These may be one of the oldest pairs of basketball sneakers in the world. The shoes were manufactured by the Colchester Rubber Company which shut down in 1893. Vintage clothing dealer Gary Pifer paid 50 cents for them at an estate sale in Vista, California. From CafeTerra:

"In a instant, I knew this discovery would be re-writing basketball and sneaker history, as these sneakers are 25 years older than the 1917 Converse All-Stars", added Pifer. The Colchester Rubber Co. was located in Colchester, Connecticut and was in business from 1888 to 1893.

"World's first basketball sneakers 116 years old found at an estate sale"

Roy Christopher has assembled his annual summer reading list, which includes book recommendations from several of our friends and former guest bloggers.

Gareth Branwyn:

A trend I’m noticing in books recently is that there are an increasing number that trade in danger – anti-Nanny State books. No, not those Dangerous Book for Boys and Girls. Those are rubbish. I’m talking about books like Theo Gray’s tremendously awesome Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home – But Probably Shouldn’t (Black Dog & Leventhal) and Bill Gurstelle’s Absinthe and Flamethrowers (Chicago Review Press). Gray’s book has a bunch of enticing experiments that are so well-documented and gorgeously photographed, you don’t have to do them yourself, but if you decide you want to, Gray tells you the real dangers involved and what you have to find out on your own to do them safely and successfully. Treating us like adults. What a concept.

My friend Bill Gurstelle’s book first looks at reasons for living dangerously, mapping what he calls the Golden Third, those people who take risks, who aren’t afraid to live a certain degree of risk,… but not too much risk. Be too risk-taking and you might not survive, not reproduce, don’t take any risks, and you won’t move the culture, innovation, etc. forward. All the action is in that Golden Third. After these ruminations on the why of living dangerously, he gets into some projects and activities, the “art” of living dangerously, from “thrill eating” (stuff like fugu that can theoretically kill you) to Bill’s main bailiwick, teaching you how to spectacularly blow shit up (hence “flamethrower” in the title).

Richard Metzger:

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back by Douglas Rushkoff (Random House, 2009): Ever get the feeling that you’re trapped on a hamster wheel of predatory “Corporatism”? An unwitting participant in a system that you didn’t sign up for in the first place? What happens when the operating system of the corporate Moloch runs amok.

Never Trust a Rabbit by Jeremy Dyson (Duck Editions, UK, 2001): Great macabre short story collection from the silent member of The League of Gentlemen. “Never trust a rabbit. They may look like a child’s toy, but they will eat your crops.” Hungarian proverb.

Summer Reading List by Roy Christopher

"The choppers call him 'Torch.'"

Many thanks to the The Isotope Guerrilla Cult Theatre for uploading this 1961 movie about a gang of kids who steal and strip down cars to turn into hotrods.

If you cool cats like classic hotrod cars, bad boys from the other side of the tracks, sexy blondes in tight shirts, insipidly catchy songs, goofy teen idol good looks, and the world's biggest cell phone... this one is for you!

Hot rods, hot rock, and hot hair are the jewels in the juvenile delinquency crown of THE CHOPPERS. This classic drive-in exploitation flick features the debut of sixteen year-old Arch Hall Jr. as Cruiser, the spoiled rich kid with a taste for crime and his band of troubled teens who call themselves cool names like Torch, Flip and Snoop, and specialize in stripping cars in record time. This is the movie that made you mom weak in the knees and your daddy worried about the crowd you run with.

Featuring the some exceptional less-than-hit songs from the awesome Arch Hall Jr, including non-classics like "Konga Joe" and "Monkey In A Hatband".

(Thanks, Brian!)

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

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More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

Behold, gentlemen! Ript, "the revolutionary torso-enhancing undershirt." The designer of this undergarment is described as "the creative force behind P. Diddy's Sean John clothing line, where she mastered her understanding of what appeals to the most sophisticated and discriminating men." Ah, so we can blame Diddy.

"Ript" is so technologically advanced, it comes with a HOWTO, bitches:

Ript, via Book of Joe.

