Lascaux painting photographer Bernard Sury focuses a camera on prehistoric paintings on the ceiling at Lascaux, 1947. Previously unpublished
Here's a treat from the archives of LIFE magazine -- the first photos of the cave paintings in Lascaux, including some unpublished photos.
September 12, 1940. A warm afternoon in southwestern France. As two schoolboys hunt rabbits on a ridge covered with pine, oak, and blackberry brambles, their dog chases a hare down a hole beside a downed tree. Widening the hole, removing rocks, the boys follow -- and enter not merely another world, but another time. Underground, they discover "a Versailles of prehistory" -- a series of caves, today collectively known as Lascaux, boasting wall paintings up to 18,000 years old. In 1947, LIFE's Ralph Morse went to Lascaux, and became the first photographer to ever document the astonishing, vibrant paintings. Here, on the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the cave and its treasures, in a gallery featuring rare and never-published photographs, Morse -- still vibrant himself at 93 -- shares with LIFE.com his memories of what it was like to encounter the long-hidden, strikingly lifelike handiwork of a vanished people: the Cro-Magnon.
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Video link. There's a whole genre of ASL (American Sign Language) music videos, exemplified perfectly by smokin' hot hottie-hot Jennie Batchelder in her fantastic interpretation of Michael Franti's "The Sound of Sunshine." Michael's had ASL interpreters at his shows for 11 years, so come check out more at the Power to the Peaceful Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on September 10-12, 2010.
"Thought you'd like to see this... William Shatner's info from Gene Roddenberry's Rolodex (redacted for his privacy, but genuine). The guy that bought the Rolodex (at the recent Star Trek auction) is a friend of mine here at work. He paid a whopping $1280 for the dang thing... more than three times as much as I would have even considered. It's got lots of cool information in it. I'll share more when my friend gets brave enough to bring the whole thing to work. He wants to put it in a clear box for display so nobody does anything foolish like sneezing on it."
Not only was Shatner's info in there, so was Nimoy's, Carl Sagan's secretary, Astronaut Walter (Wally) Schirra, his wife (Majel) mobile phone number, all the numbers to house phones at his house, many relatives (surprisingly a lot are doctors in Georgia... does that make you think or what?!) and much, much more. I'm sure most if not all of the data here is very outdated and many of the people are no longer with us that are included on the cards, but it's cool anyway. I'm hoping to get a chance to shoot a photo of the actual Rolodex sometime, if he feels it is safe enough to bring it to work. What a treasure! My friend is considering checking out some of the numbers to see if they're still current. Who knows...
Andrea James is a Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker.
Video link. Jim Henson teaches viewers how to make puppets from tennis balls, spoons, socks, cardboard tubes, envelopes, and other common household items. Lots of interesting commentary on puppet aesthetics and utility, too! Hearing his voice, which isn't a stretch from Kermit's, is always a treat.
In April, Paul Karl Lukacs landed at San Francisco International Airport after visiting China, and he refused to tell the passport control officer why he was there. He reports what happened on his blog.
“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.
“None of your business,” I said.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.
This did not go over well. She asked a series of questions, such as how long I had been in China, whether I was there on personal business or commercial business, etc. I stood silently. She said that her questions were mandated by Congress and that I should complain to Congress instead of refusing to cooperate with her.
She asked me to take one of my small bags off her counter. I complied.
She picked up the phone and told someone I “was refusing to cooperate at all.” This was incorrect. I had presented her with proof of citizenship (a U.S. passport) and had moved the bag when she asked. What I was refusing to do was answer her questions.
A male Customs and Border Protection officer appeared to escort me to “Secondary.” He tried the good cop routine, cajoling me to just answer a few questions so that I could be on my way. I repeated that I refused to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country.
James Bridle published "the 12,000 edits made to the controversial Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War between December 2004 to November 2009 as a 7,000 page, 12 volume set of books."
Happy Friday, everyone. Tara McGinley at Dangerous Minds found this sweet video of a robot ensemble performing an all-machines cover of the classic '80s party hit "Rock Lobster," by the B-52's. It's the work of a fellow who goes by the name bd594 at YouTube, aka one mister James Cochrane of Toronto, Canada.
