Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil may have been the greatest American swindler of all time. The Yellow Kid operated in the gold age of the American con, from the late 19th century up to WWII, and became a legend in his own time, immortalized in such books as The Big Con (the sociological study of con artists that was the basis for the movie The Sting ). The first edition of “Yellow Kid” Weil , the as-told-by autobiography of the cheerful crook, was published in 1948. It was long out of print, but it was reprinted in 2010 by AK Press, and it’s one of the most entertaining memoirs of the era. Students of con games will know the basic mechanics — many of which Weil claims to have invented — and will know that some legitimate contemporary business practices, such as giving away high-priced premiums to sell commodity goods and stocking department stores with flashy, cheap goods that are priced as though they were being sold at a great discount, came to prominence as part of elaborate con-games and only later were institutionalized as normal business. But the real, serious, high-octane cons were practiced with a cast from two to 200, using elaborate sets, timing and staging, and usually involved a faked-up plan to cheat on horse races, real estate or the stock market. This plan always went awry somehow, and ended with all the participants losing their shirts (as far as the mark knew, anyway — in reality, his “pal” the con-man lost nothing and would split the take with the inside man). Weil’s autobiography is really more of a memoir — it doesn’t provide much of a coherent narrative of the man and his life. Rather, it is a series of unconnected — but hugely entertaining — anaecdotes about the various scams he ran and the venal fools he took for thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Weil is a virtuoso exploiter of human foibles, and each story serves as a miniature morality play in which someone who thinks he’s getting something for nothing (usually at some innocent’s expense) instead loses everything as payback for his venality. One glaring blindspot in Weil’s narrative is Weil himself. He has practically no self-awareness, and there’s virtually no sense of what’s going on in his own head as he bilks and cons his way around the world. This omission is as striking as anything else in the book, and speaks volumes about how disassociated Weil was from his own ethics and morality. The final two chapters are the most poignant, as they are where Weil, now gone straight, accounts for himself and his deeds. He repeats the con-artist’s shibboleth that he only cheated crooks who thought they were cheating others (though the book has plenty of contradictory examples he neglects to mention), but there is a glimmer of self-knowledge there that is all the more remarkable due to its absence elsewhere in the narrative. This is one of the most entertaining memoirs I’ve ever read. Its episodic nature makes it a natural for quick reads — a more perfect toilet-tank book there never was — and the detailed descriptions of Depression-era cons are priceless, especially for anyone interested in gadgets and improvisation. The scam fortuneteller whose turban disguised a telephone clamped to his head, which was wired down his collar and trouser-leg to an electrical contact on the bottom of his shoe, which would be mated to a telephone circuit when the “swami” reclined on an “oriental lounger” to “commune with the spirit world” is one of the best things I’ve ever read. “Yellow Kid” Weil

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Yellow Kid Weil: Autobiography of the greatest con man in American history

Writing for MAKE:, Gareth Branwyn reviews the Fiskars ShopBoss, a sucessor, of sorts, to the multi-scissors the company shipped last year. Fiskars is the Finnish giant of bladed tools, renowned for generations for its knives and other blades. Gareth really likes the ShopBoss though he has a few reservations: The heart of the ShopBoss is a pair of titanium nitride-coated snippers/shears. The bottom blade is serrated and the snips are made to cut through light metals, carpet, cardboard, plastic stock, etc. They made easy work of most everything I chewed into with them, even some fairly thick acrylic. They cut CD media very easily and cleanly and would be a good tool to grab when CoasterBot building. It was a joy to process a giant pile of boxes, plastic banding, and cardboard destined for the recycling center. Surrounding the snips are a number of other useful widgets: a wire-cutting jaw, a twine/binding strap cutter, bottle opener, and a pegboard hanging loop. The ShopBoss also comes with a plastic holster that clips onto your belt. It includes a pencil holder, a tape-cutting hook, and a metal deburring file (basically a piece of plastic rod). Tool Review: Fiskars ShopBoss

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Fiskars ShopBoss: multiscissors to the limit

Julia Suits’s The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions: The Curious World of the Demoulin Brothers and Their Fraternal Lodge Prank Machines - from Human Centipedes and Revolving Goats to Electric Carpets and Smoking Camels is a history of those long-gone, much lamented days when Americans joined fraternal lodges in great numbers, and when those lodges attracted and retained members by subjecting new initiates to horrible, dangerous, violent pranks that often involved some combination of 35 cal blanks and high-voltage electricity. You know, the good old days. The Demoulin Brothers were the top of the fraternal order prank-gadget food-chain, publishing a secretive (but wildly popular) catalog that was distributed to lodge presidents and other mucky-mucks. The catalog featured inventions that could be used to terrorize (and delight) the members by simulating their executions, making them think they were to be horribly burned, and other delights of the simpler era when TV wasn’t yet invented and radio was newfangled and untrustworthy. Suits is a real scholar of those days, and she livens up the many reproductions from the various catalogs with great context-giving notes about the nature of these lodges, reprints from newspapers and magazine articles of the day that give a sense of their prominence and significance, and biographies of the mad geniuses who sold these gadgets for so many years. From the demented copywriting in the catalogs to the fan-letters written to the company by excited lodge leaders who were delighted with the performance of the prank items, The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions is a time machine that transports readers to that gilded age and its highly specialized notions of fun and fraternity. The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions: The Curious World of the Demoulin Brothers and Their Fraternal Lodge Prank Machines - from Human Centipedes and Revolving Goats to Electric Carpets and Smoking Camels [amazon.com]

