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Posted Video: man in Japan weds anime game character to Boing Boing
Video: YouTube, MP4 download, or Dotsub (subtitles) On Sunday, a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride's virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a real human priest. The event was livecast on Nico Nico Douga, a popular video sharing web site that I wrote about in Wired Magazine back in 2008. (Watch this clip of hot shot Wired folks making total fools of themselves on Nico Nico Douga.) Nico Nico Douga is home to thousands of video projects by anonymous users — mashups of original art, pop music, anime, and web memes that only an insider to Japanese web geek culture can completely decipher. Sal9000 is an active member of the Nico Nico Douga community, so it was important to him that his offbeat wedding ceremony was broadcast on the site. The footage seen here of Sal and Nene tying the knot between real and virtual is a highly imaginative, multimedia project orchestrated by a guy determined to officiate his devotion to his video game, and to pay homage to the otaku subculture that nurtures this type of creativity. Enjoy! Previously: Man to marry his video game girlfriend this Sunday Love in 2D (New York Times Magazine) Advisor: My husband has a virtual girlfriend...
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Posted Kangaroo attacks man and attempts to drown his dog to Boing Boing
In Melbourne today, an angry kangaroo attacked a man while he walked his dog, cutting the owner's abdomen with its hind legs and pinning the dog underwater. The man ended the attack by jabbing the kangaroo in the throat with his elbow....
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Posted Room lamp inspired by motorist mirror to Boing Boing
A Spanish design firm called The Emotion Lab created a series of home furnishings inspired by things we see on the street. For example, this room lamp is based on mirrors that let motorists see around corners. Also: a coat hanger reminiscent of antennas, and bookshelves inspired by scaffolding. The Emotion Lab via Dezeen...
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Posted Music video is an electronic erotic rendition of a Japanese folk song to Boing Boing
The Plum Song is the newest music video created by Omodaka, the Japanese experimental electropop group that describes itself as a "mutational fusion of music and motion graphics." It features the voice of folk singer Akiko Kanazawa and art direction by Teppei Maki, and pays homage to the Edo period (1603-1868) red light district in Tokyo called Yoshiwara. The video hit YouTube a few weeks ago, but the song will be available for purchase on iTunes today or tomorrow (or you can buy it on Hear Japan now). via TokyoMango Previously: Electropop remix of the oldest Japanese song ever...
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Posted Advisor: What will happen if I clone my dog? to Boing Boing
Have you ever considered cloning your dog? I have. Ruby is so cute and sweet, but she probably won't be around a decade from now. Since I don't know how to find her family and she can't have babies, maybe it's the only way possible to keep a part of her near me forever. I contacted RNL Biostar, a Maryland-based company that has successfully cloned several dogs already, to find out how exactly it would work. The company's director of strategic planning, Jin Han Hong, broke it down to me as four main steps: 1. The vet obtains small samplings of skin and fat tissue. The tissue samples are placed in separate containers with sterile saline and antibiotics, then shipped in a Styrofoam box with pre-frozen ice bags overnight to RNL's lab in Maryland. 2. RNL does a feasibility check, which takes one to three weeks. Researchers isolate stem cells from the tissue and attempt to culture them into millions of cells. If this works, the living cells are cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees celsius — this allows them to be preserved for shipment overseas or for long periods of time, usually 15+ years....
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Posted Video: Lady Gaga before she became famous to Boing Boing
In this video clip from New York University's annual talent show four years ago, Stefani Germanotta — aka Lady Gaga — performs two songs she wrote herself. She came in third place. At the end of her performance, one of the judges says: "Norah Jones, look out!" Little did she know that Lady Gaga would not be making Norah Jones-ish music at all. After the jump, a music video from her new album, The Fame Monster, which comes out Monday....
