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.

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.

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 to fly, but these are perfectly engineered. A boy I met in a camp down the block from the ruins of the Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince pointed to the sky. Blinking into the sun, I took forever to find his kite: a darting black dot far above the shattered steeples.

Rob B and I were discussing the inherent oddness of those faux stereos, TVs, and computers used in furniture store displays. Cut to a good half-hour of browsing the site of Props By IDM (International Dummy Machines?). Not only does Props by IDM offer the latest in fake component stereos, laptops, and flatscreens, but they also sell huge plastic washer and dryer sets, simulated iPod with speaker dock, and fake windows with mountain views. Also available are accessories for the props, such as DVD and VHS boxes for unreal movies (Boy Story! Yo Adrian!), a wide selection of images for the various screens, including sports scenes, PC desktops, and fake Tetris for the fake video game system ($20!). Unfortunately, the company says that a "major catastrophe" at their manufacturing facility has forced them to put business on hold for the next few months. Electronic gear props

Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Henan province in China, appears to have a horn growing on the left side of her forehead. Another is reportedly sprouting on the right side, according to the Daily Mail. I know, I know, the Daily Mail... but look at that horn. Just look at it. From the Daily Mail:

Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang's head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.

This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.

Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.

They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.

The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.

Etsy seller TheWren sells messenger bags made out of South African cement sacks (which, I imagine, are durable by definition). Very nice, old school art. I had to give up messenger bags to spare my back (the lopsided burden was killing me), but I still have a soft spot for them, and live vicariously through others on this score.

PPC Cement Laptop Bag - OPC (via Wired)

Not only are torture techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced stress positions evil, they don't work very well for interrogation. Jacques Vallee talked about that on BB last year in his provocative essay, "Waterboarding's curious corollaries." This week's New Scientist also considers the efficacy of torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (CIDT). On the heels of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Obama established the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group to study and practice "scientifically proven" techniques to interrogate without torture or CIDT, which are illegal.

The idea that coercive interrogation works rests on an untested and largely unsupported framework, says Shane O'Mara, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. On the face of it, the coercive model for interrogation seems like common sense: there is information that the interrogator wants to know and the subject holds but doesn't want to give up. The interrogator applies some pressure to break down the defences put up by the subject, who then spills the desired information. "You see this model repeatedly in movies and TV series such as 24," says O'Mara.

The idea that coercive interrogation works rests upon an untested and largely unsupported framework Whether it really works like that is questionable, however. "Everything we know shows that the ability to accurately retrieve information is severely impaired under conditions of extreme stress," O'Mara says. Studies on soldiers, for instance, have shown that manipulating sleep, food and temperature produces severe effects on memory, even when people are willing to give up information.

In a recent paper, O'Mara outlined the problem (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, p 497). Both torture and CIDT flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, with potentially profound effects. Three regions are especially affected: the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part of the fear network; and the frontal lobes. Disturbances of these regions are likely to kick in during coercive interrogation, particularly if such questioning continues for weeks or months.

In addition, prolonged stress could also lead to the creation of false memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator. This phenomenon, known as confabulation in psychiatric jargon, is also found in people with frontal lobe disorders. "These people are not consciously making stuff up or trying to lie," says O'Mara. "But they have difficulty discriminating between genuine memories and those that don't bear any relationship to events they have experienced. Though the occurrence of confabulation in torture victims is more speculative, it's a marked possibility."

Warning: This may shock you if you love dogs and cats. In this video report, CNN's Emily Chang goes to a dog and cat meat market in Guanghzhou, China. There, dogs and cats are kept in cages and sold to restaurants and street vendors that specialize in things like cat stew and frozen dog leg. The Chinese government has taken the first steps in banning the consumption of dog and cat meat, but this report says it may take a decade for actual changes to be implemented.

Karen O'Leary creates hand-cut city maps from paper. She just finished Paris, and it is shown above. More here, and her Flickr stream is here.

Susannah Breslin writes, "Apparently, there's an entire phenomenon of young women videotaping themselves talking to the internet as they show off the latest cache of goods they scored at the mall. Do not underestimate the haul vloggers. They are fascinating." More on this by Susannah at True/Slant, and one such specimen is above. What-so-ever.

Photo © Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR: Nelvis Clerge sits on the rubble that was his family's home in Port-au-Prince. Nelvis, a 55-year old construction worker, built the house with his own hands 25 years ago. The Clerge family is one of many struggling to survive in post-emergency Haiti with little assistance.

