JK Rowling and Warner Brothers have joined in a copyright suit against the publishers of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a highly praised Harry Potterverse reference website-cum-book. Rowling -- who previously gave high praise to the site -- has gone on record saying that it's not right for people to make money by publishing reference books about writers' work. As Salon's Machinst blog says:

In a statement, Rowling added: "It is not reasonable, or legal, for anybody, fan or otherwise, to take an author's hard work, re-organize their characters and plots, and sell them for their own commercial gain. However much an individual claims to love somebody else's work, it does not become theirs to sell."

Has J.K. Rowling ever been to a library? Seriously, I truly wonder. Because if she had, she might have seen many examples of exactly the sort of books she describes as "not reasonable." For instance, a list of the allusions in "Ulysses"; or a complete guide to all of the characters in William Faulkner's fiction; or a compilation and detailed analysis of Bob Dylan's lyrics; or a book containing the complete chronology of the events in David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest."

Hey, J.K. -- can I call you J.K.? -- these are known as "reference books," and, like the HPL, they are not mere "reorganizations" of characters and plots.

They are works of scholarship -- works derived from detailed study of an artist's creations, and intended to aid in research and appreciation of those creations. You might take a look at the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law, which allow people to copy work for "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching ... scholarship, or research."

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

The Dvorak Zine has a free comic that narrates the storied history of the miserable QWERTY layout and its superior cousin, Dvorak, which practically no one uses, despite that fact that QWERTY is slow, gives you RSI, and is the keyboard layout most frequently employed by baby-eating sociopaths.

Seriously, the comic makes a great case, after the fashion of all people who do stuff that is empirically better but that no one else does (eating healthy food, taking regular exercise, and yes, switching to free software, cough cough).

I type QWERTY really goddamned fast, and it's really baked in for me. I even have dreams in which I type in QWERTY. My old roommate was a Dvorak convert and he tried to bring me over to the side of sweet reason more than once, without success, I'm afraid. Maybe it's time to try again. Link (Thanks, Andrea!)

During yesterday's RIAA trial proceedings in Virgin v. Thomas, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's the head of litigation. admitted that the 20,000+ anti-downloader lawsuits run by the labels had cost the companies "millions" and were enormous money-losers. I had previously heard from an industry insider that they were running the suits on a break-even basis, shaving costs by running a sloppy boiler-room operation that used cheap telephone thugs and flimsy, badly assembled evidence to extort a few thousand bucks from each of the victims, just barely breaking even.

The next line of questioning was how many suits the RIAA has filed so far. Pariser estimated the number at a "few thousand." "More like 20,000," suggested Toder. "That's probably an overstatement," Pariser replied. She then made perhaps the most startling comment of the day. Saying that the record labels have spent "millions" on the lawsuits, she then said that "we've lost money on this program."

The RIAA's settlement amounts are typically in the neighborhood of $3,000-$4,000 for those who settle once they receive a letter from the music industry. On the other side of the balance sheet is the amount of money paid to SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) to conduct its investigations, and the cash spent on the RIAA's legal team and on local counsel to help with the various cases. As Pariser admitted under oath today, the entire campaign is a money pit.

Link

Mother Jones has a long, chilling feature on The Judge Rotenberg Education Center, a private radical behavior-modification school based in Canton, Mass. The school is run by a rogue behaviorist who uses discredited "punishment" techniques -- electroshock -- on children as young as nine to change their personalities. Matthew Israel, the school's $400,000/year executive director, straps homemade, overpowered shock apparatus to children (including severely autistic and retarded kids) and has his staff administer strong shocks for even minor infractions. Some children have been shocked thousands of times a day, and several children have died at the school.

Eight states send troubled children to the school, where "high functioning" kids are "educated" by being sat in front of computers all day, running through automated tutorial programs. Talking, fidgeting, or acting out during this "school" time is punished with shocks. Some kids' shock apparatus misfires, shocking them without any provocation. The staff are instructed to activate the shock apparatus out of sight of the children, so that they can't mentally or physically prepare for it.

The Rotenberg process lacks any kind of scientific basis, and the school uses a 20-year-old film of its "successes" to convince parents to send their children to the program -- however, some of the success stories in the film are still institutionalized at Rotenberg 20 years after their "cure," wheelchair bound and in terrible shape.

