A survey of the 1.9 million accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking to cheat on their spouses, rounds up the most common occupations among the would-be infidelitous: For Women:
1. Teachers
2. Stay-at-home Moms
3. Nurses
4. Administrative Assistants
5. Real Estate Agents

For Men:
1. Physicians
2. Police Officers
3. Lawyers
4. Real Estate Agents
5. Engineers Who Cheats? Docs and Stay at Home Moms! (via MeFi)

(Image: The Seventh Commandment, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from pasukaru76's photostream) Previously:

• Woman stoned to death in Afghanistan for adultery
• Scan of Li'l Abner venereal disease comic strip
• Vintage sexist coffee TV commercial
• A year of following all the rules in the Bible
• Conservative California legislator gives pornographic account of ...
• Political sex scandals: the phenomenon of the "centipede" - Boing ...

An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leslie Howle sez, "NW MediaArts is a non-profit organization inviting award-winning speculative fiction writers to Seattle to teach a one-day writers workshop, read at the University Book Store, and speak at schools and libraries. Workshops take place at Richard Hugo House. March 12 - Christopher Barazak, author of 'The Love We Share Without Knowing,' which was shortlisted for the Tiptree Award last year, reads at University Book Store on 3/12 and teaches a workshop on 3/14. Workshop space is still open if you register by 3/10/2010."

Wired claims that this is the tenth anniversary of the dotcom boom, and in honor of that auspicious overheated bubble, they've put together a long, Web 0.96b layout depicting the most hubristicly hubristic predictions and hype of that golden age.

I moved to San Francisco in 1999, and remember the feverish absurdity of it all -- and how hard it was not to feel like all these people must know something if they were pouring all this money and energy into all the odd and improbable ideas (a recurring theme I remember was people explaining how they were going to build shopping malls for the web, which, I guess, is basically what Amazon's Z-shops are).

10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dotcom Boom and Bust Previously:

• Monkey Calls! Finally a dotcom
• FIXED Dotcom downturn be damned.
• Poignant story of a dotcom's
• First-person account of a dotcom
• How to avoid the dotcom shakeout: buy a better domain ...
• A quasi-defunct dotcom is doing

Casttoo makes decorative decals for your orthopedic casts -- including these ones, depicting the broken bones within.

(via JWZ) Previously:

• Anatomical drawing on a cast
• Baby goose with homemade leg brace
• Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom ...

Raj Panikkar sez, "We're screening a film called 'At Home By Myself... With You' (directed by Kris Booth, starring Kristin Booth - no relation) at The Royal in Toronto this week. The unique thing about the film is how we raised the financing to shoot. Quite literally, we campaigned for people to contribute their loose pocket change. The strategy took off, partly through an active Facebook and Twitter presence and also frequent video blogs detailing the contributions. By the time we shot the film, we had raised $42,000 (admittedly, one person's pocket change is occasionally another's small fortune - but it did really begin with 15 cents, 43 cents, a dollar 12, etc.) One might be led to assume that with a limited budget, there'd be a matching limitation on production quality. But the film looks gorgeous (Telefilm Canada came on board at the very end to help fund a pro finish), and reviews and comments have been great. We were reviewed by all the major papers in Toronto: The Sun, NOW, The Star, The Post, etc. The film plays at The Royal for the rest of the week, and then gets its TV debut right away on TMN and Movie Central, plus a DVD release on April 6th."

Pocket Change Film (Thanks, Raj!)

(Disclosure: Raj's mother, Bev, taught me to read) Previously:

• Get involved in production of community-made SF movie: Artemis ...
• Loony evangelical claims credit for Canadian film tax-credit ...
• Check out the sunglasses in this curious Danish sci-fi B-movie ...

Paul sez, "We have been putting this together for a week or so and thought you might like it. Looks like I am going back to school to be a systems engineer, haha."