John sez, "I am producing 'An Evening of Steampunk and Robot Theatre.' Nine plays, six directors, and robots galore... for charity! Agents of Queen Victoria search for a secret weapon on the outer reaches of space. A disgruntled robot gets family counseling. A mad scientist aims to destroy the world with the help of a cyber-head and time traveling brothers. Bonus: opening night my blog will reveal a link to a steampunk and robot web anthology with original music, comic book art, and eight more plays."
By definition, "neo-minimalists" don't have an overabundance of things in their lives. But one thing they tend to have more and more of these days is visibility. Recently, The New York Times talked to some people participating in the 100 Thing Challenge about how it has affected their lives; The BBC looked into the "Cult of Less;" and here on Boing Boing, Mark has been getting down to the nitty-gritty of what the "lifestyle hack" involves. The common thread here is a growing number of people are realizing that our mountains of physical stuff is actually cluttering up more than just our houses. All of this is exciting to me, because it's something in which I have a growing personal interest: I have been taking steps to get rid of the mountains of stuff I now realize I have no reason to hang on to. In fact, I'm not just doing it myself--I'm trying to help start a revolution.
Here's a Kickstarter project from the EyeWriter team -- EyeWriter being a set of free/open libraries and hardware for doing eye-tracking for input and robotic control. EyeWriter has its inception with TEMPT1, a famous Los Angeles graffiti artist who was paralyzed by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) but who has been able to go on working thanks to the EyeWriter tools.
Now TEMPT1 and the EyeWriter folks are raising $15,000 to "create a new collection of original TEMPT1 artwork and merchandise using the EyeWriter 2.0 software, robotic technology, traditional print-making techniques, as well as his community of friends, fans and peers. Supporting this campaign will not only allow TEMPT1 to continue to make art and express his ideas, but it will give him a chance to again become a professional artist, independently support himself and his family, pay for his medical bills, and make a contribution to the contemporary art world."
A Canadian safety awareness group put a 45-foot decal of a little girl on a West Vancouver intersection. Apparently when you approach it, it creates an optical illusion of a real 3D figure. The effect is similar to the fake speed bumps I posted about in 2008. The organization behind the child-in-the-road sticker, Preventagble, is examining how it impacts driving behavior and also, seemingly with success, creating a buzz about road safety in the area. From CNN:
The group, which uses guerrilla marketing in campaigns focusing on preventable injuries, developed the image with the support of the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation, the District of West Vancouver, School District #45 West Vancouver, and the West Vancouver Police.
With the help of a Youtube video that shows how it appears to an approaching driver, the illusion has sparked intense debate in British Columbia and outside Canada, with some claiming it could lead drivers to swerve or break abruptly in a school zone.
But Preventable says a detailed risk assessment was undertaken to address such concerns.
Before drivers approach the image, they pass a "School Zone" sign, crosswalk, an extended curb and a sign by Preventable that reads, "You’re probably not expecting kids to run out on the road."
Hey, Germans! Next Monday, I leave for a ten-day tour of Deutschland with the German edition of Little Brother. At my urging, my publisher Rowohlt has set an insane pace so that I get to as many places as possible. I'm coming to Hamburg, Braunschweig, Köln, Seeheim-Jugenheim, Erding and Göttingen.
I wrap up with two days in Amsterdam, where I'm appearing at Picnic and doing an event for the Bits of Freedom activist group, in honor of the launch for the Dutch edition of Makers.
Roombots are autonomous, roving furniture segments that cruise around your house, looking for each other and spontaneously organizing themselves into furnishings that evolve based on how you use them. It's a project from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
This project intends to design and control modular robots, called Roombots, to be used as building blocks for furniture that moves, self-assembles, self-reconfigures, and self-repairs. Modular robots are robots made of multiple simple robotic modules that can attach and detach (Wikipedia: Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotics). Connectors between units allow the creation of arbitrary and changing structures depending on the task to be solved. Compared to "monolithic" robots, modular robots offer higher versatility and robustness against failure, as well as the possibility of self-reconfiguration. The type of scenario that we envision for the Rolex Learning Center is a group of Roombots that autonomously connect to each other to form different types of furniture, e.g. stools, chairs, sofas and tables, depending on user requirements. This furniture will change shape over time (e.g. a stool becoming a chair, a set of chairs becoming a sofa) as well as move using actuated joints to different locations depending on the users needs. When not needed, the group of modules can create a static structure such as a wall or a box.
