[Sponsor] Tendence watches now have fully mechanical automatic movements! Watchismo has the exclusive for the new Tendence Skeleton Watches, each with fully exposed 'skeletonized' mechanics seen both from the top of the dial and the see-through crystal of the caseback where the rotor can be seen revolving & generating power the old fashioned way -- with cogs, gears and hairsprings! A blend of form and function, the Tendence collection is a highly evolved concept, with extreme dimensions and three-dimensional numbers carved to stand high above the concave dial, itself cut from stainless steel, polycarbonate or titanium.s.
$100k chicken coop Remembering the Tomy Mighty Men and Monster Maker kits Extreme EPCOT geekery from the Norway pavilion The City Museum: St. Louis' Happy Mutant wonderland Chic's "Le Freak" and post-punk NBC delays Community -- so it can actually promote it Psychic Teens: "Tape" music review Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel Cory in Deerfield, IL tonight Vote for Mitt Romney Wife-carrying champion defends title Pinkwater's Bushman Lives: absurdist misfit story is an insightful treatise on art Idea Box draws community to public library Second Wind, a brutal browser roguelike QWOP creator on gaming Girl's stomach removed after liquid nitrogen cocktail drunk Art.sy Dishonored "the finest hour" for shooting games Mathew Borrett's hypnagogic cities Inky-Linky: making live links on printed webpages TRAMPOLARCHERY: loosing arrows whilst bouncing on a trampoline Carnage in Azeroth Mind-powered animal ears Steve Jurvetson, on Rose's Law for quantum computers YouTube adds more than 50 original content channels David Pogue, Neanderthal Kids are receiving more CT scans than ever, but is radiation risk worth it? SpaceX launches first official cargo resupply mission to International Space Station Prank signs for the London Underground Redefining Pink $100k chicken coop
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 09, 2012 12:49 pm Neiman Marcus sells this chicken coop for $100,000. Your custom-made multilevel dwelling features a nesting area, a "living room" for nighttime roosting, a broody room, a library filled with chicken and gardening books for visitors of the human kind, and, of course, an elegant chandelier. The environment suits them well as you notice the fresh ...
Read in browser Remembering the Tomy Mighty Men and Monster Maker kits
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 09, 2012 12:46 pm On TheFwoosh, Themanintheanthill has a detailed remembrance of Tomy's Mighty Men and Monster-Maker kits, which John at Super Punch calls "the toy from my childhood I most regret not keeping." I'm with John. I loved these things -- you assembled templates for monsters/superheros in a frame, inserted a sheet of paper overtop, did a "brass ...
Read in browser Extreme EPCOT geekery from the Norway pavilion
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 09, 2012 12:38 pm Jeff sez, "Disney nerds rejoice! Last week, to celebrate EPCOT's 30th Anniversary, Communicore Weekly had a live show in the Norway Pavilion's VIP Lounge. We geeked out over EPCOT History and interviewed Ron Schneider, the original Dreamfinder!" Communicore Weekly - Live Show for EPCOT's 30th Anniversary in the Norway Pavilion (Thanks, Jeff!)
Read in browser The City Museum: St. Louis' Happy Mutant wonderland
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Oct 09, 2012 12:38 pm At one point — I think it was about halfway through climbing the twisting warren of dark staircases and pipe organ parts that leads to the top of the 10-story slide — I turned to my husband and asked, incredulous, "Why the hell wasn't this place in American Gods?" Opened in an abandoned shoe factory ...
Read in browser Chic's "Le Freak" and post-punk
By David Pescovitz on Oct 09, 2012 12:31 pm I'm reading Simon Reynold's absolutely fascinating and comprehensive book about this history of post punk, titled Rip It Up And Start Again. As in his latest book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, Reynolds does a masterful job at connecting the dots between people, bands, scenes, memes, and even business shenanigans that drive ...
Read in browser NBC delays Community -- so it can actually promote it
By Jamie Frevele on Oct 09, 2012 11:55 am While everyone is enthusiastically awaiting the return of NBC's Community this fall, news broke today that the network was delaying its fourth season premiere indefinitely. Now, when I first read this, my first thought -- and many probably thought the same -- was that NBC was screwing over Community, yet again. But, as it turns ...