This image is part of a larger slideshow on survivors of the Haiti quake, and the work of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti. MSF: Facebook, Twitter-USA, Twitter-UK. (thanks, Julie Whitaker)

Six women from Essex County, New Jersey were hospitalized after getting black market butt enhancement procedures in which they were injected with the kind of non-medical grade silicone you can buy at the hardware store. I've read about similar practices in drag queen communities as well. I'd imagine that DIY cosmetic surgery, like medical tourism, will become more "mainstream." It's not clear yet if the six new cases are related. From NJ.com:

Different from medical-grade silicone, the substance used in the botched procedures was believed to be a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone.

"The same stuff you use to put caulk around the bathtub," said Steven M. Marcus, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, who learned about the bizarre procedures through a committee he sits on that monitors outbreaks in the metropolitan area.

"What a tragedy," said Gregory Borah, chief of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. Using over-the-counter silicone can cause abscesses that he said resemble "a big zit"...

A plastic surgeon doing buttocks augmentation would make an incision to develop a pocket underneath the muscle and shape the buttocks with inert medical-grade silicone, Borah said. He noted it is a relatively uncommon procedure in most practices and that he has done only two in his 24-year career. By the time he tells patients of the potential risks — from anesthesia, scarring and silicone shifting when patients sit down — they often change their minds.

[via Etsy]

Nick from i3 Detroit hackerspace sez, "We all know that robot poverty is a major problem but no one is taking any steps to help combat it...until now. Help i3 Detroit, Detroit's Hackerspace, move to our bigger 8,000 sq/ft location and fight the causes of Robot Poverty. Most robots don't have the basic alcohol they need to survive or the tanks of pneumatic fluid to pressurize appendages. It's everyone's problem and you can help. Watch our informative video and support us via our Kickstarter program."

i3 Detroit v2.0 (Thanks, Nick!)

Lauren from Orbit books sez, "I thought you guys might like my latest behind the scenes design project, while designing the latest cover in a Victorian/Steampunk book series, I left the video screen-capture on...for like 6 hours (never knew how much I checked email until I had to edit them out of there) - we condensed the rest down to just under 2 minutes, and voila."

I love watching people who are good at their jobs do their thing, such a treat to watch over Lauren's shoulder. Also, what a smart little promo for the book!

design editor's inspiration (Thanks, Lauren!)

Boing Boing heroes Megan and Rick Prelinger run the Prielinger Library, an amazing privately-funded but public "appropriation-friendly" collection of books, magazines, and ephemera in San Francisco. In my opinion, the Prelinger Library's materials have the vibe that I imagine a Boing Boing Library would feel like. Megan has been working on a fascinating book, "Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962," that will be published in May by Blast Books. Judging by today's New York Times preview of the book, it's going to be a doozy of retro-futurism and atomic/modernist design. Congrats, Megan! From the NYT:

Some of the most extravagant of these visions of the future came not from cheap paperbacks, but from corporations buffing their high-tech credentials and recruiting engineering talent in the heady days when zooming budgets for defense and NASA had created a gold rush in outer space.

In the pages of magazines like Aviation Week, Missiles and Rockets and even Fortune, companies, some famous and some now obscure, were engaged in a sort of leapfrog of dreams. And so, for example, Republic Aviation of Farmingdale, N.Y. -- "Designers and Builders of the Incomparable Thundercraft" -- could be found bragging in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in 1959 about the lunar gardening experiments it was doing for a future Air Force base on the moon. Or the American Bosch Arma Corporation showing off, in Fortune, its "Cosmic Butterfly," a solar-powered electrically propelled vehicle to ferry passengers and cargo across the solar system...

The book, she said, was inspired by a shipment of old publications to the library, including Aviation Week & Space Technology and Missiles and Rockets. "I little expected that the advertising in their pages would seize my attention more than the articles themselves," she writes in the introduction to her book.

Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 (Amazon)

Jeremie writes,

The written declaration 12/2010 regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is now open for signatures. It has to be signed within three months by more than half of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). It is a great opportunity for the European Parliament to prove its commitment to protecting fundamental rights and freedoms. Every EU citizen concerned about ACTA and the preservation of an open Internet can participateA dedicated campaign page is available here: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Help_sign_the_Written_Declaration_12/2010_against_ACTA by getting in touch with MEPs and urging them to sign the written declaration.

A dedicated campaign page has been set up to allow EU citizens to participate in collecting the signatures of the majority of the Members of the European Parliament. From Monday, March 8th to Thursday, March 11th, MEPs will meet in Strasbourg for a plenary session. From now on and until mid-June, plenary sessions will be the best periods to collect signatures on the written declaration.

"Signing the written declaration 12/2010 would show MEPs' commitment to protecting citizens' rights. The adoption of the written declaration will send a strong message to the Commission and Member States that the European Parliament will not let EU citizens' freedoms be undermined by opaque diplomatic negotiations. Every citizen and NGO concerned about ACTA can participate by calling MEPs and urging them to sign the declaration.", concludes Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson of La Quadrature du Net.