Eric Spiegelman of “Old Jews Telling Jokes” explains this episode: “My cousin Michael recommended that we get Charlotte Bornstein on camera to tell some jokes. He also advised that we ‘just keep the camera running.’ You’ll see why.” Many more new episodes of this stripped-down, oldschool comedy at oldjewstellingjokes.com. (Technical note: If you have trouble viewing the embedded Flash videos hosted on Blip.tv, as I did, you may have better luck downloading the videos as iTunes podcast episodes.) Previously:Old Jews Telling Jokes (video) Old Jews Telling Jokes is Back Old Jews Telling Jokes: Ed Koch…

People in seven European countries have expressed willingness to try “NoMix” toilets that keep crap and urine separate, allowing for more efficient waste processing and less seepage of urine-born pharmaceuticals into the water supply. The study was conducted with 2700 people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, with 80 percent supporting the toilets. Even higher numbers were willing to use urine as fertilizer. The article doesn’t discuss infrastructural issues, though: would you need a second black-water sewer for the yellow gold? NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in 7 European countries Previously:World’s most flushingest toilet Trompe l’oeil ski-toilet mural Rampaging toilet terrorizes children Woman sat on toilet for two years Weed growing inside toilet pipe Airplane toilet gobbles a whole roll of TP Tiny still-lifes in toilet-paper tubes Toilet snake bites man’s penis…

The sign on the left is familiar to Americans, but other countries think it is a horrible design, preferring the green running man on the right or a variation of it. Julia Turner of Slate has an in-depth article on the 25-year international fight over exit signs. It’s one of a terrific six-part series about sign history and design. Fans of Ota’s running man point to two key advantages: It’s a pictogram, and it’s green. The sign’s wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don’t speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don’t touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system. Are the running-man advocates right? This battle over the exit sign has been brewing for 25 years now, and the little green guy is slowly making inroads in the States. But to understand whether he should triumph, we must first understand America’s skepticism toward pictograms and symbols, which have long been more popular in the rest of the world than they are here. The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man: The international war over exit signs…

Rob B and I were discussing the inherent oddness of those faux stereos, TVs, and computers used in furniture store displays. Cut to a good half-hour of browsing the site of Props By IDM (International Dummy Machines?). Not only does Props by IDM offer the latest in fake component stereos, laptops, and flatscreens, but they also sell huge plastic washer and dryer sets, simulated iPod with speaker dock, and fake windows with mountain views. Also available are accessories for the props, such as DVD and VHS boxes for unreal movies (Boy Story! Yo Adrian!), a wide selection of images for the various screens, including sports scenes, PC desktops, and fake Tetris for the fake video game system ($20!). Unfortunately, the company says that a “major catastrophe” at their manufacturing facility has forced them to put business on hold for the next few months. Electronic gear props…

Ethan Zuckerman’s new piece on Worldchanging, “Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention,” looks at the technical and social limitations of circumvention of censoring firewalls that we love so much as a tool for helping people in repressive regimes liberate themselves. It’s an excellent and thought-provoking piece that raises more questions than it answers, but it points to some very meaty research problems that people who care about technology and freedom need to attend to. – We need to shift our thinking from helping users in closed societies access blocked content to helping publishers reach all audiences. In doing so, we may gain those publishers as a valuable new set of allies as well as opening a new class of technical solutions. – If our goal is to allow people in closed societies to access an online public sphere, or to use online tools to organize protests, we need to bring the administrators of these tools into the dialog. Secretary Clinton suggests that we make free speech part of the American brand identity – let’s find ways to challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms and to consider internet freedom to be a central part of their business mission. We need to address the fact that making their platforms unblockable has a cost for content hosts and that their business models currently don’t reward them for providing service to these users. – The US government should treat internet filtering – and more aggressive hacking and DDoS attacks – as a barrier to trade. The US should strongly pressure governments in open societies like Australia and France to resist the temptation to restrict internet access, as their behavior helps China and Iran make the case that their censorship is in line with international norms. And we need to fix US treasury regulations make it difficult and legally ambiguous for companies like Microsoft and projects like SourceForge to operate in closed societies. If we believe in Internet Freedom, a first step needs to be rethinking these policies so they don’t hurt ordinary internet users. Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention (Image: Great Firewall of China, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from chidorian’s photostream) Previously:Firewall workaround: use Google as a proxy and access forbidden … Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to Wikipedia … Net censorship: HOWTO bypass China's Great Firewall Great Firewall of Australia will nationally block sites appearing … Wikileaks reveals secret blacklist behind proposed Great Firewall … Google and China's "Great Firewall": Fun with the Billboard … Great Firewall of Australia to block video games unsuitable for ……

Ethan Zuckerman’s new piece on Worldchanging, “Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention,” looks at the technical and social limitations of circumvention of censoring firewalls that we love so much as a tool for helping people in repressive regimes liberate themselves. It’s an excellent and thought-provoking piece that raises more questions than it answers, but it points to some very meaty research problems that people who care about technology and freedom need to attend to. – We need to shift our thinking from helping users in closed societies access blocked content to helping publishers reach all audiences. In doing so, we may gain those publishers as a valuable new set of allies as well as opening a new class of technical solutions. – If our goal is to allow people in closed societies to access an online public sphere, or to use online tools to organize protests, we need to bring the administrators of these tools into the dialog. Secretary Clinton suggests that we make free speech part of the American brand identity – let’s find ways to challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms and to consider internet freedom to be a central part of their business mission. We need to address the fact that making their platforms unblockable has a cost for content hosts and that their business models currently don’t reward them for providing service to these users. – The US government should treat internet filtering – and more aggressive hacking and DDoS attacks – as a barrier to trade. The US should strongly pressure governments in open societies like Australia and France to resist the temptation to restrict internet access, as their behavior helps China and Iran make the case that their censorship is in line with international norms. And we need to fix US treasury regulations make it difficult and legally ambiguous for companies like Microsoft and projects like SourceForge to operate in closed societies. If we believe in Internet Freedom, a first step needs to be rethinking these policies so they don’t hurt ordinary internet users. Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention (Image: Great Firewall of China, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from chidorian’s photostream) Previously:Firewall workaround: use Google as a proxy and access forbidden … Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to Wikipedia … Net censorship: HOWTO bypass China's Great Firewall Great Firewall of Australia will nationally block sites appearing … Wikileaks reveals secret blacklist behind proposed Great Firewall … Google and China's "Great Firewall": Fun with the Billboard … Great Firewall of Australia to block video games unsuitable for ……

Don’t forget to schedule your mammogram….

Top 10 Jeff Bridges movies that his oscar was really for: 10: Jagged Edge. 9: The Last Picture Show. 8: Fisher King. 7: K-PAX. 6: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, 5: The Contender. 4: Starman. 3: The Big Lebowski. 2: Fearless. 1: Tron….

Popular Science, in partnership with Google, just put its 137-year archive online, for free. You can’t yet browse by issue; rather, the entry point is a keyword search box. But yes, the ads are all there too. At left, Chatroulette, er, I mean “You See Your Party On New Video Phone” (September, 1950). Ah, the history of the future never gets old. Search the PopSci Archives…

It’s like Chic and Abba had a baby!…