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Posted Man to marry his video game girlfriend this Sunday to Boing Boing
Last month, I wrote about a Japanese husband who confessed to his wife that he had a virtual girlfriend, a character from an addictive Nintendo DS game called Love Plus. Now, another man is planning to hold a wedding ceremony with his Love Plus girlfriend this coming Sunday. The man, who calls himself SAL9000, was so in love with Nene Anegasaki that he decided to marry her and take her on a honeymoon to Guam. Of course, this means that he literally just took his Nintendo DS to Guam... while there, he took photos, livecast their adventures on popular video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga, and documented their adventures using the augmented reality iPhone app Sekai Camera. In any case, the guy plans on having a public reception in Tokyo this Sunday. It will be livecast on Nico Nico Douga, but in case you miss it, we'll be bringing you an update early next week. Stay tuned! via IT Media News (Japanese) Previously: Advisor: My husband has a virtual girlfriend Love in 2D (New York Times Magazine)...
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Posted Taste Test: natto, gooey fermented soy beans to Boing Boing
In Japan, we eat soy all the time. For breakfast we have rice with natto and miso soup with tofu; for dinner we pop edamame into our mouths in between chopsticks-full of vegetables sauteed in soy sauce. I always assumed it was good for you, until I came to California and my health-conscious American friend told me that soy was actually really bad for you. So which is it? Natto spaghetti Ingredients: packet of natto, soy sauce, butter, chopped scallions, nori seaweed, spaghetti Boil the spaghetti in a pot. Open the natto packet and mix the ingredients (it usually comes with some mustard and a soy-based sauce) together. Once the spaghetti is cooked and drained, toss it in butter and soy sauce, then place the natto, scallions, and seaweed on top. Here's what we know about soy: unprocessed, it's a great source of digestible protein and has tons of vitamin B, calcium, and folate — all things that are good for you. It also contains isoflavones, and here's where things get tricky. Some studies prove that isoflavones are beneficial, while others have shown that it promotes breast and prostate cancer. Soy has also been called out as an agent of brain cell aging and thyroid dysfunction, too. In her recent book The Jungle Effect, San Francisco-based physician Daphne Miller — who studied low cancer rates in Okinawa extensively — writes: While Okinawans take in over 80 percent of their soy in a relatively unprocessed form as tofu, edamame, soy flour, soy milk, or miso, people in the United States eat a similiar percentage of their soy in a processed form. Our soy foods are heated, mashed, and denatured to create a vast array of substances ranging from Tofurky to fillers for tuna fish to ice-cream sandwiches... while whole foods offer valuable protection, concentrated or denatured derivatives of these foods are having the opposite effect. The bottom line, at least for now, seems to be that good soy prevent cancer and bad soy might promote cancer. Good soy = tofu, soy sauce, miso, natto, edamame. Bad soy = soy protein powder, energy bars made with soy, fake hot dogs, tofurky. A lot of Western people think natto — fermented soy bean — is gross because of it's gooey texture and stinky smell, but it's one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast. It's filled with protein and great for a post-workout snack, too. If you're still iffy about it, why not combine the foreign with the familiar and cook some natto spaghetti? The slippery texture of the pasta cuts the gooeyness a little, and in my opinion this is a gentle way to ease natto into your culinary life. Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item. Images via Jasja Dekker's Flickr and Gaku's Flickr Previously: Taste Test: togarashi Taste Test: persimmon Taste Test: red kuri squash...
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Posted New Catholic video game promises to brings family closer to heaven to Boing Boing
A new video game called Mass: We Pray brings new family fun to those who can't wait until Sunday to go to church. It has a cross-shaped motion-sensing controller reminiscent of a Wiimote, and you can collect "grace points" in order to unlock holy mysteries. The release date is slated for Spring 2010, but it's available for pre-order now. Mass: We Pray main page via The Raw Feed...
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Posted Space Invader war photography to Boing Boing
For his latest project, British art director Adam Richardson used Photoshop to superimpose Space Invader characters onto pics he took in Afghanistan and Iraq. Adam Richardson main page via NotCot...
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Posted Conservative children's book vilifies Nancy Pelosi to Boing Boing
A new conservative children's book titled Help! Mom! The Radicals Are Ruining My Country! prominently features Nancy Pelosi as an evil villain. Author Katharine DeBrecht, whom you may have seen on Fox News, explains: When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House all we heard was how wonderful it was that a mother and grandmother rose through the ranks to such a position. In reality, that mother and grandmother has played an enormous role in ensuring that our children and grandchildren are shackled with debt for decades to come....
