Nifty fan art; the guy is posting this stuff to the web, and so not even seeking commercial gain.

Maybe Mazz can ask to become officially licensed to produce knitted Dr. Who products for the BBC, or offer to sell them the knitting patterns.

I hate to see overzealous intellectual property law squelch genuine creativity that is trying to bring something new and beautiful into the world for all to enjoy.

Wonder what the RIAA will have to say about it... :(

Still got my original 45s collecting dust (mostly 80s pop songs) in a closet, and an old 1970s-vintage school library portable record player to play them on.

To my fellow Librarians...have any of you cataloged this work and added the bibliographic record to WorldCat yet??

You don't expect me to buy this cock and ball story, do you? ;-)

Some art pieces I've seen in Museums I wouldn't rescue out of a junk pile (because I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the other junk).

On the other hand, I've also seen very creative art made from "found" objects, too. Helps to have a good blurb on the museum wall, too.

Street artist vendors who create their high-speed spray-paint creations, often to a techno music beat, impress the heck out of me. Is it high art? No. But it is pretty darn cool. Wouldn't necessarily put it on my own walls, but in a cafe or bar, why not...

"Twelve sided died! Man, that's rough"
-Strongbad (TGS narration)

No, I think he's saying it IS enough to merit a boing boinging, just that there's plenty worse that also merits it even more.

Or something like that.

What an ugly mashup of copyright gone mad now mingled with absolutist property rights. Perfect storm of silly resulting from the devaluation and degradation of a truly public sphere.

I haven't run into this problem yet, though I'm strictly an amateur photographer. I was in Dallas recently for the annual TLA conference and around lunch time I walked up from the convention center over to the West End District (which is kind of nice) and snapped photos of some of the restaurants down there, and the public architecture. I also wandered over to Dealey Plaza and took photos there, too, including the exterior of the entrance to the 6th Floor Museum. I also took photos outside the exterior of the Dallas Museum of Art. I've also taken photos all around downtown Houston (my former hometown) so far without incident. In DC in recent years I've been a little more circumspect, but even in 2003 I got nice photos of the Library of Congress, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, etc.

But these kinds of stories are just crazy--especially the crowd/mob reactions, as if the cops weren't bad enough...reminds me of the Simpson's episode where Grandpa Simpson accused a photographer "you're stealing my soul!!!"...my own grandmother really disliked being on videotape, would always shirk from the camera when my dad would take home movies with his shoulder-mounted VHS camera (early 1980s, mind you).

But seriously, what gives with the self-appointed vigilantes aiding and abetting this kind of soft fascism...? pure batsh*t crazy! Needs to stop, needs to be fought back against. Best wishes to the photographer in this case.

Strange German--I mean Polish--postcards from Danzig, er, I mean, G'dansk.

Bulgaria would work, too.

Kazakhstan *would* have worked in the pre-Borat era, but with Borat it kind of makes that pretty "meh" now.

Some of the soundtracks had a "boop" noise to tell the lucky kid picked by the teacher to manually advance the film. With time these became sophisticated enough to self-automate.

It would've been a better video if he'd sought to insert this cheesy audio clue in...at least to help the viewer pay attention, something like "yo, pay attention, scene change ahead".

In high school, some of my teachers were cool enough to sometimes run actual reel-to-real films backwards through the projector...laughed our asses off. Ah, simple minds, simple pleasures.

I really love the whole retro AV Geeks movement...great archival stuff...thanks for posting this!

"the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets..."

Just creepy. Makes me think of certain, other historical Armies that were tasked with making killing more efficient and could save themselves from wasting ammo...with the help of corporate innovators like I.G. Farben...
*shudder*

Pretty darn cool, and very Russian.

The creator of the figurines says he was going for a "World War 1"-type rifle look for the storm troopers (whose uniforms I do like, btw), but I think he fails in this. He should've taken a German Mauser as his prototype, or a Lee Enfield or a Mosin-Nagant. In any case, he ended up producing something that looks like a cross between a US Army M-14 from the 1950s and a Yugoslavian-made SKS rifle w/ grenade launcher attachment.

