I retract my previous statement; Ethan appears correct. From look at the other exhibits on the artist's website those sort of prints seem to be frequently used medium.

Hm, I believe that "c-prints on aluminum" refers to the photos of the exhibit, or rather to high-quality mounted prints. I see no reason why the exhibit wouldn't be real meat, and the squares look thicker than cardstock or paper. Contrary to what someone suggested earlier, cured meats such as salume (pl) would not go bad rapidly. It's still a bit of a waste, though.

@ Antinuous, #49
The linked article mentions that this APC's top speed is 30 mph. Not speedy, but not trudging either.
Don't sweat it, though, this thing will only show up if you get all six wanted stars.

I agree with the sentiment.
This is fucking ridiculous.
How do we let this happen?

I am certain this thread, like Oliver Cromwell, will die by 1658.

@ Teresa -
I think that 1984, while perhaps referenced with nauseating frequency, is a valid benchmark for a totalitarian surveillance state with complete control of created reality. Catalonia's completely different. It influenced Orwell's mindset when he wrote 1984, but it has nothing to do with the possibility of complete future technology-aided totalitarianism - an oft-heard and not unreasonable fear to this day. Catalonia's about how things fell apart at one time, in one place, under a very specific set of historical and political circumstances. It's For Whom the Bell Tolls with less romance and more insight.
Someone mentioned Zamyatin. If We was 1984, Catalonia would be a story set in Petrograd in 1917.
But, because I love the bugger, here's some superfluous Orwell: At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.

Meanwhile, artist hype aside, I think these covers would look nice on my bookshelf.

@ #s 30 & 31
It's a little unfair to assume that these politicians were low-balled like that. The figures there are only the declared contributions. It doesn't take into consideration contributions from "private individuals" shilling for these companies or any possible under-the-table gifts of goods.
These representatives may well have gotten their money's worth.
Let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are capable negotiators until we have reason to believe otherwise.

Misplaced apostrophe!
STEAMPUNKSTROPHE!
(and steampunk antistrophe)

It's exciting to hear that the steampunk craze has finally made it's way to BoingBoing!
Man, steampunk!

Yeah, from the video the scripts seemed insufficiently customizable and overly hostile. Were there other phrases that could be used to de-escalate?

Hmm, more less bug-eyed, more squinty.

"Why aren't you working out your face?"

All in 30 minutes or less.

The review misses the point. This isn't an ipod.
It's meant to be used by people on drugs.
Chances are, if you're not high on something, you wouldn't bother buying this in the first place.

This would be more of a workout incentive than the Wii Fit!

I've seen plenty of reviews of Little Brother, whether here, Amazon, or on Making Light. And, y'know, I've read it.
I'd be really interested in seeing what a member of LB's real target audience makes of it, though - an actual young adult.
@Torrance, you definitely ought to post a review when you finish.
@Michael Thorn, any chance of getting your kids to write up something short and put it up here?

Oh, snap.
Emo Godwin.

My father, on the other hand, told me that aspirin, tylenol, etc were all placebos, that any pain was all in my head, and that I just needed to get over it.
Me? I'm just gonna beat the "owies" out of my children.

Takuan-
You cut out the part of the article that says what "crime" the sailor was being pardoned for.
The article, here, begins:

President Clinton recently pardoned a Black sailor who was court-martialed for mutiny during World War II when he and others refused to load live ammunition after a disastrous explosion at a naval storage facility.
Freddie Meeks, 80, of Los Angeles is one of only two known survivors of the 50 Black men who were sentenced to prison and hard labor following the incident at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine near San Francisco. He alone sought a pardon.

Buddy66
It seems from much of what I've read like a lot of problems with the officer corps in Vietnam was just that - they were inexperienced and posturing. Rather than commissioning men from the ranks the Army ended up with junior officers who were "90 day wonders" fresh from OCS, without much more real leadership ability than any other recruit. They weren't familiar with conditions in the field, couldn't relate to the troops, and put people in dangerous situations due to their forced bravado.
It's my turn to throw a book recommendation into the ring. Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America are surveys that use Homeric tales as a reference point to explain the structural and political problems of the military that destroyed cohesion and set the stage for increased trauma. A bit gimmicky, maybe, but approachable to those of us unfamiliar with the combat experience.
As to Perry killing his officer, I wouldn't want to be a black man in civilian life in the 1940s, much less one in the segregated army. Combining the disregard for the humanity of black people in that era with the sort of authority imbued by the chain of command, you're set up from the start for disharmony and growing hatred.

Man, I used the word "within" way too much within my last comment.