Following up on Ben Terret's calculations on the number of unkerned 100pt pieces of normal cut Helvetica it would take to stretch to the Moon (2,826,206,643.42), Jason Kottke has calculated the type-size necessary to reach the moon with a single instance of the word Helvetica (282.6 billion points -- "the 'h' would be 44,600 miles tall, roughly 5.6 times as tall as the Earth").
Where to start with this old Karo Corn Syrup ad touting "Deep South Peanut Pie?" Between the creepy, naked (!) kid with the bowler hat over his (?) privates (!), the ornate type used for "Deep South Peanut Pie" (and the attendant innuendo!) and the glistening image of the pie itself, it is a kind of perfect marvel of a bygone era of radically different aesthetics. I mean, this once was used to sell a product!
Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay and birthplace of The Pirate Party, has a funny relationship with copyright (not least because of all the US pressure on the country's parliament to pass copyright laws that give advantage to American entertainment giants). Here's the latest weirdness: the Swedish cops are trying to assemble a database of what kinds of prints are made by which brands of shoes, using images harvested from the Web. But Swedish copyright law prohibits this:
The police claim that the law lets them ignore copyright in solving crimes, but an intellectual property professor quoted in the article notes that such an exemption only applies in the direct police investigation of a specific crime -- not for the sake of building up a general database. The professor suggests that this appears to be a clear violation of Swedish copyright laws.
San Franciscans: the latest installment of the excellent, free science fiction reading series SF in SF is coming this Saturday, Sept 11, featuring Amelia Beamer and Mark Van Name. Free to attend, highly recommended.
— Cory • 1 Comment
Here's an archival thing of beauty from steampunk assemblage clock-sculptor Roger Wood of Klockwerks, who notes: "All I've been creating lately are clock-on-wheels so I'm showing one of my favourites from a few years ago."
Here's Yeshmin, a YouTube character whose schtick is somewhere between Yakov Smirnov and Andy Kauffman, wandering the halls of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX: a nerdgasmic gamer/culture convention run by the Penny Arcade webcomic), chatting with the likes of Wil Wheaton and Jonathan Coulton. Funny stuff!
The New York Times reports that US Department of Defense officials are "negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir" from St. Martin's Press, which they claim includes intelligence secrets. But those objections came a bit late: "Several dozen copies of the unexpurgated 299-page book had already been sent out to potential reviewers, and some copies found their way to online booksellers. The New York Times was able to buy a copy online late last week." Streisand Effect, here we come. — Xeni • Comments: 25
Newsweek reports that Wikileaks will soon publish what is believed to be an extremely large cache of war documents, constituting the biggest military leak of all time. The exact number of documents and the nature of their contents have not been revealed, but the material may include what imprisoned Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is believed to have passed along to WikiLeaks earlier this year. From the Newsweek article:
A London-based journalism nonprofit is working with the WikiLeaks Web site and TV and print media in several countries on programs and stories based on what is described as massive cache of classified U.S. military field reports related to the Iraq War. Iain Overton, editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, tells Declassified that his organization has teamed up with media organizations--including major television networks and one or more American media outlets--in an unspecified number of countries to produce a set of documentaries and stories based on the cache of Iraq War documents in the possession of WikiLeaks. As happened with a similar WikiLeaks collection of tens of thousands of U.S. military field reports on the Afghan war, the unidentified media organizations involved with the London group in the Iraq documents project will all be releasing their stories on the same day, which Overton says would be several weeks from now. He declined to identify any of the media organizations participating in the project.
Through its Twitter account, Wikileaks today issued a "no comment" on reports that the documents were related to Iraq. The last large leak publication by Wikileaks contained material related to the war in Afghanistan.
Allen Dale June, one of the 29 original Navajo Code Talkers who encrypted American military communications during World War II using principles of indigenous language, died Wednesday night in Prescott, Arizona, at age 91.
The Code Talkers took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications critical to the war's ultimate outcome.
Several hundred Navajos served as Code Talkers during the war, but a group of 29 that included June developed the code based on their native language. Their role in the war wasn't declassified until 1968.
When I was in Kyoto, I watched people waste their money at a cork gun game. Nobody was able to knock over the prizes. The corks were so lightweight that they harmlessly bounced off the boxes of candy and packs of cigarettes set up on the racks. (Also, quite of few of the people seemed to be half-drunk, which didn't help their aim.)
