi Klein's Disaster Capitalism video: exploiting disasters for globalism (Cory)

Ice-free arctic in 23 years, and polar bear extinction? (Xeni)

How right digits affect perception of discounts (Mark)

Rolling Stone on "The Great Iraq Swindle" (Mark)

Bush's alien overlord peeks through window during speech (Mark)

Gnome puzzle from MAKE 11, illustrated by Roy Doty (Mark)

RIP: author Madeleine L’Engle (Xeni)

NASA could use a better slogan. Got one? (Xeni)

Southwest airlines: fashion police of the skies

Mass. State Treasurer detained at airport for carrying peaches (Mark)

Grooveshark -- DRM-free P2P music -- pays uploaders (Cory)

DoJ slams net neutrality, says all packets not created equal (Xeni)

Extreme cuisine: So what does it feel like to eat live octopus? (Xeni)

Mark Dery on Taco Bell (Mark)

Psychological "torture bible" published in 1961 reappears online (Xeni)

Photos of "anti-socials" (Mark)

Ronald Jenkees; Hello YouTubes, have you heard my SICK beats? (Xeni)

Steve Fossett (Xeni)

Cory's Guardian column explaining DRM's impossibility to non-geeks (Cory)

IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 2 -- keyboard-destroying nerd sitcom (Cory)

Bottled water forbidden at Seattle festival (Mark)

(Image from ucumari's polar bear set on Flickr. This wonderful photographer's IRL-name is Valerie, and she is a volunteer at the North Carolina zoo. )

Getting high with Richard Branson: Virgin America's virgin flight (Xeni)

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie (Mark)

Chart of presidential candidate's positions (Mark)

Two-word license agreement: "FUCK YOU!" (Cory)

Bad cops to wear Hello Kitty armbands (Pesco)

Rep. Bob Allen cites fear of black men, weather in oral sex arrest (Mark)

Great Happiness Space: doc film on Japan's "host bars." (Xeni)

Video game you control with piss (Cory)

Cartoons for HTTP error codes (Cory)

Google Video robs customers of the videos they "own" (Cory)

US tech firm behind massive new human-tracking system in China (Xeni)

Image: RedandJonny, from this BB post: Link.

EPIC LULZ: Video Link (from this short links roundup / XJ)

Cory's comic-con snapshots, and a voice post.

Ikea opens free hostel for shoppers who don't want to leave (Cory)

Guy who lost online trollfight drives 1300 miles, burns dude's trailer (Xeni)

Never get busted / surviving police encounters: one, two, three. (Mark)

ZOMG TERRISTS GONNA KILL US ALL ZOMG ZOMG ALERT LEVEL BLOODRED RUN RUN TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES MOISTURE BOMBS ZOMG! -- t-shirt. (Cory)

Songs for ice cream trucks (Pesco)

Gyp-hop MP3s (Xeni)

Vintage Planned Parenthood issue of Spider-Man comic (Pesco)

Animated flashlight film (those Sprint ads came from here) (Pesco)

Wireless power explained (Pesco)

Mull of Kintyre pornography test (Mark)

Wal Mart flip flops cause nasty chemical burn (Mark)

Secret list of buildings you can't photograph (Cory)

Fake ATM receipts for sale (Mark)

William Gibson explains why science fiction is about the present (Cory)

Steorn's "free energy" machine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. (Mark)

Laptop typewriter mod (Xeni)

Mostly NSFW iPhone wallpapers: Coop, and Clayton James Cubitt. Also, unicorns! (Mark, Xeni)

Itsy-bitsy electric generators uses ambient vibes for input (Mark)

The Woz interviewed by RU Sirius (Pesco)

Wide variety of freaks running for US president (Pesco)

Kid in Malawi homebrews a windmill generator (Cory)

iPhone + EFF + ATT + NSA = funny photo (Xeni)

Sicko inspires grassroots action in Dallas cinema (Cory)

What it takes to bring you Fiji water (Xeni)

TED talks videos (Mark)

Stasi smell museum (Cory)

iPhone hacktivation: 1, 2 (Xeni)

Sicko inspires grassroots action in Dallas cinema (Cory)

Teddy bears turned inside-out: photo book by Kent Rogowski (Xeni)

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

Image: Mark Ryden, Corkey Ascending to the Heavens, 1994, 36 x 54”, from this post by Pesco about a 10 year anniversary exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles.

Cropped detail from "The Last Supper," by clarkbar6, courtesy iphonematters.com. Here's the large size so you can read all the funny txt, and the rollovers are pretty funny too (thanks, KN!).

iPhone posts:
1 :-( / 2 ;-) / 3 :-) / 4 :-/ / 5 :-x / 6 :-O / 7 :-P / 8 =-o / 9 :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D.

