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Provided by: boingboing.net12010-03-10 03:24:06blogs / boingboing.net /: Many stills here, all from his 2010 collection, all released today. The iconic fashion designer, whose work incorporated fantasy and futurist themes familiar to Boing Boing readers, died earlier this year....

Provided by: boingboing.net22010-03-10 03:09:30blogs / boingboing.net /: Wednesday March 10 is Tibetan Independence Day—and this year will also mark His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. In honor of both, Shepard Fairey collaborated with photographer Don Farber on this limited-edition, signed and numbered 18"x14" print, which goes on sale at this link Wednesday, March 10, at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Net proceeds divided between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (thanks, Christal / Tibet Connection Radio)...

Provided by: gapingvoid.com31970-01-01 00:00:00blogs / gapingvoid.com /: SEGA announced today that Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson will provide their voices for " Iron Man 2: The Video Game ": SEGA"cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" ["Hugged", which went out earlier this morning in the newsletter. You can buy the print here etc.] These days I’m finding myself writing less about my usual sex/angst/alienation shtick, and more and more about business and entrepreneurship, hence the cartoon above. As my interests evolve, so does the subject matter. It’s really that simple. I want to [...]

Provided by: gapingvoid.com42010-02-23 01:41:02blogs / gapingvoid.com /: Very cool. “Tried Life”, one of my favorites from the “Moleskine” series, is now for sale over on the gallery. You can see the enlarged image here.

Provided by: gapingvoid.com52010-02-18 00:30:25blogs / gapingvoid.com /: Mike Walsh commissioned me to draw a “Cube Grenade” for his consultancy, Rockstar Group. Mike’s company is basically in the business of helping small startups either make or find more money, by whatever means necessary. His website explains all… Why do people do startups? Because they want to be “rock stars”, or something like that. They have [...]

Provided by: boingboing.net62010-03-10 00:21:54blogs / boingboing.net /: If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes....

Provided by: boingboing.net72010-03-10 00:21:54blogs / boingboing.net /: Israel approves construction of 1,600 new homes for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes....

Provided by: boingboing.net82010-03-10 00:14:54blogs / boingboing.net /: A delightful invention from Morten Skogly: "How about bathroom scale that takes a picture of you, from the worst and least flattering angle, and uploads it straight to the web through Twitter and twitpic? Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea! Which means it simply HAS to be made. So I did, or at least a working prototype!" Picturetweeting bathroom scale (Thanks, Laura!)...

Provided by: boingboing.net92010-03-09 23:51:57blogs / boingboing.net /: I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible: (Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer) I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!...

Provided by: boingboing.net102010-03-09 23:34:45blogs / boingboing.net /: The Survival Seed Bank is advertising on Glenn Beck's television show. They offer "survival seeds" for growing your own "crisis garden" amid "emerging totalitarianism." As Media Matters points out, the brand identity meshes well with the host's apocalyptic visions of the future. "More valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown," the website reads. They may quote WorldNetDaily as a news source, fine, but I really like the sound of the heirloom varieties they offer: Jacob's Cattle Bean, Yellow Dent Corn, and non-hybrid varieties of tomato and leafy greens. I'm not sure $149 is such a great deal for a couple dozen packets of seeds, even if they promise it's enough for "a full acre Crisis Garden." But when the jackbooted Obama-thugs destroy all the grocery stores with their black helicopters, looks like we may be going extreme vegan locavore for a while. (via Baratunde)...

Provided by: boingboing.net112010-03-09 23:27:22blogs / boingboing.net /: Sex.com will be sold at auction next week. Current owner Escom LLC reportedly paid $14 million for it a few years ago, but since defaulted on loans. According to CNN, "The auction is set for March 18 in New York, and bidders are required to appear with a certified check for $1 million to participate."...

Provided by: boingboing.net122010-03-09 23:07:03blogs / boingboing.net /: Not only are torture techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced stress positions evil, they don't work very well for interrogation. Jacques Vallee talked about that on BB last year in his provocative essay, "Waterboarding's curious corollaries." This week's New Scientist also considers the efficacy of torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (CIDT). On the heels of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Obama established the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group to study and practice "scientifically proven" techniques to interrogate without torture or CIDT, which are illegal. The idea that coercive interrogation works rests on an untested and largely unsupported framework, says Shane O'Mara, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. On the face of it, the coercive model for interrogation seems like common sense: there is information that the interrogator wants to know and the subject holds but doesn't want to give up. The interrogator applies some pressure to break down the defences put up by the subject, who then spills the desired information. "You see this model repeatedly in movies and TV series such as 24," says O'Mara. The idea that coercive interrogation works rests upon an untested and largely unsupported framework Whether it really works like that is questionable, however. "Everything we know shows that the ability to accurately retrieve information is severely impaired under conditions of extreme stress," O'Mara says. Studies on soldiers, for instance, have shown that manipulating sleep, food and temperature produces severe effects on memory, even when people are willing to give up information. In a recent paper, O'Mara outlined the problem (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, p 497). Both torture and CIDT flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, with potentially profound effects. Three regions are especially affected: the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part of the fear network; and the frontal lobes. Disturbances of these regions are likely to kick in during coercive interrogation, particularly if such questioning continues for weeks or months. In addition, prolonged stress could also lead to the creation of false memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator. This phenomenon, known as confabulation in psychiatric jargon, is also found in people with frontal lobe disorders. "These people are not consciously making stuff up or trying to lie," says O'Mara. "But they have difficulty discriminating between genuine memories and those that don't bear any relationship to events they have experienced. Though the occurrence of confabulation in torture victims is more speculative, it's a marked possibility." "Beyond torture: the future of interrogation"...

Provided by: boingboing.net132010-03-09 23:07:24blogs / boingboing.net /: Researchers say the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that hit Chile was so strong, it moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet (or more!) to the west. The Chilean capital, Santiago, was bumped about 11 inches to the west-southwest. (via kristielustout)...

Provided by: boingboing.net142010-03-09 22:44:07blogs / boingboing.net /: Image (large size): One of many vintage ads from old issues of Wired Magazine at wiredreread.com, a site created by Theis Søndergaard. This one for an AT&T "strap-on telephone" appeared in 1995. Be sure to use your fancy new 28.8 modem when you call up that website on the internet....

Provided by: boingboing.net152010-03-09 22:49:07blogs / boingboing.net /: An upsetting stat tucked away in a NYT piece today: Doctors in American hospitals wash their hands only 30-40% of the time, according to national estimates. (via consumersunion)...

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