Then, in June of 2006, a report produced by the New York State Education Department threatened to destroy the program's carefully cultivated image. A group of investigators, including three psychologists, spent five days at the Rotenberg Center and compiled a 26-page document packed with damning findings.

* Staff shock kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance" and once threatened to shock a girl who sneezed and then asked for a tissue.
* Some students must "earn" meals by not displaying certain behaviors. Otherwise they are "made to throw a predetermined caloric portion of their food into the garbage."
* When students enter and leave the school each day, "almost all" are wearing some type of restraints, such as handcuffs or leg shackles.
* "Students may be restrained"--on a four-point restraint board or chair--"for extensive periods of time (e.g. hours or intermittently for days)."
* Some students are shocked while strapped to the restraint board.
* A "majority" of employees "serving as classroom teachers" are "not certified teachers."
* Rotenberg's marketing reps bestow presents on prospective families--"e.g. a gift bag for the family, basketball for the student."
* Although the center has described its shock device as "approved" by the fda in its promotional materials, it "has not been approved."
* The facility collects "comprehensive data" on behaviors it seeks to eliminate, but "there was no evidence of the collection of data on replacement or positive behaviors."
* The facility makes no assessment of the "possible collateral effects of punishment such as depression, anxiety, and/or social withdrawal."

Link

UPDATE (08-30, 12pm PT): Ryan Singel at Wired News Threat Level blog suggested filing a FOIA request around this incident, and I plan to do so with his kind assistance (Link to his post). Will post what I learn here on BoingBoing.

- - - - - - - - - -

I flew from JFK to LAX today, and something really weird happened when I arrived (at about 230PM local time).

I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.

Some of the TSA guards then backed up against walls in the hallway, and sort of barked at anyone who tried to move a few feet away from their "spot," like towards chairs to sit down or whatever.

One TSA guard jogged ahead, back towards the arrival gates (United, this was Terminal 7). At first I assumed maybe it was some weird security drill? A few of us asked what was going on, and got terse answers, like, "Security review." WTF? 5 minutes passed. 10, 15, 20. The two teen Japanese tourists about ten feet behind me looked utterly dazed -- welcome to America, guys. I was really jetlagged and cranky, wanted to move a few feet and sit down, but the TSA lady nearest me kind of snapped at me to stop and stay frozen where I was when the order went out.

After 30 minutes, the TSA people said, okay, you may leave now. And everyone unfroze, and went and got their bags. No explanation. I guess I should have pressed for an explanation, or demanded to know why we were being held without our consent and without a provided reason, but I was really tired and just wanted to get the hell out of there and go home. Perhaps I was wrong to have just walked away.

Has anyone else out there experienced this kind of thing in a US airport? Was this some sort of weird TSA fire drill, or was there an actual security incident with a perceived imminent threat?

The guards were all just sort of standing around scratching their heads, looking bored, I definitely didn't have the sense there was any urgency. But they held us there, standing, frozen, for 30 minutes. I felt like we were in an undiscovered Godard movie or something, and some Parisian babe with heavy eyeliner was going to burst in any moment and start reciting poetry. Totally surreal.

Love to hear anyone else's first-hand accounts of anything similar in the comments, if you've experienced it lately.

30-year-old musician, comic book author, and painter Mazen Kerbaj in Beirut has been blogging throughout the recent violence. You can view some of his recent drawings here on his blog.

Listen to a six-minute ambient, improvisational music piece he performed -- accompanied by the sound of falling bombs. "Starry Night" -- Audio link, alternate MP3 link, more links.

Cropped above: "Family Tree," here's the full-size: Link. "This is not a political blog," writes Mazen, and he continues:

for the israeli musicians, painters, writers, thinkers, intellectuals and for all the israeli in israel and around the world who sent us supportive emails and comments,

we know you are here.
we know you are hearing us.
we know you are hearing the bombs getting down on civilians and kids.
kids from lebanon.
kids from israel.
kids from al over the world.

we know that like us, you feel ashamed.

we know you are not a lot.

but we shall meet one day.
when our people will wake up.
in 10.000 years.

