Boing Boing

Boing Boing - A directory of Wonderful Thing, one of my favarite blogs. There are a lot of sites out there that aggregate similar information, but no imitators can replicate the Boing Boing staff's uncanny ability to catch every bit of cool info that hits the Web, from comics to flowcharts to unicorns, and far, far beyond.

I have been reading Gizmodo for about the last three years. It has been my #1 stop for all gadget related news. Back when I started Joel Johnson was writing the posts and he did a damn good job of it. He covered gadgets that I was interested in and he had a great sense of humor. Just as Gizmodo started to blow up some kind of drama went down and Joel was forced to leave. I stuck with Gizmodo as they made it big and hired an entire team of writers to cover the gadget world. They still do a great job but lately it just hasn’t been the same. These guys are posting machines probably averaging, I would guess, about 40 posts a day. That is great but on any given day there are only maybe 15 that I am really interested in. The rest of it is just a bunch of crap. I had added Gizmodo to the RSS reader on my Blackberry but after a few days of going through posts I didn’t care about I had to remove it. Luckily for me my man Joel Johnson popped his head up over at Boing Boing and became

According to this article, beauty-seekers in Southern China (and other parts of the world) are soaking themselves in pools filled with a type of small fish that eat human skin: Garra Rufa, a type of small tropical fish, also nicknamed Chinchin Yu, nibble fish or simply doctor fish, are put in hot springs. As they can live and swim freely in at least 43-degree-hot waters, they are naturally used for the treatment of skin diseases in such spas. When placed in the spa, these fish can feed themselves on the dead cells of the human body, since they only consume such cells, leaving the healthy skin of the human body to grow. The whole process is reportedly free of pain. It won’t hurt and the bather might feel a pleasant tingling on his or her skin.

David Pescovitz: I Make Projects posted plans for "giving yourself a sixth sense for wireless networks" through a small wearable device. It's made from a cannibalized Wi-Fi detector, microcontroller, vibrating motor, and a bit of custom electronics. From the project description: This project is for a small electronic unit that allows the user to sense the presence and relative signal strength of wireless hotspots. It can be worn as a pendant or carried in a pocket. It is "always on" and communicates the presence and signal strength of an in-range hotspot by way of sequences of pulses - like a heartbeat you can feel. The stronger and faster the "heartbeat", the stronger the wireless signal detected. Link (via MAKE: Blog) Blog Search Links: Blogdigger Bloglines Blogpulse Feedster Icerocket Technorati

Xeni Jardin: BoingBoing reader Jim McAnally says, Here's an article about the "world-famous" Nun Bun which was stolen/kidnapped about two years ago. The Nun Bun is a cinnamon roll that has a strong resemblence to Mother Teresa. The REAL Mother Teresa sued the local coffee shop to C&D selling Nun Bun memorabilia. A question: You know, this isn't necessarily Nun Bun Number One, after two years on the Run. How could pastry authentication be Done? That thing's worth a Ton. UPDATE: Jackson S. O'Brien says: I'm the manager of the Coffee shop in Nashville that the Nun Bun comes from. I started frequenting the shop after the miracle baking, eventually got hired there and now I run the place (my immediate superior is the guy who discovered the bun). I wanted to thank you for covering this story, I read Boingboing more frequently than I read the Tennessean, and this is the first photo that's surfaced of the bun that isn't taken from the same angle as t

Xeni Jardin: Click on any of the photos in this post to view a larger (900 px wide) version. (image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4). Allen Sullivan, a photojournalist currently working in Guatemala (allen @ allensullivan.com) who shot these images, says: These images were made in Tecpán, Guatemala on Monday, March 12. US President Bush, Guatemala President Oscar Berger and their entourages visited the nearby Mayan historical site, Iximché, while Bush was on his Latin American tour. I was working with Marc Lacey, a New York Times writer, the previous week on a story about child labor in Guatemala. On the day of Bush's visit, I decided to head to Tecpán instead of Guatemala City because I knew there would be protests there, too, and I wanted something that said "Guatemala" more than another riotous metropolis like those in his previous stops. My assistant and I had little trouble getting there, even though they were closing the road to Tecpán

Xeni Jardin: IBN reports that just last week in Delhi, air traffic radar spotted "two unidentified flying objects over Delhi moving northwest to south between 0930 hours and 1000 hours." Woooo. Link to story, with this video of the flying saucery things whizzing over the airport. (Thanks, Sameer Pitalwalla) Reader comment: Ed says, I was poking about on scribd.com late last night, wading through various documents. When I saw your boingboing post today about UFOs in India, it struck a chord. Here's the URL of the piece on scribd that resonated with your post: Link. Apparently, the aliens have landed, built a base in a "forbidden zone" (Ladakh valley, in the Himalayas), and are broadcasting to the locals! According to this document, the aliens appear to be friendly and can make black and white televisions show colour pictures, and are using local "emmisaries" to communicate with people in India, Pakistan and China. The plot thickens, methinks .

