Internet

• Time lapse video of slime mold and mushrooms 1 hour ago Boing Boing
  Time lapse video of unusual looking molds and mushrooms erupting. Be sure to check out the related mushroom videos, too. (Via Grow-A-Brain)...
  
• Love and Rockets: New Stories, Vol 1 2 hours ago Boing Boing
  National treasures Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have relaunched Love and Rockets with a new format and a new approach. I can hardly wait. Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 reboots the beloved ongoing "Love and Rockets" comic into a fat, all-new annual graphic novel length package. Jaime launches the new format with a story that's unusual even for him... A full-on, pulse-pounding super-hero yarn! Maggie's longtime friend Penny Century has finally realized her longtime dream of acquiring super-powers, but at a terrible personal cost. Now she rampages through the galaxy, half mad with grief, and a motley group of super-heroes assembles to try to stop her -- led by Maggie's girlfriend Angel and her mysterious neighbor Alarma, and involving a number of characters longtime Love and Rockets fans will delight in recognizing. The epic-length 50-page story (only the first half of the saga!) combines Jaime's razor sharp characterization and superlative art with wildly inventive, Kirby-style slam-bang super-hero action. Then Gilbert Hernandez explodes with a similarly generous helping of his fantastically creative one-shot short stories: "Tamanny" (rookie cop vs. demonic drug users); "Papa" (a turn-of-the-century story involving a traveling businessman); "The New Adventures of Duke and Sammy" (super-powered Martin and Lewis impostors in outer space); "The Tender Room" (Into the Wild as re-imagined by Beto); "Chiro el Indio" (written by third brother Mario Hernandez); and "Never Say Never" (a kangaroo gets lucky in Las Vegas). One hundred pages of Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez at the peak of their powers: this is a major graphic-novel event! Love and Rockets: New Stories #1...
  
• Small gallery of old comic book ads 2 hours ago Boing Boing
  Datajunkie has a small galley of choice comic book ads from the days of yore. If you like these, you should get a copy of Hey Skinny! Great Advertisements from the Golden Age of Comic Books. Old comic book ads...
  
• How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop 3 hours ago Boing Boing
  Eren Göksel wrote a tutorial that anyone can follow to create a drawing of a pencil in Photoshop. The Pencil is one of the visual metaphors most used to express creativity. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to draw a pencil icon. We'll have a look at gradients, selection tools, and basic transform operations. Let's have some fun with this. I'd love to see Boing Boing readers' variations on this. If you create one, please link to it in the comments section. How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop...
  
• Photographing the science museum 5 hours ago Boing Boing
  Photographer Meera Sethi has written a nice essay about taking photos in science museums. Sethi is part of Utata, a collective of photographers who met via Flickr. Indeed, be sure to check out Sethi's "Muse" science museum photo set on Flickr. (Seen here, "Together Forever," taken at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.) From "Photographing the Science Museum": Is there anyone who doesn't feel a certain frisson of excitement when they see something organic preserved in a glass jar? I don't know exactly what it is, but I suspect it might have something to do with certain cultural associations we all carry around in our heads, some strange common currency that comes from years of watching mad scientist movies late at night.That might be me in there, I find myself thinking. If some other intellectually curious species with opposable thumbs and access to the secrets of chemistry had come to dominate the planet instead of my own, that might be my shriveled body all scrunched up in there?my brain at whose familiar whorls some creature with a purple exoskeleton would now be leering through the glass, wondering how on earth it could be so very...grey. Mostly, though, what I love about standing in front of these heavy jars is how much easier they make it to observe the world I love so much, in close detail. Time pauses, temporarily. The barriers between me and the mysteries of this earth fall, temporarily. Nothing else matters except looking, and everything about the place where I am is designed to make it easier to look?and to see. I see that this barnacle has claws like a dragon's. I see that these spiders have legs like sharp needles. I see that this frog has approximately six times as many organs inside its torso as I would have thought it had room for. I try to look as much as I can, and when I have looked until I have seen, I take out my camera. Photographing the Science Museum (Utata, via Eastern Blot)...
  