Link. (Thanks, Mr Angry)

Guillaume Reymond and his collaborators at NOTsoNOISY created this amazing stop-motion video of space invaders. Sixty-seven people act as the "pixels." The three minute video took 4 hours to film. It was a project for the festival Belluard Bollwerk International earlier this month in Fribourg, Switzerland. Last year, the group produced a similar piece based on Pong.
Link to video on YouTube, Link to project page

People magazine profiles Ben Underwood, a blind 14-year-old who apparently uses echolocation to "see." Ben, sightless since the age of 3, makes loud clicking noises with his tongue and then listens for the echo. According to the article, he can not only detect distance but sometimes the material of an object based on how soft, dense, or sharp the echo is. From the People profile:

Ben's ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say experts, extraordinary. "His skills are rare," says Dan Kish, a blind psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. "Ben pushes the limits of human perception."

Kish has taught echolocation to scores of blind people as a supplement to more traditional methods, such as walking with a cane or a guide dog, but only a handful of people in the world use echolocation alone to get around, according to the American Foundation for the Blind...

Ben learned how to read Braille and walk with a cane, but when he was 3, he also began teaching himself echolocation, something he picked up by tossing objects and making clicking sounds to find them. His sense of hearing, teachers noticed, was exceptional. "One time a CD fell off his desk and I was reaching for it when he said, 'Nah, I got it,'" says Kalli Carvalho, his language arts instructor. "He went right to it. Didn't feel around. He just knew where it was because he heard where it hit." Haase took walks with Ben to help him practice locating objects. "I said, 'Okay, my car is the third car parked down the street. Tell me when we get there,' " she says. "As we pass the first vehicle, he says, 'There's the first car. Actually, a truck.' And it was a pickup. He could tell the difference."

Link to People, More on human echolocation here and here

Stuart Hughes, the BBC correspondent and blogger whose work and personal experiences in Iraq we've blogged many times before, is now in Beirut. He's posting audio, photos, text, and other media from the field, "Israeli shelling permitting." Shown here: "My flak jacket and helmet - I never leave the office without it." Link to blog, and here's his Flickr photostream where he'll be uploading pics. Here's a pretty incredible audio post from yesterday, in which Stuart notices a new neighbor next to the BBC camp -- a large rocket launcher: Link.

Sticker Nation, the new Disinformation book on Srini Kumar's radical sticker-ganda goofiness, is reviewed here. Among the countless subversive slogans immortalized in his work, some of my favorites are:

* ask me about my conspiracy theory
* admit that goth is ridiculous
* you LIVE in that head?
* thou shalt not torture
* write shit down
* tastes like wiccan
* more orgasms fewer kids
* marxists get crazy laid
* Now that you've conquered Iraq, why don't you schmucks move there.
* assume this phone is tapped
* LINUX is the answer
* cheer up, emo kid
* mosh clockwise
* Do not buy anything from any bake sale that the air force may hold to buy a bomber, because those bombs will kill people.

Link

It's always fun to find out about the artists responsible for creating the illustrations that have been permanently burned into my brain since early childhood. Just look at these beautiful cereal box packages designed by Roger Bradfield.

(Biggify Jets and Trix)

I don't want to slam today's talented and hard working cereal-box designers because I'm sure that they would love to come up with designs that are as elegant and appealing at Bradfield's. It's not the fault of illustrators that many modern packages are hideous. The blame goes to the brand managers at cereal companies who think they are art directors but have no artistic taste.

Look at this sad example of how a fantastic character and a logo can be utterly ruined:

(Biggify Trix)

The leering, brain-damaged rabbit looks frightening.

Dan Goodsell of A Sampler of Things has a nice write-up on Bradfield.

I sent [Bradfield] an email to see if he had worked on any kids food. Well he wrote back and told me that he had worked on the General Mills cereal boxes of the early 60's! He had worked on Kix, Trix, Wheaties, Jets and did the fronts for many of the signature boxes of the time. WOW.

He also did some work on Mr Bubble and some Pillsbury projects. One other great thing he did was all the spot illustraions for the Bisquick Cookbook in 1964. It is amazing to see all the creativity and skill he poured into this book so I scanned a few of my favorites.

