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3D printing buildings and other structures with soil and binder United Airlines loses a 10 year old girl Military spy blimps used in Afghanistan will now patrol US-Mexico border How to compound bad business with bad social media: @Progressive's crummy job explaining the company's legal defense of a policy-holder's killer WTFNASA? Steve Jobs' Palo Alto burglarized in "totally random" attack Thailand: politician accidentally kills woman with machine gun in restaurant New reports of Tibetans burning themselves alive to protest Chinese opression Will.i.am's custom DeLorean has been deStolean Dave Hill: My Friend David Rakoff Nocebo, now available without a prescription Electromagnetic Field: a UK geek/maker/hacker weekend campout Cow Week: Cow kills Irish pensioner Scenes from a heart surgery Corporate IT adoption visualized The invention of interactive science education Hachette to Tor authors: you must keep the DRM on your ebooks Anatomically correct heart macaroons 1863 Manhattan brought to life in miniatures, to retell the story of the Draft Riots for "Copper" (video) Branch sounds neat StarShipSofa sf podcast is having a killer August Insurance company defends policy holder's killer in court Apps for Kids 29: Yodel-Oh! Apps for Kids 29: Yodel-Oh! How to Tell Good People from Bad People The Sixty-Eight Rooms: exciting kids' novel about shrinking to fit inside the miniature Thorne Rooms For his birthday, (almost) all of Alfred Hitchcock's cameos Animation teacher faces the sack for refusing to push "unnecessary, expensive" textbooks at hedge-fund invested Art Institute of California Kirby Ferguson's TED Talk: "Embrace the Remix" - a must-see Bain Capital buys profitable American plant, ships it to China; soon-to-be-jobless workers train their overseas replacements 3D printing buildings and other structures with soil and binder
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 14, 2012 12:58 pm Stone Spray is a promising-looking 3D printer that is intended to produce building-scale structures by combining soil with binder from a spray-nozzle. Unfortunately, all the meaty tech information is locked up in a weird "book" player that doesn't work well on my screen, but you can get a general idea from the video above (I ...
Read in browser United Airlines loses a 10 year old girl
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 12:36 pm Bob Sutton writes about a horrible ordeal his friends Annie and Perry Klebahn had in late June and early July when United Airlines "lost" their 10 year-old daughter, who was traveling as an unaccompanied minor. Here is the headline: United was flying Phoebe as an unaccompanied minor on June 30th, from San Francisco to Chicago, ...
Read in browser Military spy blimps used in Afghanistan will now patrol US-Mexico border
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 12:10 pm The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. military and border-patrol officials are teaming up on a new initiative to bring dozens of surveillance blimps from Afghanistan war zones to the Mexican border. Over the next few weeks, the military will oversee a test in south Texas to determine if a 72-foot-long, unmanned surveillance blimp—sometimes ...
Read in browser How to compound bad business with bad social media: @Progressive's crummy job explaining the company's legal defense of a policy-holder's killer
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 14, 2012 12:00 pm Last night, Mark wrote about Matt Fisher's experience with Progressive Insurance, the insurer for his late sister, who was killed in a traffic accident. Progressive tried to deny Fisher's claim (the other driver was underinsured, but Fisher's Progressive policy included coverage for underinsured third parties) In order to collect full benefits, Fisher's family has had ...
Read in browser WTFNASA?
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 12:00 pm A website that auto-generates answers to the question, "What the fuck has NASA done to make your life awesome?" (via Rob Sheridan)
Read in browser Steve Jobs' Palo Alto burglarized in "totally random" attack
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 11:57 am The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Palo Alto home where deceased Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once lived was burglarized in a "totally random" attack last night. More than $60,000 worth of "computers and personal items" were allegedly stolen, and a suspect has been taken into custody. (via Steve Silberman)
Read in browser Thailand: politician accidentally kills woman with machine gun in restaurant
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 11:52 am CNN reports that a Thai politician accidentally shot and killed his ex-wife with a submachine gun in a restaurant in northern Thailand. "Senator Boonsong's gun was accidentally fired off while he was trying to keep his pistol into its case." The shot went "straight in" to his female dining companion. Other news organizations report the ...
