spriteleigh

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A mashup of Star Wars and "Bohemian Rhapsody"? That's right up our alley! Now, if they'd only thrown a cute cat in there… This video was produced by the Digital Video Program at University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona, starring the Arizona Star Wars cosplay community. One guy, Adam Newton, sings the whole thing! -via Geeks Are Sexy

See also: Midichlorian Rhapsody

It's Hubert Cumberdale's birthday! Earlier episodes of this horrible cartoon may be observed at animator David Firth's homepage. Previously.

Los Angeles. The Future. 1995.

A string of disappearances throughout the underground night club circuit has driven law enforcement to initiate a manhunt for the elusive figure they call Starcadian.

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I'm ecstatic to debut the new video from the elusive figure, who may be followed on Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud. Directed by Starcadian & Rob O'Neill (with SFX from Michael Batista and iconoclasm), it's a cut from Sunset Blood, a major motion picture available on Betamax and Video Home System in another universe. [Video Link]Previously.

Tom Scocca writes that ostentatious positivity, pitched as a noble response to the web's omnipresent snark, typically amounts only to the worse thing that snark itself cures: smarm.

What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves. Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why, smarm asks, can't everyone just be nicer?

The most significant explicator of the niceness rule—the loudest Thumper of all, the true prophetic voice of anti-negativity—is neither the cartoon rabbit nor the publicists' group nor Julavits, nor even David Denby. It is The Believer's founder and impresario, Dave Eggers.

Smarm is another word for Serious Culture—"In smarm is power"—and you know what to do with that.

The classic image of an arsonist is a person who sets fires for financial gain, for attention, or out of anger. The classic image of a firefighter is a hero -the most visible occupation in which people put themselves in danger to save lives with no expectation of a reward. So why are so many fires started by firefighters? One theory is that pyromaniacs are drawn to the occupation, but that doesn't hold up. Firefighter arsonists who have been caught say they never considered starting fires before they joined the department.   

The average firefighter-arsonist is a young white male of above-average intelligence, no criminal record, and "poor occupational adjustment." It is unclear how significantly this profile differs from, say, the average firefighter who does not commit arson. He works for a fire service that doesn’t get many calls, which may be why he’s eager to prove himself. He tends to start with small grass or Dumpster fires, and then progress to abandoned houses or garages. It’s rare that a firefighter-arsonist will opt for inhabited buildings, or locations where people are likely to be hurt.

Firefighter-arsonists often work in teams, egging each other on. "Before the fire, we were just sitting around bored," said Robert Vasquez, who admitted to committing arson in Prince George’s County, near D.C., in 1990. "We were talking about how the Chief yells at us for the things we do wrong and everybody was saying ‘Let’s wait for the next fire to come out and maybe we can do good on it’… And then the words, ‘Set a fire’ came up."

An article at The Awl looks at the life of a firefighter and how the occupation itself -and the way the public views the job- contributes to the decision to start a fire. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Rob)

Elizabeth Stark writes, "We're pleased to announce the Device Freedom Prize: a crowdfunded reward for the first developer(s) who release an open source iOS 7 jailbreak. Providing users the ability to control their devices is crucial in an age where we're increasingly dependent on our mobile phones. An open source jailbreak provides users the capability to install what they want on their own devices, the ability to audit the code they're using to do so, and enables disabled users to more easily use their devices."

"We've assembled a judging panel of awesome folks that care a lot about these issues, including Boing Boing's own Cory Doctorow; Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit; Biella Coleman, Professor and Author of Coding Freedom, and Chris Maury, Accessibility Advocate. Contribute to the prize to help make an open source iOS jailbreak a reality."

Is iOS7 jailbroken yet? (Thanks, Elizabeth!)

Ben Orlin at Math with Bad Drawings studied both math and psychology, so it only makes sense that he would look at sensationalist headlines with a jaundiced eye. He published a collection of typical headlines that would be oh-so-mundane if they came with a better understanding of statistics and how data can be manipulated to say whatever you want. And as advertised, they come with a series of bad drawings hand-drawn illustrations. Here's a sampling:

Our World: Illegal Downloaders Would Have Spent $300 Million to Obtain Same Music Legally
Mathematically Literate World: Illegal Downloaders Would Never Have Bothered to Obtain Same Music Legally

Our World: Controversial Program Would Cost $50 Million in Taxpayer Money
Mathematically Literate World: Controversial Program Would Cost 0.0001% of Taxpayer Money

Our World: Proposal Would Tax $250,000-Earners at 40%
Mathematically Literate World: Proposal Would Tax $250,000-Earners’ Very Last Dollar, and That Dollar Alone, at 40%