A new specimen from Ethan Persoff's "Comics with Problems" archives: Early NAACP Comic Book History - Your Future Rests In Your Hands and The Street Where You Live (1960 and 1964)

Cross-Stitch Ninja's Flickr stream is a bottomless well of pixellated delights. Shown here, the CCTV cameras worked into the border of the "You Are Not Alone" sampler, and there's plenty of other lovelies, like the Super Mario maps, grammar puns, religio-vegetarian humor and loads more.

Cross-stitch ninja's photostream (via Craft, thanks, Alice!)

The Obamabot 3000 is ready to be unveiled at Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, along with the Mark II George Washingtron ("Now with real talking action!") and a Gettysburg-complete Lincolnbot.

No word on whether the Obamabot will allow release of the photos of the waterbotting on Pleasure Island, a no-go zone for civilians for several years now.

We're just sorting out our Christmas at Disney World plans -- our first WDW trip with the baby -- and I'm looking forward to this. There is something eerily cool and compelling about all those hyper-detailed robots nodding and twitching at you from out of the uncanny valley while Maya Angelou tells you about the War Between the States.

A remarkably lifelike Audio-Animatronics figure of President Barack Obama enters the spotlight in a revised and refreshed Hall of Presidents show when it reopens July 4 in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort. The addition of the countrys 44th chief executive is just part of the most significant update to this classic attraction since its 1971 debut in the parks Liberty Square.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin helped develop the show with Disney Imagineers. In this video they talk about the Hall of Presidents: A Celebration of Libertys Leaders.

Barack Obama Joins Hall of Presidents at Disney's Magic Kingdom (Thanks, Patricio!)

This prototype handbag detects camera flashes and emits a powerful, obscuring strobe that is meant to confound paparazzi. Of course, if there were four paps shooting at once (as there usually seem to be!), it would just ruin one of the four shots.

Last year on July 4, we were walking down the beach in Santa Monica and we saw a pap stop his car in traffic, jump out, run up to the passenger window of a car and start shooting. It turned out Courtney Love and a friend were in the car, enjoying a drive.

We chased the pap back to his car and paced him in the snail-traffic with our cameras, snapping pictures of him as he crawled to the next traffic light.

Anti-Paparazzi Clutch Bag

The Times of India is calling it "India's Gay Day." A ruling on Thursday overturned a colonial law nearly 150 years old that describes sex acts between two persons of the same gender in India's capital city as an "unnatural offense."

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence. Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.

A clarification from an earlier iteration of this blog post: The ruling only applies to India's capital city of Delhi. Sex acts between two men or two women is, if I'm reading this right, still a crime in the rest of India.

India media hails gay sex ruling (BBC). See also: Mumbai gays' long fight for recognition (BBC). Below: image from WAtoday: "A eunuch kisses another member of the transgender, gay and lesbian communities as they celebrate the Indian court decision." (thanks, Antinous!)

Tony sez, "Recently, a group of paleontologists were in town for the North American Paleontological Convention at the University of Cincinnati, and decided to take a field trip to the Creation Museum just across the river, in Kentucky. My aunt went to cover it for AFP, and I had the doubly good fortune of living just a stone's throw away, so I tagged along to see what these guys were up to. It was an eyeful, to say the least. Gorgeous facilities with amazingly engaging displays and animatronics, and at least a few hundred cubic cubits of bad science and misinformation. One young lady stood, furious, and grumbled, 'It's bullshit. Bullshit pretending to be science.' Anyone who finds themselves in the Cincinnati area with a few bucks, hours, and brain cells to burn should check it out, and see what the scientific community is up against in terms of informing the public."

Arnie Miller, a palentologist at the University of Cincinnati who was chairman of the convention, said he hoped the tour would introduce the scientists to "the lay of the land" and show them firsthand what's being put forth in a place that has elicited vehement criticism from the scientific community...

"And there was a feeling of unhappiness, too, about the extent to which mainstream scientists and evolutionists are demonized -- that if you don't accept the Answers in Genesis vision of the history of Earth and life, you're contributing to the ills of society and of the church."

Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour. "This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

(Thanks, Tony!)