Beyond the whole vindictive and crazy thing, I'm pretty sure that's not how karma int the religious sense works.
I can't speak with any authority on the topic, since most of my knowledge of karma is within Jain cosmology rather than the more common Hindu or Buddhist sort. Within my limited understanding, karma affects condition of rebirth rather than events within the present lifetime.
I believe Boing Boing has some resident Buddhists among its more frequent commenters (Tenn & Antinuous I believe) - y'ins care to comment on this?

@ Trial Monkey, 11
Officers do have more responsibility for the lives under their command, I agree. The danger they face, at least for the lower officer pay grades, vary based on posting -- geographically and by specialization (MOS or what have you). An infantry second lieutenant in Afghanistan might die more readily than an Spc fixing Jeeps on Okinawa.
In general, what you suggest about motivation and necessity rings true, but isn't universally the case. I've met some enlisted men, Marines and Sea Bees primarily, who had other options and enlisted anyway. I've known officers who joined up because the military would pay for them to go to university.
I'm not a current or former serviceman, and I don't generally agree with the wars (operations? "police actions?") that our military are presently embarked upon. I just think that "anyone who kills an officer is probably OK" is an awfully broad statement, and was interested in context and defense. The initial responses focused on draft-specific defenses. Given the present lack of a draft, I still feel that they're a little weak. While, as you point out, the situations of folks who willingly enlist are likely somewhat different from those who receive commissions, both groups chose to go to war. If you one feels that people who chose to wage war (especially non-defensive war) deserve to be killed, that ought to transcend rank.
Most people who oppose war, particularly "preemptive" war, tend to be fairly pacifistic. Saying that the warlike deserve to die just doesn't jibe right with that. Thus, I was interested in additional context.
Sorry if I thread-jacked somewhat.
--
@Takuan, 10
Yeah, there are definitely some sadistic bastards in the mix. There are probably officers who restrain their sadistic troops from killing civilians as well, though.
The whole institution is in sad shape. As far as my country's military goes, just look at things like the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy or the treatment of non-Christian soldiers. Ethical issues stopped me from enlisting when I was considering doing so. But it's still a broad bush.

Re Takuan @5 & Vonmises @6 -
That explanation makes some sense in the context of the draft that was part of this account (and for what it's worth, I think it looks like a damn interesting book) but is somewhat weaker as a general statement.
In the military at present, the officers and enlisted are all volunteers. The primary difference between a commissioned officer and a private is a bachelors degree. An officer isn't necessarily joining up for any greater period of time, nor are they automatically more interested in killing than enlisted men. They also aren't the ones responsible for instituting a draft. Politicians do that.
There are some officers who may be monsters. This guy may have earned a fragging.
I still question the worth of #2 as a general statement because in the context of an all-volunteer army (as America presently has) every "average soldier" made the same choice every officer did.

Takuan:
Why, exactly?

Hopefully, this sort of proof of corporate wrong-doing may actually force some reform in their tactics, at least.

These are not your standard alt-medicine toxins, they are actual toxic volatile chemicals given off by substances in the home, as in the case of the poisonous FEMA trailers.

RossInDetroit, 94-
I agree that it's a Them First, Then Us argument.
But you've inverted the order of the paragraphs, which changes the meaning. My reading of the comment at 83 may have been predicated on my understanding of "these... other wastes of human of financial capital" as referring to the oligarchs and dictators as alternate agents, in the sense that I might refer to someone as a "waste of space," rather than as the problems to be solved. I assumed that the poster desired these other assholes be required to do some international do-gooding as we're forced to.
I suppose I'm wrong.

I've never really liked Joe Frank, but that could just be because the local college radio station played his show at midnight on Saturdays, which is one of those times you're least likely to want to listen to hypnotic music and two hour monologues.

Rossindetroit @ 88 -
I think you might need to spit that back out. CSHOTTON @ 83 never mentions "Greater Evils" in the world (e.g., "why do you care about global warming when children are dying in the Sudan" argument, he refers to other agents. More like There Are Other Nastier People In The World With The Capability To Solve Problems As Well so Maybe We Shouldn't Worry That We Only Try To Some Of Them, but that would make for a nasty abbreviation.

Mr Benjamin Wright @3-
I think that it's peripherally related at best.

Jake0748 @9 -
See, I always just balance the ashtray on my secretary's head. I used to just use her as a footrest, but then I realized that in today's competitive job market, the peons should be required to multi-task.

@ Torrance -
Most of the book threads have been closed to further commenting.

The last sentence of the article, not in the blockquote, is one of the funniest and most suggestive.
Also, guy at 0:32 is doin' it wrong.