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Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions: awesomely dangerous pranks from the age of fraternal lodges

As every blog and news site everywhere has already reported ( including Boing Boing ), the definitive biography of the late Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson , is out today. Actually, it’s out today in paper , but was released yesterday for download via Amazon and iTunes . I’m willing to bet it breaks some sort of download sales record. Last night’s edition of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes was devoted entirely, 100%, to stories on Jobs and his products . As Mike Godwin noted on Twitter , Steve Kroft asks during the segment how Jobs, “who dropped LSD and marijuana,” goes off to India and returns to become a businessman. LOL @ “dropping marijuana.” The show sure does know their demo. At least they didn’t say he smoked acid. Snarking aside, the 60 Minutes pieces are worth watching. Here’s part 1 , here’s part 2 , and here’s 3 (!), on iPad apps for autism. In other news this week, Obama says we’re bringing troops home from Iraq, and Qaddafi’s dead. Related : Dan Lyons, former Fake Steve Jobs, on the backlash .

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Steve Jobs bio out early for downloads; "60 Minutes" devotes entire episode to book

What in the…? How could you have possibly screwed this up? WHY IS THE ENTERPRISE ON THE COVER? AND WHERE THE HELL ARE THOSE REVIEWS FROM? Holy shit, seasons 1-4 all in one box? Sold! UPDATE : VHS quality video of a farmer killing chickens for six hours. 3/5 stars. Black-market Battlestar DVD calls the show a “tween comedy” [io9] Thanks to Asperflux, who’s surprised Luke and Leia didn’t make the cover.

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I Spy: Battlestar Galactica Pirated DVD Cover

I’m pushing 30, which means I’ve officially entered that stage of life where self-preservation becomes less about avoiding pain, and more about boosting my chances of reproductive success*. In other words: regular health check-ups, infrequent jacuzzi and always a pillow or jacket between the MacBook and my precious, heat-sensitive manstuff . I tend to forget to use such protection, though. That’s why adding a ThermaPAK to my laptop bag seems like a no-brainer**. Small (13.5″ X 11.5″ X 0.5″), relatively lightweight (23 oz.) and reasonably-priced ($30), the pad contains “phase change material” crystals (sodium sulfate decahydrate), which melt to help absorb the heat output from a laptop battery, then crystallize back up when they cool after use. The quilted-like surface on the laptop side also comes into play. According to the manufacturer: ThermaPAK’s pad grooves channel air under the laptop, and use the second law of thermodynamics (which states that heat will tend to flow from hot areas to cold ones to reach equilibrium) to draw heat from the laptop. I can attest to the reduced heat. Last night I sat with the laptop in front of the TV and then in bed. No issues at all in terms of keeping my junk cool. The pad did it’s job and was mostly comfortable (feels similar to the lead apron you wear for dental x-rays, only lighter). However, that rigid surface is a tad on the slippery side. The first few times I leaned forward, my computer nearly flew off the pad. Not a deal breaker, but something to be aware of. The company claims these pads can extend your laptop’s battery life. My experience: at 10:43 pm, I had 19 minutes left on my battery. By 11:11pm, I had 8 minutes. At 11:16pm, 3 minutes (while running iTunes, Firefox and TweetDeck). How the pad may have affected my sperm count, I can’t say for sure. But piece of mind is irrefutable. *I don’t have children, but I do want at least one. **I’ve never used a USB fan, which is another option.

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Review: 1 Night w/the ThermaPAK Cooling Pad

Filed under: Gadgets , Etc. , Tech , Volkswagen Vehicle infotainment systems, those all-inclusive interfaces controlling the myriad electronics on today’s modern cars and trucks, can make or break the driving experience. CNET is offering us a sneak-peek at Volkswagen’s latest iteration from the company’s Electronic Research Laboratory (ERL). Developed with Intel, the new system uses Global Open Research Infotainment Architecture, or GLORIA. Most systems today us a joystick-like device, touch screen, or hard buttons on the edge of the display (or a combination of the three) to control the inputs. Volkswagen’s new GLORIA system takes it one step further by making Apple iPhone-like “gesture control” possible. This means that users are able to navigate quickly by simply tracing single letters across the pressure-sensitive display. Another unique feature may allow users to import third-party widgets for the system, much like consumers currently load apps from iTunes onto their iPhones. As cool as it sounds, GLORIA is still under development and she isn’t expected to see showrooms for a few more years. [Source: CNET , Photo by CNET] REPORT: Volkswagen’s next-gen nav system to get Apple iPhone-like gestures originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 21 May 2009 13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink ?|? Email this ?|? Comments

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REPORT: Volkswagen’s next-gen nav system to get Apple iPhone-like gestures

Two chairs enter…two chairs leave. In fact, I’m sitting my fat ass on one of the two chairs we reviewed right now: the Herman Miller Embody , a fine chair that only wobbles a little after running it into a wall. But I’m only sitting on it because I had to take the other chair, the Steelcase Leap , downstairs to do some more shooting for this video. So which chair should you buy? Honestly, they’re both so much better than a typical office chair it’s difficult to pick, but if I were paying real money and not just begging review samples off of the manufacturers, I’d be hard pressed to pay nearly twice as much for the Embody, even if it is fantastically weird in looks. (Especially in the showcase cream-and-orange livery.) Also, for the record, yes, this is the very best Clarkson impression I can do. And yes , it disturbed me that it isn’t that different from how I normally talk in these things. Would you like to download this as a “file”? Okay . [mp4]

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Boing Boing Video review: Top Chair? Herman Miller Embody and the Steelcase Leap