boingless

Neutrality takes no side but that of convenience

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:13:48 -0800

The Swiss have voted to ban minarets. There's no mincing words over why: the measure is designed to curtail Islam. Hitherto held among the most liberal democracies, Switzerland now faces international condemnation for such a blatant (if superficial) suppression of religious freedom. The measure is a cipher for a deeper weakness: the assumed inability of Swiss culture to withstand the influence of another....

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Gravity Is For Suckers

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:26:37 -0800

Astronaut Don Pettit--inventor of the Zero-G Coffee Cup--plays with free-floating, head-sized water bubbles on the International Space Station. Make sure you stick around for the third experiment, where Pettit sticks an antacid tablet into one of the bubbles. Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user delicate genius, via CC....

Stylophone synthesizer at Restoration Hardware

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:45:35 -0800

Invented in 1967, the Dübreq Stylophone is a small synthesizer played by touching a built-in stylus to the metal keyboard. It was famously used on David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator." I just spotted it in Restoration Hardware's catalog for $29. I was slightly surprised to see it there, but not too much as Restoration usually has terrific gadgets and toys for sale along with their classic (and costly) American home furnishings. For more Stylophone fun, check out the below video of Brett Domino performing a "1980s Hits Medley" on the device. (UPDATE: They're only $20 at ThinkGeek!) Previously:Stylophone Reborn Stylophone reborn (again) on iPhone Kraftwek goes iPhone with a little help from the Korg DS-10 and a ......

Dr. John's weird New Orleans psych music

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:42:36 -0800

Years ago, I got turned on to the psychedelic New Orleans "voodoo" vibe of Dr. John (aka Mac Rebennack, Jr.). His 1968 debut Gris-Gris is a fantastically weird amalgam of R&B, dark psych rock, and NOLA culture. I'd never seen footage of the Night Tripper, as Dr. John is also known, until today. Quite a spectacle. From music critic Richie Unterberger's liner notes for a reissue of Gris-Gris: Gris-Gris was the first record credited to Dr. John, and to most listeners he seemed to have dropped out of nowhere with his mystical R&B psychedelia and Mardi Gras Indian costumes. The album, however, was actually the culmination of about 15 years of professional experience, during which Dr. John -- born Mac Rebennack in New Orleans -- had absorbed the wealth of musical influences for which the Crescent City is famed. Gris-Gris's roots reach back well beyond the dawn of the twentieth century, even as the album took in cutting-edge influences such as 1960s progressive jazz, and pushed into territory that no popular musician had ever explored in quite the same fashion. "Gris-Gris" itself is a New Orleans term for voodoo, and the name Dr. John taken from a New Orleans root doctor of the 1840s and 1850s. Also known as John Montaigne and Bayou John, he was busted in the 1840s for practicing voodoo with Pauline Rebennack, who may or may not have been a distant relative of our man Mac. One of Mac's grandfathers sang in a minstrel show, and the latter-day Dr. John adapted one of grandpa's favorite tunes, "Jump Sturdy," into the track on Gris-Gris of the same name. His onstage costumes and feathered headdresses, the source of shock and delight to audiences since the late 1960s, are similarly adapted from those worn by Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans, famed for the infectious tribal percussive rhythms and chants they perform in local parades. "Gris-Gris" by Dr. John, The Night Tripper (Amazon)...

Roomba: 1, Deadly Snake: 0

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:25:16 -0800

What's that Roomba, you say Timmy is stuck in a well? A Roomba vacuuming robot did more than clean the floor for one family in Israel, killing a venomous Vipera palaestinae by, apparently, running over the snake and wrapping the creature around one of its rotating brushes. The family credits the robot for sparing their children and pets from possible snakebite. Good boy. (Via Engadget)...

Man hires movers to rob home

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:41:20 -0800

A burglar hired a moving company to clean out a three-story home in Nottingham, UK, and arranged for the contents to be sold at a public auction. Police went to the sale and nabbed the perp, who had no prior record according to the article in ThisIsNottingham....

Are Fake Academic Conferences the New Nigerian Prince Scam?

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:21:50 -0800

Tired of snaring your Grandma with sob stories about deposed princes and their locked bank accounts, email scammers are branching out. Their new target: Academia. Researchers get invitations to a hot, new scientific conference and are asked to send their personal information in order to register. But when The Scientist checked up on the conferences, the location hadn't been booked, the named speakers didn't know anything about it and the organizer asking for info fell strangely silent. (Full story is free, but you may need to log in.)...

National Day of Listening: A Better Use of a Friday

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:26:28 -0800

Whether the reasons are ideological, demophobia-based, or a little bit of both, many of us would rather avoid today's mass shopping chaos. As an alternative to Black Friday, Story Corps is promoting today as the National Day of Listening--an opportunity to sit down for an hour with family members and other people you care about, ask them about their lives and preserve their stories for future generations. At the National Day of Listening site, you'll find helpful How To's for recording and preserving family stories and a question generator, to help you get over that "what the heck do I ask Grandma?" hump. Your family stories can also become part of the oral history archives at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. To do that, though, you'll have to get hooked up with a Story Corps professional recording session. They've got semi-permanent booths in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, and they're traveling the country with a portable system all year. Image courtesy Flickr user Adam Selwood, via CC....

Epoch time: Herschel reveals VY Canis Majoris death throes

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:23:51 -0800

"It is colossal. If it was sited at the centre of our Solar System, it would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn." And it is ready to go supernova....

"Inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious"

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:56:42 -0800

A judge in New York has wiped out a $525k mortgage after OneWest bankers misled the court while trying to secure foreclosure....

A girl at the 1978 comic-con

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:43:50 -0800

Comic fandom's rarely held to be a welcoming place for girls. But one correspondent remembers fondly her trip to the 1978 San Diego Comic-Con, when she was a wee 8-year old. Other females, however, were few and far between.

Vote early, vote often

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:07:15 -0800

Attention, readers! If you don't vote for Boing Boing in Adweek's "blog of the decade" poll, Perez Hilton may win. Do your duty....