Our World: Rates of Cancer Approach Historic High
Mathematically Literate World: Rates of Surviving Long Enough to Develop Cancer Approach Historic High

Our World: Hollywood Breaks Box Office Records with Explosions, Rising Stars
Mathematically Literate World: Hollywood Breaks Box Office Records with Inflation, Rising Population

Really, is there anyone anywhere who thinks The Phantom Menace was the bigger hit movie because it outgrossed the original Star Wars twenty-two years later? There are plenty more of these, including some that you probably saw right through when they hit the news, at Math with Bad Drawings. -via Boing Boing

Nicole writes, "The Tides Foundation is pleased to announce the 2014 Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest. The prize annually awards a $10,000 cash grant to an individual who has created or led an effort to create an open-source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change."

Those nominated for the prize should have developed a software product that is open-source, as defined by the Open Source Initiative, and easily and widely available, and has already demonstrated its value to at least one nonprofit organization. Better still, it should be a product that can be a value to multiple nonprofit organizations.

The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing and seeks software developers who create, for free public distribution, open source applications and tools that nonprofit and advocacy groups can put to good use. We welcome both applications from and nominations for single individuals. Applicants will be evaluated on a range of criteria by an advisory panel that includes past winners of the Prize. Please visit our website for more information: http://www.tides.org/impact/awards-prizes/pizzigati-prize/. The deadline for applications or nominations is Friday, December 6, 2013.

Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest (Thanks, Nicole!)

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Screen Junkies has a seasonal supercut offering for us: the biggest Christmas movies, all mashed together. Let's decorate the tree, hang the lights, kiss under the mistletoe, wreck the halls, ride Santa's runaway sleigh, fight bad guys, get arrested, and enjoy the usual Christmas movie tropes together. How festive!  -via Viral Viral Videos

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During the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew of the Enterprise wore as their Starfleet uniforms zip-up spandex bodysuits. The actors hated them. They were smelly and tended to be a bit too, uh, form fitting. Patrick Stewart’s chiropractor told him that he might become permanently injured if he continued to wear the binding bodysuit. So Bob Blackman, a costume designer on multiple Star Trek series, designed new uniforms. In an interview, he explained the look that he was attempting to create:

At the beginning of that third season, you will see that the uniforms change structure during that time period, eventually ending up with that Eisenhoweresque mandarin collar, leaving the black yoke, leaving the angled colour panel on the front, but removing all of the piping that was on the yoke and all of that sort of thing, making them, essentially, more formal. Er, more dignity.

Some of that was necessary, because of Patrick, because of Americans and their sense of the English and the sound of an English accent. To make it more casual seemed inappropriate.

Patrick Stewart now wore a short-waisted Eisenhower jacket. It often rode up, so Stewart developed a habit of tugging it down. Fans referred to this tendency as the “Picard Maneuver”—a reference to a battle tactic devised by Jean-Luc Picard.

In this video, you can see a compilation of Captain Picard engaging in this fashion maneuver. Other characters wore similar jackets, so you’ll also see Will Riker, Data and Worf trying it out.

-via American Digest

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Captain Picard gets into the holiday spirit with a song we all know and love -but changed just a little to reflect the sensibilities of the Enterprise crew as seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation. You'll want to make sure there's no liquid in your mouth when Wesley Crusher shows up. Edited by James Covenant, the song is only a little over a minute long, despite the length of the video. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Lachlan writes, "My friend Aamer Rahman is an Australian comedian, one half of the duo Fear of a Brown Planet who makes race, religion and capitalism a central part of his comedy. Here he is, looking like Malcolm X, with a fantastic rant on reverse racism in his comedy."

Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism (Thanks, Lachlan!)

dj BC writes, "I just dropped Santastic 8, the 8th annual Holiday mashup album in the series (10th if you count 'Menorah Mashups' and 'Re:Compostition'). This year we offer 14 new Christmas mashups, and one old one which was reissued because it is great and it matches the album cover so well. Contributors come from California, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Vienna, The Netherlands, Stockholm and Nashville."

There's some outstanding work here -- don't miss mojochronic's Lou Reed tribute at Track 12: "Lou Christmas (Without You)."

The new website, christmash.com, aims to finally put all the albums, videos and what not in one semi-coherent location. I'll be cleaning up the old album websites as well, but for now the site serves as a good central hub for links to all things Santastic. Merry Christmas, and I hope people dig it!

(Thanks, dj BC!)

The art of seduction is generally lost on the classic monsters of filmdom, but when they’re asked to get in touch with their tender side and let it all hang out these sexy beasts don’t disappoint.