Roger continues to paint and many of his great kids book from the 1960's & 1970's are now being republished. It is great to think that his incredible artwork will be enjoyed by many generations to come.

Link

BoingBoing reader Jace says,

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. Indian ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. SpectraNet, MTNL, Reliance, and as of Monday afternoon, Airtel. State-backed BSNL and VSNL have not started yet but likely will soon. The known list of blocked domains is *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*.

Yes folks, the Indian government has decided to censor blogs and refused to explain why. This morning Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue directives to ISPs. His response: "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?"

If any Boing Boing readers in India find several sites inaccessible today, please call your ISP and demand to know why. If you can help, please join the coordinating group: Link.

Link to Shivam's post, and Jace is following developments on his blog, here.

Manish adds,

The block is still spreading through Indian ISPs. This recalls Pakistan's Blogspot ban during the Danish cartoon controversy and India's Yahoo Groups ban in '03 to shut down a separatist forum.

Dina Mehta says,

The plot gets thicker and thicker as more bloggers are getting alerted to the fact that an increasing number of Indian ISP's are banning blogspot and typepad blogs and geocities.com. Several detailed posts on this, with regular updates here: withinandwithout.com, Conversations with Dina, and Travel Tales from India.

There's a wiki here: Link. We're treading with a little caution before we go whole-hog at the government. There is a possibility that it is a mistake - where a directive from the government on a few blogs might have been misrepresented by ISP's here - who have blocked the entire sites.

Amit Varma says,

Amit Agarwal has some tips on how Indian bloggers can circumvent the ban on Blogspot here: Link. More here: Link.

Update, 11AM PT: Shii says,

An Indian political blog is reporting that the ban was initiated by the Indian intelligence service to stop terrorism: Link. According totheir source, the terrorists are using blogs to communicate. Not only is this useless (because the terrorists can simply use proxies), it's akin to shutting off the country's telephone service because terrorists talk to each other through phones.

Jim says,

Indian Censorship can easily be bypassed when using TorPark. It's a no-install version of Firefox that uses the Tor Network for communication. This should also work in China and other countries that filter the web.

And of course, this and many other censorship workarounds at BoingBoing's "How to Defeat Censorware."

Vijay says,

I am not yet facing any of the blocking effects as reported by several Indian bloggers. I have noticed a certain pattern here. The blocking seems to be affecting city users while rural netizens have been spared of this curb for now. I have mentioned this in detail here.

Randall Park directed this lowbrow, cheeseball comic short and performs the role of Dr. Miracles: a medical provider who has a most NSFW method for curing what ails the worst-off patients in an urban hospital. Think "E.R." meets bad 1970s porno. Link (Thanks, Jason Wishnow!)

This darling kitten with two faces was born on Wednesday in Grove City, Ohio. According to NBC10.com, it meows in unison and so far is nursing just fine with the rest of the litter.
Link

Sofa-bricks are washable, adhesive-backed soft "bricks" you can use to turn walls and floors into semi-permanent lounging areas (for example, you can stack them around the head of your bed to give you something to sit up against when you're working).

The simple mould of SOFA BRICK enables manufacture from various materials. For example, cork grains will offer a soft, comfortable brick.

Link (via Cribcandy)

MCM sez, "After reading about Captain Copyright and how some people think it's okay to brainwash small kids into believing the current state of copyright nonsense is somehow sacred, I thought it might be nice to make an anti-DRM story to show kids an alternative. So I wrote a short little book that parents can read to their kids at night, to reinforce the notion that yes, sharing IS good, no matter what they try and tell you at school. It's not A.A. Milne, but I hope it does the job. CC Sampling+ licensed download of a free PDF on the linked page."

Just then, Duck came bounding up the road. She was covered from head to toe in sticky, gooey apple sauce.

"Yoooooou stinky Pig!" yelled Duck.

"What happened to YOU?" gasped Pig.

"My baby duckling tried to eat an apple for snack time, and ALL THE APPLES EXPLODED! Why can't I share the apples with my family, Pig?"

"Oh..." said Pig.

Link (Thanks, MCM!)

Pink Tentacle has some great photos of medical devices on display at the International Modern Hospital Show 2006 in Tokyo.