Google versus Michael Moore's "Sicko": one, two. (Cory)

GPL 3.0 ships (Cory)

Poking at Facebook privacy: one, two (Xeni)

Bong Hits 4 Jesus: one, two, three, four (Mark, Xeni)

Rule the web! one, two (Mark)

Mushrooms as insulation material (Pesco)

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars (Pesco)

Peeking at the CIA's "family jewels" -- one, two, three (Pesco and Xeni)

Man thinks he is living inside Grand Theft Auto (Mark)

NYC to require $1MM in insurance and a permit to shoot video on public sidewalks (Cory)

Froot Loop straws (Mark)

Some people hated Michael Bay's "Transformers," while Joel Johnson declares himself "totally gay for robots fighting." (Xeni)

Airplane full of poop (Xeni)

Crustaceans chewing up Japanese island (Pesco)

Wikify the problem of ending corruption (Cory)

Itteh bitteh cheezborgers! (Cory)

The sippy cup terrorist secret agent mom, and TSA's weird "Mythbusters" denial.

Giant snake terrorizing Pennsylvania (Pesco)

Scans of old comic book ads, a screensaver, ad for paper spaceship, photo of the genuine article. (Mark)

Map shows how kids aren't allowed to roam around (Mark)

Video: Doze Green one-liner drawing (Pesco)

Taipei street-basket virtuoso throws 140 balls/minute (Mark)

Laugh Out Loud Cats: rediscovered short film (Xeni)

Pac Man Skull (Pesco)

Jamais Cascio on his new hearing aids (Pesco)

The Cosmoboy jacket (Pesco)

SciFi.com is going to nuke its fiction archive (Cory)

Cory's column on the origins of the copyright wars (Cory)

Mr. Wizard (1917-2007) (Pesco)

Cyber-walrus (Cory)

Creationist Archie comic (Mark)

EFF privacy attorney is a magnet for privacy invading street-searches (Cory)

Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s (Mark)

Sexual predators online - the real story (Cory)

White Stripes album sold on thumb drive (Mark)

Terrorists are stupid (Cory)

Flickr users in Germany and Asia complain of image censoring (Xeni)

(Image: Respectful LOLdaptation of a truly amazing photo by Paul Nicklen, as blogged in this BB post).

Pamela Low, Cap'n Crunch creator, RIP (Pesco)

Skytyping (Pesco)

Soviet arcade games: wonderfully horrible (Cory)

Science of forgetting (Pesco)

Laugh Out Loud Cats: more 1900s comics unearthed, and True historic origins of the Laugh Out Loud cats. (Xeni)

Things that don't look like what they're supposed to be: mutant Jesus candles (Mark), Johnny Depp cookies (Xeni), Popsicle plastic surgery (Mark), Turtle popsicle (Mark)

Bradbury denies free speech message in Fahrenheit 451 (Cory)

Do The Right Thing with Sesame Street Toys (Cory)

Realist archive project (Mark)

Google Street View: a cavalcade of reactions, gag pix, paranoid rants (Xeni)

Steampunk Star Trek (Cory)

Cat has camera on collar so we can see what he does (Mark)

Cory's book reviews: Rejuvenile, Execution Channel, Other Side (Cory)

Mark's new blog, call-in podcast, and book: Rule The Web (Mark)

Cory's Internet Filtering editorial for the Guardian (Cory)

YouTubes to make your Mexican grandmother cry (Xeni)

Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird, and Bugs Bunny popsicle (Mark)

Best-ever case-study on free book downloads' impact on sales (Cory)

Amazing mystery of the new AACS key leak, and New AACS key leaks onto 'net (Cory)

How to snoop online (Mark)

Is this Nessie on video?, and Paula Zahn Now: Loren Coleman and Joe Nickell discuss Nessie video (Pesco)

The Great Google Street View Freakout of 2007: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. (Xeni)

The Great LiveJournal Strikethrough of 2007: 1, 2, 3 (Xeni)

Venezuela: Chavez vs. the media vs. Chavez. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. (Xeni)

Damien Hirst's Diamond Skull (Pesco)

Morphing history of female portraiture (Pesco)

New iTunes steals your ability to turn Apple music into iPod-friendly MP3s and EFF finds HUGE block of hidden info in new iTunes tracks (Cory)

Roswell plans UFO theme park (Pesco)

Xeni's snaps from Guatemala

BoingBoing names a Virgin America plane: "Unicorn Chaser" (Xeni)

HD-DVD re-cracked six days *before* it is patched (Cory)

