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Friday, March 22nd, 2013
- NPR Xeni Tech - Guatemala: digital archives may help find ...
- NPR "Xeni Tech" - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future (and new ...
- NPR Xeni Tech: Guatemala Project Builds Grassroots Tech - Boing ...
- NPR Xeni Tech: Storm Victims' Remains Exhumed in Guatemala ...
- NPR Xeni Tech - Reporter's notebook: Guatemala - Boing Boing
- Genocide trial begins in Guatemala, for US-trained former dictator ...
- Guatemala: Audio and video livestreams of genocide trial for ex ...
- Guatemala: Christmas Day video and audio snapshots - Boing Boing
- NPR "Xeni Tech" - Guatemala: Unearthing the Future (and new ...
| Time | Event |
| 12:55a | Cory signing Rapture of the Nerds at Forbidden Planet London tomorrow
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| 4:07a | Donglegate The fight against ingrained sexism in tech culture is gruelling indeed; but what do you do when an off-color joke about "dongles" leads not only to internet drama, but everyone—including the claimed victim—getting fired? Ars Technica sums up "Donglegate". Adds Amanda Blum: everyone lost. |
| 4:15a | Well-planned bank heist fails In a daring, Hollywood-style bank heist, a crack team of thieves occupied offices above their target, covered its windows to make it look like they were working on renovations, cut through a concrete floor to gain access to a secure area, bypassed an alarm system, and used hockey bags to exfiltrate $293,000 from the vault within. Then they were arrested in a field. [Reuters] |
| 4:31a | Girl, 7, brought into pepper-spray fight Stephanie Farr, at Philly.com:
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| 4:34a | Polite boos now OK at Riverhead town board meetings A ban on booing has been lifted at Town Hall board meetings in Riverhead, N.Y., but officials warn that only polite booing will be permitted. [Newsday] |
| 4:39a | Vatican: Batman has "grown bitter and more vengeful" The Vatican reassured the Catholic faithful that it hadn't been hacked Thursday after as unusual tweet--"Holy Switcheroo! Batman has grown bitter, more vengeful with the years"--appeared on a popular news feed. |
| 5:36a | Apple removes Sweatshop iOS game
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| 5:54a | MAD Artist's Edition: a massive tribute to Harvey Kurtzman
IDW's Artist's Edition series is a line of enormous (15" x 22")</font> hardcover art-books that reproduce the full-page, camera-ready paste-ups used to create classic comics, from Groo to Spider-Man, offering a rare look at the white-outs, annotations, corrections, and pencil-marks that give tantalizing hints about the hidden workings of these amazing pages. A recent and most welcome addition to the series is MAD: Artist's Edition, a spectacular tribute to the early years of the magazine and especially to the brilliant satire of Harvey Kurtzman, one of the great heroes of satire, which features an introduction by Terry Gilliam himself. MAD: Artist's Edition isn't just an amazing book, it's an amazing object, a massive and weighty presence that drew me magnetically to it as soon as I got it back to my office. I spent the next several hours on a rug on the floor with it, clambering all around it (it's much easier to move yourself than a book this size!)</font>, marvelling and delighting at it. I snapped a few highlights (full-rez photos here)</font> to give you a sense of what's going on here.
Let's start with the obvious: Kurtzman was a genius of parody, with a wolvertonian grasp of the grotesque and a sense of humor that was capable of expressing itself in both broad and subtle strokes. This was a man who could capture both drama and comedy, as in this sequence from Smilin' Melvin', where the punchline is just a lagniappe on top of a sequence that is as illustrative as it is absurd:
And Prince Valiant is reproduced with pitch-perfect veracity, even when he's holding his ass and screaming in agony:
It's that veering between styles and modes that really makes this stuff sing. Is Howdy Doody a daemonic possessed toy, or a agent of commercial forces bent at getting kids hooked on booze? Why choose?