Leia with a flintlock? Couldn't she at least get a Webley revolver?

"Our subjugation of the rest of the world is a completely personal choice made by everyone of us every day."

That line will get a lot of laughs at the next Bilderberg conference, btw.

"Imperialism is driven by consumers in the first world who want to make as much money as possible and buy things as cheaply as possible."

...so by extension, do we conclude that people in the 2nd and 3rd Worlds DON'T also want to make as much money as possible and buy things as cheaply as possible...? I think demographic changes in India and China would run counter to this.
*wink*

Imperialism is in part driven by the forces you describe, but there's more to it than that.

At a deeper level, there's just something wrong with the basic mental structure of "make as much money as possible and buy things as cheaply as possible"; as Americans this seems, at first glance, like a human universal, but in fact it's not (though it has spread like a cancer through the world of ideas). The more virulent strain of this mental virus is the Las Vegas variant, which boils down to the unspoken belief of "It is possible to get something for nothing".

There seems to be a lot of resistance from on high of any competing narrative, say "make enough money to live modestly well and try to buy only what you really need, with only a few luxuries for the sake of art/aesthetics--nobody too rich but nobody too poor, either"

...Or how about "I'd like to live in a walkable community where I didn't have to @#$@ drive everywhere". Because I can, in fact, walk to work, I do so, but there are obvious limits to my personal choice...most of my colleagues continue to commute in. I'm also very fortunate that there are actually places worth walking to in my neighborhood (a college town main square with little privately owned shops, cafes, etc, and very little by way of alien--as in non-local--corporate presence). But we also have our crappy strip mall hell along the highway just like nearly every other town in America.

Part of the problem is that Contemporary mainstream Economic theory doesn't recognize any such thing as "needs", it stuffs everything into the category of WANTS. Contemporary economic theory is also predicated on infinite growth--on a finite planet.

Contemporary mainstream Economic theory is, therefore, a variety of psychopathic mental illness and delusion in the service of those in the top 10% of worldwide incomes who are utterly drunk on power. At least that's how it looks to me.

Unless you're willing to live off the land, off the grid and voluntarily transition to and be satisfied with a more 19th and 18th century mode of existence, "Green living choices" are really more about feel-good fashion choices than anything truly substantive...kind of like my voting for Obama in the Texas primary.

Back to the original post, for what it's worth--the Green circuit board hoodie is beautiful, very Matrix-y, but I don't need it. I've got plenty of functional hoodies for the climate I live in. I do my part to support the arts by going to museums and becoming a dues-paying member, and by patronizing "Art Walks", etc.

I probably fail by most Environmental standards of morality and am "part of the problem". But little atomized consumer choice actions without concerted COLLECTIVE action are little better than re-arranging deck chairs on the good ship Titantic, though maybe some informed consumer choices even rise to the level of smashing said deck-chairs and trying to jury-rig together more makeshift lifeboats...but still doesn't get to the heart of the problem (like avoiding the proverbial damn iceberg to begin with).
Yeah, we all bought tickets, yeah, we should care about the folks down below in steerage (more literal and less metaphorical than I'd like it to be, considering rising ocean levels and island nations), but we're not at the helm in the boathouse if you catch my drift. And every four years we get to vote for either Captain Bligh or Blackbeard...or settle for the lesser evilism of Capt. Edward J. Smith ;-)

All right! Let's boot up TELENGARD, whoo-hoo!

Way nicer than our makeshift family computer desk (with Apple II+) in 1983, when I was a wee lad...just a plain, painted door laying over two filling cabinets.

In fact, that's still what our family computer desk consists of...the TV and computer have upgraded, the Atari is now a PS2...but the desk is the same.

I think I still have a PacMan glass somewhere, too.

Cool nostalgia picture...thanks!

Sounds like fodder for a new episode of MYTHBUSTERS.

Tom wrote:
(for example)
"Does The Jewish War appear in world history, ancient history, religion, warfare, Jewish studies, or classics?"