[This] photo shows a transnasal endoscope developed by FUJIFILM Medical Co., Ltd. and Fujinon Toshiba ES Systems Co., Ltd. Surveys show that 90% of patients who have experienced endoscopy think it is more comfortable to enter through the nose (as opposed to through the mouth or anus). I hope the expression on this guy’s face is no indication of his comfort level.

Link

Here's a wonderful list of Non-Errors ("Those usages people keep telling you are wrong but which are actually standard in English"). I love this stuff. English is a brawling, promiscuous drunkard of a language made up of mispronounced and stolen words from other languages, and that's what makes it such a glory to speak. Usage pecksniffs who try to tell you that colorful, unambiguous, expressive turns of phrase or sentence structure are incorrect are the worst kind of bores.

Dinner is done; people are finished.
I pronounce this an antiquated distinction rarely observed in modern speech. Nobody really supposes the speaker is saying he or she has been roasted to a turn. In older usage people said, "I have done" to indicate they had completed an action. "I am done" is not really so very different.

Crops are raised; children are reared.
Old-fashioned writers insist that you raise crops and rear children; but in modern American English children are usually "raised."

"You've got mail" should be "you have mail."
The "have" contracted in phrases like this is merely an auxiliary verb indicating the present perfect tense, not an expression of possession. It is not a redundancy. Compare: "You've sent the mail."

Link (via Kottke)

I've just finished L. Timmel Duchamp's first novel, Alanya to Alanya, the first book in a feminist science fiction series of novels about pacifist aliens working with human activists to topple a corrupt authoritarian political establishment. The action opens in 2076, when environmental cataclysms and political instability have birthed a new, rigid social order with an elite, called The Executives, running the majority of the world's government. Executives hold onto their power with a mixture of brutal military oppression and a bread-and-circuses program of propaganda and "tubefood." This is ended when an alien species comes to Earth and shuts down all electronic equipment, but not before announcing that they have taken charge of the planet and require that each of the world's governments send them three unarmed women to negotiate on humanity's behalf. The negotiation will determine the tenor of a new egalitarian, pacifist political regime.

Naturally, this drives the Executive berserk; they decide that the "aliens" are in fact sophisticated terrorists and resolve to fight them -- only to face demonstration after demonstration of the absolute, unearthly power that the invaders possess.

The story follows Kay Zeldin, a retired intelligence officer turned academic, who is brought back into the field by the loathsome Sedgewick, the head of the secret police and military apparatus -- who also happens to be an old lover and partner of hers. Zeldin is sent onto the alien ship to negotiate on behalf of the US, and balances on a knife-edge between terror of Sedgewick and outrage at the aliens and their activist allies who have taken her country hostage.

This is not a subtle book. I don't think that there's a single sympathetic major male character in it -- even the anarcho-syndicalist boyfriend of one of the activists dismisses her feminism as divisive "identity politics." But then again, subtlety is hardly the point of political, dystopian science fiction. If Alanya to Alanya is explicit and one-sided about its point of view, it is no more so than 1984 or Brave New World or Frankenstein are. And what's more, it's absolutely true that issues of gender are very divisive within progressive political movements.

Alanya to Alanya does just what a poltiical sf novel should do: it leavens its political message with first-rate futuristic extrapolation, chilling dystopianism and a breathless adventure story that keeps you turning the pages. It was a refreshing read and a rare example of deft political storytelling. Link

Fascinating article about Virgin's new venture, Virgin Comics, whose mission is to create a line of comics and animated films drawn from Indian and South-Asian myths and culture, creating a mainstream "Bollywood" for comics and toons:

In "Spider-Man: India," the face under the famous mask is familiar - sort of. Mumbai-dwelling teen misfit Pavitr Prabhakar gains superhuman powers. This time, though, they come not from the bite of a mutant spider, but by karmic decree from a godlike being. Kang portrays the familiar villains Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus as demons of Hindu mythology. Characters use modern Hindi slang and make knowing Bollywood references (glossary thoughtfully provided). But like his New York counterpart, Pavitr learns the hard way that "with great power there must also come great responsibility." Some things are true in every culture.

Link (Thanks, Tom!)