Read in browser New reports of Tibetans burning themselves alive to protest Chinese opression
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 11:48 am Multiple sources: Two (possibly three) more Tibetans self-immolated in protest of Chinese military rule in Tibet. The two confirmed cases involve men in their early twenties, monks in Tibet's Ngaba region. As of August 8, 45 more Tibetans have resorted to self-immolation inside Tibet, 35 of whom have died, according to the International Campaign for ...
Read in browser Will.i.am's custom DeLorean has been deStolean
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 11:38 am My car was stolen...what the fuck...— will.i.am (@iamwill) August 14, 2012 Jalopnik reports that a bespoke automobile created for (and reportedly designed in part by) will.i.am was ripped off last night while the Black Eyed Pea and entrepreneur/fashion dude/space and science enthusiast was attending a private party at the Avalon hotel in Hollywood.
Read in browser Dave Hill: My Friend David Rakoff
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 14, 2012 11:22 am "I won't bother trying to compete with the eloquence of so much that has already been written about David and his work because the fact is, compared to the man himself, it all seems like the grunts of a caveman. So, rather than try to run from that reality, I'll just go ahead and embrace ...
Read in browser Nocebo, now available without a prescription
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 14, 2012 11:10 am New, from the makers of Maximum Strength Placebo, it's Nocebo, the product you will almost certainly regret." Now for the first time, Nocebo is available for sale direct to the general public! Despite containing no active ingredients whatsoever, Nocebo can cause a wide range of undesirable effects, from nausea to diarrhea, that is because it's ...
Read in browser Electromagnetic Field: a UK geek/maker/hacker weekend campout
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 14, 2012 11:08 am Jonty sez, Electromagnetic Field is a three day camping festival for hackers, geeks, scientists, engineers, artists, and crafters. From the 31st August to the 2nd September we'll be taking over a field in Milton Keynes and turning it into a place for makers and breakers to meet, build and learn from each other. Throughout the ...
Read in browser Cow Week: Cow kills Irish pensioner
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 14, 2012 09:17 am Last winter, I found out something really fascinating: Cows kill more people than sharks. It's true. Here's Popular Mechanics on the statistics: Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark ...
Read in browser Scenes from a heart surgery
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 14, 2012 08:43 am This is absolutely wonderful, and absolutely not for the squeamish. Defective Heart Girl Problems is a blog where physicist Summer Ash has blogged her experience with finding out that she has a defective heart valve and getting treatment to deal with that defect. The image above shows her scar from her recent surgery. Ash went ...
Read in browser Corporate IT adoption visualized
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 14, 2012 08:39 am As someone who's spent a bit of time working in corporate IT management, I had to laugh and wince at Simon Wardley spot-on chart of the enterprise IT adoption cycle. It's so sadly accurate, including the steepness of the curve between "Oh fuck" and full adoption (which is why so many vendors hammer away at ...
Read in browser The invention of interactive science education
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 14, 2012 08:31 am Today, when almost every major city in America has a science museum with hands-on, interactive exhibits, that particular format of education seems pretty obvious. But it wasn't always. In 1969, Frank Oppenheimer opened the Exploratorium, the first American museum to use these now-familiar educational tools. The experiment was sort of a combination of the skills ...
Read in browser Hachette to Tor authors: you must keep the DRM on your ebooks
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 14, 2012 01:45 am You'll recall that Tor Books (and its sister science fiction imprints of Macmillan publishers around the world) has dropped DRM on all of its titles. Hachette, one of Macmillan's rivals in the "Big Six" pantheon of publishers, is famously pro-DRM (one Hachette author told me that her editor said that Hachette's unbreakable policy, straight from ...
Read in browser Anatomically correct heart macaroons
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 13, 2012 11:00 pm Eat Your Heart Out Bakers, home to some of the weirdest confections in my weird world, have unveiled a line of anatomically correct macaroons. Because of reasons. If you have to ask, you'll never om nom nom nom. Fills me with joy how all the uber talented EYHO bakers continue to push the limits of ...
