Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Lisa Katayama beckons me to this "laptop pillow for sleepy workaholics."

In 1968, Jack Kerouac was a guest on William Buckley's Firing Line tv program. The video is viewable online at the Digital Beats: Kerouac site hosted by the Jack & Stella Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Kerouac on Firing Line

Want to wish your mom a happy Mother's Day this Sunday, but can't be bothered to fit the task in to your, uhh, four hour work week? Outsource it to mom-sourcing.co.in.

* Yes, the site is a joke, operated by a friend of a personal friend of mine, and they have actually hired call center workers to call your mom for you. That part is not a joke. They swear they won't keep the data or use it for any other purpose, they just think this is a funny thing to do.

Bizarre magazine in the UK conducted a rather odd interview with 1980s icon, Mr. T.

Your current Snickers campaign sees you come out with a new trademark line, telling weedy men to “get some nuts”. Who’s the weakest guy you’ve ever encountered? Pee-wee Herman. Sadly, I’ve never had the chance to train him – to get him to beef up and man up! I don’t think there’d be enough time if I had eternity. And that little wimpy suit he wears doesn’t help matters.

But you’ve worn some pretty full-on outfits – dungarees, gold lamé waistcoats, all those necklaces...
When you’re a real man, you can dress up in whatever – spangly fabrics, women’s stuff or whatnot – because you’re secure enough in your masculinity to pull it off. But you’ve gotta be a real man inside the clothes.

Have you ever seen a ghost?
I’m not sure whether it was just my imagination, and the memory might have become blurred in my mind, but again, as a child, one night I peeked out from my bed covers and I saw a court jester wearing curly-toed shoes and a spiked hat with bells on sharp points. Perhaps I was dreaming – influenced by the sound of the wind whipping around outside the house, the building creaking and the rain tapping on the windows, but it seemed very real.

"How Bizarre is... Mr. T"

IEEE Spectrum has compiled a deeply geeky and interesting article about "25 microchips that shook the world." Here's a bit about one of my faves, the Texas Instruments TMC0281 Speech Synthesizer from 1978. From IEEE Spectrum:

If it weren’t for the TMC0281, E.T. would’ve never been able to “phone home.” That’s because the TMC0281, the first single-chip speech synthesizer, was the heart (or should we say the mouth?) of Texas Instruments’ Speak & Spell learning toy. In the Steven Spielberg movie, the flat-headed alien uses it to build his interplanetary communicator. (For the record, E.T. also uses a coat hanger, a coffee can, and a circular saw.)

The TMC0281 conveyed voice using a technique called linear predictive coding; the sound came out as a combination of buzzing, hissing, and popping. It was a surprising solution for something deemed “impossible to do in an integrated circuit,” says Gene A. Frantz, one of the four engineers who designed the toy and is still at TI. Variants of the chip were used in Atari arcade games and Chrysler’s K-cars. In 2001, TI sold its speech-synthesis chip line to Sensory, which discontinued it in late 2007. But if you ever need to place a long, very-long-distance phone call, you can find Speak & Spell units in excellent condition on eBay for about US $50.

"25 Microchips That Shook The World"

record envelopes
old 45s
vanguard covers
inspired by blue note
knockoff project
lp cover lover
worst album covers
cover heaven
museum of bad covers
unusual cover art
bizarre records
sleeveface

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Afghanistan has one pig -- it's in a zoo -- and it's quarantined:

The animal, known simply as Khanzir, the Pashtu word for pig, was given to the zoo by China in 2002.

The zoo director says Khanzir has been moved to a large space with lots of windows and fresh air and that he hopes the pig will be quarantined for only a few days.

Quarantine for lonely Afghan pig

This proud individual, Teressa Groenwald-Hagerman, is the first woman to kill an elephant with a bow and arrow. She reportedly spent eight months working out to handle a bow big enough to take down an elephant in Zimbabwe. From The Telegraph:

The huntswoman wrote her own blog about her trip to Zimbabwe where she found the elephant in 2007.

She describes leaving the animal overnight lying on its side before returning to check it was actually dead the next day.