Update: Jason sez, "The quote cited in the post refers to a 2004 series published by Marvel that helped to inspire the Virgin line. Virgin Comics is not an imprint of Marvel or any other publisher."

SERPENT (Scientific and Environmental ROV Partnership using Existing iNdustrial Technology) is hosting a wondrous online gallery of otherworldly photos from this year's BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition. Seen here: "A 'piglet squid' swimming around subsea equipment," submitted by Alan Kinnear.
Link (via Kirsten Anderson's Thumbmonkey)

Here's a wonderful article on the history of joke-telling under Soviet communism; from the earliest jokes after the October Revolution to the jokes that led up to the fall of Wall.

Yet there is an obvious problem with the idea that communist jokes represented an act of revolt: it wasn't just opponents of the regime who told them. Stalin himself cracked them, including this one about a visit from a Georgian delegation: They come, they talk to Stalin, and then they go, heading off down the Kremlin's corridors. Stalin starts looking for his pipe. He can't find it. He calls in Beria, the dreaded head of his secret police. "Go after the delegation, and find out which one took my pipe," he says. Beria scuttles off down the corridor. Five minutes later Stalin finds his pipe under a pile of papers. He calls Beria—"Look, I've found my pipe." "It's too late," Beria says, "half the delegation admitted they took your pipe, and the other half died during questioning."

Link (via Oblomovka!)

Today's New York Times reports on new developments in neuroprosthetics, implants enabling the control of technology like robotics and computers with your thoughts. From the NYT:

In separate experiments, the first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, was able to move a cursor, open e-mail, play a simple video game called Pong and draw a crude circle on the screen. He could change the channel or volume of a television set, move a robot arm somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.

Although his cursor control was sometimes wobbly, the basic movements were not hard to learn. “I pretty much had that mastered in four days,’’ Mr. Nagle, now 26, said in a telephone interview from the New England Sinai Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Stoughton, Mass., where he lives. He said the implant did not cause any pain...

The sensor measures 4 millimeters — about one sixth of an inch — on a side and contains 100 tiny electrodes. The device was implanted in the area of Mr. Nagle’s motor cortex that is responsible for arm movement, and was connected to a pedestal that protruded from the top of his skull. Link (Thanks, Xeni!)

The results of the experiments, conducted by Brown University professor John Donoghue and his team, were published in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature. The magazine's companion Web site has also published a free "Web Focus" that includes interviews, video of the experiments, and a collection of key papers in the field of brain-machine interfaces. Highly recommended browsing.

Link to Nature's Web Focus, Link to 2005 article from Wired about Nagle and brain implants

Over at Corante.com, Derek Lowe issues an impassioned plea to PR departments and photographers on behalf of all people who work in laboratories: enough with the kooky colored gel lighting effects:

[O]ur instruments do not, regrettably, emit orange glows that light our faces up from beneath, not for the most part, and if they start doing that we generally don't bend closer so as to emphasize the thoughtful contours of our faces. When we hold up Erlenmeyer flasks to eye level to see the future of research in them, which we try not to do too often because we usually don't want to know, rarely is this accompanied by an eerie red light coming from the general direction of our pockets. It's a bad sign when that happens, actually.

Link

Coop says: "Forget the Freemasons, the illuminati, or Bill Gates. If you have the stomach for it, gaze upon the faces of the men who truly do run this sick and corrupt world. I will probably be quickly and quietly 'disappeared' for revealing this." Link

Reader comments:

Michael says:

Seems Boing Boing is discovering Germany after all (see Xeni's "Raumpatrouille Orion" post). Though the images shown are from the Netherlands, costumes like these are extremely popular (and extremely prestigous) in the German Carnival Mardi Gras (adopted by the Dutch too). German Carnival runs from November 11 (@11:11:am) until about 4 weeks prior to Easter. It is based on pagan rites of driving out winter. but especially in the Rhine area (Mainz, Cologne, Düsseldorf) it turned into opposition against the French occupation in the 19th century. People made phantasy uniforms based on the French uniforms and made parodistic military dances all under the disguise of the Carnival celebrations. There is a brief English article on Wikipedia.

