How a Malawian teenager harnessed the power of the wind.

William Kamkwamba’s parents couldn’t afford the $80 yearly tuition for their son’s school. The boy sneaked into the classroom anyway, dodging administrators for a few weeks until they caught him. Still emaciated from the recent deadly famine that had killed friends and neighbors, he went back to work on his family’s corn and tobacco farm in rural Malawi, Africa.

With no hope of getting the funds to…

Want to see with your tongue? Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz looks at technology that blurs the boundaries between our five senses.

What if you could see with your skin? Or taste what you see? While those kinds of experiences might suggest a mental disorder, or an acid trip, the ability to substitute your senses by choice is on the horizon. A confluence of new technologies are leading to a kind of digital synesthesia.

Synesthesia, of course, is…

The Global Lives Project is creating a video cross-section of humanity.

Rumi Nagashima, 22, navigates Tokyo in her wheelchair on the way to a girl scout meeting where she’s the troop leader. In Ngawle Village, Malawi, Edith Kapuka, 13, is playing ball with her school friends before walking a trail to her small hut. Across the world in San Francisco, James Bullock, 57, steers his cable car up San Francisco’s steep hills. And you? You’re in…

A host of shady online services is making it easy to lie and cheat.

Are you sick of lying, cheating, and stealing the old-fashioned way? Of course you are—it’s too hard. Who wants to spend all that time and effort cooking up excuses, ruses, and swindles to deceive unwitting victims, when you could be enjoying your ill-gotten gains?

Good news! There’s no need to abandon your commitment to indolence. A raft of new online services is making…

Social media meets social unrest in Guatemala

Guatemala is in the throes of its most intense political convulsions since a bloody 36-year civil war ended in 1996. A president accused of assassination by the victim himself, from beyond the grave; government officials accused of corrupt dealings with one of the country’s largest banks; thousands marching in the street, week after week, demanding an end to impunity.

And in this crisis, online social networks such as Twitter and…

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin explains how fast people can still enjoy slow food.

When the economy took a nosedive, I did the same thing a lot of other Americans did: I looked at my household expenses and my lifestyle with newly frugal eyes, and began thinking about costs and personal priorities in new ways. That included food.

Rethinking what I cook and eat post-econopocalypse meant simpler, slower food; a more local and traditional diet which, in fact,…

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…

Xeni Jardin is a co-editor of Boing Boing, and producer of the blog’s daily Boing Boing Video program. In March, 2009, she traveled to the West African nation of Benin. Following are excerpts from her travel journal. Longer form video and audio features are planned for future release through Boing Boing Video.

1.

A few days before we left, I looked into a camera and failed to impress a television talent director. “Where do you look to find…

Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz on the merits of burying your dead yourself

As cyberspace becomes a “layer” on top of the physical world and we spend more of our lives online, a new-found appreciation emerges for authentic experiences, interactions, and goods. I think that’s part of why so many people are embracing the “maker mindset” of DIY culture, from Stitch and Bitch to Maker Faire.

In many ways, authenticity is the flipside of the mediated experience. For example, the United…

Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson on why Amazon’s Kindle 2 is the next step towards ubiquitous e-book readers

Today Jeff Bezos held up the Amazon Kindle 2 in front of a lecture hall filled with journalists and outlined his vision for the white slab e-book reader: “Every book ever printed in every language available for download in under sixty seconds.” It’s a good goal. Wouldn’t you want every book every printed just a click away from…