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Xeni Jardin:

If you went gaga over that “lizard attacks girls wearing meat hats” video a while back, this will be welcome news. BoingBoing reader Gavin Purcell just launched a new blog about odd (at least to Westerners) stuff on television in Japan.

After visiting Japan a few times, I found myself totally foregoing all tourist-type things to hang out in my hotel room and watch TV. I understand very little Japanese but in some ways that made the experience much more charming and fascinating. I think you’ll agree that there’s something very unique about Japanese TV programming that you just don’t get anywhere else.

And now, thanks to sites like YouTube and Google Video, there’s now a bunch of Japanese TV clips online and it allows me to feed into my love of the stuff.

Link

Originally by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing on April 26, 2006, 10:58pm

A Cultural Snapshot – Public Authoring & Feral Robotics – jointly authored by the project team is now available to download.

Proboscis has also completed a new short film about the project, which we will be presenting at the talk tonight at the Dana Centre.

Update: An 8.1Mb version is now available to download.

Originally by Giles Lane from Urban Tapestries on March 30, 2006, 7:51pm

Mark Frauenfelder:
Todd Lappin says: “Today is a major anniversary in the history of transportation and logistics, because today, the now-iconic steel shipping container celebrates its 50th birthday. No word on where to send presents or cake, but here’s some background (From The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson):

By dramatically lowering freight costs, the container transformed economic geography. Some of the world’s great ports - London and Liverpool, New York and San Francisco - saw their bustling waterfronts decay as the maritime industry decamped to new locations with room to handle containers and transport links to move them in and out. Manufacturers, no longer tied to the waterfront to reduce shipping costs, moved away from city centres, decimating traditional industrial districts. Eventually, production moved much farther afield, to places such as South Korea and China, which took advantage of cheap, reliable transportation to make goods that could not have been exported profitably before containerisation.

Link

Originally by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing on April 26, 2006, 12:14pm

Cory Doctorow:

Larry Knox was commissioned to produce a cover for a reprint of HG Wells’s War of the Worlds, on the cheap. So he headed to a Chinatown fish-market, bought some squid, and faked it!

Link

(Thanks, Larry!)

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on April 26, 2006, 3:05pm

Xeni Jardin:

BoingBoing reader Jordan says,

Following up on previous BoingBoing posts about “flarf”, video clips from last week’s Flarf Festival are starting to appear on YouTube. Highlights include Rodney Koeneke’s “Pizza Kitty,” Michael Magee’s “Mainstream Poetry,” and Drew Gardner’s “Chicks Dig War” (NSFW for obscenity, critique, and silliness).

Link. Oh, my, the titles: “Nugatory Wax Milk Goats,” “Squirting Ringworm Taco,” and “Squid Versus Assclown” promise greatness.

Originally by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing on April 26, 2006, 4:09pm

“Evolution is operating with a vengeance in the urban environment,” New Scientist reports, “as animals struggle to adapt to novel conditions and cope with ‘evolutionary illusions’.” An evolutionary illusion is when an animal “does something it has evolved to do, but at the wrong time or in the wrong place.” Like grilling chicken in bed at 3am. Or massaging oneself in public.
New Scientist then explains how “cities are not just accidental homes for animals that really ought to be elsewhere. They are also hotbeds of evolutionary change, shaping the adaptations of their resident fauna as surely as the Serengeti plains or the Amazon rainforest.”
Interestingly, both of these articles seem to overlook any evolutionary changes cities might inflict upon humans – in addition to the squirrels, rats, songbirds, or coyotes who also happen to live there. The evolutionary illusion of the studio apartment, for instance: what strange pathology of life wrongly lived has made its appearance inside these domestic spaces? What new behavioral triggers have evolved? Pale-faced urban apartment dwellers staring at themselves in badly lit mirrors, popping zits, wondering where on earth the rest of the planet has gone.
“Most new species arise not from the insensibly gradual transformation of large populations,” Andrew Knoll writes, “but rather by the rapid differentiation of small, isolated populations at the periphery of the main group.”
In this context, you could re-read all of European existentialism as the philosophical by-product of an evolutionary struggle: humans, fighting to adapt to the biological niche of the isolated single apartment.
In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis makes the point that, soon, all future human population growth will occur inside cities – even within slums. Will this have a genetic impact on what we now consider the human species? And what new branches of philosophy might therefore arise?