On the hunting website 'Hunts of a Lifetime' Hagerman wrote: "A man by the name of Larry, who is a videographer for Orion Multi Media, bet me I couldn't shoot a buffalo or elephant with a bow.

"He indicated only one or two women had completed the buffalo with a bow and no woman had ever taken an elephant with a bow. Of course, I couldn't turn down the challenge."

"Woman hunter kills elephant with bow and arrow" (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

(WARNING: Not meant for kids, or for adult viewing while in prudish work environments). This brilliant animated video ad for the German financial services firm Bontrust was produced by the creative firm Optix (Andreas Pohl, Creative Director). From the notes at a YouTube url where it's been reposted:

When the agency came to us with the idea to show the increase of money on the international market in connection with some kind of sexual relation, we were very enthusiastic. No doubt, we had to do this!

The goal was to create a world completely made out of banknotes and explicit characters that stood for themselves. So we spent many days and nights doing a lot of research finding the right objects such as furniture, buildings, bridges, certain landscapes, clothes, etc.

This procedure was followed by style frames in 2D to evoke the right feeling, tone and look for the film while having a special origami look in the back of our minds. After we were done creating rough animatics, we could start to fine tune our characters, as well as the different scenarios of the spot. Our final task was to blend all the scenes, camera tracks and sounds together.

All characters (Lincoln, Mao and the unknown lady) were created as 3D characters in Softimage XSI. Therefore, our designing team engaged in a lot of origami studying. To get used to the technique, we spent a lot of time with uncountable folding sessions. We took dollar and pound notes and folded Origami figures until our hands bled.

Then we were able to start with the digital modeling. Each character received an individual animation rig. With this digital skeleton we defined positions, rotations as well as the movements of the particulars.

Looks like there are a couple of related posts with more on the "making of" at Motionographer, along with links to Flickr sets of production stills: Making of "Geldvermehrung" ("Increase In Currency"), and Optix Digital for Bontrust and Inlingua (Thanks, Metzger!)

Need to make entrails? Who doesn't? Mary Robinette Kowal has the skinny:

To make entrails takes very few supplies. Your shopping list looks like this.

* Unlubricated condoms
* KY Jelly
* Food coloring
* Press and Seal wrap
* Fake blood

Start by filling the condoms with KY Jelly. You'll need about one tube of KY per condom. Add a little bit of food coloring, but don't worry about mixing it evenly. I use 1 drop green to 3 drops red, personally. Tie each condom off making a whole bunch of individual of links.

Note: The KY usually makes really impressive farting noises.

How to make entrails (via Whatever)

Thomas Crampton, formerly of the International Herald Tribune, sez, "The NYT committed most boneheaded move by a web team since the dawn of the Internet: In merging the International Herald Tribune and New York Times sites, the brilliant New York Times web team deleted all links to every IHT story along with the newspaper's archives. In other words, they erased my journalism career online. Anyone following one of the thousands of links from over the years to a specific IHT story is now directed to a generic home page. Full horror detailed in posting on my blog."

Reporter to NY Times Publisher: You Erased My Career (Thanks, Thomas!)

Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc., is a guest blogger.

Here's Patrick Dixon, of Siemens, advertising as features all the things about RFID tags that I always thought should bother people the most. The first time I watched this, I figured it was The Yes Men having one over on the Ascent Business Leadership Forum.

I mean - it's all there: implanted RFIDs with human brain tissue growing naturally over them, total surveillance, predictive marketing... I suppose it's possible I'm still seeing this out of context - and that the speaker is actually pointing out how scary and strange this stuff gets. But I don't think so.

My favorite bit may be the reaction shot of one of the businessmen, who seems to be actually considering whether he is now fully and irrevocably engaged with the dark side of the force.

(Thanks, Joe, for sending it my way.)

Gareth says:

Last week, our guests on Make: Talk were Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne of Homegrown Evolution. We talked to them about their book, Urban Homestead (Process Media), their blog, and their urban farming efforts. A couple of good points were made: that you don't have to do urban "homesteading" with any sort of crunchy-granola political agenda. They do it because they enjoy it and they enjoy the results: having great, fresh food available. The process and the results are their own rewards. And, it happens to be good for you, a great way to get outside, get exercise, it's good for the environment, it can save you money, etc, etc.

