The joint JAXA/NASA Hinode mission captured this image of the January 6, 2011 solar eclipse. On May 20-21, sky-watchers in Asia and much of the U.S. will be able to view a “ring of fire” eclipse or a partial eclipse of the Sun, depending on their location. The rest of the world, including our readers [...]

The NYT's Nick Bilton compares Facebook and Twitter to the tortoise and the hare. "Facebook exploded because it slurped up endless amounts of data about its users," writes Bilton. "This race is not judged by speed, but a stopwatch with a much longer lifespan, one that is tied to trust."

Gweek podcast guest Kevin Mack and Snow Mack have an art opening this Saturday at the Barbara Mendes Gallery in Los Angeles. I love their work. Snow was in the 25th Anniversary show of La Luz de Jesus in 2011. Her painting, "Cheesy Rider" is included in the book La Luz de Jesus 25, The [...]

Andrew Leonard of Salon interviewed Charles Ferguson (director of Inside Job, the documentary about the unpunished criminals who caused the current financial collapse) about his new book, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America Ferguson: I recently was at a dinner in New York City and one of the people there [...]

A campaign on Unglue.it is seeking to raise $7,500 to pay for a Creative Commons Attribution-only licensed edition of Oral Literature in Africa, an out-of-print classic on the subject that is widely sought by African libraries. Once the money is raised, they will produce the new edition and make it widely available. First published in [...]

Leah sez, Bespoke troublemakers, the Space Hijackers, have announced that they are the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games. To this end, they've launched a site where you can register for tickets for the official protests. They have also outlined the top ten reasons why the Olympics are worth protesting against. A spokesperson [...]

Alexandra Lange sends us her "Living in Lego City," from Print Magazine: "An essay that asks and answers the question: If you built all the Lego City sets, what kind of city would you get? The city you get is one founded on the stereotype of boy busyness, a place that makes 3-D the transportation, [...]

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff. My co-hosts for episode 52 are: Maggie Koerth-Baker: BoingBoing’s science editor, journalist, and author of Before the Lights Go Out, a new book about electric infrastructure [...]

"Sexy girl in coffee beans," by Marcel Jancovic, via Shutterstock. A large prospective study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that "coffee consumption was inversely associated with total and cause-specific mortality." In other words, data showed that there is a connection between drinking coffee and not necessarily dying. Sort of. "Whether [...]

Make is knocking out some fabulous "3D Printer Trading Cards (From the Future!)" -- lovely contractual design fictions from a world gone made for additive manufacturing. I had a dream that I found a box of 3D Printer Trading cards from 2012 at the Seekonk Speedway Flea Market. When I awoke I realized that might [...]

Marvin Ammori's recently-bestowed freedom bling. Note the Nyan Cat. Constitutional law expert Marvin Ammori, one of the First Amendment scholars along with Larry Tribe who explained how SOPA would violate the First Amendment, shares a wonderful story with Boing Boing. Snip from his blog post: When I was quite young, I saw the first Star [...]

A new, two-week long daily podcast called Journey to Planet JoCo consists of a series of dialogues between John Scalzi and Jonathan Coulton -- like my two favorite flavors of ice-cream in one delicious cone! Welcome to Journey to Planet JoCo, an interview series where science fiction and sometimes fantasy author John Scalzi talks to [...]

When Canada's Lemon Bucket Orkestra -- a swinging klezmer act -- got stuck on Air Canada flight 876 at the start of their Balkan Station Romanian Tour 2012, they treated the fliers to a fabulous impromptu performance. Here's Lemon Bucket's origin tale: The band grew out of a conversation between a Breton accordionist and a [...]

Writing on Warren Ellis's site, Justin Pickard presents "Action and Decision-Making for the Professional Weirdo," part of a longer, inspiring "Gonzo Futurist manifesto (PDF)" that opens with my most-favorite Bruce Sterling quote -- the words that were in my heart when I dropped out of university to work on the Internet: "Don’t become a well-rounded [...]

The next installment of San Francisco's SF in SF science fiction reading series is this Saturday, May 19: Ysabeau Wilce, Marie Brennan & Erin Hoffman. Doors open at 6, event kicks off at 7. Free, with a suggested donation to Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California of $5-10.

Hedge funds in America have backed several dental practices, and Medicaid and parents allege that this has led to a rash of "dental abuse" of poor children, who are seen by dentists at school, without parental consent, for invasive and painful (and expensive) procedures performed by dentists. Critics say the dentists have to meet quotas [...]

Rachel Hobson says: "Who needs to watch a web cam of baby pandas when you can watch Venus live? Welcome to the Public Observatory channel, where you can see live video of the Sun, moon, or the planets taken through one of our telescopes. The Public Observatory is located at the National Air and Space [...]

REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach German riot police carry a demonstrator fully covered in paint as police clears the camp of occupy protestors in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, May 16, 2012.

My pal Anthony Citrano points to this outrageous story, and says: "The State Department says their staff should blog about 'individual stories', but this bullshit about your new nipple is just too much." The tl;dr: Jennifer Dinoia, who is married to a foreign service agent, maintained a family blog that was promoted on the State [...]

Ethan sez, Me and my colleague, Alexandra Keller, gave up our day jobs as web geeks to write this game, and almost two years later we finally have it: Sky Alchemist - a puzzle game about transforming impure matter into pure forms, using heaters, coolers, and breakers, phase-specific collectors, and a centrifuge. We tried to [...]

A styrofoam-and-acrylic model of Osama bin Laden's compound that was used to plan the May 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader has been declassified by the Pentagon. CNN reports that the model of OBL's building and surrounding farmland in Abbotabad, Pakistan was built over a six-week period, and then was taken to the [...]

Admittedly, I am biased, but New York state supreme court judge Gustin L. Reichbach speaks for me when he writes in a New York Times op-ed today that medical marijuana "is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue." Like me, justice Reichbach has cancer. He has pancreatic cancer, and [...]

I had no idea that neurons came in such a beautiful diversity of shapes. Each of these neurons has a different function, too: A. Purkinje cell B. Granule cell C. Motor neuron D. Tripolar neuron E. Pyramidal Cell F. Chandelier cell G. Spindle neuron H. Stellate cell. The image, drawn by science journalist Ferris Jabr, [...]

Last year, at the Twin Cities branch of the BoingBoing Meetup Day event, musician Jeremy Messersmith brought the lyrics to a song he was working on—a song intended to be as terrible a song as he could possibly write. Now, you can enjoy "It's the Heat" as an actual recorded song ... a song that [...]

The Met, London's police force, is buying "mobile device data extraction" devices that can suck all the data out of your phone "in minutes" -- that's where you've been, who you know, what you've said to them, what websites you visit, and, depending on your apps, what groceries you buy, when you've called for a [...]