(See also animal urbanism and simian urbanism).

Originally from BLDGBLOG on April 26, 2006, 10:14am

[Images: Four excerpts from the amazingly surreal car park photography of Branislav Kropilak, whose other work appears to document landing airplanes: blurs of stretched light through the angled sky. Many more garages where these came from. Via
we make money not art
].

Originally from BLDGBLOG on April 26, 2006, 12:24pm

The Tactical Ice Cream Unit, a project of the Center for Tactical Magic, distributes ice cream but also information at a time when most channels of distribution, communication, and social interaction are mediated and constrained by the fervor of financial exchange.

Divided into a “mother ship” (Central Command Van) and a “scout” (Tactical Ice Cream Cart), the TICU harbors surveillance devices including a 12-camera video surveillance system, acoustic amplifiers, GPS, satellite internet, a media transmission studio capable of disseminating live audio/video, and ice cream. With every free ice cream handed out, people are also handed out printed information developed by local progressive groups.

The TICU’s surveillance suite provides grassroots access to mobile communications technologies to produce independent community news or to monitor such “un-American” activities as corporate dumping or police brutality. Equipped with a mobile satellite internet system, the video can be viewable in real-time and recorded via a remote website. Additionally, the various surveillance technologies are used to accumulate recordings which will provide a unique audio/video account of the local geography.

The TICU invites visitors to explore the interior, view documentation of the street operations, or collaborate on “missions”. Local community groups may also suggest uses for the TICU (i.e. support a strike, a beach clean-up, protest, or a neighborhood block party). The vehicle can also supply activists with in-demand items (water, first-aid, film, gas masks, water balloons, etc.).

Providing food and food-for-thought, the Tactical Ice Cream Unit merrily activates public space with wholesome information and good humor.

Meet Aaron Gach of the Tactical Ice Cream Unit, on Friday April 28th at Machine Project, Los Angeles.

See also Vagamundo , an ice cream cart that invites pedestrians to play a video game that reflects the plight of illegal Latin American immigrants in New York.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by sonia zjawinski on Apr 26, 2006 at 03:24 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 26, 2006, 3:24pm

Originally from FlickrBlog, ReBlogged by sonia zjawinski on Apr 27, 2006 at 08:32 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 27, 2006, 8:32am

detskiy_dvor:

the elephant ass slide is amazing. I want to know the story behind that. –SZ

Originally from jwz, ReBlogged by sonia zjawinski on Apr 27, 2006 at 08:29 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 27, 2006, 8:29am

AP - A judge changed a sentence from six months in prison to eight years after a teenager convicted in a drive-by shooting wrote a letter asking a friend to take over his marijuana dealings.

Sorry not art or tech related, but how was someone sentenced to 6 MONTHS for a drive-by shooting and then 8 YEARS for a letter? –SZ

Originally from Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough, ReBlogged by sonia zjawinski on Apr 27, 2006 at 08:47 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 27, 2006, 8:47am

One of nature’s deepest puzzles is illustrated by some surprisingly common events in which disorder, inexplicably, produces its opposite.

Originally from WORLD SCIENCE on April 26, 2006, 7:05pm

Researchers say they may have found some brain cells that participate in our purchasing choices.

Originally from WORLD SCIENCE on April 26, 2006, 7:05pm

Archaeologists have unearthed stone slabs that they say could be part of an ancient pyramid buried under a tall hill.

Originally from WORLD SCIENCE on April 26, 2006, 7:04pm

Originally from Tinselman on April 26, 2006, 11:24am

Web site Drive Far has a page of techniques describing different methods for reducing your fuel consumption when driving, like stopping your acceleration sooner than normal.