Gibson on the Neuromancer movie rumor (Cory)

The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner (Mark)

Stelarc, posthumanist and artist, implants "third ear" inside his arm (Xeni)

Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner (Cory)

Salvador Dali: What's my line? and TV commercials. (Mark, Pesco)

Dr. Strangelove scenes recreated with everyday stuff (Xeni)

Which troll-fighting techniques work (Cory)

New, searchable index of more than 5,000 vintage LA news photos (Xeni)

Elton and Betty White (Xeni)

Preschoolers asked: What happens when people get old? (Mark)

Bigfoot porn (Pesco)

Gerald Casale and V. Vale perform Mongoloid (Pesco)

Get Illuminated podcast #9 -- Adam "Ape Lad" Koford (Mark)

Stoned cop calls 911 fearing overdose on pot (Pesco)

Evicted: Berkeley's Shipyard maker community (Pesco)

Sam Kieth cover for comic of Cory's Anda's Game (Cory)

The Mystery of Mingering Mike: part 1, part 2, proto-post (Xeni)

Taking LOLcats way too seriously, and even more so. (Xeni)

EFF sues Uri Geller over DMCA takedown abuse (Cory)

Compendium of psychological curiosities (Pesco)

BoingBoingBoing podcast 12: Q-Burns Abstract Message (All of us)

Indian tsunami refugees and organlegging (Cory)

Liveblogging LA's Griffith Park Fire: one, two. (Xeni)

Open source copyright doc wants you to remix footage (Cory)

Video: high-voltage, high-altitude work (Xeni)

Iraq: Kurdish girl stoned to death, mob films it on cameraphones (Xeni)

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus (Mark)

AACS vows to fight people who publish the key (Cory)

Maker Faire previews from May 1-5 (Pesco)

Digg users revolt over AACS key (Cory)

New AACS crack "can't be revoked" (Cory)

Faces of Guitar Heroes (Pesco)

Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit (Mark)

Photo tour of lovably decrepit petting zoo in Los Angeles (Mark)

Japanese nihilist anarchist candidate video and edited versions (Mark)

Play Jane McGonigal's World Without Oil (Pesco)

LOLtrek (Xeni)

Bratton: LAPD attacks on reporters, protestors "worst in 37 years" (Xeni)

Coachella pt. 1: Björk's wild sound machines; report from the turf (Xeni)

Coachella pt. 2: hipsters, robots, ravers, steampunk, 122 bands (Xeni)

Coachella, pt. 3: plastic crunch, raver cruft, ghosts of desert past. (Xeni)

Telerobotic birdwatching (Pesco)

Potentially Earthlike planet discovered outside our solar system (Pesco)

Maker Faire Previews: 1, 2, 3 (Pesco)

Super Mario vs Psycho Crusher (Cory)

Cory's Little Brother reading (Cory)

Mayor of Boston bans Boing Boing (Cory)

Art by Todd Goldman that looks like other artists' work: 1, 2, 3 (Mark)

Get Illuminated Podcast episode 8: Comic Art Magazine (Mark)

Contest: imitate the CA Governor issuing a warning (Mark)

Posts on the Virginia Tech shooting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Xeni)

Why the shootings mean we must support my politics (Cory)

URGENT! Europeans! Last chance to save Europe from worst copyright law in the world! (Cory)

Todd Goldman's lawyers sending nastygrams (Mark)

Mayor of Boston bans BoingBoing (Cory)

Metal detector posts: 1, 2, 3 (Mark)

Red square nebula (Pesco)

Meteorite smuggling in Mauritania (Pesco)

Voynich Manuscript: 1, 2, 3 (Mark)

Buddha Machine: spiritual, generative transistor radio (Cory)

America needs Boing Boing economics (Cory)

Cavalcade of homeowner holdouts (Mark)

Bruce Sterling video explains the future of cities (Cory)

Supporters work to free Egypt blogger Kareem (Xeni)

Ape Lad draws Jackhammer Jill as a hobo (Mark)

Heaven's Gate, ten years later (Pesco), LA Weekly on Heaven's Gate (Mark)

Nikola Tesla profiled by Mark Pilkington (Pesco)

Invasion of the Peeps (Xeni)

FBI: terrorists might drive school-buses, but they probably won't (Cory)

Sticker prototype for uppity bloggers (is there any other kind?), t-shirts (Xeni)

Lovecraft's 70th death-a-versary, Cthulhu adoration everywhere (Xeni)

David Gill reviews Philip K. Dick's new old novel (Pesco)

MAKE article about "antigravity" lifter killed (Mark)

700 sets of 700 drawings (Mark)

Kidnapped "Nun Bun" Resurfaces in Seattle (Xeni)

