Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senator Al Franken zings the everloving crap out of Ann Coulter in this sweet little clip. Funniest 1:22 I've seen all day.

Ann Coulter and Al Franken at The Connecticut Forum (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

An inspiring how-to for turning an ugly plastic clock into a nice-looking wood-cased object. Inspiring!

Turn a generic plastic gadget in to something a little more beautiful (Via MAKE blog)

If you aren't in the mood for McDnoald's, how about Pizza Huh?

Fake brands shopping center set to open in China (Via Michael Dolan)

Posted to the Apple web site on January 5, 2009: Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Good stuff from the Collins Kids. (via PCL Linkdump)

surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pierced and be-fanged woman demonstrates how she can wiggle her split tongue.

Previously:

• Long-tongued people - Boing Boing
• Novelty tongues for dogs - Boing Boing
• Tongue-mounted vibrators - Boing Boing
• A tongue piercing gone horribly - Boing Boing
• Sensor-dentures reveal the secret life of tongues - Boing Boing

Delightful sets, characters, and music in this 1970s Japanese kids' show, Kure Kure Takora.

From Wikipedia: Kure Kure Takora (クレクレタコラ, Kure Kure Takora? unofficial translation: "Gimme Gimme Octopus") is a tokusatsu children's comedy show from Japan. Produced by Toho Company Ltd., the show aired on Fuji TV and its subsidiaries from October 1, 1973 to September 27, 1974 with a total of 260 episodes.

However, Episodes 223, 252 and 255 never materialised. The show was rebroadcast over CS digital satellite television, except for episode 220, which was censored due to problematic show content. The reason behind the censorship being that the main character, Takora is beaten by his neighbors to the point of being brain damaged, and it was considered much too violent to be rebroadcast. Laserdisc and VHS versions were sold, but currently only the DVD version (which includes episode 220) is on Japanese market.

It was a new type of program for children. TAKORA, a central character coveted for everything saying "KURE! (I want it)" all the time. Each episode was absurd, strange, violent, surreal, indescribable, and ran exactly 2 minutes and 41 seconds.

More excerpts available at Mt. Holly Mayor's Office: Kure Kure Takora - Amazing Japanese Kids Show from the '70s

UPDATE: Jack found banned episode #220. He said it "Looks like a cartoon version of COPS."

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has the inside story of Max Butler, a former white hat hacker who joined the underground following a jail stint for hacking the Pentagon. His most ambitious hack was a hostile takeover of the major underground carding boards where stolen credit card and identity data are bought and sold. The attack made his own site, CardersMarket, the largest crime forum in the world, with 6,000 users. But it also made the feds determined to catch him, since one of the sites he hacked, DarkMarket.ws, was secretly a sting operation run by the FBI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeremy of ToyCyte writes: As part of our custoMONDAY series, we're giving away a custom made toy. Today's feature is Lana Crooks, who has a gallery on TOR, and does cephalopods. (Her tentacled plushes have been on BoingBoing before.) She's giving away a large handmade plush skull to the reader who can come up with the best name for her series of skulls. "Win a Custom Skull Plush by Lana Crooks"

thepacketmaster writes "The Star reports about a new power generation model using smaller distributed power generators located closer to the consumer. This saves money on power generation lines and creates an infrastructure that can be more easily expanded with smaller incremental steps, compared to bigger centralized power generation projects. The generators in line for this are green sources, but Hyperion Power Generation, NuScale, Adams Atomic Engines (and some other companies) are offering small nuclear reactors to plug into this type of infrastructure. The generator from Hyperion is about the size of a garden shed, and uses older technology that is not capable of creating nuclear warheads, and supposedly self-regulating so it won't go critical. They envision burying reactors near the consumers for 5-10 years, digging them back up and recycling them. Since they are so low maintenance and self-contained, they are calling them nuclear batteries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

phyr writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) has released its Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) freely as GPL for Linux and Windows. It provides an integrated viewer for reading, calibrating, post-processing and analysis of ESA (ERS 1&2, ENVISAT) and 3rd party (Radarsat2, TerraSarX, Alos Palsar, JERS) SAR level 1 data and higher. ESA has chosen to distribute the software as fully open source to allow the remote sensing community to easily develop new readers/writers and post-processors for SAR data with their NEST Java API. The software provides both a command line interface and GUI for all features including data conversion, graph processing, coregistration, multilooking, filtering, and band arithmetic."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Concentrate sells pre-chewed pencils for £1.50 a pack. (via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)

Lorin Ricker writes "Back in the dark ages of windows-based GUIs, corresponding to my own wandering VMS evangelical days, I became enamored of a series of books jauntily entitled Xxx Annoyances (from O'Reilly & Assocs.), where "Xxx" could be anything from "Windows 95", "Word", "Excel" or nearly piece of software which Microsoft produced. These were, if not the first, certainly among the most successful of the "tips & tricks" books that have become popular and useful to scads of hobbyists, ordinary users, hackers and, yes, even professionals in various IT pursuits. I was attracted, even a bit addicted, to these if only because they offered to try to make some useful sense out of the bewildering design choices, deficiencies and bugs that I'd find rampant in Windows and its application repertory. Then I found Keir Thomas, who has been writing about Linux for more than a decade. His new "tips" book entitled, Ubuntu Kung Fu — Tips & Tools for Exploring Using, and Tuning Linux, and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, is wonderful. Having only recently wandered into the light of Linux, open source software, and Ubuntu in particular, this book comes as a welcome infusion to my addiction." Read below for the rest of Lorin's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phenomenal artist James Jean has posted a slew of scans from his 2008 Moleskine sketchbooks. Jean has a show of new work opening at Jonathan LeVine Gallery on January 10 and the paintings are truly mind-blowing. I'll link to the online gallery once the show opens. (Some of the sketchbook pages may be NSFW.) James Jean (via DRAWN!)

Previously:

• Prada animation by James Jean and CocoRosie - Boing Boing
• The art of James Jean - Boing Boing
• AIDES safe sex posters - Boing Boing

We like both of these ABC sets for very different reasons. The modern design deck by Jen Renninger is hip, modern, retro, and old school, all at the same time. Love it! And the Star Wars characters set by Michael Fleming appeals to our sci-fi, geek sensibilities.

Jen Renninger's Etsy Shop
Michael Fleming's Tweedlebop

(Modern Design Deck via Whorange)

Previously:

• Clothespin and skin alphabet
• Young Mad Scientist's Illustrated Alphabet Blocks
• Alphabet Made out of Corpses in Halo
• Alphabet in raw beef
• Dr. Seuss alphabet in Unicode
• Alphabet paper clips
• Modded plastic soldier alphabet

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Jetdaisuke performs symphonies with a gadget orchestra consisting of a DS Lite, iPod Touch, iPhone, and other assorted bits of gear and software. Brandon has video over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Jetdaisuke conducts the gadget orchestra"

Architext Teddy Cruz is planning low-income housing developments in San Ysidro, San Diego, California and Hudson, New York that are inspired by shantytowns in Tijuana, Mexico. From GOOD: Homes will be jammed together, with any leftover space commandeered by taco stands, market stalls, and gathering places...

Behind the precariousness of low-income communities, says Cruz, there is a sophisticated social collaboration: People share resources, make use of every last scrap, and look out for each other...

In collaboration with the nonprofit Casa Familiar, the San Ysidro development will include 30 housing units alongside spaces where residents can run small businesses. The model also accounts for sweat equity, allowing people who help with construction to gain rent credits for their work. Shantytown, USA

Anonymous Coward writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.