I don’t know how many times I have hit the gas to get up an onramp onto the highway only to brake 10 seconds later as I get too close to the car in front of me. Stop accellerating sooner, slip into neutral and see how you go.

In this era of ever-increasing gas prices, methods of conservation are very important, so I appeal to you, most excellent Lifehacker readers, to take this one to the limit. What methods do you use to conserve your gas, from the simplest to the most complex? Let’s hear them all in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.

 
Comment on this post

Related: Cheap, recycled moving boxes
Related: Lower your phone bill (and more) with leveraged bargaining
Related: ZiXXo online coupon creation

Originally from Lifehacker on April 26, 2006, 12:00pm

Back when I was preparing to move to California, the thing that shocked me the most was how much moving boxes cost. Somebody might as well have hit me on the back of the head after I paid for a stack at the U-Haul store. I wish I’d known about UsedCardboardBoxes.com at the time, a company that sells (and buys) used boxes and will pick up and deliver to your door.

Are these used boxes fit for moving, you ask?

Make no mistake, the boxes we deliver are used. But for the purpose of packing them with household items for a single move, they are great. Our main suppliers are manufacturers and moving companies that use high-quality boxes only one time, to deliver products to a retail store, or to deliver household items to a residence. Most of the boxes we stock have been carefully opened with razor blades, so the integrity of the cardboard is not jeopardized. We offer you these same boxes, but at about ½ the price of new ones. You will pack them, tape them and write on them just like you would a new box.

No one here at Lifehacker has actually tried out the service, but if you’re in the midst of moving and you do, let us know how it goes in the comments or to tips at lifehacker.com.

 
Comment on this post

Related: Call for Help: Moving to a new place

Originally from Lifehacker on April 26, 2006, 11:30am

The TV-Turnoff Network is a nonprofit organization that encourages people to watch much less television with initiatives like TV Turnoff Week, which just happens to be this week. Why the boob tube hatin’?

Television cuts into family time, harms our children’s ability to read and succeed in school, and contributes to unhealthy lifestyles and obesity. Here are just a few of the facts:

• On average, children in the US will spend more time in front of the television (1,023 hours) than in school this year (900 hours).
• Forty percent of Americans frequently or always watch television during dinner.
• As US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said at the Kick Off of TV-Turnoff Week 2001, “We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history…This week is about saving lives.”

Now, we’re not going to get all finger-waggy on ya about the idiot box, but a lot of you mentioned TV in our recent biggest time-wasters thread. Could you do without the tube for an entire week? Would it make a difference in your TV habits the rest of the year? Let us know what you think in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com. Thanks, Michael!

 
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Originally from Lifehacker on April 27, 2006, 11:00am

The guy who effectively ended the Cold War (aka ’my nuclear arsenal is bigger than yours’), and had to manage the cleanup of Chernobyl, has this to say on a topic doing the rounds at the moment: “Nuclear power is neither the answer to modern energy problems nor a panacea for climate change challenges,” President Gorbachev said recently. “You don’t actually solve problems by finding solutions that create more problems down the track. It doesn’t add up economically, environmentally or socially. Of all the energy options, nuclear is the most capital intensive to establish, decommissioning is prohibitively expensive and the financial burden continues long after the plant is closed. In the U.S., for example, direct subsidies to nuclear energy amounted to $115 billion between 1947 and 1999 with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies. In contrast, subsidies to wind and solar combined during the same period totaled only $5.5 billion.” An extract from his press release, commemorating Chernobyl 20 years on, in which he beseeches the leaders of the G8 to show some spine, and support solar energy with a global fund of $50 billion USD. via ::Green Cross International.

Originally by warren from Treehugger on April 27, 2006, 2:12am

Vancouverites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon have just launched an exciting expansion of their 100-Mile Diet, a new website. From the press release…

(This post continues on the site)

Originally by Ruben from Treehugger on April 26, 2006, 6:16pm