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Posted Lou Jing, half black Chinese girl, sparks race debate in China to Boing Boing
A 20-year old Shanghai woman of mixed race has sparked a discussion about race in China. Lou Jing is half black; she was raised by a Chinese mother and speaks and acts like any other Chinese girl. But when the aspiring TV anchor entered an American Idol-like contest and rapped on-stage, she attracted both sensational admiration and ignorant hate. The presenters adoringly called her "chocolate girl" on stage — meanwhile, on web forums, people called her gross and ugly and criticized her mother for having sex with a black person out of wedlock. In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered, Lou Jing says: "I've always thought of myself as Shanghainese, but after the competition I started to have doubts about who I really am." Lou Jing has never met her dad, who left China without knowing he had gotten her mom pregnant. She hopes to study journalism at Columbia University. Stories about Lou Jing on NPR, Time, Shanghai Daily Image via Shanghai Daily...
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Posted Leopard seal teaches photographer how to catch penguins to Boing Boing
Brian Lam showed me this amazing short video yesterday. It chronicles an encounter that National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen had with a giant leopard seal in Antarctica who, over the course of four days, fed penguins to his camera and tried to teach him how to catch prey....
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Posted Samasource: How African refugees are scoring Silicon Valley Internet jobs to Boing Boing
On a scorching hot June day in northeastern Kenya, an hour west of the Kenyan-Somali border, Leila Chirayath Janah arrived at the Dabaab refugee settlement in an armed convoy. She was there on a mission: to connect jobless, displaced refugees to the rest of the world through legitimate Internet-based jobs. Leila, 27, is the founder of Samasource, a non-profit organization reminiscent of a tech startup that outsources web-based jobs to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty in third world countries. I met her last month in the tiny office space she rents out in downtown San Francisco. She is tall and well-dressed, and has credentials that include Harvard, Stanford, and a fellowship with TED India. Her obsession with Africa started in her teens — when she was a senior in high school, she left LA to teach English to a class of 60 blind people in rural Ghana; a few years later she created an African Development Studies at Harvard, and a few years after that, she started working on Samasource....
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Posted Dress made with 24,000 LEDs to Boing Boing
This crazy-looking dress, created by two designers in London for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, is made of silk chiffon and 24,000 full color LEDs. It's called the Galaxy Dress. It runs on tiny iPod batteries woven into the fabric so no one part becomes extra-bulky or heavy. The catch: it uses as much electricity as two light bulbs and will only stay lit for up to an hour. Designer duo create a dress with 24,000 LEDS...
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Posted An evening of confusion with Dell customer service to Boing Boing
Photo: ndevil I got my Dell Mini10V in the mail yesterday. It's small and red and pretty, but I had one minor issue with my order. When I was personalizing my order online, it asked me if I wanted a 24WHr 3-cell battery or a 56WhHr 6-cell battery; the 6-cell was just $35 more, but had double the lifespan. I went with the 6-cell. As soon as I pulled it out of the box, though, I realized it was way too big to fit into my favorite bag. It was my fault; I had ordered the wrong thing. I called Dell's 1-800 number to see if they could process an exchange; it was the beginning of what turned out to be a baffling journey into the labyrinth of Dell's customer service phone line. After a few minutes of hold music, I got through to a woman who told me I could return the 6-cell, get a refund, and then purchase the 3-cell separately. I wanted to ask her how much the refund would be for, but after telling me she'd email me a UPS label, she hastily thanked me for choosing Dell and then put me on hold so I could speak to a sales rep who would then sell me the 3-cell battery. The sales rep was a soft-spoken woman named Jame. After asking me about three minutes of questions about what kind of laptop I had purchased and how, she told me I could buy a 3-cell battery for my Mini 10V for $129.99 + tax, how would I like to pay? Before I paid, I wanted to know how much I was going to get refunded for the 6-cell. She said it would be around $135, but she seemed unsure. I asked her to put me back on the phone with the person whom I had talked to about the refund so I could double check. She refused. "I'd really like to sell you this battery first," she said. I explained that I didn't want to pay $129.99+ for an extra battery for a $299 computer without knowing how much I'll get refunded for the one I was returning. She kept asking me why I wasn't buying the battery from her, and I repeatedly told her that it was because I wanted to confirm the return amount, and besides, I can buy it on Dell.com for the same price, free shipping, without spelling out my name, address, and credit card number over and over. Finally, she said: "Ma'am, I didn't want it to come to this, but I'll tell you this, I want to make this sale. If you don't buy the battery, I won't get my commission."...
