Visit our new online store, filled with a hand-picked selection of books, toys, games, gadgets and miscellaneous tat that we like. It uses Amazon's platform, which means that we get paid with referral fees cut from their end: the prices to you are the same as usual. We're going to regularly prune it, too, so that the choices are fresh!...

Now in the Boing Boing Bazaar: chunks of aerogel! $50 buys you a pair of aerogel discs. Silica aerogel, the infamous and ethereal material comprised of up to 99.98% air, can be yours at last. Known for its superinsulating abilities, ultralow density, and its use on the Mars rovers, silica aerogel is just one member of the amazing class of materials known as aerogels, which promise to revolutionize everything from buildings to electric energy storage to hydrogen to lightweight structures. These ..

Note the conspicuous lack of smut! Frame from a Seattle Post-Intelligencer gallery of Playboy founder hugh Hefner's teenage doodles, sent to his high school sweetheart in the early 1940s. The full collection is for sale at a price well into the 6 figures. Apparently, rare book dealer Lux Mentis will send you a PDF of the contents upon request. (Via Roger Ebert)...

Jalopnik reports that "James Sikes, the San Diego runaway Toyota Prius driver, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one anonymous tipster, we're also told he hasn't been making payments on his Prius." So was his story a fake? (via Chris Anderson)...

Holga, © Stavro Papadopoulos, from an image gallery curated by Sean Bonner of work by various photographers using toy cameras, over at Magnesium Agency....

I don't know where this came from, or if it is from a real choose-your-own-adventure book, but as Margaret Wise Brown might say, the important thing is that it is funny. Page 56...

Boing Boing readers are interested in Edgar Allan Poe (examples 1, 2, 3, and 4), so I suspect you'll want to be the first to know about 4 by Poe, an upcoming collection of four Poe stories designed and illustrated by Eric Mongeon. Mongeon is best-known 'round these corners as a fabulous magazine designer and art director (and as the man behind the look of a record that's particularly close to me), and this is a new project for him, although one that has haunted him since design school. Each ..

A Wichita, Kansas man was apparently beaten up by a drug dealer after the man paid for crack cocaine with Monopoly money. The man, who was bleeding from the head when police pulled him over, said he had purchased the drugs weeks before and the dealer was only now taking revenge. It's not clear why it took the dealer so long to realize that the multi-colored bills were not legal tender. From NBC: "The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house and upon ..

Roq La Rue Gallery's "Lush Life 2" group show opens in Seattle this Friday and it's a tour-de-force of Pop Surrealism and contemporary painting and sculpture. The show includes new work by: Joe Sorren, Chris Berens, Marion Peck, Kris Kuksi, Travis Louie, Brian Despain, John Brophy, Martin Wittfooth, Ryan Heshka, Michael Brown, Charlie Immer, Mandy Greer, Gail Potocki, Laurie Hogin, Boomer, Madeline Von Foerster, Ryan Heshka, and Andrew Arconti. Above is Berens's "Stage One" (mixed media: ink, ..

Twine is selling these magnificent vintage rotary phones, retrieved from the British General Post Office where they were never used. They ain't cheap though: $210. Tellies (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)...

Victor Pineiro put a lot of work into a funny, popular post about the "top ten geek anthems of all time." Shortly after, CNN ran an extremely similar article, which replicated many of Victor's picks and had extremely similar copy. But the CNN article didn't credit Victor with the inspiration. Victor doesn't think that this is a copyright violation (I think he's right), but it does smack of plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. It's possible that CNN was inspired to write the extremely similar ..

Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile (again). There've been a lot of earthquakes lately. But scientists say there haven't been more earthquakes lately. Tremors are, and have always been, common. On average, per year, you can expect one 8.0 or above quake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and 130-odd quakes between 6.0 and 6.9. One thing that has risen: Death tolls. But scientists say that increase has more to do with economic conditions that drive people to pack into mega-cities and live in cheaply built ..

Tor Books, the US/Canada publisher, has two hundred advance copies of my next young adult novel, For the Win, available for free to young (19 or younger) gamers who are interested in reviewing the book on their blog or school paper. The book is about gamer kids all over the world who use multiplayer games to organize and fight back against abusive employers: In the virtual future, you must organize to survive At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in ..

What the hell, planet earth! Chile was just slammed by a 7.2 aftershock, as inaugural ceremonies for right-wing billionaire president-elect Sebastián Piñera began in Valparaiso. Chile was devastated by an 8.8-magnitude quake on Feb. 27....

Last week, the UK LibDem party was thrown into scandal when two of its Lords proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship, particularly aimed at "web-lockers" like Google Docs and YouSendIt. Now a leaked document from the British Phonographic Institute suggests that the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the "party of liberty." This weekend, LibDem members who ..

Recently-exiled latenight talk show host Conan O'Brien will be headlining the comedy stage at the annual Bonnaroo festival. Wonder if he'll pick a random person out of the crowd to befriend and bestow insta-stardom? The date is part of Conan's cross-country comedy tour, also just announced today....

I feel a great disturbance in the public utility, as if millions of bladders cried out, and were suddenly silenced. Pats Papers: What If Everybody in Canada Flushed at Once? (Thanks, Christina!)...

Dick Burger has been hailed by fandom as the greatest comic book creator since Jack Kirby. Unlike Kirby, however, Burger retained ownership of his characters and became a media tycoon, complete with a private jet furnished with a hot tub and a mansion in Los Angeles. He is also an insufferable bastard. Leonard Bates is a North American journalist who is conducting research for a biography of Burger. When he travels to Hicksville, New Zealand to visit Burger's childhood home, he discovers that ..

Boing Boing partner John Battelle was on a WiFi-enabled flight last night, and wanted to say bedtime-goodnight to his kids using videochat. Lots of parents tuck their kids into bed over video when they're far from home. What gentler, more loving example of the power of the internet could there be? Nope. A United Airlines flight attendant told John that this was prohibited because terrorists could use this to coordinate attacks. So what's a curious guy to do? To the Internet! Which is exactly ..

To coincide with South by Southwest, journalist Scott Kirsner is making his 2009 book Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age available free, in digital form, for the duration of the festival. You can download it here. Lots of folks you've seen at SXSW are featured in the book, including artist Natasha Wescoat, pioneering videoblogger Ze Frank, singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton, Burnie Burns of "Red vs. Blue," comedian Eugene Mirman, ..