Not only could Kurtzman strike some wolvertonian notes, he could also write some spectacular material for Wolverton to illustrate, like the series of full-page spreads dedicated to portraits of typical MAD readers:
And since this is such a big ole compendium, the IDW folks saw fit to include these illos as finished inks, later in the book:
It's only the book's rather smashing price-tag (north of $225) that stopped me from grabbing a scalpel and hacking out some of the full-page sheets and the splashes, as every one of them would make a fantastic framed piece:
There's even a lavishly illustrated page of fake classifieds:
Every detail of this book is pretty damned special, right down to the end-papers:
Update:,/b> You can also get this from IDW direct for $150! |
| 6:00a | Interview with Peter Clines, author of Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots
Peter Clines is the author of Ex-Heroes, a science fiction novel about super humans trying to save what remains of Los Angeles in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Above, the cover for the Clines' upcoming follow-up novel: Ex-Patriots. Below, an interview with Clines about his love of Dr. Who. (Keep your eye out for 3 Doctor Who Novels coming out April 2: Plague of the Cybermen, Shroud of Sorrow, and The Dalek Generation.) Originally published by a small, print-on-demand press without any publicity or marketing support and almost no physical distribution, Peter Clines’s brilliant novels, Ex-Heroes and the forthcoming Ex-Patriots -- which combine the best of the sci-fi, thriller, horror, and adventure fiction genres -- still managed to draw an incredible cult following. Now, Broadway is thrilled to introduce Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots to a whole new slew of fans with the release of these paperback originals. With two more novels to follow in the series, including Ex-Communication (July 9, 2013), Ex-Heroes and Ex-Patriots are sure to appeal to fans of such hits as Watchmen, World War Z, and Ready Player One. How big of a role did Doctor Who play in your decision to become a writer?It was a huge influence. I watched the show religiously as a kid, and even then I was aware that a good story could really help make up for cheap sets and rubber monsters (pay attention, SyFy!). I got chills from cliffhanger endings in “The Face of Evil” and “The Horror of Fang Rock.” Davros in “Genesis of the Daleks” was the first time I ever realized a character was evil. I always knew they were the bad guys out there, but Michael Wisher as Davros was just pure evil. And I loved the brilliant plot-twists that could be either scary or kind of sad and dramatic. Not to mention the fact that the whole show is about someone who gave up their life so they could try to make a difference. It was just fantastic storytelling, and it made me want to tell stories that would get the same reactions from people.
Of all of the actors who played Doctor Who, which was your favorite?I’d have to say Tom Baker. The scarf, the hat, a dozen layers of clothing... that’s always going to be the Doctor to me. I think Doctor Who is a lot like James Bond—the first one you’re ever exposed to is the “real” one and then other actors get brought in to play the part as time goes by. Why do you think the character and story continues to thrill fans, old and new alike?The TARDIS and time travel are fun, the monsters are exciting, but at the end of the day I think it’s the honest sense that the Doctor just wants to help people. He doesn’t care about politics or procedure or social classes (he’s really the antithesis of the Prime Directive). He just wants people everywhere to have good, happy lives, and he gave up his whole life on Gallifrey because he thought he should try to make that happen. That sort of selflessness is something everyone can admire. I mean, what’s one of the running gags in the series? When the Doctor needs someone out of the way, do they vanish mysteriously? Do they have an accident? Do they get fired? No, when he needs someone out of the way, they win the lottery. A recurring plot point in the show is that the Doctor gives people the life they’ve always dreamed of just so that he can get on with what he’s focused on doing.
What do you think is the Doctor’s real name? Go ahead, guess.I would have no idea. I feel confident it isn’t Steve, Brett, or Cliff. I like that they’re pushing an idea from the Sylvester McCoy years, that the Doctor might be something bigger and greater than “just” a Time Lord. Because there’s something fantastic and kind of scary about the idea that being the nigh-immortal last survivor of the oldest race in the universe is your cover story... I could prove my geekiness by pointing out that his school nickname was Theta Sigma. And I didn’t even have to look that up. I could even name the episode.
