EU Parliament votes 663-13 against ACTA's enforcement measures

The European Parliament resoundingly voted against the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), in a resounding 663 to 13 tally. The parliamentarians defied the EU executive and threatened to take the issue to the European Court of Justice if the EU doesn't reject ACTA's provisions on disconnection for infringement and other enforcement provisions.

A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online.

In addition, the Parliament's decision today states that MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject ACTA rules, including cutting off users from the Internet "gradually" if caught stealing content.

Though MEPs cannot participate in the ACTA talks, without the consent of the European Parliament, EU negotiators will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a compromise.

Parliament threatens court action on anti-piracy treaty

The international war over exit signs

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The sign on the left is familiar to Americans, but other countries think it is a horrible design, preferring the green running man on the right or a variation of it. Julia Turner of Slate has an in-depth article on the 25-year international fight over exit signs. It's one of a terrific six-part series about sign history and design.

Fans of Ota's running man point to two key advantages: It's a pictogram, and it's green. The sign's wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don't speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don't touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system.

Are the running-man advocates right? This battle over the exit sign has been brewing for 25 years now, and the little green guy is slowly making inroads in the States. But to understand whether he should triumph, we must first understand America's skepticism toward pictograms and symbols, which have long been more popular in the rest of the world than they are here.

The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man: The international war over exit signs

LibDem rank-and-file make emergency motion for net freedom

After last week's disastrous news that two LibDem Lords had introduced a web-censorship amendment to the Labour Digital Economy Bill, a group of LibDems have pulled together a pro-net-freedom emergency motion that's being taken to this weekend's party conference in Birmingham. If you're a LibDem or know LibDems headed to the conference this weekend, please urge support for this motion: help the LibDems get on the right side of the net-freedom debate!

We condemn
a) web-blocking and disconnecting internet connections
b) the threat to the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals and businesses from the monitoring of their internet activity, the potential blocking of their websites and the potential termination of their internet connections.
c) the Digital Economy Bill for focusing on illegal filesharing rather than on nurturing creativity and innovative business models.

We support
a) the principle of net neutrality, through which the freedom of connection with any application to any party is guaranteed, except to address security threats or due to unexpected network congestion.
b) the rights of creators and performers to be rewarded for their work in a way that is fair, proportionate and appropriate to the medium.
Conference therefore opposes excessive regulatory attempts to monitor, control and limit internet access or internet publication, whether at local, national, European or global level.

We call for:
1. All publicly-funded publications to be freely accessible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licence.
2. Copyright legislation to allow fair use and to release from copyright protection works which are no longer available legally or whose authors cannot be identified.
3. A level playing field between the traditional, copyright-based business model and alternative business models which may rely on personal copying and legal filesharing. (read less)

LibDems Save the Net (Thanks, Obhi!)

LA Times health blog: Only 32% of medication studies compare the drug in question to already available treatments, rather than just placebo. And only 11% compared the drugs to non-pharma based treatments, like surgery or lifestyle changes. For evidence-based medicine (let alone cheaper healthcare) to work, stuff like this has gotta get fixed. (Via Steve Silberman)

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Corey Haim, star of "The Lost Boys," is dead at 38. [AP]

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Watch a dissertation defense...LIVE

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Do you like prairie voles? Are you curious about the process of earning a Ph.D.? Possibly just a touch of both?

Then tune in today, starting at 10 central, for what Science magazine's Science Careers Blog is calling the first live-streamed dissertation defense (at least, that they've ever heard of).

The adventurous academic is Danielle Lee of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. The dissertation is entitled: An Investigation of Behavioral Syndromes and Individual Differences in Exploratory Behavior of Prairie Voles, Microtus ochrogaster. There was some talk of live Tweets as well. However, Lee says she won't be Tweeting, herself, during the defense (that would be just a little crazy multi-tasky, wouldn't it?), but she is up for answering your questions once everything has been successfully defended. Just Tweet them with the hashtag #LeeDefense. Good luck, Danielle!

Streaming video of Danielle Lee's dissertation defense

Pictured: The prairie vole, one of nature's most adorable research subjects. Originally found on the animal behavior Web site of Verna Case, Ph.D.

