[Sponsor] The Alessi Grow Watch is a cool new timepiece designed by Andrea Morgante of Shiro Studio and now available at Watchismo! The watch concept is derived from the 'act of growing' which often results in forms and patterns which we can all instinctively relate to. The surface of the design features a rippled texture, much like the muscle fibers which lay below our skin. Perceived as a single entity rather than an assembly of multiple mechanical parts, 'grow' is an external manifestation of our bodies' qualities.
Win VIP tickets to San Francisco's Treasure Island Music Festival (10/13-10/14)! Woman explains why she is waiting in line for an iPhone 5 LovePalz teledildonic sex toy Optical illusion painted on house Recreating the sound of early 20th-century America Wow, ocean You might be discriminating against women and not even realize it Randy Regier's space toy artwork Healthy family cat euthanized by mistake during routine vet visit for flea bath Fame (1980): Leroy Johnson's "audition" From death row to Life After Death: Damien Echols profiled in NYT Copyright lobbyists secretly engineering clawback of Canadian user rights Amit Gupta on life after cancer treatment Manson's note to Manson What else can a 747 carry? An atlas of horrible things that could happen to you in the 15th century Elfquest: His Memories Suspected burglar found asleep on floor Free guns for romantics Critiquing the flying car in 1944 Flush Mob: 1m Zimbabweans empty cisterns in unison CNN in hot water with State Dept. and slain ambassador's family over diary swiped from embassy French doctors on trial for cancer radiation overdoses Romney on America's uninsured: Let them eat emergency rooms Parkour Squirrel (video) The future is mobile Making the Book Talismanic: An Interview with Robert Ansell Hackspace in Juneau, Alaska Time-Warner Cable pisses off two Starship Enterprise Captains on two coasts Molly Crabapple describes and illustrates her Occupy arrest Win VIP tickets to San Francisco's Treasure Island Music Festival (10/13-10/14)!
By David Pescovitz on Sep 24, 2012 12:57 pm The always-fantastic Treasure Island Music Festival returns to the San Francisco Bay Area on October 13 and 14. The exquisitely-curated line-up includes the likes of Girl Talk, The XX, M83, Joanna Newsom, Public Enemy, Youth Lagoon, Grimes, War On Drugs, and more than a dozen other acts. Our pals at Noise Pop, co-promoters of the ...
Read in browser Woman explains why she is waiting in line for an iPhone 5
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 24, 2012 12:44 pm [Video Link] Mossberg, watch out -- Rachel's gunning for your job. (Via Uproxx)
Read in browser LovePalz teledildonic sex toy
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 24, 2012 12:27 pm An early 1990s magazine called Future Sex was all about teledidonics - devices that allow people to have sex with each other even when they weren't close enough to have sex. But in the early 1990s, there weren't any real teledildonic devices. Future Sex closed down after a few issue In 2012, a couple of ...
Read in browser Optical illusion painted on house
By David Pescovitz on Sep 24, 2012 12:18 pm Ciaran Brennan painted the exterior of his home with a delightfully surrealist trompe l'oeil. "boptical illusion" (via)
Read in browser Recreating the sound of early 20th-century America
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 12:14 pm Naturalist Aldo Leopold took such detailed notes of the sounds he heard in 1930s Wisconsin — particularly bird calls — that researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been able to recreate what the environment sounded like back then. At least, what it sounded like around Aldo Leopold's house. His notes, and the recreated sound, ...
Read in browser Wow, ocean
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 12:05 pm TIL: The Great Barrier Reef is nearly the size of Montana. (Via Marilyn Terrell)
Read in browser You might be discriminating against women and not even realize it
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 12:02 pm Let's talk about the pay gap. Census data show shows that, in 2008, American women still earned .77 cents for every $1 earned by American men. And, while some of this has to do with women working different jobs then men, working less hours, or spending less of their lives moving up the corporate ladder, ...
Read in browser Randy Regier's space toy artwork
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 24, 2012 12:01 pm Artist/sculptor Randy Regier makes one-of-kind toys and sometimes exhibits them in shops that never open their doors. To see them, you must peer through the storefront window. His latest work is a batch of space toys. I was commissioned to find a lost shipping crate of early 1950's era space toys from a Wichita, Kansas ...
Read in browser Healthy family cat euthanized by mistake during routine vet visit for flea bath
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 12:00 pm "Jesse Conway took his mother's 8-year-old cat, Lady, to get a flea bath at Broadway Animal Hospital in Gardner last week when he unknowingly signed forms agreeing to have the kitty put to sleep." The vet gave Conway the wrong forms by accident, and Conway says "nothing was explained," and that he did not realize ...
Read in browser Fame (1980): Leroy Johnson's "audition"
By David Pescovitz on Sep 24, 2012 11:58 am The late Gene Anthony Ray's "audition" as Leroy Johnson in the original, and still brilliant, 1980 film Fame. The tune is Linda Clifford's "Red Light," available on the movie soundtrack. Wicked. His partner Shirley Mulholland, played by Carol Massenburg? A disaster. That's ok, she didn't want to spend four fucking years in this ass-licking school ...
Read in browser From death row to Life After Death: Damien Echols profiled in NYT
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 11:54 am In today's NYT, Dave Itzkoff profiles death-row inmate turned memoirist Damien Echols, who was one-third of the West Memphis Three. The feature includes some really striking photographs by Todd Heisler. The profile is pegged with the release of Echols' new book, "Life After Death." In a separate NYT review, Janet Maslin describes it as "a ...
Read in browser Copyright lobbyists secretly engineering clawback of Canadian user rights
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 24, 2012 11:39 am Michael Geist sez, More than ten years of contentious debate over Canadian copyright law appeared to come to a conclusion in late June when Bill C-11 passed its final legislative hurdle and received royal assent. Yet despite characterizing the bill as a "vital building block", the copyright lobby that pressured the government to impose restrictive ...