If you could cast anyone as the next incarnation of the Doctor, who would it be?I don’t know. Lots of people want to see female Doctors and other-ethnicity Doctors, and while I don’t see any story-logic problem with that I do think it’d probably alienate a lot of fans. I always thought Richard Grant would make a fantastic Doctor, except now he’s sort of been the Doctor, so that probably wouldn’t go over well. Then again, Lalla Ward played a princess and later became the second Romana, with the logic being she was using the princess as sort of a regeneration template. Y’know who’d be a great Doctor? Martin Freeman, from Sherlock and The Hobbit. He’s got an ability to seem completely harmless and extremely dangerous. That’s a fantastic quality for a Doctor. |
| 6:05a | Act now to stop the UK Leveson press-regulations from applying to blogs and individuals online! I've written here before that the impending UK press-regulation rules coming in as a result of the Leveson report will inadvertently end up treating bloggers and other everyday Internet users as though they were newspapers, exposing them to the threat of arbitration proceedings where they will have to pay the legal costs of people who want to silence them, and be subject to "exemplary damages" -- enormous statutory fines that grossly exceed any actual harm caused. Now the Open Rights Group has started a campaign to warn party leaders about this in the three days we have left before Leveson becomes law. We need your help now, or bloggers and the open Internet will become collateral damage in the campaign to control Britain's awful tabloids. Jim from ORG writes, "The Leveson regulations are being applied to UK websites -- in ways that could catch more or less anyone who publishes a blog. Ordinary bloggers could be threatened with exemplary damages and costs. If this happens, small website publishers will face terrible risks, or burdensome regulation -- and many may simply stop publishing." Cameron, stop the Dangerous Blogs Bill (Thanks, Jim!)
(Disclosure: I co-founded the Open Rights Group and am proud to volunteer on its advisory board)
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| 6:19a | Transgender teacher kills self after Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn denounces her 
Lucy Meadows was a teacher. Born male, Lucy transitioned to female later in life, a process that was supported by her employers. Writing at the Daily Mail—one of Britain's largest-circulation newspapers—Richard Littlejohn publicly denounced her in terms usually reserved for child abusers. Not long afterward, Meadows killed herself. The Daily Mail took the article down upon Meadows' death, but here it is at archive.org, and here's a representative excerpt.
You want to point out that children don't do this at all, that prejudices centered on complex cultural issues are learned from adults. You want to wonder at those who would hound people who are already widely victimized, yet remove evidence of their ostensibly principled beliefs when their targets suffer the predictable effects. You want to remark on what a miracle it is that steps toward libel reform can take place at all. You want to wonder at how the children feel at the death of their teacher, children to whom suicide must now be explained. But most of all, you just want to see Britain lose its interest in the opinions of people like Richard Littlejohn. |
| 6:45a | Astounding Beetlejuice roller-coaster made in Minecraft This five-minute video takes you on a tour of the astounding Beetlejuice roller-coaster created by Nuropsych1 and friends. It incorporates many of the best visual elements from this outstanding film, all set to an excellent remix of the Beetlejuice soundtrack, one of the great instrumental pieces of all time.
Beetle Juice - A Minecraft Roller Coaster
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
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| 7:32a | Human bodies mercilessly jiggled by gravity at 2000fps [NSFW] LA video artist Michael Haussman recorded human bodies bouncing up and down at 2000 fps, synching the camera to the movement so that the people appear to be standing still while gravity mercilessly attempts to separate their meat from their bones. Add in some spooky music and it's like watching someone in the first stages of being torn to shreds by angry, invisible poltergeists.