Girl appears on TV show to identify Star Wars figurines with her mouth

This kleige maidel* appeared on a German TV show where she demonstrated her remarkable talent for identifying Star Wars minifigs by putting them in her mouth. The blindfold is what makes this. And the minifigs. Oh, and the waistcoat.

Kinderwette Star Wars (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

*Not actually German. Almost Yiddish.

Robots dance the Nutcracker Suite

Jenise sez, "I work for Kiva Systems, a small robotics company in Woburn, MA, and the bots are amazingly fun to watch. A few years ago, one of our interns shot this video of the bots dancing to the Nutcracker Suite, and I thought it would tickle your ample sense of whimsy."

Ample whimsy: tickled.

(Aside: Whenever I hear the Nutcracker Suite, my stupid brain insists on supplying the lyrics from the "Smurfberry Crunch" breakfast cereal ad: "Smurfberry Crunch is fun to eat/A Smurfy fruity breakfast treat/Made with crunchy strawberries/They taste so sweet and [garbled]/Very fresh and very true/And very very Smurfy blue!")

(Bloody Smurfs.)

The Nutcracker performed by Dancing Kiva Order Fulfillment Robots (Thanks, Jenise!)

Amy Rigby, "Balls" (Greatest Song of All Time of the Day)

Jimmy Guterman (website, blog, twitter) writes, edits, and produces things.

When she's not dropping everything to catch up on Twin Peaks, transatlantic troubadour Amy Rigby sings, writes, and performs some of the funniest and some of the most heartbreaking songs you've ever heard. Sometimes she does both in the same number. "Balls" is an all-out rock'n'roll barnburner that captures the frustration and excitement of desire with anger and several great punch lines. It's nasty, it's welcoming. It's as confusing and wonderful and awful as your life. Did I mention the slide guitar? Did I mention how Amy tosses off the aside "this one's gonna hurt"? Did I mention it's on two great albums: The Sugar Tree (along with "Rode Hard," another greatest song of all time of the week candidate and perhaps the most convincing argument for bad behavior on disc this side of "Dead Flowers") and 18 Again (a terrific greatest hits record, but all her records are greatest hits records)?

WARNING: The YouTube clip below, however worthy, is not the version I've just raved about. It's a live solo acoustic version, the only take available on the Interwebs. Rigby's song is great in any context, but you've got to see and hear her as a bandleader to get the full sense of how brilliant she is. Anyone out there got any full-band footage to share? The rest of you: invest 99 cents and buy the song at your favorite online outlet. It'll be the smartest and longest-lasting buck you spend today (do you really need another cup of coffee)?

Most adulterous professions

A survey of the 1.9 million accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking to cheat on their spouses, rounds up the most common occupations among the would-be infidelitous:

For Women:
1. Teachers
2. Stay-at-home Moms
3. Nurses
4. Administrative Assistants
5. Real Estate Agents

For Men:
1. Physicians
2. Police Officers
3. Lawyers
4. Real Estate Agents
5. Engineers

Who Cheats? Docs and Stay at Home Moms! (via MeFi)

(Image: The Seventh Commandment, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from pasukaru76's photostream)

Leslie Howle sez, "NW MediaArts is a non-profit organization inviting award-winning speculative fiction writers to Seattle to teach a one-day writers workshop, read at the University Book Store, and speak at schools and libraries. Workshops take place at Richard Hugo House. March 12 - Christopher Barazak, author of 'The Love We Share Without Knowing,' which was shortlisted for the Tiptree Award last year, reads at University Book Store on 3/12 and teaches a workshop on 3/14. Workshop space is still open if you register by 3/10/2010."

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Looking back at the dotcom boom, ten years later


Wired claims that this is the tenth anniversary of the dotcom boom, and in honor of that auspicious overheated bubble, they've put together a long, Web 0.96b layout depicting the most hubristicly hubristic predictions and hype of that golden age.

I moved to San Francisco in 1999, and remember the feverish absurdity of it all -- and how hard it was not to feel like all these people must know something if they were pouring all this money and energy into all the odd and improbable ideas (a recurring theme I remember was people explaining how they were going to build shopping malls for the web, which, I guess, is basically what Amazon's Z-shops are).

10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dotcom Boom and Bust

Cast-art depicting broken-bone X-rays


Casttoo makes decorative decals for your orthopedic casts -- including these ones, depicting the broken bones within.