Read in browser Psychic Teens: "Tape" music review
By Aquarius on Oct 09, 2012 11:50 am While the rest of the world has been reveling in the resurgence of the cassette tape, some folks have been taking it a step further, and going full VHS! Video Horror Show is a label that only releases VHS tapes, which feature not only music, but also appropriately enough accompanying psychedelic visuals. Here is Psychic Teens with
Tape.
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel
By Ed Piskor on Oct 09, 2012 11:00 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!
Read in browser Cory in Deerfield, IL tonight
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 09, 2012 10:50 am Hey, Deerfield, IL! I'll be at the Deerfield High School Auditorium tonight at 7PM for the latest stop in my Pirate Cinema tour. I've got two other stops in the Chicago area: tomorrow, it's Anderson's Books in Naperville; on Thursday it's the Evanston Public Library. From there, I go to NYC for Comic-Con and an ...
Read in browser Vote for Mitt Romney
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 09, 2012 10:48 am This is utterly convincing. [via Robert Popper.]
Read in browser Wife-carrying champion defends title
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 09, 2012 10:45 am Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen are once again wife-carrying world champions, writes Scott Thistle at the Oxford Hills Sun-Journal: "The prize, besides a check for $530 ... is the winning woman's weight in beer." [The complete leaderboard]
Read in browser Pinkwater's Bushman Lives: absurdist misfit story is an insightful treatise on art
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 09, 2012 09:27 am Daniel Pinkwater's
Bushman Lives is another of Pinkwater's marvellous novels for young adults (and adults!) in which a misfit narrator embraces his inner weirdo and finds odd joy. Harold Knishke is a young man in late 1950s Chicago who finds himself with a lot of spare time thanks to weird political patronage at his high-school, which results in him serving as a corrupt hall monitor who can excuse himself from school grounds on his own recognizance. One day, he quits flute lessons, sells his flute to his relieved instructor, and uses the money to take up life-drawing classes at a beatnik art school across the street from a mysterious whitewashed house whose paint is constantly being replenished by mysterious, hissing humanoids all dressed in white wrapping.
Read in browser Idea Box draws community to public library
By LibraryLab on Oct 09, 2012 01:01 am The Idea Box at Oak Park Public Library is a new experiment in community participation and library programming that invites visitors to "explore, learn, and play." The 9 x 13 glass-enclosed space opened in March and has already played host to several popular exhibitions. Before the Idea Box opened, the space was home to a ...
Read in browser Second Wind, a brutal browser roguelike
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 09, 2012 12:48 am Described by author Squidly as "text adventure, roguelike, and sweet simplicity," Second Wind is a grind-em-up browser adventure. Attack, upgrade, buy stuff, and watch as stats accumulate, new character classes unlock, and the pixilated world changes. It's all horribly addictive, of course.
Read in browser QWOP creator on gaming
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 11:53 pm Bennett Foddy, creator of staggeringly difficult running game QWOP, has no sympathy for complainers: "My worry is not that games are getting too easy, because easy games can be wonderful. My worry is that games are getting too comfortable." [Indie Games]
Read in browser Girl's stomach removed after liquid nitrogen cocktail drunk
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 11:50 pm The BBC's Amy Gladwell: "As the frozen vapour hits the stomach it rapidly warms, releasing large volumes of air which can burst the stomach. Doctors performed emergency surgery to remove Gaby Scanlon's stomach, an operation known as a total gastrectomy"
Read in browser Art.sy
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 11:37 pm Art.sy is a recommendation engine a la Pandora or RDIO, but for the visual arts. Melena Ryzik, in The New York Times: An extensive free repository of fine-art images and an online art appreciation guide, it is predicated on the idea that audiences comfortable with image-driven Web sites like Tumblr and Pinterest are now primed ...
Read in browser Dishonored "the finest hour" for shooting games
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 11:24 pm Dishonored is a striking new first-person action game from Arkane and Bethesda. Beautiful and unique—it's set in a bizarre alternative London that suggests a Peter Ackroyd novel on drugs—it is described by Alec Meer as "the finest hour in what we might loosely but innacurately term 'blockbuster shooters' in years". But, he says, there will ...