Cory Doctorow: I just finished listening to the 3-CD Allen Ginsberg Audio Collection -- I was mostly interested in the classics like Howl and Kaddish, Pull My Daisy and Don't Grow Old, but the poem that totaly took me away was "Put Down Your Cigarette Rag," a poetic song that can make me laugh, dance, and sing along even after about 20 listens. It's also totally stuck in my head and I find myself singing it under my breath as I walk down the street. Here's a video of Ginsberg performing the piece on the AllenGinsberg.org site: Communism's flopped Let's help the Soviet millions Sell 'em our Coffin-Nails & make a couple billions Big Bucks Big Bucks bucks bucks bucks bucks smoke smoke smoke smoke smoke Bucks smoke bucks Dope bucks big Dope Bucks Dig Big Dope Bucks Big Dope Bucks dont smoke big dope bucks Dig big Pig dope bucks Nine billion bucks a year a Southern Industry Buys Senator Jesse Fear who pushes Tobacco su

Xeni Jardin: Robert Pearlman of the excellent space ephemera site collectspace.com writes, Adorning the entranceway to the U.S. Destiny Laboratory on the International Space Station have been two pennants: one for the Army and one that reads "Go Navy, Beat Army." The pair are not the first pennants to fly in space: hundreds of flags and banners championing colleges, societies and even sports teams have been carried to orbit by the space shuttle. Now, NASA wants a pennant of its own and is turning to grade school students to design it. In partnership with Mad Science and AOL's Kids Service KOL, NASA is hosting a contest for 6 to 12 year olds to create pennants that celebrate either of two themes: the upcoming STS-118 shuttle mission including the flight of the first educator astronaut Barbara Morgan or the Vision for Space Exploration, NASA's plans to send humans to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The winning design will fly with Morgan on-b

Cory Doctorow: Cabel tells the detailed story of the new Katamari Damacy tees: When you read translated interviews with Takahashi in the American press, you get the impression that he brashly hates everything. In reality, this is only partially true. He's actually pretty shy person, and you quickly realize it's not "I hate everything", but honest, thoughtful opinion — his vision is so specific, and many things don't live up to his expectations and their potential. What also doesn't come across in the press is his dry sense of humor and mischievousness — his critiques are generally said with a sly smile and a laugh, as if he knows he's being marginally ridiculous by admitting, for example, that he didn't really like Mother 3. That's not to say I have him fully figured out. We know he has a low tolerance for anyone who takes the "safe road". So, you'd think he'd be a huge fan of the convention-shunning Nintendo Wii system, right? Wrong! He's currently pla

Cory Doctorow: On the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner (co-author of the wonderful Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything) digs into the pricing on generic drugs and finds that the main-street pharmacies mark up their offerings by 975 percent! Even once you factor in the cost of buying a membership at Costco and Sam's Club, the price differences were astounding. Here are the prices he found at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac: Walgreens: $117 Eckerd: $115 CVS: $115 Sam's Club: $15 Costco: $12 Those aren't typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12. Link See also: Freakonomics quiz: Who is Celebrity X? Freaknomics on Jane Siberry's pay-what-you-want music store Monkeys taught to use money Blog Search Links: Blogdigger Bloglines Blogpulse Feedster Icerocket Technorati

Xeni Jardin: UPDATE 3/15 at 12:15 PT: The 10 Zen Monkeys servers have been hammered with traffic since this news broke. Keep trying and they'll hopefully be up again soon. Former DMCA abuser Michael Crook today apologizes to the entire internet for his takedown campaign and his attacks on free speech. BoingBoing was one of his targets. We accept his apology, we applaud his change of heart, and we welcome him back from the dark side. [Update: Ah, bummer. Spoke too soon. See the comments below for news of Crook's latest evil deeds. Judging from material recently posted on Mr. Crook's various websites, it would appear he remains a racist, a holocaust denier, and an enemy of the same constitutional protections for free speech that allow him to promote homophobia, white supremacy, or any other beliefs others may find objectionable.] Congratulations and huge respect to Jason Schultz and others at the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their hard work on this case, and

Greetings everyone who found us through Boing Boing & Digg. Our site was down this morning due to a cache "error" on my part but is back online thanks to the quick rescue by Anarcat from Koumbit. If you've never heard of them, be sure to check them out! If you're looking for the comic, click here. A great many thanks to Cory Doctorow for accepting my submission on Boing Boing and to Robin for suggesting I submit in the first place. Thanks to Hilton for submitting the story to Digg. A I hope you all enjoy the first two chapters, the third one is underway. From the age of Big Brother, Frederic Guimont