GRAVITY by MICHAEL HAUSSMAN (Thanks, James!) |
| 9:01a | Guatemala genocide trial continues; watch or listen live
Nicolas Brito Bernal, the first witness in the genocide trial. Photo: Aida Noriega; via @PzPenVivo. Efrain Ríos Montt, the former de facto dictator of Guatemala, is in court today for the third day of his trial on charges of genocide against some 2,000 Ixil Maya during the country's 36-year civil war. Listen here, or watch here. I also created this Twitter list so you can follow the accounts of people live-tweeting from the courtroom (or listening to the audio/video stream, where dialogue is in Spanish and Ixil Maya only). As you can see for yourself on the video stream, the ex-general is sitting and listening in the courtroom while prosecution witnesses, Ixil Maya victims, recount in gruesome detail the atrocities they survived under his regime. As I type this blog post, an Ixil woman, Cecilia Sánchez Sánchez, is breaking down in tears as she retells the story of how on one day in 1982, her husband, two sons, and baby were murdered, her home burned, and "flying instruments" (helicopters) swarmed overhead, dropping bombs on the villagers. Did you ever see your husband again, the interrogator asks her. "No, I only went to carry away his bones."
Our military and our government were intimately involved in orchestrating, funding, and propping up to power the Guatemalan generals who led the bloody civil war that killed at least 200,000, and left tens of thousands more "disappeared." Montt was trained in the US Army's own School of The Americas, and aided by our CIA under the Reagan administration. PRI's The World has a good interview with Kate Boyle of the Guatemala Documentation Project for the National Security Archive, who has been monitoring the proceedings and has been working for years to help preserve the evidence that makes this process possible. I reported on some of that work for NPR. But denial persists. Supporters of Montt and the military legacy he represents call the trial a form of political persecution or "political lynching," and deny that any genocide took place. Here is one such example.
Rios Montt, during trial. There's a dedicated website for trial observation: RiosMontt-trial.org. It's supported by the Open Society Justice Initiative, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), the National Security Archive (NSA), Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), and Plaza Pública, the Guatemalan investigative media initiative. NISGUA has been liveblogging the proceedings, too. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. From today's NISGUA post, a powerful documentation that I encourage you to read:
Survivor testimony continued on the third day of former dictator Efraín Rios Montt and intelligence chief Rodriguez Sánchez's trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. Hours of intense first-person accounts of violence and endurance left impressions of profound grief: "They killed our fathers, our mothers, and everything we loved," said one witness; as well as resolute purpose: "I am one of the few survivors. Perhaps I was sent to be the messenger of the story here."Outside the courtroom, bootleggers are selling copies of a documentary film credited with helping to bring Montt to trial. You can watch the film online here. Snip from the filmmakers' blog:
The filmmakers are encouraging people to send emails imploring the US Ambassador to Guatemala to attend the trial. There's a powerful first-person essay by Yates about the making of that documentary here, on the Witness.org blog. In fact, out-takes from that film were used by the prosecution to build their case against Montt: The lawyers were as surprised as we were when they saw the outtakes.. In 1982, I had asked: “What would you say to the charges that it’s the Army that is massacring (Maya) peasants in the highlands? Is there repression on the part of the Army?” Boing Boing pal Renata Avila, who lives and works in Guatemala, has photographed many of the sites where massacres described in this tribunal took place. Here is a photoset with some images of these sites.
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| 9:35a | Brazil's music collecting societies convicted of forming an illegal cartel Ronaldo Lemos sez,
Ecad é condenado por formação de cartel por órgão de defesa da concorrência
(Thanks, Ronaldo!)