Luckily artist Erika Deoude was there to capture these baddies striking a seductive pose, pin-up style, and she put all of her illustrations together in The Calendar of Sexy Monsters- a set if 12 giclee prints featuring Godzilla, Zuul, the Predator, King Kong and more like you’ve never seen them before. They’re perfect for brightening up a dank cave, haunted house or swampside cemetery.

Via JazJaz

It's make or break time for the Innovation Act (H.R. 3309), with less than two days until a crucial vote. The Act injects some much-needed reform into the patent system (though it doesn't go far enough), and it's been moving strongly through Congress, coming out of committee with a 33-5 vote. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking its supporters to call their reps to tell them to support the bill.

Use our tool to call your representative and tell him or her to support the Innovation Act. (You can also email your member of Congress and urge them to support the bill.)

Though the bill has seen a fair number of changes over the last few weeks as it went through the markup and amendment process—and there may be more amendments coming—it remains an extremely strong force in the fight against patent trolls.

The bill makes it easier and cheaper to fight patent trolls in court, it requires trolls to make their cases for infringement publicly and clearly, and it helps protect end users and consumers when they face suits from patent trolls.

You Have 48 Hours to Stop Patent Trolls

When you use the Vine app, you've got only 6 seconds to get your message across. But you can do a lot in six seconds. If you've watched a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons, this one made by HunterVine is immediately recognizable.

It's one of 8 submitted to Mashable as part of a challenge to show a cartoon in 6 seconds. You can see the rest here.

In Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations [PDF] a November 2013 report from a DC thinktank called The Center for Corporate Policy, researcher Gary Ruskin documents the scary, corrupt relationship between major corporations, private security firms, and secret police agencies like the FBI. These entities engage in highly militarized spying and sabotage campaigns against activist organizations from Greenpeace to the Camp for Climate Action, to Occupy and more; planting spies and provocateurs in their midst, compiling dossiers on organizers, and going through their trash for evidence of plans. Included in the opposition are active-duty CIA agents, who are allowed to moonlight for private clients in their off-hours, and the FBI, whose involvement in corporate anti-activist espionage was condemned in a 2010 report from the Office of the Inspector General in the US Justice Department.

The FBI's involvement in corporate espionage has been institutionalised through 'InfraGard', "a little-known partnership between private industry, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security." The partnership involves the participation of "more than 23,000 representatives of private industry," including 350 of the Fortune 500 companies.

But it's not just the FBI. According to the new report, "active-duty CIA operatives are allowed to sell their expertise to the highest bidder", a policy that gives "financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation's top-level intelligence talent. Little is known about the CIA's moonlighting policy, or which corporations have hired current CIA operatives."

The report concludes that, due to an extreme lack of oversight, government effectively tends to simply "rubber stamp" such intelligence outsourcing:

"In effect, corporations are now able to replicate in miniature the services of a private CIA, employing active-duty and retired officers from intelligence and/or law enforcement. Lawlessness committed by this private intelligence and law enforcement capacity, which appears to enjoy near impunity, is a threat to democracy and the rule of law. In essence, corporations are now able to hire a private law enforcement capacity - which is barely constrained by legal and ethical norms - and use it to subvert or destroy civic groups. This greatly erodes the capacity of the civic sector to countervail the tremendous power of corporate and wealthy elites."

The war on democracy [Nafeez Ahmed/The Guardian]

(via Reddit)

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Let's be honest, those of us who were youngsters when Home Alone came out thought it was pretty awesome, but once you see it as an adult, you realize it isn't just cheesy, but pretty terrible all around. Of course, if you haven't seen it recently, you might not realize just how terrible it is until this Honest Trailer reminds you that it's about a little sociopath with a horrible family who decides he needs to torture to non-violent criminals who are inexplicably obsessed with breaking in to one specific home -all of which makes for one delightfully bad movie and a great Honest Trailer

Via Laughing Squid

Things aren't looking good for copyright trolls Prenda Law -- they've been ordered to pay $261K in opponents' fees, and the judge has made all three of Prenda's principles -- Paul Hansmeier, John Steele, and Paul Duffy -- jointly liable for the sum. He also called them liars. They're much worse than that.

Robbo sends us a "Supercut of all the 'Humbugs' from 32 different versions of A Christmas Carol. Spot your favourites!"

'Humbug' - The Christmas Carol Supercut (Thanks, Robbo)

Researchers at Malwarebytes have discovered that some programs covertly install Bitcoin-mining software on users' computers, papering over the practice by including sneaky language in their license agreements allowing for "computer calculations, security."

