Caturday: Japanese cat in a box Long dinosaur is long HOW TO: Fish in the desert Cory in Boston today for finale of the Pirate Cinema tour Knuckles that promote literacy Man cultivates healthy lifestyle to be more like his avatar Two brilliant SF YA novels now in paperback Slow animated GIF Zombie lord carved from pumpkin Photos from Disney Television Animation's fall art gallery Starlog Magazine: Crazy movie rumors before the Internet Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide The infrastructure of longevity — a systems-level perspective of living to 100 Sponsor shout-out: ShanaLogic and cephalopod wine/bar accessories This year's hottest fashion item is a CSS style sheet MAKE Vol 32 is here! 3D printed "Success Kid" A fact that explains a lot about why I hate certain bars Amazing citizen science opportunity! Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. (Photo) Scientific American goes inside the rogue geo-engineering story HOWTO make a Minecraft Herobrine costume How to: Eat a triceratops Copyright versus human rights G4 announces the end of Attack of the Show!, X-Play Wet Hair: "Spill Into Atmosphere" music review Bird poops on TV anchor In the year 2000 The dangers of being a 19th-century x-ray fiend Boing Boing Daily Digest 003 10/26/2012 Caturday: Japanese cat in a box
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 27, 2012 12:34 pm Shironekoshiro.
Read in browser Long dinosaur is long
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 27, 2012 08:14 am Diplodocus is a sauropod — one of those dinosaurs whose shape you probably associate with the name "brontosaurus". Except that Diplodocus was long. Really long. At an average length of 90 feet, it's longest dinosaur ever found. Also: It might have had spines up and down its neck. Check out this LiveScience piece by Kim ...
Read in browser HOW TO: Fish in the desert
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 27, 2012 08:06 am In the United Arab Emirates, a freshwater lake has appeared in the middle of the desert. The oasis is beautiful and full of life, and it's risen 35 feet since 2011. It's also probably accidentally man-made. Hydrologists believe the lake formed from recycled drinking water (and toilet water). The nearby city of Al Ain pumps ...
Read in browser Cory in Boston today for finale of the Pirate Cinema tour
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 27, 2012 06:11 am Yo, Boston! Today is the last day of my Pirate Cinema tour (after this, I'll be touring complete) and I'm wrapping it up in Boston, the 18th city in 6 weeks, where I'll be appearing at the Boston Book Festival, on a 4:15 panel with MT Anderson, Rachel Cohn, and Gabrielle Zevin. Come on out ...
Read in browser Knuckles that promote literacy
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 27, 2012 12:09 am Spotted today at a Toronto restaurant: a great, pro-literacy set of knuckle-tatts. READ MORE knuckles, Fresh, Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Read in browser Man cultivates healthy lifestyle to be more like his avatar
By David Pescovitz on Oct 26, 2012 10:36 pm Marcus Dickinson, 40, was very overweight and unhealthy when he created his EVE Online character Roc Wieler, the tough guy seen above left. Eventually, Dickinson became so inspired by Roc that he hit the gym to be more like him. Above right is Dickinson now. "I'm a role player inherently," Dickinson says. "I take it ...
Read in browser Two brilliant SF YA novels now in paperback
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 26, 2012 10:04 pm Great news: two of my favorite young adult novels of recent years are now in paperback. First is Steven Gould's 7th Sigma, a spectacular science fiction/western mashup set in the southwest after a mysterious alien invasion makes it impossible to use metal anywhere in the desert. Next is Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, a brilliant post-peak-oil ...
Read in browser Slow animated GIF
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 08:23 pm 
Read in browser Zombie lord carved from pumpkin
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 26, 2012 08:12 pm Ray Villafane carved this pumpkin lord at the New York Botanical Gardens, where it was captured on still and video.
Read in browser Photos from Disney Television Animation's fall art gallery
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 07:07 pm Here are photos from Disney Television Animation's fall art gallery, themed "Some Kind of Monster," spotlighting submissions from its pool of talented creative artists, executives and staff who create shows like Gravity Falls, which is a favorite around our house.
Read in browser Starlog Magazine: Crazy movie rumors before the Internet
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 06:43 pm Mike Ryan has a fun article about Starlog magazine in The Huffington Post. "Starlog" was a glorious publication. In the mid-1980s, at a small-town newsstand in mid-Missouri, I had my first experience with "Starlog." This particular newsstand often carried back issues of comic books (most often "The Flash," for whatever reason), but one day I ...
Read in browser Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 06:27 pm Here are some examples of projects from the Unofficial Lego Technic Builder's Guide.