The other thing we talked about was using social networking, and sites like VeggieTrader, to coordinate gardening efforts and to swap produce. We all laughed about the fact that everyone wanders around the neighborhood in the summertime with bags of tomatoes and basil, trying to give them away to neighbors already up to their eyeballs in tomatoes and basil. There's gotta be a better way! One other resource they also mentioned was DigitalSeed, a southern California gardening site.

[Our thanks to Process Media for giving us copies of Kelly and Erik's book to give away to callers.]

Host Picks
As always, we talked about some of our favorite MAKE activities, posts, and news on the week.

Mark recommended a DVD he'd recently gotten, Belly Jelly's "How To Build A Guitar : The String, Stick, Box Method," where Bill Jehle shows you how to make your own cigar box guitars and is clear and inspiring enough about it that Mark is encouraged to take his cigar box projects to the next level, adding things like metal frets to the neck, which he says the instructions make it look relatively easy.

Dale updated us on goings on with Maker Faire prep. They've been working on the speaker roster and it's an amazing line-up. Just the speakers presenting alone is worth the price of admission. I've seen the list and I thought I might never leave the stage area.

I talked about recent items on the sit: the story of the open-formula 3D printing media that University of Washington researchers have developed and the story of Doctor Fzz's Easter Challenge and hydrogen balloon camera rig.

This Week, Friday, May 8, 12-noon PDT, 3pm EDT
Our guest this week on Make: Talk will be tech writer Bob Parks. He'll be talking about his Home Energy Dashboard article from MAKE, Volume 18. I will be "away on assignment" (gawd, I always wanted to say that!), so John Edgar Park will be filling in for me. As usual, they'll be taking your calls live. The number is (646) 915-8698.

Make: Talk on BlogTalkRadio

This blog contains nothing but photos of cute critters makin' friends with one another. Too bad it hasn't been updated in two years, but maybe the animal pals all broke up. letsbefriends.blogspot.com (via @Rstevens)

Mayor Mike has compiled a bunch of Joe Meek music videos. The Devo-esque video above is from 1963.

Joe Meek was a huge innovator in music from the 50's on through most of the 60's. He started a powerful independent British record label, Triumph, and production company, RGM. Although much as been written about his obsession with the occult, homosexuality, and the murder suicide that ended his life, Joe Meek will forever be in my heart and ears for the wonderful sound that he created. Take a listen.

A Joe Meek Showcase

Snip from a NYT piece by Shaila Dewan about hurricane survivors in New Orleans being kicked out of the crappy, toxic-fume-emitting trailers provided to them (late) by our government as temporary housing. The senior citizen in the photo below is Earnest Hammond, a retired truck driver who did not get any of the relief money that went to aid property owners after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

He failed to qualify for one federal program and was told he missed the deadline on another. But he did get a trailer to live in while he carries out his own recovery plan: collecting cans in a pushcart to pay for the renovations to his storm-damaged apartment, storing them by the roomful in the gutted building he owns.

It is a slow yet steady process. Before the price of aluminum fell to 30 cents a pound, from 85 cents, he had accumulated more than $10,000, he said, almost enough to pay the electrician. But despite such progress, last Friday a worker from the Federal Emergency Management Agency delivered a letter informing him that it would soon repossess the trailer that is, for now, his only home.

"I need the trailer," said Mr. Hammond, 70. "I ain't got nowhere to go if they take the trailer."

Though more than 4,000 Louisiana homeowners have received rebuilding money only in the last six months, or are struggling with inadequate grants or no money at all, FEMA is intent on taking away their trailers by the end of May. The deadline, which ends temporary housing before permanent housing has replaced it, has become a stark example of recovery programs that seem almost to be working against one another.

Thousands of rental units have yet to be restored, and not a single one of 500 planned "Katrina cottages" has been completed and occupied. The Road Home program for single-family homeowners, which has cost federal taxpayers $7.9 billion, has a new contractor who is struggling to review a host of appeals, and workers who assist the homeless are finding more elderly people squatting in abandoned buildings.

