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Did Timothy Leary supply the LSD for Dock Ellis's no-hitter baseball game? (Probably not) Pesco on augmented reality games Memories of shooting Sneakers Three Second City performers join Saturday Night Live, Jason Sudeikis also sticks around Venus Patrol, gaming art and culture site, launches Elfquest: Twilight in The Holt Hello, Curiosity Atoms for Peace: "Default" For those with cancer: make your own "With great power comes great radiotherapy" t-shirt Here's a drawing of a torture box the US used to interrogate Gaddafi's enemies in Libya TinkerMite: a wooden puzzle toy that turns into phones, tablets, and circuit boards "Matrix" producer buys WPA-era post office in Venice, CA, plans to transform it into film center Report faults Santa Monica College in student pepper-spray case Mote and Beam Anti-party-politics-as-usual posters up in DC Metro Angry roboticist drops science Boing Boing comment of the day Crocheted bicycle London mapped by common surnames 56 Broken Kindle Screens: book and video Shooting video -- with bullets Did Timothy Leary supply the LSD for Dock Ellis's no-hitter baseball game? (Probably not)
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 12:54 pm Lisa Rein from the Timothy Leary Archives sez, "ESPN's Patrick Hruby did a piece a few weeks ago investigating Dock Ellis' claim that he pitched a no-hitter on LSD in 1970. We had a few more details and clarifications to add (regarding the origin of the LSD), and of course, threw in a few more ...
Read in browser Pesco on augmented reality games
By David Pescovitz on Sep 10, 2012 12:25 pm Over at our sponsor Intel's My Life Scoop site, I posted a short into to augmented reality games: In 1901, Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum published a short story called "The Master Key" in which the protagonist Rob has invented the "Character Marker," electrical spectacles that overlay a letter on the foreheads ...
Read in browser Memories of shooting Sneakers
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 12:00 pm In Slate, Stephen Tobolowsky remembers what it was like to shoot the 1992 hacker/caper flick Sneakers, one of the great hacker movies of all time, with an all-star cast that included Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley: During part of the big action finale, Robert Redford is chased through a secret lab by all of us ...
Read in browser Three Second City performers join Saturday Night Live, Jason Sudeikis also sticks around
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 10, 2012 11:57 am Just in time to start its 38th season this weekend, Saturday Night Live has added three new performers to its roster, all of them discovered through their work at Chicago's Second City: Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, and Tim Robinson will join the cast as featured performers. In other news, it looks like Jason Sudeikis is ...
Read in browser Venus Patrol, gaming art and culture site, launches
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 10, 2012 11:31 am Venus Patrol, Brandon Boyer's independent videogame art & culture site, has "really honestly actually finally launched", he reports! Venus Patrol -- the website dedicated to independent videogames and their crossover with art, music and design which took in in excess of $100,000 in its successful 2011 Kickstarter campaign -- has officially opened at http://venuspatrol.com and ...
Read in browser Elfquest: Twilight in The Holt
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Sep 10, 2012 11:00 am 
Here's the first page of a new chapter of Elfquest, the long-running series of graphic novels first released in 1978 (Do you want to know more?) Published online-first for the first time here at Boing Boing, a new page of the ongoing narrative will be posted each Monday over the next few months. First time reader? You're 6,000 pages behind — Rob
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Read in browser Hello, Curiosity
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 10, 2012 10:54 am On Sol 32 (Sept. 7, 2012) the Curiosity rover used a camera located on its arm to obtain this self portrait. The image of the top of Curiosity's Remote Sensing Mast, showing the Mastcam and Chemcam cameras, was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The angle of the frame reflects the position of ...
Read in browser Atoms for Peace: "Default"
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 10:22 am [Video Link] Loving the blippy, glitchy feel of "Default," the new track from Atoms for Peace, the Thom Yorke/Flea/Nigel Godrich project. Pitchfork has more. At the Radiohead website, word from Yorke that an album is coming in 2013. Buy the single, "Default," on itunes or Amazon.
Read in browser For those with cancer: make your own "With great power comes great radiotherapy" t-shirt
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 10:15 am Science blogger Ed Yong whipped up this awesome graphic and made me a one-off tshirt to wear to radiation treatment for breast cancer. Cancer patients, radiation oncologists, radiation therapists, and the people who love them all can make their own t-shirts and stickers with the JPEG if you are so inclined! Thanks, Ed!
