The TED Prize event is streaming live now. I watched it last year and it was very moving. I imagine it will be again this year. About the 2008 TEDPrize The TED Prize was created as a way of taking the inspiration, ideas and resources generated at TED and using them to make a difference. Winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, and more importantly, a wish. A wish to change the world. During today's session, webcast live from Monterey, California, the 2008 TEDPrize winners will unveil their wishes for the first time. Prize winners Neil Turok, Dave Eggars and Karen Armstong will be joined by singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela. Link...

Yesterday here on Boing Boing, I pointed to two new projects about the sex trade from my friend Susannah Breslin: Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls. She says: In the comments, a reader posted a link to a project in which the artist had turned sex worker stories into comic strips. That artist is Peter S. Conrad, a Northern California based writer and artist whose work has appeared in True Porn and will appear in I Saw You: Missed Connection Comics. I dropped Conrad an email about the project. He wrote back and sent the comic I've posted here. I asked him if I could ask him a few questions, and he said yes. So today, Susannah has posted a short interview with Conrad, and the rest of "Going Back," with larger scans of his work. Link (contains explicit, adult material)....

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have demonstrated that we can tell from voice alone whether a speaker is smiling -- and even which sort of smile ("open," "smiley eyes"). The audio for the interviews was then played back to another group of test subjects. Even without seeing the speakers, the listeners were able to hear the different types of smile the speaker made as he or she went through the wacky interview. "A voice contains a variety of acoustical characteristics" said Drahota. "It's possible that we interpret these 'flavours' in someone's voice almost without noticing." Link (Image: Another smile ..., a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Ferdinand Reus's Flickr stream)...

Writer Susannah Breslin (of Reverse Cowgirl), whose work I've blogged many times here on Boing Boing, has launched two new projects: Letters from Working Girls, and Letters from Johns. As the titles suggest, the blogs consist of first-hand accounts from real sex workers, and from real clients of sex workers. Here's a snip from "Working Girls": I am 26. I'm a grad student in New York. Internet men pay to spank me. If I don't maintain certain grades, I lose my scholarship, and at the beginning of the semester I was flipping my shit about this one class, insisting I was going to fail and whatnot. I was wondering how I was going to pull three or six thousand dollars out of my ass, depending on how bad I did, and my friend said, "It's too bad you don't live upstate, because my friend Mary has a dude that pays her a fuckton of money to just spank her. No sex." So I had to figure that if Mary can find a dude like this upstate, there HAS to be people like this in NYC I can find. And I have a high tolerance for pain and a passing interest in spanking, so it was on. And here's a snip from "Johns." I started seeing her once or twice a month and have kept on doing so even though I've been in relationships. I won't lie and say I don't think of it as cheating, it is. I finally stopped when I met a woman who, to be honest, shared a lot of similarities with B. I told B about this and she wished me nothing but happiness. We've spoken a few times since and seen each other socially. It's a bit like work friends after one person has moved to a different job....

The Endless Belt Trains for Futuristic Cities described in the November, 1932 ish of Modern Mechanix is one of my all-time favorite tomorrows of yesterday -- a world run on rails, rising high above the city, slicing through it with arrow-straight, improbable lines: Passengers board the first local train at any point, and it stops every 50 seconds for a period of 10 seconds. When the doors close, a gong sounds and the local platform starts moving. Now there is another signal and gates open for a second platform, or express, on which the passenger takes the major part of his trip. After ten seconds the gates close and the local slows down for another stop, while the express picks up to a 22 m.p.h. speed. Noise of the system is at a minimum, and passengers are delivered at no more than 300 feet from their streets. All stations are controlled from one central point, all elements being so timed that there can be no hitches. Link...

Cracked has a list of five Fortune 500 companies that profited greatly by their active collaboration with the Nazis, from IBM (punchcard tabulators to count the concentration camp dead) to Hugo Boss (designed the Nazi uniforms) and others -- check out how incredibly evil Siemens is: Siemens was the major player in the Nazification of Germany. The company, run by Werner's son, Carl, and then his grandson, Hermann, struggled in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression and had to earn some dough fast. When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, it was the signal for the Siemens executives to start building factories, and nowhere was the real estate better than near the homey neighborhoods of Auschwitz and Buchenwald... At the height of the Nazi terror during the 1940s, it was not atypical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning and be snuffed out in a Siemens-made gas chamber in the afternoon... Well, a few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens. Link (via Plastic Bag)...

My pal Roger Wood is a mad assemblage sculptor in Toronto who makes gorgeous steampunky kinetic clocks. Every day or two, he sends out a "newsletter" to his friends with a picture of his latest -- check this one out. I already own three of Roger's clocks (and they're among my favorite objects in the whole world), but I'm tempted to get a fourth. He's just brilliant. Link...

Today in my series of pictures from my travels: these inexplicable, angelic, rendered pigeon wings that were just sitting there on the sidewalk yesterday in London's east end. Link...

The NY Public Library has scans of an 1804 book from China that shows 22 engravings of common punishment methods of the day. Shown here: a malefactor enduring the "punishment of the wooden collar." Can anyone translate the Chinese characters on the collar? Link (Via BibliOdyssey)...

Inspired by the never-ending news of new and ridiculous restrictions on flying, Grig Larson has written a grimly funny little science fiction vignette about what a world in which flying was really "made safe" would be like: When she gets to the counter, a uniformed woman takes her booklet, and compares it to her ID. She asks for a fingerprint scan. Uh oh! There's a problem. Jill can't remember what finger she used! But the lady helps her out, and within minutes, she's approved to go into the disrobing chamber. The lady gives her a neck tag, stamps Jill's forehead, and sends her on her way past the many guards down a hallway. Jill knows what to expect. Helpful pictograph signs show her what she will be doing when she gets to the disrobing room. At the end of the hallway, she steps into a free closet, and strips down naked. Don't forget those earrings and hair bands, Jill! Jill remembered that the safety of her personal belongings could never be guaranteed, so she came wearing nothing she couldn't afford to lose. She puts her belongings in a plastic bag, and seals it nice and tight. She sees herself in the mirror. Oh my, Jill. You have been gaining a little weight, haven't we? Better lay off those desserts at the buffet when you're in Los Angeles, Jill! Link (Thanks, Grig!)...