The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Search Engine's Jesse Brown: Boing Boing Guestblogger!
- Charles Bukowski's hatred of Mickey Mouse
- Top Shelf Comix annual sale
- Philadelphia Free Library System is shutting down
- The great punk poet Jim Carroll has died.
- Brutal police violence at Berlin "Freedom not Fear" demonstration
- Young adult writers! Detroit teacher of blind kids wants your ebooks for her Braille printer!
| Search Engine's Jesse Brown: Boing Boing Guestblogger! Posted: 13 Sep 2009 07:18 AM PDT I take sincere pleasure in introducing you to our latest guestblogger, Jesse Brown. Astute readers will remember him as the host of the storied net-culture podcast Search Engine, which was killed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and then rescued by rival public broadcaster TV Ontario. Jesse's podcasts are the epitome of what net-news coverage for a mass-audience can be: impassioned, participatory, smart, and comprehensive without being esoteric. Welcome, Jesse!
Previously:
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| Charles Bukowski's hatred of Mickey Mouse Posted: 13 Sep 2009 10:56 PM PDT I got a kick out of this short video clip about writer Charles Bukowski's loathing of Mickey Mouse, that "three-fingered son-of-a-bitch who has no soul, for Christ's sake." The fact that Mickey had only three fingers really seemed to bother him. (The second half of the video isn't about Mickey Mouse, but it is still worth watching.) |
| Posted: 13 Sep 2009 09:26 PM PDT Chris from the wonderful indy comics publisher Top Shelf sez, Top Shelf's MASSIVE $3 SALE kicks off today to celebrate the release of the SURROGATES on September 25th.THE 2009 TOP SHELF MASSIVE $3 SALE! (Thanks, Chris!) |
| Philadelphia Free Library System is shutting down Posted: 13 Sep 2009 09:21 PM PDT The Philadelphia Free Library system is broke, and they're shutting it down, including cancelling "all branch and regional library programs, programs for children and teens, after school programs, computer classes, and programs for adults" and "all children programs, programs to support small businesses and job seekers, computer classes and after school programs" and "all library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and other community centers" and "all community meetings" and "all GED, ABE and ESL program." Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings. Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they guarded would become firewood. Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years of the PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records. Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is universal access to all human knowledge. Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community. Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us. |
| The great punk poet Jim Carroll has died. Posted: 13 Sep 2009 06:54 PM PDT  What a sad loss. He will be remembered, respected, and missed. NYT obituary. Patti Smith, another personal idol of mine, says of Carroll, "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty." Photo: Patti and Jim (via ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger, no image credit given) |
| Brutal police violence at Berlin "Freedom not Fear" demonstration Posted: 13 Sep 2009 10:48 AM PDT fALK sez, "This video shows a peacefull protester being beaten by policeman at the 'Freedom not Fear' demonstration that was totally peaceful. The demonstration was attended by 25.000 people and called for by more then 160 groups that are concerned about privacy, censorship and freedom. I personally have been close to the beating and the police acted provocative in the time before hand - encircling one truck that took part at the demonstration and pulling out people harshly - there will likely more videos surface over the coming hours. " I hope you help spread the word about this incident and help us find the brutal policeman. |
| Young adult writers! Detroit teacher of blind kids wants your ebooks for her Braille printer! Posted: 12 Sep 2009 10:38 PM PDT Back in August, I got a surprise in the mail: a long Braille computer printout and a letter. The letter was from Patti Smith, who teaches visually impaired middle-schoolers in Detroit's public school system. She explained that almost all the Braille kids' books she had access to were for really little kids -- kindergartners, basically -- and how discouraging this was for her kids. The reason she was writing to me was to thank me for releasing my young adult novel Little Brother under a Creative Commons license, which meant that she could download the ebook version and run it through her school's Braille embosser (US copyright law makes it legal to convert any book to Braille or audiobook for blind people, but it is technically challenging and expensive to do this without the electronic text). I wrote about this on my personal blog, and it inspired my colleague, the sf/f writer Paula Johansen, to write to Patti to offer up her own YA titles as ebooks for Patti's students. Well, this got me thinking that there might be lots of YA writers who'd be glad to see their books get into the hands of visually impaired, literature-hungry students, so I worked with Patti to put together the pitch below. Please pass it along to all the YA writers you know. I would love to see Patti's class start the school year with a magnificent library of hundreds and hundreds of fantastic YA books to choose from, so that they can start a lifelong love-affair with literature. Thanks! Patti's email is TeacherPattiS@gmail.com |
Hi! I'm Jesse Brown and I host a podcast called 
I am Patti Smith and I teach at OW Holmes, which is an elementary-middle school in Detroit Public Schools in Detroit, Michigan. My students are visually impaired, ranging in age from 2nd grade to 8th grade. Five of my students are Braille writers and two are learning Braille. I would love books for young adults in electronic format (Word or RTF) so that I can plug the file into my computer program and emboss the book in Braille so my kids can have something to read. I have found it very difficult to find books for young adults; most seem to be written for very young readers. My Braille readers are all age 11+ and it is a challenge to find relevant books for them to read. Thank you so much!! | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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