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Great Graphic Novels: Promethea, by Alan Moore Origami TIE Fighter eBook Review: Warm Moonlight Star Wars meets Rushmore meets Breakfast Club: Jedi High Thomas Jefferson, enthusiastic, brutal slaver Firing a pistol underwater Dinosaur Smith-Corona's voice letters by post: dead media Greek Pastafarian arrested for "Cyber Crimes" Princess Vader goes to Disneyland Great Graphic Novels: Promethea, by Alan Moore
By Angus Stocking on Sep 30, 2012 12:30 pm Last month I asked my friends to write about books they loved (you can read all the essays here). This month, I invited them to write about their favorite graphic novels, and they selected some excellent titles. I hope you enjoy them! (Read all the Great Graphic Novel essays here.) -- Mark Promethea, by Alan ...
Read in browser Origami TIE Fighter
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 30, 2012 11:34 am Martin "starwarigami" Hunt made this lovely TIE Fighter origami piece for London's MCM Comic Expo and contributed it to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, along with several other marvellous creations. The photo notes state: "Folded from a 2 by 1 rectangle cut from a sheet of 150gsm A1 craft paper. For a B.O.S. display at ...
Read in browser eBook Review: Warm Moonlight
By Jason Weisberger on Sep 30, 2012 10:26 am Warm Moonlight is the second Kindle Single I've read by Joseph Wurtenbaugh. I really like his style! Warm Moonlight reveals a former 20's gun moll turned grandmother, sharing a supernatural story of their family past with her granddaughter. While the story isn't the most original and you've heard it before, Wurtenbaugh does a wonderful job ...
Read in browser Star Wars meets Rushmore meets Breakfast Club: Jedi High
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 30, 2012 09:00 am Vincent sez, "A hard-working group of film students from Oak Park High in Winnipeg, Manitoba made this intergalactic cinematic mashup, which is an homage not only to Star Wars, but also The Breakfast Club and Rushmore." Jedi High (Thanks, Vincent!)
Read in browser Thomas Jefferson, enthusiastic, brutal slaver
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 29, 2012 11:59 pm Marilyn sez, "My historian friend Henry Wiencek was distressed when he found, halfway into his research on Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves a new book about Thomas Jefferson, that generations of historians had been covering up Jefferson's dark side: he wasn't the lenient, soft-hearted, reluctant slave owner that he'd been made ...
Read in browser Firing a pistol underwater
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 29, 2012 09:09 pm Destin from Smarter Every Day captured high-speed images of both a revolver and an automatic pistol discharging underwater; the water perfectly captures and renders visible the gas forces at work in the system (and makes for a beautiful picture). I performed an experiment to see what the differences were between semi-automatic pistols and revolvers. The ...
Read in browser Dinosaur
By Rob Beschizza on Sep 29, 2012 06:30 pm The correct answer is, of course, Ankylosaurus.
Read in browser Smith-Corona's voice letters by post: dead media
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 29, 2012 06:02 pm Here's a weird bit of dead media: a Smith-Corona audio-letter that used a "Letterpack cartridge" (which appears to be a 3.5" floppy disc) to record and play back personal voice-letters sent by post. The apparatus is a fascinating dead branch in design history, something that looks like it might be descended from a desktop intercom ...
Read in browser Greek Pastafarian arrested for "Cyber Crimes"
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 29, 2012 04:13 pm A reader writes, "On September 24, Greece's Cyber Crimes division arrested a 27 year old man on charges of blasphemy, for his website that mocks a well-known Greek monk Elder Paisios, using the name Elder Pastitsios (the even better-known Greek pasta dish). The link is to a Greek blog, which shows a religious procession through ...
Read in browser Princess Vader goes to Disneyland
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 29, 2012 02:57 pm This little girl reportedly visited Disneyland with her parents in her adorable princess Vader Hallowe'en costume, taking it for a test drive. Rsharich, the redditor who posted the pic, doesn't mention how the day went, but I assume it was, you know, epic. Friends took their daughter dressed like this, all day, to Disneyland (i.imgur.com)
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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