(via JWZ)

Movie funded by asking for pocket change on Twitter: "At Home By Myself... With You"

Raj Panikkar sez, "We're screening a film called 'At Home By Myself... With You' (directed by Kris Booth, starring Kristin Booth - no relation) at The Royal in Toronto this week. The unique thing about the film is how we raised the financing to shoot. Quite literally, we campaigned for people to contribute their loose pocket change. The strategy took off, partly through an active Facebook and Twitter presence and also frequent video blogs detailing the contributions. By the time we shot the film, we had raised $42,000 (admittedly, one person's pocket change is occasionally another's small fortune - but it did really begin with 15 cents, 43 cents, a dollar 12, etc.) One might be led to assume that with a limited budget, there'd be a matching limitation on production quality. But the film looks gorgeous (Telefilm Canada came on board at the very end to help fund a pro finish), and reviews and comments have been great. We were reviewed by all the major papers in Toronto: The Sun, NOW, The Star, The Post, etc. The film plays at The Royal for the rest of the week, and then gets its TV debut right away on TMN and Movie Central, plus a DVD release on April 6th."

Pocket Change Film (Thanks, Raj!)

(Disclosure: Raj's mother, Bev, taught me to read)

Best jobs in America infographic


Paul sez, "We have been putting this together for a week or so and thought you might like it. Looks like I am going back to school to be a systems engineer, haha."

I like that they've color-coded for "low-stress," "benefit to society" and "satisfaction." However, on these three counts, I'm unsurprised to see that "science fiction writer" didn't make the cut. When I was 17, the school guidance counsellor got in some software that would help you figure out what career to set your sights on. I completed its questionnaire and hit return, and an instant later was advised to become a "geriatric nutritionist" (that is, someone who prepares meals in an old folks' home). Even today, I sometimes feel like I missed my calling. ("Science fiction writer" wasn't on that list either).

Best Jobs in America (Thanks, Paul!)

Turn a quarter of Detroit into "semi-rural" farms?

The city of Detroit is proposing to give over a quarter of its land to be turned into "semi-rural" fields and farms, with the surviving neighborhoods standing in "pockets in expanses of green." The proposal is politically charged (serving a death-sentence on a whole neighborhood is bound to be controversial) but the idea of "downsizing" Detroit seems to have wide acceptance.

And yes, this entire thing was predicted by David Byrne in 1988 in the song "(Nothing But) Flowers" on the final Talking Heads album Naked.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit looks at downsizing to save city (Thanks, Rigel!)

(Image: Garden grows, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Payton Chung's photostream)

Picture 94.jpg

Many images here, all from his 2010 collection and released today. The iconic fashion designer's work incorporated fantasy and futurist themes familiar to Boing Boing readers. He died earlier this year.

Dalai Lama Has a Posse

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Wednesday March 10 is Tibetan Independence Day—and this year will also mark His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. In honor of both, Shepard Fairey collaborated with photographer Don Farber on this limited-edition, signed and numbered 18"x14" print, which goes on sale at this link Wednesday, March 10, at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Net proceeds divided between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (thanks, Christal / Tibet Connection Radio)

Bad paintings of Barack Obama

Bill Barol (email, Twitter) is the author of Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice: How to Rip the Lid Off Your Id and Live Happily Ever After (Volt Press). He’s a former senior writer at Newsweek and his journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Slate, and elsewhere.

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If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes.

Picturetweeting bathroom scale

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A delightful invention from Morten Skogly:

"How about bathroom scale that takes a picture of you, from the worst and least flattering angle, and uploads it straight to the web through Twitter and twitpic? Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea! Which means it simply HAS to be made. So I did, or at least a working prototype!"
Picturetweeting bathroom scale (Thanks, Laura!)

