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Candy-corn flavored Oreos are a thing Musicians on file-sharing, record industry as Monsanto See you in Rochester on Sunday! Wells Fargo mistakenly forecloses on the wrong house, destroys elderly couple's entire lifetime's worth of possessions Internet video's robotic, idiotic copyright cops Beer Slogans Quiz! Glenn Greenwald replies to CNN's attempt to discredit story about compromised Bahrain coverage Shepard Fairey sentenced to probation US State department employee owes $3.3 million to escaped sex slave Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has a few choice words for a Maryland politician Anthrax's Dan Spitz is now a master watchmaker Rebel on Rebel: Rebel Wilson interviews a rapper version of herself Cartoon characters gone bad CC-licensed nerdy feature film breaks Kickstarter record Google celebrates Star Trek's 46th anniversary with an interactive doodle! Earlimart - "97 Heart Attack" (free MP3) Gay war veteran talks to Mitt Romney The wet get wetter and the dry get drier Tim Berners-Lee blasts UK government's Internet spying plan Instructions for legitimate knot enthusiasts What is the SPF of your beard? America's best public bathrooms Story of the family business whose gears are inside the Mars rovers How to build a better speed limit Candy-corn flavored Oreos are a thing
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 08, 2012 12:49 pm The end-times are upon us (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Musicians on file-sharing, record industry as Monsanto
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 08, 2012 10:45 am On TechDirt, Mike Masnick rounds up three thoughtful and thought-provoking statements from musicians about the way that their careers can be helped by piracy, and the how the response to downloading is bad for art and society. I was especially impressed with this op-ed from Doomtree Collective's Dessa, who makes a connection between the music ...
Read in browser See you in Rochester on Sunday!
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 08, 2012 08:37 am Charlie Stross and I conclude our whirlwind transhumanist comedy two-act on Sunday to support our new novel Rapture of the Nerds with appearances at RIT in Rochester, and the IEEE International Games Innovation Conference 2012. Be there or be consigned to the scrapheap of history!
Read in browser Wells Fargo mistakenly forecloses on the wrong house, destroys elderly couple's entire lifetime's worth of possessions
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 10:17 pm Wells Fargo mistakenly foreclosed on a home that had no mortgage, sending in a crew to steal all and throw out all the elderly homeowners' belongings. Alvin Tjosaas helped his father build the family home in Twentynine Palms, CA when he was a teenager, and the couple raised their own children there. The Wells Fargo ...
Read in browser Internet video's robotic, idiotic copyright cops
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 07:49 pm On Wired, Geeta Dayal looks at the state of automated copyright enforcement video-bots, the mindless systems that shut down the Hugo awards livestream, took down NASA's own footage of the Curiosity landing, and interrupted the video from the DNC. Dayal examines the legal status and necessity for these bots (dubious); their ability to model copyright's ...
Read in browser Beer Slogans Quiz!
By David K. Israel on Sep 07, 2012 07:13 pm Twaggies presents another quiz, which on this occasion shall have you under the counter
Read in browser Glenn Greenwald replies to CNN's attempt to discredit story about compromised Bahrain coverage
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 06:07 pm Yesterday, I blogged Glenn Greenwald's Guardian story about CNN suppressing its own award-winning documentary on human rights abuses in Bahrain, which Greenwald linked to CNNi's commercial relationship with the ruling Bahraini regime. I was quickly contacted by two different PR flacks from CNN with a list of small, picky points it disputed about Greenwald's article, ...
Read in browser Shepard Fairey sentenced to probation
By David Pescovitz on Sep 07, 2012 05:40 pm Shepard Fairey was sentenced for two years' probation for tampering with evidence during his copyright battle with the Associated Press. From CNN: "I accept full responsibility for violating the court's trust by tampering with evidence during my civil case with (The) Associated Press, which, after my admitting to engaging in this conduct, led to this ...
Read in browser US State department employee owes $3.3 million to escaped sex slave
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 07, 2012 05:32 pm "A Virginia federal judge awarded $3.3 million to a Yemeni woman who was enslaved by a State Department employee and repeatedly raped by that worker's husband." Fortunately for the State Department employee, Linda Howard, she is still employed as an IT manager there, so she will be able to pay the bill off on no ...
Read in browser Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has a few choice words for a Maryland politician
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 07, 2012 05:08 pm In case you were wondering how some NFL players feel about marriage equality, Chris Kluwe, punter for the Minnesota Vikings, is in support. Vocal support. Very vocal support. He also supports fellow player Brendon Ayanbadejo, linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, who recently voiced his own support for marriage equality. Why? Because this November, there is ...
Read in browser Anthrax's Dan Spitz is now a master watchmaker
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 04:00 pm Hodinkee's John Reardon has a great profile on and interview with Dan Spitz, former Anthrax guitar hero who quit the music business to become a world-renowned, prize-winning watchmaker who hand-lathes his own replacement parts for antique watch restorations. Reardon quit his gig to spend more time with his family -- he has twin boys who ...