Read in browser Here's a drawing of a torture box the US used to interrogate Gaddafi's enemies in Libya
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 10:02 am Over at Wired News, Spencer Ackerman points to one grisly detail in a lengthy report just released by Human Rights Watch, about how the US cooperated with the Gadhafi regime in Libya: This is a drawing of a locked box which a Libyan man says U.S. interrogators once stuffed him into. It's said to be ...
Read in browser TinkerMite: a wooden puzzle toy that turns into phones, tablets, and circuit boards
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 09:53 am Nick sez, "Tired of greasy finger prints on your table? Tired of prying your phone out of your kiddos' hands? A Seattle-based startup, Tonkermite, is here to solve your problems with an innovative low-tech solution to teach kids about high-tech. The Tinker Tablet is a wooden puzzle toy with a magnetic, writeable surface for a ...
Read in browser "Matrix" producer buys WPA-era post office in Venice, CA, plans to transform it into film center
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 09:49 am A U.S. post office in Venice (the beach neighborhood in California, not the one in Italy) which includes an 1941 mural and began as a 1939 WPA building, has been purchased by Movie producer Joel Silver ("The Matrix," "Lethal Weapon" and "Sherlock Holmes"). He plans to re-use the historic site as the new home of ...
Read in browser Report faults Santa Monica College in student pepper-spray case
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 09:44 am Last April, a number of students were pepper-sprayed in a "melee" that took place outside a Santa Monica College Board of Trustees meeting. About a hundred protesters gathered to protest a proposed two-tiered fee plan in which high-demand courses would be priced higher. Naturally, police sprayed them with less-lethal chemical weapons. An internal police review ...
Read in browser Mote and Beam
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 10, 2012 09:26 am Joel Johnson, formerly the gadgets man at this august institution, has himself a new blog: Mote and Beam. This one, unlike the others, is about whatever the hell he likes! Right now, this is Virtual Reality. Early highlights: • Six possibly useful observations about the successful Oculus Rift Kickstarter • Grove iPhone 5 case: When ...
Read in browser Anti-party-politics-as-usual posters up in DC Metro
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 09:17 am Boing Boing reader Jeff Gates remixed some vintage war-era posters with postmodern slogans, and called the series "The Chamomile Tea Party." The idea: encourage "a calming force in American political discourse." I've blogged them before, and now, he's taking it underground—on the DC Metro. I've decided to up the ante with these posters and get ...
Read in browser Angry roboticist drops science
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 10, 2012 09:00 am Here's Katy Levinson's semi-drunken robotics tutorial from DEFCON XX in Vegas this past summer. To get a sense of Levinson's presentation style, imagine if Bill Hicks was a young, female roboticist. Watch this presentation and you will learn that four-way linkages are pimp, bolts are zinc-plated turds, and all robots should wear sunglasses. Levinson's last ...
Read in browser Boing Boing comment of the day
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 10, 2012 08:57 am "You could not be more full of shit here if someone reversed the polarity on your enema bag."—noted by our moderator Antinous in this thread.
Read in browser Crocheted bicycle
By Dean Putney on Sep 10, 2012 12:48 am I spied this cozy crocheted cruiser on Balboa Street just outside Shanghai Dumpling King in San Francisco. Bundle up, winter's coming!
Read in browser London mapped by common surnames
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 09, 2012 07:00 pm James Cheshire (Department of Geography, UCL) produced a series of interactive maps of London that show the relationship of common surnames to different neighbourhoods: This map shows the 15 most frequent surnames in each Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) across Greater London. The colours represent the origin of the surname (*not necessarily* the person) derived ...
Read in browser 56 Broken Kindle Screens: book and video
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 09, 2012 05:00 pm Here's a bit of wry gadget iconography: a book and video devoted to the sad sight of a smashed Kindle screen. Speaking as someone who broke three Kindle screens in as many months (and then gave up on carrying one), I can empathize: "56 Broken Kindle Screens" is a print on demand paperback that consists ...
Read in browser Shooting video -- with bullets
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 09, 2012 03:00 pm A Juxtapoz article from last March featured the firearm-flavored contemporary illustrative photoshoppery of Adam Wheatley. I'm especially fond of this visual commentary on shooting video. Juxtapoz Magazine - The Illustrations of Adam Wheatley (via Kadrey)
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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