The malicious programs include YourFreeProxy from Mutual Public, AKA We Build Toolbars, LLC, AKA WBT. YourFreeProxy comes with a program called Monitor.exe, which repeatedly phones home to WBT, eventually silently downloading and installing a Bitcoin mining program called "jhProtominer."

So now that we have proof that a PUP is installing miners on users systems, do they do it without ever letting the user know? Well not exactly, their EULA specifically covers a section on Computer Calculations:

COMPUTER CALCULATIONS, SECURITY: as part of downloading a Mutual Public, your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates.

Their explanation is basically the purpose of Bitcoin Miners and that they will install this software on the system, run it, use up your system resources and finally keep all rewards from the effort YOUR system puts in. Talk about sneaky.

In my opinion, PUPs have gone to a new low with the inclusion of this type of scheme, they already collected information on your browsing and purchasing habits with search toolbars and redirectors. They assault users with pop-up ads and unnecessary software to make a buck from their affiliates. Now they are just putting the nails in the coffin by stealing resources and driving user systems to the grave.

Potentially Unwanted Miners – Toolbar Peddlers Use Your System To Make BTC [Adam Kujawa/Malwarebytes]

(via /.)

"An elegant weapon, for a wealthier age." -- Scrooge McDuck

"Adventure is a bother." -- Up, Winnie the Pooh

"A whole new Puddin'." -- Aladdin, Harley Quinn

"The toy with no name." -- Toy Story, A Fistful of Dollars

"The Corpse Crusader." -- The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batgirl

James Silvani is an artist in Hawaii. He works mostly with Disney product lines and is most famous for his Darkwing Duck comics. His Tumblr blog is filled with sketches of mashup art, usually mixing Disney characters with Star Wars, Star Trek and Warner Bros. characters. You can watch a brief interview with him here.

-via Landa Calrissian

Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board.

— J.P. Morgan (@jpmorgan) November 14, 2013

When JP Morgan's Twitter account announced last month that "VC Jimmy Lee" take questions from the net with the #AskJPM hashtag, they should have been able to predict what was coming next: a stream of hilarious, vicious critiques of late-stage capitalism, banksterism, and financial corruption. One day later, the Q&A was cancelled. The astonishing thing isn't how predictable this was, but how anyone at JP Morgan failed to see it coming -- the greatest irony isn't the questions raised, it was the hubris in thinking that these questions wouldn't be raised at all.

The fiasco is being called one of the worst social media disasters in corporate history, and has spawned lots of creativity, including this video of Stacy Keach and a sock puppet performing the tweets and a Matt Taibbi-sponsored haiku contest.

What's the best way to get blood stains out of a clown suit? #AskJPM

— Eddy Elfenbein (@EddyElfenbein) November 13, 2013

I have Mortgage Fraud, Market Manipulation, Credit Card Abuse, Libor Rigging and Predatory Lending AM I DIVERSIFIED? #AskJPM

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) November 13, 2013

Active duty millitary overcharged, 18 homes stolen from them. Why is JPM still allowed to exist? #ASKJPM : http://t.co/kfsWqXv24l

— Zane Zodrow (@ZaneZodrow) November 14, 2013

What did those plutocrats think was going to happen?

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Intellectual Property Strategy and the Long Tail: Evidence from the Recorded Music Industry [PDF], a new working paper from University of Toronto Strategic Management PhD candidate Laurina Zhang documents the rise in sales experienced by the music industry following the abandonment of DRM in digital music offerings.

The paper compares sales of 5,864 albums from 634 artists from before and after the music industry eliminated DRM, and finds an average rise of 10 percent in overall sales (though back-catalog experienced more of a lift compared to front-list titles). As TorrentFreak reports, "This effect holds up after controlling for factors such as album release dates, music genre and regular sales variations over time."

“Relaxing sharing restrictions does not impact all albums equally; it increases the sales of lower-selling albums (the “long tail”) significantly by 30% but does not benefit top-selling albums. My results are consistent with theory that shows lowering search costs can facilitate the discovery of niche products.”

According to Zhang, the 30% sales increase for lower-selling albums can be explained by the fact that DRM-free music makes it easier for consumers to share files and discover new music. The finding that removing DRM from top-selling albums has no effect on sales makes sense in this regard, since the discovery element is less important for well promoted musicians.

While DRM is still prevalent in the book industry and elsewhere, most of the major labels are now in agreement that it’s not a good fit for music.

What Piracy? Removing DRM Boosts Music Sales by 10 Percent [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

A new Snowden leak reveals that the NSA worked with the Canadian spy agency CSEC to illegally spy on diplomats attending the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010 (an earlier leak revealed that the NSA also spied on the 2009 G20 summit in London).