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| 9:43a | Tesla vs. Edison vs. The Great Men of History
Matt Novak (aka Paleofuture) is a historian and blogger who writes about the history of innovation and the history of the way we imagine the future. A couple of weeks ago, at South by Southwest, he gave a fascinating presentation that I wanted you guys to hear more about. The basic thesis: Tesla vs. Edison — UR DOIN IT WRONG. Whether you think Tesla > Edison or Edison > Tesla, Novak says you're missing something important. In reality, technology isn't shaped by one guy who had one great idea and changed the world. Instead, it's a messy process, full of flat-out failures and not-quite-successes, and populated by many great minds who build off of and are inspired by each other's work. This is about more than just getting history right. Letting go of The Great Man paradigm has implications for everything from copyright law, to how we go about innovation today. When we focus too much on Great Men, Novak says, we lose sight of what innovation actually looks like ... and we impede our ability to build the future. You can listen to my interview with Matt Novak here, or download it at Soundcloud. Image: Atomic Zeppelin, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from puuikibeach's photostream |
| 10:26a | Canadian "pipeline" game enrages humourless oilpatch blowhards
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| 11:35a | Nenetl of the Forgotten Spirits: indie horror comic
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| 11:38a | Neil DeGrasse Tyson in votive candle form
I Heart Chaos — Hail St. Neil. (via IO9) Update: Buy 'em on Etsy |
| 11:41a | Prosecutors call for inaccurate groundhog's death After an unexpectedly cold start to March, authorities in Ohio have called for the indictment and execution of the groundhog whose report promised an early end to winter.
Funny! But only because he's not in Italy. |
| 12:39p | Guatemala: In 1982, ex-dictator Rios Montt told this documentary filmmaker, "I Control the Army" As I've been blogging here on Boing Boing this week, former Guatemalan Army general and de facto dictator Efraín Rios Montt and ex-military intelligence chief Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez are on trial over charges of genocide. A Guatemalan judge ruled in January that Montt must stand trial; his lawyer said his defense would be that he wasn't personally on the battlefield and couldn't control what happened there. I've been listening in to the trial via a live audio stream, and their cross-questioning of Ixil Maya witnesses suggests that this remains their plan. The documentary film "Granito:How to Nail a Dictator" is streaming online for free, and you should see it if you're interested in the United States' role in the atrocities of Guatemala's 36-year civil war. In the clip above, filmmaker Pamela Yates "finds an outtake from her 1982 interview with the then President that puts a lie to that claim." That interview was for Yates' earlier film on the Guatemalan Civil War, "When The Mountains Tremble," which you can also watch online for free, here. The interview with Montt was filmed in 1982. In vivid testimonial over the last few days, witnesses in the trial have been describing atrocities that his troops carried out against men, women, and children during that very same year. Yates blogged earlier today that bootleggers outside of the Guatemala City courtroom are selling copies of "Granito," retitled as "A greater story never told." "There is no honor or award that could surpass this endorsement of our film by the Guatemalan people," Yates writes, "Bootleggers all over the world are tuned in to their cultures, and what people want to see and hear."
"Having your film bootlegged in a country is a great affirmation of its value in that society, whether it be for entertainment or in this case, hunger for a suppressed history and the restoration of collective memory. The street price, by the way, is 10 Guatemalan Quetzales (US$1.25)." |
| 1:27p | Check out the latest videos on our Boing Boing Video page 
We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page. The latest finds for your viewing pleasure include:
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| 1:40p | The $500 Million Gardner Museum Heist, an epic art caper infographic 
Hilary "chartgirl" Sargent has created another epic infographic, explaining something complicated and interesting: this time, it's the Gardner Museum Heist (background here).
Here's the PDF in full-rez glory. |
| 1:42p | NY judge says running a search engine for news is a copyright violation A NY federal judge handed down a terrible ruling in AP vs Meltwater, which turned on whether providing a search-engine for newswire articles that showed the first sentence or two of the article was fair use. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Corynne McSherry sums up many of the ways in which this judge got it wrong. We can only hope for an appeal and a better ruling.