(Image: (AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)

A tombstone for the famed German sex-worker and advocate Domenica Niehoff has been turned down as too sexual by the cemetery where she was buried.

The 77-year-old artist Tomi Ungerer's parting gift to his friend Domenica Niehoff was to be a gravestone featuring two ample pink marble boulders in homage to her famously top-heavy figure. But those responsible for the Garden of Women cemetery, resting place of Hamburg's most famous women, turned his design down, the paper reported...

Ungerer and Niehoff were friends for decades, and even shared a flat for a while in 1984. He published drawings of Niehoff and her colleagues in a book entitled "Guardian Angels of Hell" at the time...

Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009.

Famous prostitute's gravestone deemed too 'slutty' (Thanks, Rosa!)

Inspired by this European Digital Rights Initiative article on "The Silence of the Chips" (a proposal to redesign your radio-enabled ID cards so that you can control when they work and when they're switched off), Oneillkza created this CC-BY logo for the idea, and made a CafePress tee in case you wanted to add it to your sartorial repertoire.

One of the most important action point is the launch of "a debate on the technical and legal aspects of the 'right to silence of the chips', which has been referred to under different names by different authors and expresses the idea that individuals should be able to disconnect from their networked environment at any time."

This is one of the main actions of the plan in order to allow the usage of the RFID while respecting privacy and the protection of personal data, two fundamental rights of the EU.

Silence of the Chips (Flickr)

Silence of the Chips (CafePress)

(via Beyond the Beyond)

The photoshoppers at Worth1000 have found some remarkably fertile territory in today's contest, to remix the Statue of Liberty -- see, for example, Lady Liberty on the Launching Pad, BFF with Jesus of Rio, Yee-HAW!, Window Washer and Evil Monster.

Cliche Hell 18 - Statue of Liberty

Raul Gutierrez is one of my favorite photographers. I particularly love his images of Tibetan life, like the Kham logging camp above. I've traveled to some of the same places, and Raul's work captures these scenes in a different way than my eyes remember. He says:

For the past fifteen years, I have been making pilgrimages to the deserts and mountains of China's western borders, focusing on Tibetan and Uyghur communities. These remote frontier regions are laced with contested geographies where religious and cultural legacies confront powerful economic and political transformations.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

20x200 just released a collection of four 11x14 prints from his "Travels Without Maps" project. You can buy them as a set, or individually. Truly beautiful work. (thanks, Sara Distin)

Ever the happy prankster, Paul Krassner "met" with Larry King for an interview.

This video was made to promote Paul's new book: Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today.

A mock interview between Paul Krassner and Larry King by Andy Thomas. (Thanks, Doug Rushkoff!)

Direct link to video. There is no part of this trailer that is not made of awesome. A robot geisha transforms into a tank. Two robot geishas (I guess) spew poison milk (don't ask) out of their titties at an opponent. A girl gets stabbed to death in the butt with a giant sword. Robot girls make giant swords pop out of their butts, presumably with which to stab other people in their butts. "Bust Machine Gun." And a dude is blinded with tempura shrimp.

All this and more in the trailer for Noboru Iguchi's new film RoboGeisha - you may recall his work on similarly-themed films Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police. According to the website, the film will be "in theatre fall 2009." (thanks, bobby ciraldo, via geektyrant)

BB pal Tara McGinley spotted these delightful planter kits, called Honbachi, from Japan, containing the plant, soil, and a hollowed-out book. Looks like it would be fun and easy to DIY too! Book planters

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube / View large at boingboingvideo.com)

Joel Johnson writes over at Boing Boing Gadgets,

Should you buy the Sigma DP2? Only if you're in love with the sensor. While it's definitely a better choice than its predecessor and is not without its manual charms, its high price puts it in range of DSLRs and other cameras that come without as many limitations.

Looking through a glass viewfinder is such a treat, though—too bad it doesn't seem to actually line up very well with the actual pictures.

Join the discussion on this video over at Boing Boing Gadgets, where Joel has also uploaded a slideshow of unretouched images from the DP2!