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Posted School sells test scores to students to Boing Boing
A strapped-for-cash middle school in North Carolina is selling test points to students for $20....
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Posted Purses made to look like book covers to Boing Boing
This is not a book. It's a fabulous little clutch purse that looks like a book cover made by Olympia LeTan. via Kottke.org...
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Posted Soap will wash away your sins to Boing Boing
This funny soap dispenser promises to wash away all sins. Undergrowth Design via NotCot...
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Posted DC sniper to die today to Boing Boing
John Allan Muhammad, best known for killing 10 people in the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, will be executed at 9PM today in Virginia....
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Posted Study suggests women's illness leads to partner abandonment more often than men's to Boing Boing
A new study on "partner abandonment" has found that a woman is six times more likely to be separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient. Link...
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Posted Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators to Boing Boing
The product designers over at MintPass have created these concept designs for real life calculators that look just like the calculators that pop up on a Windows or Mac OS screen. via The Raw Feed...
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Posted One morning in a fitness boot camp to Boing Boing
I was driving along the San Francisco waterfront one morning when a sign on a white tent in the Marina Green parking lot caught my eye. It said Reactt: The Only Real Boot Camp in San Francisco. I was curious, so I googled it when I got home. Originally, the term "boot camp" referred to the training program military recruits go through before they're deployed. In the mid-2000s, boot camps for rehabilitating juveniles caused a media frenzy when a boy's tragic death was caught on camera. These days, it has become a popular title for extreme fitness programs that start really early in the morning and command lots of repetitive hard core exercise under the watch of really buff instructors. Reactt is one of them, and since I've always wondered what being at boot camp might be like, I decided to try it out....
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Posted Howl's Moving Castle made out of Lego to Boing Boing
Somebody has made the dreamy floating wonderworld from the Oscar-nominated Hayao Miyazaki film Howl's Moving Castle out of Lego. The details are quite impressive, and blogging about this is making me want to watch the movie again. Imagine's Brickzone's Flickr via Japanator...
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Posted Advisor: Are you an Internet addict? to Boing Boing
You spend a lot of time online. Maybe it comes with the job. Maybe your idea of a perfect weekend is to be perched in front of your computer reading blogs, buying shit you don't need on Amazon, Tweeting and Facebooking, or surfing YouPorn. But at what point are you considered a bona fide Internet addict? To find out, I called up a psychologist and a fancy rehab center who specialize in this type of thing. I must admit there was a part of me that went into reporting this story with a smirk. Internet addiction? Aren't we all Internet addicts to some extent? And then I talked to Coleen Moore of the Illinois Institute of Addiction Recovery, who told me that 20% of all addicts who check into the rehab center are there for Internet addiction. Some of them use drugs along with the Internet so they can stay awake and online longer, and others get urinary tract infections or wet themselves because they don't want to take bathroom breaks. Carpal tunnel and eye strain are only the tip of the iceberg. For some, Internet addiction is a very real psychological issue that calls for medical help....
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Posted UK stamps to feature famous album covers to Boing Boing
Next year, the UK's Royal Mail will sell 1st class stamps that feature images of 10 famous British album covers. The postal service collaborated with music mag editors and design writers to come up with the list — interestingly, no Beatles albums were chosen, but artists represented include Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones. I wish the USPS would do something like this instead of boring us with stamps decorated with bells and reindeers. Studio Dempsey via Creative Review...
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Posted Face painting art to Boing Boing
James Kuhn is a Michigan-based artist who likes to paint his own face in the most intricate, creative ways. I love the one where he puckers up to represent a dog's butt. I've always wondered what my mouth would look like as an anus. James Kuhn's Flickr via Web Urbanist...
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Posted Taste Test: Persimmon to Boing Boing
Image via Sandy Austin's Flickr People always ask me what I like to do in Tokyo. What's fun? What's cool. Well here's my dirty secret. Most nights, I sit in my parents' living room and watch silly game shows while drinking green tea and eating persimmon....
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