The other day I watched a girl my friend was talking to at a coffeeshop try to access the results of an online "IQ test" she'd taken.
She had to click through page after page of ads, declining surveys and special offers.
"This is lame. How did you find this test?"
"I clicked on an ad," her friend said.
"So you already failed the test?"

To be fair, what she means is that the Stonehenge security team will be receiving a police report form in the mail in about three weeks, to be filled out and returned.

@ Pork Musket, #5-
And even on the rare occasions that I'm caught without a lighter, just about anything will do. Silverware, hardbound book, countertop. It's hard not to be able to open a bottle. Hard edge + torque = open.

Guinness Extra Stout, at least as available in the California, fails only in that it comes in standard bottles rather than utilizing any of the neat nitrogen carbonization widgets found in the Draught bottles and cans.
Well, that and that it's bottled in Canada.
Ooooh, flame on.

@WIL9000, # 46
Six trillion dollars hasn't actually gone anywhere yet. The number is an estimate that includes both direct expenditures and "indirect costs, and factor in the long-term additional expenses that the war has accrued — everything from caring for brain-damaged soldiers for the next 50 years through to loss of economic productivity attributable to instabilities in the supply of oil from Iraq."

@ Doc Tourneau, #44
That was my first thought as well. Even strong opponents of the war, however, tend to agree that the man was more than just a gangster. He was a despot, and one that caused the painful deaths of a lot of people. While there are already plenty of folks like him who are astronomically rich and powerful, I would rather not add him to the list.

The thing that really confuses me about this is the layout. It's all about the graphic design, at the expense of any real information. The linked website contains nothing additional.
The caption says that the graphic shows "three commonly found toxins, and the plant species that mollify their effects." Now, the diagram is color-coded into three sections, one for each of the three chemicals (trichloroethylene, formaldahyde, and benzene), with each broken down into various sources of that chemical toxin, each accompanied by a plant that negates it. Different sources correspond to different plants.
This leaves me wondering a number of things. Is the height of the source on the diagram meant to convey how much of that compound it gives off, or is the placement arbitrary? Are the plants that correspond to the objects chosen by the amount of that compound that they absorb, or again, is it arbitrary? Why, if water repellent gives off formaldehyde, is it on the stalk of the diagrammatical "plant" that contains the Benzene sources?

I took a look at the website of Wolverton Environmental, one of the cited sources of the diagram, to see what I could discover. That site is also somewhat lacking. It seems that you must purchase one of the Wolvertons' books to learn about the benefit of plants. I turned to the primary source of information provided, the FAQ. It said nothing about the correspondence between type of plant and type of chemical removed from the air, but there was one useful section, under the question heading "3. How do I determine how many plants I need?"
That section included the following statements:

The amount of leaf surface area influences the rate of air purification by plants. Generally, the larger the plant leaf surface area, the higher the transpiration rate and the greater the surface area to absorb airborne chemicals.
The basis for recommending the number of plants per room is based upon the average amount of air pollution found in public buildings that were tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [...]
Go to the table below and estimate the number of plants required to remove this amount of formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is the predominant chemical found in the test buildings. Therefore, if sufficient numbers of plants are added to remove formaldehyde, other chemicals should also be removed.

Now this, to me, makes the GOOD diagram even more confusing. Why would different chemicals require different plants if a sufficient number of plants should remove the other chemicals as well? (I'm ignoring the weird misuse of "therefore.")
Now here are the plants that appear on the chart which followed that can also be seen on the diagram, with their listed "removal rate (micrograms/hour):" Bamboo Palm (1350), Janet Craig (1328), English Ivy (1120), and Peace Lily (939). With those numbers in mind, a glance at the diagram shows that a simple bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom reading doesn't correspond to rate of efficacy. The separation into the three "stalks" muddies things somewhat. Does the Bamboo Palm, matched on the chart to formaldehyde from furniture, not absorb more of the benzene from tobacco smoke although it would absorb more formaldehyde? The diagram just leaves you to guess. Nor is the Boston Fern, rated highest on the chart at the FAQ at 1863, included on the diagram. Are none of the toxin sources potent enough to warrant the use of the botanical big guns? For that matter, couldn't I just buy a bunch of Boston Ferns and do away with the Chrysanthemums, Poinsettias, and Azaleas entirely?

Whether this is junk science or not, the diagram is more or less useless without some accompanying article.

The inclusion of an "electric razor with door mirror" on the business side was no doubt after a number of tests indicated the inadvisability of including a single-edge razor.

@ Robert, #12
It's not that the government chose "to go into public debt" over this war, it's that it chose to greatly increase the public debt. The already phenomenally huge public debt.
Were you or I asked in 2002 to choose what to spend 513 billion imaginary dollars on, I hardly think this would be it.

