Friday, June 30, 2006

Tattooed pigs
Top 10 coolest designer gadgets
Newbie's Guide to Detecting the NSA (From Wired's Blog here)

If you're a Windows user, fire up an MS-DOS command prompt. Now type tracert followed by the domain name of the website, e-mail host, VoIP switch, or whatever destination you're interested in. Watch as the program spits out your route, line by line.

C:\> tracert nsa.gov 1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 12.110.110.204 [...] 7 11 ms 14 ms 10 ms
as-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218] 8 13 12 19 ms
ae-23-56.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.173] 9 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms
192.205.33.17 10 88 ms 92 ms 91 ms
tbr2-p012201.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.186] 11 88 ms 90 ms 88 ms
tbr1-cl2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.41] 12 89 ms 97 ms 89 ms
tbr1-cl4.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.29] 13 89 ms 88 ms 88 ms
ar2-a3120s6.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.8.65] 14 102 ms 93 ms 112 ms
12.127.209.214 15 94 ms 94 ms 93 ms
12.110.110.13 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * *

In the above example, my traffic is jumping from Level 3 Communications to AT&T's network in San Francisco, presumably over the OC-48 circuit that AT&T tapped on February 20th, 2003, according to the Klein docs. The magic string you're looking for is sffca.ip.att.net. If it's present immediately above or below a non-att.net entry, then -- by Klein's allegations -- your packets are being copied into room 641A, and from there, illegally, to the NSA.

Of course, if Marcus is correct and AT&T has installed these secret rooms all around the country, then any att.net entry in your route is a bad sign.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

The Matchstick Ukelele
More 419-scam reversals. 419-Eater convinced a scammer to carve a wooden C-64 (!).
There's No Way I'm Saving That Guy (Onion)
The Dance Lesson from McSweeneys
Google launches their online payment service: Checkout

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I have a feeling that the guy who runs Casa D'Ice restaurant has a few more opinions he'd be willing to share with you.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Social engineering the USB way
We figured we would try something different by baiting the same employees that were on high alert. We gathered all the worthless vendor giveaway thumb drives collected over the years and imprinted them with our own special piece of software. I had one of my guys write a Trojan that, when run, would collect passwords, logins and machine-specific information from the user’s computer, and then email the findings back to us. The next hurdle we had was getting the USB drives in the hands of the credit union’s internal users. I made my way to the credit union at about 6 a.m. to make sure no employees saw us. I then proceeded to scatter the drives in the parking lot, smoking areas, and other areas employees frequented. Once I seeded the USB drives, I decided to grab some coffee and watch the employees show up for work. Surveillance of the facility was worth the time involved. It was really amusing to watch the reaction of the employees who found a USB drive. You know they plugged them into their computers the minute they got to their desks.
The non-definitive guide to the session musician (Stylus)

Monday, June 26, 2006

Ever uttered the words "pickles are destroying my life!" in a tear-soaked fit? Hey, don't feel bad: we all have. Instead of merely exploding the life-destroying pickles or blaming them for the world's problems as I've tried to do countless times (mixed results. I don't not recommend it), this woman bravely decides to confront this devastating and completely rational fear. On TV. On Maury. Until we can cost-effectively launch all pickles into space so they menace humankind no more, this solution may have to do. Let's watch! (youtube, via boingboing)
The Bush Code of Secrecy (Salon, watch ad for free access)
"It would be hard to overstate the significance of this proceeding," Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said in an e-mail. "It is not just a dispute over surveillance. It is a test of our whole system of government. They are not only arguing that the courts cannot adjudicate the matter, but that Congress is powerless to limit the government's activities. If the administration prevails, then we will be well on our way to a different form of government in which executive authority is effectively unchecked."

Thousands of Vintage Bridge postcards at BridgePix

Sunday, June 25, 2006


[Hyperspecialization XIV] A pulp cover gallery that specializes in menacing octopuses.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Happiest day of the year
Fake David Bowie postage stamps (?)

