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Salon, Salon . . . Jewelry!

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 6:01 PM
Despite kind encouragement from the world's greatest auctioneer, I really can't say it any better than our esteemed colleague the multitalented Ms. Bradford.

And now my jaw is a-drop at the amazing conversation about Beading as Interstitial Art that is happening amongst crafties and IAF Auction contributors [info]elisem, [info]ktempest, [info]copperwise, (moderator) [info]krismcd59 and others on our third IAF Online Salon. You should go join them.

I'm just going to go take a hot bath and let everyone else be articulate and talented for awhile.

Deb Price: Courts Rule in Favor of Deception

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Anti-gay crusaders are deceiving voters about their strategies and intentions -- and the courts are playing along.
kimtree.jpg kittie.jpg

A small booth headed up by a woman as nice as her creations are clever, Keep It Moving Design sells knit plants. Each hand-knit specimen comes in a pot with its own name. Most are flexible due to wire armature and some even have moss. She has some great vintage-like jewelry pieces and some embroidered men's ties too. All depends on what she's been up to that week. If you can't make it to the Flea Market you can find some of her work on her her Etsy site.

The Black Oven

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 9:27 PM
black oven blog

Black metal and baking don’t usually go together, unless you’re talking about baked brains. The Black Oven, however, is a blog of cookie, cupcake, and brownie recipes, none of which require blood, animal sacrifices, or pledging allegiance to Satan. (more…)

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Paul Frank’s men’s Baby on Board tee

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 9:08 PM
paul frank tee

This shirt is sheer brilliance. Let’s face it, who doesn’t love silly tees? Clearly, Paul Frank does! For a reasonable $32 at Urban Outfitters, this tee is a perfect way to have yourself smiling all day and others giggling. With you, not at you. Promise!

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Plants have an ambivalent relationship with light. They need it to live, but too much light leads to the increased production of high-energy chemical intermediates that can injure or kill the plant. The intermediates do this because the efficient conversion of sunlight into chemical energy cannot keep up with sunlight streaming into the plant. "The intermediates don’t have anywhere to go because the system is jammed up down the line," says ASU chemist Devens Gust.
A team of researchers has recently shown that the administration of sildenafil protects the heart in mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The findings are published today in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seeing Alzheimer's amyloids

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 12:00 AM
In an important step toward demystifying the role protein clumps play in the development of neurodegenerative disease, researchers have created a stunning three-dimensional picture of an Alzheimer's peptide aggregate using electron microscopy. Researchers from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and the Leibniz Institut in Jena, Germany, have shown -- for the first time -- how A-beta peptide, found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, forms a spaghetti-like protein mass called an amyloid fibril.
My favorite new mind-bending idea is an extension for Firefox released today by brainy game designers Merci Grace and Justin Hall. It's called PMOG, for passively multiplayer online game, and it...

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newVideoPlayer("matrix1_io9.flv", 463, 387,""); A juicy virtual steak convinces Cypher to betray Morpheus, Trinity and Neo in maybe the most famous non-bullet-y scene from The Matrix. When you start...

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Now that we're already discussing Iron Man 3, and filming may soon start on the Superman Returns sequel, it's a good time to look at science fiction's wreckage-strewn history of bad and weird...

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happy release day!

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 5:50 PM
The first book in Shelley Adina's series: It's All About Us. Visit her website for an interactive community based on the books.

Tall, blonde Lissa Mansfield is used to being one of the "in" crowd--but being accepted by the popular girls at posh Spencer Academy boarding school in San Francisco is turning out to be harder than she thought. And then there's her New-York-loudmouth roommate, Gillian Chang, who's not just happy to be a Christian herself--she's determined to out Lissa, too! If Lissa can just keep her faith under wraps long enough to hook Callum McCloud, the hottest guy in school, she'll be golden.

But when Callum pressures her to go all the way with him, Lissa has to decide for herself how far is too far. How can she see that line when he's so gorgeous and popular and she's so dazzled? And besides, she's too busy shopping for a Valentino and booking the hottest celeb for the Benefactors Ball. Who knew finding a place at Spencer Academy would be so complicated?

***

All About Us #2: The Fruit of My Lipstick (August, 2008)
All About Us #3: Be Strong & Curvaceous (January, 2009)

Jack Handy explains the symbols on his flag

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 4:23 PM
Comedy writer and Army Man publisher Jack Handy wrote a great "Shouts & Murmurs" in the most recent the New Yorker. Here's a small sample:
The plow with the four-leaf clover symbolizes the luck of the farmer.

The quicksand represents the travails of life. The hand sticking out of it is so you know it’s quicksand and not just a dirty spot on the flag.

The bat stands for eternal life, through our lord Dracula.

The sheaf of wheat symbolizes the bounty of the land, and the hope that soon more things will come in sheaves.

The parrot represents the need to communicate, even if it’s only squawks.

The tin of paprika stands for paprika, a spice I hope to learn more about.