Read in browser 1863 Manhattan brought to life in miniatures, to retell the story of the Draft Riots for "Copper" (video)
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 13, 2012 09:17 pm [Video Link] Director Joe Sabia, who collaborates with us on the Boing Boing video channel for Virgin America, says: To promote BBC America's Copper, we turned 1863 Manhattan into miniatures to detail the events of the Draft Riots. Our second production for Four Story Treehouse. Epic. An earlier spot Joe and co. did for BBC ...
Read in browser Branch sounds neat
By Xeni Jardin on Aug 13, 2012 09:06 pm Branch, a new social startup, just came out of beta today. Promising "A new way to talk to each other," the startup is incubated by Obvious Corporation, the "mini-accelerator" from Twitter's Biz Stone, Ev Williams and Jason Goldman. Here's an example of what they have in mind. One of the things Twitter doesn't do very ...
Read in browser StarShipSofa sf podcast is having a killer August
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 13, 2012 08:40 pm Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast writes, "August sees a fantastic line up of top SF authors on StarShipSofa. This month boasts stories by Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, Gene Wolfe and Adam Roberts, with also an amazing cover art by Andreas Rocha."
Read in browser Insurance company defends policy holder's killer in court
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 13, 2012 08:10 pm Comedian Matt Fisher says: "On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light… At the trial, the guy who killed my ...
Read in browser Apps for Kids 29: Yodel-Oh!
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 13, 2012 07:51 pm [Video Link] Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane and I talk about Yodel-Oh!, a target tapper game where you have to keep a Swiss mountain climber from falling ...
Read in browser Apps for Kids 29: Yodel-Oh!
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 13, 2012 07:50 pm [Video Link] Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane and I talk about Yodel-Oh!, a target tapper game where you have to keep a Swiss mountain climber from falling ...
Read in browser How to Tell Good People from Bad People
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 13, 2012 07:26 pm I remember reading this pamphlet when I was a first or second grader living in Golden, Colorado. I can't remember if my school passed out copies, or if it came in the mail. The page scans at Budget Raygun are low-res, but it looks like the pamphlet was published in 1964 by the International Order ...
Read in browser The Sixty-Eight Rooms: exciting kids' novel about shrinking to fit inside the miniature Thorne Rooms
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 13, 2012 07:05 pm One morning a couple of weeks ago my family and I were rushing out the door for a vacation. Everyone but my 9-year-old daughter had packed a book for the long plane ride (Me: Too High to Fail; Carla: Gone Girl; Sarina: The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette). I hurriedly skimmed our bookshelves to find ...
Read in browser For his birthday, (almost) all of Alfred Hitchcock's cameos
By Jamie Frevele on Aug 13, 2012 06:38 pm In honor of Alfred Hitchcock's birthday - which would have been his 113th - here is a very decent compilation of nearly all the cameos made by the Master of Suspense. He may not have been an angel, but he made us some pretty excellent movies, in which he made some pretty clever cameos. (via ...
Read in browser Animation teacher faces the sack for refusing to push "unnecessary, expensive" textbooks at hedge-fund invested Art Institute of California
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 13, 2012 06:22 pm Mike Tracy teaches at the Art Institute of California—Orange County, but not for long. In a note on his Facebook page, Tracy explains that AIC-OC (whose parent company, EDMC, is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs) has told him he'll be fired if he doesn't agree to sell a quota of expensive and, in his ...
Read in browser Kirby Ferguson's TED Talk: "Embrace the Remix" - a must-see
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 13, 2012 05:20 pm Kirby "Everything is a Remix" Ferguson, whose work we've blogged about a lot, gave an amazing, must-see TED Talk about the way that creativity comes about as the result of creative re-use of others' work. It's not just explicit remixes and samples -- everything from the iPhone to Bob Dylan's music are made out of ...
Read in browser Bain Capital buys profitable American plant, ships it to China; soon-to-be-jobless workers train their overseas replacements
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 13, 2012 03:13 pm In the Guardian, Paul Harris reports from Freeport, IL, where a profitable, competitive auto-parts plant has been bought out by Bain Capital, who have literally shipped the factory to China, and who have extended the "kindness" to the American workers who will lose their jobs of a few extra weeks' worth of work training their ...
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