• A quick and dirty Japanese humor tutorial 6 hours ago Boing Boing
  Japanese humor is slowly but surely infiltrating mainstream media in the US. Fake Japanese game shows on ABC, human Tetris on Fox, the YouTube video of the guy that shoots out of a toilet stall into a ski slope... as someone who grew up in Tokyo watching Japanese variety shows every night, though, I have to say that the US adaptations don't really get it. Previously, I explained why I thought I Survived a Japanese Game Show doesn't work on my blog. I also wrote this little blurb explaining why: The host of a real Japanese game show is a politically incorrect, sarcastic man who revels in mild forms of torture and isn't afraid to smack a woman on the head. (The feminist in me battles the light-hearted Japanese humoree every time I watch one.) The contestants are stoic, and driven by the determination not to make a fool of themselves and the desire to win money and/or fame. The show's creators are constantly upping the ante, forcing contestants into grueling, sometimes life-threatening situations. A panel of yappy celebrity commentators and on-screen subtitles emphasize LOL moments and onomatopoeia. And, perhaps most importantly, the show can't be overproduced?it's the barebones "variety"-style set-up that has allowed the Japanese game show to survive and thrive for decades. (In one famously controversial show, an aspiring comedian named Nasubi was locked naked in an empty apartment and forced to live on winnings from magazine sweepstakes until he earned $10,000. When he finally reached his goal 14 months later, the show's producers gave him some clothes, blindfolded him, and took him on a surprise vacation to South Korea, where he was locked in yet another apartment until he won enough money to buy a plane ticket home. While some vehemently opposed the show, most watched it religiously with delightful horror and amusement. Nasubi wrote a best-selling book about his experience and later became a successful stage actor.)It's the type of comedy that only works in a culture where lawsuits don't take precedent over a nationwide commitment to make fun and have fun.  In a nutshell, a real funny Japanese TV show will have you thinking, over and over: This is embarrassing to watch. This is so wrong. I'm so glad that's not me. This is f-ing hilarious. The above clip is from one of iconic 80s comedian Ken Shimura's many variety shows. Every Japanese person over the age of 25 probably knows it.( Lisa Katayama is a guest blogger.)...
  
• Human waste as fertilizer and irrigation in developing regions 8 hours ago Boing Boing
  According to a new report, 200 million farmers use human shit as fertilizer for 49 million acres of land. The study, published by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), details how ten percent of the population, mostly in developing nations, eat grains and vegetables harvested from fields irrigated and fertilized with raw sewage. Traditional fertilizer and clean water is too expensive or simply unavailable in many places. From National Geographic: The report focused on poor urban areas, where farms in or near cities supply relatively inexpensive food. Most of these operations draw irrigation water from local rivers or lakes. Unlike developed cities, however, these areas lack advanced water-treatment facilities, and rivers effectively become sewers. When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related diseases, including cholera, according to WHO statistics. More than 80 percent of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an IWMI environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.... In most cases, the excrement is used on cereal or grain crops, which are eventually cooked, minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne pathogens and diseases, IWMI's Drechsel noted. Human Waste Used By 200 Million Farmers (National Geographic)...
  
• Sea urchin-inspired art made from pencils 8 hours ago Boing Boing
  Sculptress Jennifer Maestre makes colorful abstract and plant-like pieces using colored pencils. She turns each colored pencil into beads by cutting them into inch-long sections and then drilling a hole in the base, then sharpens and sews hundreds of them together using the peyote stitch. She loves prickly things like sea urchins?they're what inspired her to work in this unusual medium in the first place. Link (via Moco Loco) ( Lisa Katayama is a guest blogger.)...
  
• Comic bio of Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and magician 8 hours ago Boing Boing
  Jack Parsons (1914-1952) was a pioneering rocket scientist and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He was also a deep devotee of Aleister Crowley and worked some heavy duty occult rituals with none-other than L. Run Hubbard. Parsons had an amazingly strange life that writer Richard Carbonneau and artist Robin Simon are now translating into comic form. "The Marvel: A Biography of Jack Parsons" is now online as a serialized Web comic. I hope it eventually gets published as a graphic novel! The Marvel: A Biography of Jack Parsons (Webcomics Nation via Damn Data) Previously on BB: ? Book review: Strange Angel, a Jack Parsons biography...
  
• Guitar Praise: Christianized Guitar Hero 9 hours ago Boing Boing
  Guitar Praise is an, er, Christian knock-off of Guitar Hero. "Grab the guitar and play along with top Christian bands! Shred those riffs or blast the bass?you add a unique sound to the solid Christian rock." Seriously. Brownlee has more over at Boing Boing Gadgets. Guitar Praise: Guitar Hero for Christians (BB Gadgets)...