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Adam Savage: my Blade Runner gun

Swatch

I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible: (Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer) I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had gr... more

Sex.com for sale

Sex.com will be sold at auction next week. Current owner Escom LLC reportedly paid $14 million for it a few years ago, but has since defaulted on loans. According to CNN, "The auction is set for March 18 in New York, and bidders are required to appear with a certified check for $1 million to participate."... more

Glenn Beck advertiser sells "survival seeds" for apocalyptic agriculture

Swatch

The Survival Seed Bank is advertising on Glenn Beck's television show. They offer "survival seeds" for growing your own "crisis garden" amid "emerging totalitarianism." As Media Matters points out, the brand identity meshes well with the host's apocalyptic visions of the future. "More valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown," the website reads. They may quote WorldNetDaily as a news source, fine, but I really like the sound of the heirloom varieties they offer: Jacob's Cattle Bean, Yellow Dent Co... more

Chilean earthquake so strong, it moved an entire city 10 feet

Researchers say the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that hit Chile was so strong, it moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet (or more!) to the west. The Chilean capital, Santiago, was bumped about 11 inches to the west-southwest. (via kristielustout)... more

Study says US doctors in hospitals only wash their hands about 30% of the time

An upsetting stat tucked away in a NYT piece today: Doctors in American hospitals wash their hands only 30-40% of the time, according to national estimates. (via consumersunion)... more

Wired Reread: AT&T's "strap-on telephone"

Swatch

Image (large size): One of many vintage ads from old issues of Wired Magazine at wiredreread.com, a site created by Theis Søndergaard. This one for an AT&T "strap-on telephone" appeared in 1995. Be sure to use your fancy new 28.8 modem when you call up that website on the internet.... more

Totally righteous "Cove" dudes reported to have caught LA sushi joint selling illegal whale meat

Santa Monica sushi restaurant The Hump is reported to have been caught selling illegal whale meat to its customers. Who went after them with hidden cameras? The guys behind the dolphin slaughter documentary The Cove. Image above: Ric O'Barry, right after The Cove won an oscar, during the Academy Awards. BB pal Ehrich Blackhound emailed in the image and says, "I love it when winners hijack the broadcast, and for a txting campaign!" His speech, after the jump.... more

Kids in Haiti refugee camps making kites

Lawrence Downes of The New York Times says: "I was just in Haiti reporting on things there and found amazing makers: boys who make kites. Even in refugee camps, where there’s only tiniest scraps of stuff: plastic, sticks, thread." The kites are beautiful: some have layers of black and clear plastic forming diamonds and stars. Some have decorative edges, the plastic razor-sliced into piñata fringe. But they work, catching the breeze and jack-rabbiting into the smoky air. Small kites are notoriously hard t... more

Lindsay Lohan is absolutely not a milkaholic

Lindsay Lohan would like you to know that she is not a milkaholic. To that end, she is reported to be suing e*trade for $100 million over a baby that appears in one of its TV ads. (via @tokyomango)... more

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: The Metzger interview

Richard Metzger writes: "It was the blog post heard 'round the world. When Charles Johnson wrote "Why I Parted Ways With The Right" in the space of a few minutes and posted it on his popular Little Green Footballs blog, he had no idea the firestorm it would set off. Nasty denunciations, death threats and a New York Times magazine feature article later, Charles Johnson joined me for a lively discussion about what happened to him, the Darwin-hating, know-nothing Creationists and the frenzied insanity (and rac... more

Fake electronic gear props — 12:27 Tuesday — 21 comments

Knife-brandishing yob in a hoodie openly menaces public just steps from Parliament — 12:17 Tuesday — 28 comments

Horned centenarian — 11:59 Tuesday — 31 comments

Laptop bag made from cement bag — 11:54 Tuesday — 4 comments

Future of Interrogation — 11:41 Tuesday — 18 comments

CNN visits dog and cat meat market in China — 11:33 Tuesday — 58 comments

Paris mapcut by Karen O'Leary — 11:22 Tuesday — 5 comments

Haul vloggers: young women videoblogging clothes and makeup they buy — 11:05 Tuesday — 21 comments

A home in Haiti — 10:52 Tuesday — 4 comments

Black market butt enhancements lead to hospitalizations — 10:40 Tuesday — 18 comments

How to make your cat look like a shark — 10:27 Tuesday — 18 comments

Stop robot poverty: i3 Detroit hackerspace fundraiser — 10:05 Tuesday — 7 comments

Time-lapse of book-cover design — 10:01 Tuesday — 15 comments

Advertising the Space Race, a Prelinger Library book — 09:56 Tuesday — 6 comments

Ask your MEPs to support anti-ACTA motion — 09:41 Tuesday — 2 comments

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