The leak is significant for many reasons, but especially because it adds to the evidence that the NSA's's bulk surveillance capabilities are an instrument of US trade policy, used to spy on diplomats from friendly countries in order to cheat on trade negotiations, winning tactical advantages through unethical and illegal means. It's the sort of state-sponsored industrial espionage that the US and Canada frequently accuse China of -- takes one to know one, I suppose.

Also noteworthy is the fact that CSEC is not allowed to spy on Canadians, nor on visitors to Canada. It may be that they circumvented the law by assisting the NSA to spy in Canada. Similar allegations have been made about the NSA and the British spy agency GCHQ; they are rumored to have an established process of asking one-another to spy on their own citizens in order to stay in technical compliance with the rules that prohibit domestic spying: "We didn't spy on our own people; we asked these foreign spooks to spy on them and give the information to us. It's totally different."

The NSA and its Canadian "partner," the Communications Security Establishment Canada, gather foreign intelligence for their respective governments by covertly intercepting phone calls and hacking into computer systems around the world.

The secret documents do not reveal the precise targets of so much espionage by the NSA — and possibly its Canadian partner — during the Toronto summit.

But both the U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies have been implicated with their British counterpart in hacking the phone calls and emails of foreign politicians and diplomats attending the G20 summit in London in 2009 — a scant few months before the Toronto gathering of the same world leaders.

Notably, the secret NSA briefing document describes part of the U.S. eavesdropping agency's mandate at the Toronto summit as "providing support to policymakers."

New Snowden docs show U.S. spied during G20 in Toronto [Greg Weston, Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher/CBC News]

We've already seen what happens when Nic Cage becomes everyone. But while we know that he has been in some terrible movies (whether or not you agree he is a terrible actor), it's way more exciting to see a geek actor we all love as just about everyone.

That's why it so fun to enjoy the new Wheaton meme that features Wil Weaton in all kinds of great movies. Unlike the Nic Cage meme, this one actually started out by Wil, who Tweeted a picture of himself in front of a green screen -motivating his fans to photoshop him into all kinds of fantastic situations.

Via Geeks Are Sexy

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience is a smart and sometimes devastating critique of "neurobollocks" -- the propensity for using brain-science (and, particularly, brain imaging) to reductively explain human motivation. The authors, Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld, are a psychiatrist and a psychologist (respectively) and so it's hard not to suspect that there's a little professional rivalry at play here, but they present a compelling argument nonetheless -- a picture of promising science oversold in the name of winning grants, winning court cases, and, at the worst, duping the gullible.

Brainwashed is broken into five brisk sections that each address a different critique of "neurocentrism," or the belief that there is something special about the brain (and especially the brain scan) that trumps virtually every other account of human behavior. The authors open up with a scathing indictment of "neuromarketing," whose practitioners distort and manipulate the literature on brain imaging, getting rich off of gullible clients who are seduced by the idea of a scientific method for "pushing the brain's Buy Now button." This is complemented by a later chapter on the use of neurological imaging for lie-detection, another extremely profitable field based on shaky science. This later chapter is also interesting in the questions it raises about the nuance of falsehood, by way of illustrating the difference between successfully identifying the "induced falsehood" of a lab subject and determining whether an accused adulterer or murderer is spinning lies.

Also immediate and practical are the chapters on addiction and criminal culpability. On addiction, the authors show how neurocentric views of addiction ("I'm not a crack addict, my brain is") rests on a nonsense theory of addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease that has become War on Drugs dogma, and which, therefore, produces proscriptions that add little to the practical business of helping people who struggle with painful drug problems. On the subject of neuroscience and guilt, the authors introduce the nuanced and chewy idea of human agency and free will, and the larger social purpose of a justice system. This discussion is accompanied by a philosophical argument about the need for "retributive justice" (punishment) as a means of creating legitimacy in the justice system, presented as an argument against the idea of treating crime as a neurological disease. This was, for me, the book's weakest argument, and reflective of the political agenda of the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian thinktank where Sally Satel is Resident Scholar.

The book ends with a wider philosophical inquiry into what neuroscience can tell us about free will -- not much, in the authors' view, especially not much that hasn't already been captured by centuries of philosophical debate. But this closing chapter is also a good summary of the overall message of the book: that we are irrationally swayed by brain imaging, imputing to it a precision and informative value that far exceeds the present state of the science -- a science that is extremely promising and fascinating, but which is routinely oversold.

At 150 pages (with 50 pages of dense end-notes), this book is a brisk read, but a good one -- and, I would argue, an important one.

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience