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http://www.newsaskew.com/2008/08/20/more-ew-love-kevin-excels-in-dual-roles/

http://www.newsaskew.com/?p=7390

• Entertainment Weekly once again honors Kevin in a new article and photo gallery, this time citing his talent as an actor-director:

  
  KEVIN SMITH

  Clerks (1994)

  At first, all Smith had was his voice. Didn’t have any money, didn’t have any idea where to put the camera (still doesn’t, many critics would say), but he had that witty, profane, pop culture-soaked voice that made spending all day at a convenience store with slackers Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) into a fun way to pass the time. Smith also gave himself the not-too-taxing role of Silent Bob, which became his signature character.

  Chasing Amy (1997)

  The unlikely romance that made stars of Ben Affleck and sidekick Jason Lee, and that gave Smith his biggest acting challenge to date: the monologue that gives the film its title.

  Clerks 2 (2006)

  Even slackers have to grow up sometime. That’s the lesson facing Dante and Randal (still in service-industry purgatory 12 years later) and Smith himself, as he closes what looks to be only the first chapter in a long career.

http://www.newsaskew.com/2008/08/20/batman-cacophony-november-12th/

http://www.newsaskew.com/?p=7389

• Newsarama posted the cover and some details on Kevin’s highly-anticipated return to the comics world, and revealed the title of the Batman book will be “Batman: Cacophony”. They’re also speculating a NOVEMBER arrival for the book, and even reveal the book’s cover, designed by Adam Kubert. This will also mark the first time Kevin and longtime pal Walt Flanagan will work on a book together. Here’s the deets:

  

  
  Written by Kevin Smith
  Art by Walt J. Flanagan & Sandra Hope
  Cover by Adam Kubert
  Variant cover by Andy Kubert
  Sketch cover by Andy Kubert
  Best-selling comic book writer/director Kevin Smith (GREEN ARROW, Daredevil, Clerks) steps into Gotham City to write this 3-part miniseries event! Practically from out of nowhere, the mysterious masked killer known as
  Onomatopoeia returns and sets his sights – and sounds – against The Caped Crusader!

  Retailers please note: This issue will ship with three covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Adam Kubert), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Andy Kubert). For every 50 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Adam Kubert), retailers may order one copy of the Sketch Edition (with a cover by Andy Kubert). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.

  
  On sale November 12 • 1 of 3 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US

  We really dig Kev’s villain and can’t wait to see him face off against Bats. The saddest news of the whole thing is probably the confirmation that it’s just 3 short issues, though we’re betting the story will be packed. The variant cover details are also interesting to see, at the rate they’re being issued, it certainly seems they’ll be rare (so if any kind comic shop owners out there can get us a hookup on the rare books, let us know, lest our View Askew comics collections be incomplete). We’ll of course keep on top of this story, a great Fall followup to “Zack & Miri” will be the new Batman book, just two weeks after we see the film!

http://www.newsaskew.com/2008/08/20/view-askew-newsbites-1859/

http://www.newsaskew.com/?p=7387

• SciFi Wire, the official news site of the SciFi Channel, votes “Clerks” as the best “Star Wars” spoof in history. Yep, even beating out “Spaceballs” (No. 2):

  
  1. Clerks, film, available on DVD. Perhaps the most eloquent Star Wars geek on record, director Kevin Smith crafted dialogue about the issue of contract labor on the second Death Star in Star Wars: Episode VI–Return of the Jedi. Collateral damage or deserving collaborators? The debate rages on.

• Don’t forget, folks, Crazy 4 Cult 2, this Friday at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles. This site runs a few more images from the hundreds they’ll have on hand this Friday, expect a big crowd but some fantastic art up for grabs. Man would it be cool to hang some of these works of art on the walls.
• We’re only running this as a newsbite as rumor control — According to the often error-prone IMDB, the actor Johann Benét has been attached to “Red State” for a 2010 release. Considering the last news we heard from Kevin was that they were still in the final stages of getting all the funding they needed, we don’t think anyone’s being cast just yet. Plus, we also believe if things work out, we’d see the flick late in 2009, not 2010. Consider this rumor crushed unless we let ya know otherwise.
• And finally today, okay, so this is SORT OF the flying car - Looks like you can own it for $150k next year. And it won’t even cost you any body parts or being violated by deviant scientists. Nice. See ya next time.

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http://cabbage.vox.com/library/post/seriously-dude-wtf.html?_c=feed-atom

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370319038/newlyweds-tasered-an.html

(Photo by Kacper Skowron/For the Sun-Times)

"The short version of the story is they didn't want to quit their partying," said Mike Sepic, Berrien County, Mich., chief assistant prosecutor. "If you put this in the class of wedding receptions gone bad, I guess this would take the cake."

And the story didn't end after the reception. Two nights later, the bride and groom were again arrested in Michigan -- and again shocked by a stun gun -- after struggling with police investigating a noise complaint, Sepic said. The groom was charged with pushing his new wife down during that incident, but the charge was later dropped as part of a plea bargain, Sepic said.

• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Battle for Bikini Bottom for PS2


• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  


• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370262090/beijing-update-new-p.html

Everyone listed here is still missing.

- James Powderly
- Brian Conley
- Jeffrey Rae
- Jeff Goldin
- Michael Liss
- Tom Grant

They were all working in Beijing in different ways, as citizen journalists and activists. My opinion at this point is they are being held longer than other detained activists because they all had much more gear - macbooks, eee pc's, HD video cameras, digital SLR cams... standard stuff in most places, but I can imagine it raises a lot of eyebrows to the authorities in China, especially when related to protests and Tibet.

We are in active touch with the US Embassy in Bejing the the US State Department... the big deadline we are just hitting 48 hours right now, so 24 hours left until the 3 day mark.

The activists who deployed the LED banner have all already been sent home, arriving in JFK right about now.

Beijing – After intense surveillance by up to 50 plainclothes police, a Tibetan-German man and two pro-Tibet activists protested tonight near the Bird’s Nest stadium. The three raised their fists in the air, unfurled a Tibetan flag, and called out “Free Tibet” at approximately 12:05 am Beijing time. A fourth Tibet activist who observed the protest was detained by police at the scene. The four were taken away in a police vehicle and their whereabouts are unknown.

The four are Tibetan-German Florien Norbu Gyanatshang, 30, American Jeremy Wells, 38, American John Watterberg, 30, and Briton Mandie McKeown, 41.

“Against all odds, a Tibetan has once again raised our outlawed national flag in Beijing tonight,” said Lhadon Tethong, the Tibetan-Canadian Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “This action symbolises the determination and steadfast commitment of the Tibetan people and our supporters from around the world to achieve freedom and justice for six million Tibetans living under the brutal rule of the Chinese government.”

Tibetans and Tibet supporters have defied the best efforts of the Chinese authorities to silence all voices of dissent during the Olympic Games, staging eight protests in Beijing over the past two weeks. The protests have ranged from technically-challenging banner hangs to a dramatic “die-in” at Tiananmen Square. Surveillance efforts by Chinese authorities increased dramatically over the past few days.

“The Chinese government is petrified of these peaceful acts of defiance simply because they represent the true feelings of Tibetans inside Tibet,” said Tenzin Dorjee, Deputy Director of Students for a Free Tibet. “Our protests are a reminder to the world of the tragic reality of the Chinese government’s illegitimate occupation of Tibet and the urgent need for the Chinese leadership to seek a resolution with the Tibetan people.”

[Tethong] said she was more concerned with the plight of protesters in Tibet. In recent days, she said, at least three people have reportedly been killed in the city of Ganzi after protesting on the street. She said one woman, Dolma Yungzom, was shot five or six times point blank after she unfurled a banner, though Ms. Tethong provided no evidence.

Related episodes of Boing Boing tv:
* BBtv WORLD (Tibet): Inside Lhasa
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet report - monks forced to participate in staged videos.
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet's uprising and the internet

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-08-20-027-35-OS-DT-GN

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBrothersBrick/~3/370241105/

http://www.brothers-brick.com/?p=2716

lokosuperfluoLEGOman has updated the folder with more pictures of 2009 LEGO sets, including Star Wars: Clone Wars and Indiana Jones.  Please keep in mind that these are all preliminary pictures and are almost certainly subject to change, therefore the use of old pieces in new figures (such as Patrick the starfish’s torso used for the brute in the Flying Wing set and the Imperial Guard torso used for Willie) will probably change.  Also note that the Flying Wing preliminary set art includes a Swastika, something The LEGO Company will certainly not use in the final box art.  Note that the pictures seen here are from corran11’s photostream on Flickr, because some images are cropped and rotated for easier viewing.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370206513/how-to-watch-videos.html

This gentleman likes to watch videos while he drives at night. He places his iPhone on his car's dashboard and watches the reflection on the windshield.

He wears a headset while he watches, but usually with just one ear bud inserted "so that I can hear the traffic and whatnot."

'It's great — I can watch my stuff while I'm driving' (Book of Joe)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370191677/truck-as-flower-bed.html

Here is one of my favorite sights, a "green" truck in the Farm area. It's an old truck covered in grass with vegetables and flowers growing in the flat bed. Talk about a raised bed! Think how the yards of rural America could be transformed once rusty wrecks become warm and fuzzy, like something out of a Pixar movie.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370191678/how-conmen-make-thei.html

Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe wrote an article on the various ways con men gain their marks' trust, including body language, verbal language, and facial expressions.

When deciding who to trust, the research suggests, people use shortcuts. For example, they look at faces. According to recent work by Nikolaas Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov of Princeton's psychology department, we form our first opinions of someone's trustworthiness through a quick physiognomic snapshot. By studying people's reactions to a range of artificially-generated faces, Oosterhof and Todorov were able to identify a set of features that seemed to engender trust. Working from those findings, they were able to create a continuum: faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones struck people as trustworthy, faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones untrustworthy.

In a paper published in June, they suggested that our unconscious bias is a byproduct of more adaptive instincts: the features that make a face strike us as trustworthy, if exaggerated, make a face look happy - with arching inner eyebrows and upturned mouths - and an exaggerated "untrustworthy" face looks angry - with a furrowed brow and frown. In this argument, people with "trustworthy" faces simply have, by the luck of the genetic draw, faces that look a little more cheerful to us.

Just as in other cognitive shorthands, we make these judgments quickly and unconsciously - and as a result, Oosterhof and Todorov point out, we can severely and immediately misjudge people. In reality, of course, cheekbone shape and eyebrow arc have no relationship with honesty.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/370182289/lsd-as-therapeutic-t.html

After three LSD sessions, a patient emerged from what was labelled chronic psychotic depression (she had attempted suicide three times, had been hospitalised, and given several courses of ECT, major antipsychotics and antidepressants), and was able to hold a job, derive pleasure from her days, and look forward to cultivating a varied garden of delights. She moved from cursing me for not letting her die to blessing me for the surprising freedom that opened up for her as a result of her LSD experiences. Psychotherapy, without LSD, would not have been enough, I'm afraid.

I can only hope that if new research with psychedelics proceeds in a responsible, careful and creative manner, the powers that be can begin to support and foster further research into this fascinating realm. I was 27 when I first tasted this incredible substance called LSD. Now I am 68 and for the last two years have been persona non grata in the US, because a border guard Googled my name, and found an article I wrote many years ago on entheogen-assisted psychotherapy. I hope I will be invited into the US before I die to teach professionals how to use psychedelics for the benefit of all.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/8/20/84039/4943

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