Leaving the Trailers (via Ned Sublette). A related news item: 3.5 million American kids under the age of 5 are at risk of hunger, and Louisiana has the highest child hunger rate.

(Image: Lee Celano for the NYT. )

Here's the cover and a couple of interior pages for Jordan Crane's latest issue of Uptight, no. 3. It looks great! Uptight No. 3 by Jordan Crane

Drawn! says: "I imagine if the puppets of Spitting Image created their own version of Spitting Image, it would look like this." Sculpted caricatures of three of the Beatles by David O’Keefe

In the new MAKE weekend project, Kipkay shows how to make a pseudoscope, an "amazing optical toy that plays tricks on your brain."

Dave sez, "Continuing on with my summer goal to periodically write songs about scientific terms, I bring to you what I'm assuming is the only song ever about mitochondria, and quite likely the only song ever to attempt to rhyme 'endosymbiotically' with 'maternally'. Altogether on the chorus now, 'Mitochondria... Mitochondria... Mitochondria... Mitochondria...'"

Quite possibly the only song dedicated to mitochondria, ever! (Thanks, Dave!)

It's Useful to Have a Duck is the English translation of the delightful Spanish kids' board-book "Tener un patito es util," by Isol. It's an accordion-fold book that you can read from either end -- read from front to back, it tells the story of a boy who found a rubber duck that he loves but uses roughly, sitting on it, drying his ears with it and leaving it in the plug-hole when he's done with his bath. Read back to front, though, the story becomes "It's Useful to Have a Boy," and it tells the same story from the duck's perspective -- the boy "rubs my back," "waxes my beak" and when its all done, the duck finds "my little sleeping hole."

It's a really sweet little story with great illustrations, and it's also a fine example of empathy and seeing the other side of your actions. A great board-book for fat-fingered toddlers!

It's Useful to Have a Duck

Recently on Offworld we got a double dose of LittleBigPlanet with news that illustrator Jon Burgerman would be kicking off an artist-series set of sticker packs to buy in-game, alongside another set by UK comics giant 2000AD (!), and one man creates a fairly faithful tribute to Eric Chahi's classic adventure Another World/Out of this World.

We also listened to a preview of Alex Mauer's latest chiptune album to be released on an actual NES cart, saw Tale of Tales' coming-of-age-horror-via-Red-Riding-Hood game The Path come to the Mac (with a new trailer that 'sells' the game more than anything they've showed thus far), and a new site dedicated to cataloging the internet's use of hidden Konami Code easter eggs, as was recently discovered (and, sadly, quickly yanked) on ESPN.

Finally, we played PixelJam's latest game newly published on Adult Swim, Pizza City, the kinder, gentler (unless you're a clown or mime) Atari 2600 version of Grand Theft Auto we never got, and our 'one shot's: Dan Schoening's 'Screw Attack' Metroid montage, and the pixel Botticelli above, which coincidentally, came from PixelJam artist Rich Grillotti.

Rob Weir writes in Inside Higher Ed on how to conduct a lecture that your students will actually pay attention to. Good advice -- I like this quote: "It's better to say a lot about a little than a little about a lot."

A time-tested way of engaging students is using a hook. Unveil a teaser, pose a question, tell a story, be provocative, invite brief brainstorming... any adult equivalent of "Once upon a time ...." Frontloading wonderment helps keep an audience. For instance, when I want students in my Civil War class to consider a stated objective about the link between ideology and historical memory I show a slide of King George III, George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, and Robert E. Lee. I ask, "Which figures can we pair and why?" For a lecture on the economics of the Salem witchcraft trial I hold up a shard of imported 17th century pottery and tell students, "This little scrap of crockery contributed to the death of 19 people in 1692."

Once hooked, proceed to the body. Illustrate the thesis, don't hammer it into submission. In days past I crammed as much detail as I could into lectures, which often led to confusion (and sore note-taking wrists). It's better to say a lot about a little than a little about a lot. Delving into a few examples makes for a more cohesive narrative. Make sure that everything in your lecture relates to the objectives and isn't just shoehorned in for the sake of being "comprehensive." The real skill in lecturing is how well you assemble and organize material, not how arcane, esoteric, or exhaustive it is.