With respect to libraries, it appears wherever the original cataloger, usually someone at the Library of Congress, decided to classify it with respect to the Library of Congress Classification System (or Dewey Decimal System). All other libraries then follow suit (this is called Copy-cataloging).
Additional Subject Headings can be added at the local level, but a Classification number assigned my LC is usually retained no matter what, with only minor modifications made if needed for shelf-listing purposes.

In a somewhat related vein, Librarian Earl Lee has complained that atheist and freethought books are sometimes mishandled, badly classified in libraries because they're often handed over to the religion cataloger, who may be hostile to the material. Bad cataloging *can* virtually make a book disappear...but this is a no-no in Library ethics. Not to say it doesn't happen, but it ought not to happen, as far as the professional ethics of Librarians are concerned.

The Dewey Decimal System is heavily weighted towards Christianity in its religion section, reflecting the biases of its creator, Melvil Dewey.

Tom also wrote:
"So the same book can be legitimately categorized in dozens of different ways. Any attempt to say that one category is the best is necessarily an exercise in psychology. It's just an attempt to guess the way most people here-and-now would think was the One True Way of categorizing it."

Library catalogers do know this. The problem is, there's only ONE copy of the book in the library, and it's gotta go SOMEWHERE in the shelving scheme, determined by the call number (which should be semantically linked to the first subject heading) The cataloger exercises her best judgment and PUTS it somewhere that she feels fits best. Nobody claims it's perfect, it just has to work to serve the purpose of making the book findable. It's inherently always a "best guess" at some level for the cataloger, and perfection is not the goal, just good quality description that fulfills that primary function reliably.
We have a truck full of other books we have to get out onto the shelves in a timely fashion. We take our best shot then move on.

We have one of those hanging in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, though I think it's just a model, not the plastinated real deal.

Awww......Too cute for words! :-D
It's like Chibi-anime Star Wars or something...

"...Tuttle, Buttle..."
--from the movie Brazil.

The authority control problem in Libraries is challenging enough in the subset of the population that are creators of recorded works of information (books, CDs, filmmakers, etc), full of conscientious professionals trying to get the details right.

For a TIA-type database, it is utterly nightmarish to contemplate.

Robo-Jesus 2.0 deactivated for your sins so that all may reboot and upgrade.

(slightly OT)
Up next on BoingBoing: Steampunk Diebold voting machines!

Actually, we have a lot of cool things technology-wise as a spin off because we do (spend a lot of money on bombs, etc.)...NASA's data gathering was also useful for perfecting ICBMs; indeed that was one of the main (if hidden) purposes of the space program, all romantic fanfare aside.

Ekroplane = a real life Star Wars Landspeeder! Cool!

I'd be ok with the gov't contracting the grunt work out, but the information should still be public domain.

Also, the concept of Naval aviation and air craft carriers were still quite controversial in 1923--this was still the era of the "Battleship Admirals".

The reigning wisdom of the Battleship Admirals was put to bed for good in December of 1941, of course.

Another solution in search of a problem....

Looks very Harry Potter-y, for some strange reason.

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We have one in Houston that drives so @&#$! fast through the neighborhood he might as well play thrash metal from his speakers instead of the kiddie song. That's what I always think of when I see him whip by, utterly uninterested in making any sales.

Slightly OT, but I had to confirm/provide proof I was (still) registered with selective service as a condition of being hired by my state university here in Texas. I provided said proof, but found the requirement itself very strange.

I agree that loyalty oaths are stupid. A real spy/terror agent, whatever, wouldn't bat an eye at signing one, they'd do it as a matter of course.

Clearly not true...Anakin Skywalker was still the Podracing Drag fiend in High School. This is Darth MAUL's High School wheels.

He should've given the brat a parachute and pushed him out the door... ;-)

I'm surprised some drug dealer hasn't blasted it with a handgun or sawed-off shotgun by now...did he make it bullet-proof?

Fliegende Zirkus, indeed....nice!

The question that sticks in my mind is...is this simply cheaper than building libraries and training librarians?

Ankh sez: "...akin to walking into a huge dark library and shouting out your question, and having voices from the stacks reply with answers."

Hmmm...and hoping the voice is that of the educated, well-read Librarian than some random yahoo...

Das ist bestimmt mehr als neunundneunzig Luftballons!