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New Zealand record industry flubs its first three-strikes prosecution Music Appreciation: Drone Girl dresses as a different person every school day Iconic erotic film star Sylvia Kristel of 'Emmanuelle' dies of cancer at 60 1950s Data storage ad Secret Garden, relax-em-up browser game Panama aims to adopt Euro Improving the Tibetan dung-stove with wire coat-hangers Time-Traveling Librarians from Outer Spa... from Texas Cory coming to Vancouver this weekend What does Ritalin do to kids? Why don't we ask the kids? The binary stars of Alpha Centauri, as seen from Saturn The crowd psychology of Grand Central Station Nine books I think you should read (plus a couple more that I need to read, myself) Kill robocalls, get paid Pharisee quits A cordial invitation Mark at WFMU Radiovision Festival 2012, Saturday in NYC Cory in Edmonton tomorrow morning Researcher claims feasibility of writing lethal wireless pacemaker viruses 99 useful hints and tips for everyday life Paranormal Activity 4 has been infiltrating all of your social media with secret plot things Music and the Psychedelic Mind (documentary video) PENDING LARRY QUOTE Dutch government gives itself the right to break into your computer and destroy it How's Your News, Election 2012: developmentally disabled reporters go to GOP and DNC Meet the man who showed up to be Jack Nicholson's body double in The Shining -- 57 years early Failed cannonball into frozen swimming pool Twitter censors Germans' access to Neo-Nazi group's Twitter account "Naked caveman" may be evicted from cave-like home in El Paso, TX New Zealand record industry flubs its first three-strikes prosecution
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2012 01:00 pm The first of eight prosecutions brought under New Zealand's three-strikes copyright law (passed as a rider to the emergency legislation freeing up money to provide relief for the Christchurch earthquake) has fallen apart. The RIANZ (Record Industry Association of NZ) withdrew its case against a student in shared accommodation without saying why. However, as Torrentfreak ...
Read in browser Music Appreciation: Drone
By Marcus Boon on Oct 19, 2012 12:29 pm For many people, a drone wouldn't even be called music, just an irritating noise, like the buzzing of a refrigerator, the hum of traffic, the sound of bees in a hive. For others, it is OMMMM, the sound of the universe in Hindu cosmology, or, put in the language of modern physics, an expression of the fact that everything vibrates, everything is a wave.
Read in browser Girl dresses as a different person every school day
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2012 12:10 pm Stella Ehrhart is an eight-year-old girl in Omaha who dresses as a different historical, prominent or local figure every day, with few repeats; she's been at it since the start of second grade. Much of her inspiration is drawn from 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century, and she and her fellow students and ...
Read in browser Iconic erotic film star Sylvia Kristel of 'Emmanuelle' dies of cancer at 60
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2012 12:08 pm Actress Sylvia Kristel died this week at 60 years of age. "She died during the night during her sleep," her agent, Marieke Verharen, told the AFP news agency. The cause of her death was cancer. In recent years, she received treatment for throat and liver cancer, and suffered a stroke. She is most famous for ...
Read in browser 1950s Data storage ad
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 19, 2012 11:55 am How Don Draper's firm might have saved client data. From OrangeCats' Flickr stream, referenced in "History of Modern Computing" (Ceruzzi).
Read in browser Secret Garden, relax-em-up browser game
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 19, 2012 11:40 am The Secret Garden (play) is a relaxing trip around a mysterious polygon-tastic pastoral landscape. The Garden's deligts include jumping around and Buddha-hurling. [via Free Indie Games]
Read in browser Panama aims to adopt Euro
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 19, 2012 11:29 am The Panamanian president announced that the country would like to introduce the Euro as legal tender, alongside the U.S. dollar. [Reuters]
Read in browser Improving the Tibetan dung-stove with wire coat-hangers
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2012 11:00 am Liz To has designed a coat-hanger-based disassemblable stove for Tibetan nomads who cook indoors. It's a clever way of recycling one of the more pernicious waste products of western society (coat hangers) and relieving one of the worst health problems faced by Tibetan nomads (indoor pollution from dung fires). Apart from the rather unfortunate orthography ...
Read in browser Time-Traveling Librarians from Outer Spa... from Texas
By LibraryLab on Oct 19, 2012 10:07 am When I first heard of the Billy Pilgrim Traveling Library, a new Houston-based bookmobile venture, I felt myself get a bit unstuck in time. For one thing, I usually see "traveling library" used to describe the library boxes that were shipped as part of early extension efforts that were especially popular in the 1890s. And ...
Read in browser Cory coming to Vancouver this weekend
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 19, 2012 08:12 am Hey, Vancouver! I'm headed your way tomorrow for a pair of ticketed appearances at the Vancouver Writers Festival, the first with William Gibson at 2PM, then another at 5PM with Margaret Atwood and Pasha Malla. On Sunday at 6PM, Kidsbooks (one of the last great independent children's bookstores in the country) is hosting an event ...
Read in browser What does Ritalin do to kids? Why don't we ask the kids?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 19, 2012 12:01 am I know. It's a crazy idea. The ADHD Voices report isn't peer reviewed research (and it's presented in way that you might find to be refreshingly readable, or a jumbly mess that's hard to follow in spots, depending), but it points us toward some ideas that really should be followed up on. Couple things that ...
Read in browser The binary stars of Alpha Centauri, as seen from Saturn
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 18, 2012 11:38 pm Earlier this week, we learned that there is (most likely) at least one planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B. If you want to get really in-depth on this discovery, how it was made, and what it means, you should be reading Paul Gilster's Centauri Dreams blog. I wanted to highlight this image, specifically, in ...