Read in browser Rebel on Rebel: Rebel Wilson interviews a rapper version of herself
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 07, 2012 03:37 pm Bachelorette star Rebel Wilson did an interview for Bullett with Rebelicious, the British rapper who was hiding inside of her this whole time. I thought you might like to read something like that on a Friday afternoon. Respect. (via Rebel Wilson on Twitter)
Read in browser Cartoon characters gone bad
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 07, 2012 03:18 pm A botched bank robbery. From a men's adventure magazine. (Via X-Ray Delta One)
Read in browser CC-licensed nerdy feature film breaks Kickstarter record
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 03:02 pm Ben sez, "Our feature film comedy about roleplaying gamers and collectible card games, The Gamers: Hands of Fate, is just finishing up a very successful campaign on Kickstarter [ed: $384,174 and rising at the time of writing] and we wouldn't be here without Boing Boing. Reading this site taught us how to go directly to ...
Read in browser Google celebrates Star Trek's 46th anniversary with an interactive doodle!
By Jamie Frevele on Sep 07, 2012 02:46 pm Hey, Trekkies: Google has treated us all to a really fun, interactive doodle to celebrate the 46th anniversary of the network premiere of Star Trek! From today until tomorrow -- September 8, the actual air date in 1966 -- you will get to set your cursors to "stun" and maybe mess with a Redshirt (hint: ...
Read in browser Earlimart - "97 Heart Attack" (free MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Sep 07, 2012 02:14 pm Sound it Out # 36: Earlimart - "97 Heart Attack" (MP3) Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray make records as Earlimart and also help other artists make theirs. Aaron owns The Ship Recording Studio in LA, which evolved from a group of friends who liked to drink beer and play music to a place where artists from around the globe ...
Read in browser Gay war veteran talks to Mitt Romney
By Mark Frauenfelder on Sep 07, 2012 02:10 pm [Video Link] First posted in December, I just watched this excellent video of a Vietnam war veteran speaking with Mitt Romney about marriage equality. The vet was undecided about who to vote for before he spoke face-to-face with Romney, and by the end of the conversation he decided Romney's reprehensible homophobia made him unsuitable to ...
Read in browser The wet get wetter and the dry get drier
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 07, 2012 02:07 pm The other day, a reader asked why I call climate change "climate change", instead of "global warming". The short answer is that, from my perspective, climate change does a much better job of giving people an accurate mental picture of what is going on. Global warming sounds like the world is just going to get ...
Read in browser Tim Berners-Lee blasts UK government's Internet spying plan
By Cory Doctorow on Sep 07, 2012 01:54 pm Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has blasted the UK government's Draft Communications Bill, which will allow bulk, warrantless, unaccountable surveillance of all Internet traffic by government agencies in the UK. TBL rightly points out that this will overturn the whole UK tradition of freedom and privacy. The Open Rights Group has a ...
Read in browser Instructions for legitimate knot enthusiasts
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 07, 2012 01:47 pm Please observe this chart of knots and then direct all claims of new knots to the New-Knot Claims Assessment Committee, which will assess your knot and let you know whether or not the knot is new.
Read in browser What is the SPF of your beard?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 07, 2012 01:37 pm Have I told you guys lately that you should be reading the Scicurious blog, especially for Weird Science Fridays? Because, seriously, you guys. You guys, seriously. Today, Scicurious tackles "DOSIMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF THE SOLAR ERYTHEMAL UV RADIATION PROTECTION PROVIDED BY BEARDS AND MOUSTACHES", a paper published in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry. Basically, it's about ...
Read in browser America's best public bathrooms
By David Pescovitz on Sep 07, 2012 01:29 pm Every year, the company Cintas sponsors a contest to find "America's Best Restroom," specifically public bathrooms. This year's finalists like Washington DC's Mie N Yu Restaurant and Minneapolis's Walker Art Center boast posh bathrooms to be sure, but my favorite is the 2007 winner: Jungle Jim's International Market in Fairfield, Ohio. You enter the expansive ...
Read in browser Story of the family business whose gears are inside the Mars rovers
By David Pescovitz on Sep 07, 2012 01:15 pm Forest City Gear is a family business that was founded in 1955 in Roscoe, Illinois. The gears they make are now on Mars, inside the Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers. Our City, Our Story tells the Forest City Gear story.
Read in browser How to build a better speed limit
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Sep 07, 2012 01:06 pm Sometime in November, Texas will open a stretch of toll road south of Austin where the speed limit will be 85 miles per hour.It will be the highest speed limit in America. (Montana used to have no speed limit at all during the day, but that changed in 1999.) Naturally, one of the big arguments ...
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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