Lucy the Elephant 1881 novelty house survived Sandy Chat about climate science and Sandy with Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh Sumana Harihareswara and sf writer Leonard Richardson will match up to $10,000 in donations to the Ada Initiative, funding for women in open culture and free/open source Instagramming Hurricane Sandy's damage The Great Showdowns, exclusive excerpt from Scott Campbell's terrific new book Quack medicine pills made from babies and super bacteria smuggled from China to South Korea Millions without power in US after Hurricane Sandy Awesome and ill-starred bodges: "Crazy logistics" Video from flooded NYC: East 8th Street and Avenue C before the blackout How to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning from generators in an emergency Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee pt. 1 HOWTO follow FDNY radio scanners in an emergency Haunted Mansion model-kit ads First-person account of emergency hospital evacuation in NYC after Sandy power outage Sandy slows US nuclear plants, oldest in US declares alert: morning-after update Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312: a novel that hints at what we might someday have (and lose) Con Ed transformer explosion in Manhattan Music for Sleeping Children (Video) Boing Boing Daily Digest 004 10/29/2012 NYC Mayor Bloomberg's ASL interpreter Lydia Callis has her own fan-tumblr Exploding electrical wires sparking fires in NYC Apps for Kids 32: Cobypic Rescue video: Sandy sinks tall ship HMS Bounty replica off NC; 14 saved, 2 missing (updated) Gawker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post experience Sandy downtime after power knockout Monkey rides on a goat walking a tightrope Dying old satellites jeopardize future storm coverage Man steals phone on subway Sandy's getting bad Halloween greetings from Antarctica How Adrian Tomine came up with his first New Yorker cover Lucy the Elephant 1881 novelty house survived Sandy
By David Pescovitz on Oct 30, 2012 12:56 pm BB pal Todd Lappin reports: Last night, tropical story Sandy made landfall approximately 5 miles southwest of Atlantic City, NJ. That means Sandy came ashore in Margate, NJ, on the exact site of Lucy the Elephant -- a charming 19th century house built in the shape of a gigantic circus elephant. Lucy has survived the ...
Read in browser Chat about climate science and Sandy with Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 30, 2012 12:56 pm Yesterday, I told you that the relationship between Hurricane Sandy and climate change can be summed up with "It's Complicated". If you want a referendum on climate change, the data is in and we know it's happening. But if you're curious about this specific storm, what scientists know about hurricane systems, and how weather and ...
Read in browser Sumana Harihareswara and sf writer Leonard Richardson will match up to $10,000 in donations to the Ada Initiative, funding for women in open culture and free/open source
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 30, 2012 12:13 pm Sumana sez, "Scifi author Leonard Richardson and his spouse Sumana Harihareswara are pleding up to $10,000 from their own pockets to match donations to the Ada Initiative made before November 1st. They say: 'This is make-or-break time for the Ada Initiative. Leonard and I make our living through open source and we want to pay ...
Read in browser Instagramming Hurricane Sandy's damage
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 12:01 pm Mobile Photo Group has a live curated feed of the #hurricanesandy Instagram tag, and photos of the storm's damage throughout the Eastern US. Related: Time's photogs covering the storm last night via Instagram. And below, one particularly striking image from @jesseandgreg on Instagram: East Village swamped! #newyorkcity #nyc #ev #flood #avenuec
Read in browser The Great Showdowns, exclusive excerpt from Scott Campbell's terrific new book
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 30, 2012 12:00 pm Here's Scott Campbell with a few words about his wonderful new new book, The Great Showdowns, which depicts cartoonified iconic scenes of conflict from beloved movies. Ever since the beginning of time, there has been struggle in the world. From Triceratops versus Tyrannosaurus Rex to Tom versus Jerry. We deal with it in our day ...
Read in browser Quack medicine pills made from babies and super bacteria smuggled from China to South Korea
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 30, 2012 12:00 pm The South Korean customs department is going to target its inspections in order to intercept shipments of Chinese quack medicine tablets made from the flesh of babies and foetuses, which are sometimes infected with superbacteria. From the BBC: "It was confirmed those capsules contain materials harmful to the human body, such as super bacteria. We ...
Read in browser Millions without power in US after Hurricane Sandy
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 11:55 am #Sandy is the largest storm-related outage in #ConEd history. Crews are working around the clock to access damage and restore power.— Con Edison (@ConEdison) October 30, 2012 East Coast electric companies say outages from Hurricane Sandy so far have taken over 8.1 million homes and businesses offline, according to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) ...
Read in browser Awesome and ill-starred bodges: "Crazy logistics"
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 30, 2012 10:48 am The latest installment of Dark Roasted Blend's "Crazy Logistics" series highlight some sterling examples of awesome bodgeing, kludgeing and ill-starred jerry-rigging. My favorite story about this comes from a friend who worked at the CBC when its studios were on Jarvis Street in Toronto. Every night, there'd be a pair of power-outages across the whole ...
Read in browser Video from flooded NYC: East 8th Street and Avenue C before the blackout
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 10:38 am "Looking down at flooding from Hurricane Sandy on East 8th and Avenue C before the blackout."
Read in browser How to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning from generators in an emergency
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 10:36 am This CDC link contains essential tips for avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen when people use emergency generators in confined spaces, as many affected by Sandy were forced to do.
