Douglas Rushkoff - author of the book Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back - is a guest blogger.

I've started doing a rather free-form talk radio show on WFMU-FM and WFMU.ORG called The Media Squat, in which we explore bottom-up, open-source style solutions to some of the problems engendered by a relentlessly top-down, closed source society. We've had some great guests so far, from Richard Metzger and Paul Krassner to Joanna Harcourt-Smith and RU Sirius.

We also focus on "real people doing real things" - from people turning cement tracts in the projects into urban agriculture centers, and unemployed workers developing local currencies.

A month or so ago, a group from Indiana emailed asking if they could meet up with me in New York to get some advice and support for some bottom-up ventures they're initiating - and I figured it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of some of the community we've developed through the show. So they're coming on this Monday evening, May 11, at 7p EST.

I invite you all to tune in and help them figure out exactly how to proceed. Here's what they sent me so far:

The Bloomington Think Tank, aka the 'Culturvators,' are a group of young people in Bloomington, IN who are exploring and enacting hyper-local methods of creating, supporting, and improving permaculture practices, local economic initiatives, and community. They are promoters of and participants in organic agriculture, the art community, and local currency/bartering. They are engaged with local permaculture practitioners, and are earning food through a work-share CSA.

The Culturvators believe in the tribe, or small to medium social group, as the key component in improving their local community, and the world at large, in our present moment of crisis. Culturvation is the process of bridging the gaps of individuation that prevent us from creating and sustaining working relationships with our neighbors. Culturvators are those who break down barriers to form the social groups that produce change. In short, many hands make light work, and the Culturvators get those hands to shake so the work can get done.

A British Member of Parliament claims he saw two undercover cops acting as agents provocateurs at the G20 demonstrations, attempting to get the crowd to riot. It was during one of the "kettling" sessions (this is a tactic used by UK cops wherein all protesters and bystanders are crammed into a physical space that is cordoned off indefinitely, and though the protesters are not charged with any offense, they are not allowed to leave, seek medical care, use toilets, etc). The men apparently threw missiles at the cops and tried to get others to do the same, then, after being accused of being provocateurs, flashed credentials at the police and passed through their lines.

"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He ­legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."

G20 police 'used undercover men to incite crowds'

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

We're supposed to take heart in the fact that the Treasury Department's bank "stress tests" didn't come out worse. No, our biggest banks aren't insolvent, exactly. In fact, enough cash was printed to guarantee that they should be able to survive the rest of the recession. Worst case, with a little late-night printing and lending by the central bank, even the worst of them - like Citibank - should be able to hobble through. Our Treasury Department wants us to be reassured.

True enough, as long as banks are understood by many as fueling the economy, this should be good news. By this logic, banks disperse the capital that allows businesses to do their business. As so many have explained to me, it all starts with the banks. Banks lend businesses money, and then those businesses turn it into something real - like products, salaries, or innovation.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Labor might make money, but money doesn't make labor. (Or as I said to Rolling Stone's editor, music makes money - money doesn't make music). And while we can certainly point to the fact that assembly lines and mixing boards cost money, neither are required as the first step in creating a car company or a musical act. Yes, in a well-functioning economy, good production yields income, part of which goes to making production better. A great company dedicates part of its winnings to R&D.

But the notion that enterprise and production starts with banking is just another artifact of Renaissance-era currency monopolies. Back before the first central banks, production and yield actually created money. (That's what all this hoopla about complementary currency is about.) Money was not lent into existence by a bank. Instead, farmers brought their grain to town and received receipts for the grain. These receipts served as the local currency. Currency was worked into existence. There was as much money as there was grain.

The problem with this scheme was that people got too wealthy - especially in comparison with the feudal lords and fledgling monarchy, who had always been used to getting rich, well, by being rich. So they went and made all the grain-based currencies illegal, and forced everyone to use coin of the realm - central currency. While this coin was better for long distance trade and collecting taxes, it was lousy for local transactions. People lost their ability to live off the land, took jobs with early corporations, got poor, less fed, and eventually the economic downturn in Europe led to a plague that killed half the population. This isn't economic interpretation - it's just fact.

Eventually, with only half the population to deal with, Europe's new economic scheme proved basically sufficient to the task. And we got the rules that have - in one form or another - defined economics to this day: people don't make money, banks do. The chief function of money is for money to make money - not for it to be used for successful transactions.

But today we may be smart enough, information may travel around fast enough, for many of us to realize just how transparent a fraud we're witnessing unfold before us today - how the bailouts of AIG were really funding Goldman Sachs, how intimately involved are bankers - Rubin or Paulson, are with Treasury chiefs like, er, Paulson and Rubin. How government and banking are one and the same, both after the same centralization of authority, both inextricably linked with the biases of lending-based wealth schemes, and both utterly incapable of serving as the source of anything.

The Star Trek Bridge playset was, hands down, the best toy I owned as a child. I played with it for approximately 10,000 hours. Especially the whirly-twirly transporter cubicle. I loved the psychedelic cardboard viewscreens, the tippy chairs and furniture, the stick-on UI for same that was as inscrutable and ridiculous as the authentic show computers. This toy had the magic, a vinyl-covered, detailed, configurable kind of magic that made you want to play with it for hours and hours on end.

I kept my Bridge playset for all these years. It sat in my Toronto storage locker for a decade, and then got shipped to London, where it now resides, along with my action-figures, in my office. And it still has the magic.

And now: the toy has been reissued, along with all the original action figures, including the two-tone aliens and the lizard dudes. The crew have the tiny blue phasers and the same dead eyes and the miniatures plastic Blundstones from the future. And I just saw the set, in person, in a comics shop, and it still has the magic.

Star Trek: Retro Bridge Playset

Star Trek Retro Action Figures

Remember the revelation that pharma giant Merck had paid Elsevier to publish a fake peer-reviewed journal that promoted its products? Turns out Elsevier has an entire division devoted to publishing fake journals for money:

Now, several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of 'advertorial' publications. Excerpta Medica, a 'strategic medical communications agency,' is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, it published a number of other 'journals.' Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharmaceutical companies."

More Fake Journals From Elsevier

Murilee sez, "Remember the first generation of cars with voice warnings, from the late-70s/early-80s era? The Datsun 810 was the first, and I've disassembled the voicebox from a junkyard unit. Turns out that Nissan used a tiny phonograph, complete with 3" record with 6 separate grooves (one for each message) and a precision solenoid-controlled stylus. All in a 3" cube. Coolest thing I've seen in a while."

1982 Datsun Voice Warning Box Used Tiny Phonograph Record, Just Like Moon Base Robots (Thanks, Murilee!)

Today is the start of programming at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, featuring everyone from Scott McCloud to R.Stevens and plenty in between. It's on at the Metro Reference Library, with the show starting at 9 and the programming starting at 10. I can't find any info on admission prices -- I know it was free in years gone by, though.

Toronto Comics Arts Festival

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.