A UK e-petition: Public Hanging for those who propose public hanging: "The proposed punishments for some crimes are so horrific that the proper punishment for proposing this punishment is the death penalty..." (Thanks, Alex)

Shu Sugamata's origami spaceships

Avi sez, "Shu Sugamata has been making origami spaceships since 1977 and has amassed quite a body of gorgeous work." ORIGAMI SPACESHIPS (Thanks, Avi!)

The hidden beauty of the bottom of toy cars

At Jalopnik, Jason Torchinsky's interest in the bottoms of toy cars borders on the Nicholson Bakeresque. The bottoms of toy cars are fascinating because it's a revealing insight into the mind of the toy designer. Generally, you don't really have to do anything at all, but most toy cars have at least some attempt made [...]

Canadians speak out en masse against pro-censorship, pro-DRM copyright proposal; government ignores them

Michael Geist sez, Tens of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against proposed copyright reform in recent days that could combine the US DMCA with SOPA to create restrictive digital lock rules along with targeting of legitimate websites and website blocking. Canadians recognize that the bill will have an impact on the legitimate activities of [...]

The Pirate Bay will fit on a ZIP cartridge

The Pirate Bay is making good on its long-announced plan of moving from hosting a torrent-tracker to hosting "magnet links" that allow BitTorrent file-sharing without a centralized tracker. This will vastly reduce the amount of data that TPB needs to store and serve, so much so that the entire TPB index will only be 90MB [...]

KILL ACTA

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country's officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it! Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana [...]

Over 100 NGOs ask WIPO to postpone secretive South Africa meeting

Over 100 NGOs have asked the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization to postpone a summit in South Africa on the grounds that notice of the meeting was not published, the agenda has been set without any transparency, and the speakers all favor a single, narrow view on copyright and patents. In a letter to the [...]

Make: Talk 004 - Steve Lodefink, Broad-Spectrum Hobbyist

Here's the fourth episode of MAKE's podcast, Make: Talk! In each episode, I'll interview one of the makers featured in the magazine. Our maker this week is Steve Lodefink. An inveterate tinkerer and "broad-spectrum hobbyist," Steve just can't say no to a cool project. At 3, he was already reverse-engineering the peanut butter and jelly [...]

U Washington's best-of-breed 3D printing lab shuts down knowledge sharing after administration introduces sweeping patent-grab

Michael sez, "The Open 3DP lab at UW has been doing some amazing things with 3D printing. More amazingly, they have prioritized sharing what they are learning with everyone else in order to make 3D printing better. A change to UW's intellectual property policy has essentially forced them to stop sharing what they are up [...]

Insurer offers discounts to customers running in-car GPS telemetry

Writing in PC Pro, Stewart Mitchell describes a partnership between GPS vendor TomTom and Fair Pay insurance, an auto insurer, to offer discounts to people whose GPS devices report low incidences of sudden stops and unsafe turns. I rather like this idea, the idea that your device could offer testimony on your behalf, but a [...]

Tool for finding out what information your apps are leaking

mitmproxy, "an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle proxy," is a useful little free software utility that can sniff the traffic between your computer or mobile device and its servers and determine what data the apps you're running are leaking to the mothership. mitmproxy is an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy. It provides a console interface that allows traffic flows [...]

Every Apple Design Ever in 30 seconds

I thought this week could do with some more "fanboy", so cobbled together this blast of Every Apple Design Ever (ish) in 30 seconds. I'm a Sony guy, at heart, but even if each of its products were given only a single frame of animation, such a video would not end before the heat death [...]

Video: when hip young technophiles become alter kakers

Social Media Week's "Future Hipsters" video imagines today's young technophilic changesurfers as old farts in 2062, wearing out-of-date fashion and telling rambling stories about being embarrassed by videos of themselves passing out at dubstep gigs. It's a nice illustration of the parenting advice Bruce Sterling once gave me: "No matter how outre and bohemian you [...]

William Gibson on aging futurism

In the latest Geek?s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, William Gibson talks in depth about his terrific new essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and explains how he feels about doomsaying by elderly futurists: ?Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality,? Gibson says in the Wired [...]

People in a bathroom sing "I Wanna Be Like You"

Here's a perfectly delightful cover of I Wanna Be Like You from the Disney film "The Jungle Book," performed by a group of young people crowded into a bathroom. Good acoustics and fine choreography! JUNGLEBOOOK - I Wanna Be Like You (cover) (Thanks, Bethany!)