So, I thought this story from Fuji TV was interesting. The network hired Mamika Tsuruoka of the Japan National Rifle Team to give a cork gun game a try.
After 62 shots, she has claimed 49 of the 50 prizes. The total cost of her ammo was 2,480 yen (40 yen per cork). The total cost of the prizes won was 3,940 yen. However, the remaining prize is a large box that cannot easily be knocked down. Single shots are too weak to move the box, so she gets her friends to help her fire volleys at the target. This tactic works, and after 9 volleys it falls to the ground. Unfortunately, that used a lot of corks, so the total price of knocking over all 50 targets ends up at 5,360 yen. The actual price of the prizes totaled to 4,535 yen, so the festival booth guy made a profit of 825 yen.
Carlos Miller reports that there's a new TSA poster which seems to suggest that people who photograph airplanes are suspicious. The TSA blog has responded saying that 1) the poster isn't new and 2) the pictures on the poster just show general things which happen around airports and are not meant to cast photographers as terrorists. That their current group of posters includes pictures of a stewardess and a maintenance person probably backs up their story. Just in case, though, I fixed it to help us be alert of the real threat which photographers pose.
A is for Amazon, to get all your books.
B is for Bank of America, which holds all your crooks.
C is for Craigslist, no services adult.
D is for Dictionary, to define your result.
E is for eBay, to spend all your cash.
F is for Facebook, web pages like trash.
G is for Gmail, world domination ambition.
H is for Hotmail, Gmail's competition.
I is for Ikea, for a lamp named Bljampäjese.
J is for Johns Hopkins, where they cure your disease.
K is for Kohl's, a store that's old-school.
L is for Lowe's, to buy your tool.
M is for MapQuest, for the place you go to.
N is for Netflix, to add to your queue.
O is for Orioles, a Baltimore obsession.
P is for Pandora, an audio digression.
Q is for QVC, for goods without esteem.
R is for Ravens, another Baltimore team.
S is for Sears, appliances and more.
T is for Target, a Wal-Mart like store.
U is for USPS, where mail you submit.
V is for Verizon, Steve Jobs should use it.
W is for Weather, for forests in flames.
X is for Xbox, a console for games.
Y is for Yahoo, a home page for Chrome.
Z is for Zillow, to value your home.
Ohio councilman Phil Davison screams and shoots eye daggers at the people he hopes will vote for him to be Stark County Treasurer.
The best part is the way he frequently pauses his artificial anger to read his script. The college that gave him a "masters degree in communication" ought to be stripped of its accreditation.
Scary Stump Speech of the Day
Connal Hughes and Anjel Van Slyke's photos of a 1980s-era Soviet arcade machine reveal that even light-hearted recreation was a grim affair behind the iron curtain.
Here's Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Houses taking you on a tour of his clever, 100-square-foot house, which reminds me of a wooden, super-luxury first-class plane-seat on the flagship airline of some oil-soaked, cash-infused land.
A “suspicious” toy pony was blown up after it was found abandoned in the middle of a cul-de-sac near an Orange County elementary school this morning.
The FurReal pony, an expensive, life-like toy, was investigated as a possible explosive device after someone called Orange County deputies to report it. A robot inspected the toy before a pack of explosives was placed near the stuffed animal and detonated.
For some reason Orlando and Cincinnati are mother lodes of wonderful stories.
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"We've been doing random searches for years. None have been in response to particular threats. It's more to show force." - 
John sez, "I am producing 'An Evening of Steampunk and Robot Theatre.' Nine plays, six directors, and robots galore... for charity! Agents of Queen Victoria search for a secret weapon on the outer reaches of space. A disgruntled robot gets family counseling. A mad scientist aims to destroy the world with the help of a cyber-head and time traveling brothers. Bonus: opening night my blog will reveal a link to a steampunk and robot web anthology with original music, comic book art, and eight more plays."
Hey, Germans! Next Monday, I leave for a 
The police claim that the law lets them ignore copyright in solving crimes, but an intellectual property professor quoted in the article notes that such an exemption only applies in the direct police investigation of a specific crime -- not for the sake of building up a general database. The professor suggests that this appears to be a clear violation of Swedish copyright laws.
A London-based journalism nonprofit is working with the 
The Code Talkers took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications critical to the war's ultimate outcome.
Check out 