The database of world currency design has lots of examples of money that looks better than ours. Check Macedonia's atomic spacepod

Thursday, June 22, 2006


Manhole cover floormats
Earth temp at 400yr. high.
The Bush administration has maintained that the threat is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Effective Friday, AT&T is changing its customer privacy policy, giving itself broad permissions to share private customer data with the Bush Administration.

AT&T is being sued by San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation for allegedly allowing the NSA to tap into the company's data network, providing warrantless access to customers' e-mails and Web browsing.

AT&T is also believed to have participated in President Bush's acknowledged domestic spying program, in which the NSA was given warrantless access to U.S. citizens' phone calls.


Great vintage candy bar wrappers on Mr. Toast's blog.
Mmmm, mmm... cold turkey.
Flash: Escape from the crimson room
Then try the viridian room and the white chamber
The sound of pi
Flash app plays the first 10,000 digits of pi. While great at circles, pi sucks at music.
Sushi Pillows

Monday, June 19, 2006


Embed
Check Mark Jenkins' other street art.
Hamster powered MIDI sequencer
The big list of fallacious arguments
"Hi! Come on in. Let me get you a cup of coffee and tell you about the swell bridge you'll be buying."

Sunday, June 18, 2006


More edible Beatles stuff from RareBeatles.com
Beatles Bubble Gum Cards
[Too Much Fab Book-Lernin']
People tend to get really analytical about the Beatles. Here are a few of the most fevered.
Semantic Shifts In Beatles Chord Progressions
The intention of our experiment was to investigate whether harmonic shifts can be perceived as shifts in the semantic contexts of a song excerpt. To this end we presented progressions of two and three chords to a sample of 40 subjects. The first chord was meant to induce a tonal context for the next ones, which we asked the subjects to rate on both semantic dimensions. The stimuli contained a minimal amount of musical information. The song fragments with the relevant chord transitions were reduced to chords played on a piano, each lasting only a couple of seconds. The approach taken thus can be called highly reductionistic.

The Beatles Biography

Beatles Money. Just what it sounds like. I have no idea why anybody would want to know who lent who money.
Sample fact: In a promo sheet from '65 it states George bought a bow and arrow. Purpose unknown

And saving the best for last, Alan Pollock's The Official Beatles Canon
which features detailed analysis of every single Beatles song. The fanboy geek-factor is cranked to an unbelievable level, but there's just a lot of great info in hear that even the most studious listener would never have picked up.

"Surprisingly, barely six different chords are used within the entire song to exploit such a complex tonal situation, in which your sense of where the home key is is kept continually in flux. I'd suggest that this changeability is so strongly a subliminal hook element of the song that the final ending on C sounds a tad abrupt and forced; perhaps a fade-out would have worked better."
Happy 64th, Paul

Life Masks. Strange.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Amazing Colbert interview with Georgia (R) Congressman Lynn Westmoreland
(YouTube)
Check out The Jive's house band, Jet Weston and the Atomic Ranch Hands, playing live on WDVR's Heartland Hayride. The show runs Saturday evening from 6-8pm. The Ranch Hands will be playing a half dozen songs throughout the course of the show.

WDVR's Audio Feed Here

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Looks like whale's back on the menu, boys!
"There are stocks of whales that are very abundant. What's the idea of having them just there, increasing, increasing and increasing," he said.
Gold rush, front yard (SFGate)
Apt. door peephole = digital camera fisheye lens.
Death by DMCA
Emboldened by their successes, U.S. entertainment companies are pushing for another wave of even more restrictive legislation. “Broadcast flag” legislation could require that all consumer electronics devices recognize protected television broadcasts and potentially refuse to copy them; a so-called “radio flag” bill would prevent or restrict the manufacture of hard disk recorders for digital radio; and an “analog hole” closure would restrict the connections new digital devices can make with analog devices.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

This quiet 51-year-old Californian (above, on a ladder) for the past 22 years has been creating giant plywood people who pop up in fields and on storefronts all over Monterey County, California.