Read in browser Mathew Borrett's hypnagogic cities
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 11:06 pm Matthew Borrett's Escher-like sunken cityscapes invite exploration; Huge, finely-detailed prints are available. [via Illusion 360]
Read in browser Inky-Linky: making live links on printed webpages
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 08, 2012 10:38 pm Roo Reynolds's Inky-Linky is a bookmarklet that makes printed-out webpages much more useful by adding QR codes to the margins, corresponding to the links in the document. That way, you can follow the links in your hardcopy by scanning the codes. It's available as a tarball on GitHub, and will probably not be usable to ...
Read in browser TRAMPOLARCHERY: loosing arrows whilst bouncing on a trampoline
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 08, 2012 09:22 pm Ryan is a University of Waterloo Engineering grad student who has invited the world to suggest damnfool stunts that he might perform for the youtubes. In this episode, he looses arrows from a powerful bow while bouncing on a trampoline. It's TRAMPOLARCHERY! CREATIVE DISSONANCE EPISODE 4 – TRAMPOLARCHERY (via Skepchick)
Read in browser Carnage in Azeroth
By Rob Beschizza on Oct 08, 2012 09:00 pm "Hackers have massacred all the virtual characters in some of online adventure game World of Warcraft's major cities" [BBC]
Read in browser Mind-powered animal ears
By Mark Frauenfelder on Oct 08, 2012 08:46 pm Gillian BenAry says: This is without a doubt the next best thing to actually being a colorful furry animal (for those who’d be interested in that sort of thing). I got chatting with the guy who was wearing these fuzzy orange fox ears, which move in accordance with your emotional state (triggered by alpha and ...
Read in browser Steve Jurvetson, on Rose's Law for quantum computers
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 07:38 pm If you are a nerd and you're not following Steve Jurvetson on Flickr, you should correct that. Why? Posts like this one, in which the VC and tech-thinker explores interesting things in interesting ways. "Barring a fracture of physics, we may be able to build quantum computers more powerful than the entire universe within 3 ...
Read in browser YouTube adds more than 50 original content channels
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 07:26 pm YouTube was once all about "oddball videos of gurgling babies, teenagers crashing their skateboards and synchronized wedding dances." They're still there, but now they're part of a broader mix, with a growing number of professionally produced content channels. Today, 50 more launched, added to the 100 introduced in the last year More in the NYT.
Read in browser David Pogue, Neanderthal
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 07:19 pm On the Wednesday edition of NOVA scienceNOW, David Pogue walks the streets of San Francisco in Neanderthal drag. Above, a actual clip from the upcoming hour, "What Makes Us Human?," in which the tech writer turned PBS host explores our relationship with Neanderthals, after being made up like a Neanderthal based on instructions from Daniel ...
Read in browser Kids are receiving more CT scans than ever, but is radiation risk worth it?
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 07:12 pm There has been a steep increase in the number of CT scans given to children in emergency rooms across the U.S., mostly for "kids presenting with belly ache," but the appendicitis rate hasn't budged. Findings published today in the journal Pediatrics detail the spike in use of x-ray-based scans, which are associated with concerns over ...
Read in browser SpaceX launches first official cargo resupply mission to International Space Station
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 07:07 pm SpaceX this weekend "successfully launched its Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on the first official cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station," at 8:35 p.m. ET on Sunday from Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Details from the commercial space startup below. The SpaceX CRS-1 mission marks the first of at ...
Read in browser Prank signs for the London Underground
By Cory Doctorow on Oct 08, 2012 07:05 pm An anonymous -- but inspired -- prankster has affixed some helpful addenda to the usual London Underground official signage on various tube-trains, as are documented in this Imgur photoset. London Underground prank stickers
Read in browser Redefining Pink
By Xeni Jardin on Oct 08, 2012 06:26 pm Jody Schoger, a writer and cancer advocate whom I met over Twitter during my treatment and now look to as a cancer mentor of sorts, writes about how to move beyond Pinktober, Pink Nausea, Pinksploitation, and the branding of a disease. Enough "consumerism masquerading as research, flawed studies, and misinformation about breast cancer," she writes. ...
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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