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)

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.

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!"

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!

The Survival Seed Bank is advertising on Glenn Beck's television show. They offer "survival seeds" for growing your own "crisis garden" amid "emerging totalitarianism."

As Media Matters points out, the brand identity meshes well with the host's apocalyptic visions of the future. "More valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown," the website reads.

They may quote WorldNetDaily as a news source, fine, but I really like the sound of the heirloom varieties they offer: Jacob's Cattle Bean, Yellow Dent Corn, and non-hybrid varieties of tomato and leafy greens. I'd eat that!

"You'll have confidence knowing that you and your family will be able to eat if the Insiders trigger some huge meltdown," reads the promotional copy. Perhaps (and who are these "Insiders?"), but I'm not convinced $149 is such a great deal for a couple dozen packets of seeds and a little plant food, even if it's enough for "a full acre Crisis Garden." But hey, when the jackbooted Obama-thugs destroy all the grocery stores with their black helicopters, it does look like we may be going extreme vegan locavore for a while.

Make sure to listen to the audio testimonials from happy customers. (via Baratunde)

Image (large size): One of many vintage ads from old issues of Wired Magazine at wiredreread.com, a site created by Theis Søndergaard. This one for an AT&T "strap-on telephone" appeared in 1995. Be sure to use your fancy new 28.8 modem when you call up that website on the internet.

Santa Monica sushi restaurant The Hump is reported to have been caught selling illegal whale meat to its customers. Who went after them with hidden cameras? The guys behind the dolphin slaughter documentary The Cove.

Image above: Ric O'Barry, right after The Cove won an oscar, during the Academy Awards. BB pal Ehrich Blackhound emailed in the image and says, "I love it when winners hijack the broadcast, and for a txting campaign!"

His speech, after the jump.

Lawrence Downes of The New York Times says: "I was just in Haiti reporting on things there and found amazing makers: boys who make kites. Even in refugee camps, where there’s only tiniest scraps of stuff: plastic, sticks, thread."

The kites are beautiful: some have layers of black and clear plastic forming diamonds and stars. Some have decorative edges, the plastic razor-sliced into piñata fringe. But they work, catching the breeze and jack-rabbiting into the smoky air. Small kites are notoriously hard to fly, but these are perfectly engineered. A boy I met in a camp down the block from the ruins of the Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince pointed to the sky. Blinking into the sun, I took forever to find his kite: a darting black dot far above the shattered steeples.

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

Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Henan province in China, appears to have a horn growing on the left side of her forehead. Another is reportedly sprouting on the right side, according to the Daily Mail. I know, I know, the Daily Mail... but look at that horn. Just look at it. From the Daily Mail:

Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang's head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.

This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.

Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.

They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.

The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.

Etsy seller TheWren sells messenger bags made out of South African cement sacks (which, I imagine, are durable by definition). Very nice, old school art. I had to give up messenger bags to spare my back (the lopsided burden was killing me), but I still have a soft spot for them, and live vicariously through others on this score.

PPC Cement Laptop Bag - OPC (via Wired)

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."

Warning: This may shock you if you love dogs and cats. In this video report, CNN's Emily Chang goes to a dog and cat meat market in Guanghzhou, China. There, dogs and cats are kept in cages and sold to restaurants and street vendors that specialize in things like cat stew and frozen dog leg. The Chinese government has taken the first steps in banning the consumption of dog and cat meat, but this report says it may take a decade for actual changes to be implemented.