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee pt. 1
By Ed Piskor on Oct 30, 2012 10:30 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser HOWTO follow FDNY radio scanners in an emergency
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 10:00 am ShutterstockDuring last night's storm emergency, I monitored the FDNY scanners to try and follow fast-moving and difficult-to-obtain details about what was happening where in NYC. For future reference, radioreference.com is an excellent way to do that (provided you have power and internet access). Along with that, you'll want to have two browser tabs open, for ...
Read in browser Haunted Mansion model-kit ads
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 30, 2012 09:54 am Man_Writing_Slash has plundered a haul of Haunted Mansion ephemera from Monster Memories, including a pair of ads for the (absolutely fabulous) old model-kits. Disney Haunted Mansion toy ad & sound files
Read in browser First-person account of emergency hospital evacuation in NYC after Sandy power outage
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 09:48 am Image: CBS NewsOne of the focal points of the storm emergency in New York City last night was New York University's Langone Medical Center: the hospital's main and backup power generators all failed, and hospital staff had to evacuate patients as power resources faded. All but 50 patients have been evacuated, and the remaining 50 ...
Read in browser Sandy slows US nuclear plants, oldest in US declares alert: morning-after update
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 30, 2012 09:39 am Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey was placed on "alert" status last night, after a storm surge from Sandy caused water levels at the plant to rise over 6.5 more than normal, threatening the "water intake structure" that pumps cooling water throughout the nuclear plant. Snip from Reuters update: Those pumps are not essential ...
Read in browser Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312: a novel that hints at what we might someday have (and lose)
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 30, 2012 09:09 am Kim Stanley Robinson's
2312 is an insanely ambitious novel of life three hundreds years hence, set in a solar system where the Earth continues to limp along, half-drowned, terrified, precarious -- and only one of many inhabited places.
Read in browser Con Ed transformer explosion in Manhattan
By David Pescovitz on Oct 30, 2012 12:24 am A transformer
exploded at the Con Edison plant on 14th Street in Lower Manhattan.
Read in browser Music for Sleeping Children (Video)
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 11:46 pm I have long been a fan of Charlie White's photography. His new project is called Music for Sleeping Children.
Read in browser Boing Boing Daily Digest 004 10/29/2012
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 11:40 pm Commentary on a few of my favorite Boing Boing posts of the day, plus what I did over the weekend. Please let me know what you think of these (criticism is welcome).
Read in browser NYC Mayor Bloomberg's ASL interpreter Lydia Callis has her own fan-tumblr
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 29, 2012 10:41 pm A woman identified by NY Mag as Lydia Callis, the ASL interpreter at New York mayor Mike Bloomberg's side during tonight's Sandy update, was like a human emoticon for one of the nation's most expressionless mayors. Now she has internet fans, animated tribute GIFs, and her very own fan-tumblr. (Update: Her name is misspelled on ...
Read in browser Exploding electrical wires sparking fires in NYC
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 29, 2012 10:31 pm Power lines downed from Sandy's storm sparking electrical fires, endangering people in the water and structures nearby.
Read in browser Apps for Kids 32: Cobypic
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 08:41 pm In this episode of Apps for Kids, we talk about a coloring book app for iPhone called Cobypic.
Read in browser Rescue video: Sandy sinks tall ship HMS Bounty replica off NC; 14 saved, 2 missing (updated)
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 29, 2012 07:39 pm A 180-foot, 3-mast replica of the 18th century tall ship HMS Bounty sank on Monday, Oct. 29 during the epic surf and winds from Hurricane Sandy.
Read in browser Gawker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post experience Sandy downtime after power knockout
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 29, 2012 07:31 pm As others have quipped, if you're a celebrity, now is the time to do something stupid. Hurricane Sandy has achieved what Anonymous could not: the ultimate pop culture publishing blackout trifecta. . From tweets by those affected, looks like the culprit was a Sandy-caused power outage in Lower Manhattan, where Buzzfeed, HuffPo, and the Gawker ...
Read in browser Monkey rides on a goat walking a tightrope
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 06:41 pm As you can see in this detail from a larger photo, the monkey looks concerned. But the goat appears to know what he's doing. And here's a related post.
Read in browser Dying old satellites jeopardize future storm coverage
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 29, 2012 06:18 pm In the NYT, a story about "endangered satellites" that orbit the earth and provide essential data for tracking storms like Hurricane Sandy. But because of "years of mismanagement, lack of financing and delays in launching replacements," they could begin falling apart—with no functional plan in sight to maintain those resources.
Read in browser Man steals phone on subway
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 05:30 pm It's a good idea to keep your wits about you when you are riding the subway in Budapest.
Read in browser Sandy's getting bad
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 04:39 pm (Via instacane)
Read in browser Halloween greetings from Antarctica
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 29, 2012 04:32 pm Henry Kaiser is kind of our man on the inside in Antarctica. He works there every year as a film maker, turning science into movies. He sent this awesome Halloween greeting from underneath the sea ice. Bonus: He also sent us a video taken at the same spot — only this has 100% fewer wacky ...
Read in browser How Adrian Tomine came up with his first New Yorker cover
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 29, 2012 04:30 pm Optic Nerve cartoonist Adrian Tomine wrote a great piece for The Thought Fox about how he came up with his popular (and first) cover for The New Yorker. It includes a lot of preliminary sketches. If you’ve lived here your whole life, you probably just think of the subway as a way of getting from ...
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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