tech@vedella

Our thanks to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our once-daily delivery of headlines by email. Watchismo is offering progressive savings for the Last Chance Big Time Holiday Watch Sale. Save 10%, 15% or 20% off all your watch purchases. Don't waste a minute: this offer ends Sunday. • Use code LASTCHANCE10 for 10% off [...]

A cautionary tale for Boing Boing readers who like to irrigate their nasal passages with warm salt water during the cold season: don't use water right out of the tap. (via @heathermg)

A timely Kickstarter campaign: censored SOPA shirts. Listening the SOPA markup hearings on December 15th left me with a feeling of helplessness despite having contacted my representatives and helping Kickstarter speak out against the bill. When █████ ████ asked me how things looked later that night, I tried to convey how frustrating it was to [...]

Sound it Out #10: The Duke Spirit: "Procession" If I could invent a band, they’d be one that played straight-ahead, non-trendy guitar rock. My make-believe band would meet at art college and live together in a dingy, furniture-less apartment. They’d have a hot, growly, mysterious female singer and four accomplished dudes cranking out the music. [...]

Banksy spoke to the BBC about his brilliant and funny new sculpture, Cardinal Sin, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He made it by gluing bathroom tiles to the face of cardinal bust, to give the effect of a mosaiced photograph. I love everything about the Walker Gallery -- the Old Masters, the contemporary [...]

The New America Foundation's Open Network Technology Initiative, a US State Department-funded project to build an "Internet in a suitcase" that can be dropped into repressive zones where protesters need network access and the state is trying to take it away. The project -- a very complex piece of technology -- has gotten to the [...]

From Space.com: "A newly discovered comet is set to make a death dive into the sun's atmosphere today (Dec. 15), and scientists will have a ringside seat to watch its fiery demise." How could this story be made any more sci-fi? The comet's name is Lovejoy. Feels like a creepy omen of doom, with all [...]

Possibly the most upsetting thing I've seen on the internet. Ever. Video Link. The principal issued a bullshit apology. (via Joe Sabia, and thanks for the update, Pesco!)

Please note that as soon as Dean approves the capital expense, Happy Mutants World Headquarters will move from our unmarked island to this Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silo and air park now for sale in New York's Adirondacks. The new list price is just $750,000! From Sotheby's: The Atlas-F missile sites were activated in 1961, and [...]

Jeff Vandermeer sez, Shared Worlds is a unique summer SF/F writing camp for teens, based out of Wofford College in South Carolina. The participants build worlds in the first week and write stories set in those worlds in week two. We've just announced our guest list for 2012, as well as set up donation and [...]

Comedian Louis CK has weighed in with a status report on the first four days of his experiment with independent, DRM-free video distribution. CK spent $170,000 recording live performances consisting of previously unaired material ("every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop") and made it available online [...]

Michael Weinberger sez, "Today is a big day for SOPA, but it is really the culmination of over a year's worth of negotiations, meetings, and debates. This video gives a bit of background and context for the bill to help people realize what has happened already and to imagine what is likely to happen in [...]

This the last day of the Magick for Terri auction to benefit Terry Windling, one of fantasy literature's most beloved figure, presently mired in family health and financial difficulties. Included in the auction: naming rights to a character in the sequel to my novel Little Brother.

One interesting fact and one bit of useful advice, courtesy the Neuroskeptic blog: • When bees use nectar from wild Rhododendrons the honey they produce is poisonous. Not poisonous as in, "dude, you have to try this poison honey it made me see god," but poisonous as in "was once left out as a deadly [...]

Bob Self says, Baby Tattoo publishes art books that are distributed around the globe; but we are, at heart, a local business that has been based near North Hollywood, California for nearly a decade. In the spirit of being a good neighbor, we are opening our 2nd annual Christmas Pop-Up store in the NoHo Arts [...]

Five Day Weekend has reissued "The Medium is the Massage" LP (1967), the experimental audio recording based on media theorist Marshall McLuhan's groundbreaking book of the same name that was designed by Quentin Fiore and coordinated by Jerome Agel. The reissue of this rare LP includes new essays, artwork by BB pal Winston Smith, and [...]

A former administrative assistant for the Maine Trial Lawyers' Association has pleaded guilty to embezzling $166,000. Apparently, much of the money was spent on powerups for the Facebook games YoVille and Mafia Wars. (Thanks, Chad!)

From the Washington Post today: Nearly all medical research on chimpanzees is "scientifically unjustified" and any future studies using the great apes must pass a “very high bar,” according to a new congressionally ordered report from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences. “Fewer kinds of studies will be justified based [...]

I just caught up (rather late) with the last Spider on the Web podcast, wherein science fiction writer and musician Spider Robinson reads aloud from his work, plays his guitar, and plays some of his favorite music. I really enjoy Spider's podcasts, and the last one was a particular favorite, as it included a reading [...]

You should listen to this awesome song by Adam Warrock, called I Am An Action Scientist. It's guaranteed to make you feel like a badass, even if all you're doing is plotting data points. (Via Atomic Robo and bclevinger.)