Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson on why we should change the channel already

The televisions in 6.5 million American households will stop working when stations are forced to switch to the digital format—and I don’t care.

Although it’s been pushed back time and again (yesterday the Senate voted to postpone the transition deadline once more, from February 17th to June 12th), the switch from analog to digital television will happen eventually. When it does, valuable radio spectrum will be…

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The musical misunderstandings called mondegreens

As an English teacher and language columnist, I know as well as anyone that the world is full of errors, errors that sometimes seem more numerous than monkeys at a banana convention.

There are spoonerisms, which are unintended reversals like “The Lord is a shoving leopard.” There are spellchecker-caused boners, like a recent student who wrote me, “Thanks for the calcification.” There are plain ol’ malapropisms, which give George W. Bush a grand…

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The Dictionary of American Regional English, a comprehensive lexicon of local language quirks, nears completion If you’re living in a snowpocalyptic wasteland like the ice planet Hoth, Buffalo, New York, or much of the United States lately, you’ve probably shoveled some snow onto the berm. Berm? Oh,.. Read & Discuss

Water levels are falling in America’s largest reservoir. If it dries up, so could power and water for much of the Southwest.

Imagine Nevada’s Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, as a great sand pit, and imagine the population of the western United States as a colossal ostrich burying its head in the pit. And now, imagine the sand level dropping so fast that the willfully ignorant bird is forced to confront the…

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How to can employees in a humane and deceitful manner Unemployment is a national disease, and I just want you to know that I feel your pain, employers of America. Hey, anyone can sympathize with out-of-work citizens trying to pay the bills and shelter the family. It takes a truly great humanitarian.. Read & Discuss

There is an article in the Times about a new book promoting veganism by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson called The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food. I have a hard relationship with vegans and vegetarians. Partly because the idea of that diet repulses me, partly because I am pretty sure that I would need a disgusting amount of vegan food to get the number of calories I need on a daily basis (I’m not saying this…

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Ever since Adam introduced Eve to Barney the dinosaur—talk about awkward!—the nomenclature of relationships has been fraught with difficulty. Boyfriend and girlfriend are the most acceptable terms for the person you’re dating, yet seem too childish for oldsters or even thirtysomethings. In conversation,.. Read & Discuss

Facebook’s Status Update as 21st-century literary form

About a year ago, my undergraduates had to explain to me what they meant by “Facebook group.” About six months ago, they tittered when I told them I had joined: professor- and parent-types were embarrassing, slightly unwanted invaders into their youthful site. About two months ago, I started getting frequent friend requests from, well, friends. Facebook is now officially open to oldsters.

Me and my peeps love Status Updates. We…

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That’s the primary conceit of Urban Mole, a conceptual project by designer Phillip Hermes. He suggests using the existing sewer infrastructure to transport all manner of packages via robotic messenger—a series of tubes, if you will (reminds me of pneu-mail). The sudden lack of street-clogging delivery trucks could have a profound effect on congestion, both in terms of traffic and air quality. You can see a similar project called UNITX, including an actual prototype, here.

If…

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Is text messaging destroying our language? Texting is pretty awful, isn’t it? Every “sentence” is OMG icu lolcat WTF. Ninety percent of texting is done by teens. Not only are kids turning in term papers full of abbreviations, but they’re ruining the English language for the rest of us. And we might have.. Read & Discuss

Put on your aprons and pass the saw: The next wave of the food-awareness movement is do-it-yourself butchery.

Early on a recent Sunday morning I boarded a train to San Francisco’s Mission District to learn how to butcher a whole hog. The class, taught by the chef-turned-butcher Ryan Farr, was held in La Cocina, a non-profit shared-use community kitchen that Farr is using as a temporary venue until he opens his new butcher shop, to be called…

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas. It is emitted when fossil fuels—such as gasoline, oil, and coal—are burned, and it traps heat in the atmosphere. We produce more CO2 than the environment can process, raising the temperature of the planet. It’s getting hot in here.

View GOOD Sheet: CO2 World

Clearly the carbon situation is a challenge. We recommend opting for public transportation more often, shifting to renewable energy sources, and recycling. Are there…

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The documentary adaptation of Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire looks at our relationship with plants—from the plants’ perspective.

Bees, as we all know, unwittingly help flowers reproduce as they collect nectar. But humans have a strange and symbiotic relationship with plants, too—and it’s one in which we are manipulated more than we realize. That relationship is the subject of The Botany of Desire, a documentary adaptation of Michael Pollan’s eponymous 2000 book that will air on…

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GOOD readers, our friends at Design 21’s Social Design Network (read about them here) want to pose a challenge to you. They want to know how you define social design. It’s very simple and very broad. Let us know what you think in the comments. The first 25 commenters will get a GOOD t-shirt and a stainless steel Allumonde ring from Design 21. Make sure you’ve included your real email with your GOOD profile, or we won’t…

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A look at the technology, design, and people behind the Mission One motorcycle

The world’s fastest production electric motorcycle was built in San Francisco’s Dogpatch—an industrial neighborhood bordered by the city’s waterfront. It is an amalgam of drydocks, former steel mills, and factories. Constructed in the 1860s and having largely survived the 1906 earthquake, the zone maintains a smoke-stacked atmosphere of sturdy stone and brick, the streets redolent of coal- and oil-powered commerce. It is appropriate…

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Yup. Pick your price. Pay what you want: a dollar or more. It all goes to charity. And you get GOOD for a year (a subscription was $20 before). Our goal is to create a collaborative community of individuals, businesses, and non-profits. We feel that the content is the invitation into this community.. Read & Discuss

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok3ykR2GHCc[/youtube] The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries put together an easy-to-follow, eye-opening video that shows how it plans to keep its citizenry fed. The initial problem: a shift in diet from the traditional Japanese cuisine (rice,.. Read & Discuss

It sometimes feels like stuff this wonderful doesn’t happen anymore. Fortunately YouTube is there with seemingly every moment of television available so we can still enjoy it:

Watch as the unflappable Mr. Rogers leaves a senator with goosebumps and saves PBS.

Thanks Folkert (via Spacecollective). 

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Think solar power is all about photovoltaic panels? Solar thermal could power the entire country—and the technology has been tested.

Solar technology is nothing new. For literal millennia, humans have been harnessing the sun’s rays for energy. Over the past few decades, the dream of a solar-powered future has mostly conjured up images of rooftops covered by photovoltaic panels, turning every house into a mini power plant. But a somewhat lower-tech and much older solar solution…

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Data visualization guru Ben Fry has created a unique map of the United States by displaying all of the nation’s 26 million roads—and nothing else. As he says:

“No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population.”

The resulting image of a transportation network sans substrate is very reminiscent of the plastinated human circulatory system pieces from Body Worlds. One…

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