Read in browser The crowd psychology of Grand Central Station
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 18, 2012 11:26 pm New York's Grand Central Terminal, as it currently stands today, was built between 1903 and 1913. But it is the third Grand Central. Two earlier buildings — one called Grand Central Depot, and the other known as Grand Central Station (which remains the colloquial name for the Terminal) — existed on pretty much the exact ...
Read in browser Nine books I think you should read (plus a couple more that I need to read, myself)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 18, 2012 10:40 pm The New York Times Magazine's 6th Floor Blog interviewed me about the books I'm reading now (including a climate scientist's account of dealing with evidence and uncertainty in the treatment of cancer), the science books I love (where you'll learn why it's impossible to remove the risk from risky technologies), and the books I generally ...
Read in browser Kill robocalls, get paid
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 18, 2012 09:48 pm If you hate robocalls and love money, the FTC wants to hear from you. They're offering a $50K bounty for practical robocall-killing technology. Details at robocall.challenge.gov.
Read in browser Pharisee quits
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 18, 2012 09:32 pm Conservative thinker Dinesh D'Souza split his time between haranguing the president over "traditional values", getting engaged to a 29-year-old woman who is not his wife, and being president of an evangelical college. Alas, the college gig didn't work out.
Read in browser A cordial invitation
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 18, 2012 09:06 pm 
Read in browser Mark at WFMU Radiovision Festival 2012, Saturday in NYC
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 18, 2012 07:39 pm If you are going to be in New York this weekend, I'll be giving the keynote talk at 10 am on Saturday at the WFMU Radiovision 2012 Conference. I'm going to be talking about maker culture, Boing Boing, MAKE magazine, and the future of DIY. I'm really looking forward to meeting the other attendees! WFMU ...
Read in browser Cory in Edmonton tomorrow morning
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 18, 2012 06:34 pm Hey, Edmonton! A reminder: I'll be at the free PAGES library conference tomorrow morning at the Stanley Milner Library. My keynote is at 9:15 AM, followed by a Q&A at 1130h and a signing at 1, before I head out to Vancouver for the Vancouver Writers Festival where I'll be doing two ticketed events; one ...
Read in browser Researcher claims feasibility of writing lethal wireless pacemaker viruses
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 18, 2012 06:00 pm In a presentation at the BreakPoint security conference in Melbourne, IOActive researcher Barnaby Jack described an attack on pacemakers that could, he says, deliver lethal shocks to their owners. Jack claims that an unspecified pacemaker vendor's devices have a secret wireless back-door that can be activated by knowledgeable attackers from up to 30 feet away, ...
Read in browser 99 useful hints and tips for everyday life
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 18, 2012 05:08 pm Most of the clever tips on this page will eventually come in handy for me. I tried the toilet roll iPhone speaker trick and it works!
Read in browser Paranormal Activity 4 has been infiltrating all of your social media with secret plot things
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 18, 2012 04:42 pm Dread Central has been doing a little bit of investigating into the viral campaign being run by Paranormal Activity 4. Accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube apparently belong to a man named Jacob Degloshi from Henderson, Nevada. But appearing in one picture he's shared on Twitter is a young blonde woman named Alex, who happens ...
Read in browser Music and the Psychedelic Mind (documentary video)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 18, 2012 04:25 pm "Music and the Psychedelic Mind" is a 20-minute documentary that explores the relationship between music and psychedelic drugs.
Read in browser PENDING LARRY QUOTE
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 18, 2012 04:08 pm Google posted (apparently bad) quarterly earnings with the SEC early, and the stock fell about 9 percent before it halted trading. [Buzzfeed]
Read in browser Dutch government gives itself the right to break into your computer and destroy it
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 18, 2012 03:28 pm Ot from Bits of Freedom sez, "On 15 October, the Dutch ministry of Justice and Security proposed powers for the police to break into computers, install spyware, search computers and destroy data. These powers would extend to computers located outside the Netherlands. Dutch digital rights movement Bits of Freedom warns for the unacceptable risks to ...
Read in browser How's Your News, Election 2012: developmentally disabled reporters go to GOP and DNC
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 18, 2012 02:51 pm Developmentally disabled news reporters cover the weird world of the 2012 RNC and DNC. We interview director Arthur Bradford, and backer Matt Stone (South Park, Book of Mormon).
Read in browser Meet the man who showed up to be Jack Nicholson's body double in The Shining -- 57 years early
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 18, 2012 02:21 pm When the Overlook Hotel swallowed Jack Torrance's soul in The Shining, sucking him into their haunted history, did you ever wonder if Stanley Kubrick actually got a whole bunch of people to pose for that last vintage-looking photo of happy partygoers, with Jack Nicholson front and center? Or did you consider that it was an ...
Read in browser Failed cannonball into frozen swimming pool
By David Pescovitz on Oct 18, 2012 02:13 pm "Fuck the fucking cold."
Read in browser Twitter censors Germans' access to Neo-Nazi group's Twitter account
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 18, 2012 02:04 pm A story that seems tailor-made for internet comment thread arguments: Twitter has blocked access for those inside Germany to the tweets of a German neonazi group, whose very existence is against the law in Germany. Chilling Effects has the legal request that led to the content block. Notably, the hate group is fond of teddy ...
Read in browser "Naked caveman" may be evicted from cave-like home in El Paso, TX
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 18, 2012 01:55 pm A naked "caveman" whose life and political beliefs have intrigued residents of El Paso, TX may soon be evicted from his cave home. There's a video interview with him here. The local ABC TV affiliate learned that his dwelling "is actually an intricate structure comprised of three main living quarters." This includes the cave he ...
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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