Cyclists would rather ride a bike than have sex

In a recent survey of 5000 Bicycling magazine readers, 50% of men and 58% of women said that—if pressed to choose between sex or bikes—they'd pick the bikes.(Via Maria Popova)

The song of a Jurassic cricket

Re-creation of Jurassic Cricket song, from Bristol University in the UK by qparker Listen to this recording. It sounds a little like Sputnik, but it's actually a noise that's not been heard in 165 million years. This is the song of an extinct species of bush cricket, the fossils of which have been found in [...]

Nevada police beat the hell out of man immobilized with diabetic shock, screaming "Do not resist, motherfucker!"

Here's footage of the police in Henderson, NV beating the crap out of Adam Greene, a man immobilized diabetic shock whom the police have mistaken for a drunk driver. The police point guns at him, pull him from the car, throw him to the ground, pile on him, and one officer, Sgt. Brett Seekatz begins [...]

Water bubbles orbiting a knitting needle on the ISS

Astronaut Don Pettit is a national treasure. He's been to space three times—once for a six-month stay on the ISS. On every mission, he's found time to make huge contributions to the public communication of science, including making a series of amazing "Science Saturday" videos and inventing (from spare parts he found lying around the [...]

Father John Misty: ?Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings? (MP3 download) - Boing Boing Exclusive!

Sound it Out # 17: Father John Misty ?Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings? I?m extremely happy to share this free/exclusive download of Father John Misty?s first single. Father John Misty is better known as Josh Tillman, former drummer for Fleet Foxes and a solo artist. He has a new album called Fear Fun that?s out on [...]

NYT publishes "infringement is theft" column and rips off another paper's article in the same weekend

The Boston Phoenix's Carly Carioli points out that on the same weekend that the New York Times carried a column from Bill Keller decrying piracy as a war on creative people, the Times's op-ed page pirated an article to which the Phoenix holds the copyright. And of course, the Times is the same corporation that [...]

Fables Super Team: turning the Silver Age superhero inside out to find the fables within

The sixteenth collected volume in Bill Willingham's long-running Fables series is Fables Super Team, and Willingham uses the volume to demonstrate his absolutely catholic approach to mythmaking and storytelling. The Fables, faced with an impossible fight, decide to plumb new mythologies to find ways of overcoming the odds, and hit on the idea of creating [...]

Stephen Fry on the techno-cluelessness of English judges

David Weinberger sez, "Stephen Fry explains that when a frustrated traveler tweets something about wanting to bomb an airport where there have been delays, the traveler isn't really announcing that he is about to bomb the airport. Social media, Fry explains, need to be understood as conversations. And then Fry kicked into the fund for [...]

Grandpa sings the pig song

[Video Link] Thanks, Erin! (Via Orangette)

Trailer for bobcat Goldthwait's movie God Bless America

[Video Link] Er…

On the auction block: Adrian Tomine's 1-Page Story "The Donger and Me"

From a 2001 issue of Giant Robot magazine, this one-pager by Adrian Tomine has a bid of $500. Adrian Tomine's cathartic one-page comic strip describes his personal feelings about actor Gedde Watanabe's portrayal of Long Duk Dong, in the John Hughes film, Sixteen Candles. This strip was used as a tie-in to an NPR All [...]

Fnord -- the new Boing Boing T-shirt

Here's a closer look at the design. And I forgot to say that it's Rob's design! "Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know." Purchase includes membership in the Church of [ ---------- ]. Buy one today! Don't forget about our other fancy decorated jerkins and tunics: Boing Boing Critter - Baby [...]

Paved with good intentions: When energy efficiency backfires

Right now, I'm reading The Conundrum by David Owen. It's a really interesting book about some of the unintended consequences of the way we approach sustainability and environmentalism. I'm going to post a full review soon, once I get all the way through it, but so far Owen is making a couple of key points: [...]

Steampunk Magazine is back!

Magpie Killjoy sez, "SteamPunk Magazine, the oldest-known journal of steampunk fiction and culture, has returned after a two-year hiatus. This 110-page issue covers everything from the fine art of urban exploration to how to sew a lacy cuff. There are articles discussing the girl gangs of New York City in the 19th century as well [...]

Mickey Mouse vs. Crass t-shirt

On the heels of the official, and sadly discontinued, Mickey Mouse vs. Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures" t-shirt, culture jammers Cuboopop printed up Mickey Mouse vs. Crass shirts and shopdropped them at a Disney Store. You can also purchase them online for a very limited time directly from Cubopop. (Thanks KevinVanCamper, via Submitterator!)  Did a UK [...]