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NYT on tailor-Made "bioartificial" organs for regenerative medicine Michigan J Frog meets Black Mesa High quality math audio programs from a successful Kickstarter If Google yanks "Innocence of Muslims," will it lose its DMCA Safe Harbor? Elfquest: A greater challenge Free, Creative Commons licensed downloads of Rapture of the Nerds The Arrival: graphic introduction to steampunk ARG District Attorneys rent out their letterhead to debt collectors, split the shakedown loot Quick self-promotional item: I will be in one of Anderson Cooper's "Tweet Seats" tomorrow morning! Saturday Night Live recap: Seth MacFarlane and Frank Ocean Hot Wheels corkscrew jump with real car Jill back Spider Robinson's podcast returns with an excerpt from The Free Lunch William Gibson on where the Internet's Bohemias are UK Tories put a spam kingpin in charge of the party NYT on tailor-Made "bioartificial" organs for regenerative medicine
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 12:58 pm A feature in the New York Times this weekend about the rapidly-evolving science of growing, then implanting "bioartificial" organs in the field of regenerative medicine, "which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs — livers, kidneys, even hearts — built in the laboratory."
Read in browser Michigan J Frog meets Black Mesa
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 12:37 pm Ronaldthecock produced this Black Mesa/Michigan J Frog mashup as part of a machinima challenge on steamcommunity.com: Let's have another Theme week. Starting sunday September 16th and running through sunday September 23rd, will be Critter week. in honor of the release of Black Mesa this friday, Make Videos of headcrabs, bullsquids, antlions, alien swarm monsters, or ...
Read in browser High quality math audio programs from a successful Kickstarter
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 12:11 pm Peter sez, "Samuel Hansen completed a successful Kickstarter project and as a result has created eight high-quality audio documentaries featuring in-depth stories about the world of mathematics. Samuel describes them: 'While each episode revolves around a single theme, the themes themselves vary widely and include a checkers playing computer, new tools for your mathematical toolbox, ...
Read in browser If Google yanks "Innocence of Muslims," will it lose its DMCA Safe Harbor?
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 11:20 am Robert Cringely speculates on the reasoning behind Google's decision to continue hosting the controversial "Innocence of Muslims" clip despite a request from the State Department to remove it. Cringely believes that Google worries that if it were to begin removing videos, it would lose access to the "Safe Harbor" defense of the 1998 Digital Millennium ...
Read in browser Elfquest: A greater challenge
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Sep 17, 2012 11:00 am 
Here's the second page of the new chapter of Elfquest, the long-running series of graphic novels first released in 1978 (Here's page 1: and here's our our introduction to the series) 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 gonna need a few hours to catch up — Rob
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Read in browser Free, Creative Commons licensed downloads of Rapture of the Nerds
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 09:00 am After a short delay, Charlie Stross and I have finally managed to get the site for our new novel, Rapture of the Nerds, live and online, including Creative Commons licensed ebook versions of the book. If you enjoy the free downloads, we hope you'll buy a personal hardcopy at your local bookseller, or from your ...
Read in browser The Arrival: graphic introduction to steampunk ARG
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 08:49 am The Arrival is the opening salvo in a multi-year, multimedia steampunk alternate reality based in London. It tells the story of how restless mechanical servants were brought to Victorian England, servants who had to move always to recharge their batteries (this alternate world has a different sort of entropy than ours, I gather), and then ...
Read in browser District Attorneys rent out their letterhead to debt collectors, split the shakedown loot
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 16, 2012 09:00 pm Over 300 US district attorneys have made arrangements with strong-arm debt collectors, through which the debt collectors send out threatening notices on the DAs' letterhead to people who've allegedly bounced checks, and split the payments they get back (including hefty "service fees" levied by the collectors) with the DAs' offices. Jessica Silver-Greenberg writes in the ...
Read in browser Quick self-promotional item: I will be in one of Anderson Cooper's "Tweet Seats" tomorrow morning!
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 16, 2012 07:39 pm So, Boing Boing readers, here is a media alert for you: I'm going to be sitting in one of Anderson Cooper's "Tweet Seats" tomorrow morning at his daytime show, Anderson Live, which means that I'm going to be on national television! All y'all are going to find out what I look like! I'll be hijacking ...
Read in browser Saturday Night Live recap: Seth MacFarlane and Frank Ocean
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 16, 2012 07:19 pm Last night, NBC's Saturday Night Live returned early to get a head start on the presidential election season. And not only did it spend considerable time on the topic, it introduced us to three new cast members and shiny new opening credits! Our host for the 38th season premiere was Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family ...
Read in browser Hot Wheels corkscrew jump with real car
By David Pescovitz on Sep 16, 2012 07:05 pm As a kid, did you do insane stunts with your Hot Wheels cars? So do the people at the Hot Wheels Test Facility, but with real cars. This 92-foot "corkscrew jump" broke the world record. "Making of" video here.
Read in browser Jill back
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 16, 2012 06:17 pm Due to popular demand, we have returned Jackhammer Jill to the logo.
Read in browser Spider Robinson's podcast returns with an excerpt from The Free Lunch
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 16, 2012 06:16 pm Hurrah! Spider Robinson's put up another installment of his podcast (it's been understandably erratic for the past few years, as Spider and his family were doubly afflicted by cancer). As always, it features some great blues, jazz, roots and eclectic music (including some great tracks by Jeff Healey and Mose Scarlett as well as a ...
Read in browser William Gibson on where the Internet's Bohemias are
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 16, 2012 03:06 pm Here's more of Geeta Dayal's Wired interview with William Gibson (see also), wherein Gibson discusses the way that the Internet impacts on "Bohemia" and how subcultural moments like the birth of punk differed from modern "viral" phenomena like the Gundam Style video. We'll be discussing this further on Oct 20, when we do a joint ...
Read in browser UK Tories put a spam kingpin in charge of the party
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 16, 2012 01:34 pm Grant Shapps is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield and the new co-chair of the UK Conservative Party. He's also co-owner (with his wife) of a spam factory called HowToCorp, which markets a product called TrafficPaymaster, a program that scrapes blogs/RSS/search results, runs the text through a thesaurus (seemingly to avoid copyright infringement ...
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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