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UK government is squatting on 1.67 million unused IPv4 addresses Fire tornado NSA to AT&T customers who believe wiretapping violates their rights: neener neener neener Drop everything now, watch this video of a panda being born at the National Zoo Fun activities for you and your nuclear warhead Return of the Winkelvii Ice expert foresees final collapse of arctic sea ice within four years Native American women twice as likely to be raped Study finds BPA associated with obesity in kids Iraq gets a Hackerspace Re-grown lizard tails are cheap knock-offs of the original A mandatory $180 art school textbook about "prehistory to 1800" with no pictures, thanks to a lack of mysterious "copyright clearances" Brain Rot: The Venom Action Figure Why can we see through some animals? Mitt Romney does not understand how one creates a "dirty bomb" When does bad news become funny? How Romney's "47 percent" percolated through the internet, and became a viral political moment Russia reveals large deposit of "extra-hard" diamonds in asteroid crater Marshmallow bedding Obama 2012 campaign erases all previous civil liberties campaign guarantees Guns that are also other weapons Leaked video from Romney fundraiser: Half of US voters expect free "health care, food, housing, you name it" (updated) Privilege denying dude Amid nationalist rage in China, Japanese tech firms suspend operations Lecture on sf writing with Joe Haldeman Pakistan blocks YouTube over "Innocence of Muslims" As space shuttle Endeavour retires in LA, 400 trees to be removed, four times as many to be planted One Year of Occupy. One Year of Journalist Arrests. On Occupy's first anniversary, over 180 arrested in NYC Glaucus atlanticus: For once, the Internet is not lying to you UK government is squatting on 1.67 million unused IPv4 addresses
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 18, 2012 12:38 pm The UK's Department for Work and Pensions is squatting on an unused block of super-scarce IPv4 addresses. Specifically, they're sitting on a /8 network with 1.67 million spare addresses. A petition asks the government to sell these off. It has recently come to light that the Department for Work and Pensions has its own allocated ...
Read in browser Fire tornado
By David Pescovitz on Sep 18, 2012 12:11 pm Chris Tangey took this intense image of a tornado sucking a brushfire into the sky near Alice Springs, Australia. From The Australian: "There was no wind where we were, and yet you had this tornado," Tangey says. For him, it sounded "like a fighter jet"; for (firefighter Ashley) Severin, it was like "standing behind a ...
Read in browser NSA to AT&T customers who believe wiretapping violates their rights: neener neener neener
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:52 am Courthouse News Service has an extensive explainer on the state of a legal battle between The National Security Agency and a group of non-terrorist AT&T customers who claim that warrantless wiretapping violates their rights. The short version: NSA argues it is immune from their federal lawsuit because REASONS.
Read in browser Drop everything now, watch this video of a panda being born at the National Zoo
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:42 am [Video Link] A baby panda cub was born last night at the National Zoo! More at the Zoo website. (via i09).
Read in browser Fun activities for you and your nuclear warhead
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 18, 2012 11:38 am The Skulls in the Stars blog has a funny/terrifying look at all the different uses for nuclear bombs that the United States and the Soviet Union tried to come up over the course of the Cold War. From blowing out a new harbor in Alaska, to mining, to a few less realistic ideas.
Read in browser Return of the Winkelvii
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:35 am Mark Zuckerberg may have Facebook (and its ever-shakier stock valuation), but the Winklevoss twins have a new social network for professional investors. From the WSJ: "After finishing their competitive rowing career, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss launched Winklevoss Capital. The Twins have invested $1 million of their fortune in SumZero, a new social network for the ...
Read in browser Ice expert foresees final collapse of arctic sea ice within four years
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:28 am A leading expert on the science of ice predicts the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years, and describes a "global disaster" unfolding in northern latitudes "as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded." (Guardian via @nytjim)
Read in browser Native American women twice as likely to be raped
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:19 am "One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape," according to a Justice Department statistic cited in the NYT. The rate of sexual assault among indigenous American women "is more than twice the national average," and it's particular grim in "Alaska's isolated villages, where there are no roads in ...
Read in browser Study finds BPA associated with obesity in kids
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:15 am A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that children with higher levels of BPA in their bodies are more likely to be obese. Liz Szabo at USA Today notes that it is "the first large-scale, nationally representative study to link an environmental chemical with obesity in children and teens." Doesn't ...
Read in browser Iraq gets a Hackerspace
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 11:07 am Spencer Ackerman at Wired News reports on a project led by Iraqi-American Bilal Ghalib, 27, "who's trying to create the country's first hackerspace" and believes it'll take "irrational optimism" for Iraqis to remember "they were among the planet's first maker cultures."
Read in browser Re-grown lizard tails are cheap knock-offs of the original
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 18, 2012 11:02 am A new study suggests that the "miracle" of re-growing a lost tail is less awesome than it might first appear. Sure, growing a new tail is cool and all. But the new tails have completely different anatomy — a tube of cartilage in place of vertebra, for instance — and are likely less flexible than ...
Read in browser A mandatory $180 art school textbook about "prehistory to 1800" with no pictures, thanks to a lack of mysterious "copyright clearances"
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 18, 2012 11:00 am Students enrolled in the Ontario College of Art and Design's Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800 are required to buy a $180 "custom textbook." Despite exclusively covering material that is, by definition, in the public domain, and despite a Canadian Supreme Court ruling that establishes a broad "fair dealing" exemption for educational materials, ...