Read in browser Amit Gupta on life after cancer treatment
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 11:32 am "We leave in a few weeks… on motorcycles." Read this beautiful blog post from tech entrepreneur Amit Gupta, who was diagnosed exactly one year ago with AML leukemia. I know that feel, bro.
Read in browser Manson's note to Manson
By David Pescovitz on Sep 24, 2012 11:29 am Charles Manson wrote Marilyn Manson a postcard from prison: To Marilyn Manson – It's taken me a long time to get there from where I could touch M. Manson. Now I got a card to play – you may look into my non-profit, ATWA, and give Manson what you think he's got coming for Air, ...
Read in browser What else can a 747 carry?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 11:08 am Last week, a 747 took the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final trip — a voyage to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. But that's not the only way 747s break away from the everyday task of hauling around airline passengers. Scientific American has a slide show of other amazing uses for these great ...
Read in browser An atlas of horrible things that could happen to you in the 15th century
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 11:01 am Today, he's known as "Wound Man", but once upon a time this illustration was just one part of a standard medical or surgical text book. You'd get your basic illustrations of anatomy. Then you'd get your Wound Man, to show you all the different, awful things that could happen to that anatomy. A 2009 blog ...
Read in browser Elfquest: His Memories
By Wendy and Richard Pini on Sep 24, 2012 10:59 am Here's the third page of the new chapter of Elfquest, the long-running series of graphic novels first released in 1978. New to it? Catch up with our introduction to the series and page 1 of the new story.
Read in browser Suspected burglar found asleep on floor
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 24, 2012 10:46 am Cristian Villarreal-Castillo was found asleep on the kitchen floor of a home that was not his own: "[Deputies] believe Villarreal-Castillo entered the home through an unlocked door and was in the process of gathering items when he fell asleep." [ABC]
Read in browser Free guns for romantics
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 24, 2012 10:43 am Buy a $2,500 diamond and receive a free rifle from D. Geller and Son of Cobb County, Ga.,: "A lot of our customers are hunters, and it just seemed like a great thing to do." [WSBT]
Read in browser Critiquing the flying car in 1944
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 24, 2012 10:42 am During World War II, a time when most manufacturing was concentrated on the war effort and Americans were living with ration books and scrap metal drives, advertising became a very strange thing. Companies wanted to make people aware they still existed, even though they weren't currently offering much for sale and unnecessary consumption was being ...
Read in browser Flush Mob: 1m Zimbabweans empty cisterns in unison
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 24, 2012 10:40 am Authorities in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, asked the city's million residents to flush their toilets at precisely 7:30 p.m. Saturday—a move aimed at clearing waste that had accumulated in the system after recent outages. [AP]
Read in browser CNN in hot water with State Dept. and slain ambassador's family over diary swiped from embassy
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 10:39 am A person working for CNN on the story of slain ambassador Chris Stevens swiped his diary from the "the largely unsecured" US consulate in Benghazi. The network then used the diary's contents to produce on-air reports, against the wishes of Stevens' family. The State Department says the network's actions were an "indefensible" invasion of privacy. ...
Read in browser French doctors on trial for cancer radiation overdoses
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 10:34 am In France, doctors and radiologists accused of overdosing hundreds of cancer patients, then destroying evidence to cover up their potentially lethal mistakes, are on trial for manslaughter. Out of a group of 24 patients who got up to 20% more radiation than they should have, seven patients died. "The errors were blamed on the radiation ...
Read in browser Romney on America's uninsured: Let them eat emergency rooms
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 10:13 am During an interview with Scott Pelley on the CBS program "60 Minutes" last night, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney addressed America's uninsured: "Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and ...
Read in browser Parkour Squirrel (video)
By Xeni Jardin on Sep 24, 2012 09:56 am [Video Link] Please enjoy the aptly-titled video above, "squirrel goes rampage on my kitchen and escapes like a boss." (Thanks, Joe Sabia!)
Read in browser The future is mobile
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 24, 2012 09:46 am Robert Andrews writes: "Publishers are seeing mobile audiences growing fast – but revenue is yet to catch up, and it's the ad industry taking the blame. ... Many publishers are becoming worried about migrating their audience from web to mobile in lieu of the latter offering an equivalent business model."
Read in browser Making the Book Talismanic: An Interview with Robert Ansell
By Avi Solomon on Sep 24, 2012 09:00 am Robert Ansell is the Director of Fulgur Press, which has published the work of esoteric artists for 20 years.
Read in browser Hackspace in Juneau, Alaska
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 24, 2012 08:55 am Juneau, Alaska, has a hackspace with the rather formal name of "the STEM satellite space of the Juneau Economic Development Council." Despite the funny name, it sounds like a top-notch hackspace, and it has just expanded its remit to cover adult use as well as kids' programs. Melissa Griffiths of the Juneau Empire has a ...
Read in browser Time-Warner Cable pisses off two Starship Enterprise Captains on two coasts
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 23, 2012 09:07 pm Behold, a Twitter exchange between Captains Kirk and Picard bemoaning the execrable state of Time-Warner Cable and the firm's general incapacity not to be a monstrous source of life-up-fucking. Starfleet Captains versus Time-Warner
Read in browser Molly Crabapple describes and illustrates her Occupy arrest
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 23, 2012 08:54 pm Molly Crabapple's brief, illustrated editorial describing her arrest at the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street is a tale of police entrapment: petty, punitive justice; solidarity, and resolve. At one corner, I saw a cop grabbing the arm of a woman in front of me and pulling her into the street. It was the same ...
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
No comments:
Post a Comment