Boing Boing challenge: draw Jack's flag. Link

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 4:23 PM
thinkpadx300rev.jpgToday on Boing Boing Gadgets we saw mugshots of the dumbest thieves in New York State, foresaw the return of crappy Tiger-style LCD games, and played with a frightening WowWee Chatterbot. John converted a houseplant's meaningless biometric readings into—appropriately enough—twitter posts; Joel lost a few extra pounds on a novelty velocipede, and Rob donned a useless anti-cellphone radiation suit. JVC and Kenwood gazed lovingly into one another's eyes. We also looked at a GUI-based music video; a transparent Eee hardcase; a phone of little use to onanists; an iPod file squirter; a gallery of shipping containter data centers; a scammy fuel-injection gizmo that outsmarts at least one Florida NBC affiliate; and AT&T screwing its own customers. We learned about Japanese cigarette vending machines, the fears of Thai children, everything there is to know about bicycles, and how to turn corpses into a syrupy fecal sludge. Don't forget the adjustable hot sauce. There were reviews, too, of Bruton's Solaris 52 solar and Solo 15 battery and Lenovo's x300 ultra-thin notebook. There's one thing we won't be reviewing any time soon, however: a portable gaming console from Apple.

Eager coworker: I took a candy bar from you yesterday, but I didn't have a dollar. And I want to take one again today.

Wausau, Wisconsin


Alsome | Thumbs up | Thumbs down | wtf?
Link · Email · Quote this! · Del.icio.us · Posted 2008-05-12

First Space Lawyer Graduates

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 9:11 PM
PHPNerd writes "Over at space.com is an interesting article about the first space lawyer. He graduated from the University of Mississippi. 'Any future space lawyer might have to deal with issues ranging from the fallout over satellite shoot-downs to legal disputes between astronauts onboard the International Space Station. The expanding privatization of the space sector may also pose new legal challenges [...] "We are particularly proud to be offering these space law certificates for the first time, since ours is the only program of its kind in the U.S. and only one of two in North America," said Samuel Davis, law dean at the University of Mississippi.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Edition 45 of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just arrived online, this time ably hosted at PodBlack Blog.

A couple of my favourites include a poem inspired by a new stereoscopic atlas of the body and brain, and an excellent post on the neuropsychology of stalking (with a great bonus Death Cab for Cutie track!).

Coincidentally, the stalking article appears courtesy of Neurocritic where the the next edition of Encephalon is due to appear in two weeks.


Link to Encephalon 45.

iphone-membership-cards.pngBlogger Albert Alberts loves a slim wallet, and after reading over some of our wallet-slimming tips, he realized he had a powerful wallet-slimming tool in his pocket all the time: his iPhone. His idea? Rather than reducing his membership cards to just one club card, he scanned his membership cards to his computer, then synced them to his iPhone as an album called WalletCards. According to the post, his phone-friendly cards even scan successfully. You're still going to be at the mercy of whether or not the workers are willing to accept your scanned cards, but if they are, you can carry around all the membership cards you want without adding any bulk to your wallet.



Firefox and Internet Explorer only: The Surf Canyon browser extension embeds extra search results at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. With Surf Canyon installed, search the web with your favorite engine as usual. A bullseye icon will appear next to results—click it to expand another level of links related to the single result. My test for a "lifehacker" Google search was promising: Surf Canyon included links to the official Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, and a life hacks site search engine at Google Coop. Surf Canyon is a free download, and it's available as both a Firefox extension and IE add-on.


Golden Girls: Science Fiction

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 8:10 PM

Okay, so the clip above isn’t SF, but it’s very surreal, and that’s what I like about The Golden Girls TV Show. Yes, it has been suggested I now need to turn in my man card, but I really enjoy this show when it’s not being preachy. Rose’s St. Olaf stories are utterly bizarre and surreal.

Also, the show has had its science fictional moments, as when they wind up as heads on ice-surrounded plates in a dream sequence about being cryogenically frozen….

Contact Paper Screen Printing (Video)

  • May. 12th, 2008 at 1:23 PM
Very cool video tutorial featuring Karine at Better Than Jam showing you how to screen print using contact paper!




Source: Craft Zine

The incident occurred during a Southwest flight from Austin to Dallas. "After multiple requests, the flight attendants were not successful in getting the passenger to get off the phone," says a Southwest spokeswoman. (Dallas Morning News | AP brief)

In a leading study that has implications for the development of novel therapies for a number of breast, lung and ovarian cancers that have lost the expression of a gene called glypican-3, Sunnybrook researchers have discovered how the loss of the GPC3 gene induces overgrowth through certain growth factors such as Sonic Hedgehog which stimulate cancer growth.
In a sweeping analysis of 77 previous studies involving more than 15,000 subjects, UW-Madison researchers found that exposure to media depicting ultra-thin actresses and models significantly increased women’s concerns about their bodies, including how dissatisfied they felt and their likelihood of engaging in unhealthy eating behaviors, such as excessive dieting.