Read in browser Brain Rot: The Venom Action Figure
By Ed Piskor on Sep 18, 2012 11:00 am 
Read in browser Why can we see through some animals?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 18, 2012 10:56 am Creature Cast is one of my favorite blogs — a series of charmingly animated videos about surprising, oft-overlooked details in the animal kingdom. Better yet, the videos are often made by students who work with professor Casey Dunn's evolution and diversity laboratory at Brown University. In this entry, Riley Thompson, from the College of the ...
Read in browser Mitt Romney does not understand how one creates a "dirty bomb"
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 10:53 am Mother Jones today published a second part of the video secretly recorded at a Mitt Romney fundraiser in Boca Raton. The first bombshell will forever be known as "47 percent," but the portion getting attention today focuses on a response the Republican presidential candidate gave to a question about the Israel/Palestine peace process. The tl;dr ...
Read in browser When does bad news become funny?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 18, 2012 10:47 am What makes the difference between successful satire or dark comedy, and jokes that make everybody hate you? Obviously, some of this has to do with the personality and internal culture of the person or group you're talking to. For instance, some families use humor to deal with tragedy. For others, jokes at a funeral would ...
Read in browser How Romney's "47 percent" percolated through the internet, and became a viral political moment
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 10:43 am Ben Smith at Buzzfeed describes the RomneyFail leak as "unexploded digital ordnance," and traces its explosion. At Poynter, a post that similarly explores the hands through which it passed—one of them being Jimmy Carter's grandson.
Read in browser Russia reveals large deposit of "extra-hard" diamonds in asteroid crater
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 18, 2012 10:18 am The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reports that the government has declassified a large deposit of diamonds, located in a meteorite crater formed 35 million years ago. The unique composition of these "extraterrestrial gemstones" could make them uniquely valuable for the technology industry: According to Academician Pokhilenko, "the value of impact diamonds is added by their ...
Read in browser Marshmallow bedding
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 18, 2012 09:51 am From a smashing collection of vintage bedding ads on Voices of East Anglia, this marshmallowey sleeping bag that makes your little ones feel like they're cocooned in spun sugar. I'm Only Dreaming - Vintage Bedding Adverts (via How to Be a Retronaut)
Read in browser Obama 2012 campaign erases all previous civil liberties campaign guarantees
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 18, 2012 09:00 am Marilyn sez, "The Democrats criticized Bush for suspension of civil liberties and guaranteed them in their 2008 platform. In their 2012 platform, those guarantees have all been erased." Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has the whole sad story in Al Jazeera: Listening to Obama's famous keynote address from the 2004 DNC - his ...
Read in browser Guns that are also other weapons
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 11:18 pm On the Propadeucist, "objects that are guns - and are also other weapons," including a gun that is also several other guns. objects that are guns - 2 - and are also other weapons (via Richard Kadrey)
Read in browser Leaked video from Romney fundraiser: Half of US voters expect free "health care, food, housing, you name it" (updated)
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 10:03 pm Mother Jones has published a "secret" video captured during a private fundraiser for Mitt Romney, in which the Republican presidential candidate tells a small gathering of wealthy voters what he thinks of Americans who support Obama. The tl;dr: rich guy who gets millions in tax breaks calls half of America parasites. "[The] 47 percent who ...
Read in browser Privilege denying dude
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 09:44 pm I have encountered his type on the internet before. (via Theremina)
Read in browser Amid nationalist rage in China, Japanese tech firms suspend operations
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 09:30 pm Panasonic, Canon, and other Japanese technology firms have suspended operations at their plants in China, as massive anti-Japan protests continue over disputed islands in the East China Sea. (AFP)
Read in browser Lecture on sf writing with Joe Haldeman
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 17, 2012 09:09 pm Tony Smith from StarShipSofa sez, Over the coming months StarShipSofa will present a series of online web lectures by some of the top SF writers out there. These lectures will be called How To Write Science Fiction with... Among the writers lined up for future lectures are Kim Stanley Robinson, Spider Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi and ...
Read in browser Pakistan blocks YouTube over "Innocence of Muslims"
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 09:08 pm The government of Pakistan blocked access to YouTube today, after Google refused to remove the craptacular trailer for "Innocence of Muslims" linked to violent protests around the the Muslim world. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered the ban to prevent further violence, according to the Pakistani paper Dawn, and YouTube responded with a statement acknowledging ...
Read in browser As space shuttle Endeavour retires in LA, 400 trees to be removed, four times as many to be planted
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 08:50 pm To make room for the space shuttle Endeavour as it is transported from Los Angeles International Airport to The California Science Center, some 400 trees must be removed from the city streets. The shuttle is just too damn wide. An agreement was today reached between the Science Center and South LA neighborhood groups to plant ...
Read in browser One Year of Occupy. One Year of Journalist Arrests.
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 08:40 pm Josh Stearns has been tracking "press suppression and journalist arrests," which became a regular occurrence since the start of Occupy Wall Street on September 17, 2011. "As press, protesters and police converge in New York City for the one year anniversary, we'll be tracking press suppression here." Sadly, the list has been updated today on ...
Read in browser On Occupy's first anniversary, over 180 arrested in NYC
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 17, 2012 08:34 pm The AP reports that protesters circulated around lower Manhattan this morning, one year after the "Occupy" movement kicked off. "There were a few hundred protesters scattered throughout the city. More than 180 of them were arrested by early Monday evening, mostly on disorderly conduct charges."
Read in browser Glaucus atlanticus: For once, the Internet is not lying to you
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 17, 2012 08:24 pm This is actually a real life animal. I know. I didn't believe it either. When it turned up in my Facebook feed, via my Aunt Beth, I assumed that this had to be a hoax photo. Had to be. I mean, just look at it. This animal looks like it should appear in pretty photos ...
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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