Boring Within or Simply Boring? (via Kottke)

Back in 2008, Space.com covered Celestis's plan to expand their shoot-your-remains-into-space program to include sending a vial of your ashes to the Moon. The article says that the service will be available in 09, but Celestis's website currently says that the it won't "launch" until 2011.

A small portion -- 1 gram -- of the encapsulated cremated remains of one person can be sent to the moon for $9,995. The price includes the option of watching the launch, an inscription of the deceased's name on an accompanying plaque, and complimentary scattering of the remainder of the remains at sea near the launch site.

For $29,985, Celestis will launch 14 grams total of the cremated remains of two people together...

Future customers won't be the first people to have their remains spread on the moon. In 1998, Celestis, at the request of NASA, provided a Luna Flight Capsule to the family and friends of the late legendary astronomer and planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker. The Celestis Flight Capsule, containing a symbolic portion of Shoemaker's cremated remains, was attached to NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft and launched on a one-year mission orbiting the moon.

On July 31, 1999, at the completion of Lunar Prospector's mission, the spacecraft was intentionally crashed into the moon's south pole, making Shoemaker the first human to be laid to rest on another celestial body. NASA called the memorial "a special honor for a special human being."

Fly Me to the Moon ... Forever

Celestis Memorial Spaceflights (via Monochrom)

Evil Mad Scientist Labs wants you to proudly label your organic garden with these handsome "Now Slower and with More Bugs!" stickers, originally produced to adorn software products:

The influence of the Slow Food movement is increasing, and gardening is getting ever more popular. Even the tech bloggers are posting about local pollinators and getting beehives. In this environment, it is fitting that a new use has been found for our Now Slower and with More Bugs stickers, which were first seen in the wild back in December 2007. If you find a good use for them, we'd love to see pictures in the flickr auxiliary!

Stickers for the Organic Gardener

(Photos by Lorien Tersey )

Provincial officials in Hubei, China have sent down orders to government employees demanding that they consume 230,000 packs of locally produced cigarettes in order to boost tax revenues from coffin-nail factories in the region.

In total, officials have been ordered to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes worth £400,000...

"The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax," said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong'an cigarette market supervision team...

Local authorities in Gong'an county are taking the cigarette quota seriously and have established a "special taskforce" to enforce it.

According to a local newspaper account, a teacher from a village middle school said officials burst unannounced into the school at around 3pm one afternoon and started sifting through the ashtray and bins in the staff-room.

Three "non-compliant" cigarette butts were discovered by the "cigarette marketing consolidate team" which informed the teacher he had violated the related civil servants "cigarette usage rule" After some negotiation the school was spared a fine, but subjected to "public criticism" for "undisciplined practices".

Chinese ordered to smoke more to boost economy (via We Make Money Not Art)

The blogger at What I'm Seeing is a prolific photographer of San Francisco's rapid transit system, and thus has fallen afoul of its imaginary no-photos policy, with a threatened arrest:

Before I could get the 1st shot off, Fare Inspector #32 started marching towards me, hands in the air, yelling at me to "STOP TAKING PICTURES!!" So I put away camera, walked towards him and answered his statement with a question. I asked him if he could site me the specific Muni code that prohibited a Translink Card carrying passenger from taking pictures of Muni Personal on Muni Property. He could not. Instead he responded that I "needed his permission" and demanded to see my "credentials" and the pictures on my camera. He added that in fact, if I was unwilling to turn over possession of my camera to him he would seize my camera and have me arrested.

What Is Muni's Photography Policy?? (Thanks, Ted!)

Keni Lee Burgess plays Muddy Water's "Baby Please Don't Go" on his cigar box guitar.

And here's Burgess' MySpace page with streaming music.

(Via Cigar Box Nation)

John from the Free Software Foundation sez, "The Free Software Foundation announced a new internship program today, and is looking for interested students to apply by May 25. A wide variety of focus areas are possible, from campaign and community organizing (like DefectiveByDesign.org and LibrePlanet.org) to helping with free software licensing issues, and of course programming. We're really excited about being able to offer these positions and work with bright students interested in free software." Intern at the FSF (Thanks, John!)