Well, assuming that my hasty internet figures are correct*, we could have bought out all of Iraq's oil for just $3Tn in 2003 prices. Then we could have swum about in our pools full of oil, spitting fountains of oil into the air. Those less inclined to enjoy swimming in crude oil would be allowed to build Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pools full of money with the remaining $3Tn.
Yes, I'm being somewhat facetious, of course. Buying the entirety of Iraq's reserves would likely have caused an insane surge in oil prices, which, given that the $6Tn figure is based in part on "loss of economic productivity attributable to instabilities in the supply of oil from Iraq" might not be the solution we're looking for. It would also be a gigantic payoff to a dangerous dictator. I'm just sayin'.
*Internet numbers: Oil at or under $25/bbl from Wikipedia x Iraq oil reserves as of 2007 at 115 Bn bbl from CIA world factbook = $2875Bn

I speak Sumerian, and to me it looks like dood by the time you finish counting there will be three more green LEDs showing.

Just remember to de-accessorize before going to pick up your friends at the airport. Forgetfulness may lead to increased familiarity with the business end of a submachine gun.

As a Northern Californian, I can bear witness that our general intonation up here is closer to her Seattlite than her Valleygirl.

Actually, what delights me about this post is that it's tagged book and kids rather than civlib. While the book is about fighting for civil liberties (or so I hear, haven't cracked open the PDF yet) and spawned some useful instructables on such, it always seemed a bit misguided to have information on the book tour in that category. Sort of stood out like a sore thumb and diluted the usefulness of tagging.

I find it interesting that so much of the Pacific Islands marketshare is held by Friendster. I briefly flirted with Friendster during the period between its boom in popularity and near-total abandonment. I understand that most folks left because the software architecture then in place couldn't support its size; once the problems were fixed it had already lost its audience to other emerging sites. I still occasionally receive friend-request spam from the site (one just hours ago), but I had no idea that it was still really viable.

A YouTube search for "Disney Silly Symphony - The Skeleton Dance" turns up a number of copies of the video that are still viable.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the xkcd strip about bacon.
I tend to cook fairly simple dishes and am perhaps a bit over-paranoid about animal products spoiling, so I rarely include meat among my grocery purchases. When I do, and for the same reasons, it tends to mean a huge orgy of meat consumption, such as the Great Steak Week of 2007, when nary a meal lacked steak.

What's the etiquette on painting over other people's pieces?
Does the quality of the work factor in? The vanity?
Does the etiquette vary by region?

Personally, I call shenanigans on Eriko23 @7 for making me think that all Italian men drove cars that look like this.

Having not previously bothered to read this thread, I'm curious: did Mark Frauenfelder (@#3) disemvowel his own comment ex post facto? At the time of his apology? Did Teresa N-H?
Somewhat amusing either way.

@#20, Shinchan-
If you're looking for something more lively on C-SPAN, check out the Prime Minister's Questions, a period of debate in the British House of Commons. It's got the same style as in this video, with a mix of traditional niceties and sometimes withering insults. It was loads of fun to watch when Blair was PM. Definitely quite a contrast with the plodding House of Representatives. More information on the C-SPAN website here.

It should also probably be noted that the acceptability of that sort of construction may be chalked up to dialectical and regional or generational differences.
I'm aware that the term "Oriental," for instance, is considered correct for all people of East Asian descent in British usage and is still used by many people of my parent's generation here in the States, while to the young or language-conscious speaker of American English it's considered somewhat racist. It's not the worst slur I could use for any given Asian person, but it's at best insensitive and at worst might land me in a fight.
Similarly, when I hear someone talk about "a black" or "a Vietnamese" it's an instant tip-off that they're not from 'round here, given that I live in a city in a progressive blue state. It's about the same as talking about "the gays."

@#24, Wolfrider
I believe that you greatly misunderstand Sister Y's comment, and that you make the same errors in that you attribute to that commenter.
There are two quotes in question, one from a Chinese media source and one from a Vietnamese media source. Both use the same word, but they use them as different parts of speech. Yes, a word can be both an adjective and a noun.
One of the issues here is that use of a word that is perfectly acceptable as an adjective can be fairly dehumanizing when used as a noun. Ethnic/national/racial descriptors are the most notable examples, though not the only such cases. Consider these two statements:
"There are homeless sleeping on the sidewalk." vs "There are homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk." The first usage is common practice, and greatly affects the tone.
The wrongdoing of the swindler wasn't the question here, it was the subtle racism perceived in the use of language in the article sourced. The way that I read Sister Y's comment was not that that commenter was unopposed to racism, as you infer, but that she wished it understood that this was a minor instance of racism in language and perhaps should not be blown out of proportion.