Nowadays, this subversive festivities have turned into a serious (in every aspect) business. To become "Prince Carnival" (as shown on the pics) cost you a lot of money and dedication, but is connected with serious business aspects. The "organized carnival" as they call themselves have strict rules and sometime it's really pathetic. In many cities there are movements for an easygoing "alternative carnival" which rests on the same historic roots, but is again subversive, funny and unrespectful.

You get some more (recent) pics via this search

Joris says:

On the off chance that you are really interested why the hell middle-aged men dress up in such a fashion (and not just point-and-laugh at peculiar clothes).

This is a gallery of pictures of the line of 'prince carnaval' of the Dutch village of Heijen.

'Prince carnaval' is the head of carnival during this period. Carnival is only celebrated in the provinces Brabant and Limburg of The Netherlands. During the 5 day height of carnival, the prince becomes the defacto mayor of the city/town/village, the city is then known with its carnival name and everyone parties dressed up. Quite a lot of beer is involved in this. The celebration itself is mentioned in documents from 1673 and is considered one of the true highlights of the year in the South of the Netherlands.

Sandy says:

In case you don't know who the Masters are: they're the past and present Princes from the Carnaval Club "de Wortelpin" (sort of means "carrot pin") in Heijen, a tiny village in the Netherlands. Each year every Carnaval Club elects a new Prince and his Council of 11 men. I've put a message in their guestbook to let them know of their notoriety (so watch your back!)

My husband is Dutch and when we lived in Boskoop (another tiny Dutch village) he was a member of the Carnaval Club "de Krooshappers". If you click on their gallery (fotoboek) then on "Raad van 11" you can see THESE masters of the world are all clowns! (Theme for this year in Boskoop).

Interestingly, Carnaval in the Netherlands officially starts at 11:11am on 11 November - which in Australia is Remembrance Day for the war dead, quite a contrast.

I also wanted to mention that one of the nice things about Carnaval in the Netherlands is that it is NOT just for the young and gorgeous, like its counterpart in Brazil. There are parties for people of all ages, from children to the elderly; a street procession with costumes, and several big parties. Even small villages will have several Carnaval Clubs, but they all go to the same parties. The main party is, of course, one big booze up. Most of the village is drunk for three days. I won a prize for my pig costume (I was actually meant to be a merino, but who cares...)

Walter says:

The Dutch princes of carnaval are known for making people disappear, indeed. They're the 'mayor' of the southern cities and towns in the Netherlands for a short period in february, and people tend to go lost in that few days - mostly because of drinking to much beer. They reappear with a hangover, eventually.

Personally, i'm glad I don't live in the south.

Rogier says:

Take it from an ex-Dutchman, now a naturalized Yankee: Those mirth-inducing photos have to do with a centuries-old Dutch tradition called carnaval.

Every year in the spring, in Holland's southernmost two provinces, Brabant and Limburg, a day or two is set aside for merry-making. People dress up in preposterous costumes, drink large quantities of beer, and take part in -- or toast -- the parade floats that every self-respecting town puts on.

The festivities take place under the auspices of 'Prince Carnaval,' who commands a Council of Eleven (eleven being the number of zaniness). A new Prince Carnaval -- one in each town -- is locally elected every year. Those pictures you linked to, of the guys in the startlingly awful get-up, are the portraits of the successive princes in the town of Heijen, Limburg.

Carnaval is celebrated elsewhere in the world too -- Germany and Brazil come to mind, although only the Brazilian version has made into America's pop-culture consciousness.

BB reader Scott says,

I'm interning here in Beijing for Nokia over the summer. For the past several weeks, we've been experiencing the oddest weather -- almost every day has been beautiful cool and sunny...but at night, come 7PM-ish, the sky turns forebodingly dark and we get these magnificent thunderstorms that last well into the early morning hours.

I asked my boss at work today why this was happening, because apparently rain in Beijing during the summer is quite unusual. He told me over dinner that there are actually people who launch these rockets filled with chemicals into the clouds, which causes the rainfall. I had a hard time believing him -- I jokingly mentioned it had to be some conspiracy theory about some stranded Russian scientists in Siberia left over from the cold war.