I like that they've color-coded for "low-stress," "benefit to society" and "satisfaction." However, on these three counts, I'm unsurprised to see that "science fiction writer" didn't make the cut. When I was 17, the school guidance counsellor got in some software that would help you figure out what career to set your sights on. I completed its questionnaire and hit return, and an instant later was advised to become a "geriatric nutritionist" (that is, someone who prepares meals in an old folks' home). Even today, I sometimes feel like I missed my calling. ("Science fiction writer" wasn't on that list either).

Best Jobs in America (Thanks, Paul!) Previously:

• Hotmail users deemed too dumb for employment at firm
• California Supreme Court: Non-compete clauses are not enforceable ...
• Federal temporary jobs in disaster recovery, a HOWTO
• Restaurant lays off waitress who shaved head for cancer charity ...
• Cal State U forced to re-hire Quaker math teacher who inserted ...
• City in Montana requires job applicants to hand over all social ...
• Lose your job, lose your life: trauma of being laid off can ...
• Best Job in the World
• Scary-ass job-loss chart comparing previous and current recession ...
• Grateful Dead Archivist wanted at UC Santa Cruz
• Prison guard: better job than journalist, according to "worst US ...

The city of Detroit is proposing to give over a quarter of its land to be turned into "semi-rural" fields and farms, with the surviving neighborhoods standing in "pockets in expanses of green." The proposal is politically charged (serving a death-sentence on a whole neighborhood is bound to be controversial) but the idea of "downsizing" Detroit seems to have wide acceptance.

And yes, this entire thing was predicted by David Byrne in 1988 in the song "(Nothing But) Flowers" on the final Talking Heads album Naked. Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit looks at downsizing to save city (Thanks, Rigel!)

(Image: Garden grows, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Payton Chung's photostream) Previously:

• Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Detroit now available for download ...
• Lost Landscapes of Detroit from the Prelinger Archives
• Buy an inch of land in Detroit
• Stop robot poverty: i3 Detroit hackerspace fundraiser
• Pictory's Neighborhood Treasures: Detroit Smile
• Artists buying cheap houses in Detroit
• Haunting photo-essay on rotting buildings in Detroit
• Rotting textbook warehouse in Detroit

gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many images here, all from his 2010 collection and released today. The iconic fashion designer's work incorporated fantasy and futurist themes familiar to Boing Boing readers. He died earlier this year.

Wednesday March 10 is Tibetan Independence Day—and this year will also mark His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. In honor of both, Shepard Fairey collaborated with photographer Don Farber on this limited-edition, signed and numbered 18"x14" print, which goes on sale at this link Wednesday, March 10, at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Net proceeds divided between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (thanks, Christal / Tibet Connection Radio)

I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible:

(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)

I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!

I even had it chrome plated at one point and I weathered it:

In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $256,000.00. Supposedly to Paul Allen [That myth has been busted -- Mark]:

This is the final iteration:

It's 95% finished. My hand-built baby. About 30-40 hours of labor spread out over (at least) 6 years. An original Steyr-Mannlicher .222 target rifle receiver and magazine and a Charter Arms Bulldog .44, both demilled and gunsmithed by me (working with hardened steel -- FUN!) with custom machined aluminum and steel parts (barrel, grip, butt) and made as close as possible, in every respect, to the original. Painstaking.

That is all I have to say on the subject (probably not). I can't even describe how good it feels to hold it in my hand.

[Click thumbnails below for enlargements]

rgdaniel posted a photo:

By request from the guy who literally co-wrote The Book on these guys...

rgdaniel posted a photo:

By request from the guy who literally co-wrote The Book on these guys...

eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes.

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.

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."
"Beyond torture: the future of interrogation"

A delightful invention from Morten Skogly: "How about bathroom scale that takes a picture of you, from the worst and least flattering angle, and uploads it straight to the web through Twitter and twitpic? Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea! Which means it simply HAS to be made. So I did, or at least a working prototype!" Picturetweeting bathroom scale (Thanks, Laura!)