Spiritual album or serial killer's confession? You be the judge. Anyway, old Freddie should be arrested for the white hi-rise leather boots alone. I must have made a dozen bad album cover posts, but there's always something new. Here's another site full of horrible ideas.
[Scopitone film] Web of Love - Joi Lansing
Folgers: Wake up to torment by glowing yellow clowns singing "You can sleep when you are dead".

Monday, June 12, 2006


[The Dust of Oblivion] Paintings by Dan Kennedy
Stan Getz and a jaw-droppingly cute Astrud Gilberto doing "Girl from Ipanema" (1964)
I can't hear it (mp3).
(story)

Nixie clock gallery Digital clocks from analog tubes
(via gizmodo)
This is a really cool optical illusion

Sunday, June 11, 2006


For more urban decay photography, check out Satan's Laundromat. Tons of great stuff, including the imitation chicken gallery.
I could really go for some Utah fried chicken.


A photo set documenting the death of the Pabst brewery in Newark.
Michael Berg talks about the death of his son and al-Zarqawi
I find it incredible that someone can be so hopeful, rational, and forgiving when something this bad has happened to them.

Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that. (Watch Berg compare Zarqawi to President Bush -- 1:44)

I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Oneworldexpedition is the online diary of 2 guys trying to cross the arctic icecap before it melts. Sponsored by Greenpeace's Project Thin Ice
Less Popular Game Show Catchphrases (McSweeneys)
Harper's On Simple Human Decency

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Why didn't I think of this?

Gallery of huge beings
Every huge roadside guy I've ever seen has had a beard. Big lumberjack. Big Amish guy. Big farmer. Trucker. You get the idea. Actually, I'm pretty sure the beard is these sculptors' only priority. I'll be damned if this blimp-holding welder (wtf?) isn't sporting one under his mask. Huge-guy-sculpting is truly a beard-enthusiast artform. So this is a welcome sight.
[Tri-tarded] Since the early 50's when electric guitars first gained popularity with players, people have been screwing up a perfectly good thing with idiotic schemes trying to come up with a better way to make them. Now there's this y-shaped... oh forget it.
Monkey Chow Guy is 4 days in and 5 pounds down.
It's all in the monkey sauces.

But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I'm about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes." Maybe I'll lose weight. Maybe I'll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I'll go crazy. Maybe it's too late. Check back here every day to follow along with the Monkey Chow Diaries. Comments, criticisms, questions and advice can be left on the blog.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

RIP Billy Preston

Monday, June 05, 2006

The Mummies! Kings of the Budget Rock Showcase!
Stephen Colbert's Commencement speech at Knox College

And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-poorest borders. Now I know you’re all going to say, “Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America.” Yes, but here’s the thing—it’s built now. I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it’s a touch-up and repair job. But thankfully Congress is acting and soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem to Spansih, the next thing you know, they’ll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.

So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. That may not be enough—maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we’ll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we’re at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we’ll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It’s time for illegal immigrants to go—right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Silent Library
Wooden Periodic Table of the Elements

[Would you like 50 lbs. of fries with that?] There's a place in Clinton, New Jersey called the Clinton Station that serves what has to be the world's biggest cheeseburger. It's 50 lbs. (demolishing their old record-breaking 15 pound "Zeus" burger, because, hey, why the hell not?), and if 5 people can finish it in 3 hours, it's free. Otherwise, they pay the $100. These guys tried, but failed.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

(Flash) Paint like Jackson Pollock (via boingboing)

Thursday, June 01, 2006


Guitar Face Gallery (from wfmu)
The Fate of the Ocean
A long (12p) but very worthwhile article on the effects and probable outcomes of man-made climate change and pollution-causing hypoxic zones on the oceans (Mother Jones)
["Yeah.... but why?" dept.] Gallery of the Absurd is gossip-page art, I guess.
The artist makes really nice paintings using empty celebrities as themes.
The long-awaited Ubuntu linux 6.06 "Dapper Drake" release is available today! Get it.