Anyways, I decided to use the ol' JFGI (Just Fucking Google It) Philosophy to see what turned up. What I got was unexpected -- apparently this cloud-seeding business is pretty common, but I've never seen it used in the US before. This article I found was particularly informative, but this recent Reuters article really tipped me off to the whole thing when I googled for "Rain in Beijing."

Reader comment: Garrett Kelly says,

One of my friends who's into the whole weatherwars.info stuff once sent me this link to a U.S. company: weathermod.com. I thought it must be a joke, but I even called them late at night and someone picked up the phone and said in a matter of fact voice, "thanks for calling Weather Modification Inc., how can I help you?"

Todd Hartman says,

There has been interest in cloud seeding in the United States, though it has not been publicized all that much. The NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory - Hurricane Research Division has been looking at cloud seeding as a method for lessening the impact of hurricanes. Link.

Margot Kaminski says,

i worked as a ski instructor in colorado this past winter, and there was/is definite talk of cloudseeding in the us for major ski resorts. helps them out with snow conditions. Link, and another.

Ookami Snow says,

In Western Kansas cloud seeding is a common practice. I am not sure who is in charge of doing it, but for almost any large thunderstorm you can see a small airplane flinging into the storm going to release the rain causing chemicals. The reason that they seed the large thunderstorms is so that it rains and the storm loses energy so that it will not produce hail, which would damage the crops. I was not aware that people did not know that this was going on in America, because I can remember this practice going on for as long as I have lived in Western Kansas.

Eric Lee says,

I saw your post about the cloud-seeding and was reminded of a news clipping that my Earth Science professor in college shared with us. Back in 1916, one Charles Hatfield was able to seed the clouds in San Diego to fix the hardcore drought that had been doing on since 1912. It produced so much rain that excessive flooding took place in Mission Valley which ended up causing the rupturing of dams, and I even think a few deaths. And then he sued the people who hired him for not paying up! Link to article

Oli says,

There was the suggestion that a storm that almost wiped out Lynmouth (a town in Cornwall, England) in the 1950's was actually the direct result of the British Government toying with weather-seeding.

From Wikipedia - "In 2001, a BBC Radio 4 documentary featured suggestions that the events of 1952 were connected to government cloud seeding experiments being conducted in southern England at the time. There does not presently seem to be any direct evidence to support such allegations, but conspiracy theories have been fuelled by rumours of missing or destroyed government documents relating to the experiments."

Carl Malamud says,

In reference to your post about weather seeding and Charles Hatfield, I can't recommend enough "The Wizard of Sun City: The Strange True Story of Charles Hatfield, the Rainmaker Who Drowned a City's Dreams" by Garry Jenkins. Available at your local independent bookstore.

Amazon link.

EFF has put together a list of "Frequently Awkward Questions" for the entertainment industry, "tough questions for times when you hear entertainment industry representatives speaking and want to challenge their positions."

# The RIAA has sued more than 20,000 music fans for file sharing, yet file sharing continues to rapidly increase both online and offline. When will you stop suing music fans?

# The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing, who have on average paid a $3,750 settlement. That's over $75,000,000. Has any money collected from your lawsuits gone to pay actual artists? Where's all that money going?

# The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing. Recently, an RIAA representative reportedly suggested that "students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford [P2P lawsuit] settlements." Do you stand by this advice? Is this really good advice for our children's futures?

# The RIAA said that it only went after individual file sharers because you couldn't go after P2P system creators. After the Supreme Court's Grokster decision, shouldn't you stop going after music fans?

Link

"Lycos is selling its Wired News unit to Condé Nast Publications for $25 million, Lycos parent Daum Communications announced in Korea late Tuesday, a deal that brings Wired.com and Wired magazine under the same owner after an eight-year separation." OMGWTFBBQLINK!!!1!!1one.

Our sources in Pyongyang say Wired News' successful missile test prompted the reunification.

Disclosure: I'm a contributor to both Wired News and Wired Magazine, and I'm so excited to hear this I could just spontaneously combust right now. (Thanks, Kourosh Karimkhany and Paul Boutin!)

At the Burbank-based workshop of Sword & Stone, master blacksmith Tony Swatton forges handcrafted pieces -- some futuristic, some historically accurate -- for use in TV, movies, and on stage.

Their website is full of droolworthy works created for