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

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More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

Cory's post about the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, one of my fave concert films too, reminded me of Laurie Anderson's fantastic Home Of The Brave movie. I distinctly remember seeing it for the first time when I was 14 at a midnight showing in my town's art house cinema and feeling very... avant garde. That was my first exposure to William S. Burroughs, whose quote "Languags is a virus from outer space" inspired the song performed in the clip above. Unfortunately, Home of the Brave never saw an official DVD release, just VHS and laserdisc. But according to Anderson's site, a DVD film/video box set collection of her work is on the horizon.

Home of the Brave (MP3 soundtrack)
Home of the Brave (VHS)

Christopher Ryan wrote a short profile of Alan Watts for Psychology Today. He included this quote from Watts' about the self-importance of humans:

“The point is that rapport with the marvelously purposeless world of nature gives us new eyes for ourselves – eyes in which our very self-importance is not condemned, but seen as something quite other than what it imagines itself to be. In this light, all the weirdly abstract and pompous pursuits of men are suddenly transformed into natural marvels of the same order as the immense beaks of the toucans and hornbills, the fabulous tails of the birds of paradise, the towering necks of the giraffes, and the vividly polychromed posteriors of the baboons… Seen thus, the self-importance of man dissolves in laughter.”

Alan Watts: priest, scholar, monk, author, trickster guru

My pal and IFTF colleague Alex Pang just turned me on to NCBI ROFL, a hilarious blog written by two molecular and cell biology grad students at UC Berkeley in which they point out funny, bizarre, and questionable biomedical research articles. NCBI stands for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a national research organization that also houses databases of published scientific papers. Alex says, "The case studies on accidental condom inhalation, the article on the dangers of beards in microbiology labs, and the study of canned cat food evaluation techniques are all must-reads. However, I think the article title 'Inappropriate use of a titanium penile ring: An interdisciplinary challenge for urologists, jewelers, and locksmiths' may be the best thing ever written." From a post today excerpting a paper on "the nature of navel fluff:"

Hard facts on a soft matter! ... The hypothesis presented herein says that abdominal hair is mainly responsible for the accumulation of navel lint, which, therefore, this is a typically male phenomenon. The abdominal hair collects fibers from cotton shirts and directs them into the navel where they are compacted to a felt-like matter. The most abundant individual mass of a piece of lint was found to be between 1.20 and 1.29 mg (n=503). However, due to several much larger pieces, the average mass was 1.82 mg in this three year study. When the abdominal hair is shaved, no more lint is collected. "

From the materials and methods: "The author first observed the accumulation of navel fluff in his early 20s. Despite thorough body hygiene including a daily morning shower, the navel filled with lint over the day. The author collected 503 pieces of navel fluff since approximately March 2005 with a total weight of almost 1 g... ...In order to investigate the role of the abdominal hair, the author also shaved his belly for this study."

NCBI ROFL

Trumpet player Kermit Ruffins is an icon of New Orleans jazz. His sensational Rebirth Brass Band is a jazz/funk musical extravaganza that must be experienced live for full effect. Ruffins is also the founder of the jazz quintet Barbecue Swingers and is famous for firing up his grill at their shows in NOLA. In celebration of the July 4 tradition of grilling out, Putumayo World Music Blog interviewed Ruffins about his passion for the BBQ pit. Ruffins is featured on Putumayo's New Orleans compilation and also Putumayo Kids' New Orleans Playground CD, which I heartily recommend. From Putumayo (photo by dsb nola):

Where did the name “Barbecue Swingers” come from?
Kermit Ruffins: From tailgating. I started tailgating at Vaughn’s during break-time so the guys could have something to eat. So one morning I woke up and said “Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Kings,” but by the middle of the evening I had changed it to “Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers.” I was having so much fun barbecuing during the show that it just hit me: “Barbecue Swingers”.

So you originally were barbecuing to have some hot food at the shows, then the idea just caught on?
Kermit Ruffins: Yep, the tailgating started [it] all. I would cook hot sausage for the guys during break time, and whatever was left over, we would give it to the fans. Then I bought a big grill and started cooking for everyone, still up [to] today!