Read in browser The infrastructure of longevity — a systems-level perspective of living to 100
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 06:15 pm I really enjoyed reading a recent story in The New York Times Magazine about attempts to understand extreme longevity — the weird tendency for certain populations to have larger-than-average numbers of people who live well into their 90s, if not 100s. Written by Dan Buettner, the piece focuses on the Greek island of Ikaria, and, ...
Read in browser Sponsor shout-out: ShanaLogic and cephalopod wine/bar accessories
By David Pescovitz on Oct 26, 2012 06:08 pm Special thanks to our lovely sponsor ShanaLogic, sellers of handmade and independently-designed jewelry, apparel, gifts, and other curious creations. The shop's inventory of Dellamorte's cephalopod wine/bar products has expanded with the stately Octopus Bottle Opener. Also still available are the popular Squid Corkscrew and Tentacle Wine Stopper. All of the pieces are cast resin with ...
Read in browser This year's hottest fashion item is a CSS style sheet
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 06:03 pm What do Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Web design share in common with high fashion?
Read in browser MAKE Vol 32 is here!
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 05:53 pm The new issue of MAKE magazine has hit the stands! Volume 32 has lots of cool projects and articles.
Read in browser 3D printed "Success Kid"
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 26, 2012 05:46 pm Ryan sez, "I did a digital sculpture of the e-famous Success Kid and am selling 3D printed copies through Shapeways. Here's a video timelapse of the sculpting process."
Read in browser A fact that explains a lot about why I hate certain bars
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 05:28 pm According to a Popular Science story published earlier this month, turning up the volume of music in a bar increases the rate at which the patrons drink. Which I suppose makes sense. When you can't talk to anybody, you always have booze to be your friend. In fact, a 22 percent increase in music volume ...
Read in browser Amazing citizen science opportunity!
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 05:20 pm This is seriously awesome. Researchers with the Mastadon Matrix Project need help sifting through "matrix" — the dirt that a fossil is embedded in. Join the Project, and you'll be sent a kilogram of matrix from a mastadon dig in New York State. You can do the analysis with inexpensive, easy-to-find equipment, and then send ...
Read in browser Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. (Photo)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 05:09 pm A 1939 photo by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. See full size at Shorpy.
Read in browser Scientific American goes inside the rogue geo-engineering story
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 04:24 pm Recently, news broke that a scientist had unilaterally launched a geo-engineering experiment — dumping iron sulfate and iron oxide into the Pacific Ocean. There were two goals to the project: First, grow a massive plankton bloom which would store atmospheric carbon the same way that trees take in and store atmospheric carbon; second, use that ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a Minecraft Herobrine costume
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 26, 2012 03:45 pm Matt sez, "Here's a link for the Herobrine costume I made for my son. After a bunch of requests, I put up the PDF files and instructions to make your own. It was a huge hit with the kids at his school. Even bigger than when we went as Finn and the Ice King last ...
Read in browser How to: Eat a triceratops
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 03:43 pm With their big, bitey teeth and teeny, ineffectual arms, it can be difficult to picture how Tyrannosaurus Rex actually managed to eat anything. After all, all of our personal experience with eating involves an awful lot of gripping with the forearms. Some new research, takes a stab at understanding T. Rex table manners. The results ...
Read in browser Copyright versus human rights
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 26, 2012 03:42 pm On TechDirt, Leigh Beadon's taken an excellent, in-depth look at the way that UN instruments and treaties address copyright and human rights.
Read in browser G4 announces the end of Attack of the Show!, X-Play
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 26, 2012 03:38 pm In an official announcement on its web site, gamer channel G4 told fans that its two of its most popular and long-running shows would end at the end of the year: G4's two longest-running and defining series, Attack of the Show! and X-Play, will be ending their run at the end of 2012. Both shows ...
Read in browser Wet Hair: "Spill Into Atmosphere" music review
By Aquarius on Oct 26, 2012 03:37 pm These Iowa psychpop-kraudrone-WTFwave weirdos return with their second full length for De Stijl.
Read in browser Bird poops on TV anchor
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 26, 2012 03:24 pm It's raining poop. "I have to tell you Bethany," says Fox anchor Paul Robins, "one of my goals in life is to make it on YouTube and I think I just did."
Read in browser In the year 2000
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 26, 2012 03:06 pm Illustration from a 1960 Cinzano ad, shared on Flickr by photographer and vintage ad aficionado Paul Malon of Toronto. His collection is extensive and excellent.
Read in browser The dangers of being a 19th-century x-ray fiend
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 26, 2012 03:04 pm How a 19th-century fascination with x-rays turned deadly.
Read in browser Boing Boing Daily Digest 003 10/26/2012
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 26, 2012 02:59 pm I am continuing to experiment with a daily digest highlighting some of my favorite posts on Boing Boing. This one is about eight minutes long. Let me know what you think!
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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