Time makes Reagan cry with Photoshop, interview (Mark)

Guatemala: Photos from indigenous protest of Bush visit (Xeni)

NPR: Google to purge some data to protect privacy (Xeni)

Pierre Matter's biomech-steampunk sculptures (Pesco)

Michael Crook apologizes to internet for DMCA abuse (Xeni)

SRL and Greg Leyh's Taser Cannon renamed after C&D (Pesco)

Squirrel menace posts: part 1, part 2 (Mark)

Alternate soundtrack to old '70s PSA for union workers (Mark)

Viacom: privacy-hating hypocrites (Cory)

BoingBoingBoing podcast 11: Noah Shachtman, Danger Room (all of us)

Boing Boing portrait: our obsessions, illustrated (Cory)

IMAGE: "Father and Son," shot in Amdo province, Tibet, by Raul Gutierrez (he and his wife have a beautiful new son of their own this week - congrats!). From this Feb. 26 BoingBoing post.

Darwin's "Origin of Species": free audiobook (Xeni)

NPR "Xeni Tech" - RIAA vs. college students, Gizmodo boycott (follow-ups: 1, 2, 3) (Xeni)

Finding Nemo at the sushi bar (Cory)

Video of failed-chute skydiver surviving 12,000 foot fall (Mark)

Rodney Ascher's short film about a freefalling parachutist (Pesco)

Second Life: John Edwards assaulted by poo-slinging communists (Xeni)

Tricking the social voting sites (Cory)

Loren Coleman: No bread, no blog (Pesco)

WaPo editorial on jailed Egyptian blogger, and US responsibility (Xeni)

Steampunk magazine (Cory)

Take a picture in Miami, go to jail (Mark)

Complete New Yorker Magazine on a USB hard drive (DRM crippled) (Mark)

Pop-up porn case update (Mark)

BoingBoingBoing podcast 10: Bonnie Burton, Star Wars fandom (all of us)

Generation labels from the Puritans to Gen Y (Cory)

Why DRM drives piracy (Cory)

Peru: report on links between unsafe sex and public 'net cafes (Xeni)

Moon Over Morocco podcast (Pesco)

Above: movie poster for the mid-'60s bedroom farce "Boeing Boeing," starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis (Thanks, Andrew Tonkin).

Here are a bunch of recent Boeing Boeing posts we think are worth a second peep, in case you missed 'em.

Schneier on Vista (in)security (Cory)

China: new censorship protests against Google and Sina.com (Xeni)

Osama Team Hunger Force: ATHF terror freakout parody video (Xeni)

American Dime Museum closes, auctions oddities (Pesco)

Maltese Falcon swiped (Pesco)

Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted (Cory)

Songs of the Pogo (Cory)

Prosthetic mask makers of World War I (Pesco)

Parrot uses 950 words to converse with people (Mark)

Vintage tech devices that never existed (Mark)

Dating advice for men explained in electrical diagrams (Xeni)

Supremely excellent cat-playing-piano video (Xeni)

Gizmodo emeritus rips all gadget-sites a new one (Cory)

Mexican drug cartels taunt each other with YouTube videos (Xeni)

Anti-evolution, anti-semitic memo under legislator's name (Pesco)

Virtual drug gets you and your Second Life avatar high (Cory)

Maker Faire "auditions" in the SF Bay Area Saturday Feb 24 (Mark)

Reader comment: Brendan says,

Following today's link to the movie poster of the old 60s film version of 'Boeing Boeing', a stage revival of the original play has recently started in London. I'm quite sure it's a wonderful thing. Link

It wasn't all ATHF all the time on Boing Boing this week, even though it may have seemed that way. Here are our favorite posts from the last seven days.

• Disney's employee manual, 1943
• Snakes eat poisonous toads and collect their poison
• Horizontal gene transfer explains evolutionary jumps
• Interior shots of Putin's jet
• Inside organized credit-card fraud
• NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: digital archives may help find "disappeared."
• Amazing Hot Wheels video
• Boston LED terror scare: a message to the media

ReasonableAgreement.org - the anti-EULA (Cory)

Autistic person translates from her language (Cory)

Ray Harryhausen tribute site with lots of good clips (Mark)

Faux cocaine seduces the ladies: creepy '80s TV (Xeni)

Terrorist sympathizer Andy Griffith rails against Patriot Act (Xeni)

Mongolian death worm documentary online (Mark)

HOWTO isolate stem cells from a placenta at home (Pesco)

HOWTO photograph smoke (Pesco)

Mike Love's Geneaology of Influence (Pesco)

Big factory pig farms are some of America's worst polluters (Xeni)