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| 1:43p | Huffington Post reporter "seeks people who have had sex with aliens" What's of note in this media gossip item is that "15 have responded". If the reporter was filing for Boing Boing, one can assume he'd have a much higher total by now, as many of us have had romantic encounters with extraterrestrials, and it's really not a big deal around here. [romenesko] |
| 2:02p | National Conference for Media Reform coming to Denver, CO, April 5-17 2013 Josh Stearns writes, More links: Latino Tech and Media Activism at the conference, and the Arts, Comedy and Music events taking place there. |
| 2:17p | A celebration of ‘Paris Is Burning’ with Peaches Christ and Latrice Royale According to Niall Connolly at Dangerous Minds, "If you have not seen Paris Is Burning, you’re just not doing it right. I’m talking Life, honey." I’ve written about Paris Is Burning before, and referenced it in my recent ballroom piece for Boing Boing, but the truth is that the impact of this film on gay culture, and by extension culture at large, cannot be overestimated. That a film about underground drag culture and voguing resonated so strongly amongst gays should not be a surprise, but what is surprising is how far its influence has spread in “straight” circles. Its language and imagery are now common parlance, and it won a recent PBS “best documentary” poll by an overwhelming landslide.</p> Read: Legendary: A celebration of ‘Paris Is Burning’ with Peaches Christ and Latrice Royale [Dangerous Minds] And don't miss Niall's earlier feature for Boing Boing on voguing.
Check out Robbie Sweeny's photoset from the Castro Theater event. |
| 2:42p | Shepard Fairey talks about some of his favorite YouTube videos In a video for Los Angeles MOCA, Shepard Fairey selects some of his favorite clips from YouTube, and talks about videos that have inspired him "including the great graphic designer Saul Bass, and music videos for Rapture by Blondie and Atomic Dog by George Clinton." Video produced and edited by Stephen Pagano and Tom Salvaggio. |
| 2:44p | A cybersecurity lobbying boom in DC, as congress considers new laws Recent actions by Congress and the Obama administration to "protect networks of critical U.S. industries from hackers and cyberspies" have led to an explosive growth opportunity...for lobbyists. Bloomberg reports that there were "513 filings by consultants and companies to press Congress on cybersecurity by the end of 2012, up 85 percent from 2011 and almost three times as many as in 2010." |
| 2:49p | The art and science of beer: a video feature on the "Pope of Foam" In this video, Charlie The Pope of Foam" Bamforth, the head of Malting and Brewing Science at UC Davis, explains beer-making and reveals how to pick the freshest pint when you're at a pub. "How Beer Saved The World," "Why I Tease Those Wine Guys," and "How Bird Poop Makes A More Aromatic Belgian Beer" are but a few tidbits. |
| 3:00p | Phone wars Mat Honan has a request: Please Stop Fighting About Your Smartphone. "The phone wars, the platform wars, should be left to people who work for Apple and Samsung and Google and Microsoft and Nokia and BlackBerry. Do you work for Apple? Do you work for Samsung? No? Then shut up." [Wired] |
| 3:58p | Beautiful booze-trailer for sale
Bulleit is delicious bourbon, but I recently bought a bottle of Elmer T Lee Single Barrel and holy cats, is that stuff astounding. |
| 6:04p | Skype's IP-leaking security bug creates denial-of-service cottage industry
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| 7:39p | Crocheted skeleton with organs
Lab (skeleton)
(via Making Light)
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| 10:49p | Launching the UK edition of Rapture of the Nerds TODAY at Forbidden Planet London
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This tribunal is the first and only genocide trial in history held in a domestic court against a former head of state, and is a huge historic moment for Guatemala. It's also an important moment for the United States. 
Guatemalan bootleggers at the scene saw this as an opportunity to sell pirated DVDs of our film 
A chorus of cheers rings out the minute you pull up. Tailgating will never be the same now that your Bulleit Frontier Whiskey Woody-Tailgate Trailer is on the scene. Designed by interior designer Brad Ford, it's impressive on the outside, but what's on the inside truly astounds: sleek leather furnishings and details from Moore & Giles, rich wood finishings (handcrafted from reclaimed Bulleit Bourbon casks), elegant glassware, and a top-notch entertainment system, including a flat-screen TV, Blu-ray Disc™ player, and a state-of-the-art sound system, plus a one-year supply of Bulleit Bourbon and Bulleit Rye*. You park, open the hatch, and slide out the bar—cocktails anyone?
Artist Shanell Papp has a project called "Bawdy," which is about bodies and textiles. The centerpiece is "Lab," a yarn skeleton with a complete set of organs.
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