BK: Do you have any recipes or tips you would like to share with us?
Kermit Ruffins: I like to use a pan. I cook a lot of things in the pan - shrimp, fish, chicken, anything. Just a little olive oil, Tony Chanceries’, granulated garlic, thyme, and a little beer. Wrap it tight for an hour and a half; it’s like cooking in the oven. After, if you want, you can put them on the grill so they get that pecan wood taste.

"July 4th BBQ Essentials from New Orleans Legend Kermit Ruffins"

Funny coincidence: The SEC's Eric Swanson, who told his underling lawyer to stop looking into Bernie Madoff's questionable activities in 2004, married Bernie's niece Shana Madoff in 2007.

By the way, in April Shana contacted Wall Street Prison Consultants, a firm that "gives advice to future inmates on how to survive prison time and win an early release." According the the firm's website, Shana can "learn the ropes of federal prison" including: "Prevent Being RAPED, Prison Living Conditions, The Daily Prison Grind, Your 1st Day What To Bring With, Inmate Personal Property, Inmate Etiquette & Politics, Dealing With Other Inmates, Avoiding and Spotting Informants, Dealing With Gang Members, Defusing A Confrontation, Prison Slang & Lingo,   Avoiding Bad Prison Jobs, Getting A Lower Bunk Pass, Getting A Soft Shoe Permit."

Staffer at SEC Had Warned Of Madoff

The IRS will let you deduct your losses from Ponzi scheme ripoffs. No word on whether losses due to the wire, the pigeon drop, advance payment or three card monte are allowable, but I'm gonna claim 'em anyway.

The IRS has announced it will allow favorable ordinary loss treatment for investment theft losses. Basically, such losses occur when your money is never actually used for the intended purpose of acquiring investment assets.

Instead, the money is hijacked by the perpetrator of a fraud. The classic example is the so-called Ponzi scheme where money collected from later "investors" is used to cover "income distributions" and "withdrawals" paid to earlier "investors" without any investments ever actually being made.

Taxpayer-friendly ordinary loss treatment takes some of the sting out of Ponzi scheme losses. Unfortunately, however, there are plenty of victims who can benefit from the IRS's enlightened attitude. Not only did Bernie Madoff lose some $65 billion of investors' money, but other similar frauds have since come to light. The sad truth is, Ponzi losses are more widespread than you might think.

Tax Breaks for Ponzi-Scheme Victims (via Consumerist)

Andy Paiko's glass sculptures and machines are absolutely breathtaking. Top left, a functional glass seismograph. Top right, a 5.5 foot long syringe. Other favorites include a 24-carat gold-plated coyote skull encased in a glass vessel, an animal spine inside a glass tube sculpture, and the incredible kinetic sculpture seen in the video above. Andy Paiko Glass

Page after page of this unsettling effect applied to well-known folks. (However, the photo of James Earl Jones looks about the same. And I guess you could argue that George W. Bush looks more distinguished). Celebrities upside down pictures

Heather McDougal, who writes about curiosities and wonders of nature on her blog Cabinet of Wonders, has a good essay about black widow spiders, which have infested her new trailer.

Unlike brown recluse spiders, whose venom is cytotoxic, meaning it is meant to slow down the prey, partially digesting the tissues and making for failure of the prey's systems, the black widow spider's venom is based on a neurotoxin, which I would much prefer. In mammals, when they are bitten by a spider with cytotoxic venom, it means the tissue surrounding the bite turns necrotic (dies) and is often unable to heal afterwards. There are some truly horrific pictures on the Internet of brown recluse spider bites several months on, which I would rather not contemplate.

The venom of a black widow, being a neurotoxin, has a more widespread effect, entering the bloodstream and being deposited at the nerve endings where the endings insert into the muscles. This causes intense, painful cramping and muscle spasms, and is very painful. It lasts a few days and then disperses, leaving only a few minor symptoms - spasms, tingling, nervousness and weakness - to remember her by. For me - though I would not want to encounter a black widow bite - the biggest fear has been for my children, because the smaller the body mass, the more likely the venom is to cause shock to the system and death.

Heather McDougal on black widow spiders